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Organisations and Networks - Pakistan
Aahung, Karachi
Aahung is a non-profit sexual health resource center aiming to promote sexual health and rights in Pakistan. They work with the belief that all human beings have the right to sexual health and other rights enshrined by the United Nations and ratified by all of its member states. Currently, the Aahung team leads capacity building and awareness raising activities, provides clinical services and conducts research and advocacy for better sexual health. The Sexuality Information Centre has materials targeting youth, health care providers, adults, parents and educators. Aahung also has publications on seminars, progress reports and research, and a community centre section, where you can read the message board, subscribe to information services, and browse people's personal writings in "Our Voices".
Pakistan - International Planned Parenthood Federation
International Planned Parenthood Federation works in Pakistan with a member organisation called ‘Rahnuma - Family Planning Association of Pakistan’. Rahnuma was one of the pioneers in providing family planning services and advocating for spacing of childbirth and for smaller families. The government later embraced the cause by establishing the Ministry of Population Welfare. Rahnuma advocates for a rights-based approach to sexual and reproductive health (SRH), for the empowerment of particular groups within communities (especially women and young girls), and for the strengthening of civil society in Pakistan.
Shirkat Gah – Women’s Resource Centre
Shirkat Gah - Women’s Resource Centre, formed in 1975 is a Collective to integrate consciousness raising with a development perspective, and to initiate projects translating advocacy into action. Shirkat Gah meaning ‘place of participation’, has over the last 30 years empowered women by increasing their access to information, resources, skills and decision making. In this process Shirkat Gah has brought positive change to policies, laws, and practices. Shirkat Gah has ECOSOC status at the United Nation.
The Pakistan Reproductive Health Network (PRHN)
The Pakistan Reproductive Health Network (PRHN) is a national network of organisations and individuals committed to promoting the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of the people of Pakistan. PRHN was established in 1995 after the 2nd Asia Pacific Social Science and Medicine Conference held in Manila, Philippines. Their objectives are to enhance the capacity of its members to promote sexual and productive health and rights and advocate for and promote effective SRHR policies and programmes.
Women Living Under Muslim Laws, Lahore
An international network that provides information, solidarity and support for all women whose lives are shaped, conditioned or governed by laws and customs said to derive from Islam. The Network aims to increase the autonomy of women by supporting the local struggles of women from within Muslim countries and communities and linking them with feminist and progressive groups at large; facilitating interaction, exchanges and contacts and providing information as well as a channel of communication.
World Population Foundation
World Population Foundation (WPF) aims to encourage sexual and reproductive health and rights throughout the world. WPF supports projects by local organisations in developing countries enabling individuals to make their own decisions about their sexuality and the number of children they desire. It’s mission is to work to improve the quality of life in developing countries by promoting: sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR); raising awareness of the importance of SRHR for sustainable human development and understanding the central role of reproductive health in population issue through awareness creation, education, resource mobilisation, and the provision of information and services, especially to women and young people.
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Scaling the Walls: A Look Back at How the Community Broke Into a Closed System
Posted by George Lee on May 2, 2014 at 9:56am
While looking through some old code, I found my first iOS projects that I did while I was a graduate student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The earliest of which goes back to November of 2008, which was 4 months or so after the App Store opened its doors (according to Wikipedia). Since then I had developed 3 apps (two ended up in the App Store), the last of which I worked on in 2010.
Whenever I spoke to others about my experience developing iOS apps, I would often complain about how difficult it was. The challenges of learning Objective C, managing memory, little to no support for unit testing, and dealing with threads in order to perform network requests were things early iOS developers needed to overcome. It was even more challenging if you were relatively new to programming (like I was) or hadn’t done much lower level programming. Not to say it was all bad. Knowing how it works under the hood is still valuable even today. That experience has even helped me out in interviews when asked about how I might do things at a lower level.
I knew I wasn’t alone, even as Objective C rose steadily in the TIOBE language ranks starting in mid-2009. John Siracusa of Ars Technica was skeptical in 2005 about Objective C’s future, and wrote a followup in 2010 calling for Apple to create a successor to Objective C that supports automatic memory management. ARC, fully released in 2011, made memory management in Objective C a lot easier, although it did little to appease Siracusa. Siracusa was but one voice among many developers clamoring for better tools and improvements to the runtime.
TIOBE Index from 2002 to 2013, courtesy Wikipedia and TIOBE.
Fast forward to today, where I just started developing iOS applications in earnest again. Apple has made several improvements, like the aforementioned ARC, object literals (no more having to type “[array objectAtIndex:0]”!), and better support for testing from XCode. It’s also easier to get your application on your device (the process on the old developer portal was pretty painful). We may never know if these changes were in response to developers clamoring for them, but they do make developing Cocoa applications easier. Yeah, there’s still the whole verbosity thing, but we can’t have everything, right?
But, the thing that dramatically changed in the past 4 years is the development of 3rd party tools that make development so much easier. The advent of frameworks like Xamarin and PhoneGap make app development easier by letting you develop for multiple platforms using programming languages you’re familiar with. However, the tool that dramatically changed how I approach iOS development now is CocoaPods, a dependency manager for Cocoa projects. If you’re familiar with Ruby on Rails, then you’ll notice that CocoaPods looks a lot like Bundler.
What CocoaPods brought to Cocoa development is that it makes installing third party packages so much easier. Previously, you’d have to download the package, add it to your project, and then muck with some settings to make sure it’s on your build path. CocoaPods streamlines this process dramatically. Installing a library like AFNetworking (the current go-to library for performing network requests) is as simple as adding it to your Podfile and doing a “pod install”. Having not followed Cocoa development closely these past 4 years, I imagine that CocoaPods was integral in creating the ecosystem we have today.
We know how open source projects live and die by community involvement. Projects like Node.js and Ruby on Rails thrive on the thousands and thousands of developers that contribute code, develop packages, and test out their ideas. It’s relatively rare to see a community develop around a walled garden like Apple and still innovate and contribute. Of course, Apple is still closed and that’s unlikely to change, but the community found a way to get in and make development for fellow developers much easier.
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BBC Premieres New Doctor Who Spin-Off: Class
By Alasdair Flett
Alasdair Flett
Violence. Swearing. Blood. Class delivers on its adult credentials but fails to engage viewers emotionally – I feel like we have seen it all before.
The BBC, while ‘resting’ the main series for a year, have decided to try and inject new vitality into the Whoniverse by launching a new, more adult programme set in the school at which former companion Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) used to teach. The premise appears to be a contradiction in terms. Perhaps, by setting the show in an educational environment, the creator was trying to make the point that teenagers are just adults treated with less respect. However, I cannot seem to make that cognitive leap within the first episode.
Typical sci-fi fodder is employed for the opening. For the millionth time, a heavy-breathing youth is pursued through endless corridors accompanied by a melodramatic soundtrack, only to be inevitably obliterated by a fantastical foe. The monsters are unoriginal, first appearing as insubstantial and corny ‘shadows’ and gradually materialising as a cross between Sauron, White Walkers and the Witch-King of Angmar. The CGI is not terrible, but neither is it particularly good, having never been a strength of Doctor Who; the physical costumes are always much more impressive.
Class’ theme tune is decidedly bland, evoking none of the epic, suspenseful tone of Doctor Who’s original theme. It is an odd contrast to the opening scene, shattering the tension it had attempted to build.
The show does have its strengths. The writing raises more than the occasional smile, and it lives up to the diversity credentials of its trailer. However, while the show’s inclusiveness is a definite plus-point, in the pilot it seems more like a box-ticking exercise than being particularly natural.
Characters are sometimes simply used to express the writer’s opinions; for example, the casual dig at ITV for the success of Downton Abbey and racial politics of that popularity. There are a few instances where ‘white people’ are the subject of ridicule, and whilst this criticism is by and large justified, the way it is inserted into the writing is clunky.
Whilst admirable for ethnic and sexual diversity, Class’ class issues (ironically enough) are muddier. Are we supposed to feel sympathy for the princely main protagonist, who has enjoyed a life of privilege and comes from a planet whose society is a perpetual private school? It is a questionable origin story, and not exactly inspired. This brings up a broader problem in Stephen Moffat’s canonical meddling, where he introduced an underclass in Gallifreyan society – the Time ‘People’ who are ruled over by the Time Lords. It is an interesting conceptual development, but lacks the exploration necessary to justify inclusion.
Class’ influences are not difficult to decipher. The two alien warring factions bear a striking similarity to Guardians of the Galaxy’s Kree and Xandarians, especially considering that one of these groups are called the Quill (Peter Quill being the central character in the franchise). The telepathic link between April (Sophie Hopkins) and the main villain is an age-old trope with its origins in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and can be seen more recently in Harry Potter.
The show’s violence is perhaps the most shocking element. What starts out, and for most part continues in the vein of, a bog-standard Doctor Who episode is suddenly shattered with an almost Tarintino-esque eruption of blood spraying from the body of one of the character’s prom dates as a sword is thrust through her back, drenching the onlooker. Decapitation ensues. Incongruous Capaldi then turns up, providing medical assistance and superlative cautionary advice.
From the teaser for next week, gore seems to be a mainstay, which is odd for an otherwise charmingly innocent show.
Class is an intriguing concept. Certainly not as dark or sexy as Torchwood, and with a confusing mix of cuteness and graphic violence, its success remains to be seen.
Image: Manginwu @ Flickr
Stardust Nation
“The Times They Are A-Changin’” - Bob Dylan...
BBC Three Online Review: Cleverman
The New World on BBC Radio 4
Why The Secret Life of Five Year Olds is just so meme-able
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Frances Barth
Scale, Economy and Unnamable Color
January 7 – February 6, 2010
New York-based artist Frances Barth lures viewers into imaginary landscapes of shifting scale and multiple viewpoints in her first solo exhibition at Sundaram Tagore Gallery New York. Her abstract paintings are at once flat surfaces and immense panoramas. Reinventing the picture plane, Barth uses expanses of color and sparsely drawn lines to imply both space and time. This vibrant new body of work investigates the history of painting and challenges perceptions of space.
Barth studied painting at Hunter College, New York, and first came to prominence in the 1970s. In tandem with abstract artists of her generation, she turned away from a purely illusionistic rendering of space. Her early works were horizontal paintings of thinly applied fields of color. Exploring the possibilities of painterly space, she created radically abstract geometric compositions. Barth sought to lengthen the time viewers spent reading her works. This gave rise to perplexing environments with narrative qualities.
The artist's recent paintings draw inspiration from geological landscapes, the passage of time, and the behavior of light. The works are akin to the floating worlds of Ukiyo-e woodblock prints from Japan. Dislocating viewers, Barth creates landscapes that are miniature and monumental within a single terrain. She is acutely aware of viewers' perceptions of space. In an instant, she brings us to soaring heights offering an aerial perspective then suddenly plummets below ground. Barth's luminous paintings guide viewers through spaces that not only shift, slide, and surprise, but also manage to tell a story.
Barth layers painted colors and maps lines using hand-made stencils and engineering drafting pens, which she inherited from her grandfather, who was born in the nineteenth century. She scumbles and glazes colors to create surprising new hues. The expanses of color create an atmosphere and concurrently offer the illusion of objects in space. To further such effects she makes a range of marks— from structured lines produced by stencils to spontaneous hand-drawn lines. Often, her works evoke the strata of the earth as they appear in geological diagrams. A passage of time is implicit. As Barth explains, "I like to make things appear to exist in different times. There's no one version of reality."
Frances Barth is the Director of the Mt. Royal School of Art, Maryland Institute. She has exhibited extensively across the United States. Her paintings are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas. Private collectors include Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, and IBM Corporation, New York.
For more information please email: gallery@sundaramtagore.com or call 212-677-4520
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Minute Maid Park Houston Information
Houston Information
The gulf coastal plain metropolis was established in 1836 along the banks of the Buffalo Bayou and named for General Sam Houston. Boasting the largest population in the state, the multicultural destination earned the nickname “Space City” when in 1967 it became home to the world famous NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Houston has a long list of attractions that are regularly visited by locals and guests alike.
Houston Theater District
Situated in the downtown region, the 17-block area features nine performing arts organizations and six performance venues. Whether looking for live classical or contemporary entertainment, Alley Theatre, the Bayou Music Center and Jones Hall host a variety of options. The multi-level Bayou Place also stands nearby with a list of bars, restaurants cinemas and live music opportunities. Other venues include the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts and the Galleria, which is billed as the largest mall in the state.
The Museum District receives millions of visitors every year. The wide selection of facilities here include the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum, the Holocaust Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts and the Station Museum of Contemporary Art.
Guests have the chance to explore the “Old South” when visiting the Bayou Bend estate, which is located in Memorial Park. In 1927, Miss Ima Hogg and her brothers claimed the site and constructed a plantation that is synonymous with southern charm. Designed to represent an 18th-century Georgian manor house, the mansion now welcomes guests to see an amazing collection of American arts that span more than 200 years. Paranormal enthusiasts find numerous opportunities to contact spirits in locations known for tragedy. The Spaghetti Warehouse, the Rice Hotel, the Glenwood Cemetery and the Battleship Texas are reportedly some of the most haunted locations in the city.
The downtown area is also popular with professional sports fans and serves as home to Minute Maid Park. The venue features a retractable-roof for night games and central air-conditioning for day games when the Houston Astros Major League Baseball team play. Fans cheer for the Houston Dynamo professional soccer team at the newly-constructed BBVA Compass Stadium. Basketball fans watch the action court-side at the Toyota Center. The venue also offers a regular schedule of musical concerts. NRG Stadium plays home to the Texans football league. The modern facility also has a retractable roof, air-conditioning and a natural grass field.
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Tone Mill is a complete water-powered cloth finishing works, established by the Fox Brothers and Co at the confluence of the River Tone and the Back Stream and dates from 1830. The remains of the water wheel remain in-situ and so too do all the line shafting and gearing.
The Mill later had an electric motor installed to supplement the water-wheel during times of drought, although the water wheel continued to be used for many decades after.
Put simply the mill comprises of a number of key areas to accommodate the various stages of production: A Fulling area, where wet cloth was dried, scoured, cleaned and milled to the desired finish. A dying room, adjacent to the fulling area which specialised in producing an indigo colouring. Reservoirs and Sluice gates, to manage the flow of water into the wheel chamber. The wheel chamber and a later power house. The associated machinery for all the stages of production are all in-situ, making it an industrial archaeologists paradise.
The works finally closed in 2000 and production was moved to a more contemporary location. The buildings and machinery are Grade II* listed.
Tone Mill in Wellington was the last woollen mill in the West Country, with a priceless collection of original machinery still in place in the wet finishing works. The site is of European significance
July 2014:
Tone mill dye works
October 2014:
Tonedale mill
Tonedale mill powerhouse
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Photo Credit: Turner Classic Movies
Network: TCM
Genre: Movies
Subject Matter: Anthology
No DVDs Available
(That We Know Of)
Legal Full Episodes
Each Saturday night -- except during February and early March when Turner Classic Movies presents its 31 DAYS OF OSCAR -- host Robert Osborne and a co-host introduce a hand-picked classic film and offer commentary on its cultural relevance and what makes it a timeless, must-see movie.
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In THE ESSENTIALS' 15th season, which started on Saturday, March 7, 2015 at 8pm ET/5pm PT on TCM, Osborne and new co-host Sally Field presented movie classics, including a mixture of enduring dramas, sparkling comedies, and contemporary gems (all movies start at 8pm ET/5pm PT). The new season opened with a screening of William Wyler's classic, ROMAN HOLIDAY. The lineup of movies selected by Field and Osborne for Season 15 include:
- David O. Selznick's adventure THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (1937) starring Ronald Coleman
- George Stevens' World War II comedy THE MORE THE MERRIER (1943), starring Jean Arthur and Charles Coburn
- Iriving Rapper's enduring love story NOW, VOYAGER (1942) starring Bette Davis and Paul Henreid
Robert Osborne - Host (Season 6 - Present)
Sally Field - Co-Host (Season 15)
Rob Reiner - Host (Seasons 1 & 2)
Sydney Pollack - Host (Seasons 3 & 4)
Peter Bogdanovich - Host (Season 5)
Molly Haskell - Co-Host (Season 6)
Carrie Fisher - Co-Host (Season 7)
Rose McGowan - Co-Host (Season 8)
Alec Baldwin - Co-Host (Seasons 9-11)
Drew Barrymore - Co-Host (Season 12-14)
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Rivers of Jannah. An invitation to Islam.
An invitation for you.
How my journey began
The Basic Beliefs of a Muslim
The 5 Pillars of Islam
Shahada (The testimony of faith)
Forum. Q & A
Links to beneficial websites
Contact information and to request an English translation of the Qur'an
Who is Allah and what is His message?
Blogging my way through Islam.
Verily, all praise is due to Allah. It is due to Him, and to Him alone. We praise Him and we seek His help and forgiveness. We seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our own selves and from the evil of our actions. And whomsoever Allah guides, there is none to misguide him, and whomsoever Allah leads astray none can guide him aright. I testify that there is no god worthy of worship except Allah, alone with no partner, and I testify that Muhammad (SAWS) is His slave and messenger.
The Basic Beliefs of a Muslim:
Along with a brief description of each of the basic beliefs, verses from the Qur'an that mention the basic beliefs, are included.
1. Tawhid:
Tawhid is the belief in the Oneness of Allah. No partners are associated with Him.
“Say, He is Allah, the One. Allah is Eternal and Absolute. The Self-Sufficient Master (Whom all creatures need, He neither eats nor drinks). He begets not, nor was He begotten; And there is none co-equal or comparable unto Him.” (Qur’an, 112)
2. The Angels of Allah:
Angels are a creation of Allah (SWT), which have no free will. They perform special duties and always obey Allah (SWT). They are always in praise and glorification of Allah. Angels also aid us in our use of our free will. All of us are attended by two angels who record our deeds, both good and bad, right up until our death.
“But verily, over you are appointed protectors (angels), kind and honorable, writing down your deeds. They know all that you do.” (82: 10-12)
“ He sends down His angels with the Ruh (Revelation) of His command to such of His servants as He pleases, (saying) “Warn (man) that none has the right to be worshipped but I, so do your duty to Me.” (16:2).
One of the most honord angel, Jibreel (Gabriel), brought the revelation of the Qur'an to Prophet Muhammad (SAW).
3. The Books of Allah.
The revealed scriptures. Muslims believe in all of the original scriptures
The Tawrah of Musa (AS) (Moses),
The Zabur of Dawud (AS) (The Psalms of David)
The Injil (Gospel of Isa (AS) (Jesus)
The Qur’an, revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW).
The Qur’an is the only divine book that remains unchanged, and will remain unchanged, in its original form. The message of the Qur’an is for all of mankind, and for all times. The Qur'an remains the only scripture that was compiled during the lifetime of a prophet who had received it directly from the divine source. The Qur’an, a Miracle from Allah (SWT), the Word of Allah, is the final book of Guidance.
“This is the Scripture in which there is no doubt. In it is guidance for the God-conscious, who believe in the Unseen, and are steadfast in prayer, and spend in charity out of what We have provided for them; and those who believe in what was revealed to thee (Muhammad) and in what was revealed before thee, and are certain of the Hereafter. These are on the true way of guidance from their Lord, and these are they who will be successful.” (2:2-5)
4. The Messengers of Allah.
The Qur’an states that Allah (SWT) sent a warner and a guide to every people. The first Prophet was Adam (AS). Other messengers include Nuh (Noah), Ibrahim, Ishmael, Isaac, Yaqoob, Yusuf, Musa, Dawud, and Isa (May Allah be pleased with them all).
There are 25 Prophets named in the Qur’an.
“Say (O Muslims): ‘We believe in God and in what is revealed to us, and in what was revealed to Abraham, and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Tribes (of Israel), and in what was given to Moses and Jesus, and in what was given to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them (in believing them all to be God’s messengers), and to Him do we submit ourselves.” (2:136, 3:84-85).
Muhammad (SAW) is the final Messenger of Allah (SWT). He left behind the Qur’an and his Sunnah (teachings and ways) for all of mankind.
5. The Day of Judgment (The day of Recompense).
On this day, all of mankind will be accountable for their deeds. This day will come.
“Then how can you disbelieve in Allah? seeing that you were without life and He gave you life. Then He will cause you to die and will bring you to life again (on the day of Resurrection), and then unto Him you will return.” (2:28)
“O mankind! If you are in doubt concerning the Resurrection, then, verily, We created you from dust, then from a drop, then form a clot, then from a lump of flesh, both shaped and shapeless, that We may make it clear for you. And We cause what We will to remain in the wombs for an appointed time, and afterwards, We bring you forth as infants; then you attain your full strength. And among you there is he who dies (young) and among you there is he who is brought back to the most abject time of life so that, after knowledge, he knows nothing. And thou seest the earth barren, but when We send down water on it, it thrills and swells and puts for the every lovely kind of growth. That is because God is the Reality, and it is HE Who gives lift to the dead, and it is He Who has power over al things, and because the Hour of Judgment will come concerning which there is no doubt, and because God will raise those who are in the graves.” (22:5-7)
6. Divine Decree.
Everything is governed by Allah’s (SWT) will. Nothing takes place, not even a fallen leaf, without His permission.
“The Prophet believes in what has been revealed to him from his Lord, and so do the Believers. They all believe in God, His angels, His scriptures, and His messengers, making no distinction among His Prophets. And they say, “We hear and we obey. Grant us Thy forgiveness, or Lord, and unto You is the return (of all).” (2:285)
7. Life after Death, The Hereafter.
The abode of Jannah (Paradise)
“Those who believe and do righteous deeds, they are the best of creatures. Their reward is with their Lord: Gardens of Paradise beneath which rivers flow. They will dwell there in forever, God well pleased with them and they with Him. This is for those who hold their Lord in awe.” (98:7-8)
Or the abode of Jahannam (The Hellfire)
“And on the Day those who disbelieve will be placed before the Fire, (they will be asked), Is not this real? They will say, Yes, by Our Lord. “ He will say, “Then taste the punishment because you disbelieved.” (46:34).
Photo used under Creative Commons from Ranoush.
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Articles with the Tag: Mission
9/11 anniversary: St. Ignatius community honors heroes
ST. IGNATIUS – Local police, firefighters, emergency responders, and a soldier followed the Mission Valley Honor Guard onto the football field to honor the heroes of Sept. 11 during a ceremony before the Friday evening game. The Mission Valley Honor Guard brings people together almost every y...
Ronan Seniors for Sept. 12, 2018
ST. IGNATIUS — We can’t help everyone, but everyone could help someone. - Ronald Reagan Our nail clinic will be here on Tuesday, Sept. 18, from 9-11 a.m. Please call the center to make your appointment at 406-745-4462. Commodities will be here on Tuesday, Sept. 18, and available for p...
St. Ignatius seniors for Aug. 29, 2018
ST. IGNATIUS — Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new. — Albert Einstein At our nail clinic, times have changed; it will still be on Tuesday, Sept. 3, but is now scheduled from 9-11 a.m. Call the center to make your appointment at 406-745-4462. Our next clinic will b...
Children learn self-defense during summer program
ST. IGNATIUS – Students of all ages are still rolling at the Jiu-Jitsu Cross Collar Academy after it opened three years ago in a studio in town on First Avenue. The martial arts academy is open all year long, but on Tuesday, the children’s summer program came to an end, and five kids wer...
ST. IGNATIUS — Whenever I find the key to success, someone changes the lock. The food pantry is still looking for volunteers to work Tuesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. If you are interested, please call 406-745-0057. The quilters are in the center on Mondays from 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. ...
Work underway to save historic paintings
By Karen Peterson Valley Journal ST. IGNATIUS – Repairs to save historic murals in the St. Ignatius Mission have begun – just when it started to look like they couldn’t wait much longer. The walls seem grand when you first step through t...
ST. IGNATIUS — Golf is a good walk, spoiled. — Mark Twain The food pantry is still looking for volunteers to work Tuesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. If you are interested, please call 406-745-0057. The nail clinic will be on Tuesday, Aug. 21, from 10 a.m.-noon. Call the center at 406-...
St. Ignatius Seniors for Aug. 1, 2018
ST. IGNATIUS — “ The best way to predict your future is to create it.” — Abraham Lincoln Our foot and nail clinic will be on Tuesday, Aug. 21, from 10 a.m.-noon. Please call the center at 406-745-4462to make your appointment. Meals can be delivered to qualified seniors and...
Mission Valley Museum Consortium shares upcoming events
ARLEE Arlee/Jocko Valley Museum See our beautiful outdoor veterans’ memorial and memorabilia from area veterans along with Pioneer Day photographs and more. ST. IGNATIUS St. Ignatius Mission Church St. Ignatius Mission Church’s summer hours are 9 a.m.-7 p.m. d...
ST. IGNATIUS — If you can dream it, you can do it. - Walt Disney Our card party is held on the second and fifth Monday evenings of each month at 7 pm. and everyone is welcome. The food pantry is still looking for volunteers to work Tuesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. If you are interested...
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#192: The Flying Burrito Brothers, "The Gilded Palace of Sin" (1969)
Let’s start with the Nudie suits. When the band sported them in 1969 for the album cover of Gilded Palace of Sin, the Ukrainian-born, Hollywood-based tailor Nudie Cohn had by then outfitted at least half of the country stars who had graced the stage of the Grand Ole Opry with his elaborate embroidered and rhinestone-studded suits. By 1969, rhinestones, spotlights, and country music were indelibly linked. Like the rap industry of today, the country-music industry was, then and always, about glitz and fame. It was about making it past your poor roots and becoming a star. As the rap industry is about escaping the projects, the country-music industry was about escaping rural America. Country was about gold records, large shiny belt buckles, seeing your name in the marquee lights.
In regards to rap culture: Cornell West has written that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Let Freedom Ring!” became “‘Bling! Bling!’—as if freedom were reducible to simply having material toys.” In wealth-obsessed America, the freedom we seek is less about the opportunity to pursue a spiritually fulfilled or a richly meaningful life and more about cash money.
The country music that also glosses the meaning of freedom commodified the rural American experience and turned it into profit; it was about capitalizing on one’s humble upbringing by conjuring all of its sellable images—dirt roads and hayfields and rivers and creeks and oak trees—while at the same time turning them into nostalgias, leaving the rural life behind. To make it —to become a star—meant to make it out of rural America. Living in the country was the past, and that’s what made country songs pure and sad and very big money among a rapidly urbanizing and increasingly wealthier and more depressed American population.
It was the “outlaw” country singer Waylon Jennings who in 1977, eight years after the influence of Gilded Palace had seeped in, insisted, “I don’t need my name in the marquee lights,” who suggested going back to Luckenbach, Texas (pop. 3) to live simply, with music, friends, and love, and renounce success. It’s funny that the term “outlaw” used to describe Jennings and other musicians who shunned the industry’s “slick” production, its rhinestones and marquee lights and gilded palaces of sin, means to have broken the law and to be a fugitive, which implies a restriction of freedom. It’s as if to seek fortune was to follow the law, while to shun material wealth was to break the law and thus to have one’s freedoms restricted.
“Baby, let’s sell your diamond ring / Buy some boots and faded jeans and go away.” To be a fugitive was to return to the country. But the fugitives who fled Nashville and Hollywood came later, in the late ’70s. The pianist David Barry, who played in L.A.’s music scene, has said that in the Flying Burrito Bros.’ time, “Real country stars didn’t want to wear [jeans and boots], because it suggested they came from country’s poor white roots.”
Real country stars lived in Hollywood. They wore Nudie suits.
That the suit that’s said to have launched Nudie Cohn into fame, one worn by a trying-to-make-it country singer named Tex Williams in 1948, featured a covered wagon and wagon wheels is not uninteresting. The covered wagon as American symbol stands first for manifest destiny, that notion that swept the new inhabitants of the continent ever westward, into already-inhabited territories that they believed, or made themselves believe, God had intended for them to have—what is now Mexico and Texas and New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Oregon, and Washington. And California, the farthest West of the continent that embodied and made complete this notion of expansion.
The term manifest destiny was first used by a journalist named John L. O’Sullivan in an editorial in favor of the annexation of Texas, in 1845. He asserted the American Anglo-Saxons’ “manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”
Three years after O’Sullivan’s editorial, when gold was found at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California, the Rush began, and covered wagons rolled in steady streams, and pack horses plodded in droves, making their way to the land that symbolized then and now both freedom and bling bling, or the material—if not spiritual, mental, psychological, or otherwise—freedom that bling bling affords. (“In your high society you cry all day,” Jennings would later sing.)
One hundred thousand Native Californians were killed or died of disease in those first twenty gold-rushed years, and by 1900 the Native population in California had dropped from perhaps a million to 16,000 people, while Los Angeles hit a population of over 100,000. It was exactly 100 years after the Gold Rush began that Nudie Cohn, newly relocated to Hollywood, convinced the struggling Tex Williams to buy him a sewing machine with the money he’d made from an auctioned horse.
With the sewing machine, Nudie made Tex’s covered-wagon-covered suit that began his career of selling high-Western-style wear to stars at exorbitant prices. As Nudie rose to fame, he became known for promoting himself shamelessly, paying cash for purchases with dollar bills on which a sticker of his own face covered George Washington’s.
Nudie designed the famous gold lamé suit that Elvis wore in 1959 on the cover of his album of hit singles called 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t be Wrong. Released by Hollywood’s RCA Victor, it turned into a bona fide Gold Record. Its cover featured no less than 16 identical Elvises in gold lamé suits, a fact that, coupled with its title and Gold status, puts the Elvis phenomenon in direct conversation with the German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay called “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” which argued that the aura of a work of art is devalued the more it is reproduced. (Hence the dollar bill is not-regrettably defaced, and, though it would take some time to explain the leap, hence also inflation, wherein the more money that is produced the less value it has, meaning that the $10,000 Elvis paid for his gold-lamé Nudie suit would have cost him $85,000 or so today.)
This idea resonates with the oft-told (and most often laughed at as outlandish) Native American belief that having one’s photograph taken robs a person of their soul. The duplicated Elvis photographs on the record cover look like figurines, toys ready for sale. Elvis would spend the next decade in Hollywood making films that preceded his long psychological crash and drug addiction that ended in 1977 with a pharmie-induced heart attack.
But when kid Gram Parsons—lead and harmony vocals, guitar, piano, and organ for the Flying Burrito Bros.—saw Elvis in Waycross, Georgia, Elvis was still 21, and his aura captivated the nine-year-old Gram. Elvis was a strange and different bird. He had grown up in Tupelo, Mississippi and in Memphis, Tennessee, sometimes in public housing projects in predominantly African-American neighborhoods, hearing blues musicians on Beale Street, and singing hymns in a Pentecostal church in which the Lord was made of blood, sweat, tears, and spirit, was a Lord who traveled through music, worked through song. When Gram saw Elvis, he was channeling something real and raw and profound on stage. It was the beating heart of America, particularly of the capital-S South. Seeing Elvis is often cited as the formative event of Gram Parson’s young life as an artist, and when Gram—also a Southerner with a background in church hymns, spirituals, and country—ended up in Los Angeles some ten years later, Elvis was living there too.
Gram was the grandson of a wealthy Florida citrus-fruit magnate. His parents had both died of over-consumption of drugs and alcohol. As a member of the Byrds, he transformed the group, as Country Music Hall of Fame writer Peter Cooper put it, “from America’s most popular rock band to one of America’s least popular country bands.” He can be seen as the force behind the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, which Gram didn’t call rock or country either but Cosmic American Music, and he and fellow Byrd Chris Hillman split off to continue the sound as the Flying Burrito Bros., along with “Sneaky Pete” Kleinow and Chris Ethridge, on the Gilded Palace album.
A Rolling Stone article written at that time called Los Angeles a place to “get heard, get signed, get rich,” where “there are 318 record wholesalers and manufacturers listed in the yellow pages,” “a city crammed with writers, photographers, artists, critics, producers, marketing consultants, promoters, managers, publicists, messenger services, and at least a hundred other occupational categories—all of them devoted in part or wholly to the music business.” Not to music but the business.
No artist’s aura was safe there. The language of the music business echoed the language of Western imperialism and expansion—as in, for example, Columbus’s “discovery” of an entire continent already inhabited by intricate and complex civilizations, or Cabrillo’s “discovery” of San Diego Bay, or all the lands and places that explorers “found”—in that agents “discovered” new talent, original people and material they hoped to plunder for riches.
Thus was written the searing gospel anthem of Cosmic American musicians— “Sin City,” of Gilded Palace of Sin, the Burritos’ debut, recorded in Hollywood’s A&M studio. “This old town’s filled with sin, it’ll swallow you in,” were the first lines. It’s a visionary song. It’s slow and sorrowful and on fire. It’s everlasting. It seems to grow richer the more you hear it, not less.
The song’s central and invisible character was the former Byrds’ manager Larry Spector, with whom Hillman and Parsons had had bad dealings, and who Hillman said was “a thief.” The unnamed Spector stays hidden behind a gold door in the song. “On the 31st floor, a gold-plated door won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain,” Hillman and Parsons sang together, like choirboys.
Hollywood didn’t know what to make of choirboys, be they cosmic or not. The album was a commercial failure, while a few critics at the time insisted it had artistic value.
Rhinestones are imitations of actual stones. They’re sparkly, cheap, made to catch the spotlights. They are mass-produced, while real stones and gems are more rare, each one a wholly unique piece of rock from the earth.
The Flying Burrito Bros. did a photo shoot for the album cover in the Mojave desert outside of Los Angeles. Dressed in the rhinestone suits, they stood in the ruins of a wooden shack that looked like a hovel abandoned after the Gold Rush and left to dissolve again into the dust. Gram’s suit famously featured marijuana leaves, poppy flowers, and pharmaceutical pills, along with fire leaping up the sides and a cross on the back with shafts of light radiating from it. Was he country? Was he rock ‘n’ roll? He was a Cosmic American.
The Burrito Bros. wore the rhinestone suits for the cover, while on the “Sin City” recording, their voices shone like emeralds, the pedal steel a gleaming ruby. Real gems.
Gram died of an overdose in that same Mojave Desert, at the age of 26, four years after the photo shoot, after Gilded Palace of Sin, after a lot of commercial flopping, and with him died whatever his vision of Cosmic American Music was, except that it didn’t. It’s an aura that continues to penetrate in its mysterious way.
Elvis outlived him by four years. He lived to be the subject of the first global concert satellite broadcast; his image reached more viewers in the world at once than any human’s ever had. He staged more and more live shows than ever before while his addiction grew. Those closest to him say that he was not himself, that it was as if he’d disappeared, as if his soul, that raw spark that he was known for in the beginning, had vanished. He died, from a drug-induced heart attack, on the toilet in his gold-embellished bathroom, an American king.
—Holly Haworth
Written by Brad Efford On October 13, 2017
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Olive and the Beaver... sometimes you just have to suck it up...
Back when I was President of the Liberal Party Olive Crane came to my office to discuss running for the Liberals in District 7 Morell. I was quite excited about the possibilities as I had known about her work at the Vet College as I was on the AVC Inc. Board and she certainly had some great credentials. She was a bit naive at our meeting as one of her concerns was making sure that Larry McGuire wouldn't put his name forward at the nomination meeting if she decided to take a run at it for us... and that my friends would have been a miracle in itself. We all know the rest of the story and we've all had a chance to see Olive in action as a MLA and for the most part she has done a great job but obviously on the "Beaver" issue she has completely lost her mind... what possible good is there in bringing a 30 year old matter up in the house that will in the end only embarrass our Province in the National media... how about a few Ideas for Islanders… I understand the likes of Jim Bagnall shooting his mouth off about it as he just doesn’t know any better but I would have expected Olive to at least understand that she is making a laughing stock of our Legislature... she just doesn't seem to know when to "let an issue go" and that's quite evident with the PNP's as there has been a long line up of well healed Tories who have tried to "shut her up" (and that’s the common quote I hear)… she doesn't seem to understand that she needs them if she ever thinks she can go any further in the Tory party... just ask Pat Mella... if most of the guys working around Mike Currie when he ran the PNP program were scooping up PNP’s just think of the number of “well connected and well healed Tory supporters” who were recipients’ during Mike’s reign and they DON’T LIKE ANY MEDIA ATTENTION…. so I'm thinking Olive is "toast" at the next leadership review unless she starts towing the Tory line...and that would be too bad... Olive, sometimes you just have to suck it up.....
Brown won't apologize for blowing up beaver dams
WAYNE THIBODEAU
An admission by P.E.I.’s Environment minister that he used dynamite to blow up beaver dams when he was in his 20s has the Opposition demanding an apology. But Environment Minister Richard Brown fired back, saying the Opposition was making a mockery of the P.E.I. legislature. He went on to say that no beavers were hurt by his work, adding they had all been removed before he used the dynamite. “Our office has been getting calls all day from environmentalists, and national (animal) rights groups from all across the province, and all across the country, who have heard this comment,” Jim Bagnall said during question period Thursday. “That the minister of Environment has been bragging about crisscrossing our gentle Island and blowing up beavers, which is our national symbol. “Will the minister stand in this house today and give a public apology to all Islanders for those types of comments.’’ That exchange only prompted more fireworks inside the legislature. “I take offence to that,” Brown replied. “This legislature is here to debate and discuss things and it’s a serious issue. The question was posed to me about this problem, the overpopulation of beavers and the problems they are causing in Island rivers. If this Opposition doesn’t want open and frank debate, if they want to make a mockery of this thing, then they can do it.” The Guardian was the first to tell Islanders about the jaw dropping exchange in the legislature earlier this week. As outlined in Thursday’s newspaper, Brown admitted to using dynamite to blow up beaver dams. He had a permit, but the idea of the Environment minister blowing up dams shocked other MLAs, including Opposition Leader Olive Crane. Brown said Thursday the point he was trying to make is that times have changed and what was acceptable 30 years ago is no longer tolerated. “No, not the sins of the past,” said Brown, responding to a heckler. “That’s the way things were done in the past. Thirty years ago, this was acceptable. It’s not acceptable today.” But Bagnall said it’s time for the province to put more humane practices in place. “Would you please come up with a more humane and compassionate way to remove the beavers rather than blowing them up?” said Bagnall. Brown said that’s already happened. He said beaver dams are now being removed by the P.E.I. Trappers Association using the most humane methods possible. “I didn’t hurt any beavers in my life,” added Brown.
Posted by Tim Banks at Saturday, May 02, 2009
A couple of things Tim:
1. The reason Olive will be successful (and the reason the Liberals are trying to find dirt on her) is because she will not listen to those old Tory's on the PNP issue. That is why the PC members are excited about her.
2. That Beaver comment by Brown wasn't during Question period or anything, it happened during a funny moment when they talked about the budget. If you listen to the audio on the Guardian website, both Crane and Brown were laughing. Bagnall brought it back up, as might be expected by him.
So trying to blame her for this is laughable at best. get your facts straight Tim.
Ummm, that story was all about Bagnall, not Crane.
And Brown should have known better.
Farmer said...
Crane is focused on the abuse of the PNP program. I heard Nancy Key on the radio the other day saying the PC's were backing off. HA! She only wishes they were backing off. She must be part of the back room club. Anyone paying attention the House has seen Olive Crane and the Opposition going after this horrid file. Keep up the good work Mrs. Crane. And welcome back to the blog world Mr. banks.
Yes Tim I was wondering. I had heard Ghiz had told you to lay off and was surprised you were bowing down to baby Ghiz.
Yes..this is just another example of Brown not knowing when silence is golden.
he really dug himself a hole with this. But this is typical of Brwon. Similar to when he stood up and said in regards to improper behavior with PNP that the "buck stopped with him".
Brown like the rest of PEI didn't know just how filthy and seedy the whole PNP file really is and he didn't know enough to keep his mouth shut.
Brown i thought could maybe be replacement for Ghiz because Ghiz will have to go before the next election. But with this latest muck up by Brown they will have to look further for a new Leader.
Too bad because even though for his short comings I always thought Brown was if nothing else genuinely Sincere and Honest. Honesty is trait that is in short amounts if the Liberal Party these days.
Hey Tim..You were gone too long. Brown dug his own hole. I have had this sent to me from all over Canada and US. We are becoming more of a laughing stock than ever. Guess it's the "Island Way".
It's not the Island Way, it's the Liberal Way...fools!
Wine On Thursday... No Show On Friday...
Another White Elephant... you say...
Now here's a new take on a "Ring-Tone"....
Here's The Skinny On Rob Lantz for Mayor...
Tim's Tweets... on Twitter...
Why Not Throw In A House And A New Car...
"Buy American" Campaign Not Working...
Spicing Up The Ratings.... the old fashion TV way....
Hard To Believe... we didn't give them "enough"......
Boomer... say it's not so...
Nova Scotia Election Blues?... maybe Red or Green....
All About Nothing...
Setback for the "Don't Get Ahead Gang".....
Go Lorie Go.... our Island Pride...
Home again, home again, jiggity, jig...
Wrong Again Mr. Bagnall....stop grandstanding on n...
Hard To Believe.... she's still in charge.....
Bagnall Worried... and he should be...
Only In Charlottetown You Say.... "beam me up"
Parking Problems.... and then some..
No Green Here....and not likely anytime soon...
Campbell... A Carbon Tax Winner... red again..
Great Work Ronnie...
What Can I Say.... you be the judge...
Give Us A Break.... "and start sticking up for us"...
Big Mistake Mike...
What's The Old Saying... a few bricks short...
Must Be A Full Moon...
Olive and the Beaver... sometimes you just have t...
Fish To Fry... it's open season
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Home / News / Updated Hurricane Irma Forecast Sept. 8 at 8 p.m.
Updated Hurricane Irma Forecast Sept. 8 at 8 p.m.
September 8, 2017 News, Top Headlines, Topstory Leave a comment 5,518 Views
On Sept. 8, 2017 at 8 p.m. the National Weather Service released new predictions that show Hurricane Irma set to make landfall in Naples, Florida early Sunday morning. This is after the storm passes over Key West, Florida and could potentially make landfall as a category 4 or even a category 5 hurricane over Key West. It is expected that winds at this time will exceed 110 mph.
The storm is on track to move into Southeast Georgia on Monday morning a few hours before noon. Orlando, Florida, which lies halfway between the southern tip of Florida, where landfall is projected to occur, and Valdosta, Georgia, is expected to be covered by Hurricane Irma on Sunday evening near 8 p.m. Due to this anticipate clouds and winds to roll into Valdosta around 8 a.m.
In the newest forecast Valdosta is set to experience the full effects of Hurricane Irma around 2 p.m. on Monday. The projected center line of the storm runs just miles away from Valdosta State University and Moody Air Force Base.
Today Lowndes County was placed under a State of Emergency by Gov. Nathan Deal. Due to this Lowndes County residents who live in a mobile home or an RV are being asked to evacuate. Interstate 75 may soon be subject to contraflow lane reversal. If this does happen the northbound and southbound lanes will both be used as northbound lanes. This is a standard evacuation procedure and will allow those under mandatory evacuation in parts of Florida to evacuate quicker.
The strength of the hurricane could change drastically and place Valdosta in the center of a very powerful storm.
The current predictions still have the center of the storm traveling through Lowndes County near the city of Valdosta as well as through Echols County, Berrien County and Lanier County. Lowndes County and surrounding counties that are under a State of Emergency in Georgia are in bold below. A list of all 94 counties under a State of Emergency is provided below.
“A state of emergency now exists in the following 94 counties: Appling, Atkinson, Bacon, Baker, Baldwin, Ben Hill, Berrien, Bibb, Bleckley, Brantley, Brooks, Bryan, Bulloch, Burke, Calhoun, Camden, Candler, Charlton, Chatham, Chattahoochee, Clay, Clinch, Coffee, Colquitt, Cook, Crawford, Crisp, Decatur, Dodge, Dooly, Dougherty, Early, Echols, Effingham, Emanuel, Evans, Glynn, Grady, Harris, Houston, Irwin, Jeff Davis, Jefferson, Jenkins, Johnson, Jones, Lamar, Lanier, Laurens, Lee, Liberty, Long, Lowndes, Macon, Marion, McIntosh, Meriwether, Miller, Mitchell, Monroe, Montgomery, Muscogee, Peach, Pierce, Pike, Pulaski, Quitman, Randolph, Schley, Screven, Seminole, Stewart, Sumter, Talbot, Tattnall, Taylor, Telfair, Terrell, Thomas, Tift, Toombs, Treutlen, Troup, Turner, Twiggs, Upson, Ware, Washington, Wayne, Webster, Wheeler, Wilcox, Wilkinson and Worth Counties.” (Governor Nathan Deals Office of the Governor/Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency)
The hurricane is slowing down and thus is still currently located in the ocean between Florida and Cuba and continues to grow stronger as it travels in the direction of the continental United States. Predictions currently suggest that the eye of the hurricane is growing stronger as it moves over the water. Due to the size of Hurricane Irma, it is possible that while it’s moving over Florida it will struggle to lose strength because of the heat from the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. The water on the eastern and western sides of the storm will also keep it from shrinking.
The eastern side of a hurricane tends to feature the most instances of tornadoes. Please be aware of this as you are looking at the forecasted tracks.
Valdosta State University still lies directly in the predicted path of Hurricane Irma and could suffer from 40-80 mph winds on Monday as early as noon. Plan for inclement weather for the majority of Monday.
If you are a student remaining on campus during Hurricane Irma please stay informed on precautions and safety guidance before, during and after the storm. RA’s in each dorm hall will be providing information to keep those staying on campus safe. All students that live on VSU campus must complete the Hurricane Housing survey.
For those who are off campus and are in or around the projected path of the hurricane, prepare your supplies before Monday. The hurricane is expected to begin impacting the Lowndes County area Monday morning at 10 a.m. Tropical Storm force winds are expected in Valdosta and the surrounding areas during the first interaction with Hurricane Irma.
Make sure that your household has a plan for when disaster strikes if you are not evacuating ahead of time. This includes, but is not limited to, placing any stray items that are currently outside into your home or garage, clear off any front or back porches such as chairs and tables, and, if possible, park your cars inside of a garage or under a stable covering. Winds are expected to be the most extreme part of our interactions with Hurricane Irma, so treat this storm as you would treat a tornado watch/warning. Today is the last full day to safely prepare for the upcoming weather.
The National Weather Service advises you stay in a room that is centralized in your home and that has no windows, on the lowest level of the house, if possible. This is the safest location to be in during times of severe winds. Fill bottles with water in the event that water treatment facilities become inoperable and keep shelf-stable foods near in the event that power is shut off and you are not able to cook or use your fridge. If power does shut off, try to keep your fridge door shut, as this will help to preserve the food that is inside and will keep the cold in for as long as possible. A battery operated emergency radio can be useful too if the power is not working.
Stay safe and try to keep your phones charged going into the storm just in case the power is out for an extended amount of time.
The Spectator will continue to relay all information that is provided by the National Weather Service and local authorities regarding Hurricane Irma.
Follow us on social media for more updates on Hurricane Irma.
Story by Seth Willard. Photos by the National Weather Service.
emergency georgia Hurricane HURRICANE IRMA severe weather state of emergency Valdosta VSU weather 2017-09-08
Seth Willard
Tags emergency georgia Hurricane HURRICANE IRMA severe weather state of emergency Valdosta VSU weather
Previous VSU professors give advice to students
Next Updated Hurricane Irma Forecast Sept. 9 at 11 a.m.
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Peacock Theatre
Portugal Street
WC2A 2HT
(5mins) Turn left on Kingsway and carry on 200 metres until Claire Market, where the theatre is on your left.
Please note: the location shown on the map is an approximate location of the theatre. In the majority of cases the theatre will be marked on the map so please make sure you locate the exact location yourself. If the theatre is not shown on the map please make sure you locate the correct road name and take account of the directions.
Get ready for the musical that lives forever, and join the fame-hungry students New York’s High School For The Performing Arts as they tackle life, love and legwarmers alongside the eternal search for stardom. Based on the classic 80’s film, Fame the Musical features the Oscar-winning title song, and a dynamite cast of fearless performers including Keith Jack.
ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company - Some Like It Hip Hop
ZooNation’s smash-hit sensation Some Like It Hip Hop thrilled audiences and critics when it opened in 2011, prompting five-star reviews and standing ovations with its infectious “wit, heart and magnificent energy” (The Independent).
Message In A Bottle is the spectacular new dance-theatre show from triple Olivier Award nominee, Kate Prince to the iconic hits of 17-time Grammy Award-winning artist Sting including Roxanne, Every Breath You Take, Walking on the Moon, Fields of Gold, Englishman In New York and Shape of My Heart. A village alive with joyous celebrations is suddenly under siege. Everything changes forever. Determined and daring, three parted siblings step out on their own extraordinary adventures. With a mix of exhilarating dance styles, dazzling footwork and breathtaking athleticism set to the music of Sting, Message In A Bottle tells a vital and uplifting story of humanity and hope. Message In A Bottle is the latest masterpiece from the ground-breaking creator behind Some Like it Hip Hop, Into The Hoods, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (choreography) and SYLVIA, and features the astonishing talents of dance storytelling powerhouse, ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company.
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Rednecks + Culchies
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The Kennedy Films of Robert Drew & Associates (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
American Heroin Addicts
Alien Contact: Secret Societies
Best Of History Gift Set [DVD]
Teague: Design & Beauty
1916: The Irish Rebellion DVD
Out of Luck
Rust Never Sleeps (Blu-Ray)
Let There Be Light: John Huston's Wartime [Blu-ray]
Manufacturer: Criterion Collection (Direct) Brand: CRITERION COLLECTIONS
CRISIS-1963, FACES OF NOVEMBER-1964
Six of HISTORY's biggest hits including WWII in HD, The Men Who Built America, and The World Wars are now available in one comprehensive 17-disc set. The best and most epic historical documentaries from the most trusted name in the business.
A biography of the life and work of the American designer, Walter Dorwin Teague (1883-1960).As a determined and ambitious man from a tiny rural town in Indiana, Walter Dorwin Teague struck out on his own to find his dream in New York City. After developing a career as an illustrator, he found himself bored in an unfulfilling career. After a trip to Europe, Teague found inspiration in modern art, design and architecture and he decided to create a new profession: industrial design. This decision led to the design of many great items such as the classic Kodak camera, Steinway pianos, Steuben glassware, Boeing Aircraft and more.Selected for the Newport Beach Film Festival, San Diego Design Film Festival, Trail Dance Film Festival and the IDSA International Conference 2014.The DVD contains 10 minutes of extra interview footage with Bill Moggridge, Harry Teague, and Prof. Craig Vogel.When sold by Amazon.com, this product will be manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
Manufacturer: PBS Model: 35341235
On Easter Monday 1916, a small group of Irish rebels took on the might of the British Empire. Although defeated militarily, the men and women of the Easter Rising would soon win a moral victorywith their actions leading to the creation of an independent Irish State and contributing to the eventual disintegration of the British Empire. They have inspired countless freedom struggles throughout the world.
Manufacturer: Reprise Brand: DVD Model: 35369618
The full-length concert film from Neil Young & Crazy Horse s 1978 tour Featuring the legendary hits Cinnamon Girl, and Like A Hurricane Picture restored from original film negative 5.1 surround & stereo mixes24bit/192 kHzHigh Resolution Audio "BECAUSE QUALITY MATTERS"1.Introduction (Live) 2.Sugar Mountain (Live) 3.I Am A Child (Live) 4.Comes A Time (Live) 5.After The Goldrush (Live) 6.Thrasher (Live) 7.My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue) [Live] 8.Stage Announcements (Live) 9.When You Dance I Can Really Love (Live) 10.The Loner (Live) 11.Welfare Mothers (Live) 12.The Needle And The Damage Done (Live) 13.Lotta Love (Live) 14.Sedan Delivery (Live) 15.Powderfinger (Live) 16.Cortez The Killer (Live) 17.Cinnamon Girl (Live) 18.Like A Hurricane (Live) 19.Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black) [Live] 20.End Credits (Live) 21.Tonight's The Night (Live)
Manufacturer: Olive Films
Presented in cooperation with the National Archives and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, this collection features four documentaries directed by John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen) as part of his service as an officer in the Army Signal Corps. The documentaries are not simple propaganda, but reflect Huston's own changing attitudes toward war. Winning Your Wings (18:19 min) is a recruitment film for the U.S. Army Air Forces, hosted by Jimmy Stewart. Report from the Aleutians (44:48 min) reveals the tedium of being stationed at a remote Army post in the islands of Alaska. With San Pietro (32:05 min), however, the tone of Huston's documentaries begin to take a dark turn, documenting an Italian military battle that cost an estimated 1,100 American lives, revealing, in unflinching detail, the retrieval and burial of casualties. The Army chose not to publicly screen the film. The final installment, the emotionally devastating Let There Be Light(57:50 min) narrated by Walter Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), is considered to be one of the most important wartime documentaries ever made, depicting the treatment of "psychoneurotics" (now known as post-traumatic stress disorder), through hypnosis, drugs, and psychotherapy.
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Police find body believed to be Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts
By RYAN FOLEY, Associated Press
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Investigators have recovered a body believed to be that of 20-year-old college student Mollie Tibbetts, who disappeared from her small hometown in central Iowa a month ago, police said Tuesday.
The body was discovered in rural Poweshiek County, which includes Tibbetts’ hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said in a press release.
The agency called a 4 p.m. news conference to provide an update on the search for Tibbetts, saying investigators were working to confirm the identity of the body.
Greg Willey of Crime Stoppers of Central Iowa, a nonprofit that is administering an anonymous tip line and reward fund in the case, said he learned of the discovery from a close friend of the Tibbetts family on Tuesday morning. Willey called it a tough but not unexpected ending to the search for the University of Iowa student.
Investigators said Tibbetts was last seen July 18 in Brooklyn, a rural town of about 1,400 people, as she took a routine evening jog. It’s unclear whether she returned to the home where she was dog-sitting for her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s brother, who have said they were both out of town . She was reported missing by her family the next day, after she didn’t show up for work at a day camp for children.
Tibbetts’ disappearance set off a massive search involving dozens of officers from the FBI, as well as state and local agencies. They focused much of their efforts in and around Brooklyn, searching farm fields, ponds and homes. Investigators asked anyone who was around five locations , including a car wash, a truck stop and a farm south of town, to report if they saw anything suspicious on July 18.
Last week, Vice President Mike Pence met privately with the Tibbetts family during a visit to Iowa and told them that “you’re on the hearts of every American.”
While hundreds of people have been interviewed, no suspects have been publicly identified in Tibbetts’ disappearance. Investigators have said that foul play, including the possibility that she was abducted, could be involved, saying that disappearing on her own would be inconsistent with past behavior.
Willey’s group has been publicizing a reward fund that raised around $400,000 for any tip that led to Tibbetts’ safe return. He said the fund, which included more than 220 donations from individuals, will now likely be used for any information that helps police catch anyone responsible for her death.
“Once they catch their breath, this will turn into a weapon going the other direction, to catch the person who did it,” he said.
Tibbetts, a psychology major, would have started her junior year this week in Iowa City, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Brooklyn. She was staying with her longtime boyfriend and working while home from school over the summer.
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CRIME · TOP STORIES
3-year-old girl sexually assaulted by 25-year-old bricklayer in Lagos
Police have arrested a 25-year-old bricklayer for sexually assaulting a three-year-old pupil in Lagos.
The suspect, Yinusa Olowu allegedly raped the schoolgirl in her non-registered primary school, Smart Kids Say School in Bariga area of the state.
Yinusa was said to have been arrested after the child was examined at Mirabel Centre and was confirmed defiled.
According to a police report, the suspect had gone to visit his friend, who owned Smart Kids Say School, Sodiq Showumi, when he carried out the action right in the school premise.
Sodiq was arrested and accused of the crime being the primary guardian of the seven children in his school.
However, upon interrogation, he recalled that Yinusa had come visiting. He said he had left the children in his care while he went to pour away the pupils’ urine.
“I suspect Yinusa. Two years ago, he had a case of defilement within the community,” he said.
Yinusa, an indigene of Ijebu Ode in Ogun state, admitted having committed the crime during interrogation. He further revealed that he defiled the pupil with his finger.
He was transferred to the gender unit of the State Police Command for further investigation and prosecution.
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Fran Drescher Really Wants to Cast Cardi B in a Reboot of ‘The Nanny’
Jamie Kravitz
Kevork Djansezian, Getty Images
Ever since Cardi B paid homage to Fran Drescher's character in The Nanny by wearing a head-to-toe cheetah look during Milan's fashion week — which she credited to Drescher in an Instagram post, BTW — comparisons have been made between the two stars. And now, Drescher is starting to think seriously about casting Cardi in a reboot of the beloved '90s sitcom.
This isn't the first time Drescher has expressed interest in casting the rapper as her daughter in a potential Nanny reboot, and now she says she's in talks with Cardi's team about the possible project.
"[I’m] talking to her representation," Drescher told ExtraTV at Universal Studios Hollywood. "It’s really getting me excited. It’s fresh and it could be super fun."
"She started it because she kind of paid homage to me, putting our pictures side by side when she was wearing animal print and it was me in animal from The Nanny and that just went viral," Drescher continued. "That got my creative juices going."
"She’s got a funny voice, too," Drescher added. "What kind of a great mother/daughter would we be? Amazing, I think."
The Nanny was on the air for six seasons, from 1993 until 1999. That would make this year the show's 25th anniversary, which seems like the perfect time to set a reboot in motion.
20 Must-See TV And Movie Cast Reunions
Source: Fran Drescher Really Wants to Cast Cardi B in a Reboot of ‘The Nanny’
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Simone Rocha FW15
The intertextual review
A lot has been said about Simone Rocha’s new collection for FW15: ‘Simone Rocha has been killing it the past few seasons’, ‘Simone Rocha sent out her most accomplished collection to date’, ‘Rocha’s collections are collectible for generations of women’. We were interested to see how all these different thoughts and opinions would work together as one, and decided to break down a handful of different reviews on her last collection, and piece them together with fragments of interviews, and excerpts from a talk between Anna Wintour and Suzy Menkes, in which Simone sat in the audience and also opened up about her experiences in the industry. In between these (clickable) quotes, you will find traces of our own thoughts. What follows is a review of reviews: a new way of reviewing?
Backstage after the show will be the very moment the international press dive back to grill her about the collection. “Yeah, who came up with that idea?” Simone says, laughing. “It’s like you’ve given birth. You’ve just given birth to 37 outfits, on 37 really skinny ladies and you’re, like…” Simone mimed a dramatic, heaving sob. “But everyone’s there waiting, asking, ” So ?” And I want to say, ‘If you didn’t get it, that’s cool. Go away and digest it. That’s fine with me!'”
Maybe the press digested it right this season, maybe they didn’t. All we know is that Simone Rocha has been killing it the past few seasons, expanding the aesthetic vocabulary of her young brand at lightning speed in a series of hauntingly beautiful collections. In the aptly grand setting of London’s Guildhall, with its backdrop of stained glass windows, Simone Rocha sent out her most accomplished collection to date. (Funnily enough this Elle review clashes a bit with that of Style.com, which says, “Rocha may have been resting a bit on her laurels this season, but you still sensed her creative restlessness in these clothes.”)
What stood out most were the damask-style tapestry materials that looked as if they could have been taken from a Renaissance portrait of a Medici (where they would have been used to convey status and wealth). In previous collections, it has been relatively easy to trace her childhood in Ireland or her father’s Asian background. For the Autumn/Winter 2015 season, the clothes seemed less innocent; more historical and religious.
Simone’s background and family is indeed something which is very important to her, and makes the brand work. She has given insight about this during a talk between Anna Wintour and Suzy Menkes last year: “My business partner is my mom, who has worked in the industry for years, so it’s a huge advantage. The advantage of family and partners is bouncing ideas off. It’s not a one-man show. For me it’s really important to be able to flesh things out, I need somebody else to think of other sides of the business. Like your sales, like your distribution, like your customer. ” But then she’s also mentioned, “It’s very funny working with my mum because we’re completely different.” How? “She’s, um, really nice!” Simone laughed. “I’m very yes or no. I know what I like and I don’t like. That’s how I work on my collection. I can be quite cut-throat with myself. I’ll say, ‘I know it’s a good skirt but it’s out. It’s out!'” She kills her darlings then? “Oh, that’s good,” Simone enthused. “I might keep that.”
Backstage after the show last weekend, Simone mentioned the styling and ‘editing’ of her own shows once more (which we overheard):
Journalist: Do you always do it without a stylist?
Simone Rocha: Yeah, I’ve been doing it myself for four seasons.
Why do you prefer to work like that?
It’s a very intimate personal thing for me, I like to feel super connected to the work, and hair and makeup, so we just kind of cradle our little world together.
Does that make it difficult though, when it comes to editing down the collection? Because you’re the one who has to do the editing?
Yeah but I think I should, I put them there in the first place.
But it gets very hard, doesn’t it, to do that.
You have to sort of step back from it. Try and look at it with your head.
“I style each show, and I always want to take it to a specific place.” This season, she took it all to the Guildhall — a historical building in Bank that still had all tapestries on the walls when she first came to see it; something which originally inspired her, and something that was definitely visible in her FW15 collection.
“I so admire her tapestries as well as the ones here,” was something Simone said about the Guildhall’s decor while referencing her main inspiration behind the collection: Louise Bourgeois — about whom she’s written her thesis in art school in Dublin.
Bourgeois’s tapestries [are] themselves inspired by the artist’s childhood and the hours she would spend sewing alongside her mother as she did her restorations in the family’s Paris workshop. When restoring tapestries for prudish clients, Bourgeois’s mother would cut out any images of genitalia and replace them instead with tapestry flowers. “I got to visit her little house in New York after she had passed and was absolutely blown away. There were all these little drawings… Her work is so witty, so smart, but crude at the same time,” Simone said. Bourgeois often dealt with issues of betrayal and anxiety within her work, so it makes sense that many of the looks seen today were physically different from front to back. Rocha [has also] described the process as “getting her body into the process,” and it felt as though Simone had something deep to express, but that she could articulate it only in clothes, not words.
But other people like to speak words about her. Louise Wilson, for example has praised her work: “Simone is like a fine wine. The thing I find interesting and brave about her work is that it is so deeply personal and she puts it out there, and that’s really quite rare for a female designer. I think women pick up on that; they sense something very sincere and honest in her clothes which feels refreshing and new.“
While this personal touch is definitely visible in her collections, working together with her mother and taking in different points of view really adds to the product in the sense that it will fit women of any age: “Every look here added to the feeling that Rocha’s collections are collectable for generations of women – not just her age group – clothes to cherish and wear for years to come.” Funnily enough, Simone touched upon this point during the Anna Wintour talk, and it’s something that comes from her family background. “Me and my mom are very different ages, so we think of different customers, and I think it’s really important that when you’re forging something with a strong identity. What I work with is really with a modern femininity — that you have someone else who can see how your identity can work in different areas. You know, it’s not like one road; there are so many different paths. And I think that’s really important when you come out of college to know that there’s… – I’m super fortunate that my family were in the business, but everybody does a completely different route and there’s so many different ways to set up a label and different types of support. I think it’s really important to know that.”
“I think that a huge part of growing up in the industry was being aware of how good quality things should be,’ Simone says. ‘Because I’ve been around it my whole life I feel I know how something should look, so I set really high standards from the get-go. [And] a big thing I learned in college was to not spend time on things you’re comfortable with. That’s what it is, being creative.“
Traces of Vogue #1, Vogue #2, Style.com #1, Style.com #2, The Telegraph #1, The Telegraph #2, Financial Times, Grazia, ELLE, Dazed Digital
Simone Rocha: Family and Femininity
A decade after graduating from CSM, the Irish designer shares a few pearls of wisdom at The Sarabande Foundation
'The Force That Moves Fashion' - Louise Wilson
Don't call her a fairy godmother: Lulu Kennedy
Chalayan Comes Dancing
Fashion Week through the eyes of Central Saint Martins students
Fabian Kis-Juhasz and her Devilish Damsels
The former RCA student talks femininity, Fashion Week and the fickle reality of success.
Simone Rocha shows how sticking to your guns triumphs
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Nair Cardiac & Medical Centre
Nair Cardiac Medical Specilaist Centre
Mt E Novena Specialist Centre
38 Irradwaddy Road #07-35
Dr V P Nair is a cardiologist practicing at Nair Cardiac & Medical Centre, Mount Elizabeth Orchard and Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospitals & Medical Centres, Singapore. His work involves caring for patients through clinical cardiology, interventional cardiology and implantations of stents.
Upon his graduation (MBBS), Dr Nair attained his post-graduate degrees MRCGP UK, 1975, MRCP Ireland, 1977 and MRCP UK, 1979. He then underwent Cardiology Advanced Specialty Training in Singapore and England and was inducted as a Fellow of the Academy of Medicine Singapore (FAMS, Cardiology) in 1981.
Dr V P Nair also became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP Edinburgh), Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP Ireland) and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP London). Subsequently, he was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners (FRCGP UK), Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians (FCCP USA), Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC USA) and Fellow European Society of Cardiology (FESC Paris), and Fellow of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (FSCAI USA).
He then went on to train in interventional cardiology at Regional Cardio-Thoracic Centre, Newcastle Upon Tyne in England, San Francisco Heart Institute in USA, Cleveland Clinic in USA and Broussais University Hospital in France.
Dr V P Nair is multilingual and speaks English, Mandarin, Malay, Bahasa Indonesia, Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam. He has received Most Outstanding Malayalee Award in 1994, PBM - Pingat Bakti Masyarakat (Singapore) in 2009 and was awarded with Hind Rattan in 2001.
Dr Nair has published many scientific papers and has addressed many regional and International Cardiology conventions including the World Congress of Cardiology. He is involved in many Social, Cultural, Educational, Sports and Voluntary activities. He gives regular lectures to doctors and nurses in Singapore and many Asian countries. He has given talks and demonstrations on the new concept of cardio cerebral resuscitation, laughter aerobics, PTCA & Stenting as well as cardiobiomarkers to the medical community and the public in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and many other Countries.
Dr V P Nair provides clinical services, such as:
* Specialist Consultation
* Cardiac & Medical Assessment
* Complete Health Screening
* 12-Lead Electrocardiogram (ECG)
* Heart Rhythm assessment / Pacemaker
* Echocardiography & Ultrasound of Heart
* Ambulatory ECG monitoring (Holter monitoring)
* Ambulatory Blood Pressure monitoring (ABP)
* Comprehensive range of blood/ urine investigations
* Treadmill Stress Test (TM / ETT)
* Myocardial perfusion Stress echo & PET Scan
* Coronary Calcium Score & CT Coronary Angiogram
* Coronary Angiogram, Angioplasty & Stenting (Radial & Femoral Route)
* Renal Artery stenting
* Carotid & Abdominal Ultrasound
* ABI (Ankle Brachial Index)
Dr Reginald Liew
The Harley Street Clinic Heart Specialists
Gleneagles Hospital Annexe Blk #02-38/41
6A Napier Road, S 258500
Dr Reginald Liew is a Cardiologist practicing at Gleneagles Hospital. He is widely recognized both regionally and internationally in the field of heart rhythm problems and was involved in some of the early pioneering clinical studies in the UK validating the use of 3D-mapping systems to treat complex heart rhythm problems. He has mentored many cardiologists in the UK, Singapore and the surrounding region in performing cardiac electrophysiology (EP) procedures and regularly proctors EP cases in neighbouring countries.
Dr Reginald Liew received his UK Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) in 2008 and was appointed consultant cardiologist at the National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS) in 2008 and senior consultant in 2012. Dr Liew was elected Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC) in 2010 and Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC) in 2012.
Dr Reginald Liew has a strong track record in both clinical and translational research and was formerly deputy director of the Research and Development Unit at NHCS. His research interests include atrial fibrillation, sudden cardiac death and the use of stem cells in cardiovascular disease. Dr Dr Reginald Liew was awarded the prestigious British Heart Foundation Junior Research Fellowship from 2000 to 2003 and obtained a PhD from Imperial College London for his research on the arrhythmic actions of oestrogens on the heart.
Dr Reginald Liew holds an academic position as assistant professor at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore where he continues to teach and mentor medical students. He is the course organizer for the cardiovascular component of the first-year normal body course. He has presented his research and been invited to be guest speaker at many national and international meetings and has published over 100 papers and abstracts in high impact peer-reviewed journals.
He is currently the Associate Editor for Heart and the ASEAN Heart Journal and is also a member of the Research Committee for the Singapore Heart Foundation and the Basic Science Committee of the Asian Pacific Heart Rhythm Society. He is accredited in Gleneagles Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, and Parkway East Hospital.
Dr Reginald Liew provides clinical services such as:
- Coronary Angiography
- Stent Insertion
- Pacemaker Implantation
- Catheter Ablation
- Exercise Treadmill Test
- Cardiac Computed Tomography
- Electrophysiological (EP) Study
- Myocardial Perfusion Imaging
- Valve Replacement and Repair
- Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) Surgery
- Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation
- Aneurysm Repair
- Thoracic surgery
- Cardiac Screening
Dr Brian Khoo Chung Hoe
Nobel Heart Centre
Mt. Alvernia Medical Centre
Block A #01-03
820 Thomson Road, S 574623
Dr Brian Khoo is a Cardiologist at Nobel Heart Centre in Mount Alvernia Medical Centre A.
He completed his MB ChB in 1998 at the Queen’s University of Belfast, UK and MRCP in 2002 at the Royal College of Physicians, UK.
Dr Brian Khoo is a multilingual and speaks several languages such as English, Malay, Mandarin and Cantonese.
His works involves Arrhythmia Evaluation and Management, CT Coronary Angiogram, Heart Failure Disease Management Program, Chest Pain Evaluation and Management and Preventative Cardiovascular Screening.
Dr Brian Khoo underwent Advanced Specialist Training in Cardiology at Tan Tock Seng Hospital and obtained specialist accreditation in Cardiology from the Ministry of Health & Singapore Medical Council in 2006. He furthered his studies by spending a year in interventional cardiology, under Dr Neal Kleiman at the Methodist DeBakey Heart and Vascular Centre and Dr Ken Fujise at the University of Texas Medical Branch, USA. He is the only doctor in Singapore to have been accepted to the United States-based Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s sponsorship programme as an interventional cardiology fellow.
On his return, Dr Brian Khoo helped to set up the Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention service at the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. This 24-hour service has significantly improved survival rates in heart attack patients by reducing the “door to balloon” time – the period from the moment a patient comes in through the A&E to the time coronary blood flow is achieved – to below 90 minutes.
Dr Brian Khoo has been actively involved in teaching undergraduates and post graduates medical and nursing students, and was a Senior Clinical Lecturer at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, instructor for advance cardiac life support (ACLS) and Core Clinical Faculty member for cardiology in National Healthcare Group Cardiology Residency Programme.
He had also participated in numerous researches and was the principal investigator for the hospital in many international randomized controlled trials involving patients with cardiac disease.
Dr Brian Khoo provides clinical services such as:
- Preventative cardiovascular screening
- Screening for athletes and those wanting to participate in vigorous exercise
- Chest pain evaluation and management
- Arrhythmia evaluation and management
- Heart failure disease management
- Electrocardiogram (ECG)
- Carotid intima-media thickness
- Transthoracic echocardiogram (2D Echo)
- Exercise stress echocardiogram
- Dobutamine stress echocardiogram
- 24-hour ECG monitoring
- 24-hour ambulatory BP monitoring
- Cornoary calcium scan
- CT coronary angiogram
- Diagnostic invasive coronary angiogram
- Percutaneous coronary intervention (balloon angioplasty and stent implantation)
Dr Peter Yan
Peter Yan Cardiology Clinic
Mt E Medical Centre #06-01/ 02
Dr Peter Yan graduated from National University of Singapore (NUS) with Bachelors in Medicine and Surgery (MBBS) in 1976. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine and obtained his master of Medicine (Internal Medicine) in 1981. He then went on completing his Fellowship in Cardiology at the Alfred Hospital Melbourne, Australia where he sub-specialised in the field of Coronary Intervention in 1986.
Dr Yan was an Associate Professor in Medicine, Department of Medicine, National University of Singapore and Senior Consultant Cardiologist, Cardiac Department of National University Hospital, Singapore. He is also a member of the American Heart Association (Clinical Cardiology, Cardiopulmonary Critical Care and Epidemiology). Dr Yan sits on numerous International Advisory Board on lipids, hypertension, anti-platelet and anti-coagulation therapy, coronary interventional devices and innovations.
Dr Peter Yan provides clinical services such as:
- Specialist Consultation
- Cardiovascular Screening Programs - including high risk cardiovascular assessment
- Balloon angioplasty
- Coronary stenting
- Permanent Pacemaker Implantation
- Right and Left Heart Catheterisation
- Emergency Percutaneous Coronary Intervention for heart attack
Dr Daniel Yeo Poh Shuan
Apex Heart Clinic
Gleneagles Hospital Annexe Block Suite #04-37
Dr Daniel Yeo Poh Shuan obtained his Medical Degree (MBBS) from the University of Western Australia in 1999. He obtained Membership of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 2004 and completed Advanced Specialty Training in Cardiology in 2007. In 2008, he was awarded the Ministry of Health, Singapore, Health Manpower Development Programme Scholarship to pursue a Fellowship in Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplantation at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, which he completed in 2009. He obtained Testamur status in the National Board of Echocardiography ASCeXAM in 2009, and obtained full certification as a Diplomate in the ASCeXAM in 2012. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, in 2011. He was elected a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology in 2013.
Dr Yeo has been Consultant and the Head of Heart Failure Service at Tan Tock Seng Hospital since 2008. During the SARS outbreak in 2003, he was one of the doctors who cared for the SARS patients. For his dedicated service, he was awarded a Courage Star Award by the Singapore Government.
Dr Yeo is one of the few cardiologists in Singapore who are specially trained in Heart Failure and certified by the USA National Board of Echocardiography. His passion is to understand the patient’s concerns and to care for the patient as a unique individual. He practices evidence-based and collaborative medicine so as to achieve the best possible results for his patients, and ultimately achieve a healthy heart.
Dr Daniel Yeo Poh Shuan provides clinical services such as:
- General Cardiology
- Heart Failure
- Echocardiology
Dr Rohit Khurana
Mount Elizabeth Novena Specialist Ctr #07-41
Dr Rohit Khurana is a cardiologist practising at Gleneagles Hospital, Singapore. He has special interests in coronary artery disease and resistant hypertension, and in treating these conditions by catheter based interventions. Dr Rohit Khurana is accredited in Gleneagles Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, and Parkway East Hospital.
Dr Rohit Khurana completed his MB BCh from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom in 1996. He then underwent fellowship training in coronary intervention at Kings College Hospital, London, and Vancouver General Hospital, Canada. He is an accomplished interventionist, using mostly the transradial approach and routinely performing complex angioplasty, including chronic total occlusions, and adopting the latest innovations in interventional techniques. He was appointed as a consultant at the National Heart Centre of Singapore in 2009.
Dr Rohit Khurana has mentored many cardiologists in Singapore and ASEAN and proctored numerous workshops in regional hospitals, assisting in complex coronary angioplasty. In 2011, he pioneered renal denervation as a novel procedure to treat resistant hypertension in Singapore and was invited to proctor the first renal denervation procedures in Brunei and Vietnam.
Dr Rohit Khurana has won Young Investigator awards and has received the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship which funded 2 years of his research at Dartmouth College in the United States. He has over 35 publications in peer-reviewed journals and continues to be a regularly invited faculty member at many national and international meetings. He contributes time as a member of the research committee for the Singapore Heart Foundation.
Dr Rohit Khurana provides clinical services such as:
- Heart attacks/myocardial infarctions
- Angina
- Chest pains
- Shortness of breath
- Coronary artery disease/blockages
- Heart muscle disorders
- Cardiomyopathy
- Valvular heart disease
- High blood pressure/hypertension
- Palpitations
- Atrial fibrillation
- Fainting/blackouts
- Heart block
- Arrhythmias
- Pericardial disease
Dr Victor Lim Yen Teak
Heart Partners Clinic
Dr Victor Lim Yen Teak obtained his Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (with Commendations) from the University of Glasgow, UK in 1993. He became a Member of the Royal College of Physicians, UK in 1997, a Fellow of the Academy of Medicine Singapore (Cardiology) in 2003 and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh) in 2007. His subspecialty is Interventional Cardiology (coronary angioplasty and stenting)
Dr Victor Lim underwent his Interventional Cardiology training at the National Heart Centre Singapore and did his Interventional Cardiology Fellowship at the Sieburg Heart Centre, Germany from 2004-2005.
Dr Victor Lim Yen Teak provides clinical services such as:
- Interventional Cardiology
- General Cardiac Assessment & Screening
- General Health & Cardiac Health Blood Profile testing
- ECG, Treadmill stress testing, Echocardiography
- Carotid artery intima-media thickness scanning
- Diagnostic Coronary Angiography
- Coronary Angioplasty & Stenting
Dr Dinesh Nair
Heart Matters @ Novena
38 Irradwaddy Road, S 329563
Heart Matters @ Orchard
Dr Dinesh Nair 's subspecialty within Cardiology is in Interventional Cardiology and he has a special interest in Percutaneous Valve therapies and Complex Angioplasty/ Stenting procedures. He worked as a Cardiologist in NHC before moving to Tan Tock Seng Hospital in 2006, where he was the Director of the Coronary Care unit.
Dr Nair was trained in Helios Heart Centre, Siegburg in Germany, in advanced Interventional Cardiology with Prof Eberhard Grube, one of the pioneers of Interventional Cardiology. The centre is one of the premiere centres worldwide for “first-in-man trials” of numerous cardiac devices and procedures, including percutaneous valve implantation, novel arterial stents and cutting-edge coronary imaging techniques.
Dr Dinesh Nair provides clinical services such as:
- Coronary Angiogram
- Coronary Angioplasty
- Complete Cardiac Assessment
- Multimodality Imaging
- 2D Echo & Carotid Ultrasound
- Treadmill Stress test
- Cardiac Imaging - PET Scan
- Cardiac Imaging - CT Scan
- Cardiac Imaging - MIBI
- Complete Health Screening
Dr Soon Chao Yang
The Heart Doctors Clinic
Mt Alvernia Hospital Medical Centre
Block D #05-56
Gleneagles Hospital Annexe Block #04-37
6A Napier Road
Dr Soon Chao Yang graduated from University of Otago, New Zealand in 1997. He has worked and trained extensively in New Zealand and United Kingdom before completing his training in the field of cardiology at National University Hospital Singapore, in 2004.
Dr Soon is one of a select few cardiologists to receive formal training in interventional cardiology, as well as peripheral vascular intervention at the prestigious Methodist DeBakey Heart Centre (Baylor College of Medicine) and Texas Heart Institute, Houston,United State of America. He is board eligible for interventional cardiology in the US.
Dr Soon is a fellow of American College of Cardiology, Royal College of Physician (UK), College of Asia Pacific Society of Cardiology and Academy of Medicine, Singapore. Prior to private practice, he has vast experience in the management of cardiac emergencies at various public hospital including National University Hospital, Alexandra Hospital and Tan Tock Seng Hospital. He has also been an active investigator in several international trials in the last decade and has published on various cardiology topics in peer reviewed international journals. He is a regular invited faculty at both local and international cardiology meetings.
Dr Soon Chao Yang provides clinical services such as:
- Invasive Coronary Angiography and Stenting
- Coronary Heart Disease Management
- Valvular Disease Assessment and Management
- Vascular Disease Assessment and Management
- Abnormal Heart Rhythm Assessment and Management
- Cardiovascular Risk Factors Assessment and Management
- General Medicine
Dr Bernard Kwok
Bernard Kwok Cardiology Clinic
Farrer Park Medical Centre #07-18
1 Farrer Park Station Road
Dr Bernard Kwok is a Cardiologist at Bernard Kwok Cardiology Clinic in Farrer Park Medical Centre.
He completed his MBBS IN 1990 at the National University of Singapore, MRCP (Int Med) in 1996 at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, UK and M Med (Int Med) in 1996 at the National University of Singapore.
Dr Bernard Kwok is effectively bilingual in English and Chinese and is conversant in spoken Bahasa. In addition, he speaks 3 dialects fluently (Cantonese, Hokkien & Teochew). His works involves Cardiac Stress Testing, Exercise Testing and Exercise Prescription, Heart Health Screening, ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY and CT Coronary Angiography and Calcium Scoring.
Dr Bernard Kwok established the Singapore's first multi-disciplinary Heart Failure Programme at the National Heart Centre of Singapore. He was the Director of the Programme, and continues to care for patients with advanced heart failure and heart transplant recipients as a Visiting Consultant at the National Heart Centre Singapore. With a strong interest in exercise physiology, he is an Exercise Specialist accredited by American College of Sports Medicine.
He is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore. He is the current Governor of the Singapore Chapter of the American College of Cardiology, and a Past President of the Singapore Cardiac Society (2011-2013).
Dr Bernard Kwok provides clinical services such as:
* Cardiology consultation and heart health screening
* Echocardiography (trans-thoracic and trans-esophageal)
* Ambulatory ECG and blood pressure monitoring
* Exercise testing and exercise prescription
* Cardiac stress testing (echocardiographic and adionuclide)
* CT coronary angiography and calcium scoring
* Invasive coronary angiography and angioplasty (stenting)
Premium Heart Examination
Sport Fitness Heart Examination
Young Adult Heart Examination
Dr Wong Wui Min
W M Wong Cardiac & Medical Clinic
Dr Wong Wui Min is a Cardiologist, practicing at The W M Wong Cardiac & Medical Clinic, Gleneagles Hospital, Singapore. He has a special interest in Interventional Cardiology.
Dr Wong Wui Min completed his MBBS from the National University of Singapore. He was also inducted as a Fellow of the American College of Chest Physician and a Fellow of the Society of Cardiac Angiography and Interventions. He was a Senior Consultant Cardiologist at The Cardiac Department of the National University Hospital, Singapore from February 1991 to July 1993.
Dr Wong Wui Min is accredited in Gleneagles Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, and Parkway East Hospital. He is multilingual and speaks English, Mandarin, Dialects, and Malay.Dr Wong Wui Min has a special interest in Interventional Cardiology.
Dr Wong Wui Min provides clinical services such as:
* Heart failure
* Chest pains
* Shortness of breath
* Cardiology Consultation
* Cardiology Emergency Treatment
* Cardiology Follow up
* Cardiovascular Screening Visit
* Chest Pain Treatment
* Cardiac Health Screening
* Cardiography
Dr Stanley Chia
Asian Heart & Vascular Centre
Mt. Elizabeth Novena Specialist Centre #10-54/55
6 Napier Road #04-13
Dr Stanley Chia is an experienced interventional cardiologist and physician with expertise in managing complex coronary artery disease and a variety of cardiovascular conditions. Dr Chia currently runs his clinical practice at Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre, Mount Elizabeth Novena Specialist Centre and Gleneagles Medical Centre. He is a visiting consultant at National Heart Centre Singapore, Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, Gleneagles Hospital, and Parkway East Hospital.
Dr Chia was awarded the British Heart Foundation Scholarship Scheme and Junior Research Fellowship to undertake cardiovascular medicine research in a Doctorate program at the University of Edinburgh from 2000 – 2002 under the supervision of Professor Keith Fox and Professor David Newby. He completed his cardiology advanced specialty training at the National Heart Centre Singapore and has been certified as a Specialist in Cardiology since 2006.
Dr Chia was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and interventional cardiology fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, United States. During this period, he worked with eminent researchers and pioneers in interventional cardiology such as Harvard professors, Dr Igor Palacios and Dr Ik-Kyung Jang. He presented and published his research on advanced intravascular imaging techniques such as optical coherence tomography that provided insight into the development of coronary artery disease. He further developed his clinical expertise in interventional cardiology and specialized in structural heart and coronary interventional procedures.
Prior to leaving for private practice, he was a senior consultant cardiologist and interventional cardiologist at the National Heart Centre Singapore. He was concurrently clinical senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Medicine and Program Director of the Cardiology Residency Program.
He is a highly skilled interventional cardiologist who has performed more than 3000 invasive coronary angiography and percutaneous coronary intervention procedures. He is experienced in managing complex cardiovascular disease and difficult coronary interventional procedures, such as left main disease, chronic total occlusions and calcified lesions. He specializes in performing coronary angiography and intervention using both the radial artery and femoral approach. He is an expert in using intravascular imaging, optical coherence tomography imaging, rotablation and complex bifurcation intervention techniques.
Dr Chia made significant contributions to cardiology education and training. Currently, he is the deputy chairman of the SingHealth Institution Research Ethics Committee, and previously also served as a member of the National Medical Research Council Scientific Review Panel. He has published extensively on cardiovascular research in international peer-reviewed journals. He continues to play a major role in organizing and speaking at numerous international and local cardiology conferences.
Dr Stanley Chia provides clinical services such as:
- Cardiac Investigations
- Implantable Devices
Dr Jeremy Chow
3 Mt Elizabeth
6 Napier Road
Dr Jeremy Chow graduated with Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the National University of Singapore in 2001. He completed his basic specialist training in Internal Medicine and obtained the Master of Medicine in Internal Medicine from the National University of Singapore in 2006. In the same year, he was admitted as Member to both the Royal College of Physicians of United Kingdom and the Royal College of Physicians of London.
Dr Chow is a certified cardiologist since 2010 upon completion of his advanced specialist training in Cardiology at Changi General Hospital and National Heart Centre of Singapore. He was awarded a scholarship from the Ministry of Health, Singapore under the Health Manpower Development Plan for further specialisation in cardiac implantable electronic devices and electrophysiology in Germany. He completed his fellowship under the mentorship of Dr Johannes Sperzel, a leading cardiac electrophysiologist in Kerckhoff Klinik, Bad Nauheim. Dr Chow sub- specialized in complex cardiac device management including cardiac resynchronization therapy, complex lead management and extractions, electrophysiology and ablations including atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia. During his fellowship, he was involved in the research and application of numerous state-of- the-art device implantations and ablations.
Dr Chow is a highly skilled cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist. He performed all his diagnostic coronary angiography via radial approach including complex coronary intervention. He has also performed numerous electrophysiology studies and ablations with both radiofrequency and cryotherapy including atrial fibrillation. He is also a very experienced implanter for cardiac implantable electronic devices. This includes all pacemakers and defibrillators (ICD) of which more than 120 were cardiac resynchronization therapy devices (CRT-D). In particular, Dr Chow has vast experience with implanting the state-of- the art multipolar left ventricular lead for cardiac resynchronization therapy and in managing complex cardiac device upgrades and lead extractions.
Prior to his current appointment as a Consultant Cardiologist and Electrophysiologist at Gleneagles Hospital, Mt. Elizabeth Hospital and Mt.Elizabeth Novena Hospital, Dr Chow held the position of Consultant Cardiologist in Changi General Hospital and is a Visiting Consultant at the National Heart Centre, Singapore. He was also a Clinical Lecturer at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore from 2006 till 2013. He is currently still a Visiting Consultant with National University Hospital Singapore.
Dr Chow has vested interest in clinical research and has made significant contributions to cardiology education and training. His publications and presentations ranged from interventional cardiology to cardiac electrophysiology and complex cardiac device management. He was the first Singaporean to be interviewed by theHeart.org, the leading clinical cardiology website, for his research on trans-radial coronary intervention in ST elevation myocardial infarction in Asian during the 32 nd Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) annual scientific meeting. He is also reviewer in numerous high impact cardiology journals and continues to share his experience and knowledge as speaker during numerous international and local cardiology meetings.
He is currently a member of the Singapore Medical Association, Singapore Cardiac Society, and Fellow of the Academy of Medicine, Chapter of Cardiologists. He is also a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology and ASEAN College of Cardiology and an active member in numerous international associations including the Heart Rhythm Society, European Heart Rhythm Association and Asian-Pacific Heart Rhythm Association . He is currently a Certified Cardiac Device Specialist (CCDS) by the Heart Rhythm Society, USA.
Dr Chow also has special interest in the management of atrial fibrillation and stroke prevention and is participates actively as a member of Stroke Prevention in Atrial Fibrillation (SPAF) association. His other clinical interests include the management of supraventricular tachycardias and outflow tract ventricular tachycardias as well as cardiac device management for symptomatic bradycardias and sudden cardiac death prevention.
Dr Jeremy Chow provides clinical services such as:
- Implanting cardiac electronic devices – pacemakers & defibrillators
- Cardiac device management
- Manage atrial fibrillation and stoke prevention
- Manage arrhythmias
- Perform coronary angiography
Adjunct A/Prof Paul T L Chiam
The Heart and Vascular Centre
Adjunct Associate Professor Dr Paul T L Chiam is a Cardiologist whose sub-specialization is in Interventional Cardiology. He was previously a Senior Consultant at the Department of Cardiology, National Heart Centre Singapore and was also Adjunct Associate Professor at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore.
He graduated on the Dean’s List with the MBBS degree from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 1996, and obtained MRCP (UK) in February 2001 and MMed (NUS) in June 2001, where he was awarded the Gordon Ransome Gold Medal.
Adjunct Associate Professor Dr Paul Chiam joined the Department of Cardiology, National Heart Centre Singapore in 2002. In 2006 – 2008,he underwent an 18-month Interventional Cardiology Fellowship at the Lenox Hill Heart And Vascular Institute of New York, specializing in complex coronary angioplasty, carotid artery stenting, peripheral artery angioplasty, and structural heart disease (heart valve) interventions, and spent a further three months training in intracranial angioplasty and stenting at the Department of Endovascular Neurosurgery, University of Buffalo, State University of New York.
Adjunct Associate Professor Dr Paul Chiam performed the first Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) in Asia in 2009, and led the TAVR program at the National Heart Centre Singapore. He serves as a consultant and proctor to help train new Asian centres beginning their TAVR programs.
Adjunct Associate Professor Dr Paul Chiam has been invited as a Guest Faculty and Speaker to major international cardiovascular conferences and as a Case Operator to conduct workshops in various countries. He has also published widely in peer-reviewed journals.
Adjunct Associate Professor Dr Paul Chiam is currently the Co-Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Asian Pacific Society of Interventional Cardiology (APSIC). He is also a Member of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Peripheral Vascular Disease Section Leadership Council.
Dr Paul T L Chiam provides clinical services such as:
General Cardiology
- Screening
- Echocardiography
- Holter (24 hour ECG)
- 24 Hour Blood Pressure
- Transradial coronary artery angioplasty
- Complex percutaneous coronary artery angioplasty
- Heart valve disease interventions
- Peripheral artery disease interventions
- Carotid angioplasty & stenting
- Transcatheter aortic valve replacement/implant (TAVR/TAVI)
Dr Chuang Hsuan Hung
Dr Chuang Hsuan Hung is a cardiologist practicing at Gleneagles and Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Singapore. His work involves heart failure and heart transplant intensive care, genetic heart diseases and sudden cardiac death.
He graduated with Bachelor of Medicine of Surgery from the National University of Singapore in 1994. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Singapore General Hospital, and subsequently obtained the Master of Medicine in Internal Medicine from the National University of Singapore in 2000. In the same year, he was admitted as Member to both the Royal College of Physicians of United Kingdom and of London. Dr Chuang Hsuan Hung is multilingual and speaks English, Mandarin, Hokkien and Teochew. He is accredited in Gleneagles Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, Parkway East Hospital.
Dr Chuang Hsuan Hung is also a member of several organizations, such as: American College of Cardiology, European Society of Cardiology, American College of Chest Physicians, American Heart Association, and American College of Sports Medicine.
Dr Chuang Hsuan Hung provides the treatment and diagnosis of:
- Congenital heart defects
- Coronary artery disease
- Valvular heart disease, electrophysiology
- Cardiovascular disease
- Cardiac imaging
- Heart transplant intensive care
- Genetic heart diseases
Dr Koo Chee Choong
Koo Cardiac Clinic
Dr Koo Chee Choong is a Cardiologist practicing at Gleneagles Hospital, Singapore. He completed his MB BCh from the University of Belfast, United Kingdom in 1976. He was previously a Consultant Cardiologist in Singapore General Hospital and a Project Advisor to Ngee Ann Technological Institute for development of ECG Devices (1994).
He has received several awards, such as: Allison Prize for Neurology in 1976, HMDP Scholarship training for pacing in Melbourne (1985-1986), HMDP Scholarship training for electrophysiology in Westmead, Sydney (1986-1987), and D.P.M.B (DATO) Brunei in 1984.
Dr Koo Chee Chong is multilingual and speaks English, Mandarin, Malay, Hakka, Hokkien, and Cantonese. He is accredited in Gleneagles Hospital, Mount Alvernia Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Hospital, and Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital. Dr Koo Chee Chong is a member of Critical Care Community in Gleneagles Hospital.
Dr Koo Chee Chong provides the treatment and diagnosis of:
Dr Eric Hong Cho Tek
EH Heart Specialist Private Limited
Dr Eric Hong Cho Tek is a Cardiologist practicing at Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre, Singapore. He completed his MB BCh from the National University of Ireland, Ireland in 1996. He has special interests in interventional cardiology (femoral and radial access), sports cardiology, cardiac rehabilitation and nuclear cardiology / non-invasive cardiac imaging including cardiac CT angiography, PET/SPECT imaging.
Dr Eric Hong Cho Tek has received several awards, such as: Health Manpower Development Plan award in cardiology from Ministry of Health, Singapore, NHG Pillar Award Oct in 2008, Clinical Excellence (EXSA) Star 2008, Gold 2007, Hospital Superstar award Feb 2006, Hospital Superstar award in June 2006, Hospital Superstar award in August 2005. He was also awarded with COURAGE award in 2003.
Dr Eric Hong Cho Tek is bilingual and speaks both English and Mandarin. He is accredited in Gleneagles Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, and Parkway East Hospital. He was also a member of Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh.
Dr Eric Hong Cho Tek provides clinical services such as:
- Non-invasive cardiac imaging (including cardiac CT angiography, PET/SPECT imaging)
- Interventional cardiology (femoral and radial access)
- Sports cardiology
- Cardiac rehabilitation and nuclear cardiology
Dr Lim Ing Haan
Lim Ing Haan Cardiology Clinic
Dr Lim Ing Haan obtained her MBBS degree in National University of Singapore in 1995. After completing her basic specialist training in Internal Medicine at TTSH and NUH, Dr Lim became Member of the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh) in 2001, and proceeded to advanced specialist training in Cardiology in 2001. Her general cardiology fellowship was completed in Tan Tock Seng Hospital between 2001-4. This was followed by training in Interventional cardiology in National University Hospital in 2004 and in Duke University Medical Centre in 2005-6 under the HMDP scholarship from Ministry of Health.
She attained board eligibility in ACGME ( Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education ) accredited Interventional Cardiology centres in USA in 2006. In recognition of her professional and research achievements, Dr Lim was inducted as a Fellow of the Academy of Medicine ( Cardiology), Fellow of Medicine in Cardiology (Singapore), Royal College of Physicians (UK), Fellow of AmericanCollege of Cardiology in 2009 and Fellow of The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (USA) in 2010. Duke University Medical Centre, where she received training in the latest advances in the field including Excimer Laser Atherectomy, Rotational Atherectomy, Percutaneous valve repairs was ranked amongst the top 3 Best Hospitals for Cardiology in USA. There she was involved in performing angioplasty and stenting for high risk and complex cases transferred to Duke from 11 referral hospitals in North Carolina, USA. Dr Lim mostly practice radial angioplasty where the access is the radial artery in the wrist rather than the femoral artery. This technique cuts down bleeding risk almost to nil and is only practiced in 1.3% of all angioplasties in US and in Singapore. She was the Director of the Cardiac Interventional Laboratories in TTSH in 2008-9 and helped set up the 24 hour, 7 days a week acute heart attack Interventional service together with the busiest Emergency Department in Singapore in 2008.
Her cardiology experience spanned more than 10 years. Besides complex coronary intervention, including treatment of chronic total occlusion and saphenous vein grafts, Dr Lim's interests include peripheral intervention of lower limb and renal arteries, sports cardiology, preventive cardiology, cardiac rehabilitation, as well as non-invasive and invasive multimodality cardiac imaging. Dr Lim also offers percutaneous mitral valvuloplasty to patients who have severe rheumatic mitral stenosis.
Dr Lim maintains a keen interest in research and teaching. She was the Commissioning Editor of HeartAsia, published by BMJ, in 2009. She is still heavily involved in both undergraduate and post graduate teaching. Currently she is an Adjunct Faculty with the Duke–NUS School of Medicine and is still involved in weekly post graduate subspecialty training in Interventional Cardiology in Tan Tock Seng Hospital. Dr Lim has published many research papers in internationally recognised scientific journals. She is an active member of the SCAI (The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions) based in Washington, which develops quality standards and guidelines for credentialing, safety and quality in interventional cardiology worldwide.
Dr Lim Ing Haan travels frequently to Myanmar, Vietnam, China and Indonesia to give talks to patients and cardiologists on the topics in cardiology.
Dr Lim Ing Haan is accredited to admit patients and perform angioplasty and stenting in Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Gleneagles Hospital, Mount Alvernia Hospital, Raffles Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital and National University Hospital. Dr Lim Ing Haan's achievements are recognised both locally and internationally. She has been invited as faculty to participate in many local and international interventional cardiology meetings, including AsiaPCR/SingLive, AICT and Kamakura Course in Japan.
Dr Lim Ing Haan provides clinical services such as:
Procedure Focus:
- Cardiac catheterization
- Coronary imaging –Intravascular ultrasound, OCT, OFDI
- Coronary Angioplasty and Stenting , including rotablation and insertion of BVS (Bioabsorbable Vascular Scaffold)
- Peripheral Intervention
- Renal Denervation
Dr Shwe Tin
Myat Saydanar Medical Center
Excelsior Hotel & Shopping Centre #02-24
5 Coleman Street
There are no appointments available for this week.
Dr Shwe Tin is a Cardiologist practicing at the Myat Saydanar Medical Center, in the Excelsior Hotel & Shopping Centre. He is trilingual and speaks English, Burmese, and Mandarin.
Dr Shwe Tin completed his MBBS from the University of Rangoon, Myanmar in 1958, MRCP - Internal Medicine from Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, United Kingdom in 1964 and MRCP - Internal Medicine from Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, United Kingdom in 1965.
His clinic services involve ECG, Exercise ECG, Chest Xray, All Xrays, Angiograms, PET Scans, and MRIs, amongst others.
Dr Shwe Tin provides clinical services such as:
* ECG
* Exercise ECG
* Health Screenings (X-Rays)
* Angiogram
* PET Scan
* MRI
Dr Lim Tai Tian
Dr TT Lim Cardiology Clinic
Paragon #17-10
290 Orchard Road, S 238859
Dr. Lim Tai Tian’s subspecialty within cardiology is in the field of interventional cardiology. He has a special interest in complex angioplasty/stenting procedures.
Dr. Lim Tai Tian provides clinical services such as:
- Complex angioplasty procedures
- Complex stenting procedures
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David Nour
David Nour is a growth strategist, thought leader and global keynote speaker on Relationship Economics®, the concept of the quantifiable value of business relationships. Through his best-selling books, compelling speeches and valuable consulting, Nour demonstrates how relationships are the greatest off-balance-sheet asset any organization possesses, large or small, public or private. He is a popular speaker and delivers over 50 global keynotes a year explaining the hidden assets of relationships, and the art and science of investing in them.
He is CEO of The Nour Group, Inc., a consulting firm that advises top global leaders and boards of corporations, associations and academic forums on disruptive innovations to fuel their growth. The Nour Group, Inc., has worked with leading global companies such as Disney, Cisco Systems, Deloitte Consulting, Hilton Worldwide, HP, IBM and more.
As a speaker, Nour examines business relationships, social and mobile disruptive technologies and adaptive innovation. His keynotes have been heard at top industry summits like Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit and Marriott Annual GM Conference, among others.
His insights on driving growth through unique return on strategic relationships have been featured in top outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Mashable, CNBC, Knowledge@Wharton and Associations Now, as well as Entrepreneur and Success magazines. He also writes a regular column for The Huffington Post.
Nour is the author of several books, including the best-selling Relationship Economics (Wiley) as well as ConnectAbility (McGraw-Hill), The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Raising Capital (Praeger) and Return on Impact (ASAE) called by Fast Company a “resource-rich book … provoking us to become more customer-centric in an age where empowered customers have far greater access to real-time information, connections and company advocates.” His book CO-CREATE (St. Martin’s Press) is an essential guide showing C-level leaders how to optimize relationships, create market gravity and greatly increase revenue.
In addition to his speaking, writing and consulting, Nour has guest lectured at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and Georgia Tech’s College of Management. He serves as the lead independent director on the board of introNetworks, a privately held intelligent community technology firm based in Santa Barbara, Calif. An Eagle Scout, Nour is involved with the Centennial Scouting movement, Junior Achievement, One Voice – aiming to create peace in the Middle East – and the High Tech Ministries. He is currently an active member of the FBI Citizens’ Academy, Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), where he has earned the Governance Fellow
accreditation.
A native of Iran, Nour came to the U.S. with just a suitcase, $100, limited family ties and no fluency in English. He went on to earn an Executive Master’s of Business Administration from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and a bachelor’s degree in management from Georgia State University. Nour resides in Atlanta, Ga., with his family.
View David Nour's
The Co-Create Effect
What will the evolution of you, your team, and your organization look like?
Individuals, teams, and organizations must balance learning and performing to evolve. That evolution no longer comes from being the smartest in the room but from innovative collaboration with strategic relationships - within and external to the organization. David will explain how co-creating provides the construct, the process, and the tools to help your audience do just that – evolve themselves, their teams, and their organization. Recognized by many past clients as David’s best thinking and practical, pragmatic work to date.
Relationship Economics® – The Art & Science of Relationships
Leveraging Your Single Biggest Asset to Driver Performance, Execution, and Results
Focus on the quantifiable value of business relationships and provide a systematic process for identifying, building, nurturing, and leveraging personal and professional relationships. David introduces battle-tested best practices, based on his global experiences, along with social science research and hundreds of executive interviews that bridge the gap between relationship creation and relationship capitalization. The cornerstone keynote based on the best-selling book, Relationship Economics Updated & Revised (Wiley, 2012), delivered to more than 30 corporate, association and academic forums annually.
Return on Impact – Disruptive Technologies Impacting Your Business Model
How Will You Adapt to Disruption and Evolve Your Value-Add in the Process?
Return on Impact isn’t about Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. It’s about socially enabling organizations to listen louder, think faster, and respond to changing market dynamics, helping them reinvent, adapt, and relate in new and powerful ways. David discusses how SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud) is swinging the power pendulum in the direction of members and customers, leaving many industries and organizations out of the equation, and how you can get the most return on your business interactions, involvement, image, and impact.
Adaptive Innovation – Adaptable Business Models for Changing Market Demands
From Signal Scouts to “Yes, And” Learning to Drive Creativity, Communication, and Collaboration
Create a sustainable competitive advantage, develop a relationship-centric culture, and have the audacity to fail and the ability to learn from those failures. Create greater market value than your competitors, help your channel partners differentiate your unique products or services, and shake up your value chain. It sounds difficult; David makes it simple.
Co-Create: How Your Business Will Profit from Innovative and Strategic Collaboration
What if your customers had a vested interest in guiding your company toward greater success? What if your employees had a personal as well as professional commitment to elevating your organization? Imagine how different your results would be if investors, vendors, and even analysts treasured the relationship they have built with you?
Most important . . . is your company capable of setting aside a bit of its own self-interest to become part of dramatically more rewarding collaborative effort? That’s the provocative and ultimately earthshaking question David Nour poses. He argues that co-creation is a transformational journey that naturally leads to growth and evolution . . . because it gives birth to shared interests that dwarf anything that existed previously.
In Co-Create, David Nour makes the case that co-creation leads to Market Gravity™, a force that attracts stakeholders to your business because they recognize that many others have also united their interests with yours. It’s the sense―backed by tangible metrics―that this is bigger than any of us imagined . . . except that you imagined precisely such an outcome. That’s the power of co-creation.
Relationship Economics: Transform Your Most Valuable Business Contacts Into Personal and Professional Success
Relationship Economics isn't about taking advantage of friends or coworkers to get ahead. It's about prioritizing and maximizing a unique return on strategic relationships to fuel unprecedented growth. Based on the author's global speaking and consulting engagements, Relationship Economics reveals that success comes from investing in people for extraordinary returns. This revised and updated version explains the three major types of relationships—personal, functional, and strategic—and how to focus each to fuel enterprise growth. It introduces new concepts in relationship management, including the exchange of Relationship Currency, the accumulation of Reputation Capital, and the building of Professional Net Worth. These are the fundamental measures of business relationship, and once you understand them, you'll be able to turn your contacts into better executions, performance, and results.
ConnectAbility: 8 Keys to Building Strong Partnerships with Your Colleagues and Your Customers
ConnectAbility -noun: 1. an agile approach to running an organization that takes into account the psychology of human interaction; 2. the only way to do business in today's economy Drawing from the powerful lessons of emotional awareness and relationship dynamics, ConnectAbility promotes a sophisticated yet simple method for developing superior partnerships guaranteed to create quality results on a consistent basis. Even the best-intentioned team players too often focus more on communicating their own ideas than hearing and understanding what others have to say. ConnectAbility changes all this using eight steps to fostering optimum communication, which include: Sharing your power with others Expressing yourself with authenticity Engaging your audience with humor Challenging yourself by taking charge Maintaining awareness of emotional dynamics The book contains two tests you can take that will help you pinpoint your own level of ConnectAbility. ConnectAbility is your key to getting things done in a positive manner that benefits not only you and your team--but the organization as a whole.
The Entrepreneur's Guide to Raising Capital
Ask any established business owner to identify his or her toughest challenge when just starting out, and you'll likely get this answer: raising capital. Most aspiring entrepreneurs know far too little about the sources of money that can help start a business or fuel its growth. Where do you get capital? What are investors looking for? How do you ask for money in a way that gets results? This book answers these and many other critical questions. Even more important, entrepreneur and consultant David Nour shows how to develop long-term relationships with financial partner-the people who can help keep a business humming throughout its life. The Entrepreneur's Guide to Raising Capital, designed to help entrepreneurs navigate the money-raising maze, shows how to attract financing to fund the start-up and growth phases any business moves through. It answers the most common—and the most perplexing-questions entrepreneurs have about financing a business: How do I put together a credible request for funds? How do I choose wisely from among the plethora of financial and strategic investors, consultants, investment bankers, and other intermediaries? How do I identify and avoid the risks associated with various sources of capital? How do I plan for the right kind, amount, and source of smart capital as the business evolves? How do I get the highest return on invested capital? How do I avoid the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when raising capital? This book provides real-life, pragmatic advice from entrepreneurs who have raised money from friends, family, angel investors, and banks, as well as institutional investors such as venture capitalists and private equity firms. It details the process from start to finish while spotlighting the danger spots and ways to avoid them. It will be especially useful to those who are uncomfortable making important financial decisions, and to those who are confused by all the conflicting opinions offered by advisors-both well meaning and otherwise. By showing readers the financing ropes, Nour removes a major source of stress for budding entrepreneurs and moves them closer to their dream come true: a successful business.
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Tag Archives: clandestine operations
Djibouti, the US Permanent Drone War Base
Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti…began as a temporary staging ground for U.S. Marines looking for a foothold in the region a decade ago (2001). Over the past two years, the U.S. military has clandestinely transformed it into the busiest Predator drone base outside the Afghan war zone, a model for fighting a new generation of terrorist groups. The Obama administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the legal and operational details of its targeted-killing program. Behind closed doors, painstaking debates precede each decision to place an individual in the cross hairs of the United States’ perpetual war against al-Qaeda and its allies. Increasingly, the orders to find, track or kill those people are delivered to Camp Lemonnier. Virtually the entire 500-acre camp is dedicated to counterterrorism, making it the only installation of its kind in the Pentagon’s global network of bases.
Secrecy blankets most of the camp’s activities. The U.S. military rejected requests from The Washington Post to tour Lemonnier last month. Officials cited “operational security concerns,” although they have permitted journalists to visit in the past. After a Post reporter showed up in Djibouti uninvited, the camp’s highest-ranking commander consented to an interview — on the condition that it take place away from the base, at Djibouti’s lone luxury hotel. The commander, Army Maj. Gen. Ralph O. Baker, answered some general queries but declined to comment on drone operations or missions related to Somalia or Yemen.
Despite the secrecy, thousands of pages of military records obtained by The Post — including construction blueprints, drone accident reports and internal planning memos — open a revealing window into Camp Lemonnier. None of the documents is classified and many were acquired via public-records requests. Taken together, the previously undisclosed documents show how the Djibouti-based drone wars sharply escalated early last year after eight Predators arrived at Lemonnier. The records also chronicle the Pentagon’s ambitious plan to further intensify drone operations here in the coming months.
The documents point to the central role played by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which President Obama has repeatedly relied on to execute the nation’s most sensitive counterterrorism missions. About 300 Special Operations personnel plan raids and coordinate drone flights from inside a high-security compound at Lemonnier that is dotted with satellite dishes and ringed by concertina wire. Most of the commandos work incognito, concealing their names even from conventional troops on the base…
In Washington, the Obama administration has taken a series of steps to sustain the drone campaign for another decade, developing an elaborate new targeting database, called the “disposition matrix,” and a classified “playbook” to spell out how decisions on targeted killing are made.
Djibouti is the clearest example of how the United States is laying the groundwork to carry out these operations overseas. For the past decade, the Pentagon has labeled Lemonnier an “expeditionary,” or temporary, camp. But it is now hardening into the U.S. military’s first permanent drone war base.
In August, the Defense Department delivered a master plan to Congress detailing how the camp will be used over the next quarter-century. About $1.4 billion in construction projects are on the drawing board, including a huge new compound that could house up to 1,100 Special Operations forces, more than triple the current number. Drones will continue to be in the forefront. In response to written questions from The Post, the U.S. military confirmed publicly for the first time the presence of remotely piloted aircraft — military parlance for drones — at Camp Lemonnier and said they support “a wide variety of regional security missions.”….For nearly a decade, the United States flew drones from Lemonnier only rarely, starting with a 2002 strike in Yemen that killed a suspected ringleader of the attack on the USS Cole. That swiftly changed in 2010, however, after al-Qaeda’s network in Yemen attempted to bomb two U.S.-bound airliners and jihadists in Somalia separately consolidated their hold on that country. Late that year, records show, the Pentagon dispatched eight unmanned MQ-1B Predator aircraft to Djibouti and turned Lemonnier into a full-time drone base.
The impact was apparent months later: JSOC drones from Djibouti and CIA Predators from a secret base on the Arabian Peninsula converged over Yemen and killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric and prominent al-Qaeda member. Today, Camp Lemonnier is the centerpiece of an expanding constellation of half a dozen U.S. drone and surveillance bases in Africa, created to combat a new generation of terrorist groups across the continent, from Mali to Libya to the Central African Republic. The U.S. military also flies drones from small civilian airports in Ethiopia and the Seychelles, but those operations pale in comparison to what is unfolding in Djibouti.
Lemonnier also has become a hub for conventional aircraft. In October 2011, the military boosted the airpower at the base by deploying a squadron of F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets, which can fly faster and carry more munitions than Predators…
In March 2011, a Predator parked at the camp started its engine without any human direction, even though the ignition had been turned off and the fuel lines closed. Technicians concluded that a software bug had infected the “brains” of the drone, but never pinpointed the problem. “After that whole starting-itself incident, we were fairly wary of the aircraft and watched it pretty closely,” an unnamed Air Force squadron commander testified to an investigative board, according to a transcript. “Right now, I still think the software is not good.” …
“This [Djibouti] is not an outpost in the middle of nowhere that is of marginal interest,” said Amanda J. Dory, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary for Africa. “This is a very important location in terms of U.S. interests, in terms of freedom of navigation, when it comes to power projection.”
The U.S. military pays $38 million a year to lease Camp Lemonnier from the Djiboutian government…
Excerpts, Craig Whitlock, Remote US base at core of secret operations, Washington Post, Oct. 26, 2012
This entry was posted in civilian casualties, covert action, War and tagged al Qaeda, al Qaeda Arabia, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP, cia, CIA assassination, clandestine operations, covert action, Djibouti, Djibouti US military base, drones, John Brennan, JSOC, kill lists, obama, targeted killings, U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on November 1, 2012 by Stoa.
The Alliance between CIA and ISI; whose head on a platter?
And, perhaps most crucially, the two fractious allies’ top spies are talking again, with a view to enhancing their cooperation as the 2014 deadline for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan looms. The relationship between the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has been at the core of Washington and Islamabad’s alliance for over a decade now — and sometimes the source of the mutual misery. After 9/11, both intelligence agencies collaborated closely to capture scores of al-Qaeda suspects. But over the past two years, as suspicions have grown, the two sides have become near adversaries.
The ISI is often accused of supporting jihadist proxies attacking U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan — and is widely considered to have been either incompetent or complicit when it came to Osama bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan. The CIA was found to be operating independently within Pakistan’s jealously guarded territory, running unauthorized contractors, recruiting local informants and showering drones at their fiercest pace yet. But as bitter memories of those disputes begin to recede and new faces assume leadership roles, there is some cautious optimism going forward now — this despite domestic imperatives in both countries (an election year in the U.S., the heated anti-American populism in Pakistan) making rapprochement difficult. Last month the new head of ISI, Lieut. General Zaheer-ul-Islam, made his first visit to Washington, meeting with top intelligence, defense and Administration officials. Tentative agreements were made in terms of joint operations against militants in the region, the Wall Street Journal reported. But, officials from both sides say, fundamental differences linger.
Little is known about General ul-Islam, but a change at the top of ISI will please U.S. security officials. The previous ISI chief, now retired Lieut. General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, had become fiercely hostile to Washington in his final year — engaging in “shouting matches” with then CIA director Leon Panetta, cutting cooperation down to a minimum, ordering the harassment of U.S. diplomats in Pakistan and locking up Shakil Afridi, the physician who ran a vaccination program in the town where bin Laden was found hiding.
Afridi is currently serving a 33-year sentence handed down to him by a tribal court. The charges were not explicitly for spying for the U.S., but there is little doubt in observers’ minds that this is the reason he was punished. Afridi wasn’t arrested for the alleged offenses he has been convicted for until the ISI discovered his vaccination program and links to the CIA. At one point, according to a Pakistani military official familiar with the discussions, the CIA suggested that the ISI strip Afridi of his nationality and hand him over to the U.S. General Pasha angrily refused, saying it would set a bad precedent — one that could encourage others to spy for foreign countries if there were no consequences. U.S. Congressmen reacted angrily to Afridi’s imprisonment, voting to cut $33 million of U.S. assistance to Pakistan, one million for each year he’s serving in prison. The question of Afridi’s fate will likely have come up during ul-Islam’s visit to the U.S. There may be no movement soon, but if relations between Washington and Islamabad grow warmer, the ISI may eventually be persuaded to arrange for Afridi’s quiet release.
The harassment of U.S. officials hasn’t changed much, says a U.S. official. Vehicles are constantly stopped, security personnel searched with unusual rigor, and there is even pressure on the U.S. to abandon the construction of a new consulate in Peshawar. On other fronts, ul-Islam has maintained a low profile, a decision thought to be influenced by his predecessor’s controversial visibility. “Unlike General Pasha,” says a senior politician from Pakistan’s opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, “we don’t see the new head of the ISI interfering in politics — yet.”
During the new ISI chief’s visit, U.S. officials repeated their long-standing concerns about the Haqqani network, a potent jihadist group linked to al-Qaeda that is based in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal territory along the Afghan border. From their sanctuary there, say U.S. officials, the group contentedly plots terrorist attacks on U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, before slipping back across the border. The ISI is widely suspected of offering the group support, with Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, even describing the Haqqanis as “a veritable arm of the ISI” in his valedictory testimony before Congress last year.
The Pakistanis deny backing the Haqqanis but concede links with them and their reluctance to confront them. They plaintively cite a lack of resources and insist their priority is targeting militants mounting attacks inside Pakistan, but tellingly add that the Haqqanis will be crucial to any future Afghan settlement that Pakistan hopes to be a part of. But a series of unremitting, violent attacks in and around Kabul, authored by the Haqqanis, has intensified the pressure on the Pakistanis.
Last October, Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, discussed the possibility of “limiting the space” given to the Haqqanis in North Waziristan with Clinton during her visit to Islamabad. The Pakistani army said it had certain contingency plans in place for limited, surgical operations to reclaim territory in some of North Waziristan’s main towns. These plans were shelved soon after, with the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers in November 2011. Now, as pressure builds again, with enduring attacks and Congressmen calling for the Haqqani network to be designated as a foreign terrorist organization, the plans will have to be revisited. The new U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Richard Olson, told U.S. lawmakers during his confirmation hearings last month that he will be committed to taking on the Haqqanis.
Without a Pakistani military operation against the Haqqanis, the CIA has focused on drone strikes against them and other militants in the region. The strikes, U.S. officials insist, are effective. Some Pakistani military officials also have conceded improved accuracy. But there are limits to what can be achieved by a drone-only strategy, and there are political costs. Drone strikes have not only become hugely unpopular in Pakistan, where the parliament has united in denouncing them, but also across the world. A Pew Research Center survey published in June found that majorities in countries as diverse as France, Germany, the Czech Republic, China, Japan, Brazil and Turkey opposed the widespread use of drone strikes.
An acknowledgment of the accumulating political costs may temper the frequency with which the CIA uses drone strikes. General David Petraeus, the new CIA director, is said to appreciate that the program is unsustainable. Previous CIA director Panetta was seen as being indulgent of “the CT guys and their shiny toys,” says the official. Drone strikes increased to a pace of one every four days at their height.
But there are certain points at which they are seen as a necessity — and they will continue to be used despite ul-Islam’s insistence last month in Washington that they stop. Just days after Clinton’s apology and the reopening of the NATO supply lines, a drone strike in North Waziristan reportedly killed 20 suspected militants. The actual figure, the U.S. official says, was lower. But it was a truck packed with explosives heading across the border. “It was a clear shot,” the official says. “We had to take it.” And that is one of the many differences in opinion that both sides will somehow have to learn to live with.
Omar Waraich.The CIA and ISI: Are Pakistan and the U.S.’s Spy Agencies Starting to Get Along?, Time, Aug. 7, 2012
This entry was posted in civilian casualties, covert action, War and tagged Central Intelligence Agency, cia, CIA and ISI, clandestine operations, covert operations, covert war, drone attacks, drones, Haqqani, Haqqani Pakistan, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), international law, ISI, ISI Pakistan, UAVs, United States Pakistan, unmanned aerial vehicles on August 10, 2012 by Stoa.
What is In-Q-Tel? the technological branch of the CIA
Throughout its lifetime, the CIA has operated at the cutting edge of science and technology. From the U-2 spy plane to the CORONA satellite, CIA’s “wizards of Langley” earned a reputation for bold innovation and risk taking, working in advance of the private sector and other branches of government. Much of CIA’s technology success was a result of identifying gaps and opportunities. By the late 1990s, the pace of commercial innovation had overtaken the ability of government agencies to develop and incorporate new technologies. Private industry represented technical insights and innovation far too important to ignore. Driven by private sector R&D investment, these commercial technologies addressed many of the same information technology, biotechnology, communications, and energy challenges that faced the Intelligence Community.
In 1998, CIA identified technology as a top strategic priority, and set out a radical plan to create a new venture that would help increase the CIA’s access to private sector innovation. In-Q-Tel was chartered in February 1999 by a group of private citizens at the request of the Director of Central Intelligence and with the support of the U.S. Congress. IQT was tasked with building a bridge between the Agency and a new set of technology innovators.
From the website IQT
IQT portfolio
This entry was posted in covert action, Environment, Espionage, Markets, War and tagged cia, clandestine operations, covert action, covert operations, Espionage, In-Q-Tel, IQT, Markets, technology and intelligence, United States intelligence on July 9, 2012 by Stoa.
Kamikaze Drones; the drone technology that shortens the kill chain
The 2-foot-long Switchblade drone [unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)] is so named because its wings fold into the fuselage for transport and spring out after launch. It is designed to fit into a soldier’s rucksack and is fired from a mortar-like tube. Once airborne, it begins sending back live video and GPS coordinates to a hand-held control set clutched by the soldier who launched it. When soldiers identify and lock on a target, they send a command for the drone to nose-dive into it and detonate on impact. Because of the way it operates, the Switchblade has been dubbed the “kamikaze drone.”
The Obama administration, notably the CIA, has long been lambasted by critics for its use of combat drones and carelessly killing civilians in targeted strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia. In 2010, a United Nations official said the CIA in Pakistan had made the United States “the most prolific user of targeted killings” in the world.
The Switchblade drone appears to be an improvement as an alternative to traditional drone strikes, in terms of minimizing civilian harm, but it also raises new concerns, said Naureen Shah, associate director of the Counterterrorism and Human Rights Project at Columbia Law School. She pointed out that when a drone strike is being considered there are teams of lawyers, analysts and military personnel looking at the data to determine whether lethal force is necessary. But the Switchblade could shorten that “kill chain.” “It delegates full responsibility to a lower-level soldier on the ground,” she said. “That delegation is worrisome. It’s a situation that could end up in more mistakes being made.” Arms-control advocates also have concerns. As these small robotic weapons proliferate, they worry about what could happen if the drones end up in the hands of terrorists or other hostile forces.
The Switchblade “is symptomatic of a larger problem that U.S. military and aerospace companies are generating, which is producing various more exotic designs,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Assn. “This technology is not always going to be in the sole possession of the U.S. and its allies. We need to think about the rules of the road for when and how these should be used so we can mitigate against unintended consequences.”
The Switchblade is assembled in Simi Valley by AeroVironment Inc., the Pentagon’s top supplier of small drones, which include the Raven, Wasp and Puma. More than 50 Switchblades will be sent to the war zone in Afghanistan this summer under a $10.1-million contract, which also includes the cost of repairs, spare parts, training and other expenses. Officials would not provide details about where the weapons would be used, how many were ordered and precisely when they would be deployed. AeroVironment, based in Monrovia, developed the weapon on its own, thinking the military could use a lethal drone that could be made cheaply and deployed quickly by soldiers in the field, said company spokesman Steven Gitlin.
“It’s not inexpensive to task an Apache helicopter or F-16 fighter jet from a base to take out an [improvised explosive device] team when you consider fuel, people, logistics support, etc.,” he said.
About a dozen Switchblades were tested last year by special operations units in Afghanistan, according to Army officials, who said the drone proved effective. The Army is considering buying $100 million worth of the drones in a few years under a program called the Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System, Nichols said. The Air Force and the Marine Corps have also expressed interest in the technology.
AeroVironment is not the only company pursuing small, lethal drones. Textron Defense Systems is also working on a small kamikaze-style drone. Named the BattleHawk Squad-Level Loitering Munition, the drone is being tested at an Army facility in New Mexico.
Excerpts, W.J. Hennigan, Pentagon to soon deploy pint-sized but lethal Switchblade drones, LA Times, June 11, 2012
See also Why They Love their Drones
This entry was posted in civilian casualties, covert action, Markets, War and tagged AeroVironment, BattleHawk Squad-Level Loitering Munition, CIA drones, civilian casualties, clandestine operations, covert action, drones, guerrilla tactics, guerrilla war, guerrilla warfare, kamikaze drones, kill chain, Puma drone., Raven drone, small drones, Switchblade drone, Textron Defense Systems, UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles, War, Wasp drone on July 4, 2012 by Stoa.
International Law-Making by Tacit Consent; the free-for-all drone attacks
When Thomas de Maizière, the German defense minister, told a gathering of army reservists last month that he considered the U.S. strategy of using drones for targeted killings a “strategic mistake,” his remarks received almost no coverage. Only the online news edition of the German public television broadcaster ARD carried the story. According to their reporter, Mr. de Maizière said he thought it was unwise to have U.S. commanders direct such attacks from their base in the United States. Repeated requests to the reservists’ association for a full transcript of the speech went unanswered. Nor did the Defense Ministry publish the remarks. Mr. de Maizière is not the only politician in Europe to feel uneasy with the United States’ frequent use of unmanned drones to target what it says are terrorism suspects in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. But many are reluctant to speak out about their doubts.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel; the E.U. foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton; and the new French president, François Hollande, are among the many officials unwilling to publicly criticize the practice of remote control, targeted killings….Even when several German nationals — accused of being militants who had undergone training in terrorist camps in Pakistan — were killed in a U.S. drone attack in Pakistan in 2010, the German government played down the incident. In an official reply to queries by opposition parties in the German Parliament, the government said on nearly every count that either it had no reliable information or that the information it did have was confidential.
In contrast, the Obama administration has had to start explaining the issue of drone attacks as human rights organizations, security experts and the military have begun asking the White House to justify their legality. John O. Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism chief, gave a major speech on the issue in April. He said that the targeted attacks did not breach international law because the United States has been acting in self-defense since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Brennan added that the White House was doing everything possible to balance security and transparency.
Legal experts say, however, that most of the targeted killings are carried out by the C.I.A. The agency is not subject to the same transparency or accountability as the military would be. “The laws of war do not prohibit intelligence agencies from taking part in combat operations,” said James Ross, legal adviser to Human Rights Watch. “But states are obligated to investigate credible allegations of war crimes and actually provide redress for victims of unlawful attacks, and that is difficult in the case of intelligence agencies.”
Apart from the legal issues, the Obama administration has also been accused of leaking details from secret drone attacks to reap political mileage during the presidential election campaign. Republicans sharply criticized the White House’s announcement last week that Al Qaeda’s deputy leader, Abu Yahya al-Libi, had been killed during a drone attack in Pakistan.
Analysts suggest that European governments prefer to turn a blind eye to the drone attacks because they see the Islamist militants targeted by the United States as a danger to Europe, too. Having this threat eliminated outweighs what qualms they may have about the method employed. “E.U. countries have their own interests in tacitly condoning these tactics,” said Nathalie Van Raemdonck, a guest researcher at the Istituto Affari Internazionali, an independent research center in Rome. “Since they are not involved in any such operations, they cannot be accused of playing any role in targeted killings. The Europeans are content with letting the U.S. do their dirty work.”
European governments, however, are not united on this issue. Britain has armed drones in Afghanistan, and other European countries also employ them for surveillance purposes so the issue of targeted killings does not directly concern them. Government officials point to this to explain their silence. Analysts say this approach is short-sighted. The United States intends to arm Italian surveillance drones in Afghanistan beginning next year. France has plans for military drones for reconnaissance and attack missions. NATO is trying to get member states to finance surveillance drones that eventually may also be armed. Even more importantly, China, Russia and other non-Western countries are also working on developing armed drones. This could lead to a free-for-all situation unless standards for the use of these weapons are agreed upon, legal experts say. It is time, said Mr. Bütikofer, the European Parliament lawmaker, for Europe to break its silence.
Excerpts, JUDY DEMPSEY, Europe Stays Quiet Despite Unease About Drones, NY Times,June 11, 2012
This entry was posted in civilian casualties, covert action, War and tagged al Qaeda, armed drones, civilian casualties, clandestine operations, covert operations, drones, drones CIA, EU drones, Europe drones, European Union drones consent, humanitarian law, international law drones, international law making, laws of war, Obama drones, standards drone use, terrorism, UAVs, War on June 29, 2012 by Stoa.
SOCOM; the power of the United States Special Operations Command
Admiral McRaven’s [head of the SOCOM] broad goal is to obtain new authority from the Defense Department to move his elite forces faster and outside normal Pentagon deployment channels. That would give him more autonomy to position his personnel and their fighting equipment where intelligence and world events indicate they are most needed. It would also allow the Special Operations forces to expand their presence in regions where they have not operated in large numbers for the past decade, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
At a time of declining Pentagon budgets and a waning public appetite for large wars of occupation, the Obama administration hopes to rely more on foreign troops and security forces to tackle extremist threats abroad. These new realities have led to a larger debate within the military about its future priorities, and not all senior officers welcome Admiral McRaven’s ambitious proposals, suspecting a power grab that might weaken the authority of regional commanders. “I was trying to figure out how to stand in front of this juggernaut that is the Special Operations Command, particularly in today’s world,” Adm. Timothy J. Keating, a former head of the military’s Northern and Pacific commands, said at a Special Operations conference in April in Washington. “I don’t fundamentally understand what needs fixing.”
While it is not unusual for branches of the armed services or combatant commands to lobby Congress for troop benefits or weaponry, like new fighter jets or artillery systems, the Special Operations Command’s hurried pitch because of the pending legislation did not go down well. In its request in April 2012, the command sought a new $25 million fund to buy uniforms, build barracks and ferry foreign troops rather than using existing Pentagon and State Department aid programs that could have added months to the process. That required changes in the law, so the command asked to tuck them into a Pentagon budget bill the House was poised to pass.
In a three-page, confidential draft legislative proposal, the command argued that by coupling the proposed changes with its existing special fast-track acquisition authorities, it could provide “a fast turnaround resource for dealing with breaking issues.” Special Operations officers would work closely with American ambassadors in each country and the State Department to support foreign policy goals. The legislative draft filled in some details of a plan sketched out for Congress on March 27 by the Pentagon’s top civilian Special Operations policy official, Michael A. Sheehan. Citing Africa as a prime example, Mr. Sheehan, a West Point graduate who is assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations and low-intensity conflict, told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “We will need different authorities, we will need different types of programs in order for us to engage with the range of countries, from Libya down through Mali, which is obviously in the middle of chaos right now, to Mauritania, all the way — and, quite frankly, all the way over to Nigeria.”
But lawmakers and State Department officials were puzzled. Only last year, Mr. Gates and Mrs. Clinton, backed by Congress, agreed to pool resources from their two departments in a new fund to respond more quickly to counter emerging threats from Al Qaeda and other militants in places like Yemen and the Horn of Africa. The program, the Global Security Contingency Fund (pdf), is small as government programs go — $250 million a year, mostly from the Pentagon — but it is meant to address many of the needs the command’s proposal outlined.
A report accompanying the military budget bill that the House approved last month summed up the objections of not only lawmakers in the House and Senate, but also high-ranking administration officials who met on May 7 at the White House to work out the dispute. “The committee is concerned that the proliferation of similar, overlapping and/or competing building partner capacity authorities creates unnecessary confusion and friction,” the House report said.
Excerpt, ERIC SCHMITT, Elite Military Forces Are Denied in Bid for Expansion, New York Times, June 4, 2012
This entry was posted in covert action, War and tagged clandestine operations, covert action, humanitarian law, JSOC, laws of war, SoCom, special operations forces, U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, US Special Operations Command, War, wars United States on June 13, 2012 by Stoa.
The Drone War in Pakistan and have-nothing-to-lose Attitude
Expressing both public and private frustration with Pakistan, the Obama administration has unleashed the CIA to resume an aggressive campaign of drone strikes in Pakistani territory over the last few weeks, approving strikes that might have been vetoed in the past for fear of angering Islamabad. Now, said a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity in discussing sensitive issues, the administration’s attitude is, “What do we have to lose?”
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta made clear the deteriorating relations with Islamabad on Thursday, saying the United States is “reaching the limits of our patience” because Pakistan has not cracked down on local insurgents who carry out deadly attacks on U.S. troops and others in neighboring Afghanistan. “It is difficult to achieve peace in Afghanistan as long as there is safe haven for terrorists in Pakistan,” Panetta told reporters here on the last stop of his nine-day swing through Asia. He made it clear that the drone strikes will continue. The CIA has launched eight Predator drone attacks since Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, was invited to attend the May 20-21 NATO summit in Chicago but refused to make a deal to reopen crucial routes used to supply U.S. troops in Afghanistan, as the White House had hoped.
The CIA had logged 14 remotely piloted strikes on targets in Pakistan’s rugged tribal belt in the previous 5 1/2 months, according to the New America Foundation, a U.S. think tank that tracks reported attacks. Obviously, something changed after Chicago,” said a senior congressional aide in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity in discussing a classified program. “I am only getting the official story, but even within the official story there is an acknowledgment that something has changed.” Another congressional official said the surge in drone attacks stemmed in part from success in tracking down militants on the CIA’s target list, although only one has been publicly identified. It’s unclear who else has been targeted.
Pakistanis view the drone strikes as an attempt to intimidate their civilian and military leaders into giving in to U.S. demands. If that’s the strategy, it won’t work, said experts and analysts in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. “They are trying to send a message: ‘If you don’t come around, we will continue with our plan, the way we want to do it,’ ” said Javed Ashraf Qazi, a retired Pakistani intelligence chief and former senator. It’s “superpower arrogance being shown to a smaller state…. But this will only increase the feeling among Pakistanis that the Americans are bent on having their way through force and not negotiation.”
A White House official said no political or foreign policy considerations would have prevented the CIA from taking action when it found Abu Yahya al Libi, Al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, who was killed by a drone-fired missile in Pakistan on Monday.
Pakistan blocked truck convoys hauling North Atlantic Treaty Organization war supplies from the port city of Karachi after a clash near the Afghan border in November led to errors andU.S. military helicopters accidentally killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers. As part of the fallout, Pakistan ordered the U.S. to leave an air base in the country’s southwest that the CIA had used to launch drone flights bound for targets in the tribal areas. Since then, the aircraft reportedly have flown from across the border in Afghanistan. The U.S. initially halted all drone strikes for two months to ease Pakistani sensitivities, and the attacks resumed only sporadically after mid-January. By May, Pakistani officials were signaling a willingness to reopen the supply route to resurrect relations.
But talks deadlocked over Pakistan’s demands for sharply higher transit fees just before the NATO conference, and President Obama appeared to give Zardari a cold shoulder in Chicago. Pentagon officials will visit Islamabad this week for a new round of talks. After the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, Pakistan allowed NATO supplies to transit through its territory at no charge. It later levied a token $250 charge per truck. Islamabad now wants more than $5,000 per truck to reopen the road, a toll U.S. officials refuse to pay. As an alternative to Pakistan, Washington concluded a deal this week to haul military gear out of landlocked Afghanistan through three Central Asian nations — Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan — as NATO coalition troops withdraw.
The senior U.S. official said the Obama administration and members of Congress were angered when a Pakistani court sentenced Shakeel Afridi, a doctor who helped the CIA search for Osama bin Laden, to 33 years in prison. Navy SEALs killed Bin Laden in May 2011 in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad. But Panetta chiefly stressed his dissatisfaction with Pakistan’s inability or unwillingness to clamp down on sanctuaries used by the Haqqani network, a militant group that has been blamed for numerous deadly attacks in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials say Haqqani fighters, including some wearing suicide vests, most recently were involved in an assault last week on Forward Operating Base Salerno, a U.S. base in southeastern Afghanistan. U.S. troops killed 14 insurgents and suffered no casualties, officials said. Panetta’s complaint isn’t new, but his language was unusually bellicose. He told a think tank audience in New Delhi on Wednesday that “we are at war in the FATA,” referring to the federally administered tribal areas in northwestern Pakistan where the Haqqani fighters and other insurgents have concentrated. He later confirmed that the U.S. is targeting not just remaining Al Qaeda leaders but suspected militants from the Haqqani network and other Taliban-linked groups responsible for cross-border attacks. U.S. officials noted that Panetta leveled his charges in the capital of India, Pakistan’s archfoe. “The tensions with Pakistan are clearly going up, not down,” said the second congressional official. “The fact that Panetta was talking about Pakistan in India tells you how frustrated people are.”
“If the U.S. feels it is doing very well in the war against Al Qaeda, OK,” said Riaz Khokhar, a former Pakistani foreign secretary. “But people in Pakistan don’t know who Al Libi is and don’t care who he is. What people care about is that Pakistani sovereignty is being violated repeatedly by drones.”….”We have made it very clear that we are going to continue to defend ourselves,” Panetta said in New Delhi. “This is about our sovereignty as well.”
David S. Cloud and Alex Rodriguez, CIA gets nod to step up drone strikes in Pakistan, Los Angeles Times, June 8, 2012
This entry was posted in civilian casualties, covert action, War and tagged al Qaeda, cia, CIA and covert operations, clandestine operations, covert action, drone war, drone war FATA, drone war Pakistan, drones, drones and civilian casualties, FATA Pakistan, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, humanitarian law, laws of war, Obama drone war, Panetta, Panetta and drones, sovereignty, UAVs, war on terrorism on June 12, 2012 by Stoa.
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Tag Archives: Luganville wharf Vanuatu
Onerous Debt and its Consequences
A Beijing-funded wharf in Vanuatu is big enough to allow powerful warships to dock alongside it, heightening fears the port could be converted into a Chinese naval installation. Fairfax Media inspected the $114 million Luganville wharf and was told US coastguard officials and Marines recently visited the sprawling facility and took a keen interest in its specifications. The Chinese and Vanuatu governments have strenuously denied they have discussed a military base…
The Vanuatu government has taken on significant debt to China, though it appears to have stopped taking large loans since getting a stern warning from the International Monetary Fund in 2016. The wharf expected to be used to accept container and cruise ships was constructed by the Shanghai Construction Company and opened with fanfare in the middle of 2017. It is unclear whether the wharf loan contract with the Vanuatu government includes a so-called debt-equity swap clause, which would mean China could take over the facility if Vanuatu defaults on its payments. It has recently taken over the major port of Hambantota from Sri Lanka in these circumstances.
Malcolm Davis, a defence expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said it was “not by accident” that wharf had been built for large vessels.
“My guess is there’s a Trojan horse operation here that eventually will set up a large facility that is very modern and very well-equipped. They’ve done this before in other parts of the world. “Their hope is that the debt of the Vanuatu government will be so onerous that they can’t pay it back. The Chinese will say, ‘the facility is ours for 99 years’ and the next thing you’ve got a PLA Navy Luang III class [destroyer] docking there.
Excerpts from China and the Pacific: The Great Wharf, Economist, Apr. 21, 2018, at 33.
This entry was posted in Espionage, geoeconomics, War and tagged China Pacific strategy, China Vanuatu, debt-for-equity swap, Indian Ocean, Luganville wharf Vanuatu, Maldives, predatory capitalism, Sri Lanka China on June 5, 2018 by Stoa.
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UBA, Export Trading Group in a $125 million deal to supply quality farm inputs to African farmers
Home›Africa›CIBN allays fears of insolvency as Nigeria plans fresh banks’ recapitalisation
CIBN allays fears of insolvency as Nigeria plans fresh banks’ recapitalisation
London, June 25, 2019 (AltAfrica)-The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN says there is urgent need for Nigeria to shore up the capital base of commercial banks in the country raising the fears of insolvency in the financial sector
But the President, Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, CIBN, Dr Uche Olowu, said that there was no need for people to panic or have any fear about the financial system.
Speaking on Monday in Abuja during the unveiling of his economic agenda for the next five years, the CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, noted that the drop in the value of the naira to the dollar had weakened the capital of banks, hence the need for fresh recapitalisation
Godwin-Emefiele-CBN-Governor
For instance, the apex bank boss recalled that in 2004 when the banks were last asked to recapitalise, the value of a dollar to the naira was about N100.
This, he explained, meant that the N25bn capital base of banks when translated into the dollar was about $250m. However, due to the drop in the value of the nation’s currency which now exchanges for N360 to a dollar, the governor put the translated value of N25bn at just about $75m.
Going by this, it, therefore, means that the value of the capital of each bank had been reduced by $175m.
Based on the number of Deposit Money Banks in the country which stands at 20, the total value of the capital base may have been eroded by about $3.5bn.
Emefiele said going by the huge developmental role the apex bank would want the banks to play in the next five years, it had become imperative to demand their recapitalisation.
READ ALSO: NIGERIA: WHY I BEGAN LIFE WITH BORROWING IN OGUN STATE-DAPO ABIODUN
Following the announcement of the recapitalisation exercise, Emefiele said the Committee of Governors of the CBN would meet to discuss the new policy.
The meeting is expected to discuss modalities for the recapitalisation exercise as well as approve the framework that would guide the implementation of the policy.
The CBN governor said during the unveiling of his agenda for the next five years that the recapitalisation of banks had become imperative as their current capital could no longer finance large transactions.
Nigeria plans fresh banks’ recapitalisation
He said, “In the next five years, we intend to pursue a programme of recapitalising the banking industry so as to position Nigerian banks among the top 500 in the world.
“Banks will, therefore, be required to maintain a higher level of capital, as well as liquid assets in order to reduce the impact of an economic crisis on the financial system.
“Recall that it was Governor (Chukwuma) Soludo in 2004 that did the last recapitalisation we had. He moved the capitalisation from N2bn to N25bn. And I must commend those efforts because it resulted in positioning Nigerian banks not only in Africa but among the top banks in the world in terms of capitalisation.
“It also helps to increase the banking industry’s capacity to take on large transactions. And those are some of the things we badly need today.
“So if you relate N25bn with 2004 exchange rate which was about N100 (to a dollar), N25bn was about $250m. Today, if you relate N25bn at N360 (to a dollar) you will see that it is substantially lower than $75m.
“So what we are trying to say is that the recapitalisation has weakened and there is a need for us to say it is time to recapitalise the banks again.
“It’s a policy thrust which would be discussed at the committee of governors’ meeting and of course, the framework for the recapitalisation of Nigerian banks would be unfolded for the whole world in due course.”
Commenting on the development, the President, Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, Dr Uche Olowu, said that there was no need for people to panic or have any fear about the financial system.
He said that the announcement of an intending capital increase in the banking sector was a welcome development.
“Ordinarily, in other climes, you continue to look at the risks that you will take because of the opportunities that you see in them. You ask them to recapitalise because of the opportunities that will come. We need to beef up the capital base.” he said.
He said that some banks were moving into the regional regions and needed to shore up their capital to beef up more confidence.
He stated, “Even with the latest International Financial Reporting Standard, it also affects capital. So it is important that they begin to address it based on their capital base.
“If you are raising your capital, it is based on the risk you are taking. Capital is a function of the business that you want to do. There is already a minimum capital, if you now feel you want to do more, it is a function of the risk you want to take.”
Providing more insights on his economic agenda which centred on five major priorities, the CBN governor said he would work closely with the fiscal authorities to achieve double-digit growth rate within the next five years.
He said during his second term in office, his first priority would be to ensure domestic macroeconomic and financial stability.
This, he said, would be followed by the need to foster the development of a robust payment system infrastructure that would increase access to finance for all Nigerians thereby raising the financial inclusion rate in the country.
The governor said his third priority would be to continue to work with Deposit Money Banks to improve access to credit for not only smallholder farmers and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, but also consumer credit and mortgage facilities for bank customers.
Emefiele said the CBN’s intervention support would also be extended to the youth population who possessed entrepreneurship skills in the creative industry.
During this intervention period, the apex bank boss said the CBN would encourage Deposit Money Banks to focus more on supporting the education sector.
On his fourth priority, he said the focus here would be to grow the country’s external reserves, adding that his fifth priority would be to support efforts at diversifying the economy through the CBN’s intervention programmes in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors.
“We are confident that when implemented, these measures will help to insulate our economy from potential shocks in the global economy.
“In my second term in office, part of my pledge is to work to the best of my abilities in fulfilling these objectives,” he added.
Speaking on strategies to achieving these priorities, Emefiele said the CBN would implement its agenda under various initiatives.
This, he noted, would enable the bank to achieve macroeconomic stability, exchange rate stability, financial system stability, financial inclusion, access to credit, lending to MSMEs, consumer credit and mortgage lending among others.
Macroeconomic stability
In the area of macroeconomic stability, the CBN governor said, “We intend to leverage monetary policy tools in supporting a low inflation environment while seeking to maintain stability in our exchange rate.
“As a result, decisions by the Monetary Policy Committee on inflation and interest rates will be dependent on insights generated from data on key economic variables.”
Working with other stakeholders, he said the bank intended to bring down the cost of food items, which had considerable weight in the Consumer Price Index basket.
He said, “Our ultimate objective is to anchor the public’s inflation expectation at single digit in the medium to long run.
“We believe a low and stable inflationary environment is essential to the growth of our economy because it will help support long term planning by individuals and businesses.
“It will also help to lower interest rates charged by banks to businesses thereby facilitating improved access to credit, and a corresponding growth in output and employment.”
Exchange rate stability
In achieving exchange rate stability, Emefiele said the apex bank would continue to operate a managed float exchange rate regime in order to reduce the impact which continuous volatility in the exchange rate could have on the economy.
He said, “We will support measures that will increase and diversify Nigeria’s exports base and ultimately help in shoring up our reserves.
“While the dynamics of global trade continues to evolve in advanced economies, Nigeria remains committed to a free trade regime that is mutually beneficial but particularly aimed at supporting our domestic industries and creating jobs on a mass scale for Nigerians.
“We intend to aggressively implement our N500bn facility aimed at supporting the growth of our non-oil exports, which will help to improve non-oil export earnings.”
He said the CBN would launch a Trade Monitoring System in October this year which is an automated system that would reduce the length of time required to process export documents from one week to one day.
On financial system stability, the apex bank boss said the CBN would continue to improve its onsite and off-site supervision of all financial institutions, while leveraging data analytics and in-house experts across different sectors, to improve its ability to identify potential risks to the financial system as well as risks to individual banks.
Emefiele said in keeping with the recent Presidential Directives, he intended to boost productivity growth through the provision of improved seedlings, as well as access to finance for rural farmers in the agricultural sector, across 10 different commodities namely rice, maize, cassava, cocoa, tomato, cotton, oil-palm, poultry, fish, and livestock/dairy.
“We believe these measures will help to boost not only our domestic outputs but also improve our annual non-oil exports receipts from $2bn in 2018 to $12bn by 2023,” he added.
In the area of financial inclusion, Emefiele said over the next five years, through initiatives and policy measures such as the Shared Agent Network and the payment service banks, he intended to broaden access to financial services to individuals in underserved parts of the country. Punch
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« School at Home and Other Places
Balancing Equations »
August 8, 2016 by Amy Welborn
Dominicans in Benin, courtesy of the always interesting and inspiring African Catholics Instagram feed.
Here’s Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on the saint, in one of his General Audiences, part of the series that focused on great figures in the Church, beginning with the Apostles:
This great Saint reminds us that in the heart of the Church a missionary fire must always burn. It must be a constant incentive to make the first proclamation of the Gospel and, wherever necessary, a new evangelization. Christ, in fact, is the most precious good that the men and women of every time and every place have the right to know and love! And it is comforting to see that in the Church today too there are many pastors and lay faithful alike, members of ancient religious orders and new ecclesial movements who spend their lives joyfully for this supreme ideal, proclaiming and witnessing to the Gospel!
Many other men then joined Dominic de Guzmán, attracted by the same aspiration. In this manner, after the first foundation in Toulouse, the Order of Preachers gradually came into being. Dominic in fact, in perfect obedience to the directives of the Popes of his time, Innocent iii, and Honorius iii, used the ancient Rule of St Augustine, adapting it to the needs of apostolic life that led him and his companions to preach as they travelled from one place to another but then returning to their own convents and places of study, to prayer and community life. Dominic wanted to give special importance to two values he deemed indispensable for the success of the evangelizing mission: community life in poverty and study.
First of all Dominic and the Friars Preachers presented themselves as mendicants, that is, without vast estates to be administered. This element made them more available for study and itinerant preaching and constituted a practical witness for the people. The internal government of the Dominican convents and provinces was structured on the system of chapters which elected their own superiors, who were subsequently confirmed by the major superiors; thus it was an organization that stimulated fraternal life and the responsibility of all the members of the community, demanding strong personal convictions. The choice of this system was born precisely from the fact that as preachers of the truth of God, the Dominicans had to be consistent with what they proclaimed. The truth studied and shared in charity with the brethren is the deepest foundation of joy. Blessed Jordan of Saxony said of St Dominic: “All men were swept into the embrace of his charity, and, in loving all, he was beloved by all…. He claimed it his right to rejoice with the joyful and to weep with the sorrowful” (Libellus de principiis Ordinis Praedicatorum autore Iordano de Saxonia, ed. H.C. Scheeben [Monumenta Historica Sancti Patris Nostri Dominici, Romae, 1935].
Secondly, with a courageous gesture, Dominic wanted his followers to acquire a sound theological training and did not hesitate to send them to the universities of the time, even though a fair number of clerics viewed these cultural institutions with diffidence. The Constitutions of the Order of Preachers give great importance to study as a preparation for the apostolate. Dominic wanted his Friars to devote themselves to it without reserve, with diligence and with piety; a study based on the soul of all theological knowledge, that is, on Sacred Scripture, and respectful of the questions asked by reason. The development of culture requires those who carry out the ministry of the Word at various levels to be well trained. I therefore urge all those, pastors and lay people alike, to cultivate this “cultural dimension” of faith, so that the beauty of the Christian truth may be better understood and faith may be truly nourished, reinforced and also defended. In this Year for Priests, I ask seminarians and priests to esteem the spiritual value of study. The quality of the priestly ministry also depends on the generosity with which one applies oneself to the study of the revealed truths.
Dominic, who wished to found a religious Order of theologian-preachers, reminds us that theology has a spiritual and pastoral dimension that enriches the soul and life. Priests, the consecrated and also all the faithful may find profound “inner joy” in contemplating the beauty of the truth that comes from God, a truth that is ever timely and ever alive. Moreover the motto of the Friars Preachers contemplata aliis tradere helps us to discover a pastoral yearning in the contemplative study of this truth because of the need to communicate to others the fruit of one’s own contemplation. More
Then, in 2012, on this feast at Castel Gandolfo, he focused on Dominic and prayer:
There are, then, nine ways to pray, according to St Dominic, and each one — always before Jesus Crucified — expresses a deeply penetrating physical and spiritual approach that fosters recollection and zeal. The first seven ways follow an ascending order, like the steps on a path, toward intimate communion with God, with the Trinity: St Dominic prayed standing bowed to express humility, lying prostrate on the ground to ask forgiveness for his sins, kneeling in penance to share in the Lord’s suffering, his arms wide open, gazing at the Crucifix to contemplate Supreme Love, looking heavenwards feeling drawn to God’s world.
Thus there are three positions: standing, kneeling, lying prostrate on the ground; but with the gaze ever directed to our Crucified Lord. However the last two positions, on which I would like to reflect briefly, correspond to two of the Saint’s customary devotional practices. First, personal meditation, in which prayer acquires an even more intimate, fervent and soothing dimension. After reciting the Liturgy of the Hours and after celebrating Mass, St Dominic prolonged his conversation with God without setting any time limit. Sitting quietly, he would pause in recollection in an inner attitude of listening, while reading a book or gazing at the Crucifix. He experienced these moments of closeness to God so intensely that his reactions of joy or of tears were outwardly visible. In this way, through meditation, he absorbed the reality of the faith. Witnesses recounted that at times he entered a kind of ecstasy with his face transfigured, but that immediately afterwards he would humbly resume his daily work, recharged by the power that comes from on High.
Then come his prayers while travelling from one convent to another. He would recite Lauds, Midday Prayer and Vespers with his companions, and, passing through the valleys and across the hills he would contemplate the beauty of creation. A hymn of praise and thanksgiving to God for his many gifts would well up from his heart, and above all for the greatest wonder: the redemptive work of Christ.
Dear friends, St Dominic reminds us that prayer, personal contact with God is at the root of the witness to faith which every Christian must bear at home, at work, in social commitments and even in moments of relaxation; only this real relationship with God gives us the strength to live through every event with intensity, especially the moments of greatest anguish. This Saint also reminds us of the importance of physical positions in our prayer. Kneeling, standing before the Lord, fixing our gaze on the Crucifix, silent recollection — these are not of secondary importance but help us to put our whole selves inwardly in touch with God. I would like to recall once again the need, for our spiritual life, to find time everyday for quiet prayer; we must make this time for ourselves, especially during the holidays, to have a little time to talk with God. It will also be a way to help those who are close to us enter into the radiant light of God’s presence which brings the peace and love we all need. Thank you.
From Word on Fire , by Fr. Paul Murray, O.P.:
Dominic, it is clear, possessed a strong instinct for adventure. He was daring both by nature and by grace. Dante calls him ‘il santo atleta,’ the holy athlete. No matter how difficult or unforeseen the challenge of the hour, he was not afraid to take enormous risks for the sake of the Gospel. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that within a few years it could be said of the young friars who followed in his wake, and whom he himself had dispersed far and wide to preach the gospel, that they had made the ocean their cloister. But was this spirit of risk and adventure reflected in the intellectual life of the first Dominicans? Study, we know, was given a place that was unheard of before in the history of religious life. It was no longer simply one exercise among others. It was now a central and sacred task. But, in terms of actual content and imaginative range, how striking and original were the studies of those first friars? The principal point to be made in answer to this question is that the early Dominicans were not attempting to be ‘striking and original’. Their studies were shaped by the needs of others, and given the nature of the crisis at that time, what was most urgently required for the task of preaching and the cura animarum was straightforward moral and doctrinal catechesis.
Here’s one of the many interesting Dominican web sites out there – focused on the Dominican liturgy.
Godzdogs, the blog site of the Dominicans of England and Scotland.
The litany of Dominican saints and blesseds
Earlier this summer, we traveled to Bologna and enjoyed just a few minutes at the tomb of St. Dominic. We were shooed away by the caretaker because, of course, we arrived right as the gates to the tomb area were being closed for the lunch hour. And we didn’t hang around the church itself because there was a school Mass about to begin…but it was a nice moment, anyway, to be at the tomb of St. Dominic and to see the fruit of his labor – young people gathering for Mass – 800 years after his death.
(Last image from Snapchat – amywelborn2 to follow)
And….St. Dominic is in the Loyola Kids’ Book of Saints. Only a page is available in online, so here it is. He’s in “Saints are people who teach us new ways to pray” section.
EPSON MFP image
Posted in Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Apostles, Bologna, Catholic, Catholicism, Church, evangelization, Faith, Family Travel, history, Italy, Italy 2016, Joseph Dubruiel, Life, Liturgy, Loyola Kids Book of Saints, Loyola Press, Michael Dubruiel, pilgrimage, prayer, Reading, Religion, Saints, Travel, travel with kids | Tagged Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Bologna, books, Catholic, Catholic books, faith, First Communion Gifts, Italy, Italy 2016, Loyola Kids' Book of Saints, Loyola Press, Michael Dubruiel, religion, saints |
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Commercial Photography collaborate with Air Festival
Published 23rd October 2015
BA (Hons) Commercial Photography students have been working with aviation artist David Bent on Bournemouth Air Festival.
Students spent four days at the festival with David and were given access to shoot from unusual locations including hotel roofs and the RFA Argus.
Conrad Tracy, Course Leader & Principal Lecturer said: “We are excited to be collaborating with both the Bournemouth Air Festival and the Internationally respected aviation artist David Bent. The collaboration gives our students the opportunity to use their skills and creativity while working on a fascinating project, during a festival that is important to Bournemouth, both culturally and economically. We look forward to the outcomes, exhibition and publication, and hope this will the first of many joint projects.”
Will Ablett said: The project has been brilliant. We were given unprecedented access to the Air Festival – even spending a day on the roof of the Marriott hotel. That was great, we had to go through a cupboard, up a ladder, through a loft etc but the views were so worth it. We saw parts of the air festival no one else could. It’s been great to collaborate with David and work in new ways.”
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Current Rheumatology Reviews, Volume 1
Current Rheumatology Reviews, Volume 1, 2005, Issue number 3
Current Rheumatology Reviews, Volume 1, 2005, Issue number 1 - Free Issue
Charles J. Malemud
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Biography of Charles J. Malemud
Charles J. Malemud received the Ph.D. from George Washington University in 1973 and completed postdoctoral studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1977. Since 1977, Dr. Malemud has been a member of the faculty at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine where he is presently Professor of Medicine & Anatomy in the Division of Rheumatic Diseases and Senior Investigator of the Arthritis Research Group. He has published over 230 papers, chapters and reviews primarily in the field of chondrocyte biology. Professor Malemud is on the editorial board of several rheumatology, immunology and musculoskeletal journals and is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Clinical and Cellular Immunology and Global Vaccines and Immunology.
Current Rheumatology Reviews was launched in 2005. Dr. Charles J. Malemud serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal.
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HANSARD 1803–2005 → 1880s → 1887 → March 1887 → 31 March 1887 → Commons Sitting → ORDER OF THE BAY.
CRIMINAL LAW AMENDMENT (IRELAND) BILL.
HC Deb 31 March 1887 vol 313 cc88-182 88
§ MOTION FOR LEAVE. FIRST READING.
§ ADJOURNED DEBATE. [FOURTH NIGHT.]
§ Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [28th March], That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make better provision for the prevention and punishment of Crime in Ireland; and for other purposes relating thereto."—(Mr. Arthur Balfour.)
§ Question again proposed.
§ Debate resumed.
§ MR. LABOUCHERE (Northampton)
said, that when the Government brought in a Coercion Bill the onus probandi of showing its necessity obviously rested with those who introduced it, and the Opposition were not bound to find arguments against it. That was all the more necessary on the present occasion, because the presumption was that any Coercion Bill for Ireland would prove a failure. Were it not so they would not 89 now be dealing with the 87th Coercion Bill. The only hon. Member of the House who appeared to be under the impression that Coercion Bills ever proved successful, was the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Joseph Chamberlain). That right hon. Gentleman boasted and gloried the other day over the fact that the Crimes Act of 1882 had proved successful. He had no doubt that the words of the right hon. Gentleman had great weight with the Party opposite; but he did not think they would outweigh those used by the Prime Minister in his speech at Newport, who said it was not true that the Crimes Act of that year did diminish outrages. What was the argument used in support of this Bill? Practically it was a syllogism. They were told that it was the first duty of a Government to maintain law and order in Ireland, and that therefore the Government was justified in asking for these exceptional powers. He (Mr. Labouchere) altogether denied the premisses and the conclusion of the syllogism. They had had three speeches from the Front Treasury Bench in favour of the present measure. The speech of the noble Lord the First Lord of the Admiralty (Lord George Hamilton) consisted almost entirely of the old stable hack—an attack on the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone). When hon. Gentlemen opposite had nothing to say that was germane to the subject they immediately turned on the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian, and tried to prove that he was one of the most dangerous—not to say wicked— Ministers who had ever existed, or who ever would exist. [Cheers.] Precisely, he thought so. When the noble Lord had gone through the usual attack on the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian, he proceeded to praise his brother. Fraternal affection was all very well, but there were so many Gentlemen connected with the Peerage on the Treasury Bench that their debates would never come to an end if those Gentlemen were each to get up and for an hour defend their own relatives. The noble Lord said his brother's tenants loved their landlord because they had voted against the Home Rule candidate. How did he know how they had voted? Those unfortunate people were so intimidated by their landlord that they could not call their souls or their votes their own; and they had 90 to prove and to show that they had voted in favour of their landlord in order that his brother might come down to that House and give it as evidence that they loved him. Well, a very short time ago the leaseholders on the Duke of Abercorn's estate held a meeting and denounced the treatment they received. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Goschen) had also attacked the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian, and his speech, though much lauded in the newspapers, was merely an amplification of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the late Chief Secretary for Ire-land (Mr. John Morley). The late Chief Secretary laid it down that the first duty of the Government was to maintain law and order. Now, he (Mr. Labouchere) entirely denied that proposition. Law and order should not be bracketed together, because the worst disorders that ever occurred in the world were due to laws—to unjust laws. Just laws were all very well, but unjust laws promoted disorder. It was the common parrot cry of despots that it was necessary to strengthen the law to maintain law and order. The Emperor of Russia had transported half the people of Poland on the plea of maintaining law and order there. The Emperor Napoleon was never tired of saying that he wished to maintain law and order whenever he wanted to transport French people to Cayenne. Charles I. wanted to maintain law and order, and the people, most properly, cut his head off. James II. wanted to maintain law and order, and he was turned out of the country. Why was there disorder now in Ireland? Because they were always maintaining execrable laws there in defiance of the will of the Irish people. What Gentlemen on the Government side of the House did not seem to understand was that they were not dealing with individuals, but with a nation. It was the first right of a nation not only to make their laws, but to be the judge of their laws. Let them allow Ireland to make its own laws, and they would have no reason to complain. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary told them that Bill was perfectly legitimate, because the Liberals had also proposed Coercion Bills. His withers were unwrung because he had voted against previous Coercion Bills; but it did not necessarily follow because the Liberal Party were in favour of Coer- 91 cion Bills five years ago that they should be in favour of thorn now. On the contrary, they had tried thorn and found them to fail, and they were determined to have nothing to do with them in future. When a doctor had tried a particular remedy on 100 patients, and they had all died, ought he to go on applying it to 100 more patients? The remedy of the Liberal Party was Home Rule, and if that were adopted coercion would not be necessary. The Gentlemen who called themselves Unionists seemed determined to act like George III., and to persist in their errors until they should be compelled to abandon them by some calamity analogous to the American War of Independence. In the Southern States of America, during the time of Mr. Andrew Johnson and his successors, intimidation and outrage flourished. In 1878, when Homo Rule was granted to those States, all the terrorism and outrage ceased, and the Union of the American States was built upon recognized Homo Rule. The Liberal Party had a remedy, and they knew perfectly well that if that remedy were adopted coercion would become unnecessary. The right hon. Gentleman's speech in introducing the matter was not distinguished by his usual clearness. It was vague, incoherent, and contradictory. He must say—speaking artistically—that he was exceedingly disappointed with it. The right hon. Gentleman appeared to know nothing about Ireland; but that was not his fault, as he was a Scotchman who had no connection with Ireland. He did think, however, that the right hon. Gentleman might have got up his case a little better. He seemed to be under the impression that a Coercion Bill ought to be passed for Ireland. He did not know particularly why, and he did not particularly care. Some sort of reasons ought, he supposed, to be given for it, and so he gave them; but, after stating his reasons, he added—" On these I do not rely." His whole speech was that of one who was content to base his action on the principle," Sic volo, sic jubeo." The right hon. Gentleman drew a terrible picture of Ireland and the anarchy which prevailed in the greater part of the country. He said if a man remained in his house during the night the odds were that he would be shot; if he went out the odds were that on his return he would find that his wife and 92 daughters would be ravished. Hon. Members from Ireland must judge whether that was a fair and legitimate picture; but then, the right hon. Gentleman thought he must give some statistics. He seemed to have a kind of contempt for statistics—the same contempt as Mr. Mantalini had for halfpence. But the right hon. Gentleman did quote some statistics, and stated that since last July 755 crimes, not political or agrarian crimes, had come before the Courts, and that 531 crimes of which no clue had been found had been committed. These figures, however, only showed that three crimes were committed per diem; while in London, in nearly every Police Court, three men were committed, for trial every day. The right hon. Gentleman said that juries would not convict. He should like to draw the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the following evidence of the Crown Solicitor for Tipperary, Mr. G. Bolton, given before the Select Committee on Irish Jury Laws in 1881:— There is no difficulty whatever in getting convictions for robberies or larcenies, because in Tipperary these offences have always been regarded as disgraceful. If you ask a prisoner whether he has been convicted, he will reply, 'Yes; but, thank God, it was for nothing disgraceful.' The right hon. Gentleman had not been quite fair in his selection of passages from Judges' charges, for he picked and chose them to suit his case. Everybody knew that an Irish Judge was made a Judge because he was a partizan. There was not a single Judge on the Bench who had not spoken in opposition to the National League. [Mr. T. M. HEALY: Yes, Baron Dowse.] Well, there was one, but one swallow could not make a summer. About the judicial harangues referred to by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, there was this peculiarity that they were all made at a time when there happened to be a vacancy in the Court of Common Pleas. Surely, that was an odd coincidence? The right hon. Gentleman had supplemented his case by a series of anecdotes. There was nothing more objectionable than for a Minister of the Crown to ask the House to pass a Bill the necessity for which was supported by anonymous anecdotes. But if the right hon. Gentleman could not give some authority for his stories, he ought not to have quoted them. He told one story of somebody who went to the 93 Usher of the Court to ask him some question about serving on a jury. Now, that story must have been told by the Usher to somebody else, who told it to somebody else, and so it at last got to the ears of somebody in Dublin Castle, who passed it on to the right hon. Gentleman. Now, really that kind of tiling was too bad. Then the right hon. Gentleman actually accused the National League of putting down crime; he said the actual number of crimes had decreased through the intimidation of the League. The right hon. Gentleman had very few figures to give them. He did not base his Bill on figures. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, said that this would not do, remembering that when the late Mr. Forster wanted to bring in a Coercion Bill he produced a large Blue Book full of cases of crime, most of which, however, were afterwards exploded in the House. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer produced some figures. He spoke of a number of 1,566 offences in Ireland; but he told the House nothing about them, and the House wanted to know—they wanted to know how many of those offences were mere threatening letters, how many were tried, and how many were made amenable to the law. The right hon. Gentleman need not shrug his shoulders? They claimed it as a right that before any Coercion Bill was passed in the House based upon the number of crimes committed in Ireland, that they should be clearly set down in a Blue Book, so that hon. Members might know all about them. The right hon. Gentleman said that juries would not convict. Very likely they would not for political offences. The peculiarity of juries in that respect was not confined to Ireland; the liberties of England were due to the determination of English juries not to convict in political cases. Did the right hon. Gentleman remember the trial of Queen Caroline? On that famous occasion all the Liberals voted on one side and all the Tories on the other, and they all declared that they voted according to their honour and conscience, yet nobody proposed on that occasion to abolish the House of Lords. He wished they had. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had declared that the reason for bringing prisoners from Ireland to this country was that 94 the safety of the jurors might not be jeopardized. In Ireland, the right hon. Gentleman said—"The names of jurors are made public, and that is un-Constitutional." The right hon. Gentleman apparently had forgotten that the names of jurors were made public in this country also. They were called from the panel, and anybody in Court at the time could take a note of them. He thought it was not so surprising that juries should be bad in Ireland, as that any juries should be good, considering the way in which not only this Government but others as well had tried to get convictions by packing juries—thus demoralizing and discrediting the jury system. He thought, then, that they might take it that there was no exceptional crime in Ireland. With regard to what had been said as to agrarian crime, that was a mere pre-text. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had attacked the National League, and had complained that it had been the head of the Plan of Campaign. As a matter of fact, the National League had nothing to do with the Plan of Campaign, and had kept out of it. For his own part, he believed that the Plan of Campaign was perfectly legitimate. It had not been quite technically legal, perhaps, in some points, but it had retained the spirit of the law at the expense, perhaps, of the letter; it had been simply a plan to enable those persons who lived on estates which were admitted even by the Government to be rack-rented, to carry out the principles of the Land Act of 1881. Those principles were that the first charge on the land was the right of the occupier to live and thrive, and that rent was but the second charge, the margin which existed after the first charge had been fully met. In the cases dealt with by the Plan of Campaign this had not been the case; the tenants could not live and thrive. Some of them, perhaps, could; but they had been quite right to stick together, rich and poor. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been indignant at the Plan of Campaign being compared to a trade union; but Sir George Cornewall Lewis had described Whiteboy associations as trade unions for the protection of the peasantry, and the plan was an adaptation, mutatis mutandis, of the principles of a trade union. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed 95 to consider property an absolute fetish. For his own part, he had never known anyone who was such an abject worshipper of the golden calf as the right hon. Gentleman. Let it be a rack-renting Irish landlord or a usurious Egyptian bondholder, the right hon. Gentleman's cry, like Shylock's, was always for "the bond, the bond," on the ground that "contracts must be maintained." But he (Mr. Labouchere) would inform him that there was no contract where there was either force or fraud, and the Irish peasants had been forced into their bargains by being told that it was necessary in order to get the benefits of the Act. They had heard a good deal about robbery, but he thought the robbers were the landlords and not the tenants. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had made the remarkable discovery that the National League was a political institution, and had told them with horror depicted in his face of a speech of the hon. Member for North Fermanagh (Mr. W. H. Redmond) about striking a blow for the Irish nation and the green flag. But that was precisely what everybody know the Irish people were doing. Then the right hon. Gentleman had fallen back on Boycotting and intimidation, and had given some general evidence to show what that intimidation was—among that evidence being the case of the midwife who had not been allowed to attend on the wife of a Boycotted man, But The St. James's Gazette boasted that that was their story. Where did the right hon. Gentleman get it from? From The St. James's Gazette? [Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: No.] At all events, The St. James's Gazette claimed the story as its exclusive property. He confessed for his part that he would not believe one single story on the evidence of The St. James's Gazette. Why, the right hon. Gentleman would next quote The Times! They had had a horrible story in The Times the other day, which had since been contradicted, or the right hon. Gentleman would no doubt have cited it, as to some people having been ravished. The story had been denied in that House, but he would point out that The Times had never denied the story. He cited this to show of how little value these cock-and-bull stories were with regard to Ireland. Then they had heard the story from the right hon. Gen- 96 tleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer about the child which had been refused food and had died. But it had turned one that that had happened as long ago as 1883, and also, as far as the evidence went from which the right hon. Gentleman had quoted, there was nothing to show that the child was not still living. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had accused the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian of attempting to palliate outrages, but the right hon. Gentleman had done nothing of the kind. He had had a perfect right to say that they ought not on account of one single case to crush out the liberties of a people, and he had had a perfect right to point out that that particular form of barbarity had been introduced by ourselves while engaged in such an attempt. There was very gross exaggeration with regard to these stories from Ireland. Emergency men and the men who took farms from which others had been evicted were the most disreputable class in Ireland, and wished to curry favour with those who employed them. Among the tenants they were ever hearing of some wonderful Nicodemus who sneaked to the landlord in the middle of the night and told him he was in despair and hoped he would take the rent, but at the same time issue a writ against him in case he should be intimidated. Why, there were sneaks everywhere, and these were simply specimens of the men who run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. He was exceedingly surprised at the right hon. Gentleman making any point of the 836 persons who were alleged to have been intimidated, because his argument was that the entire Irish nation was intimidated by the National League, and not 836 persons merely. A distinction had been drawn in those cases between partially and wholly Boycotted cases. What was the difference? Did the latter mean exclusive dealing, and the former that if a man went into a shop and asked for six eggs he was only given three? He fully admitted that Boycotting would be wrong in a country such as England, where the laws had the sanction of the people; but in a country like Ireland, where alien law existed, he was not sure that he would consider it wrong on the part of Irishmen to refuse to deal with a man who was to all intents and purposes the enemy of his 97 country. He happened to be in the North of Italy when the Austrians were there, and habitual Boycotting went on in Milan and Venice, and elsewhere. The Austrian officers would go to one café and the Italians to another; and if an Austrian officer went into a café which was frequented by the Italians, the latter would rise en masse and go out. This, however, was simply accepted by the Austrians as the natural consequence of a foreign domination. But to look nearer home, what was the Primrose League but a gigantic religious, political, and social Boycotting association? If he were to cite cases of Boycotting by the Primrose League, he should have to go on till 12 o'clock at night. Again, were not Dissenters habitually Boycotted in this country? [Cries of "No!"] Would the hon. Gentleman who cried "No" assert that there was no landlord of the Established Church who did not refuse to let his farm to a man simply because he was a Wesleyan? "What did the Prime Minister himself do? He refused to give a decent, respectable site for a Nonconformist place of worship in Hot-field. Boycotting, moreover, was a very ancient institution. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had not that veneration for the ancient Hebrew race that he himself had. But he would point out to those who did respect that race that they were the first Boycotters on record. He would call their attention to the text, "For the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans." But was it not a little ridiculous of a Cabinet, with Lord Salisbury at its head, to ask the House to pass a Bill in order to put down Boycotting in Ireland, when the noble Lord himself went out of his way at Newport to explain that no Boycotting or intimidation could be put down by any possible Bill? The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had said that the National League was a secret association which dealt with dagger and dynamite; and, according to the right hon. Gentleman, people were forced to join it by fear, and there was at the head of it a set of desperate men who desired separation. One would suppose that the Government regarded the National League as a species of Vehmgericht, dreaded and hated by everybody in Ireland. What was the National League? Why, it was the entire Irish 98 nation; it was the unauthorized Parliament of Ireland—it was not a secret society, and its objects were to protect tenants from the extortion of rack-rents, and to obtain the Home Rule which hon. Gentlemen opposite were so fond of denouncing. Sir Redvers Buller himself had stated that the people looked up to the League, because it alone protected them. If they did away with the National League, secret societies would undoubtedly spring up and take its place; and, regret it as they might, there was no question that there would be outrages. His authority for that statement was the right hon. Member for—. No; his authority was a Gentleman of the name of John Bright. He was not alluding to the right hon. Gentleman, for he was afraid the old John Bright had entirely disappeared. This was what John Bright had said— The first thing that ever called my attention to the state of Ireland was reading an account of one of these outrages. I thought of it for a moment, but the truth struck me at once, and all I have ever seen since confirms it. When law refuses its duty, when Government denies the right of the people, when competition is so tierce for the little land that the monopolists grant to cultivators in Ireland, when, in fact, millions are struggling for the potato—then people are driven back from law and from the usages of civilization to that which is termed the law of nature, and, if not of the strongest, of the law of the vindictive; and in this case the people of Ireland believe, to my certain knowledge, that it is only by these acts of vengeance, periodically committed, that they can hold in suspense the arm of the proprietor, of the landlord, and of the agent, who, in many cases, would, if he dared, exterminate them. The case for coercion had entirely failed. Eight hon. Gentlemen opposite had a sense that they were somewhat feeble men, and they wanted to posture as firm men. It was essentially a Party move. The Government would coerce those who opposed them in England if they dared. Turning to the provisions of this iniquitous Bill, and particularly to the clause changing the venue to England in certain cases, did the Government really suppose that if they picked up some miserable Irishman, and brought him over to London to be tried, they would thereby increase the love and affection of Ireland towards England? If hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite would take the trouble to refer to their history, they would find that Lord North, at the time of 99 the American Rebellion, proposed that Americans should be brought over to England and tried by jury, a proposal which was denounced by Burke as one of the most monstrous that the mind of man could conceive. It was difficult to say whether the clause referred to was more atrocious or absurd. It was an outrage on trial by jury; it would be infinitely better to do away with trial by jury. Why were they going to bring over the witnesses and the whole Irish Bar to England? Why do the Government not send the jury over to Ireland? The Bill also provides that the minor offences, of which his hon. Friends from Ireland wore habitually guilty, were to be tried by two Resident Magistrates, the punishment accorded being six months' hard labour. What were those minor offences? They were specified in the Whiteboy Acts, and included among them assemblies carrying unusual badges. [An hon. MEMBER: The Primrose League.] He did not know whether there were branches of the Primrose League in Ireland; but there were certainly Orange Lodges, which had badges; and it was possible that they too would suffer. The Acts also dealt with such an offence as persons by drums and music promoting an unlawful meeting; but hero was the most remarkable provision— "requiring by any written or printed document to do or not to do" —what?— "any act." That was a net which nothing could escape. Now, who were the gentlemen who wore to try persons guilty of those minor offences? They knew what the unpaid magistracy was in this country. They knew perfectly well that the unpaid magistrates in England were "saints in heaven" compared with the magistracy in Ireland. These gentlemen were not lawyers; they had received no legal education of any kind. They were, in some cases, the "ne'er-do-wells" of their family, and half-pay officers, whom it was thought ought to be provided for; cousins of noble Lords, and landlords sent over to Ireland to be provided for. He asked the House to observe on what conditions they held their office, for certainly never were independent men in such a subservient position to a Government before, and never were men called upon to exercise those functions from which partisanship and political feeling ought to be eliminated placed in 100 such a position. There were Acts passed in this reign which provided that the Lord Lieutenant might appoint Stipendiary Magistrates at pleasure, to be dismissed or removed at pleasure. "Their pension is to depend on the Chief Secretary's certificate of diligent and faithful service." The Lord Lieutenant might raise their classification and salary, and grant them special sums for allowances. They would, therefore, have these worthy gentlemen competing for those allowances and for those pensions, and the plea would be—-"I have sent to prison more decent men than any of my Resident Magistrate friends." He (Mr. Labouchere) really believed that an Irish Nationalist would have as little chance before two Resident Magistrates in Ireland as a Christian in the earliest ages of Christianity had before the two magistrates of Judcea, Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas. The Chief Secretary made a species of boast that his Bill would not affect the Press. But he contended that if the Bill were passed the Press would be at the mercy of the Government, and the Press of Ireland would be subject to such an Act as had never yet been passed in the most despotic Government in the world. Even in Russia a newspaper had three warnings before it was suppressed. In France, under Napoleon, a newspaper had also three warnings; but there was no provision contained in the codes of these Governments comparable with the likelihood of a newspaper being proceeded against under this Bill on the ground that it had published a report of a meeting or a resolution passed at a meeting. But he should like to know how the Government were going to distinguish between English and Irish newspapers? How were they going to deal with an incitement to Boycott published in an English newspaper circulated in Ireland? The speeches of hon. Members from Ireland delivered in the House would be published in the papers, and was the House to understand that the Press would be prosecuted for publishing those speeches? Were the speeches to be reported in the English. Press and not in the Irish Press? They were told that this Bill was to last for ever. Juries were to be suppressed, the Press was to be gagged, the liberties of men were to be subject to the will of two wretched Resident Magistrates, and all 101 this for ever. The Government would probably say that the Bill might be abrogated. But supposing the country, as he had no doubt it would, were to return a majority at the next Election in favour of the Liberal Party. In order to put an and to the Bill, it must be remembered that the repealing measure has not only to pass the House of Commons, but the House of Lords as well. Who were the Members of that House? They were the subservient political slaves of the Prime Minister. [Cries of "Oh, oh!" and "Order!"]
§ MR. SPEAKER
The hon. Gentleman is not treating the other branch of the Legislature with proper courtesy, a courtesy always due from one House to the other. [Cries of "Withdraw!"]
§ MR. LABOUCHERE
said, he had not the slightest intention of withdrawing. [Renewed cries of "Withdraw!" The majority of the Upper House, of whom he spoke with the greatest respect, was entirely in the hands of Lord Salisbury. He did not suppose that any hon. Gentleman opposite would deny that. On the contrary, they were glad it was the case. Lord Salisbury had stated that there ought to be a firm Government—that was to say, a Coercion Government—for 20 years in Ireland. The noble Lord was the master in the other House, and if this Bill were passed it could only be abrogated by the consent of the Upper House; and if Lord Salisbury acted on his views they would have this Bill for 20 years at least. The Government were also going to take powers to suppress any association in Ireland that might promote or encourage interference with the administration of the law. Of course, this provision was aimed at the National League He wanted to know who was to be the Judge, and who was going to suppress it'? Why, Lord Londonderry. It was simply scandalous to say that any association which, in the opinion of Lord Londonderry, promoted or encouraged interference with the administration of the law—that was to say, his administration —was to be suppressed by his fiat. The House was told that there was a conspiracy in Ireland. Why, the conspiracy was here, and the conspirators were here. The conspirators were the landlords, the men of class and privilege, who were always the bitter and per- 102 sistent enemies of the people. These Irish conspirators, as they were called, were defending the rights of their country, defending the poor man against the rich man in Ireland. They were doing their best to get fair rents; they were doing their best not to separate from this country, but to obtain those rights in regard to self-government which the Leaders of the Liberal Party have asserted in this country with the full assent of the Liberal Party. It was strange that there should be men who called themselves Liberals who absolutely went with the Tories in regard to this Bill. The noble Marquess the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington) had not yet spoken in this debate; but he would probably condemn in silence that to which he gave the support of his vote. In a speech delivered outside the House, however, the noble Marquess had laid down what he thought was a fair proposition, that those who declined the proposals of the late Government with regard to Ireland were bound to find some mode by which Ireland would really be governed by the British Government. The noble Marquess was surprised "at any attempt being made to throw on the Unionists the responsibility for coercion." the attempt was made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. The noble Marquess denied the responsibility, and, having done so, he went on to ask what would be their responsibility if the Bill were rejected. Consequently, if the Bill were passed by his vote, there was no responsibility; but if the Bill were thrown out by the noble Marquess, then there would be responsibility. Surely this was a distinction without a difference. He looked back a little in the speech to see what was the meaning of it and he found it. The noble Marquess said— "We hold the balance of power in the House of Commons;" and then his argument came to this—that as Mr. Parnell's Amendment was a vote of Want of Confidence in the Government they were forced to vote against it. If they voted for coercion they were not responsible; but they were responsible because they made them vote for coercion because they voted for Home Rule. They had the effrontery to vote in favour of want of confidence. The noble Marquess seemed to think this a sort of crime. Well, they did not 103 recognize that the Conservatives should be in Office, and the noble Marquess could not shake off any responsibility for his vote. If the noble Marquess voted for coercion he must take the responsibility for it. He turned next to the right lion. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Joseph Chamberlain), and what was his argument? That right hon. Gentleman adopted another line of argument. He seemed to think that if they had coercion they must have remedial measures, and if they had remedial measures they must have coercion. The radical Party did not accept that. They held that if the remedial measures were sound coercion would be unnecessary. It appeared from the organs in the Press of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham, that he gave a reluctant consent to the Coercion Acts when he was a Member of the Gladstone Government. Quite the reverse. He told them the other night that he voted for two Coercion Bills, and that he was perfectly ready to have voted for a third. Finding that he could not sell his goods to the Liberals, he went over to the Tories, and bargained with them to support coercion if they would take up with his remedial ideas. What the right hon. Member for "West Birmingham wanted was to be legislator for Ireland. He did not care about coercion one way or the other so that his miserable vanity was satisfied. He would be content if he could only say that he had had a finger in the Tory pie. As to the Whigs, he need not say much about them. But let any Radical distinctly understand that if he did vote in favour of this Bill the Radicals would never forgive him. Hon. Gentlemen opposite would, of course, receive such a Radical with open arms. But he would be a Radical no longer. The door of repentance had been open long enough. It was time that it should be understood that it was closed in the face of every Radical who on this occasion voted with a Conservative Government. He had not the slightest doubt that this Bill would pass; but by what sort of a majority? It would not pass by the votes of hon. Gentlemen opposite. What did Sir Robert Pool say about this sort of majority? He said, speaking on the first reading of the Coercion Bill in 1846— 104 A Government ought to have a natural support. A Conservative Government should be supported by Conservative votes, Support from the compassion of its enemies, or even from the personal friendly feelings of those who ought on public principles to oppose a Government, is a hollow and not a creditable support. That was the kind of support on which hon. Gentlemen opposite relied for carrying this Bill. Relying on this support, they were confident of carrying it. The Liberal Party would resist this Bill to the last. His opinion was that coercion ought to be carried by coercion. It was the duty of Liberals at every stage of this Bill to contest its provisions. He knew perfectly well that the people were with them. The reaction had already commenced. He believed this was the very last effort of class against class. It was a struggle of the poor against the rich. It was a struggle between plutocrats and landlord Party on the one 3ide, and the men who occupied the land, and who asked for a fair share of the fruits of the soil, on the other. It was a struggle between the system of government for the people, and by the people, and the system of government based upon the coercion of the people. The English democrats would stand by the democrats of Ireland, and would fight shoulder to shoulder with them, for they know that if this Bill were allowed full scope it would be their turn next. They knew, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian had said, that the ebbing tide is with you, and the flowing tide is with us." For his part, though he regretted and deplored this Bill, he had, at least, this consolation— that if it were passed and administered in Ireland, it would advanced to see than anything in recent year [...] cause of Home Rule.
§ MR. G. W. BALFOUR (Leeds, Central)
said, the hon. Gentleman the senior Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) began his speech by saying the onus probandi in support of a Coercion Bill lay with the Government, and that that was all the more the case because the presumption was against the success of any Coercion Bill. He (Mr. G. W. Balfour) ventured to dispute that proposition. He thought, on the contrary, the many Coercion Bills passed during the present century, and also before the present century, had succeeded 105 in their object. They had enabled the Government, at the time, to preserve law and order which did not exist when those Bills were passed. They wore necessary, and they did their work, and no Coercion Bill more than Lord Spencer's Act. He would admit, however, that that Act had one great fault which the present Bill had not. The Act of 1882 was limited in time, whereas the pro-visions of the present Bill, if passed, would remain in force until repealed. The hon. Member for Northampton went on to use the argument which they had heard most frequently from Benches opposite—that there was no Parliamentary case to be drawn from statistics in favour of the Bill. That argument had been used often in the House, and was certain to be used again and again in the country; and he (Mr. G. W. Balfour) thought it was necessary that they should insist on the answer to it, with as much persistence as hon. Gentlemen opposite showed in putting it forward. The Conservatives held there was a complete answer to that argument. The crime with which the Government had a difficulty in dealing was principally agrarian; and it was agrarian crime that formed the sanction of the unwritten law of the National League. Boycotting and outrages were the punishments of the National League—the means by which that League enforced its decrees. When punishment was rare, it might be because the law was supreme, or because the law was powerless; and if agrarian crime was comparatively rare in Ireland now, it only proved that the law of the National League was supreme, while at the same time the impunity of crime in Ireland proved that the Government were powerless. They must not only look at rarity of crime, but also at the impunity of crime; and if they took those two things together, he believed the Government had an amply sufficient case for introducing the Bill, and the House and the country for supporting it. He did not deny, in a certain sense, that, as the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Labouchere) had said, the National League had been endeavouring to suppress crime; for he believed that it had been making efforts to suppress the grosser kinds of crime. But why was that? He presumed that not even the National League desired to see crime in Ireland for the sake of crime. The 106 grosser kinds of crime were now useless and, indeed, prejudicial to them, and that was the reason why those crimes were comparatively few in number. The action of the League in this matter had received the approval of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, who acknowledged that it was owing to the alliance between the League and the Liberal Party that crimes were not more numerous. He (Mr. G. W. Balfour) would not deny the truth of that statement; but he confessed that it did not give him any satisfaction. It reminded him too much of that ill-omened transaction which went by the name of "the Kilmainham Treaty," and of the promise of Captain O'Shea to the late Mr. Forster, that the conspiracy which had been used to get up crime and outrages would be used to put them down. It would be a different matter if this alliance was likely to lead to any change in the character of the Nationalist Party, but he saw no such prospect. The National League, as the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson) had said, still held the throttle valves of crime, and the moment it became once more expedient to use crime, he (Mr. G. W. Balfour) was persuaded that the League would not hold its hand. This alliance could only, then, result in the further demoralization of the country, and increase the difficulties of governing it. The National League had a difficult part to play; but it had played it skilfully and well. On the one hand, it was necessary that they should not strain their relations too far with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian; and it was requisite, therefore, that the methods which formed the sanction of their unwritten law should not be too open and pronounced. On the other hand, there was also the object to be accomplished of making the government of Ireland impossible. He was bound to admit that in the pursuit of this double purpose they had exhibited considerable skill. The extract read by the noble Lord the First Lord of the Admiralty (Lord George Hamilton) from a speech of the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. J. E. Redmond) was so suggestive that he would make no apology for using it again. That hon. Member, speaking on December 11th, said— Home Rule was defeated at the last Election in Great Britain, and I say advisedly that if in 107 the face of that defeat the Tories had been able to rule Ireland with the ordinary law, the result would have been in England and Scotland to throw back our cause perhaps for a generation, and to give the lie direct to the prophecy of Mr. Gladstone. We have achieved a victory without breaking any law or committing any single outrage. Now at a time when outrages are fewer in Ireland than during the last live years, according to the admission of the Government itself, we have been able to force the Government to give up the ordinary law and to have recourse again to coercion. That extract was full of significance. It revealed the whole secret of the policy of the National League. In his (Mr. G. W. Balfour's) opinion, the remark that the League had— Achieved a victory without breaking any law, or committing any single outrage, did not reduce the significance of the extract. No doubt the hon. Gentleman's view of the crime might differ from his, and the hon. Gentleman might consider the Plan of Campaign legal and Boycotting no crime. What he wished to point out was that the comparative absence of crime, so far as it could be ascribed to the National League, was not the result of a recognition by its members that crime was an unjustifiable way of obtaining their political ends, but simply, and solely, because they had thought it necessary to suppress outrages for the moment in order to maintain the alliance with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian and his Party. He thought that the right hon. Gentleman, in lending himself to this policy, had given the Government cause of complaint. The right hon. Gentleman was perfectly within his rights in opposing the Bill, but not in obstructing it by all means in his power. The right hon. Gentleman, at the last Election, said the issue was between coercion and Home Rule. The Conservatives did not accept that as a true statement of the alternative; because they did not think that coercion, pure and simple, at all represented their policy. But having himself stated that coercion was the only alternative to his policy, the right hon. Gentleman had no right to introduce every obstacle, and in to use every means— even the most questionable—to prevent the Government carrying out that policy. Four days were spent last week in what was practically a preliminary first reading debate, and now four days more had been spent on the first reading. Last week the discussion turned principally on 108 the question of rents. Now it had taken a wider range; but, in every case, the conclusion which Members of the Opposition came to was, that coercion was not the right remedy for Ireland at all, and that they ought to try remedial measures. Had remedial measures which had been passed during the last seven years been so successful that they could depend absolutely and exclusively upon them now? They must acknowledge that the right hon. Gentleman's remedial measures had not produced the results expected of them. The Act of 1881 like that of 1870 was heralded with the promise of a Millennium to follow. The Millennium had never followed, and why? The right hon. Gentleman had told them that they were attacking the symptoms and not the causes of Irish discontent. If that had been said about the Coercion Acts passed before 1870, he (Mr. G. W. Balfour) thought there would have been a great deal of truth in it. Those Acts succeeded as far as they went; but they certainly did not go in the way to the root of the evil. But, within the last 10 years a very great change had come over the whole Irish Question, and he did not think that it could be said of the Act of 1882, or of the present Crimes Bill, that they were not directed against causes as well as against symptoms. The change in the Irish Question was this—that, for the first time in the history of the Home Rule agitation—for the first time since the Union—the Nationalist Party had linked itself with the claims of the peasantry. Those claims, up to a certain point, were just; but it was not merely the just claims which the National League depended upon to obtain their political ends. They appealed to the unjust greed and cupidity of the peasantry. Very well. How did the right hon. Gentleman opposite propose, in 1882, to deal with that state of things? The right hon. Gentleman dealt with that not merely by remedial measures, but also by a measure of coercion, which sought to destroy the organization which was making satisfactory working of the remedial measures impossible. Unfortunately, two great mistakes were committed. In the first place, the solution of the Land Question proposed and carried out in 1881 had not been a satisfactory one, or one which could be a final settlement of the question. Consequently that 109 measure must now be supplemented by another dealing more radically and more satisfactorily with the Land Question. The second mistake was one which he would allow was committed by the Conservative Government, in ever allowing the Grimes Act to lapse. If that Act could have been maintained they would not now have been in their present difficulties, or have had to come to Parliament to ask for further powers. The duty of the Government was to adopt the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian in 1882—namely, to accompany remedial measures with a measure for the restoration of law and order. The National League intended to make government in Ireland impossible, if it could; it was, therefore, really a duel to the death between law on the one hand, and the National League on the other. Everything was hazarded upon that throw. He believed that in the struggle upon which they were now entering, law would be victorious; and that nothing would be left to the official Opposition, except the shame of having allowed themselves to be the accomplices in the attempt of the National League to secure Home Rule at the price of the demoralization of the whole Irish people. What was called the wild justice of revenge was bad enough. But what happened when it ceased to be wild? When it was put under the management of a political association, it became an organized and systematic tyranny. It was impossible to confine a movement of this kind to the relations between landlord and tenant, or between tenant and tenant. It would spread to every relation of life. The present movement was already doing so. It was interfering, not merely between landlord and tenant, but between creditor and debtor, to the repudiation of all debts; and it had been pressed into the service of envy, malice, and all the basest passions of mankind. It was easy enough to call up the spirit of disorder; but it was not so easy to allay it, and we should not be able to check the growth of the spirit, except by some measure such as that which the Government were seeking to introduce. Unless there was some external pressure of the kind, the movement would spread until it loosened all the ties which hind society together which go to make up what is called civilization. He sincerely trusted 110 that, notwithstanding all the obstacles and difficulties which were threatened to be interposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, the Government would persevere with the Bill. The state of Ireland demanded that they should persevere, and public opinion demanded it also, and he trusted they would press forward their measure with all the expedition the Forms of the House enabled them to command.
§ MR. WAYMAN (York, W.K., Elland)
said, he should not be satisfied to give a silent vote in opposition to this Bill, and he knew that the electors of the Elland Division of Yorkshire, who had sent him there, would desire that he should state to the House how hateful a thing this measure was in their eyes. He had listened, with very great attention, to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) on Monday night, and he must say that he was greatly surprised at the feebleness and flimsiness of the reasons which the right hon. Gentleman urged far applying a code of such tremendous severity to the people of Ireland. He regarded the Bill as a measure which, if passed, would be an outrage on Ireland, and an insult to the people of England. It might, perhaps, have the effect of driving into holes and corners certain agitators who had made themselves inconveniently troublesome to the authorities; but it would not prevent them making secret channels of their own, through which they might exercise their influence, which would probably be ton times more dangerous to society and law and order than it was now. He did not assert that the situation in Ireland was as satisfactory as they would like it to be; but they had seen a far worse state of things there than now existed, and his own impression was that it would have been a very great deal better to-day than it was, but for the un wisdom of the Government last autumn in refusing to have anything whatever to do with the Tenants' Relief Bill of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell). That hon. Gentleman, evidently having an accurate knowledge of the facts with regard to Ireland, came to the House with a correct description of the situation in that country, and proposed a remedy for the condition of things then prevailing which, if it had 111 been applied, would have prevented the necessity for any application at that moment for such a measure as was before the House. It seemed that an opinion had prevailed in the House that Ireland should not be ruled according to her own ideas, but must be governed according to English ideas; and, therefore, when the hon. Member for Cork submitted his Bill, they said—"We will have nothing whatever to do with it. We do not believe in your description of the state of the country, and we do not believe in your remedy." Indeed, the Government and their supporters said, that so far from the description being correct, there was a great deal more money being spent in whisky and more money in the Savings Banks than there had been before. They therefore concluded that Ireland was in a tolerably good condition; and he heard some hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side talk as if a new era had dawned upon Ireland, and that it was entering upon a career of agricultural prosperity which would put everything right in a short time. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. Gibson) stated, among other things, that the recent prices of wool had risen 60 per cent. He (Mr. Wayman) had himself been engaged in the wool trade all his life, and he ought to know something about it, and he was very much surprised at the statement, which would not have been made by the hon. and learned Gentleman if he had known anything of what he was talking about. The fact was that English and Irish wool had not risen more than 20 per cent, and to the knowledge of the trade, that increase had no element of permanence in it, as it resulted rather from speculation than from any increased demand. The price had since gone back, and was not now more than 10 per cent in addition to the lowest ruling price during the worst period of depression through which we had recently passed. That showed what erroneous opinions prevailed in regard to Ireland; and he was convinced that it would have been infinitely better if the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork had been acted upon. If it had been adopted, there would have been no need for the "Plan of Campaign." He believed that the Bill was directed more against the Plan of Campaign than anything else, and he agreed with the hon. Member for North- 112 ampton (Mr. Labouchere) in thinking that, so far from deserving all the reprobation which bad been poured upon it, that Plan had done a very great deal of good in Ireland. He did not say it was legal and ought to be defended; but it had been absolutely necessary, and, but for it, there would have been worse difficulties in Ireland than at present existed. If the Bill passed, he thought that it would not be very long before the Government now in power found out the great mistake it had made. He could only say that he hoped that it would be opposed at every step of its progress, and in every way that the Forms of the House would permit.
§ MR. W. REDMOND (Fermanagh, N.)
said, he felt it was highly necessary, on behalf of the constituency which he represented, which was one of those Northern constituencies said to be loyal to Castle rule, to express the absolute repugnance with which the people of the North of Ireland regard the Coercion Bill of the Government. It appeared to him that the principal thing the Bill, if passed, would do in Ireland, was to revive the old and hateful contests and struggles between Protestants and Catholics in the North. In the constituency he represented there were 86 magistrates; and of these, 82 were Protestant gentlemen, representing, to a great extent, the Orange Institution, and carrying out, whenever they had the opportunity, the behests and wishes of the Institution. Yet it was proposed by this Bill to place in the hands of Resident Magistrates in the North of Ireland the power of sending a man to prison for six months. But it was well known that, with a few exceptions, Resident Magistrates in the North of Ireland made use of their authority in a very unfair manner towards the Catholics. It was almost a humiliation for an Irish Member to come there, and have to stand up in defence of the liberties of his country. ["Oh, oh!"] He did not wish to say anything offensive of hon. Members of the House. He did not wish to deny the right of hon. Members opposite to act on their convictions; but what was maddening to an Irish Member was to have to listen, day after day, to the gross ignorance of the affairs of Ireland shown by Gentlemen who had the power of legislating for Ireland. Gentlemen derived their knowledge of 113 the country from the columns of The Times, The Observer, or some Tory paper which was engaged in raking up every petty outrage which occurred throughout the country as evidence of the necessity for repressive measures, and which had been proved, over and over again, to have lied, while they ignored the information given by the 85 Members from Ireland, What did the Chief Secretary for Ireland know about Ireland? He went to Ireland absolutely without any knowledge of the country, and he spoke of Ireland now absolutely without information. What would Englishmen say if the case were reversed, and Irishmen, without any knowledge of England, came to govern this country? It appeared that we were to have remedial legislation after the Coercion Bill was passed. In 1881, the Liberal Government entered upon a course which proved disastrous, and the present Government were entering upon the same course. In 1881, Mr. Forster made a Coercion Act precede the Land Act. He threw priests and 1,000 of the leaders of the people into gaol, and drove the people themselves to the verge of madness, and almost into a state of rebellion. Could they be surprised, therefore, that the Irish people did not receive the Land Act of 1881 in a cheerful and grateful spirit? In the same way, the land proposals which had that evening been introduced into the House of Lords would also fail. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had been unable to make out a case for coercion by statistics of crime, simply because there had been no year since the Union in which crime had been less in amount and less serious in character in Ireland than in the past year. It had been said, however, that that hateful measure had been introduced to put down Boycotting in Ireland, and not because of the extent of crime. His (Mr. Redmond's) reply to that was, that that or any other Government would find it impossible to put down Boycotting by Act of Parliament, so long as the landlords were permitted to worry and fleece the people as they were now doing. The people of Ireland had learnt the system of Boycotting so thoroughly that it was unnecessary to incite them to it, and the only way of putting it down was to remove the cause by taking from the landlords the power they now had of evicting people for the non-payment of rents, 114 which even the evidence given before the Cowper Commission proved to be unjust and unfair. They had been told that the people of Ireland were terrorized into joining the National League. He never heard such a silly statement. The law of the League was the law of the land only and entirely because it was freely and voluntarily supported by every section and class of the people throughout the country. The Government well knew that the people of all classes and all conditions and all religions in Ireland had united in joining the National League. It was, therefore, a very poor assertion for the Government to make without proof, and it would be a long time before the Government could make good that assertion by proof. In the whole of Ireland there could not be found half-a-dozen men outside the landlord classes, who always hungered for their rants, who would stand up and attempt to expose what they (the Government) called the terror of the National League in Ireland. There was only one terror to the people of Ireland, and that was the British Government; and the terror which the National League was said to hold over the people would continue in Ireland as long as that House and the Government of that House attempted to rule the Irish people contrary to their wishes and opinions. Sir Redvers Buller had destroyed the assertion of the Government by declaring that the Land League had been the salvation of the people. The terrorism which existed in Ireland was that exercised by the landlords, who had the power to evict and grind the people down. There was no terrorism, except that exercised in those parts of Ireland where the authorities of Castle rule might with impunity trample on the people as they did before the National League came to save the South and West. This Coercion Bill was not directed against crime—there was no crime in Ireland—but it was directed against a political Party whose demand for Home Rule was too strong to be resisted by Constitutional means. As to the allegation that the jury system had broken down in Ireland, he (Mr. Redmond) emphatically denied that juries had failed to convict in cases of ordinary crime; and, on this ground also, the Chief Secretary for Ireland had failed to make out a case for the Bill. He chal- 115 lenged the right hon. Gentleman to lay on the Table of the House four cases where juries in Ireland had refused to convict in ordinary cases where the evidence was clear. There was not a place in the world where the murderer, the thief, or the common malefactor would be more speedily brought to justice than in Ireland. In those cases where no conviction had been obtained, there had been something between the landlord and the tenant to show to the minds of those peasant jurymen that they were not trying a man who was sinning alone for the sake of sin, but they were trying a man who, rightly or wrongly, had been endeavouring to stand by the people against the harsh exactions of the evictor and exterminator in Ireland. If the Government put an end to that state of things by bringing in a comprehensive measure that would recognize the rights of the tenants in the soil, give them fair justice, and offer them land at a fair price, it would, he believed, be found that Boycotting and the failure of the jury system would come to an end; but if, instead of getting a measure of that kind, the Government persisted in passing the Bill before the House, he believed, though he did not wish to see it, that crime would occur in Ireland, that outrage would redouble there. The Irish Members had been accused of being outrage mongers; but he would only repeat what he had so often stated before, that they deplored crime and outrage. But still more than crime and outrage did they deplore and condemn the cause of crime and outrage; and he believed, in his heart, if the Coercion Bill was passed, if trial by jury was abolished in Ireland, and men dragged to trial before Englishmen who knew nothing of the circumstances of the case, but would take the word of the base informer—if they did that he believed, as he had said, that crime would occur in Ireland, outrages would double in Ireland, and, moreover, he believed that when crimes did occur and when outrages redoubled, the Government would be satisfied, for he considered that that was what they wanted the Irish people to do. There was not the slightest justification for the measure. He believed it was intended to goad the people on to crime and outrage in Ireland, so that the Tory Party, who saw the cause of Home 116 Rule was advancing in rapid strides, might retain their positions and salaries. The Government saw that the English people were sympathetic with the Irish people, and they were endeavouring to rouse the prejudices of the former nation, so that the immaculate Members of the Ministry might continue to act on the Front Bench. The hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), when he became Leader of the agitation for Home Rule, found the people despairing of obtaining anything for Ireland in that House; but he weaned them from other methods which he knew would not be successful —he taught them once more to look to Parliament for the restitution of Ireland's rights, and the whole crop which the hon. Member for Cork had sown in Ireland of peace, of goodwill, of calmness, and patience, had borne fruit in the existence of the Party of which he (Mr. Redmond) was a Member, composed of Constitutionally-elected Representatives of the Irish people. If the Bill was passed and was followed by bloodshed in Ireland, history would record that the guilt and shame lay, not on the brows of the Representatives of the people, who resisted it, but on the brows of the present rulers of Ireland —rulers of two or three weeks, who had just come from Universities, and thought they could rule Ireland, of which they knew nothing whatever— those Gentlemen who carried a Bill the only effect of which could be to keep open the old sores between England and Ireland. Coercion Bills had invariably caused crime, as had been strikingly shown at the time of the imprisonment of the hon. Member for Cork. But, in fact, there was little crime in Ireland at the present time, and it was pretended that this Bill was justified on the ground that it would prevent crime. But, as Lord Macaulay had said, to punish a man because you inferred from the nature of some of his doctrines, or the conduct of his associates, that he was going to commit some offence was persecution, and in every case wicked and foolish. The Government might for a time succeed in stifling the voice of the Irish people—they might succeed in driving discontent under the surface; but they would find the Irish people in the future, as they had found them in the past, firm and determined in their desire never to relinquish their National 117 birthright, undaunted by the struggles and exertions they had passed through, and determined to carry on the war, as their fathers had carried it on before them, until it was out of the power of any English fop in the guise of a British Minister to trample on the rights of their country.
§ MR. KING (Hull, Central)
I do not intend, Sir, to take up the time of the House with a speech; but it is necessary that I should ask the indulgence of hon. Members while I explain the vote I am about to give. I, Sir, was one of those, like the Liberal Unionists to whom the noble Lord the Member for the Rossendale Division of Lancashire referred in his speech of Wednesday, who had hoped and believed, too sanguinely it seems, that the era of Coercion Bills for Ireland had passed. In 1885 things had assumed a rosy hue. The ghastly pallor of the Gladstone-Spencer régime had given way to the blushing sentiment of a Carnarvon wooing, smiled on by the hon. Member for Cork and the Archbishop of Ireland. At that time we were encouraged by our Leaders to believe that a new era had dawned; that there was to be conciliation on one side and abstention from crime and disorder on the other. The noble Lord the Member for South Paddington described the situation on the 20th November, 1885, in. these words— We undertook to govern Ireland without those abridgements of the liberty which Mr. Gladstone had found necessary. Up to the present time the experiment has been found strikingly successful. Well, Sir, in common I believe with many hon. Members who sit on this side, I not only felt a natural repugnance to what is commonly called coercion, but I hoped that the call for any exceptional legislation had passed; and I formed a firm resolution that I could not, and would not, be a party to the revival of those terribly energetic measures which Lord Spencer was sent over to Ireland by the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone)—the present distinguished Leader of the Home Rule Party—to carry out. Those measures might indeed be called "coercion." They were, Sir, described by the hon. Member for Cork in these terms— Under this system juries were packed with a shamelessness unprecedented even in Liberal Administrations. Twelve hundred men were 118 imprisoned without trial. Ladies were convicted under an obsolete Act; and, for a period, every utterance of the popular Press and of the popular meeting was as completely suppressed as it Ireland were Poland. Well, Sir, that is a description by an expert of Liberal coercion; and, believing as we did, that those severe measures, to which the present proposals are milk and water, ought not to be applied to a country which, it was admitted and is admitted on this side by Lord Salisbury himself, is suffering from grievances which he says demand large and far-reaching remedies; believing that we made declarations for our decided repugnance to legislation of that extreme character. At the same time, Sir, I, for one, and I believe others, who that way warned the Irish people that they ought, in continuing to agitate for a redress of grievances, to keep strictly within the bounds of legality—I say, Sir, it was not to be supposed for a moment that by such declarations as he made we ever intended to give a free hand, or pledge ourselves to grant unlimited scope to crime, to disorder, to defiance of the law, and to conspiracy against the Constitutional unity of these Realms. If there were pledges, it could not be supposed that they wore all on one side. To have said that if crime and disloyalty broke out in Ireland they were not to be put down by all the resources of civilization would have been so absurd that any man who committed himself to such a proposition would have been rejected by the common sense of any community. Therefore, Sir, in view of the very grave circumstances which have arisen since those declarations were made, I confess I do not see the aptness of the vindictive, the viperish remark which fell from the right hon. Member for Newcastle in his veiled speech last night. Referring to some Conservative Members, the right hon. Gentleman said— Some of their own Party, even in this Parliament—and I am going to remind them of this when the time comes—have said that there ought to he no increased stringency of criminal procedure in Ireland, unless it is also extended to England. It is absolutely out of the question; and therefore, of those Gentlemen who won their election in London and elsewhere on the ground that they wore going to deal with Ireland exactly as they would deal with England, their constituents will have a right—and a right I think 119 they will exercise—to call upon them when the time come to give an account of their want of fidelity to the pledges that won them the elections. I will not, Sir, make any reflection on the exquisite absurdity of the charges of inconsistency or tergiversation addressed to this side of the House from the Front Opposition Bench; but I will simply recall those new facts which have happened since such declarations were made by hon. Members which put a wholly different complexion on the situation, and which, Sir, I venture here to say, boldly, amply, and completely justify the hon. Member in re-considering his position at the present time. Well, Sir, at the time those declarations were made what was the situation? The agitation for Home Rule had not assumed any serious or dangerous aspect. No responsible statesman in this country committed himself openly to a Separatist policy, though it now appears that it had been germinating in the brain of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian for many years. Yes, sir, it was locked up in that brain by his own confession whilst he was applying those very measures described by the hon. Member for Cork in such indignant terms. But, now, Sir, it is all altered. Those Benches opposite are filled, as they ought to be, with Members of the Separatist Party led by English Leaders, and the country has been roused up to defend the unity of the Three Kingdoms. The agitation in Ireland has ceased to be an agitation for the mere redress of grievances— grievances which I admit ought to be remedied, and must be remedied, as Lord Salisbury has said, by '' far-reaching" and by generous legislation. I can only say if they are not—if a prompt and generous attempt is not made to redress those grievances, the Government may expect that a number of hon. Members on this side will refuse to support them. Well, Sir, I say the agitation has ceased to be a mere agitation for the redress of grievances, and has become a movement which gravely imperils the authority of the Government and the stability of the Realm. And not only that, Sir, but doctrines have been preached from the Front Opposition Bench which strike at the fundamental principles of social and political order. The right hon. Gentlemen have justified resistance to and defiance of laws 120 passed by the House, a free Representative Assembly, on the ground that the laws are unjust. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby, said— If it be a law which is just, it is the duty of civilized society to enforce that law; but if it be a law which works injustice, —and by the way, Sir, the income tax works injustice every day— it is not the first duty of civilized society to enforce that law. Well, Sir, who is to decide whether the laws are just or unjust, the people who make the law or the people who break the law? I remember the right hon. Gentleman said that it was the duty of civilized society to alter all that. I entirely concur that it is the duty of civilized society to alter it; but as I said, who is to decide what law is just and what law is unjust? Is it the men who make the laws or the men who break them? It is the utterance of such subversive doctrines as that from the Leaders of a powerful Party and their support of a Separatist policy constitute a situation of such gravity that hon. Members on this side have no alternative but to rally to the support of the Government which is engaged in maintaining the law, the Constitution, and the "Union. Those are the reasons, Sir, by which I, for one, find myself driven with a reluctance—I might say a repugnance which words cannot qualify—to vote for the first reading of this Bill. But, Sir, I must add that I await with some anxiety the Bill itself. I voted for "Urgency" because the Government demanded it, on its responsibility. I shall vote for the first reading of the Bill; but I reserve to myself absolute freedom of action in regard to its details, and especially with regard to that provision which has been sketched out for bringing Irish prisoners over to England for trial at the Old Bailey. Let me add one word more. There can be no doubt that it is with a sickening of heart that many hon. Members will yield to the absolute necessity of vindicating the outraged law and defending a menaced Union; but I say this much, that the power we are about to commit to the hands of the Government we trust them to see is not abused for the purpose of promoting the interests of a class or a religion in Ireland. It is our duty, in granting these powers to the 121 Government, to warn them of the responsibility they incur in asking for them and assuming them. That duty is to bring forward those large and far-reaching measures to which Lord Salisbury referred. I feel convinced, Sir, that the majority of the people of this country will not consent that the extraordinary powers conferred by this Bill should be employed to enforce cruel or inequitable provisions of the law on behalf of landlords. I felt, Sir, that I could not vote for this Bill without offering an explanation, and I thank the House for its kindness in permitting me to make it.
§ MR. BOWEN ROWLANDS (Cardiganshire)
I desire to do more than give a silent vote upon this the first reading of what I venture to hope is the last Bill of the kind which will ever be introduced by a responsible Government into the House of Commons. In my opinion, there is no necessity for the measure. I listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) in introducing the Bill, and I found that for the most part it is clothed in the cast-off garments of its defunct predecessors, with only here and there the sewing on of a few shreds and patches which can be called new. One of these is the provision that it shall be permanent, A good deal may unquestionably be said as to that. But there seems to be a considerable deference of opinion in regard to the value of that provision amongst hon. Gentlemen who have spoken in favour of the measure. Some attribute the failure of the Act of 1881 to the fact that it was only a temporary Act, while others have said that it was a success, and that it was so because it was only a temporary measure directed to the removal of evils which were in themselves temporary. I am not desirous of saying which is the better argument of the two, and I leave hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite to settle their differences among themselves. I protest against the Bill as being unjustifiable in itself and likely to embitter still further relations which are unhappily bitter enough already between the people of Ireland and of this country. There is another of the provisions of the Bill which, but for its sadness, would be almost ludicrous. That is the change of 122 venue to England. If this is frequently resorted to I suppose we shall find that nearly every steamer that sails from Kingstown to Holyhead is to carry a cargo of Irish prisoners, lawyers, and witnesses, to try their fortune at the Old Bailey. That is the most novel method of establishing a complete union between two parts of the United Kingdom that could possibly be conceived. I wonder whether if English juries were to act as they did in 1794, it will be proposed to send English prisoners to Ireland for trial. There is a complete novelty in this provision of the Bill. It must have struck everyone that there has been a lordly contempt for and disregard of all statistics on the part of the Government. They have expressly disclaimed any intention of relying on that part of the case. An excellent authority, no less than the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Goschen), has told us that there is nothing more deceiving than figures, and therefore the Government propose to leave them out of their calculation. But when it suited their purpose they wore prepared to give statistics in aid of the Bill they desire to introduce. Not only do they disregard statistics, but they disregard the Reports of the Royal Commissions also. Although gentlemen were sent over to Ireland under their own auspices to inquire into and report upon the condition of Ireland, the Report presented to them by those gentlemen has been altogether passed by. The Bill, in fact, is based upon the sic volo, sic jubeo of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen who make up or support the Government. Not only are statistics and the Reports of Commissions left out in the cold, but entire districts in Ireland are left out also. If there is one district in which more than another the law has been set at defiance it is Belfast, but Her Majesty's Ministers appear to look upon that city as the most peaceful district in Ireland, and allow the Orangemen to continue to "rule the roast." The material upon which the Government base their Bill is the charges of the Irish Judges. As a member of the same profession I have no desire to treat those learned Judges with the slightest disrespect, but I pay the utmost deference to them when they speak within the limits of their own legitimate authority. But as has been 123 stated forcibly in the speech of an hon. Member on this side of the House, the learned Judges derive no authority from their offices outside the scope of the subjects they have to deal with officially. I confess, therefore, that I am myself unable to attach any particular importance to words which may fall from learned Judges when they are acting upon what I consider prejudiced information, and reasoning from data which hon. Members have not before them, and upon which they are therefore unable to pronounce a judgment for themselves. And what do these Judges say? The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary read to us extracts from the charges delivered by several of them. But Mr. Justice Murphy stated that in his district the number of cases was very small. Is that one of the districts in which the statistics of crime have no weight with hon. Gentlemen opposite? At Limerick Mr. Justice Johnson said that crime has increased, and it will be found that in that case the increase of crime was taken and insisted upon, if not directly, at any rate indirectly, as a justification for the introduction of this measure. Mr. Justice O'Brien says that crime is frequent in the County of Kerry. Accordingly, the charge of that learned Judge is insisted upon as an argument in favour of the Bill, and the Government say—"Look at this bloodstained district. Surely repressive legislation is necessary here." Where there is an absence of crime, they disregard statistics altogether; and attribute such absence to some mysterious evil influence of the National League; they speak of the terror which that action produces upon the minds of the people, and say that it induces them to adopt some subtle modes of thought which this Bill, in some inexplicable manner, is intended to counteract. The learned Judge who charged the Grand Jury at Cork said that the cases of crime were few and comparatively unimportant. Tipperary where the charge was favourable has never even been mentioned. Therefore, as far as the quantity of crime is concerned, the testimony of the Judges as a whole appears to me to be a powerful argument against the introduction of the Bill. Then we are told that the influence of the National League induces men to do things which some people describe as immoral; surely, that is altogether an 124 insufficient reason for increasing the stringency of the Criminal Law in Ireland, for I am afraid there are many immoral acts committed in other parts of Her Majesty's Dominions. But it is said that the juries will not convict on the clearest evidence, and that it is very difficult to get witnesses to come forward. There seems to be some confusion here, because no explanation has been offered as to whence that clear evidence of the existence of crime spoken of by the Judges has been obtained if witnesses are so intimidated as to be afraid to give evidence. It is also said that juries are prejudiced. Juries have been prejudiced before, and in cases of political trials apart altogether from crime, the prejudices of juries have been testified to by writers on Constitutional Law as having been of the greatest possible use in procuring an alteration of the law. I am speaking of political offences and not of crime; and a great writer upon the study of history—Mr. Buckle—tells us that for several years in the later part of the 18th century there was imminent danger to the Constitution from the attacks which were made upon it, which danger was only averted by the "bold spirit with which our English juries by their hostile verdicts resisted the proceedings of Government and refused to sanction laws which the Crown had proposed, and to which a timid and servile legislature had willingly consented." Of course the statement of Mr. Buckle refers only to political trials for offences such as conspiracy and political libels, and not to what are generally understood as crimes, from which it has been said that Ireland, as a nation, is singularly free. If, therefore, juries have been unwilling on testimony which was forthcoming to return verdicts which they ought to have returned, I ask whether this is not, in itself, a significant symptom that something is wrong in the law of which the jury system is a part, and which is to be taken in conjunction with the nature of the crime and the general political condition of the country. Then we are told that the Bill deals solely with criminals, and that good, excellent, and righteous people have nothing to fear from it. On that point, let me remind the House, however, that a portion of the criminality affected by the Bill is the law of conspiracy, and the law of 125 conspiracy is a peculiarly dangerous part of the law to give any extension to, or to entrust to any but the highest and most responsible tribunals; because it often happens that the overt act relied upon is of an equivocal character—one which, in certain circumstances, would be innocent, while in others it would be guilty. It is to be determined by the intent of the doer, and very often the intent of the doer is proved by the overt act itself. Consequently, as the law of conspiracy is likely to be fraught with danger to the citizens of a free country, it becomes necessary to guard it with great jealousy, and no extension of it should be allowed to take place without every precaution against injustice being taken. When the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was making his speech the other evening, I ventured to interpose with a question as to whether any provision was to he introduced into the Bill to guard against the idea which seemed to have gained ground—rightly or wrongly— that in the constitution of juries on the part of the authorities there is some want of uniformity; and whether the jury panel would be struck in such a way as to prevent what is called jury-packing; such, for instance, as the nomination of a uniform number of jurymen on each panel; I do not know whether such a provision is to be introduced or not, but if the object of the Government is to create in the Irish people a spirit of confidence in the English Government, and in the administration and execution of the law, it would be well to take such ample precautions as would remove the possibility of any reasonable suspicion from the minds of the people affected by this legislation. The master of the situation, it is said, is the National League, which the House is told is associated with secret societies. Not a tittle of evidence has been given to bear out this assertion. The National League is an external association. It has its subscriptions, and is as open to the cognizance of hon. Gentlemen opposite as the Primrose League. I do not know whether it affects badges of innocence like the Primrose League. There certainly is not a tittle of evidence to show that it is a secret society. If, however, any measure is calculated to manufacture, and to bring the National League into connection with, secret societies, the present 126 Bill of the Government is exactly the kind of legislation which is likely to produce results so unhappy and disastrous in their consequences. The National League has certainly not been described in the most flattering terms. Its action is said to be innocent here but guilty there, which would seem to he inconsistent with the necessarily corrupt nature which has been attributed to it. The question I would like to ask is, how has the National League obtained its power? The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary said the League is the handiwork of hon. Members from Ireland. Certainly they know—if any men can know—the condition of Ireland. But who gave hon. Members their power? We have hoard a great deal about the mandate which the Conservative Members say they have received from the country. Have not hon. Members from Ireland got a mandate too? Have they manufactured both the constituencies and the mandate —otherwise whence comes their power? For aught I know, they rely upon no adventitious aid to place it in their power to coerce their fellow men. They are not possessed of titles, nor do I think they are much connected with Members in "another place." I do not know what their private resources may be; but I presume it is not because they are millionaires that they have been entrusted with this mandate. They have not the exclusive command of the Irish Constabulary, nor are they able to call into requisition the troops of Her Majesty to compel subjection to their will. Then, whence do they gain their power, except from the most legitimate source from which any Member of Parliament or any League can get its power—namely, the will of the people who believe they represent their sentiments, and are doing their best to redress their grievances. We have heard a great deal about the agitation which is going on in Ireland. I can understand men, for the sake of private ends, being able to go through a county, and for a while, by dwelling on unreal and fancied wrongs, to stir up angry passions, and to sow discord between man and his fellowman; but I challenge hon. Members opposite—many of whom are well versed in historical matters—to produce any historical parallel of a successful agitation which has gone on 127 for generation after generation, if it has not been based upon some real and solid grievances. But here is an agitation which has lived beyond a generation. Hon. Members from Ireland are the heirs and successors of men whose voices have been raised for generations in appeals to British Governments to govern their country in unison with their feelings, and in accordance with what they believe to be right. These men have gained strength as they have gone on, and they have done so because their appeals have been based to an unexampled extent on real grievances. Sometimes, under a particular leader, factitious agitators have, for a season, gained great power; but the flame thus lit has died out with the life of the man who fanned it into light; but here there has been a continual hereditary succession of complaints from the Representatives of the Irish nation. It is idle, therefore, to turn round and try to minimize these complaints by saying that the men who make them are agitators, and that their complaints are to be disregarded entirely on that account. I deprecate illegitimate agitation; but legitimate agitation is praise worthy. We have arrived at our present condition of freedom in this country by the agitation of our grievances and the demand for their removal. That being so, I rejoice that this dispute is approaching a conclusion, because I think the hour is rapidly approaching, and I believe hon. Members share in this feeling themselves, when the destinies of this country and of Ireland will not be entirely at the mercy of a Government who—however excellent they may be as individuals—are unable collectively to see any cure for the wounds of Ireland except by riveting anew the fetters which have proved so useless in the past; and are unwilling or unable to promote that less palpable but more real union between different portions of the same country, which is begotten of mutual confidence and goodwill.
§ MR. LAWSON (St. Pancras, W.)
said, he wished to explain to the House why he, in common with everyone who consistently represented Liberal opinion in the Metropolis, conceived to be his duty to oppose this Bill step by step and stage by stage. The hon. Member for Central Hull (Mr. King) had made a long and heart-rending apology for his vote, which he felt was being 128 made not to the House but to the hon. Member's constituents. Looking at the Conservative and the Liberal Unionists, he did not quite know what kind of hybrid the hon. Member was, but he prophesied that the hon. Member would be equally satisfied with the Bill introduced by the Government and the method of its execution. Most of the speeches delivered had consisted of choice quotations from other speeches, delivered under different circumstances and with different objects; but he hardly fancied that, if the charge of inconsistency which had been made were proved to demonstration, it would make much odds to the Liberal Members returned in 1885 who had been pledged to the hilt against coercion for Ireland. Whatever the policy of the Government in Ireland might be they had shown their hand very plainly in that House. In that House, at all events, the Bill was to be carried by the higher tactics of exasperation. The Leader of the House, who had a reputation for a sort of sublime common sense, had threatened Members of the House, like a pack of schoolboys, that unless they passed this Bill they would be deprived of their Easter holidays. For his part, he condemned that policy of exasperation, together with that threat, and thought the Government would be very lucky if they reached the later stages of the Bill some time before Whitsuntide. The Government wanted to draw a red herring across the scent of coercion which smelt slightly in the nostrils of the people. They wanted the people to believe that the Irish Members were obstructing. The greatest part of the time in that debate, however, had been taken up by Liberal Unionists in apologizing to their constituents, and explaining the extraordinary course of action they had thought fit to pursue. The hon. Member for Cork was about to move an Amendment to the Question before the House, and there were rumours about the application of the closure; but he would remind the House that when Lord John Russell moved this same Amendment in the form of a substantive Motion in 1844, the debate lasted nine nights. He thought the Irish Members would be very considerate if they occupied only a week in discussing a Motion of such importance as this. Further, he reminded the House that not 129 only the orthodox Liberals, but many of those who opposed the Home Rule proposals of the late Government, had strongly pronounced against a policy of coercion, and no Liberal Unionist made coercion a plank in his platform at the last Election. What became now of all their talk about equal justice to Ireland and similar laws—all the cant of Unionism, of which they heard so much, and of which a good deal was heard even at the time of the Union? He condemned the character of the present proposal, which differed from that of every former occasion, inasmuch as this poorest of makeshifts was now to have no fixed limit of time. Sir Robert Peel in 1846 described a like measure as a temporary precaution until certain remedial measures were passed; but now Parliament was asked to give to the Lord Lieutenant for all time the power of suspending the ordinary law of the land. He supposed this measure would soon be numbered with the fundamental laws of the Constitution, and he suggested that the phraseology of the 5th Article of the Act of Union should be adopted declaring that the Act should "remain in full force for ever." Professor Dicey, in his analysis of the Constitution, pointed out that the whole of our political fabric was built up on the basis of the ordinary law of the land; but now the Government proposed to make Ireland the one exception among all the Constitutionally-governed Provinces of the Empire. The permanency of the measure made it more menacing to the civil rights of the people of Ireland than any that had gone before, and those who represented that people would be guilty of a gross breach of duty if they did not oppose it to the utmost of their ability. Some Liberal Unionist Members appeared to be fascinated with the idea of its permanence, and made it a great charge against coercion in the past that it had only been a temporary remedy for a permanent disorder. Where a policy was likely to prove a true remedy it might be right to make it permanent; but, looking at the history of former measures of that kind, he must be a very bold and sanguine man who expected such coercive legislation to be anything but a disastrous failure in the future, or who said it had resulted in any other effect in the past. The hon. Member for 130 Mid Oxford shire the other night (old the House that he only supported that Bill in order to facilitate remedial legislation; but, he would ask, did the Peace Preservation Act make smooth the working of the Land Act of 1881? The hon. Member for Cirencester had spoken of the Union of England and Ireland being based on equal liberties and laws; but if a measure of that character were applied to England and Scotland, Liberal Members for rural constituencies—and particularly the Representatives of what was called the Crofter Party in that House—would run great risk of being sent to gaol for six months' hard labour. The Unionist Liberals had been complimented oil being the staff of the Party opposite. Truly this was a case of "Thy rod and thy staff comfort me," despite the fact that that rod had been turned into a very merciless rod for the backs of the Irish people. The provision under which accused persons in Ireland might be brought over to London for trial seemed to him to be a sort of ballast clause which was not seriously drafted, which the Chief Secretary for Ireland would be ready to throw overboard when he received orders to do so from the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale. Yet, after all, those who read the Report of the Commission on the Belfast riots might be inclined to think that a Mayo Catholic peasant would be better and more fairly treated by a jury of Metropolitan shopkeepers than by a jury picked, as Irish juries are picked, from the Protestant community of Belfast. Again, any man who read with an open mind the Blue Book produced by the Royal Commission, presided over by Lord Cowper, would admit that nearly every witness who was examined in order that he might say the worst of the National League found very little that was bad to say of it. One Resident Magistrate, Mr. Considine, said that the League decidedly set its face against outrage. Another said there was a great improvement in the district with which he had to deal. Mr. Uniacke Townsend, a large land agent, also stated that outrage had given way to quieter methods, and that there was far less intimidation than formerly; and one witness after another said that crime was decreasing in extent and intensity. What, then, was the justification for 131 that drastic Bill? The Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the Irish Land Question, and to investigate to the full the bearings of crime and outrage, resolutely abstained from recommending any special or repressive legislation. The case of the Government for coercion was made up of Judges' charges and anonymous anecdotes. The Judges' charges which the Chief Secretary had read to the House had all the same ring about them, and a resemblance to each other, and it appeared as though they had a common inspiration. It was a terrible thing that in Ireland every part of the civil and social administration was tainted with a political and party spirit; and certainly some of those judicial charges read by the Chief Secretary the other day were extraordinarily like the speeches of Parliamentary candidates delivered from the platforms of the Loyal and Patriotic Union. The Government could hardly be content to rest their whole case on a series of judicial perorations, or upon anonymous stories which could not possibly be verified. No lawyer would say that those vague and nameless stories would be accepted as evidence in any Court of Law; and it should be recollected that the House was not now dealing with the life or liberty of an individual, but with a proposal to abrogate, for time and eternity, the civil rights of a whole people. He wondered how long it would take the present Government to learn that nations were not ruled primarily by law unless that law had received its seal of validity in the consent and approval of the majority of the people who had to obey it. Under the new régime the offences which Lord Salisbury believed it was impossible to deal with by Act of Parliament were to be extinguished, and the seeds of coercion were to ripen very rapidly into a golden harvest of social order. It would be a strange negation of the teaching of history if that seed did not spring up in the shape of armed and masked men, the agents of secret societies, which the National League had superseded, but into whose hands they would again drive the impoverished Irish peasantry. Hon. Members knew that an emasculated Land Bill was to be sent down from "another place;" but the Irish people had not much reason to look to 132 "another place" for conspicuous benefits. The House of Lords had been a perfect cemetery of Irish remedial legislation, and its annals were marked throughout by the tombstones of defeated measures brought forward in the interests of the Irish tenantry. In this measure they had got back to the time-honoured Unionist policy of coercion. He was not so sanguine as to hope that this Bill would not get through that House; but there could be no greater proof of the impotency and futility of the Government policy than its introduction.; and as the Government, drawing its strength from many quarters, possessed all the weakness of an unnatural alliance, it would not be surprising if they became a Government of collapse before the final stage of their Coercion Bill was reached. Unless a strong protest were made from the Benches on which he sat, and from outside that House, against coercion, it would go forth to the world that the democracy of this country did not expect— did not even wish—that a healthier relationship should spring from the existing conditions and the admitted urgencies of the time in Ireland.
MR. CAMPBELL-BANNEEMAN (Stirling, &c.)
Sir, I confess candidly to the House that, although I am strongly opposed to any legislative measure of the character now proposed, yet, in one sense, the introduction of this proposal of Her Majesty's Government is a source of sincere satisfaction to me. Now, at last, we have exposed to us the alternative to the plan of the late Government for dealing with the affairs of Ireland. We have waited long. Last summer a majority of the electors of England—out numbering opposing majorities in the other parts of the United Kingdom—agreed to set aside for the time the policy of my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone), and to instal in Office those who opposed it. I observe that right hon. Gentlemen opposite appear to find much comfort in the fact that they have received a mandate from the country, and to think that this invests the Government and its allies with a peculiar degree of sanctity and authority. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Goschen), when he spoke last week, was eloquent, and, as usual, vehement upon the subject of the mandate, and the First Lord 133 of the Admiralty (Lord George Hamilton), speaking yesterday, based the claim and the reason for the introduction of this measure on this same mandate He said—"We ask for these powers because we believe that we received a mandate at the last Election." But we all know that to say that you have received a mandate, is only a pretentious way of stating the fact that you have somehow secured a majority at a General Election; and I do not recollect that when circumstances have given a majority in favour of the Liberal Party, hon. Members opposite were in any degree overawed or put to silence. I am not going to raise any contention as to the mandate, by attempting to give it a positive definition; but I would say of it negatively that it meant that the Successors of the late Government were to deal with the Irish difficulty in some way different from ours. "We have, therefore, been curious and anxious ever since to know what the course of the Government would be; but I can call to mind no occasion except one, until last week, on which any definite disclosure of the alternative proposal of Her Majesty's Government was made. That one exception was in September last. In September last the noble Lord the Member for South Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill), not addressing some meeting in the country, at which he might be held to commit no one but himself, but speaking at this Table as the authoritative mouthpiece of the Government, used these words— It is the firm and decided intention of Her Majesty's Government to make a proposal to Parliament as early as possible, with a view to placing all these questions of local government and public works more in the hands of the Irish people than they have been. This promise, so satisfactory to us, because we know that the more closely the condition of Irish affairs is examined, the more is our case strengthened, has been allowed to lapse into oblivion without even a pretence of fulfilment; and we have, during the winter, been supplied with many bravo words and sounding phrases, but no indication of a definite policy. Many meetings have been held and many speeches have been made in different parts of the country, and everywhere the roofs rung to loud declarations in favour of law and order. This is a collocation of words with which we are now very familiar; but I hope, 134 before I sit down, to state my opinion as to the mutual relations of law and order in Ireland. The words of the Prime Minister and his Colleagues in favour of the firm and unflinching administration of the law have been such as must have satisfied the stoutest assertor of landlords rights and the most coercion-loving newspaper editor in England; but the puzzling thing has been that the action of the Government in Ireland by no means corresponded with their language in England. The steps of the Irish Executive have been hesitating, confused, and faltering. They appeared to stumble from blunder into blunder. Even their exhibitions of energy gave the impression of half-heartedness; and when occasionally they were goaded into strenuous action, their courage seemed to resemble that of some shy and bashful man in society whom we often see driven, in his nervous desperation, into the commission of acts from which a bolder man would shrink. The truth is, that it is easy, at Willis's Rooms and in Lombard Street, to speak bravely of the sanctity of contract and the rights of property; to denounce as swindlers those who have taught the Irish tenants to turn their weakness into strength by uniting; to compare them to sturdy beggars, or to garotters. But, while it is easy to do this at a safe distance, it is not so easy for the Members of the Irish Executive, who are on the spot, who have a direct responsibility, who have eyes to see and a heart to feel, and a conscience to which to account, to translate this lofty doctrine into practice. It was, therefore, not astonishing to find that the right hon. Baronet the Member for West Bristol (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), Sir Redvers Buller, and those who were associated with them, exerted themselves with much zeal, and an irregularity of conduct to which they are now not unnaturally reluctant to confess, to stave off, or modify, those extremities which the rigorous application of their Colleagues' teaching would have obliged them to enforce. And now what is the cure for this ambiguity in the conduct of the Government? The powers of the law had been found by those who had to administer it so severe that they had not the heart to apply it in its full intensity; and, yet, what is it that we are now asked to do? We are asked to increase its intensity. 135 The case of the Irish tenant is so pitiable that the Members of Her Majesty's Government in Ireland did all they could to alleviate it, and now we are not only by a side wind, but, with a clear purpose and intention, to strike down the great defence of the Irish tenant and leave him at the mercy of the Irish landlord. I am sorry to say from what has occurred in this House we are not quite unprepared for this change in the temper of the Government. We have had some occurrences in this House, to which I think it right to refer briefly. I refer first to the unfortunate words used by the late Chief Secretary, when he spoke of using something stronger than blows from batons. Now, there is not a man in the House who is not prepared to make the fullest allowance for the right hon. Gentleman, who was evidently suffering from physical pain and irritation; but in respect of his words not one of his Colleagues has ever uttered a syllable by way of qualification or modification. Then I come to the occasion when the present Chief Secretary, in jaunty, if not triumphant, tones, expressed his high approval of the brutal words in which the orders to the police at Youghal were couched. And, lastly, I speak of the fact that when the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) called the attention of the House to the proceedings at Youghal which resulted in the death of a poor man, there came from that Bench not one word of sympathy or regret—although surely, whether the occurrence was justifiable or not, it was, at least, deeply to be deplored; not one word t indicate a sense of the gravity of the occurrence, only indignation, forsooth, against the Member for East Mayo, and the usual cold declaration as to the necessity for upholding the law. Every one of us here will agree with the right hon. Gentleman when he asserts, and even emphasizes, the necessity of supporting the civil power and carrying out the orders of the Courts; but the Government are responsible for the tone in which they deal with these matters in this House. In my opinion, you can inflict greater insult by a word or gesture, than by a blow, and, whatever we may think, I greatly fear that the quick-witted, intelligent, and sensitive Irish people, who watch very keenly what goes on in this House, will take these incidents, trivial as they may ap- 136 pear, as an indication of the tone and temper in which the provisions of this Bill will be framed, and carried, and worked. I venture to say further that, by incidents such as these, an amount of harm is done in the hearts of men in Ireland to your cherished cause of order which all the clauses of this Bill, even if it has all the effect you anticipate, will not suffice to counteract. What is the object of your Bill? The real object is asserted to be to put down intimidation, and when you speak of intimidation you mean, of course—for it is best to speak frankly—the action of the National League. The first observation then which must occur to every one is that, even if we judge by the conduct of the Government themselves, the case for dealing with the National League is not so strong as it was 14 months ago. What was the announcement made on the 26th of January, 1886, by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach)? He gave Notice that on the following Thursday the Chief Secretary for Ireland would move for leave to bring in a Bill for the purpose of suppressing the National League and other dangerous associations, for the prevention of intimidation, and the protection of life and order in Ireland. Well, that was not mincing the matter. They took the bull by the horns. They declared war against the National League and all its works. Judging from the speeches to which we have listened from Members of the Government, they appear to think that the evils of which they complain are more intense, as they are certainly more inveterate, than they were last year; and yet, this year the Government do not confront their task in the same direct, bold, and open way, but they approach it delicately and tenderly and with a considerable attempt at disguise. In Her Majesty's Speech we were told that what was intended was to effect some alterations in legal procedure. The ingenuous and unsuspicious mind would scarcely detect under that modest phrase a new Coercion Bill? It now appears that this legislation is intended to put down the National League, to suppress illegal conspiracies, to put an end to combination, to make intimidation impossible, to secure to all quiet citizens the full enjoyment of their liberties, and to establish the law of the land in place of the un- 137 written law of the National League. But that is a good deal of business to be achieved by "the reform of legal procedure." The use of a soothing and attractive title is not a new device. I remember the well-known lines— The merchant, to secure his treasure, Conveys it in a borrowed name; Euphelia serves to grace my measure, But Chloe is my real flame. Who would have thought that behind the Euphelia of legal procedure there lurked the Chloe of coercion? These facts, as it appears to me, are evidences of what is practically a matter of notoriety. The Government have been hesitating and reluctant for some weeks, if not for months, about bringing in this Bill, and it is only brought in now as a consequence of the pertinacious instigation of some of the more noisy and less discreet among their own Followers, and of some hon. Gentlemen behind me, whose thirst for vigorous government in Ireland varies in exactly inverse ratio to their responsibility in applying it, and of the dictatorial Mentors of the Government in the London Press, No one can venture to say that a case has been made out for this Bill on the ground of open crime and outrage. The poverty of the case in this respect is evident to everyone, and it has been proved by the reluctance of the Chief Secretary to produce the Returns which have always hitherto been given. [Cries of "No!"] Hitherto, we have had these Returns, but now they are withheld. [Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: No, no!] Well, then, let us have them. We want the ordinary Returns of grave crime and outrage which support the demand for this extraordinary legislation, and which have always hitherto been given. The Chief Secretary based his case on different grounds altogether. He relied on the Judges' Reports, and quoted them at great length. What must have occurred to most English and Scotch Members when they heard these Reports read, is that such Reports are not usually made either in England or in Scotland. English Judges confine themselves in their charges to the Calendars before them, and if they observe that one crime is increasing and another diminishing, they may comment upon the fact; but they never think of launching into a diatribe upon the general state of the country and society. But the truth is 138 that the custom in Ireland is different. The Irish Judge receives reports from the police officials of the country and others—and let me point out to the House that the Chief Secretary in coming forward to ask for new powers, quotes these same officials, and them quotes the Judges in corroboration—the Judges who have received their information from the very same source. A Judge has no special information or idea of his own as to the state of society. When he arrives at the Assize town certain reports are handed to him. He gets the information, and on that builds his comments, and it is the same information on which the Chief Secretary bases his remarks. This part of the proceedings of the Judges gives an effective illustration which I shall venture to make use of when I come to deal with the question of law and order in Ireland. There are, of course, exceptions to the condition of things I have described, even in the Judges' charges. The Chief Secretary expressed some surprise that my right hon. Friend (Mr. John Morley) should have dwelt upon the instance of Tipperary. But the fact was that Baron Dowse, in his charge to the Grand Jury at Nenagh, in the County Tipperary, wound up by saying—"So far as I know you have every reason to be satisfied with the state of the county." Could there be stronger approval of the condition of a county? And yet it was from this very county that the Chief Secretary took one or two of the examples of crime to which he referred. The right hon. Gentleman also quoted several passages from articles in Untied Ireland, and from speeches made by Members of this House and Leaders of the National League; I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman has largely read the columns of United Ireland; but if he had read as much of it as I have, he would know that it is the custom of that journal to use forcible language, and hon. Members have also developed the same habit to a considerable extent. In fact, it is notorious that in a great political movement such as this, forcible language is used which would not be employed in ordinary circumstances and in cooler moments. Among the many excellent qualities which the Chief Secretary possesses, perhaps he will allow me to say that the most conspicuous is his ex- 139 ceeding ingenuousness of nature, and he consequently appears to take what is told him an pied de la leltré. Nothing could be more unfortunate in Ireland, above all places. I remember that when I first went over to Dublin as Chief Secretary, a sagacious friend of mine in that city gave me this advice— "Always remember that whatever you hear in this country on either side of any question, is intended to be taken subject to a discount of 50 per cent." I have since acted on the advice of my friend, greatly to my comfort and advantage, and now I am very glad to communicate it to the Chief Secretary, and hope he will apply it. The broad objection we have to this legislation which you propose—as we should to any legislation for a similar purpose— is, that it is not the way to deal with the evils which exist in Ireland. I do not deny the existence of those evils for a moment. I do not dispute that in many particulars the Criminal Law might be amended with advantage. I will go further, and say I think it might be amended with advantage in the direction of making it easier and more certain to secure verdicts; and the way in which I should be disposed to effect that object, although I am not a lawyer, is by extending to Ireland, and, for that matter, to England as well, the practice with which we are so familiar in Scotland, of allowing juries to return verdicts by a majority. It is at least my opinion that this would be an advantageous change; and there are other particulars in which I would gladly see the Criminal Law and its procedure strengthened and improved. But it is necessary, not only that a change in the law should be sound, wise, and equitable, but above all things that it should be opportune, and it is this which I deny to your legislation in the present state of Ireland. I shall endeavour to give some reasons for this opinion before I sit down. Again, I do not, for one moment, dispute the existence in Ireland of a wide-spread system of intimidation, founded upon and worked by a combination of persons throughout the country. Some time ago it prevailed to a very great extent, and was attended in many cases with much hardship and even cruelty. Some cases have been quoted by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer and by the Chief Secretary. I agreed 140 in the observation of the hon. Member for East Mayo when he spoke of the small number of cases which had been brought forward by the Chief Secretary. Some of them were somewhat trivial; there wore one or two which were exceedingly strong. But with regard to the poor woman who was refused assistance in childbirth, and the child who was allowed to die without aid, these were, no doubt, serious cases; but are they a fair sample of the 836 cases of Boycotting referred to? It is ridiculous to suppose that we are to adopt this extreme legislation because there have been one or two bad cases, unless those cases fairly indicate the nature of the operation generally. Such cases, however, form but a small proportion of the entire number. I am, indeed, inclined to doubt whether the practice has not declined in vigour and intensity, and we have express evidence to that effect in the Blue Book of the Cowper Commission, which is not the quarter, certainly, in which we should expect to find it; but I raise no contention on this point. I fully admit the existence of the system, and I only join issue with the Government when we come to the further question, how it is to be met and coped with. First of all, it is well to settle in our minds what are the origin and character of this system of intimidation'. The Chief Secretary denied that it was so exclusively agrarian as we assert. He found fault with the right hon. Gentleman near me (Mr. John Morley) for taking it for granted that it was an agrarian system of combination, and the way in which he combatted the assertion was rather singular. He said— If you desire to know how far these eases go beyond mere agrarian objects you cannot do better than look down this column with regard to evicted farms. And then the right hon. Gentleman quoted, with a triumphant air, in proof of his contention, "caretaking" and "herding." But what are caretaking and herding but agrarian cases? Then the right hon. Gentleman quoted such heads as these— Being unpopular as a landlord; acting as an agent; associating with Boycotted persons; supplying the police when on unpopular duty; accommodating obnoxious persons. But everyone of these things has its root in the agrarian question. The origin of the system of Boycotting—to 141 put it shortly—was this. Tenants in Ireland—and these not only the smaller and more impoverished among them, but the larger tenants also in a country where the competition for land is so keen—have bean for generations practically at the mercy of their landlords, as long as the landlords could deal with each man singly. Then it was that combination came in, which acted like the cord around the bundle of sticks in the fable, giving strength to units individually weak. But it is quite obvious that loyalty between the tenants, among themselves, is absolutely essential in order that combination should be successful; and it is to prevent and punish what is regarded as treason to the common cause that Boycotting and other forms of interference with personal liberty have been employed. That is the genesis of the system. I yield to no one in my disapproval and condemnation of its methods; but, at the same time, I am bound to say that, in common fairness, we must not forget that they were adopted in self-defence against terrors and hardships, inflicted on the tenant class, which probably involved even greater cruelty. I will give one quotation on this point from the evidence before the Laud Commission. It is the evidence of Mr. F. O'Sullivan, who said— The Land Purchase Act will work mischievously if the question is left open between landlord and tenant." Being asked why, he answered—"I know cases of tenants who are in such dread by writs, and by being actually evicted, that they accepted conditions of purchase which, on their own admission, they believed they were unable to comply with. Let me say in passing that we are told we are going to have a scheme of purchase. It is a wonderful scheme, from all we hear of it—more likely to have been framed in a conjuror's saloon in Piccadilly than in the Cabinet of a Minister; because the tenant is to have his farm, and the landlord is to have his money down, and yet nobody's credit is to be involved. At any rate, you are going to establish a system of purchase which involves a bargain between landlord and tenant; and you now propose, previous to doing so, to deprive the tenant of the only organization which can put him on a proper footing for dealing with his landlord. The First Lord of the Admiralty said yesterday— 142 All that the Government contend for is that the conditions which surround the contract between landlord and tenant shall be even. That is what we all want. But when you strike down the power of combination you destroy the only means which enable the tenants to cope with the landlords' legal powers which have borne very hardly upon them. However, Sir, I have quoted these words merely to show that if the tenants have combined they have done so to deliver themselves from what, perhaps, has been, and is, a greater tyranny than any other ever imposed by them. And I would venture further to surmise that if, in any part of the country, landlords formed a combination for the protection of their common interests, and if any one of these landlords violated the conditions of that association, he would be visited with a degree of social disfavour quite as intolerable, though perhaps not so rough and ready, as the treatment an offending tenant under the League would meet with. It may be asked what has been the effect of the combination among the Irish tenants? Has it been effective for its purposes? On this point I should like to make one more quotation. Sir Redvers Buller said— Nobody did anything for the tenants until the League was established, and when the landlords could not let their farms they were forced to consider the question of rent. Why could they not let their farms? It was because every person who took one would be Boycotted. Now, I have not a word to say in favour of the method; but I say that the effect of it has been to put the tenants in a better position than they were before. We may push the inquiry still further, and ask—Are the objects which the tenants have in view, and which they have thus in great degree secured, legitimate and honest objects? On this point I should like to quote very briefly from a paper which has not so far, I believe, been introduced into this debate. It is a paper which, I think, well deserves the attention of the House, and might well be perused by every Member of it. It was sent to Lord Cowper by the Bishop of Elphin, and it was acquiesced in by three of his colleagues in the Irish hierarchy—than whom men more able, respected, and moderate do not exist in Ireland. They are not in any way men of extreme sympathies with hon. Members below the 143 Gangway. I should like to read the whole paper, but I will make only one or two short extracts from it; and let the House remember that no persons can speak on this matter with greater authority than these prelates, for they know thoroughly well the circumstances and feeling of their flocks. What does Dr. Gilhooly say? He says— There is no combination, public or private, that I know of against the payment of equitable rents; nor is there, except perhaps in a law isolated cases, any disposition on the part of individual tenants to disavow what are in their class considered their just obligations to their landlords. The present public combined action of tenants has no other object but the obtaining of equitable reductions of rent. That is dated December, 1886. Then the Bishop goes on to describe how certain rents had always been excessive. He says— The old rents were, as a rule, fixed, not by the produce or productive qualities of the land, but first, by the necessities of the tenants; secondly, by their competition for even small scraps of the worst land; and, thirdly, by their earnings in England, and even by the remittances of their children from America. That, Sir, is how the excessive rents began. How did they go on? The Bishop of Elphin says— The old excessive rents were again and again raised, according as the tenants were reclaiming or improving their holdings by their own hard, unaided labour, or when there was a rise in market prices; and frequently, when arrears of rent had accumulated in years of blight and famine, a new increase of rent was arbitrarily and permanently imposed on the miserable tenant as an equivalent for those arrears. The Bishop then says— Very many of our petty tenants still want the bare necessities of life, and it is only by hard, incessant toil, and by depriving their families of these necessaries, that they contrived in past years to pay the old rents. Who will venture to assert that they are still bound to pay them by still subjecting themselves and their children to such grievous privations? In their minds, at least, the exaction of such rents is a violation of God's law, which a just Government should condemn and prevent; and the English law that enforces it is, in their eyes, utterly unjust and to be submitted to only from sheer necessity. Therefore, were they even able to pay these excessive rents, which they are not, they will not pay them. The baton, even the bayonet, has but little terror for creatures so familiarized with sickness and death. I will quote only one more sentence. The Bishop states— From the above considerations, I have come to the conclusion that in all rents deductions have become necessary, and that in looking for 144 them the tenants do not mean to act, and are not acting, dishonestly." As I before said, I strongly commend this paper to the perusal of hon. Members, Now, Sir, the point at issue between us and the Government is this—Is the organization of which I have been speaking the natural fruit of social and political conditions, or is it the factitious creation of certain agitators? The latter seems to be the view taken by the Government and Gentlemen opposite. Break up the machinery, lay by the heels in prison those who work it, and then— such appears to be their theory—Ireland will be contented and happy. I will not occupy the time of the House in argument against this long-exposed fallacy. [A laugh.] Let the hon. Member who laughs point to one occasion in history when agitators have been able, without material, or with scanty material, to create a great National movement such as this. And let the House remember that this movement is not confined to the districts in which intimidation is alleged to exist; it attracts quite as much support and sympathy among the bulk of the people in the larger towns, and in parts of the country where Boycotting is unknown. We need not, indeed, look further back than a very few years. What was the groundwork and excuse of the Coercion Act of 1881? The late Mr. Forster was led to believe that, at that time also, there were a few evilly-disposed persons who were really the authors of the whole disturbance of society in Ireland. He called them mauvais sujets; they were the village idlers, and the village ruffians, and it was his belief that if he was only entrusted with power to put them in prison, the whole disorder would collapse. I remember that at that time there were one or two Members from Ireland who busied themselves in going about the Lobbies of the House advising the Government, and telling everyone that they could themselves name the half-dozen men in their own districts whose temporary removal from active life would ensure immediate quiet. What happened? Mr. Forster began imprisoning people, and the more his net brought to shore the wider he had to cast it, until the whole of the gaols in Ireland were full of untried and practically unaccused men, the number 145 reaching something like 900 or 1,000. And the worst of it was that the state of Ireland was not one whit improved thereby. Nay, it was much worse, and that for two reasons—First, because, while no doubt, some of these men had been connected with the outrages of which complaint was made, a large number of them, although they may have had Nationalist sympathies, were quiet and inoffensive citizens; but when they issued from prison they came out determined enemies to British rule, and active advocates of National self-government. I speak of facts known to everyone acquainted with the circumstances of the Government of Ireland. Then, in the second place, if there was any effect upon disorder, it was to drive it under the surface, there to fester and ferment, and produce a crop of secret and criminal societies; and it was with those societies that the Crimes Act of 1882 was mainly designed to deal, and with them it dealt with a great measure of success. Reference has been made to the Crimes Act of 1882 as a justification for this Bill; and its provisions have been repeatedly adduced as furnishing a triumphant vindication of everything contained in the Bill; but hon. Members opposite cannot allege that the same state of society exists now as then. Where are the secret societies now that justified the Crimes Act of 1882? We have not heard a word about them; there is no proof that they exist now as they did when the Act of 1882 was passed. If it is not so, let us hear about them. The Chief Secretary said nothing about it; but it would appear that certain hon. Members behind me are better informed than the right hon. Gentleman. I speak of Mr. Forster with the highest respect for his character and sagacity; but it is precisely because it was so sagacious a man who was completely misled that we should read the lesson. Most of us on this side of the House, at least, have learned a lesson from this recent failure; the lesson—namely, that it is useless—that is worse than useless, it is mischievous, to attempt to deal with the instrument and the effect, and not with the cause. This is why we repudiate the Bill which it is proposed now to introduce. Surely the course which the most ordinary prudence would dictate ought to be followed—namely, to attack the cause, and not 146 the consequence. The Government have brought in a land measure in "another place," of which this House has, as yet, no knowledge. I do not know whether it will come up oven to the standard of the recommendations of the Royal Commission, which Royal Commission itself was not of a very satisfactory constitution. Whatever that Bill may be, I would venture to present to the Government a dilemma, and they are welcome to adopt either branch of it. They are going to deal with the Land Question. Their legislation will either, on the one hand, be a successful, final, and satisfactory solution of this great difficulty, in which case the occupation of this great combination will be gone, intimidation for agrarian purposes will cease, and all the turmoil and effort and irritation caused by this Coercion Act will have been absolutely superfluous; or, on the other hand, their land measure, contrary to their desires and intentions, will not be completely effectual, in which case surely they must know that some root, of bitterness will be left behind, and that similar methods to those adopted in the past will be put into operation, and will be continued with equal disturbance of order until the grievances complained of are removed. Therefore, in either event, this Bill stands condemned. If the Land Bill is successful, then this Coercion Bill is superfluous; and if it is not successful, then the Coercion Bill will be inadequate. But, although it may be inadequate for good, it will be painfully adequate for evil, because it will do much to prevent the settlement of the Land Question in a reasonable and Constitutional fashion by further embittering the relations between governors and governed in Ireland. Sir, I said some time ago that I should have some remarks to make on the relation between law and order in Ireland. With regard to law and order, are they as nearly and necessarily associated in Ireland as we are accustomed to find them in other countries? As a general proposition it is true, no doubt, that the establishment and maintenance of order depends and follows upon the observance of the law. But, before order can be expected necessarily to follow upon law, there are two conditions to be observed. In the first place, the law must be equitable, and it must be recog- 147 nized as equitable by the general sense of the community to which it is applied. This is, in fact, a generally accepted commonplace upon which it is unnecessary to dwell. But no one, in face of what we have seen, and of the disclosures of the recent Commission, can pretend that the Land Laws of Ireland, greatly improved as they have been lately by Parliament, mainly under the guidance of my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone)— no one can say that they even now satisfy this first condition. But I pass on to the second condition, which is one not so often brought before us. I assert that it is necessary not only that the law shall be just, but that the people who live under it shall have confidence that it is fairly and impartially administered. Now, there exists in Ireland—let me be quite exact, for I do not wish to exaggerate—there exists in large sections of the community, a profound, deep-set, and hereditary distrust of the administration of the law. They and their fathers have seen the law applied in strange ways and to strange purposes. There is no such feeling, that I am aware of, in England or Scotland; where, whatever a man may think of any particular provision of the law, there is a general knowledge that it is fairly and indifferently administered. Let hon. Members of this House, who are not acquainted with the circumstances, bear in mind that that cannot be said of Ireland. I submit that this fact lies at the bottom of a great deal of the evil which we see existing in that country. The idea seems to possess, to a great extent, the minds of the Irish people that the administration of the law furnishes, as it were, a field for a sort of serious gain, in which one side endeavours at all hazards, by hook or by crook, to obtain convictions—manipulating juries, changing venue, getting up evidence, and so forth—while the other side try by every means in their power to defeat them, frustrating or refusing evidence, threatening or punishing witnesses, forcing juries to disagree. I do not state these things as facts; but I am speaking of matters quite as important as if they were facts—namely, the general sentiment and belief of the people. Each side thus tries to outwit and entrap, or to frustrate and defeat its opponent. Everything is 148 fair in love and war, and so I presume everything is fair in this case. I am not stating my own opinion, but the deep-seated sentiments and feelings of the Irish people. Above all, I am speaking of the system only, and not of individuals. I have no word except of respect for the Irish judiciary, which numbers in its ranks some of the most eminent and distinguished of judges, and no one imagines that they would be party to anything unjust or unfair. But this is the feeling, and our system gives countenance to it, and lends itself to its growth. Even the Judges' charges, which have been quoted to-night, disclose the fact that they and all public servants in the ranks of the administration of the law are regarded as executive as well as judicial officers. When we come further down, what do we find? Take the case of the Resident Magistrates. They are not only Stipendiary Judges, but are in charge of order in the districts in which they live. They have many functions, for which they have to receive direct instructions from Dublin Castle. Few of them have had judicial or legal training, and they hold their offices at the pleasure of the Crown. Yet it is to those men that the power of of trying men without a jury for the most delicate offences is by this Bill to be entrusted. Certain powers were given to Resident Magistrates under the Crimes Act, and definite crimes were specified in the Act in connection with which these powers were to be exercised. But what do the Government now delegate to them? The Government give the Resident Magistrates powers to— Try without a jury cases of criminal conspiracy, Boycotting, rioting, offences under the Whiteboy Acts, assaulting officers of the law, taking unlawful and forcible possession, and inciting to the above offences. With the exception of rioting and assaulting officers of the law in the discharge of their duty, there is not one of these offences which will not bear a political colour. Offences against the White boy Acts are of a very vague character—they are expressed in a miscellaneous body of Acts, which are to be administered by the Resident Magistrates, who are not only magistrates, but officers of the Executive Government, holding their office at the pleasure of the Executive Authority. The last head named is "inciting to the above of- 149 fences;" and then the Chief Secretary, in what he would himself call calm irony, says—"We do not propose to interfere with the freedom of the Press." If the freedom of the Press is to be interfered with, let it be done directly; and I venture to say that no one would ever think of giving jurisdiction over Press offences to the Resident Magistrates. It seems to me idle to think that the Government are going to put down the Press by such provisions as these. The hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) pointed out that English papers using the same language as we find in the Irish papers might be taken over to Ireland in cartloads and not be touched by the law. But I would further point out that United Ireland may be published in Liverpool and circulated in Ireland without being interfered with. It is surely a most dangerous thing in these days to give to Resident Magistrates such powers as these. What was the recommendation of the Royal Commission upon the riots at Belfast? One of the first and strongest of their recommendations was this—and, let me say, there were two excellent Resident Magistrates in Belfast, Colonel Forbes and Mr. McCarthy—
§ MR. T. M. HEALY (Longford, N.)
The Government have removed them.
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. HOLMES) (Dublin University)
The Government have since removed them.
MR. MAC NEILL (Donegal, S.)
Two footballs.
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN
Whatever may have been the cause of their removal, the Royal Commission especially recommended that, in future, Resident Magistrates should be confined to their duties, and that their duties should be strictly judicial. If I were to say what I consider the greatest individual fault in the whole system of government of Ireland, I should state it thus—that the administration and machinery of the law either is or has the appearance of being tainted with partizan or political feeling; and, on the other hand, just as the administration of the law is too political, the civil and political Executive is too legal in its character. I presume hon. Members sitting opposite, and some Members sitting sporadically behind me, 150 cherish the hope that they will be able to stem the rising tide of feeling in favour of National self-government in Ireland, of which the Lord. Mayor of Dublin (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) spoke so eloquently the other night. If they entertain this belief, I am not going to say a word to disturb their simple faith and quiet views; but I would venture to offer them a word of advice in the interest of the hope thus entertained by them. If they wish to secure their object of reconciling the body of the Irish people to the British Government, the very first thing they ought to do is to set to work to disentangle the web in which, in the administration of Irish affairs, legal functions and political functions are so inextricably intermixed. Hon. Members below the Gangway would probably make the complaint that, in their view, there is too much political colour about the administration of the law generally in Ireland. I looking, perhaps, at the other side of the same shield, make a different complaint— namely, that the action of the Executive Government is too much guided and controlled by the opinions of the legal advisers; and I venture to say that this evil was never so flagrant as at this moment. I have thus explained the reason why I said that, in my opinion, it would be most inopportune, at the present moment, to make any change in the criminal procedure in Ireland. The idea of the Government seems to be that the best way to restore order and to secure sympathy with, and ready obedience to, the law, is not to make a strenuous attempt to purge the public mind of its distrust in the administration of the law; but, on the contrary, to add to the causes of that distrust by importing fresh manipulations of procedure, fresh departures from the ordinary Constitutional methods, and fresh devices for in getting round, in some artificial way, the difficulty of obtaining verdicts from juries. As I have mentioned the difficulty of getting verdicts, and the difficulty of bringing people to justice, let me mention a fact which I forgot to mention before in my argument. We are told—and statistics have been quoted to prove it—that a. great number of crimes are committed, and that few people are brought to justice. Well, I have been looking at the statistics for England and 151 Wales for the year 1885, and I find that in those countries, where it is not pretended that juries do not do their duty, or that it is difficult to obtain evidence, the crimes committed in 1885 numbered 43,962, but that only 12,541 persons were committed for trial, or one in three and a-half. The figures with regard to Ireland may possibly be still less satisfactory; but, at any rate, these statistics show that there is a close analogy between the state of things in that country and the state of things in England and Wales. The Government seem to think that they will further the cause of order by importing all these fresh artificial changes into the established law. I think, on the contrary, that by the course they are taking they will merely furnish more food upon which the dislike and suspicion of your law will thrive, and that they will increase rather than remove the genuine causes of disorder. I have spoken too long, and I thank the House for listening to me. I have little more to say. My Colleagues on this Bench and myself object to this legislation as belonging to a wrong and discredited method of dealing with Ireland, and we have not failed in our duty of pointing to a better method. The fundamental vice which has caused the British Government to fail in Ireland has been that the Government has not been in touch and in sympathy with the people it professed to govern. I believe at this moment Ireland is more out of hand than it has ever been in any previous period in this century—by which I do not mean to say for a moment that there is more disorder or open resistance— [Laughter from the Ministerial Benches]— no; I am the best judge of what I mean to say. What I mean is, on the other hand, that the feeling of the people is stronger against us. It is more organized, it is more widely developed, it is more unanimous, it is more confident. The gulf between governors and governed is wide and deep. Surely it is not by cunning legal devices, it is not by the application of force, it is not by a curtailment or suspension of Constitutional liberty, it is not by placing, or rather by leaving, the whole tenant class practically at the mercy of the landlords—surely it is not by these means that that gulf can be bridged 152 over. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer said, on Friday night, that the Government asked for these powers in the defence of Union and in the defence of order. It is in the name of real Union and in the interests of true order that we refuse them.
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir RICHARD WEBSTER) (Isle of Wight)
The House will, at any rate, recognize that I am not one of those who think that lawyers ought to speak often in this House. In my opinion, lawyers, and Law Officers also, can do more useful work in watching the laws on the Statute Book, and in assisting the House in the passage of those Bills which are intended directly to alter the existing law. But in this particular case I hope the House will feel that I am justified in making some comments upon, and to the best of my ability some reply to, the criticisms which have been addressed by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite to the proposals of Her Majesty's Government; and I am sure the House will give me its indulgence if I am obliged, to a certain extent, to enter into detail, and if I attempt to make good what has been said on this side of the House more than once—namely, that Her Majesty's Government conceive that having regard to statistics, and having regard to bonâ fide information which they have searched and examined to the best of their ability, the evidence in support of the necessity of this measure is overwhelming. I may, of course, form a wrong judgment upon the materials. At any rate, I will submit my reasons to the House, and I will only ask the House to examine these reasons as I state them, and not to imagine that I am desirous of overstating the case, or of stating it in any other way than as the result of a careful examination of the materials that have been placed before Her Majesty's Government. Sir, in the course of what I may have to say it will be part of my duty to criticize some arguments which have been addressed to us by the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman). I trust I shall be able to do so with the same courtesy which he would extend to me if he were criticizing my arguments, and, at any rate, to use as moderate language as he himself used. On the other hand, I cannot help feeling that, coming from one who has filled 153 the Office that he has, with the experience which he must have had of what Ireland was at the time that he governed it, some principles which he has laid down, and some practices which he has recognized and has praised with faint condemnation—to say the least and perhaps more; the observations in which he has laid down these principles and dealt with these practices, are likely to work great harm, and to have a bad influence on the relations existing between the two countries. Sir, when I deal with that part of the case which the right hon. Gentleman referred to in his observations in regard to law and order, I shall, at any rate, indicate to him what I mean by what I have said; and I trust I shall be able to remove the impression that he has either produced or attempted to produce, that there is ground for attacking the administration of justice in Ireland. Sir, I also feel that, in my observations, it will be my duty humbly and respectfully to criticize some statements and arguments of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. I could not expect him to be here to hear me; but I do regret that he is not present for the purpose of hearing the criticisms of this side of the House on his speech. It is always difficult to criticize the speeches of men in their absence; but I will take care that I will be more guarded in my observations in the absence of the right hon. Gentleman, so that he may be less likely to think that I have taken advantage of his absence. Now, Her Majesty's Government base their cause upon the state of Ireland at the present time; and I am not afraid to compare the state of Ireland at the present moment with the statistics of the past. I am prepared—and before I sit down I will make good my statement, at any rate, from my point of view—to make good my case that, having the statistics which have been laid on the Table of the House, and comparing them with those of previous years, they show, not only ample grounds for the interference of Her Majesty's Government in the way they have proposed to interfere, but an imperative demand for such interference, I am not afraid, however many challenges may have come from hon. Gentlemen opposite us and in other parts of the House, to deal with this question of statistics; I and before I sit down I will do so. 154 There are, however, three other points on which I wish to make some observations to the House, in addition to those brought forward by the Chief Secretary for Ireland and the Chancellor of the Exchequer—three points upon which I think our case may be rested, and I do not know that they are to any degree less important than the case which is based on the statistics themselves. These points affect the cases of Boycotting, the failure of justice, and of crime. I am not dealing with it now only as an accumulative case—I will attempt to put it together as an accumulative case afterwards—but I am submitting to the House that although whether any one of these three points, or the circumstances connected with them, would have justified the whole provisions of this proposal may be a question, yet either of these three matters is now in such a condition as to call for immediate action on the part of Her Majesty's Government, and all three combined most undoubtedly do amply warrant the proposals which Her Majesty's Government have put forward. I will take these cases, not exactly in the order in which I have mentioned them, but I will take them in the order in which they have already been taken by one speaker, and which will not be inconvenient to the House. I will first take the case of Boycotting; nest, that of the failure of justice; and, lastly, I will take the case of crime. I take crime last, not because I consider it least, but because I want to put it in as strong a position as I can; and I will ask the right hon. Gentleman opposite the Member for Newcastle-upon - Tyne (Mr. John Morley), who challenged us on this point, to observe what I have to say on the question of crime when I come to the third part of my case. Do hon. Members in this House mean to deny that Boycotting exists now, and exists to an extent which can only be described as an intolerable reign of terror and intimidation spread over the greater part of Ireland? [Laughter from the Home Rule Members.] Hon. Members below the Gangway opposite may feel that an argument of this kind may be displaced by laughter. They are perfectly at liberty to laugh at it; but I would ask hon. Members to listen to me, and to judge whether, from my point of view, I make good my case. If they, with their greater knowledge, 155 think that my case is so slight that they can laugh at it, then I trust that they will bring forward some arguments that may induce Her Majesty's Government to take a less grave view of the matter, for we have been twitted as having in the autumn of last year appointed a Royal Commission. It is rather a strange thing that that Commission now affords to hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway some most important arguments in support of the measure they suggest for the reform of the Land Laws in Ireland; but has it ever occurred to hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway to examine the evidence of that Commission, and to inquire into the findings of that Commission with regard to the point I am now pressing upon the House? On the question of Boycotting, I would say this—the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) the other night, speaking with that energy which characterizes everything he says, moved us by the language he employed in describing the sufferings of the tenants at the hands of the landlords during last winter, or during certain other periods of time; but has he no heart for those who have been suffering through Boycotting and from the action of the National League, which has countenanced Boycotting to a large extent throughout the length and breadth of Ireland? I, of course, say at once that I have no personal knowlege of those cases; but I have, at any rate, some experience in dealing with evidence, and I have not contented myself with simply taking this Report without seeing whether or not it was supported by the evidence. References are given, and I have examined every case, and I hope hon. Members will examine them for themselves, and see whether the findings of the Commission are not warranted by the facts. I will only read that part of the Report which has not been referred to, and I venture to think that what I shall read will make good the allegations we have put before the House as to the seriousness of the case. Dealing with that part of the case which rests on Boycotting, I will quote paragraph 3 of the Royal Commission. It says— In the other Provinces"—that is to say, besides Ulster —" combinations made themselves felt before the passing of the Land Act, 1881, and have in various forms continued to 156 the present time. Outrage was at first made use of to intimidate parties who were willing; to pay rents; but, latterly, the methods of passing resolutions at National League meetings, causing their proceedings to be reported in local newspapers, naming obnoxious men, and then Boycotting those named, have been adopted. Tenants who have paid even the judicial rents have been summoned to appear before self-constituted tribunals, and if they failed to do so, or, appearing, failed to satisfy those tribunals, have been fined or Boycotted. The people are more afraid of Boycotting"— this was read by the noble Lord yesterday— which depends for its success on the probability of outrage, than they are of the judgments of the Courts of Justice. This unwritten law in some districts is supreme. We deem it right to call attention to the terrible ordeal that a Boycotted person has to undergo, which was by several witnesses graphically described during the progress of our inquiry. The existence of a Boycotted person becomes a burden to him, as none in town or village are allowed, under a similar penalty to themselves, to supply him or his family with the necessaries of life. He is not allowed to dispose of the produce of his farm. Instances have been brought before us in which his attendance at divine service was prohibited; in which his cattle have been, some killed, some barbarously mutilated; in which all his servants and labourers were ordered and obliged to leave him; in which the most ordinary necessaries of life, and even medical comforts, had to be procured from long distances; in which no one would attend the funeral of, or dig a grave for, a member of a Boycotted person's family; and in which his children have been forced to discontinue attendance at the national school of the district. Had we thought it necessary for the purpose of our inquiry, we could have taken a much larger amount of evidence to prove the existence of severe Boycotting in very many districts. We did not, however, think it necessary to examine more than a sufficient number of witnesses to inform ourselves, and to illustrate the cruel severity with which the decrees of local self-constituted tribunals are capable of being, and are actually, enforced. A document entitled 'The Plan of Campaign,' which sets forth an elaborate system for resisting the enforcement of legal obligations, is being extensively circulated amongst the tenantry, and has been acted on. It will be found in the Appendix. Sir, I do not think there could be any more forcible argument than the simple reading of that finding of the Commission to the House. If that language is not too strong, our case as to Boycotting is absolutely made out; and I trust the hon. Members who may think the language too strong in its terms, will have the fairness and honesty to examine the cases mentioned in that Report, and then they will see for themselves whether the slightest colour has been added to 157 the description of the cruelty and tyranny which forms the basis of it. I object very much to merely reading extracts, and though there are other parts of the Report bearing upon this matter, I will not read them. I have read enough to show that Her Majesty's Government did not rest their case upon hearsay evidence when they came to their conclusion as to the dreadful nature of the existing Boycott tyranny. As to the number of Boycotted persons, it was given in February as 836 families.
§ MR. EDWARD HARRINGTON (Kerry, W.):
Persons.
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
No. If you will examine the Returns, you will find that these figures do not mean members of families, but persons representing families.
§ MR. EDWARD HARRINGTON
I am sorry to have to interrupt the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but I would point out to him that in most of the cases these persons were caretakers —single individuals, as we may say.
I am strictly correct in what I have stated— namely, that this number, 836, is not limited to single individuals. Though, of course, in some cases, single individuals may have been referred to; in other cases they are families—heads of families. Nobody who has gone into these figures will be convinced that this 836 was the limit of the number affected by Boycotting. Probably, if you multiply that figure by 2 or 3 or 4 there would be no exaggeration as to the number Boycotted. But do hon. Gentlemen suppose that the number actually known to be Boycotted represents the extent of the tyranny or inconvenience that it puts upon those who are subjected to it? Everyone who has pluck or courage enough, or is rich enough, it may be, is able to stand Boycotting; but how many are there who cannot or dare not resist it? It was very well put that you might as well measure the prevalence of disease by the particular number of people who have died from it; or, you might as well say that any particular standard of evil that exists is to be traced simply and solely to a number of instances of persons who may come under a particular class of observation. If this number of persons that I have read to the House is known, it would be no exaggeration to say that 158 three or four times that number suffer from similar tyranny. It will be no exaggeration to say that these 836 are only the visible instances. I was, I confess, pained and surprised that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman) should have spoken of Boycotting in the language he did. He professed in one or two sentences to express a condemnation which I am sure he feels. I do not, for a moment, suggest that he does not personally feel it, but what did he do? He went on to justify, to a certain extent, this combination, and to indicate that there were reasons which would make acts of Boycotting lawful acts. The right hon. Gentleman went so far as to say that it was the punishment of those who had been guilty of unfaithfulness to their common cause. I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that his words and his influence are not confined within the walls of this House. Do you suppose that the right hon. Gentleman's speech and quotations from it will not be used by those who desire to extenuate and find some palliation for Boycotting in the future. I do suggest to this House that if that kind of language is to be used, it is an encouragement to persons to say that if people, in the exorcise of their rights, do not choose to form part of a combination which they believe to be illegal, they are to be judged guilty of what the right hon. Gentleman calls treason to the common cause, and are to be punished by this kind of self-made law, and by the judgment of these self-constituted tribunals. Sir, the right hon. Gentleman spoke also very slightingly of the Boycotting of caretakers. He spoke of these people as if they were interfering with an agrarian arrangement.
No; I only took the word "caretaker" from the list of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary—the list of persons who were Boycotted. The right hon. Gentleman argued that the list he gave showed that the offence was not confined to agrarian questions; but a caretaker has nothing but agrarian duties that I know of.
I care not where the name cam from; but I want to know whether it is the slightest justification for Boycotting and ill-treating a man who is earning a few shillings, to say that he is connected 159 with an agrarian question—that he is interfering with an agrarian arrangement.
§ MR. CAMPBELL - BANNERMAN
I did not say that.
The right hon. Gentleman knows that I would not misrepresent him. His words were that the caretaker was connected with an agrarian matter, because he was interfering with an agrarian arrangement. The House, I think understood the right hon. Gentleman in that sense.
No, no.
If the right hon. Gentleman did not moan to offer that explanation—
I did not intend to use any expression in the least degree derogatory of the caretakers. I was replying to an argument of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, who was trying to make the House think that this Boycotting and intimidation had not its origin in, and was not really connected as strictly as we thought, with agrarian questions; and I was pointing out that in the list which he himself gave were cases which had an agrarian character.
The point is this. The caretaker is supposed to be a person who has interfered with an agrarian arrangement, and interfering with an agrarian arrangement is supposed to be some sort of justification for Boycotting.
When I listened to the right hon. Gentleman I thought I fully understood what he said; but if he disclaims that which I believed to be his meaning, I am glad of it. It will remove, at any rate, one part of his speech which it appeared to me might be fraught with dangerous consequences. With reference to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, I must say that I do not think he has appreciated the real force of this case so far as Boycotting is concerned. What did he do? He read almost entirely from the evidence of Sir Redvers Buller, and he said there was no real agitation against rents, because of the answer Sir Redvers Buller had given to question 16,456. The question was— 160 Therefore, in spite of the opposition of the League, they are willing to pay? I believe that the great majority of the tenants through those counties, that is the majority of those who have not paid, are anxious to pay. But there was a question immediately before that which the right hon. Gentleman did not read to the House. Question and answer 16,455 were— Do you think that the improved state of the country as far as the payment of rent is concerned comes from the fact that the power of the League is decreasing, or is it because the League have given orders that rents are to be paid, if reductions are offered? No, I do not think so, I think the League would, if they could, prevent the payment of rents, and are now endeavouring to their utmost to prevent rents being paid; but the improvement in the payment of rent is because the tenants are getting reasonable allowances. Did it occur to the right hon. Gentleman when he read the answer to which I have referred—namely, that the great majority of tenants who had not paid were anxious to pay, to give the reason why they did not pay? What is the reason? Why, because— The League would, if they could, prevent the payment of rents, and are now endeavouring to their utmost to prevent rents being paid. But that is not all—one other answer was read by the right hon. Gentleman upon this question. He read this—the House I think will remember it— You have got a very ignorant poor people, and the law should look after them, instead of which it has only looked after the rich." ["Hear, hear."] "That at least appears to me to be the case. I am glad the right hon. Gentleman opposite thinks that that is a correct view of the position. To a certain extent, he has had a good deal to do with the past. I find here, after the answer the right hon. Gentleman quoted, the following questions and answers— 16,477. And your experience of the district is really that the people, if left to themselves, are very well intentioned?—The majority of them are. 16,478. And that they are prevented from paying their rents partly by terrorism, and partly by real inability and poverty?—Yes; and partly by bad advice; this 'United Ireland' scheme, and that sort of thing. The three worst districts which I have got—that which I really-thought were settling down—Mr. Dillon and other M. P.'s have just been preaching in, and the excitement they have created, will, I fear, again disturb them. Sir, it is our duty to study this Blue Book. It is our duty to present whatever view we take of the case; but it is scarcely the right thing to pick out one 161 answer, and to present that to the House as the effect of a man's evidence, when the two next answers show that the witness's evidence practically had a contrary effect. I pass now from that matter to the Boycotting. I am sure the House will understand that I have no wish, at the present time, to go into details; but there is sufficient information before us to make good our case; and I will now say a word or two upon the second point—namely, the failure of justice. Attacks have been made upon the Judges—most unfair attacks; it has been said that the Judges passed beyond their province, and they made certain charges—and certain extracts have been read in support of the allegation—which they need not have made. May I remind the House, as I pass, of who these Judges were, and of the circumstances under which these charges were delivered? I am not going to give more than five or six out of 20 or 30 instances that could be given from the last Assizes; but I do say that it will be to the advantage of the House that I should put before that the circumstances of the Assizes at which these charges were delivered, and I will submit that it proves to the House a failure of justice, and an inability in the clearest cases to obtain convictions, which calls at once for some prompt interference on the part of Her Majesty's Government. At the Clare Assizes, before Mr. Justice O'Brien, in the case of a man named James Kelly, who was tried for assault on the 4th November, 1886, Mr. Justice O'Brien—a Judge appointed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian himself, said "he was satisfied that there had been a failure of justice," and he adjourned the trial to the next Assizes. At the same Assizes, in the case of a prisoner indicted for firing a loaded revolver at a constable on the 30th February, Mr. Justice O'Brien said that— Having regard to the verdicts in two cases yesterday, my fixed opinion is that if I do not adjourn the trial an entire and complete failure of justice will take place. Mr. Justice O'Brien said this in the course of his judicial duty. It is nothing that he had not a right to say, and it was his bounden duty to give his reasons for postponing the trials. Let me call attention to the case of Roscommon, where a prisoner was indicted 162 for assaulting and wounding, having smashed the eyeball of his victim, and permanently destroyed his eyesight. Mr. Justice Murphy, again, I believe, a Judge appointed by the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian, and presumably, therefore, a Judge with no political bias, said— The evidence is all one way, but if the jury choose to disregard their oaths, and are of opinion that one man in this county can knock out the eyeball of another with impunity, they can say 'Not Guilty,' and the man was acquitted. At the County Kerry Assizes, on March 11, 1887, as reported in a paper to which I think hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway opposite can take no exception— namely, The Freeman's Journal, Patrick Hickey was indicted for a moonlight offence at the House of Mr. Casey, a farmer. During the mêlée the disguise of one of the attacking party fell off, and Casey recognized Hickey, his own cousin. No evidence was called for the defence, and a verdict was given "Not Guilty."
§ MR. EDWARD HARRINGTON (Kerry, W.)
I rise to Order. Perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman will allow me to interrupt him for a moment. I defended that prisoner, and I pledge my word to this House I am willing to abide by the decision of Mr. Justice O'Brien if he did not directly charge for an acquittal of the prisoner on the ground that the charge was a fabrication, and if it was not at the Judge's instance that I declined to examine any witnesses for the defence. I ask the Judge's opinion upon that.
If the hon. and learned Member defended the prisoner, I do not wonder in the least that he was acquitted. All I can say is this—that I cannot recognize —and I am obliged to say so—the facts as stated by the hon. and learned Gentleman, because the report in The Freeman's Journal, from which I am quoting, has not been in any way contradicted, or said to be erroneous.
Will the hon. and learned Gentleman—[Cries of "Order!"]
§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT (Derby)
It is most unfair.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby thinks fit to say that I am most 163 unfair. I have simply read to the House a verbatim report from The Freeman's Journal, and I will undertake to lay before any hon. Member who desires to see them the materials I have at my disposal. I have said that it is impossible for me to come to the same conclusion as the hon. Member opposite from this report in The Freeman's Journal, and I think I have sufficiently justified what I have said in regard to the matter. But that is by no means the only ease. At the same Assizes Mr. Justice O'Brien said that, with the exception of a few trivial cases, the juries had acquitted in every case that came before them. At the Limerick Assizes, Mr. Justice Johnson adjourned several cases to the next Assizes. ["Hear, hear!"] I do not know whether hon. Members opposite would consider it a creditable thing that cases should be adjourned at the Assizes. The outcome of the matter was this—that at the County Clare Assizes there were four cases adjourned, at the Kerry Assizes four cases, at the Limerick Assizes one case, and at the Galway Assizes two cases. All these cases were adjourned on the statement of the Judges that the trials, and the results of the trials, would not be satisfactory. It may be that hon. Members below the Gangway opposite are satisfied with these results; but I ask the House and the nation not to be satisfied with them. I fall back willingly on the question of crime, and I am going to make good my assertion that the figures relating to crime do not bear the construction which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian put upon them, and I hope that, in this matter, hon. and right hon. Members will do me the fairness to listen to me, and not do me the injustice of suggesting that I am guilty of unfair actions. I ask for a few moments the attention of the House for what I have to put before them from the Parliamentary Papers on this question of the statistics of crime. Sir, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian thought fit to compare the statistics of 1832 with the statistics of 1885. Did he think that there was more than one —perhaps the most junior Member of the House—who could be taken in by such a comparison? I assert—and I will make good my assertion—that it has been recognized over and over again 164 by Members of Governments under the Leadership of the right hon. Gentleman that such a comparison of statistics is wholly fallacious, and has nothing to do with the case. If he wanted to make comparisons, why did he not take the figures for 1847 and compare these with the figures for 1885 or 1886? Those of 1847 are a great deal better than those of 1832, but a great deal worse than those of 1885. Has Ireland not improved at all? Are we to take nothing for all the attempts which have been made by the right hon. Gentleman himself to improve the condition of Ireland? The population of Ireland, as hon. Members are aware, has decreased; but has there been no improvement at all in education, or in any one of those qualities of the people which would induce them to be less guilty of such conduct? Sir, perhaps some right hon. Gentleman who follows me in this debate will deal with these figures, even if they are not brought to the notice of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. I will take a case exactly in point. In the year 1870, on March the 17th, Mr. Chichester Fortescue introduced the Peace Preservation Bill of that year. He stated to the House the statistics with regard to the condition of Ireland in the year 1869. He stated to the House that 1869 was a great deal better than 1847. I can give the figures if the House wishes. He said that in 1847 there were 16 homicides, as against 8 in 1869, and 16 cases of firing at the person in 1847, as against 16 in 1869. Then he paused, and asked why, under those circumstances, the Government thought they ought to introduce a Bill to prevent crimes? He then put forward the state of intimidation in Ireland in 1869, and, in language which I will in a moment crave leave to read to the House and to adopt, he pointed out what duty it cast upon the Government of the day. Sir, do right hon. Gentlemen who sit opposite to me know that the state of Ireland in 1886 was, as far as these very crimes were concerned, considerably worse than in 1869? I want to show you how extraordinary it is that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian should have thought fit to try to displace the primâ facie case made by Her Majesty's Government by a reference to 1832. What has 1832 to do with it? 165 This is not a question of a comparison between 1832 and 1887, or between 1847 and 1887, but a question as to what is the condition of Ireland during more recent times. Sir, I want the House to permit me to read a very brief extract from the speech of Mr. Chichester Fortescue. He said— I may be asked why, under these circumstances, the Government think it their duty to propose special legislation for the repression of agrarian crimes in Ireland beyond what was proposed in 1847, and that is a question which I desire to answer. I have no doubt that those who live in the disturbed districts of Ireland, and suffer from this state of things, would answer it in a very summary manner, for they call upon the Government to put an end to the intolerable system of intimidation which exists in those districts. But, speaking for ourselves, the case stands thus—in the first place, in respect to agrarian crimes, the comparison is not favourable to the year 1869. Again, it is very evident that our standard has risen since 1847, and that we are not prepared to endure or submit to a state of crime in 1870 which was considered inevitable in 1847."— (3 Hansard, [200] 86.) So I say, on behalf of Her Majesty's Government to-day, we are not prepared to submit to a state of crime in 1886 which is worse than the state of crime which existed in 1869–17 years ago—as compared with the right hon. Gentleman's statistics of 54 years ago. But let me read on— There is also this important circumstance to be considered—that in the disturbed districts of Ireland at the present time intimidation and terrorism—though not accompanied by acts of violence and atrocity so great and so numerous as in former years—are as general and deep-seated and as effectual as ever. The Government feel that, under these circumstances—putting aside all question of comparison, and taking the actual amount of crime prevailing in Ireland—it is their imperative duty, after having done all that a Government could do, with the means at their command, to check and repress these crimes, not, I am bound to say, without a certain amount of success, but not with any satisfactory result—they feel it to be their duty, under these circumstances, to ask Parliament for further powers. The main characteristic of the disturbed districts of Ireland at the present time is the existence of a dangerous and formidable system of intimidation and terrorism—and that is a point to which the provisions of this Bill are chiefly directed; because that state of intimidation operates so as to make it almost impossible to obtain evidence for the conviction of any criminal, and tends to the spread of crime of every kind, not only in the disturbed districts themselves, but in other districts."—(Ibid. 87.) That description of Ireland in 1869, which was put forward as a justifica- 166 tion for the Bill by Mr. Chichester Fortescue, represents to the letter the condition of Ireland at the present time. The following figures are taken from the Parliamentary Returns in every case:— In 1869 the number of cases of murder and manslaughter were 10; in 1886 they were 10; cases of firing at the person in 1869 were 16; in 1886, 16; other offences against the person in 1869 were 26; in 1886, 48; total offences against the person in 1869, 52; in 1886, 74. Threatening letters in 1869 were 397; in 1886, 424. All other agrarian offences in 1869, 318; in 1886, 558; total agrarian outrages in 1869, 767; in 1886, 1,056. All offences, including agrarian, in 1869 numbered 3,153; in 1886, 3,251. The right hon. Gentleman will find that the effect of the Act of 1870 was to diminish the amount of crime immediately after its passing. The four months before its passing were as bad, or worse, than the first four months of 1869 had been; but immediately after the passing of the Act crime diminished and matters improved. I do not know whether hon. Members accept my view; but if Her Majesty's Government honestly entertain the view I have attempted to put forward—that Boycotting exists to the extent which the Royal Commission recognizes, that failure of justice exists to the extent which the Judges recognize, and that crime exists to the extent which these statistics show—how is it possible for them to accept the view that the condition of Ireland is such that it does not call for that which Mr. Chichester Fortescue asked in 1870 "for the Government to put an end to the intolerable system of intimidation which exists in those districts?" I do not deny that any Government which proposes to amend the law takes upon itself the burden of proving its case. It was suggested, somewhat unfairly, that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had not made out a sufficiently strong case. At any rate, the case has not been weakened by further examination. At any rate, those who have had the opportunity of putting together and working out the case on the lines laid down by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary find that in no respect has he overstated his case. [Laughter.] I trust hon. Members who are prepared to laugh at these things, and to treat them as matters of no serious account, will be prepared 167 to deal with them by argument showing that the facts are not well-founded, because laughing is not an argument. I hope at some time, in the course of the debate, we shall have the privilege of hearing the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-on-Tyne (Mr. John Morley). He made a somewhat extraordinary Motion in regard to these proposals of the Government, and in the course of his speech the right hon. Gentleman stated that this was a Bill to enable landlords to exact exorbitant rents. ["Hear, hear!"] The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) cheers the quotation of that opinion. He is a lawyer, a skilled and trained lawyer. He has filled the honoured Office of Solicitor General; but we must not discredit the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-on-Tyne by calling him a lawyer, because he belongs to a higher and nobler profession. Possibly, however, the opinion of lawyers may be entitled to some consideration in this matter. At any rate, I value the opinion of this House even on matters of law, and I believe that the House will acquit me of wishing at any time to put before it a view of the law which is incorrect. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-on-Tyne said that this Bill has been proposed for the purpose of putting pressure on tenants to pay exorbitant rents. He said that it would strike down the defence of the Irish tenants, and leave them helpless. The right hon. Gentleman heard what is the scope of the Bill of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and must have understood its provisions. His statement was perfectly clear, and speakers who followed him have shown that they appreciated it. Will some laywer, or some person skilled in law, kindly tell me which of the provisions of this Bill are for the purpose of enabling landlords to exact exorbitant rents? Sir, I care not for my position, except that I am proud of it; but I would be no party to this Bill if I thought that I was framing a scheme to enable landlords to exact exorbitant rents. This scheme is for the purpose of putting down crime only; it is for the purpose of stopping those who are guilty of criminal practices; it is for the purpose of relieving poor persons from the tyranny which now grinds them down to the lowest ebb. There is not one single line of the Bill which is 168 intended to be aimed at trade unionism or honest agitation. [Opposition laughter.] The right hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Henry H. Fowler) is perfectly at liberty to laugh; but can he read a clause into the Bill by laughing? He is a skilled lawyer I know; but will he now—or, much better, on the second reading of this Bill—point to any clause and say that that is a clause under which a landlord is enabled to exact an exorbitant rent? If he will point to any such clause, or the right hon. Member for Newcastle-on-Tyne will endeavour to make good his statement, I will endeavour to answer them, not by laughter, but by endeavouring to show by argument in this House which of us is right. The right hon. Member for Mid Lothian has told us that this Bill fixed a brand of inferiority on the Irish race. Was there ever a greater slander uttered against the Irish people than that suggestion? It is not the Irish people who commit these crimes; it is not the Irish people who desire that these crimes should be committed. It is a few—a certain number of them—who have, to a great extent, been led and induced to commit these crimes by influences that come from a very far distant quarter. We are told also by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian that this legislation is directed against those societies which have their strength in the necessities of the Irish tenants. How can it be to the interest of the Irish tenants that the societies should exist against which this Bill is directed? How can it be for the interest of the Irish tenants that societies should exist for the commission of crime, for carrying on operations by the commission of crime, for encouraging different persons to commit crimes, for promoting intimidation and violence, and for interfering with the administration of the law? How it can be for the interest of the Irish tenants that societies should exist for these purposes I cannot conceive. I know not why a Bill, which on the face of it and by all its provisions is directed solely to prevent the commission of crime, is to be distorted, for the purpose of political argument, into a Bill solely promoted for the purpose of enabling landlords to exact exorbitant rents. We heard from the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian another statement. I admit, perhaps, it may be because I am a young man 169 that I am always enthralled by the language of the right hon. Gentleman when he is speaking, and I always think it prudent to take his speech and read it through afterwards, in order to see if there is quite so much argument in it as at first appeared. There were two arguments in his speech which I wish to couple together. Three times in the course of his speech he made use of the word "extreme." [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: It is your own word.] I am perfectly aware of it; but if the right hon. Gentleman will be patient with me, and allow me to complete my argument, he will see why I am referring to it. I have never suggested that it was not our own word, and I have alluded to it, not for the purpose of explaining the word, but for the purpose of showing that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian used it in a sense in which it never ought to have been used. "We do regard these measures as extreme, as measures only to be enforced when the necessities of the case demand it. But to say that they are extreme measures of coercion, in the sense of meaning the most extreme measures that can be proposed, is simply to shut one's eyes to all the Coercion Bills that have been passed during the last 20 or 30 years. I do not think that my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland ever said that they were "extreme"—he certainly never said they were extreme in the sense in which the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian used the words three times; and I notice how anxious the right hon. Gentleman was to put that word upon us in that sense; but we agree that a measure of this character ought not to be undertaken, except in circumstances of necessity which justify it. The right hon. Gentleman said he did not believe he should have lived to see the day when a proposal so insulting, so exasperating, so utterly in contrast with the lesson which the whole history of Ireland teaches us, would be submitted to the British House of Commons. Sir, was the right hon. Gentleman alive and a Member of this House in the year 1882? Was he a Member of the Government in 1870, and was he a party to the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in 1881? I admit that the provisions now proposed, be they extreme or not, should only be put forward when you have a 170 case which requires their being put forward; but I say that, for the purpose of using inflated and exaggerated language to assert that they are extreme measures in the sense of being the worst form of what is called coercion ever introduced, is, I submit, to shut one's eyes to history. [A laugh.] Has the hon. Member who laughs ever heard of the clauses which prohibited meetings being held at all—of the clauses which gave a power to arrest persons who were out at night—which allowed newspapers to be seized wholesale—which enabled search to be without a warrant in houses, in order to find out whether there were threatening letters—and which suspended the Habeas Corpus Act as well? Has he ever heard of those provisions? And, on the other hand, is it fair argument to suggest, in the face of such provisions as have been enacted by this House during the last 10 or 15 years, that our measure is extreme in the sense of being the most extreme coercion that could be brought forward? I wait to hear what the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian is going to suggest as so extraordinary that he thought he should never live to see it proposed to this House. I suppose it is the clause referring to the possibility, under certain circumstances, of changing the venue to England. Whatever may be the view taken about that clause, of course it requires to be most carefully considered. Will the House allow me to put before them what I believe to be the real case on which such a clause should be founded; and if it is not made out, I admit that the House ought to hesitate before it accepts any such proposal. We have heard great phrases about Magna Charta, the Bill of Eights, trial by jury, and by one's peers, palladium of justice, and so forth. Well, in 1882, the right hon. Gentleman proposed a scheme of trial, and of trial for life, which dispensed with trial by jury altogether. I admit that as long as you can get with safety fair jurors trial by jury is the proper course to follow in Ireland as in this country. But I am by no means sure that we, who have the responsibility of dealing with this question, would not hesitate long before we brought forward a scheme whereby you would establish a special Commission for the purpose of trying men for their lives. The Government take the view 171 that it is by no means clear that we are not entering on a period which, in some respects, is unlike anything that has gone before. I care not whether the Gentlemen who sit below the Gangway, and who now hear me, were parties to the acts or not to which I am about to refer; but I say that those Gentlemen who thought fit to make such speeches as they did at Sligo, before the trial that was to take place there, committed an act of the greatest illegality. [An hon. MEMBER: The panel.] It is no question of the panel, or jury-packing; but a question of endeavouring to intimidate jurors who were about to be called upon to do their duty. I say that those men, whoever they were, connected with United Ireland who within five days after the trial of the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) published the names of the six jurors who were in favour of an acquittal, and thereby enabled the names of the other six jurors who were in favour of a conviction to be known, were guilty of an act of the highest illegality, and one reprehensible in the greatest degree. Over and over again it has been recognized by the Courts of this country—and I should think it is the same in Ireland—that the jury-box is sacred; and jurymen have been told that they do wrong if they disclose what has passed between one juryman and another. I say that there are cases where jurors have suffered partly by acts of violence against themselves, and partly by Boycotting, in consequence of the part they have taken in connection with trials. Sir, if there is reason to believe that, failing our measure, the next step will be one to intimidate jurors, I ask whether the Government will not be doing their duty when they do everything they can to protect jurors by providing expedients by means of which there can be a fair trial without danger to jurors? Do not suppose that we lawyers at all shut our eyes to the difficulties that confront us in that course; but they have been considered, and the question we have to look at is this—Are the Government right in taking that view in connection with this removal? If the case for the removal be not made out—that is to say, if, in the judgment of the Government, in respect of the probable risks and dangers, it is not well founded—they would be the first to say there is not the slightest object for having 172 the clause for removal in the Bill. It is for the protection of the juries that it is submitted. But it is, after all, only an incident in this Bill—an incident which only comes into operation under certain safeguards. It has no direct connection with the remedial measures of the Bill— that is to say, with the provisions for summary jurisdiction and change of venue in Ireland, and the suppression of associations which are acting in the ways that have been described. I feel that I have detained the House almost too long; but, at the same time, I wish to give my assurance to the House that this is a Bill which deals with crime. My words are in the possession of the House, and any hon. Member is perfectly at liberty to bring them up against me at any future stage. I ask hon. Members when they have seen this Bill in print and considered it, and when they discuss it, to point out to us those provisions of it which can, by any process of reasoning, be shown to have any other intention than that of putting an end to crime. It would be wrong, on my part, to discuss the details of the Bill now; but, as I have already said, its leading point is the punishment of crimes which at the present time are going unpunished; its object is to obtain fair trials where, as at the present time, they might otherwise be improperly conducted, and failure of justice take place, and to obtain power to put a stop to dangerous associations —that is to say, associations of the character to which I have referred. A great deal has been said during the past few days as to the position of Her Majesty's Government in this matter, and it has been suggested by the right hon. Gentleman to-night that the Government have brought in this scheme as their alternative to the plan of Home Rule. Does the right hon. Gentleman really think that that is quite a fair way of dealing with Her Majesty's Government? Does he think it quite fair to ignore altogether the Bill which he knows was introduced to-night for the purpose of dealing with the Land Question? Is it, or is it not, true that this Land Question is supposed to be at the bottom of what you are pleased to call the agrarian difficulty? Local Government may be, to a certain extent, mixed up with it; but does anyone deny that the Land Question is one of the most important considerations connected with 173 the difficulty? And yet, for the purpose of an argument which will no doubt be used, and was intended to be used, elsewhere than in this House, it is said that Her Majesty's Government have put forward this scheme as their sole alternative for the remedial measures of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. [Mr. GLADSTONE dissented.] Well, the right hon. Gentleman opposite shakes his head. All I can say is that, when he spoke about "the mask being stripped off," and when he said—"At last we know what is the alternative plan to Home Rule," his meaning was that this measure:—which is a measure dealing with crime—is brought forward as an alternative to Home Rule, which we understand was proposed by the Party opposite as one of the remedial measures for Ireland. But, as a matter of fact, the measures which ought to be described as the Government alternative for Home Rule are those measures dealing with Irish land, one of which was introduced into the House of Lords to-night, and the other of which—the larger scheme —is to be introduced as soon as it is possible to do so. Enough, then, have I said with reference to this being the beginning and end of the policy of Her Majesty's Government with regard to Ireland. It is nothing of the kind. It is a step for a particular purpose. [Ironical cheers.] Probably the hon. Member for Northampton, who started that ironical cheer, does not take the same view of that particular purpose that we do. The purpose that we mean is that crime shall not be allowed to go unpunished. We mean that trials where they do take place shall be fair trials, and that Boycotting shall be put an end to. Sir, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian made a very thinly-veiled suggestion. Turning round to the place usually occupied by the right hon. Gentleman the senior Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright), and then turning round to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain)—to the noble Marquess the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington), and to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Bury (Sir Henry James)—he told them that theirs was the responsibility for this Bill—that on their shoulders would rest 174 that responsibility; and an hon. Gentleman who is not now in his place—the hon. Member for West Nottingham (Mr. Broadhurst), I think—with what I would venture to call an unworthy sneer—said yesterday that we were only waiting one orders from the meeting of Liberal Unionists to be held to-day. Sir, on behalf of Her Majesty's Government I repudiate that situation. [Laughter.] Hon. Members may laugh, and they are at perfect liberty to do so; but I would point out to them that that is not exactly the way in which this question of responsibility ought to be dealt with. Her Majesty's Government accept the full responsibility for the measure they propose, and do not allow it to be shifted to other shoulders. [Interruption.]I do not care to notice the interruption; but I must say I am not in the habit of making audible remarks across the Table when others are speaking. I shall endeavour to observe the courtesies of debate. As I have said, the responsibility is ours. We have framed the measure; and, of course, it is idle to suggest that the responsibility is to be shifted to other shoulders. We have proposed this measure in the interests of true liberty. [Cheers.] Do the hon. Member for Cork and those very courteous followers who sit around him— [Mr. T. M. HEALY: Just as courteous as the Tories.]—imagine that I did not suppose they would cheer that sentiment? I was perfectly prepared for them to do so. I wished them to cheer. They do not take the same view of liberty that we do. We are not able to speak in this House as though we were the exponents of true Constitutional principles, and then go and make speeches outside which could scarcely be delivered within these walls. I am not here for the purpose of quoting against hon. Members extracts from their speeches, and founding charges upon those speeches; but when it is suggested that we are only to regard hon. Members below the Gangway opposite in their capacity as Representatives from Ireland, we are entitled, at any rate, to observe the character of the speeches they have made when not fettered by the responsibility of speaking in this House. That being so, I say their views of true liberty are not likely to be the same as ours. By true liberty we mean freedom of action under the 175 Constitutional Government of the Queen and the Government of the United Kingdom. We do not mean that English rule should be swept out of Ireland, and that the Queen's writ should no longer run in that country. That is the reason why we do not agree "with Gentlemen below the Gangway opposite. By true liberty we mean that gross wrongs shall not go unpunished; that grinding tyranny shall not oppress the honest, simply because the yare weak; and that law-abiding and peaceable tenants and tradesmen shall be allowed to go about the country without let or hindrance from persons who have only their own interests to serve. We consider it to be our duty to attain these ends, or to attempt to attain these ends; and whether we hold the position we now have the honour to fill, or whether we sit on the opposite side, our determination is to do our duty to the best of our power, and from that determination no taunts, no sneers, no prophecies of defeat, shall turn us aside for a single instant.
§ MR. PARNELL (Cork)
I beg to move the adjournment of the debate.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned." —(Mr. Parnell.)
§ THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH) (Strand, Westminster)
Of course, I shall not object to the adjournment of the debate; but I must observe that the hon. Member for Cork has an Amendment on the Paper which, I think, appeared first on Saturday morning, and I am, I think, not going beyond the fact when I say that it is the custom of Parliament, when such an Amendment appears on the Paper, that it should be moved at a somewhat earlier date than that which the hon. Member has chosen. I am now under the necessity of saying that I shall invite the House to-morrow to come to a decision on the Main Question before it. It is now the eighth day of the debate, on what is practically the Question before the House. Four days were occupied in asking the time of the House, and four days have been occupied in asking leave to introduce the Bill. Tomorrow will be the fifth day, making altogether nine days that will have been devoted practically to this one subject. I am sure the House will, therefore, 176 think that the time has come when a decision should be taken.
When, in the year 1846—[Laughter.] Do Gentlemen imagine that a precedent of the year 1846 is out of date? In the year 1846 the Government of Sir Robert Peel introduced a Coercion Bill, and upon the first reading of that Bill there was a debate of seven nights. Now, the closure is to be applied in this case after four nights' debate. [Cries of "Nine!"] I say most distinctly that there has been only four nights' debate on the first reading of this Bill, and that is the moderation which is to be employed on this occasion. That is to say, that the Parliamentary precedents of the past are to be disregarded. I observe, Sir, that the pretence that the opinion entertained by you was in every way to protect the minority in this House has been set aside. The Leader of the House has announced that he is going to close the debate to-morrow night.
§ MR. W. H. SMITH
here rose—[Cries of "Order!"]
§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
I do not wish to interfere with the right hon. Gentleman if he desires to make an explanation—whether he wishes to do so now or later on.
I only wish to correct a mistake into which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman has not intentionally fallen in attributing to me a power which I do not possess. I simply said that I should invite the House to come to a decision, and I do not think that that amounts to an expression of an intention on my part to close the debate.
Then I am very glad if I misunderstood the right hon. Gentleman. He does not mean to apply the closure to - morrow night, because he cannot apply the closure without the leave of the Speaker, though he has announced to-night that he is going to invite the House to come to a decision. Therefore, he has taken for granted the consent of the Speaker. [Cries of "Oh!"] How has he ascertained the consent of the Speaker is going to be given? Because, on the first application of this Rule, here we have the Leader of the House coming down on the fourth night of the debate and stating that he is going to do an act which without the consent of the Speaker he 177 cannot do. [An hon MEMBER: He can propose it if he likes.] I repeat that he cannot propose the closure without the leave of the Speaker, and if he is going to propose the clôture of the debate tomorrow night, he has openly assumed that he has got that leave. Now, we see what has become of the great Conservative safeguards to the introduction of the closure? All I can say is, that if the hon. Member for Cork chooses to demand the attention of the House to the condition of Ireland; if he chooses to ask that before this debate is closed, and before this Coercion Bill is passed, the House shall inquire into the state of Ireland, and the majority, by closing the debate, refuse that inquiry, then we shall see what has become of your Parliamentary system by which, under the Union, you manage the affairs of Ireland. After the description that has been given by right hon. Gentlemen opposite of the grave condition of Ireland, if the Government should say—"We have got a majority "—no; they have not got a majority, they borrow one—"and we will use that majority to refuse an inquiry into the general state of Ireland, as a condition precedent to passing a Coercion Bill," what a farce the government of Ireland is!What a farce the Union is!Perhaps the word "farce" is hardly sufficient—what a travesty your Union is!That would be a more appropriate phrase. There is another inquiry I should like to make. The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury has assumed the consent of the Speaker to the closure—
Order, order!I must point out that the Motion now before the House is one for the adjournment of the debate; and, further than that, I regard these constant references as to whether my assent has been obtained or not as utterly and entirely irregular. I think it fair to myself and just to the House to say that if any insinuation of that sort is made it is unworthy and it is untrue. No assent of mine has been asked or withheld. It rests entirely with the Speaker to-morrow night, if the Motion is made, either to give or withhold that assent.
Sir, I entirely assumed that that was so, and it is because I assumed that that was so that I condemned the language of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the 178 House (Mr. W. H. Smith). I hope it was not so intended, but it certainly was—
§ MR. R. G. C. MOWBRAY (Lancashire, Prestwich)
Sir, I beg to ask you, whether, after the ruling you have given— and given in the most decided way—any further allusion to this matter is irrelevant to the issue before the House?
I entertained the hope that the discussion on this point would cease. I entirely acquit the right hon. Gentleman (Sir William Harcourt) of making any unfair allusion; but the words of the right hon. Gentleman were open to the inference drawn from them, and I thought it right to repudiate it.
Sir, I have no intention to pursue this matter any further, except to point out that you, Sir, have very kindly indicated that in your opinion I had not made any imputation or insinuation. I had criticized the language of the Leader of the House, which I think I had a right to do. Now, Sir, there is another point upon which I think we ought to have some explanation; and that is, when the House does come to a decision on the first reading of the Bill, what interval the Government propose should take place between the first and second readings? When I was responsible for introducing a Coercion Bill in 1882, it was immediately after the murders in the Phoenix Park. The matter was extremely urgent; and, naturally, the Government of the day made the demand at the earliest moment that they thought was possible or proper under the circumstances. The interval which I proposed should elapse between the granting of leave to introduce the Bill and the second reading was a week. I asked leave to introduce the Bill on a Thursday, and leave was given—[An hon. MEMBER: Immediately.] Yes; I hope hon. Gentlemen will not invite me to go into a comparison between the circumstances of that time and the present, because it would not be regular on this Motion. I am justified in saying that the circumstances at that time were extremely urgent. The House was extremely unanimous, and the dissent was very small in numbers; but the Government did not think it justifiable to ask for a second reading at a less interval than that of a week. I want to know, under these circumstances, what is the proposal the Government mean to make; 179 what time they mean to give to the House and to the country, before proposing the second reading of the Bill, to consider the clauses of the Bill in print? The hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General (Sir Richard Webster) has challenged us to-night to examine the clauses, and it is quite plain that such an interval should be allowed between the first and second readings as will admit of a proper examination of the clauses being made.
A request has been made to me, which I think it right to answer. I do not wish to refer to any of the questions in dispute between the right hon. Gentleman (Sir William Harcourt) and myself, but simply to say that, as regards the second reading of the Bill, we propose to follow the precedent that was set by the Government of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian in 1881. If the Bill is read a first time to-morrow night we shall put it down for a second reading on Monday.
§ MR. JOHN MORLEY (Newcastle-on-Tyne)
Well, Mr. Speaker, I think we can have no hesitation in saying that we shall oppose that proposal with all the legitimate means at our command. The Bill to which the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. H. Smith) refers was in effect, a Bill of a single clause. This Bill is a Bill abounding, as every Member of the House admits, in difficult, intricate, and technical matters. I will mention another point which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will at once recognize the force of. As soon as the Bill is printed it must be sent to the country most immediately concerned. Are we going to be asked to read the Bill a second time before we have had an opportunity of consulting our legal friends and others in Ireland in respect to the Bill? [Laughter.] Hon. Members laugh at the idea of a Bill of this kind being submitted to the examination of legal authorities on the spot. I submit that a more unjustifiable proposition than that the right hon. Gentleman has just made was never made in this House. Here is a Bill practically suspending trial by jury, one of the most important branches of ordinary civil life—[An hon. MEMBER: Forever.]—yes; for ever. We are to receive it from the printers, if they are tolerably expeditious, on Saturday morning, and we are to read it a second time 180 on Monday afternoon. Sir, we shall resist that proposal.
§ MR. PARNELL
The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House (Mr. W. H. Smith), while assenting to the Motion for the adjournment of the debate—
MR. SPEAKEE
I must point out that the hon. Gentleman has already spoken.
I submit to you, Sir, that I spoke upon the Main Question before the House. It is well known that a Member who moves the adjournment of the debate is speaking technically on the Main Question until his Motion has been put from the Chair.
The hon. Member cannot, in the circumstances, speak twice; but if the House likes to grant its indulgence to him, he may, no doubt, address it again.
I think the House might very reasonably grant me its indulgence, looking at the position the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. H. Smith) has placed me in consequence of the announcement he has just made. If I understand him aright, he intends to ask the House to apply the closure upon the debate on my Amendment tomorrow evening. That is what I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say, and that belief is confirmed by the report of some proceedings which took place at a meeting of the Party of the right hon. Gentleman this afternoon. According to a report—apparently an authorized report—which has been supplied to the newspapers by the two Press Associations the right hon. Gentleman announced to his Party— That the decision must be taken tomorrow even if the closure was to be put in force, both on Mr. Parnell's Amendment and the first reading, and he, therefore, trusted the supporters of the Government would be in their places. Now, I think the House is entitled at the earliest opportunity to receive as much information as the right hon. Gentleman gave to the meeting of his supporters this afternoon. In view of the Amendment of which I have given Notice and of the debate which may take place upon it, the House is entitled to know whether the statements made in the evening newspapers with regard to the intentions of the right hon. Gentleman are correct or not. We ought to 181 know upon what conditions we are to go into this debate to-morrow night. If it be true that the right hon. Gentleman has made up his mind to apply for the closure to-morrow night, I myself should have very carefully to consider in the interval between now and the next Sitting of the House whether I should move my Amendment and go into the debate with the rope of closure round my neck. The right hon. Gentleman has relied upon precedent. He has said that, according to precedent, my Amendment should have been moved at an earlier date. That is undoubtedly so, but I will also say, Mr. Speaker, that, according to the precedent of the House, the information which the Government have only just vouchsafed in another place to-night should have been given at an earlier date. It was impossible for me to ask the House to go into a debate upon the state of Ireland without having the full programme of Her Majesty's Government with regard to that country in my possession. The late Mr. Maguire, who moved the Motion of which I have also given Notice, did not move that Motion until Her Majesty's Government of that day had announced their full intentions, and until he had all the facts in his possession which it was necessary for him to have, and which it was necessary for the House to have before it came to a decision. It would have been utterly impossible for me to have moved this Amendment at an earlier date—it was impossible for me to move my Amendment until we received the information which has been given to-night in another place. That is my answer to the right hon. Gentleman. If there has been delay in the moving of this Amendment the fault rests on his shoulders and not on mine, because he has disregarded the precedents set by other Governments in important matters of this kind. Now, I must press for a plain answer to a plain question. As the right hon. Gentleman has alluded to the subject of closure, we are entitled to know whether the report of his speech to his followers is a correct one. I submit that, as the proposed Mover of an Amendment for which there is high Parliamentary precedent and sanction, I should be placed in the same position of advantage that the right hon. Gentleman placed his own followers at an earlier period of the day. 182 I beg to remind the right hon. Gentleman that on a former occasion when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian called together a meeting of his followers and announced to them an important decision in regard to the Home Rule Bill which was then under discussion, and when he was challenged the very same evening in the House of Commons to state what had taken place at the meeting, he felt compelled to make an explicit declaration.
I can only answer the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Parnell) by the indulgence of the House. Assuming that is extended to me, I may state most distinctly, in the presence of many hon. Gentlemen who were present at the meeting to-day, that I made no reference whatever to the closure. I expressed the hope that the Division would be taken to-morrow night; but I made no reference whatever to closure.
§ Question put, and agreed to.
§ Debate further adjourned till To-morrow.
Back to ORDER OF THE BAY.
Forward to METROPOLITAN OPEN SPACES ACT (1881) EXTENSION BILL.— [BILL 171.]
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APPNA Peds
Bringing Together Pediatricians & Pediatric Specialists of Pakistani Descent of North America
About APPNA Peds
You are here: Home / About APPNA Peds / Constitution and ByLaws
APPNA PEDS CONSTITUTION AND BYLAWS
Article I: Preamble
We, the Pediatric physicians of APPNA, i.e. Pediatrics specialists and subspecialists of Pakistani descent residing in North America, out of our conviction for our profession, do hereby proclaim the establishment of the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America, Peds Network. We aim to collectively engage in professional activities, support educational and intellectual pursuits, upgrade medical care pertaining to the pediatric patients and adolescents, in health and disease, and maintain high ethics striving for excellence in all our pursuits.
To this effect, we hereby set forth and enact the following laws governing the Association, which shall be binding on each one individually, and all of us collectively, until and unless properly amended by the provisions herein. So help us God. Ameen.
Enacted on the 15th day of August in the year two thousand and fifteen.
Secretary, Committee on CABL
Chair, Committee on CABL
Article II: Constitution
a. Name
The name of this organization shall be the Association of Pakistani-Descent Pediatricians of North America (APPNA Peds). Hereafter, it will be referred to as “The Association”.
b. Affiliations
The Association shall be an independent, not-for-profit, professional, and educational organization incorporated in the United States of America, and shall have no substantial political affiliations or activities.
c. Aims & Objectives
This Association is organized for educational and scientific purposes which will qualify as tax exempt organization under Section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (or the corresponding provision of any future United States Internal Revenue Service Law).
The other aims shall be:
to foster scientific development and education in fields related to Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine for the purpose of improving the quality of medicine and delivery of better health care, without regard to religion, race, color, creed, gender or age
to assist medical students, and physicians in orientation and adjustment at initiation and completion of their training in the fields related to Pediatrics
to institute ways and means to cooperate with other similar organizations in North America, Pakistan and at related forums in other parts of the world
to encourage medical education and delivery of better health care in above described fields in Pakistan, specifically by arranging donations of medical literature, medical supplies, and by arranging lecture tours, medical conferences, and seminars in Pakistan
to participate in medical relief and other charitable activities both in Pakistan and in North America
to inform and educate decision makers about issues facing the medical community in general and Pakistani-American physicians in these fields in particular
d. Membership
The membership of the Association shall be of the following categories: Active (Yearly and Annual), Affiliate, Honorary, Overseas and Trainee (Resident/Fellows). Unless otherwise specified in the Bylaws, active members shall be entitled to all privileges in the Association including the right to vote and hold office. Honorary, Affiliate, Overseas and Trainee members may be entitled to the privileges of the Association, but shall not vote or hold office in the Executive Committee.
However, Honorary members may be elected as members of the Board of Trustees. The rule to elect Honorary members will be applicable after three years of the founding of APPNA Peds; during the interim, Honorary members may be nominated by the Executive Committee as Trustees.
Article III: Internal Structure
a. General Body
i. It shall consist of duly registered members of the Association, according to the provisions provided herein.
ii. This will be the supreme authority of the Association wielding absolute power on the conduct of affairs of the Association. It, however, for the smoother running of its affairs, will delegate this authority to various components as outlined herein.
iii. All actions taken by an officer or a committee of the Association may be approved, rejected or amended by 50% or more members of this body.
b. Board Of Trustees
i. It shall act as the overseer and custodian of the Association.
ii. It shall consist of active members of the Association elected as prescribed in the Bylaws.
iii. It shall have the total control of all fixed assets and property of the Association.
iv. It will have the power over the President to veto his decisions and position. For that to happen, 50% or more of the General Body members will have to make an appeal to the Board.
c. Executive Committee
i. It shall consist of the President, Secretary, Treasurer and those members of the society that are involved in making executive decisions. These members will be appointed by the President.
ii. It shall keep an up-to-date directory of members.
iii. It shall be responsible for management of affairs of the Association.
iv. It shall propose the annual budget and plans to the Board of Trustees for approval.
d. Officers
i. Officers of the Association shall be the President, President-Elect, Immediate-Past President, Secretary, and the Treasurer.
ii. President, President-Elect, Secretary, and the Treasurer, shall be elected by the General Body through fair elections.
iii. Each officer of the Association shall maintain physical residence in North America during his/her tenure.
e. Executive Director
i. In addition to the elected officers of the Association, the Executive Committee may appoint an Executive Director of the Association for the efficient running of the Association.
ii. The Executive Director will be a member of the Association.
iii. The position of the Executive Director shall be for a period of up to a maximum of 5 years. The Executive Committee may extend the duration of office for a further period of 1-5 years, as necessary.
iv. The Executive Director may serve a maximum of 10 consecutive years.
v. The Executive Director supervises the working of the organization and assures smooth running of the Association.
f. Finance
i. Funds for meetings and expenses of the Association activities shall be financed by annual dues, special assessments, and voluntary contributions.
ii. Annual membership dues and assessments shall be fixed by the Executive Committee and approved by the General Body.
iii. Financial status of the Association shall be presented by the Treasurer to the General Body at the annual meeting.
iv. No part of the net earnings of the Association shall inure to the benefit or be distributed to its members, trustees, officers, or private persons, except that the corporation shall be authorized and empowered to pay reasonable compensation for services rendered. Notwithstanding any other provision of these activities, the Association shall not carry on any other activities not permitted to be carried on by an association exempt from Federal income tax under section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (or the corresponding provision of any future United States Internal Revenue Code or by an association whose contributions are deductible under section 170 (c) (2) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, or the corresponding provision of any future United States Internal Revenue Code).
g. Bylaws
i. The Association shall adopt Bylaws for the conduct of its affairs in harmony with this Constitution.
ii. The Bylaws may not restrict or alter any proviso defined in this Constitution.
iii. Robert’s Rules of Order shall be adopted for the conduct of the meetings.
iv. Amendments
• Amendments to this Constitution may be initiated by a minimum of ten (10) members of the Association in good standing.
• The amendments thus initiated shall be referred to the Constitution and Bylaws Committee, which shall report to the Board within 120 days with their recommendations.
• These amendments will be circulated to the General Body members at least 30 days in advance of the annual General Body meeting for a vote.
• An amendment shall be approved only when it receives 50% of votes of total active membership.
• If an amendment fails to be acted upon in a General Body meeting for lack of quorum, a mailed ballot shall be sent to the general membership. The amendment(s) shall become effective immediately upon adoption.
v. Dissolution
• No proposal for dissolution of the Association shall be considered unless recommended by the majority of the Trustees and after four (4) weeks’ notice in writing has been given to each member in good standing. The Association shall not be dissolved if 5% or more of the members in good standing or majority of the Trustees dissent.
• Upon dissolution of the Association, the Board of Trustees shall, after paying or making provision for payment of all of the liabilities of the Association, dispose of all of the assets of the Association exclusively for the purposes of the Association in such manner, or to such organization or organizations organized and operated exclusively for charitable, educational, religious, or scientific purposes as shall at the time qualify as an exempt organization or organizations under section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (or the corresponding provision of any future United States Internal Revenue Code), as the Board of Trustees shall determine. Any such assets not disposed of shall be disposed of by the Court of Common Pleas of the county in which the principal office of the Association is then located, exclusively for such purposes or such organization or organizations, as the said Court shall determine, which are organized and operated exclusively for such purposes.
Article IV: Bylaws
a. Address
i. The Executive Committee shall fix the address of the Association.
ii. The billing address of the Association may differ from that of the Central Office of APPNA.
b. Memberships
i. As used in these Bylaws, except as otherwise herein expressly qualified, the term “physician” means “doctor of medicine” or “doctor of osteopathy” engaged in the field of Pediatrics.
ii. There shall be no discrimination on the basis of religion, gender, age, or ethnic origin.
iii. Membership will be conferred by the Secretary of the Association.
iv. Annual dues will be valid for a period of one year from the date payment was received by APPNA Peds.
v. Membership in the Association will be terminated for a conviction by any law enforcing agency or a disciplinary action by a board of Medical Examiners.
vi. The Board of Trustees may reinstate suspended membership at the recommendations of the President or Executive Committee on removal of charges and/or disciplinary action.
vii. Active Members
• Active membership in APPNA Peds shall be open to any physician of Pakistani descent who has graduated from a recognized medical, osteopathic school in Pakistan or the United States of America and Canada or who has graduated from a WHO recognized institution anywhere in the world who is working in the field of Pediatrics.
• To be eligible for active membership in the Association, a physician must hold an un-revoked license in North America and/or involved in Academics, Medical Research or engaged in any field of Pediatrics related diseases in North America, and complies with all provisions of the constitution and the Bylaws of this Association.
• Active members shall must be active member of APPNA and residing in North America.
• Any active member of the Association, on payment of ten (10) years’ of current annual dues in one lump sum or in desired installments, making full payment within one year may be eligible for Lifetime Membership in the Association.
• Lifetime members will be exempt from paying registration fees at meetings of the Association held in the Continental United States and Canada.
• Board of Trustees may exempt dues of any active member when in their opinion payment of such dues are hardship upon a member.
viii. Honorary Members
• The Association may elect as an honorary member any person distinguished for services or attainments in medicine or the allied sciences, or who has rendered other services of unusual value to the Association or humanity.
ix. Affiliate Members
• The Association may elect to affiliate membership professionals involved in health care services such as Internal Medicine or Family Medicine.
• Affiliate members may serve on chair committees or task forces of the Association and participate in all of its activities.
• They shall not have the right to vote or hold office of President, Secretary or Treasurer in the Association. They can however become members of committees.
x. Trainee Members
• Any Resident of Pakistani descent currently enrolled in a Pediatric or Medicine/Pediatrics Residency or Fellowship program in North America may be admitted to the Association.
• They will pay minimal annual dues as determined by the Executive Committee.
• They will have no right to vote or hold office in the Association.
• They will not be able to become Lifetime members until they finish their training.
xi. Overseas Members
• Any Overseas Physician working in Pediatrics can become a paid member of the Association. The physician must have passed a Board examination in Pediatrics/Internal Medicine Pediatrics/Pediatric Specialty in the US. They can become Annual or Lifetime members.
c. Dues and Assessments
i. Annual Dues
• Dues as determined by the Executive Committee are as follows:
▪Annual Dues: $25 (active, overseas, affiliate members)
$5 (trainee members)
▪Lifetime: $250 (active, overseas, affiliate members)
• Annual dues will be valid for a period of one year from the date payment was received by APPNA Peds.
ii. Arrears
• Any member whose dues are not paid by 4 weeks prior to the Annual Meeting will be considered in arrears and will not be eligible to hold office in the Association that year.
iii. Assessments
• The Board of Trustees may from time to time make special assessments.
d. General Meetings
i. Determination of Time and Place
• During each annual session, the Association may hold one or more general meetings.
• The Executive Committee shall determine the number and times of these general meetings.
• Such general meetings shall be presided over by the President, or, in his absence, by the President-elect.
ii. Actions
• At any general meeting of this Association, the membership may direct the Executive Committee to appoint committees or commissions for scientific, cultural, and social investigations of special interest and importance to the profession and to the public.
• Such investigations and reports shall not become official actions or expressions of this Association until so approved by the Board of Trustees.
iii. Quorum
• Presence of one third of the voting members of the Association shall constitute a quorum.
• Presence of at least 50% of the voting membership will constitute the required quorum to reject an action taken by the Executive Committee or the Board of Trustees.
• A simple majority of those present will be required for adoption of a resolution.
e. Board of Trustees
i. Composition
• The Board shall be composed of three (3) members of the Association.
• All trustees shall reside in North America during their term of office.
• Any trustee may be involved in any committee of the Association and may chair only a special committee at the request of the Executive Committee and/or the Board.
ii. Qualifications
• To be included in the BOT, a member of the Association should have been an Active member or Honorary member for three (3) consecutive years. This rule will be applicable after five years of the founding of APPNA Peds.
iii. Term of Office
• Each member of the Board shall act as a Trustee for three (3) years.
• No Trustee shall be re-elected to the Board at the end of second term, unless decided by the majority of the General Body.
• The term of office shall begin at the end of Annual Meeting and end with the Annual Meeting of following year.
• The President shall serve as a Trustee following the expiration of his/her term of office as Immediate Past President.
• Upon completion of his/her term of service as a Trustee, the Executive Committee may nominate the member to be an Honorary Trustee. The Honorary Trustee may be invited by the President to attend a meeting of the Executive Committee or the Board of Trustees and to take part in deliberations but may not vote.
• A voting member of the Board, who fails to attend three consecutive regular meetings without informing the Executive Director and a valid excuse, after review by the BOT, may be removed from the Board of Trustees. The BOT will provide opportunity to the affected member for clarification prior to such an action being taken.
iv. Officers
• The officers of the Board shall be a Chairperson and Secretary.
• Each shall be elected/nominated for one (1) year from amongst the Trustees at the annual meeting.
• Each may be re-elected as determined by the General Body.
• The Chairperson shall be the spokesman and the presiding officer of the Board and the Secretary shall act as the recording officer.
v. Meetings
• The Board shall meet at least annually at the time and place of the annual session of the Association.
• It may hold any number of meetings as the Trustees may determine.
• The Board may be called into session by the Chairperson on his/her own or upon the request of the other Trustees or when a petition is filed or appears to be filed for dissolution of the Association.
• The purpose of a session shall be stated in the notice of call and no other business shall be transacted.
• Only a Trustee shall introduce a resolution at the meeting of the Board.
vi. Powers and Duties
• As the overseers of the Association, the Board shall be the only authority to receive and discuss a proposal of dissolution of the Association.
• Recommendations of the Board, both the majority and minority views in case of dissent, shall be presented by the Chairperson or the Secretary of the Board at the next annual or emergency meeting of the Association.
• In the event of dissolution, the Board shall be the sole body to disperse the assets of the Association.
• If the majority of the Trustees’ dissent with the majority decision of the general membership, they may, after dispersing the assets, retain the papers of incorporation and may revive the Association.
• The Board of Trustees shall oversee long-range and strategic planning for the Association.
• The Board of Trustees shall receive annual reports of the Association’s accounts.
• All expenses more than $500 to be incurred shall require approval of the Board of Trustees.
f. Executive Committee (Officers)
i. Qualifications of Officers
• All officers of the Association must have been an active member of APPNA for three consecutive years. This rule of three years will be applicable after five years of the founding of the APPNA Peds.
• All officers shall reside in North America during their term of office.
ii. Term of Office
• Except as herein provided, all officers shall take office at the end of Annual Meeting and end with the Annual Meeting of following year.
iii. President
• The President shall be the general Executive Officer of the Association.
• He/she shall preside at all meetings of the Association.
• He/she shall deliver the President’s Address.
• He/she shall appoint necessary standing and special committees, when not otherwise provided for, in consultation with other members of the Executive Committee.
• He/she will fill vacancies thereon.
• He/she shall perform such other duties as are imposed upon him/her by the Constitution and Bylaws of this Association.
• The President will serve a term of office for one (1) year.
• He/she will hold the office of Immediate-past President at the conclusion of his/her term as President.
iv. President-elect
• The President-elect shall act for the President in his/her absence or disability.
• Should the office of President become vacant, the President-elect shall succeed to the Presidency for the un-expired term.
v. Secretary
• The Secretary shall be an active member of the Association.
• He/she shall be the recording officer of the Executive Committee and the General Body.
• He/she shall send out all official notices of meetings, committee appointments, certificates of election to office and special committee assignment.
• He/she shall receive and transmit to the Executive Committee the annual and other reports of officers and committees.
• He/she shall institute and correlate each new activity of the Association under the supervision of the Executive Committee and the BOT.
• He/she shall perform such other duties as are imposed upon him/her by the Constitution and Bylaws of the Association.
vi. Treasurer
• The Treasurer shall be the manager of all recurring funds of the Association.
• He/she shall be accountable, through the Board of Trustees, to the Association.
• In concert with the Executive Director, he/she:
▪ will collect all annual membership dues, assessments, donations and such monies as may be due to the Association
▪ shall deposit all funds received in an approved depository and distribute them upon order of the BOT
• The Board of Trustees may cause an annual audit of his/her accounts to be made by a certified public accountant.
• He/she shall present the annual report at the annual general meeting of the Association.
g. Committees of the Association
i. Standing Committees of the Association shall include:
• Nominations and Election Committee (NEC)
• Membership Services Committee
• Constitution and Bylaws Committee
• CME and Academics Committee
• Ethics and Grievance Committee
• Communication Committee
• Social and Welfare Committee
• Neonatology Committee
• Pediatric Cardiology Committee
ii. Chairs of all standing committees of the Association shall be appointed by the President in consultation with the Executive Committee. Each Committee shall have 1 to 3 members.
iii. The President and Executive Director shall be considered members of all Committees. Other members may be asked to attend/join a committee during the year as necessary.
iv. Ad-hoc committees may be appointed for special purposes by the President, Chairman of BOT and majority of trustees.
v. Special committees appointed by the President and the BOT Chair will be subject to the approval of the Executive Committee and the BOT respectively.
vi. Term of Ad-hoc committees appointed by the President will expire at the end of the term of the President.
vii. Term of these committees may however be extended by the new Executive Committee in consultation with the BOT to permit them to complete the assigned task.
viii. Term of Ad-hoc committees appointed by the BOT will be defined at the time of their inception.
h. Election
i. The Association aims to avoid a contest between the candidates. It wishes to use this process as an opportunity for the general membership to select the best amongst those proposed by the Association. As such, it hopes that candidates or their supporters in any form or manner – be regular or electronic mail or via telephone, will conduct NO electioneering.
ii. Eligibility to vote: for the purpose of elections, a voting member is one who has been an active Member for the last one year. This rule of one year will be applicable after two years of the founding of the APPNA Peds.
iii. The candidates for Elections shall be President, Secretary and Treasurer.
iv. No candidate shall be elected to an office of the Association for more than two consecutive terms.
v. The Nominations and Elections Committee shall conduct the Elections.
vi. The Secretary shall make a call to the membership by the first week of June of each year requesting nominations for the officers to be elected at the following Annual Meeting. This call for nominations shall last for two weeks.
vii. Qualification of nominees shall include, but are not limited to:
• To be eligible for holding an Office in the Association, the Candidate must have been an Active Member for one year or a Lifetime member for one year. The condition of one year will apply after two years of the founding of APPNA Peds.
viii. The candidate shall be required to accept the nomination unless a valid reason is provided.
ix. The Nominating Committee shall not nominate any of its members for elective office.
x. The NEC shall present to the President by the first week of July, at least one nominee for each elective office.
xi. The President shall confirm that the candidates proposed by the NEC are appropriate to lead the Association in the coming year. In case of rejection of the proposed candidates, the NEC shall have 3 days to present an alternative candidate.
xii. The names of these nominees shall be circulated to the members who are eligible to vote by email. This shall be no later than July 15th.
xiii. In addition to the slate submitted by the NEC, other nominations may be made by submitting such names to the Chair of the NEC in writing by July 1st.
xiv. To be eligible for this process, nominees shall be active members of the Association for at least one year or a Lifetime member for at least one year. The condition of one year shall be effective after two years of the founding of APPNA Peds.
xv. The nominee must be proposed by at least one active member. The nominee shall state that he/she accepts the nomination and will run for the office.
xvi. All nominations for Office shall state clearly what the Candidate has contributed to APPNA Peds, or has the potential to do so.
xvii. Only the NEC shall send the resume of the candidates to the eligible voters.
xviii. There shall be no campaigning by any candidate or their supporters, with or without their consent, real or implied. This includes telephone contact, postal mail or electronic mail etc. If the NEC after investigation feels that the spirit of this rule has been violated, the nominee shall not be included in the slate of candidates. The decision of the NEC shall be final in this matter.
xix. All candidates shall be required to sign an attestation (as noted in Appendix B below) to confirm that they agree with all the rules and regulations as are set forth by the NEC prior to any election process.
xx. The NEC shall decide on the mechanism of elections. This may include:
• The mechanism of voting: mail, electronic and other issues that may be necessary in the process of the elections.
• the timeline for different deadlines in the conduct of the election process
• if necessary, adjustments/extensions in these timelines
• other guidelines for the election process, as may be necessary
xxi. Re-election: In case of a tie, a run-off election will be conducted amongst the candidates receiving equal votes within one week after the Annual Meeting. No new names will be either sought nor will be added to the list of candidates indicated on the original ballot for the post under consideration.
xxii. The same committee that conducted the original election will conduct this re-election only to those members who were declared eligible voters at the time of the original election.
i. Vacancies
i. An office of the Association shall be declared vacant by the BOT whence an officer resigns, or leaves North America for a period longer than four (4) months without prearrangement with the Executive Committee, or becomes unable to carry out the duties of the office for reasons of health or otherwise.
ii. Should the office of the President become vacant, the President-elect shall succeed to the Presidency for the un-expired term.
iii. Should the office of President thereafter again become/remain vacant, if the un-expired term is less than six (6) months, the Immediate-past President will succeed to the Presidency.
iv. In case the un-expired term is longer than six (6) months, the BOT, at a regular or a special meeting, shall appoint from amongst the members of the Association. The BOT shall give preference to the other nominee of the NEC, if present on the original ballot, as the new President to serve until the completion of the un-expired term.
v. The vacancy of the office of President-elect will be filled in the following manner:
• Should the office of President-elect fall vacant within the first six (6) months of the term of this office, the vacancy will be filled by a special election to be directed by the President.
• If the duration of vacancy is less than six (6) months, the vacancy shall remain vacant.
vi. The Nominating Committee in this case will be chartered at the time of scheduled election to seek nominations for both the President and the President-elect for the next term.
vii. The candidate elected as President Elect shall assume the office of President on completion of the term of the incumbent President.
viii. Should the offices of Secretary and Treasurer become vacant, the BOT shall fill these posts from amongst the members of the Association. The BOT shall give preference to the other nominees of the NEC, if present on the original ballot, as the new Secretary and Treasurer to serve until the completion of the un-expired term. The Association aims to avoid a contest between the candidates. It wishes to use this process as an opportunity for the general membership to select the best amongst those proposed by the Association. As such, it hopes that candidates or their supporters in any form or manner – be regular or electronic mail or via telephone, will conduct NO electioneering.
j. Referendum
i. Referendum at Association Meeting
• At any general or special meeting of this Association, the general body shall, by more than 50% vote of the voting members present, order a general referendum upon any question pertinent to the purposes and objectives of the Association, provided, however, that a quorum at such general or special meeting shall consist of not less than one third (1/3) of voting members of the Association who are in good standing.
ii. The general meeting of this Association can be called for a specific purpose by a petition to the BOT signed by one-fourth (1/4) of the active members in good standing.
k. Seal
The seal of the Association shall be a common seal. The power to change or renew the seal shall rest with the BOT.
l. An Emergency
When prompt speech or action is imperative, authority to speak or act in the name of this Association is vested in the Executive Committee.
m. Definitions of Session and Meeting
i. Session: A session shall mean all meetings at any one call
ii. Meeting: A meeting shall mean each separate convention at any one session.
n. Amendments
i. These Bylaws may be amended in accordance with the following procedures:
• Amendments may be proposed by ten (10) % of general membership or majority of Trustees.
• These proposals shall be submitted to the Constitution and Bylaws Committee.
• The Constitution and Bylaws Committee shall submit its recommendations to the BOT at least thirty (30) days before any Board meeting.
• Adoption of the amendment shall require the affirmative vote of 50% of the Board members eligible to vote and present at the said meeting.
Committees of the Association
a. Nomination and Elections Committee (NEC)
i. The NEC shall consist of one to three Active/Lifetime members of the Association.
ii. A Past President of the Association shall be appointed by the EC as the chair.
iii. Two Committee members are to be appointed by the Executive Committee. These shall be Active Members for at least 3 of the last 5 years and have served the Organization as an elected official or have chaired a Standing Committee. These time conditions will apply five years after the founding of APPNA Peds.
iv. One Committee member may be chosen by the President from amongst the members of the BOT.
v. A committee member may serve on the NEC for a maximum of five consecutive terms. In special circumstances, the Executive Committee may request a committee member to remain on the NEC for an additional 3-5 years.
b. Membership Services Committee (MSC)
i. The Membership Committee shall be responsible for development of programs for enrollment and retention of members.
ii. This Committee will develop and organize a membership benefits package to make membership in the organization attractive for the Pakistani physicians.
iii. This Committee will study the needs and the desires of the Pakistani physicians in general, and the membership in particular, and make appropriate recommendations to the BOT, so that Association programs can be adjusted to meet those needs and aspirations.
c. Constitution And Bylaws Committee (CABL)
i. This Committee will be responsible for reviewing and developing recommendations for amendments to the Constitution and Bylaws to keep the organizational structure and function responsive to the current needs.
ii. The Chairman of this committee will serve as a resource person to the organization at the time of the annual, as well as the regional fall and spring meetings.
iii. The Committee shall organize educational programs for the leadership of the Association regarding parliamentary procedure and conduct of meetings, etc.
d. Continuing Medical Education and Academics Committee (CME)
i. This Committee shall be responsible for overseeing all major research, educational and scientific affairs and activities of the organization. This will include, but not be limited to organization of the scientific sessions and educational programs at the time of the annual, as well as regional winter meetings.
ii. It will serve as a resource organization to the various chapters for organizing their scientific educational program.
iii. It will be responsible for overseeing and developing the scientific sessions of the Association’s meeting in Pakistan.
iv. The Committee will also help develop programs of research and education in Pakistan in addition to the sessions conducted at the winter meetings.
v. This Committee will develop a network of Pakistani physicians involved in academic activities.
vi. This Committee will serve as a resource to the Physicians-in-Training, nurses and technicians providing them guidance and counseling and organize mentor group to support them.
vii. The Committee will also develop means and mechanisms to recognize and honor physicians, nurses and technicians of Pakistani origin, who have achieved academic excellence in this country at the time of the annual and regional meetings.
e. Ethics and Grievance Committee (EGC)
i. The Committee will receive and review and give an opinion on all grievances brought forward by any member of the Association.
ii. This Committee will also review and make recommendations to the Executive Committee and the Board regarding any question of ethical conduct that may be raised about any member of the Association.
iii. The Committee will develop guidelines, policies and procedures regarding the performance of above functions and insuring the rights of each member and proper due process and present these guidelines to the Board for approval, rejection or modification of their recommendations.
f. Communication Committee (CC)
i. This Committee will be responsible for all publications of the Association including newsletter, list serve on the Internet and other publications that the Executive Committee or the BOT may decide to publish. Its chair will be moderator of the list serve.
ii. The Committee will develop mechanisms and raise funds to support publications of the Association so that they become at least a budget neutral project.
iii. The Committee will endeavor to publish a newsletter and a journal that is published regularly including news about and of interest to members of the Association and review articles and/or medical research papers.
g. Social and Welfare Committee (SWC)
i. This committee will raise funds and material goods for charitable purposes in accordance with accepted ethical methods used by various national and international charitable organizations.
ii. This committee will disburse the available funds and material goods to the needy individuals, their families and appropriate institutions and organizations.
h. Neonatology Committee
i. This committee will plan to reduce perinatal mortality in Pakistan by gathering neonatologists working in North America, holding meetings with neonatologists based in Pakistan and adopt measures to reduce mortality at hospital, district and village level.
i. Pediatric Cardiology Committee
i. This committee will plan on improving and expanding pediatric cardiac surgery facilities in Pakistan.
Candidate Attestation
Those candidates who wish to be nominated for an elected post and are eligible to participate in the election process shall be required to sign the following attestation:
“I agree to the rules and regulations as set forth by the Nomination and Election Committee of APPNA Peds. If myself, or any person on my behalf, with or without my knowledge or consent, conducts any activity that is against the spirit of the rules and regulations set forth by the NEC, and is confirmed by the NEC, I shall be considered as ineligible to participate in the elections. All decisions of the NEC shall be considered binding on me and their decision shall be final.”
Membership matters – it’s all about pride!
Membership is one of the simplest, most meaningful and most affordable ways for Pakistani pediatricians to demonstrate their pride in being part of the strongest specialty network of APPNA. Sign up today!
© 2015 – 2019 | Association of Pakistani-Descent Pediatricians of North America | All Rights Reserved
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Triad Jobless Rates Ends 2017 at 4.4 percent by Richard Craver- Winston Salem Journal Feb. 1, 2018
Triad jobless rate ends 2017 at 4.4 percent
By Richard Craver Winston-Salem Journal
The Triad job market ended 2017 slightly better than it began with a December jobless rate of 4.4 percent, the N.C. Commerce Department reported Thursday.
The rate was 4.7 percent in December 2016. It reached an 11½-year low of 4 percent in September.
As typical for December, the rate drop from 4.5 percent in November came from a slight uptick in seasonal retail jobs that was somewhat offset by a decline in professional and business services, and leisure and hospitality jobs.
Michael Walden, an economics professor at N.C. State University, said there were two main economic factors in play in the Triad and state — a recent pullback in building permits and a double-digit increase in initial jobless claims.
There was a 7,151 decline in the Triad workforce from November to December to 800,673, while those listed as unemployed increased by 1,158 to 35,054.
Economists had projected for months that the recent jobless rate decrease would encourage individuals, particularly those with limited skills, to make another effort at finding work while employers have been struggling to find workers.
Individuals who drop out of the labor market are not counted as unemployed by the U.S. Labor Department.
The labor force data does not specify how many workers are full time, temporary or part time; how many jobs people are working; or if they are underemployed for their job skills.
A rate compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — the U6 index — includes those categories. The U6 index rate for North Carolina was 8.2 percent, compared with 8.1 percent nationally, both on Dec. 31.
The Winston-Salem MSA’s jobless rate went from 4.2 percent from 4.3 percent in November. The rate was 4.6 percent in December 2016.
Eight counties in the Triad and Northwest N.C. had rate increases. Forsyth County dropped from 4.4 percent to 4.4 percent.
The Winston-Salem MSA had a net gain of 600 jobs from November to December, including 500 jobs in the trade, transportation and utilities sector and 400 in education and health services.
Those gains were offset partially by a loss of 500 jobs in leisure and hospitality services.
There was a net gain of 2,000 jobs year over year, led by 1,600 in education and health services, and 900 in professional and business services. There was a loss of 900 manufacturing and 600 trade, transportation and utilities jobs.
Patrick McHugh, policy analyst with left-leaning N.C. Budget & Tax Center, said the lower retail hiring numbers is likely “a signal that automation and online sales are eating into the holiday seasonable employment.”
“Even though consumers were in a mood to spend around the holiday season, it clearly did not translate into a large employment bump in North Carolina.
“While it is too early to say with certainty, this could signal that a continued shift to online commerce and automation is depressing the need for seasonal employees to meet the holiday rush of demand,” McHugh said.
Economists traditionally have considered an unemployment rate of 5 percent as full employment, meaning that everyone who wants a job has one, employers have the skilled workers they need and there is limited inflationary pressure on wages.
The recent rate declines have Walden saying that the “full employment rate” may need to be adjusted to between 3.5 percent and 4 percent.
Yet most economists say the job market remains challenging for applicants lacking technology and other specialized skills necessary to land advanced manufacturing jobs.
Some economists and analysts stress that the state’s employment recovery has been felt mostly in five urban counties, particularly in Charlotte and the Triangle, where 45 percent of the net gain of jobs since February 2013 has occurred.
The jobless rate for the Triangle dropped from 4 percent in November to 3.9 percent, while the Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia MSA slid from 4.3 percent to 4.2 percent.
“North Carolina’s current rate (of 4.5 percent) is still well below the 5.2 percent rate reported one year ago, and the number of people employed grew by more than 63,000 over the course of the year,” said Mitch Kokai, policy analyst with Libertarian think tank John Locke Foundation.
“We also need to remember that an unemployment rate can go up when more people are enticed into our job market — either because they have restarted a job search or because they’ve moved here from other places.”
“Still, it will be important to watch the numbers going forward to see if North Carolina’s picture looks substantially different from the national numbers in the months ahead,” he said.
website(3/2/2018@11:57am)
http://www.journalnow.com/business/triad-jobless-rate-ends-at-percent/article_703d0a64-be32-596b-b33f-5a315944d029.html
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Pinmonkey
Alternative romanticism
by James M. Manheim
The buzz in Nashville is that Pinmonkey may be the first country act from the alternative side to break through to the mainstream. Of course, the reason may be that they're not really all that alternative, despite the name. Whereas the band's compatriots are often drawn to country music for its themes of obsession and self-destruction, Pinmonkey cultivates a sound that's all about beauty and romanticism.
What strikes you first is the passionate tenor voice of lead singer Michael Reynolds, so unlike the deadpan approach of Gillian Welch or the quirky downbeat gloom of the Bad Livers' Danny Barnes. Reynolds lands vocally in a great spot halfway between bluegrass high tenor and middle-of-the-road balladeer, with piercing tremolo rather than soothing vibrato as its primary ornament of intensification, and yet a sweetness that brings British Invasion pop to mind. His voice makes Pinmonkey's music seem familiar on the second hearing, and sometimes on the first.
The sound that backs Reynolds is based on the combination of electric guitar shadings with splashes of acoustic color that defines alt-country, but band members also contribute gentle harmonies that, for anyone who lived through the 1970s, will evoke the Eagles. It may seem strange, even with the reuse-and-recycle aesthetic of today's music, that soft country-rock of the 1970s should have come around again once more, but there is certainly a good deal of it in Pinmonkey's carefully smoothed-out sound.
What makes it work is its unselfconscious quality; Pinmonkey's music is simple and from the heart, and it adopts classic country archetypes trains, the devil woman, the cheap motel, the hometown with an ease that once again recalls the best of 1970s country-rock. The group's debut CD actually contains quite a variety of song types. There's a pleasantly motorlike cover of the Carter Family's "Lonesome Pine Special," a terrific new neoclassic country piece from Gillian Welch's pen called "Two Days from Knowing," several romantic creations by mainline Nashville writers, and four originals. Reynolds attacks each with equal energy and commitment, and the group's music hangs together as a collection both varied and coherent. It's hard to imagine that any other alternative performers could have pulled off the slow homecoming ballad "Augusta," or would even have tried. But when Reynolds sings, "Oh, Augusta, take me in / 'Cause I never can seem to win," it's believable and refreshing.
Pinmonkey returns to the Ark on Sunday, May 19.
[Originally published in May, 2002.]
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Adapted from ADMMR Circular 59, Mining Scams (1995) by Michael N. Greeley
"A time-honored method to bilk the public of millions of dollars is the ubiquitous mining swindle. Since an unusually rich ore deposit, or bonanza, has historically produced enormous profits for the developer, many of us believe that we too, like the '49ers', can strike it rich."
Money can be made in mining but we have a responsibility to urge the public to exercise prudence in its investment. Too many people have lost their hard-earned savings on an ill-advised mineral scheme. Archives are full of outrageous examples of mining scams and swindles in which the only beneficiary was a glib entrepreneur with unbounded optimism. In most cases, he disappeared before his investors realized what happened.
When making an investment in any mineral enterprise, there are a number of factors or key features to consider. A checklist of significant considerations follows.
Sampling and Assaying
Mining Method
Mill Site
Permitting and Reports
Profit Distribution
Sequence of Development
Professional Evaluation
Prerequisite to the investment in the development of a mineral deposit is legal access to the resource. The potential investor should know who ultimately owns or administers the subject mineral property and commodity. The property may be controlled by the State, Federal Government, Indian tribe, or a private individual or organization. Moreover, jurisdiction over the land surface may be separate from the jurisdiction of the underlying mineral resource. Where ownership or control of the mineral rights is severed from the surface rights, obvious legal problems can arise.
If a mining claim or prospecting permit for minerals is not legitimate, the money invested is wasted from the beginning. In addition, the investor should understand basic differences between leasable and locatable minerals and lode and placer deposits. These classifications determine the type of mining agreement and/or claim established on the resource. Very specific requirements must be met and procedures followed to gain the right to develop a mineral deposit. Furthermore, encumbrances against the deposit, though legal, may be detrimental to its development.
Typical examples of cloudy or illegal title to a mineral deposit include oversized claims, inappropriate claim designation and improper filing, failure to perform annual assessment or to file affidavits of labor, or location of claims on a privately held mineral estate. The investor should establish exactly what rights he has to the property in question and what conditions are imposed before he spends one penny on exploration or development.
Perhaps the next major consideration in evaluating a mineral investment is the sample and assay data. One sample does not make a mine. A person who brings a rock that contains two ounces of gold per ton, to an investor, may be carrying the entire mine in his hand. One such high-grade ore specimen is not representative of the deposit. Many samples, commonly numbering in the thousands, are required to give a reasonably accurate measure of the tenor, or quality, and tonnage of the ore.
Depending on the configuration and geologic setting of a mineral deposit, there are recommended scientific procedures to follow and methods to use to properly sample the mineralization. The investor should be satisfied that the samples referred to by the mine promoter were collected specifically from the property of interest and also that they were collected in a proper way. The sampling method should be adequately described and each sample site precisely located, preferably on a map.
It is important not to forget the practice of deliberately salting, or adulterating, samples. Ingenious ways have been devised to fraudulently enhance the grade of samples either before or after they are collected, regardless of the method of collection. The temptation to salt is particularly appealing when dealing with a mineral of high unit-value such as diamond or gold.
Assaying
Once collected the samples must be properly prepared and assayed. In general, the final sample preparation and assay should be done by qualified laboratories. Assayers registered in Arizona are generally familiar with different types of ore and are knowledgeable about the proper method to test for particular metals or other components.
All ores are amenable to rigid testing and comments to the effect that the ore is unassayable are simple not true. Statements belittling the methods of registered assayers, complaining for example that they never report all the gold, are immediately suspect. Modern copying devices also make it a rather simple procedure to later falsify the assayer's report. If there is any question, of course, the sample pulps (unused prepared portion) may be sent to another lab for comparison.
Spectrographic analyses do not provide an accurate test of mineral samples. This type of analysis, though relatively inexpensive and useful in providing a list of components in a sample, does not yield a reliable, quantitative measure of tenor. Often a billion- or trillion-dollar "ore body" is created by simply multiplying the generalized amount of each of the metals listed in a spectrographic analysis by their current market price. An ore body, however, is not that simple. At this time, there is no commercially acceptable process known whereby each element can be recovered from a deposit.
A degree of skepticism should also be reserved for ores said to contain uncommon metals or minerals. Because of their rarity, these substances may command a very high price and are therefore extremely attractive to the investor. The platinum-group metals including platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, and osmium, are the darlings of the swindler. Considering their high unit-value, even minute amounts of these metals appear to be a reasonably good bet to the innocent investor.
The problem here is usually the grade or tonnage, or a combination of both. The amount of platinum, for example, is generally too low to realistically consider extraction, or the tonnage is almost limited to a hand specimen. As a primary ore, platinum has never been mined in Arizona; its only production has come from trace amounts recovered in the final stage of refining copper ores. The geologic environment of Arizona, diverse as it is, does not encourage the search for platinum-group metals, graphite, cobalt, nickel, bauxite, diamonds, and a number of other commodities.
As plans are drawn to mine an ore deposit, proposals are made which frequently are misinformed and ill-advised. There are innumerable examples of deep shafts and long adits driven to nowhere. Many of these openings have been cut at great expense and with little or no evidence to suggest they would meet success.
An example of a mining scheme which can be described at best as ignorant was recently sold to a number of investors in the Chemehuevis Placer District, near Lake Havasu City, Arizona. The plan called for an investor to purchase a plot of ground 60 x 120 feet in size from which 8,000 cubic yards of unconsolidated gold-bearing gravel would be dug and treated. In order to recover 8,000 cubic yards of gravel from this plot, the excavation would require vertical walls, 30 feet deep!
Since loose gravel cannot be mined at a slope exceeding its natural angle of repose, approximately 45 degrees, the maximum amount of material that an investor could ideally and safely expect to obtain from an isolated parcel is about 62 percent of the total, or 5,000 cubic yards. No attempt was made to explain to the purchaser that, in this case, after an investment of $50,000 he would actually get less than two-thirds of what he paid for. This scenario illustrates one catch to a sales promotion involving fractional interests in a mineral property. The entire land package, comprised of all individually- owned parcels, must be mined together to insure each investor's return.
An interesting twist to this story is the statement made later by the developer that only 40 percent of the aggregate was gold-bearing. Consequently the investor was now entitled to 20,000 cubic yards of gravel (to yield 8,000 cubic yards of gold-bearing material) from his plot. Since 5,000 yards was the maximum he could physically dig, this is truly adding insult to injury.
There is a tendency among many of us to want to build. We want others to see our accomplishments. To some degree this attitude explains why a mine tunnel is begun with little justification.
The same propensity for building might explain why a mineral processing mill is erected or a leaching facility is frequently constructed without any obvious sign of ore. Another reason these engineering marvels are installed is due to their impressiveness. The humming, turning, grinding, and screeching of equipment and the smoke and odors of a mine plant are exciting to the potential investor. He sees industry in action - his money at work - and profits just around the corner.
Unfortunately, however, he is commonly one of a multitude who has emptied his pockets for a pipe dream. With a paltry amount of ore stockpiled, a dump laden with debris, or an old mine map showing the "lost" ore body, the developer spends the last dime of every investor getting ready to treat the mineral-rich rock. The $500,000 mill, designed to treat 500 tons per day, mills nothing, and the dreams of many become a nightmare.
Even when good ore exists, the treatment facility is often poorly designed. Frequently its component parts are improperly matched or not sized adequately. Materials handling procedures are commonly cumbersome and energy intensive. An adequate supply of water may be lacking. Hazardous operating conditions may be present. These circumstances are a few costly examples that can shut a plant down abruptly.
The recovery process is in many cases a mystery to the investor. Technological methods vary according to the metal or mineral recovered. In addition there are many variants based on the size of the mineral component, its gangue association, its state of chemical alteration, the hardness and specific gravity of the ore, permeability of the ore, and a myriad of other factors.
The milling and metallurgical treatment of ores is comprised of both physical and chemical means of beneficiation. These processes though technically sound and well understood by the professional are frequently vague and confusing to the lay person. An investor not familiar with basic physical-chemical laws is easily misled.
Proprietary methods utilizing secret chemicals and "black box" techniques, therefore, are often praised as technological breakthroughs. According to the developer, these so-called miraculous inventions will convert formerly worthless rock to metal-rich ore or improve, manyfold, the recovery of a metal or other commodity that heretofore had been difficult to extract. One should exercise caution when evaluating such claims.
Developers often speak of 100 percent recovery. Complete extraction, however, of most constituents is essentially unknown over the long term. At the turn of the century a mining firm in Ajo built a giant retort into which ores were to be shoveled and melted. Spigots were tapped into the vessel at various locations and labeled copper, lead, zinc, gold, silver, etc. All the investor had to do, after he had helped finance the operation, was turn the spigot for the metal he desired. Understandably the entire operation fizzled.
In many cases difficult technical problems are oversimplified. The ill- informed investor is merely asked to retain faith in the management and to perhaps ante a bit more so that this "minor problem" can be speedily resolved.
A host of other factors should be evaluated by the prospective investor before spending money on a mine or a beneficiation plant. Proper permitting must be obtained at various stages of development from local, state, and federal authorities. In addition to routine reports required by certain government agencies, internal reports generated for management and for the investors should be factual, accurate, and timely.
On-site security should be adequate to protect expensive equipment and supplies as well as the mine or plant product. Of course appropriate security measures must be taken also whenever the product, especially a high-value material such as bullion, is transported from the treatment facility. Acceptable safety procedures must be implemented and must be adhered to rigidly from the start to finish of any operation. Even after termination of operations, it is imperative that hazardous materials be properly disposed of and unsafe conditions, such as open shafts, be resolved.
Proposed or actual marketing of the mine or mill product should be reviewed thoroughly by the investor. There may be assessed charges for further treatment of the product. There may be by-product credits returned to the miner. The investor should also be aware of the involvement of any intermediate sales agents and their remuneration.
Another obvious consideration is the distribution of profits. What liens, including ownership royalties, loan payments, and rental fees, must be deducted from the gross to determine the net profit? Are estimates of operating expenses and pro-forma statements realistic? The investor should be satisfied with the form of payment whether it is in cash, stock, or in-kind.
Like other high-risk investments, mine and mineral developments are often subjected to careful scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service. Beware of accelerated tax write-offs. Such an advantage was one of the attractions in the Chemehuevis Placer scam referred to earlier. Supposedly the investor would receive a $50,000 write-off on his tax statement the first year of his investment by merely paying an advance of $10,000 and signing a promissory note for an additional $40,000. (The prospectus projected within four years a net income, based on gold production, of $139,000.)
In this particular case, the courts apparently upheld an IRS ruling disallowing the tax deduction. Reportedly the original developers of this program, some $3 million richer, are now unavailable.
In every mineral development there is a logical sequence of events with which the enthusiastic, yet uninitiated, investor may be unfamiliar. Each project can be broken into phases, the completion of which can be evaluated before expending large sums of additional funds. There is no legitimate reason for throwing good money after bad. Classic examples exist which have expensive land being purchased on the basis of someone else's assays or a costly mill being constructed without proven ore.
Engineering reports are useful tools that will assist the mine developer and investor. Decisions to pursue a project into the next stage, and in a particular manner, will be made easier and more logically after consultation with the appropriate professional engineer, whether a geologist, mining engineer, or metallurgist. Other professional assistance such as financial and legal is generally warranted.
In general, professional evaluation and advice should be sought outside of the developing organization. Principals with the firm and other vested partners, though well intentioned, may write overly optimistic reports. Statements, for example, referring to the attractiveness of a deposit because of its close proximity to a famous producer or the historically proven improvement of ore grade with depth in the mining district may have the ring of authority but are often pure speculation. Such reports frequently speak glowingly of questionable assets that may be virtually worthless, e.g., raw mill sites, dilapidated buildings or sheds, and rusted, dismantled equipment. Past production records may be doctored, and projected production/cost data may be presented in an unrealistic manner. Profits are often inflated or guaranteed in such company-prepared prospectuses. It is recommended, therefore, that most professional advice be obtained from consultants who have no financial connection with the company principals, the property, the mineral technology to be employed, or any part of the proposed operation.
Regulatory Contacts
1801 California St. #4800
Arizona Board of Technical Registration
1110 W. Washington, suite 240
Arizona Corporation Commission
Securities Division
1300 W. Washington
Arizona Attorney General
Special Investigations Section
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Nikol Pashinyan presents preconditions for dialogue with authorities | ARMENPRESS Armenian News Agency
Nikol Pashinyan presents preconditions for dialogue with authorities
22:58, 20 April, 2018
YEREVAN, APRIL 20, ARMENPRESS. Head of “Yelk” parliamentary faction Nikol Pashinyan does not entirely deny negotiations with the authorities, but has a number of preconditions. “We say that it’s already late, the train has left but it does not mean we are not ready to hold any discussions”, ARMENPRESS reports Pashinyan as saying. He added that they are ready to discuss the resignation of the authorities and issues linked with that process.
Referring to their visions on future political developments, he introduced a number of points which were also about the demand of resignation of the Prime Minister, election of a new Prime Minister by the National Assembly, formation of a temporary government and holding new parliamentary elections.
“We are ready to negotiate over these points with the representatives of the RPA”, he said, adding that the new elections must be totally fair.
Nikol Pashinyan informed the protesters that on April 21 the actions of civil disobedience must be continued.
Following the rally, the protesters marched in the city center.
English –translator/editor: Tigran Sirekanyan
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Home » Products » Batman Original Production Cel from Batman Mask of the Phantasm
View cart “Livewire Original Production cel from Double Dose Superman Animated Series” has been added to your cart.
Batman Original Production Cel from Batman Mask of the Phantasm
Bruce Timm Original and Limited Edition Art
Batman: The Animated Series Original and Limited Edition Art (1992-1995), DC Universe Original and Limited Edition Art
Batman Original and Limited Edition Art
Original Production Cel, Studio Art
This Batman original production cel from Batman Mask of the Phantasm is an absolutely prime example of perfect Batman animation.
About Batman: The Animated Series
Batman: The Animated Series is an American animated television series based on the DC Comics superhero Batman. Developed by Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski and produced by Warner Bros. Animation, it originally aired on Fox Kids from September 5, 1992, to September 15, 1995, with a total of 85 episodes. For the final fifteen episodes, the series was given the on-screen title The Adventures of Batman & Robin, which was also used for reruns of earlier episodes. The series eventually spawned two continuation shows, The New Batman Adventures and Batman Beyond.
The series was praised for its thematic complexity, film noir aesthetics, darker tone, artistic presentation, and modernization of its title character's crime-fighting origins. IGN.com listed Batman: The Animated Series as the best adaptation of Batman anywhere outside of comics, the best comic book television show of all time and the second best animated series of all time (after The Simpsons). Wizard magazine also ranked it #2 of the greatest animated television shows of all time (again after The Simpsons). TV Guide ranked it the seventh Greatest Cartoon of All Time. The widespread acclaim led the series to win four Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Animated Program.
The series was also the first in the continuity of the shared DC animated universe, spawning further animated TV series, comic books and video games with most of the same creative talent. Its ratings success and critical acclaim led the series to spawn two feature films: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (released to theaters in 1993) and Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero (a direct-to-video release in 1998).
Tags: batman mask of the phantasm, batman the animated series, Bruce Timm, DC Comics
Superman Catches Lois Lane Justice League Animated Series Original Production Drawing Graphite on Paper
Catwoman Original Production Cel from Batgirl Returns Batman the Animated Series
Gotham’s Dynamic Duo Batman and Robin limited edition cel by Bruce Timm
Batman and Nightwing original production cel from The New Batman Adventures Animal Act episode
× Livewire Original Production cel from Double Dose Superman Animated Series
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Catholic Vancouver January 30, 2019
Christians sing a new song unto the Lord ... together
Father James Comey (right) sings with members of various Christian churches during a special musical event at St. Monica’s Church for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. (Photos by Edward Ken Wong)
Sometimes all it takes to get Christians from various denominations on the same page is a good old-fashioned hymn.
Michael Goco, a musician from St. Monica’s Parish, has teamed up with vocalists from Peace Mennonite, Our Saviour Lutheran, and Gilmore Park United churches in the creation of an ecumenical choir.
“I am encouraged at how music and common praise is a great vehicle for unity,” Goco told The B.C. Catholic.
The Richmond-based ensemble first came together during a music festival at St. Monica’s Church after the Catholic community invited some nearby Lutheran singers to sing carols with them around Christmas time.
The choir has since given a second performance, bringing 14 hymns to life at St. Monica’s Jan. 20 in honour of the international Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
The ecumenical choir sings, led by Peace Mennonite choir director Kathy Lumsdon, at St. Monica's Jan. 20.
“There are already a lot of hymns we know in common, such as Amazing Grace and Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee,” said Goco. “I am also delighted to learn some of the hymns that they have brought from their hymnals, such as This is my Father’s World and To God Be the Glory.”
The group, led by Peace Mennonite choir director Kathy Lumsdon, also added to its repertoire Sing of Mary, Pure and Lowly, a Catholic melody Goco said was well-received among all choir members.
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was observed with various prayer and musical events around the world Jan. 18-25. In the Lower Mainland, several Catholic parishes in addition to St. Monica’s offered their own events.
St. Mark’s Parish in Vancouver, which has hosted events for WPCU since at least 2011, hosted a prayer service and a sermon by Anglican Alecia Greenfield Jan. 23.
St. Mark's Parish takes part in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
In Abbotsford, St. Ann’s Parish once again teamed up with Peace Lutheran, Mount Lehman United, St. Matthew’s Anglican, and Emmanuel Mennonite churches to offer a prayer service and community lunch at a different location nearly every day during the international week of prayer.
All Saints Parish in Coquitlam and St. Barnabas Anglican Church in New Westminster also marked the annual observance with their own events.
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is an annual event promoted by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the World Council of Churches.
The Global Rosary Relay aims to have 1 billion Hail Marys said for the sanctification of priests June 28, the feast of the...
The B.C. Catholic has been singled out for several outstanding efforts among North America’s diocesan newspapers and...
Catholic Vancouver June 26, 2019
Catholics and non-Catholics from around the Lower Mainland rallied outside the Chinese consulate on Granville Street Vancouver...
Owners of a start-up company in Coquitlam have discovered cutting down on plastic isn’t just good for the environment; it can...
*At press time June 27, The B.C. Catholic confirmed with Cineplex spokesperson Sarah Van Lange that the chain will be screening...
Both of Nicole McCreedy’s parents are so active in youth ministry, it’s only natural people would think they’re the reason she...
After a brief battle with cancer, Langley-Aldergrove Conservative MP Mark Warawa has died. He was 69. Warawa died in hospice...
More than 200,000 UK women received an abortion in 2018, setting an all-time high rate of abortion in England and Wales. The UK...
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March 7, 2017 March 7, 2017 bcnn1wp
Ex-Children’s Aid Official Convicted of Murdering Boss at North Philly Bus Stop
Police were able to piece together the gunman’s path from security camera videos.
A social services official at a private Philadelphia children’s aid organization was found guilty of first-degree murder Monday in what the prosecutor called the execution of his boss a day after she confronted him about $42,000 in missing funds.
Randolph Sanders, 39, of Northeast Philadelphia, was found guilty by a Common Pleas Court jury in the Jan. 13, 2015, shooting of Kim Jones, 56, as she waited for a bus from her home in the Yorktown neighborhood in North Philadelphia to her job as a program director for Turning Points for Children in Center City.
Sanders began rubbing his face with his hands as the foreman of the jury of seven men and five women announced the verdict after two hours of deliberating.
The first-degree murder verdict carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. Judge Glenn B. Bronson immediately sentenced Sanders and added consecutive sentences of 8½ to 17 years in prison for three gun charges of which Sanders was found guilty.
Sanders thanked Bronson for a fair trial and said, “I’m sorry for this entire situation. I understand what’s shown on the video, but I still stand by my innocence.
“I did not do this. I didn’t steal any money, and I didn’t do this to Kim,” Sanders added. “I would never do this to Kim.”
Bronson said the verdict was based on some of “the most overwhelming evidence in a case I have ever seen in 35 years as a judge and a lawyer.”
That evidence included Sanders’ confession to the slaying in an interview that was transcribed by homicide detectives and then recorded on video.
SOURCE: Philly.com
Joseph A. Slobodzian
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Carmen Fowler LaBerge: Why the Spiritual Commitment of Baptism is So Important blackchristiannews.com/2019/07/carmen… https://t.co/qcDNMlhm0B 1 hour ago
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Elliot Cox
Elliot Cox, number 51, is a kart racer from Indianapolis, Indiana. Elliot's dream is to become the youngest winner of the Indy 500. Elliot began driving as soon as he turned five, in the fall of 2012. His grandfather took him to buy his first kart, and from the time his foot touched the pedal, he was hooked. Elliot had his first win at New Castle Motorsports Park at the age of five, and he was named Rookie of the Year for the Tony Stewart Racing League at Whiteland Raceway Park that year. The following year, Elliot was the first Kid Kart driver to win a Manufacturer’s Cup national race for points, sweeping the weekend in Kershaw. He finished the year as national runner-up and local champion. Elliot continued to find success in his micro career. In 2016, he was the Yamaha Rookie class champion for the Route 66 Sprint Series. He also finished 3rd in the Superkarts! USA Pro Tour championship and 2nd in the United States Pro Kart Series Yamaha Rookie points. Elliot was the 2017 Superkarts! USA Pro Tour Champion for the Micro Swift class, as well as the Yamaha Jr. Sportsman 2 class champion at New Castle Motorsports park. Off the track, Elliot is an honor roll student at Gray Road Christian School. He races to raise awareness for Alex’s Lemonade Stand and the Dyslexia Institute of Indiana. In 2014, Elliot hosted a lemonade stand at the Graham Rahal Foundation Drivers Golf Tournament, where he raised over $1,500 for childhood cancer research. In the last 3 years Elliot has raised over $8,500 for childhood cancer research! Elliot has participated in Dyslexia awareness campaigns and radio ads with the late Justin Wilson, who was Elliot's hero, Scott Dixon, and Stefan Wilson. He proudly sports a sticker on both his kart and race trailer for the Dyslexia Institute of Indiana to raise awareness for kids with Dyslexia, just like him. Elliot has helped raise over $13,000 for the Dyslexia Institute of Indiana.
View Gear
http://www.elliotcoxracing.com/
Elliot's Gear
[1205004] KC7-CMR CARBON (57)
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Will PUBG Become an Esport? PlayerUnknown Weighs In
on July 6, 2017 9:14 AM
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We asked Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene about PUBG’s ability to become an esport, mods, and one of the most requested features, first-person gameplay!
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is one of the most popular games in the world. It seems like whenever you open up Steam, more than half your friends are actively slaughtering each other in winner-take-all combat. Meanwhile, Battlegrounds is one of the biggest games on Twitch and YouTube, with millions of viewers flocking to see the latest clutch plays.
If you’ve never experienced Battlegrounds first-hand, it may be hard to understand the game’s massive draw. While the game is based around a Battle Royale style of gameplay, Battlegrounds intensifies the action by pitting 100 players against one another in a battle to the death, all while the play area gradually shrinks in size, pushing the surviving players closer together.
Right now, PUBG is in Early Access and sees rapid growth with each passing month. The developers have been hard at work fine-tuning the game in order to get it ready for release before the end of the year, and it will even appear on Xbox as a console exclusive this fall/winter.
Recently, we had the opportunity to chat with the creator of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, and found out more about the game’s development, including two new maps and whether or not PUBG has a future in esports.
Where did the original idea behind Battlegrounds come from?
I started out modding back in ARMA II, and there was a DayZ mod event called The Survivor GameZ and I just wanted to play that. I decided to make my own mod loosely based around Battle Royale the movie; that sort of ever decreasing area of play. And yeah, that’s where it kind of came from, a mixture of the two [ideas], and making a game that I wanted to play.
Are you surprised by how massively popular Battlegrounds has become?
Just a little. I was expecting some popularity but we sailed past 200k yesterday. It’s been crazy, the amount of people. We didn’t expect this level of popularity.
What are some of the hardest challenges you’ve faced while working on Battlegrounds?
Doing it in a year. We have a great executive producer and a really passionate team, but at the start I was like, “No we can’t make this in a year,” you know? Making a realistic map takes a year in itself. Some of the challenges were just getting stuff ready for Early Access.
I didn’t want to go into Early Access with a product that wasn’t at least stable to play. We’ve been very open since the start of development. We’ve let people play the game so that we mitigate a lot of the problems. Because you’ve got a large player base testing, you get to see stuff quicker and fix it.
What led you to working with Bluehole, and how has the process been with them on board?
I got an email from their executive producer—the boss of the project—and he said that he wanted to make a Battle Royale game for the last 10 years. I decided it might be a good idea if the two of us were teamed up because his idea for a game was very similar to what I wanted.
They flew me to Korea, we had an interview, I met the whole team, and decided, “Right, let’s do this.” A week later I was there, and I’ve been there for the last year and a bit working with them making the game.
In the past, you developed mods like DayZ: Battle Royale. Did these modding experiences help shape your approach to Battlegrounds at all?
Yeah, it gave us a really solid base to work off. Over the last four years—especially in ARMA III—we’ve had a chance to refine the game mode and test stuff and see what works and doesn’t work. Going in to make my own game with Battlegrounds, I had a lot of that information already.
The gameplay still needs to be tuned and balanced, but we have a very good base to work off. We had a leaderboard system and all this kind of stuff we could implement pretty much straight away. Needs more tuning, obviously, but the platform was there already.
How do you feel about Battlegrounds being so successful as an Early Access title?
We were really happy. I didn’t want to go into Early Access. It was one of those things I fought against, but I’m only the creative director. I don’t get to make decisions like that. The point I made to my boss was, “Listen, it has to be stable.”
Because we had so many alpha tests along with the closed beta, it was pretty stable when we got to Early Access. There’s probably 10 percent of players who aren’t having the best time, but 90 percent of people are enjoying the game, and we are going to fix it.
Speaking of mods, are there any plans to add mod support to Battlegrounds in the future?
Eventually, yeah. I want to find the next me. I want to give people a platform to play with our island and stuff. Until the game is stable and runs good for everyone, we don’t want to worry too much about modding. But yes, we do want to put [modding] into the game.
Battlegrounds is one of the most viewed games on Twitch right now. Do you think exposure from streamers is one of the things that helped buoy the game’s success?
I think so. Battle Royale game modes—ever since H1Z1: King of the Kill and even my ARMA III game mode— have always been popular on Twitch and some of those big streamers like Lirik were playing quite consistently.
It’s a good thing for streamers to play because you’re dedicated, you’ve got action within 30 minutes, but there’s downtime as well. Especially in Battlegrounds, where it’s more tactical and less hectic, you’ve got that downtime where you can chat and it’s definitely helped with the popularity of the game.
Do you ever watch streams of your game on Twitch or YouTube to check out the different strategies people use to win?
Oh, I do. Because I live in Korea I’m at weird time zones—it’s like 16 hours ahead of Pacific time—I get to watch some Grimmmz and some Josh OG; whoever’s on at that time I tend to watch. It’s a great bug fixing thing, watching people play your game. You find out stuff that’s broken very quickly.
What are some of the biggest fan requests you get for Battlegrounds?
First-person. I had a guy come up to me at TwitchCon last year and spend half an hour convincing me why I should get rid of third-person and put first-person servers. First-person requires a bit of work from us because we have to redo camera angles because we’re doing true, first-person cameras.
So it takes a bit of work, and we don’t have the time to focus on that. We want to get the server optimized. There are a lot of people who want it more like H1Z1, and people who want it more like ARMA III, but we have to stick to our guns and get my vision for the game out there. We listen to people’s feedback, but we still have our vision to make.
With such a fierce competitive element to winning at Battlegrounds, are there any plans to host esports tournaments in the future?
Everyone has been asking us about esports. We believe in order for a successful esport to form it has to be organic and grow from the ground up. Also, the game needs to be stable. I mean, we’re talking to teams, we’re talking to organizations, finding out what they want from the game as a platform for esports, but until the game is solid and we have solid servers with a good tick rate, that’s not our focus.
I want Battle Royale to be the new esport. I think it’s a great format. I think it can be fun and good to watch, but until the game actually works, we’re kind of not going headlong into esports.
Are there any new maps in the works for Battlegrounds?
Yeah, we have two new maps, both about the same size as the current map. One is based in the Adriatic in the old Yugoslavia. It’s got some really cool features and it’s an island. Our lead environmental artist Sergei is designing that at the moment and pulling crazy hours doing his research on architecture types.
We also have a new technical artist and she’s building tools, so depending on where you put houses on the landscape, you can alter the number of floors very easily. We’re putting lots of new tech into the maps as well to make them look more real and have more texture. One’s in the Peruvian desert and one’s in the Adriatic. The Peruvian map is going to be a nice desert map with cities that’ve been covered by big sandstorms.
Will Battlegrounds expand to add new dangers into the game alongside enemy players and map restriction?
With the Adriatic map we have a high, snowy mountain center of the map to give it verticality. The team that we have and the boss that we have, they understand what we’re providing. We’re not planning to release the game and that’s it. There’s a very firm plan for the next 5 or 6 months as to what we want to do and deliver.
What’s one thing you’re most excited about when it comes to the future of Battlegrounds?
Server performance; we’ve been profiling the servers. This is what we’re doing all month, looking at the data trying to find choke points, and we already found one or two big issues with the network codes. Once we fix that and get higher tick servers, it’ll improve the game because the client game is pretty solid at the moment.
It’s not fantastic for everyone, but it’s pretty solid and people can play. The servers are the biggest issue. Once we get that locked down, it’s really going to make everyone so much happier. There’s also a lot of new content coming, and I’m excited for that too, but for me it’s really performance and getting everything working. Then we can look at adding more stuff.
What advice would you give other modders or would-be game designers looking to create their own game?
I know it’s cliché, but make something you want to play. I made Battle Royale as a game I wanted to play. It drew its inspiration from various sources, but it was something I wanted to make. It’s the same [with] the idea I have for another game. Again, it’s just a game I want to play.
I know that’s kind of cheesy to say, but find something you’re passionate about, because if you’re making something just to try and make money, you’ll never get there. Game design is about people making things they want to play, then capturing other people’s interest.
What’s one thing you want fans to know about you as a person?
I’m called PlayerUnknown for a reason. They should know as little about me as possible. I get a lot of people tweeting, “Oh, I’m not a content creator, you’ll never listen to me.” If you tweeted at me, I see it. I may not reply because I get a lot of tweets every day, so I can’t reply to everyone or my fingers would be sore.
I do hear most people’s complaints, and even if we don’t listen to everyone we do read them at least. And never be afraid to say hi if you can spot me. I’ve done a very good job of being PlayerUnknown because I’ve been at my own stand at conventions and have heard people talking about me and not recognize me. It’s fantastic.
Finally, are you planning a full release for Battlegrounds sometime this year?
We want a full release towards the fall. We said 6 months of EA, so we want to be out of Early Access by September/October, but there’s no firm release date. There are things we have to make sure work and are stable, but that’s kind of what we’re aiming for. We want [the game] to be out this year.
We thank Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene for taking the time to talk with us. We can’t wait to see what’s in store for Battlegrounds in the future, and try out the two new maps once they’re released. What do you want PlayerUnknown to add into the game once it’s released, first-person, esports, or mod support? Let us know in the comments below!
For more information on PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, be sure to check our feature on the game’s upcoming desert map, recap the game’s impending release on Xbox One alongside a new zombies mode, and read more about the game's longest confirmed sniper kill!
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Beer, TX
New Belgium Ranger: To Protect, To Pour, To Partake
By Ronnie Crocker on January 18, 2010 at 9:46 PM
The FedEx box was here when I arrived Monday morning, with two bottles of Ranger IPA bubble-wrapped inside.
Ranger is the newest in the Explore series from Fort Collins, Colo.-based New Belgium Brewing. The non-watercolor drawing of hops on the label hinted that this would be something different from the brewer best known for the ubiquitous Fat Tire and the well-regarded Lips of Faith series. All those are rooted in traditional Belgian styles.
The Ranger, which has a Feb. 1 rollout date but could start showing up on local shelves by next week, is the company’s first American IPA.
Spokesman Bryan Simpson explained that the company’s sales reps — the so-called “rangers” who work in the fields, talking with distributors and beer drinkers — had been clamoring for something big and hoppy.
“Those guys really got the ball rolling,” he said.
The IPA has been in the works for about two years. It will be available year-round, and Simpson said the company hopes to see Ranger among New Belgium’s top three or four sellers within a year.
Made with three pounds of Cascade, Chinook and Simcoe hops per barrel, and balanced with pale and dark caramel malts, Ranger should satisfy serious hopheads.
Upon opening one bottle last night, Patricia and I both were immediately — and pleasantly — struck by the strong floral aroma. I was expecting something with a bite, and the first taste didn’t disappoint. It was citrusy and hoppy, very clean. The early reviews on BeerAdvocate are strong as well, with an average grade of A-minus.
It’s an enjoyable IPA and a good session beer.
I was asked on Twitter last night how Ranger compared to New Belgium’s Mighty Arrow. For starters, it’s got twice the IBUs, 70.
Assistant Brewmaster Grady Hull, in a statement, elaborates on the departure from previous New Belgium offerings:
The Belgian tradition of thinking outside the box freed us up to create a beer we all love that falls outside a conventional interpretation of Belgian “style.” It was fun to play with some new elements — this is by far the hoppiest beer we have ever produced.
And about those New Belgium Beer Rangers, they’ve got a great motto (at least in the advertisements): “To Protect, To Pour, To Partake.”
Ronnie Crocker | Assistant Business Editor
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A blog about children's & YA lit, with some basset news thrown in
booksandbassets
Tag Archives: John Boyne
This week’s book talks 11/5-9
The Great War: Stories Inspired by Items from the First World War written by an amazing array of contemporary YA authors (David Almond, Michael Morpurgo, John Boyne, AL Kennedy, Marcus Sedgewick, Adele Geras,Tracy Chevalier, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Sheena Wilkinson, Ursula Dubrovsky, Timothee de Fombelle) and illustrated by Jim Kay
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo
Stay Where You Are And Then Leave by John Boyne
I gave students an influenza twofer on Thursday because Friday marks the end of the quarter and there is no school.
A Death-Struck Year by Makiia Lucier and More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War by Kenneth C. Davis
Tags: John Boyne, Kenneth C. Davis, Makiia Lucier, Michael Morpurgo, Spanish Flu, Veteran's Day, World War I
Categories booktalks
Summer is a time when I escape into the things I love.
Escaping isn’t only for the happy. It is also a refuge for those who don’t want to face difficulties, as john Boyne shows us in Noah Barleywater Runs Away.
Goodreads Summary: In Noah Barleywater Runs Away, bestselling author John Boyne explores the world of childhood and the adventures that we can all have there. Noah is running away from his problems, or at least that’s what he thinks, the day he takes the untrodden path through the forest. When he comes across a very unusual toyshop and meets the even more unusual toymaker he’s not sure what to expect. But the toymaker has a story to tell, a story full of adventure, and wonder and broken promises. And Noah travels with him on a journey that will change his life for ever.
A thought-provoking fable for our modern world from the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
This was John Boyne’s second novel. It followed his hugely successful The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Although a very different sort of book, more magical realism than fairy tale, it also carries a sadness. Noah’s mother is ill. The toymaker has regrets. But Noah’s story has a happier ending than The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
Tags: John Boyne, running away
Categories Fantasy, middle fiction
This week’s book talks
Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day in the US, but in my heart, it is still Remembrance Day. I’ve been wearing the poppy I knit last year on my school lanyard.
Students had a three-day week, so I only book talked three books, all set during the Great War.
Publisher’s Summary: The Great War is a powerful collection of stories by bestselling authors, each inspired by a different object from the First World War. From a soldier’s writing case to the nose of a Zeppelin bomb, each object illuminates an aspect of life during the war, and each story reminds us of the millions of individual lives that were changed forever by the four years of fighting. This remarkable book is illustrated by the Kate Greenaway Medal-winning Jim Kay. Featuring new work from: ** AL Kennedy ** Tracy Chevalier ** Michael Morpurgo ** David Almond ** Marcus Sedgwick ** Adele Geras ** Ursula Dubosarsky ** John Boyne ** Timothée de Fombelle ** Sheena Wilkinson ** Tanya Lee Stone **
Publisher’s Summary: The day the First World War broke out, Alfie Summerfield’s father promised he wouldn’t go away to fight—but he broke that promise the following day. Four years later, Alfie doesn’t know where his father might be, other than that he’s away on a special, secret mission. Then, while shining shoes at King’s Cross Station, Alfie unexpectedly sees his father’s name on a sheaf of papers belonging to a military doctor. Bewildered and confused, Alfie realizes his father is in a hospital close by—a hospital treating soldiers with shell shock. Alfie isn’t sure what shell shock is, but he is determined to rescue his father from this strange, unnerving place. . . .
Publisher’s Summary: The Spanish influenza is devastating the East Coast—but Cleo Berry knows it is a world away from the safety of her home in Portland, Oregon. Then the flu moves into the Pacific Northwest. Schools, churches, and theaters are shut down. The entire city is thrust into survival mode—and into a panic.
Seventeen-year-old Cleo is told to stay put in her quarantined boarding school, but when the Red Cross pleads for volunteers, she cannot ignore the call for help. In the grueling days that follow her headstrong decision, she risks everything for near-strangers. Strangers like Edmund, a handsome medical student. Strangers who could be gone tomorrow. And as the bodies pile up, Cleo can’t help but wonder: when will her own luck run out?
Tags: First World War, influenza, John Boyne, Makiia Lucier, Remembrance Day, The Great War, World War I
Categories historical fiction
Innocence corrupted
When we first meet Pierrot Fischer, he is a sweet 7-year-old, small for his age, bullied by bigger boys, but certain in his friendship with Anshel. His father disappears and dies. When his mother dies, he moves in with Anshel’s family temporarily. Because pre-WWII France is not an easy place for Jews, Anshel’s mother finds a place for him in an orphanage, where he stays until he is claimed by his long-lost German aunt. When he joins her in Austria, Pierrot’s eyes are opened to a new world and we see him evolve into someone far less likable.
Publisher’s Summary: When Pierrot becomes an orphan, he must leave his home in Paris for a new life with his Aunt Beatrix, a servant in a wealthy household at the top of the German mountains. But this is no ordinary time, for it is 1935 and the Second World War is fast approaching; and this is no ordinary house, for this is the Berghof, the home of Adolf Hitler.
Quickly, Pierrot is taken under Hitler’s wing, and is thrown into an increasingly dangerous new world: a world of terror, secrets and betrayal, from which he may never be able to escape.
What I, and his Aunt, found most terrifying is the ease with which Pierrot is turned from sweet boy to Nazi thug. She calls him on his behavior.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t spend so much time with the Führer from now on,” she said, finally turning around to look at her nephew.
“But why not?”
“He’s a very busy man.”
“He’s a very busy man who says he sees great potential in me,” said Pierrot proudly. “Besides we talk about interesting things. And he listens to me.”
“I listen to you, Pieter,” said Beatrix.
“That’s different.”
Pierrot gets caught up in the uniforms and the power he begins to feel, turning the small bullied boy into a bully. He does some terrible things. When the war ends, he claims that he was only a child and didn’t really understand, but Herta, a maid in the house, calls him out, claiming he knew what was going on.
“You have many years ahead of you to come to terms with your complicity in these matters.Just don;t ever tall yourself that you didn’t know.” She released him now from her grip. “That would be the worst crime of all.”
We see that the post war years are emotionally difficult for Pierrot but the ending brings some catharsis.
As with Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, the reader requires some background knowledge to truly understand what appears, on the surface, to be a simple book. But it is a book worth reading.
Tags: Berghof, John Boyne, orphans in literature, WWII
Categories historical fiction, YA Literature
Fiction/Nonfiction Pairing: The Great War
I’ve had the First World War on my mind since before the 100th anniversary of its start, almost two years ago. Quite a bit was done and written in the months just before August 2014, and there have been trickles since. This week, I’ve become enamored of a delightful pair of books that look at the Great War through a literary lens.
The Great War: Stories Inspired by Items from the First World War is a collection of modern stories, written by an amazing array of contemporary YA authors (David Almond, Michael Morpurgo, John Boyne, AL Kennedy, Marcus Sedgewick, Adele Geras,Tracy Chevalier, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Sheena Wilkinson, Ursula Dubrovsky, Timothee de Fombelle) and illustrated by Jim Kay.
Publisher’s Summary:A toy soldier. A butter dish. A compass. Mundane objects, perhaps, but to the remarkable authors in this collection, artifacts such as these have inspired stories that go to the heart of the human experience of World War I. Each author was invited to choose an object that had a connection to the war—a writing kit for David Almond, a helmet for Michael Morpurgo—and use it as the inspiration for an original short story. What results is an extraordinary collection, illustrated throughout by award-winning Jim Kay and featuring photographs of the objects with accounts of their history and the authors’ reasons for selecting them. This unique anthology provides young readers with a personal window into the Great War and the people affected by it, and serves as an invaluable resource for families and teachers alike.
In a powerful collection, eleven internationally acclaimed writers draw on personal objects to bring the First World War to life for readers young and old.
That collection of short stories would pair nicely with this collection of biographies of 12 men and three women, who participated in the First World War, and who later gained fame in other ways.
In the Fields and Trenches:The Famous and the Forgotten on the Battlefields of World War I is written by Kerrie Logan Hollihan and published by the Chicago Review Press.
Publisher’s Summary: When it started, many thought the Great War would be a great adventure. Yet, as those who saw it up close learned, it was anything but. In the Fields and the Trenches traces the stories of eighteen young idealists swept into the brutal conflict, many of whom would go on to become well-known 20th-century figures in film, science, politics, literature, and business. Writer J. R. R. Tolkien was a signals officer with the British Expeditionary Force and fought at the Battle of the Somme. Scientist Irène Curie helped her mother, Marie, run twenty X-ray units for French field hospitals. Actor Buster Keaton left Hollywood after being drafted into the army’s 40th Infantry Division. And all four of Theodore Roosevelt’s sons—Kermit, Archibald, Quentin, and Theodore III—and his daughter Ethel served in Europe, though one did not return.In the Fields and the Trenches chronicles the lives of heroes, cowards, comics, and villains—some famous, some not—who participated in this life-changing event. Extensive original material, from letters sent from the front to personal journals, brings these men and women back to life. And though their stories are a century old, they convey modern, universal themes of love, death, power, greed, courage, hate, fear, family, friendship, and sacrifice.
Together, these two books give readers a glimpse into the impact of The Great war on ordinary lives.
Tags: Adele Geras, AL Kennedy, David Almond, First World War, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Jim Kay, John Boyne, Kerrie Logan Hollihan, Marcus Sedgewick, Michael Morpurgo, Sheena Wilkinson, short stories, Timothee de Fombelle, Tracy Chevalier, Ursula Dubrovsky, World War I
Categories biography, contemporary fiction, historical fiction, history
Since it is St. Patrick’s Day, it seems auspicious to share the Irish Book Award Winner and shortlist.
The winner is Asking For It by Louise O’Neill.
The five books on the shortlist are:
The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne
Once Upon a Place by Eoin Colfer
One by Sarah Crosan
Darkmouth: Worlds Explode by Shane Hegarty
Demon Road by Derek Landy
Tags: Derek Landy, Eoin Colfer, Irish Book Awards, John Boyne, Louise O'Neill, Sarah Crossan, Shane Hegarty, St. Patrick's Day
Categories awards
Tomorrow we mark the event that set the dominoes of the First World War in motion: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
In John Boyne’s Stay Where You Are & Then You Leave, we see the effects of war throughout the eyes of you Alfie Summerfield. He’s only 5 at the beginning of the book and 9 by the end, but John Boyne really captures how a boy of that age would view and understand the world and the crazy event going on around him. I love that he thins at 21 he’ll need glasses to read and will want to go to bed early because he’s so tired.
This is the best of what historical fiction should be: details woven into the fabric of the story so naturally we don’t even realize that they are historical facts. We get a real glimpse of what life was like for people left at home and the consequences the war had on society. We learn about shortages, deportations, conscientious objectors, white feathers and shell shock.
Alfie’s father went off to war. At first the letters were funny, then serious, then confused. Then they stopped. Alfie’s mother tells him his dad is on a secret mission, but Alfie thinks his dad is dead. While working as a shoeshine big, Alfie comes across some information that set him on a secret mission of his own to rescue his dad.
This book is a real gem. It was more like Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse than Boyne’s most famous book, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It would be an excellent novel to read as kids learn about WWI.
Alas, I couldn’t help but do the math. Alfie is 9 in 1918. That means he’ll be 30 in 1939 when the next World war breaks out. It broke my heart to think about that. The fact that I care is a testament to the quality of the writing that created the character of Alfie.
Tags: conscientious objectors, First World War, John Boyne, shell shock, World War I
Categories historical fiction, middle fiction
Life Adventures
The Fat Squirrel Speaks
Global Yell Blog
Jone Rush MacCulloch
Klickitat St. Readers
Readerbuzz
PLUMDOG BLOG
yalsa.ala.org/blog/
Someday My Printz Will Come
The Librarian Who Doesn't Say Shhh!
Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers
andrea gillespie
Kirby's Lane: A Place for Readers and Writers
The Horn Book
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Knitting, spinning, and assorted awesomeness.
This is where I write.
Deo Writer: Musings to Spark the Spirit
Opening books to open minds.
The art of story.
Inquiring My Way Forward
A potluck of ideas from five children's book authors and illustrators
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Dwight Silverman's TechBlog
Who should kick off CES with Microsoft no longer opening the show?
By Dwight Silverman on December 22, 2011 at 6:26 AM
For eight years, Microsoft has had the privilege of hosting the pre-show keynote at CES, the huge consumer electronics show held each January in Las Vegas. As I wrote Wednesday, the keynote CEO Steve Ballmer will give on the evening of Jan. 9, 2012, will be Microsoft’s last. Beginning in 2013, not only will Microsoft not do the keynote, but the software giant won’t even have its own booth at CES.
Microsoft says it’s walking away because the January CES date doesn’t line up with its product cycle. There are some indications the Consumer Electronics Association, which runs CES, wanted a fresh face on the keynote stage. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s previous CES keynotes have been anything but riveting, so I suspect even he’s a little glad this will be the last.
Microsoft’s departure also says something about the relevance of CES itself. It’s as bloated, unwieldy and expensive to attend – both for vendors and attendees – as the doomed Comdex was in its heyday. Yes, there are benefits to getting buyers and sellers of high-tech goods together in one place, but in the modern age, you can accomplish the same thing virtually, or by attending smaller conferences that are less of a logistical and expense nightmare.
To use a computing analogy, CES is a hulking mainframe that’s become expensive to maintain. As a result, its participants are relying on PCs, tablets and smartphones instead.
Still, CES is likely to continue. And if it does, who will replace Microsoft as the opener?
Microsoft opened CES, and Comdex before it, because it was considered the dominant force in the personal computing industry, which in turn cast a huge shadow over consumer electronics. Microsoft arguably is no longer considered to be in that dominant position.
In fact, there’s no one company at the forefront. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt earlier this year identified a “Gang of Four” that’s dominating consumer tech: Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook and Google.
Despite the fact that his own company is included on his list, I think Schmidt is dead on. What are the pros and cons of the CEOs of these companies opening CES in 2013?
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.
• Amazon.com – While I can see Jeff Bezos giving the CES keynote, Amazon.com doesn’t seem to quite fit in at CES. Despite its successes with its Kindle e-readers and tablet, the company remains primarily a retailer. Having Bezos give the keynote would be the equivalent of Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn giving the speech – except, of course, that Bezos is a real visionary whose business is disrupting many others. I think he’ d give a great – if quirky – CES keynote. It certainly wouldn’t be boring.
• Apple – In the Steve Jobs era, Apple has already pulled a trade-show-withdrawal, walking away from the keynoting duties of Macworld Expo. And Apple has never been a CES participant, even though Apple’s products are incredibly influential in the consumer electronics universe. At CES, Apple is the 900-pound gorilla in the room who never actually shows up. And new CEO Tim Cook isn’t exactly a charismatic figure onstage. I don’t think Apple’s a contender at all.
• Facebook – Like Amazon, Facebook isn’t really at the center of the consumer electronics industry, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg – while he may fancy himself to be like Bill Gates – isn’t really ready for this kind of prime time. That may change over time, though, particularly if Facebook expands beyond Internet services.
• Google – This would be my pick of the four. Having CEO Larry Page and possibly his Google co-founder Sergey Brin give the keynote would make the most sense. Google has its hands in all kinds of consumer technology arenas, and its business model is as disruptive as they come. Page isn’t necessarily a commanding figure, but he and Brin could have some fun playing off each other. Just leave Eric Schmidt at home, please.
Of course, the new CES keynote star could be none of these. Or, the CEA could have a panel discussion with all four of them at once to kick off its show. Now, that would fun!
Of the “Gang of Four”, who would you like to see give the 2013 CES pre-show keynote? Take our poll, or leave your suggested choice in the comments.
Dwight Silverman
Dwight Silverman's TechBlog Search
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Painting, Paris, and Politics: The Louvre Gets Set To Move
July 14, 2015 July 14, 2015 / William Newton
Given that it is Bastille Day, and I have long ago said all that needs to be said about this most dreadful of un-holydays, the reader may be interested in reading about a less bloody battle going on in France at the moment. The Louvre announced this week that it will be moving a quarter of a million of its works currently held in storage in Paris, out to a former mining town in the north of France. The building of a new storage facility and the subsequent move will take place despite significant domestic and international criticism of the project. While it is easy to look at this plan and detect a strong whiff of that most pungent of odors, politics, the venture does give us the chance to consider what role politics can play for good in the art world.
It may surprise you to learn that the collections of many museums, but particularly ones of significant scope such as The Louvre, are never fully on display to the public. When you go to The National Gallery here in Washington for example, you are seeing only a small percentage of the thousands and thousands of pieces a major museum possesses. Because it would be impossible to display all of its holdings, the National Gallery has both an art storage facility and a separate warehouse where these works are housed in suburban Maryland, about ten miles from downtown Washington.
By comparison the former mining town of Liévin, where The Louvre will begin storing its art, is located 125 miles from central Paris. According to The Art Newspaper, Louvre President Jean-Luc Martinez has admitted that he will have to come up with ways not only to shuttle Louvre employees to and from the facility, but to actually house them there, since the town is located a 4-5 hour train ride away from Paris. Understandably, 42 of the 45 curators of The Louvre have signed a protest letter against going ahead with this move.
Timing is also of the essence for M. Martinez since French Senator Daniel Percheron, who has been a driving force behind this project, is leaving office next year. Senator Percheron is both a leading member of France’s ruling socialist party, and – quelle surprise – the representative of the region where the Louvre store will be constructed. No doubt the effort to establish his political legacy played a significant part in pulling off this coup for his constituents. For of course not only will several years’ worth of construction jobs result from this project but, once established, the huge facility will need guards, cleaners, administrative staff, etc., while those who go to work and study there will need nearby hotels, restaurants, dry cleaners, and so on.
Moreover the location for this storage site, strange as it may seem to send these works of art so far away from home, is no accident. The Louvre store will be a few miles from the “mini Louvre” in the nearby town of Lens, a museum which you may never have heard of. It was built in 2012 to display works from the overstuffed Parisian vaults of The Louvre, in part to try to draw tourism to this rusty, depressed part of France. If you are looking for Delacroix’s iconic “Liberty Leading the People”, or Raphael’s magnificent portrait of Castiglione – which in fact serves as the thematic inspiration for this blog – they are no longer in Paris, but rather in the Louvre-Lens. Sadly, this ensures that I will probably never get to see the portrait in person, but be that as it may.
The question to be asked however, is not whether it is wrong to send all of this art out of Paris. The real question is whether there was a workable alternative that could have been accomplished politically. Certainly, there are legitimate concerns to be raised regarding the safety and conservation of so many works of art traveling from one place to another, given the inherent fragility of many of the works moving north. Those concerns need to be addressed thoroughly, and one would expect that The Louvre will bear them in mind.
However, if no location within Paris or its environs was able to mount the funding, logistics, and yes, political will necessary to bring about the creation of this project, what, then, would be the acceptable alternative? Allow these works of art to sit below flood stage in the basements of the Louvre, awaiting the next inundation of the Seine? Appropriate or build a massive facility in or near the capital, where the associated costs for such a project would be astronomically higher, for a country still reeling from economic downturn?
Doing nothing and risking the destruction of the art at issue would seem a pyrrhic victory, at best, and gross negligence, at worst, both for the artistic and historical patrimony of France and indeed of all mankind. Much as one finds the end result somewhat distasteful, one must also be honest in acknowledging that the politics at play here will lead, if not to the best result, at least to a solution with positive externalities. The art will be preserved, a poor area of France will benefit, and perhaps works which have never been thoroughly studied or understood for centuries, may finally see the light of day, as they emerge from the cellars in which they presently reside. Politics may not always provide the answer to all our problems, but without its influence, efforts to preserve artistic collections of major significance such as this one, would almost certainly fall entirely by the wayside.
art, politics
art, France, Louvre, Paris, politics
← In “The Artist’s Garden”
Magnificent Portrait Of Sir Andrew Wiles By Rupert Alexander Unveiled →
10 thoughts on “Painting, Paris, and Politics: The Louvre Gets Set To Move”
Brother Rex
Wanna know how I spell culture?
I’ll tell ya. M-I-S-T-E-R B. That’s how!
*Live to be forgotten that Christ might be remembered. *
Br. Rex Anthony Norris Little Portion Hermitage Diocese of Portland, ME littleportionhermitage.org
Haha, you are too kind!
TopInteresting
Well written.. love to read it…
My Pleasure… ❤
my pleasure ♥
Daniel Culver
Not knowing all the details, based on what you have provided us, I think this could be a good move for Louvre. With the equipment and technology available for shipping delicate loads, a mile, 125 miles, or thousands of miles makes little difference. Remember that there are many very worthy collections that travel the world being crated and displayed may times a year, that survive quite well. I think the distance from the Louvre is immaterial to the art, though maybe not the employees. I suspect some of them will lose their cushy Paris jobs and they are understandably upset. For the museum, I suspect employee cost are only a small fraction of the cost consideration in such a move, as would the cost of fuel for the trucks used to move the work. I think the building, taxes, and land are much bigger concerns. I would like to know more about the atmospheric conditions that could actually have a cumulative affect on the art. Perhaps the new location might offer an improvement, but if not, and this is solely to satisfy a powerful politician ambitions, I would be onboard with condemnation. Still sometimes, a politician acting in his self-interest can still benefit the greater good, much like each of us do, going to work everyday.
Thanks for reading and commenting! I think the takeaway here is that while political concerns can sometimes hamper necessary efforts, they can also solve seemingly unsolvable impasses when it comes to the arts.
roman22jko
I think it is a good idea to send some art work outside of Paris. Many paintings of the 19 th century were commissioned by the French government to be displayed in the official buildings of the «province» i.e. away from Paris anyway (I guess most of them are now in the Musée d’Orsay). Lens is not such a bad place (I have been there: center of the coal mining area) and the people of the nothern part of France need a break. The south (Le Midi) is already filled with art work (Renoir, Picasso, etc.) not to mention the Mediterranean, the Cannes Festival and the sun. By the way, I am not French!
Thanks so much for reading and for your comments. While I think keeping the works in Paris would have been ideal, that didn’t materialise here, so others with greater political will shall benefit.
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FindLaw Blotter
Blacks 4x More Likely to Get Arrested for Pot
By Brett Snider, Esq. on June 12, 2013 9:32 AM
New federal data suggests that blacks are approximately four times more likely than whites to be arrested for charges involving marijuana.
These findings stem from a recent report by the American Civil Liberties Union, which compiled data from police records in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., reports The New York Times.
What do these numbers mean, especially when it comes to the enforcement of drug laws?
Study Suggests Racial Disparity
The ACLU study makes a number of interesting findings, including that although black and white 18- to 25-year-olds use pot at about the same rate, the arrest rate for marijuana possession is 3.73 times higher for blacks nationwide.
The lead author of the study, Ezekiel Edwards, attributes the gap between whites and blacks to racial profiling in order to round out arrest quotas in "problematic" communities, reports the Associated Press.
Even more shocking, according to Edwards' study, the arrest rate for blacks in some jurisdictions, like Iowa, was more than eight times higher for marijuana possession than for whites.
Is Racial Profiling Illegal?
Some critics point to racial profiling by police as the real reason for the apparent disparity.
Overt racial profiling is illegal, as the Supreme Court recently affirmed by telling Arizona law enforcement they could not use race or Latino ancestry as a factor to detain a suspect. However, officers often stop blacks or Latinos -- using a traffic offense as a pretext, for example -- although they may not have stopped them at all if they were white.
Regardless of the officer's true reason for a stop or detention, it's not considered illegal racial profiling if a reasonable officer could have had reasonable suspicion, not based on race, that the suspect had committed a crime.
Police Say Crime Is Crime
Some law enforcement officials don't agree with the characterization that the ACLU study has made, arguing that "the use of marijuana is a crime" and that informs how they operate, reports the AP.
That may not be so simple in a constantly shifting landscape of state laws. In states like Colorado and Washington, for example, use and possession of marijuana is only a federal crime, not a state crime.
Extreme reports of racial disparity in law enforcement not only sway public opinion, but occasionally policymakers, who make take this study as a reason to re-examine marijuana laws.
D.C. marijuana study: Blacks far more likely to be arrested than whites, ACLU says (The Washington Post)
LAPD's Patrick Smith Racially Profiled Latinos (FindLaw's Blotter)
Is Philly's 'Stop and Frisk' Racial Profiling? (FindLaw's Blotter)
Browse Criminal Defense Lawyers by Location (FindLaw)
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What Are E-Signatures? Are They Legally Valid?
By Brett Snider, Esq. on June 12, 2013 11:25 AM
E-signatures, or electronic signatures, are replacing their pen-and-paper cousins as a new form of legally valid marks on agreements.
What are the laws governing these e-signatures, and are they always just as good as a written one?
E-Signatures Making Their Mark
An electronic signature, or e-signature, is an electronic marker or token that is attached to an agreement. It indicates your intent to agree or approve the contract to which it is attached, as MakeUseOf explains.
In many cases, this can be as simple as a digital facsimile of your written signature that you attach as part of a PDF or Word document where your signature would normally go.
Services like Adobe's EchoSign can even create documents that allow a recipient to either create their electronic signature with a mouse or stylus, or just by typing in their name.
E-Signature Laws
There are two major laws governing the validity of electronic signatures: the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act ("ESIGN") and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act ("UETA"). But only ESIGN is current, valid federal law.
ESIGN was passed in 2000, and it stipulates that no contract or agreement can be denied or unenforced simply for having an electronic signature.
As for UETA, currently 47 states including California have adopted it into their own laws. These laws allow the use of electronic signatures in private and government contracts.
Limitations of E-Signatures
There are places where an electronic signature won't do, like in certain states where laws require written signatures for wills, trusts, adoption, and divorce documents.
You also won't be able to electronically sign any document to be presented in most courts, although some courts do make use of digital pleading systems that allow for an electronic signature.
The places where e-signatures aren't accepted are dwindling fast, but don't confuse the convenience of electronic signatures with dampening their effect. To make sure an e-signature is legally binding in your specific situation, you may want to consult an experienced contracts lawyer near you.
Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (National Conference of State Legislatures)
Are Electronic Signatures Valid? (FindLaw's Free Enterprise)
Contracts and Electronic Signatures (FindLaw)
Get a Lawyer to Review Your Contracts With a Legal Plan From LegalStreet (LegalStreet.com)
(Disclosure: LegalStreet and FindLaw.com are owned by the same company.)
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SCOTUS to Hear First Gun Case in a Decade
By William Vogeler, Esq. on January 24, 2019 10:15 AM
For the first time in a decade, the Second Amendment will finally have its day in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The timing is noteworthy because the Justices know it's been a long stretch without judicial review. Justice Clarence Thomas noted it last year when he called the Second Amendment a "disfavored right" in the Supreme Court.
Now that it is before them in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. New York, the question is: will the right get what it's asking for?
Disfavored Right?
The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association is challenging a New York City law that bars residents from transporting handguns beyond city limits. After passing over many gun cases, the Justices want to hear this one.
The Washington Post said it "may signal that the reinforced conservative majority on the Court is ready to consider more laws that restrict gun rights."
The SCOTUSblog said the Court may "stick to the relatively narrow question of the city's law is constitutional." Or, the Justices may address a bigger question: whether the right to possess a gun extends beyond the home.
The petitioners say the city ordinance "is an extreme, unjustified and irrational restriction on Second Amendment rights." They have a running start because of the High Court's decision in its last gun case.
Last Gun Case
In McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Supreme Court said Second Amendment rights apply to state and local governments. That was 2010.
In any case, the Supreme Court's decision to hear the New York case is already making headlines. The opinion probably won't come out until next year, but it will certainly be news.
United States Supreme Court Cases (FindLaw's Cases & Codes)
SCOTUS Lets Bad Yelp Review Live (FindLaw's Supreme Court Blog)
SCOTUS Leaves Transgender Military Ban in Play (FindLaw's Supreme Court Blog)
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All posts tagged "money"
Wonga, the archbishop and the Ethical Investment Advisory Group: interview
The day after the archbishop of Canterbury said he would try and compete payday lenders like Wonga “out of existence”, it was revealed that the Church...
Jane Austen to take over from Charles Darwin as face of £10 notes
Early 19th century author Jane Austen will be the face of the next set of £10 notes, the Bank of England has announced. The decision to...
Archbishop ‘embarrassed’ at Church of England investment in Wonga backer
The Church of England invests part of its £5.5 billion portfolio indirectly in Wonga, the same payday lender that this week the archbishop of Canterbury said...
Tell us what you think of our new look to win an iPad mini, Kindle Fire HD or a charity donation
Blue & Green Tomorrow has a new look. And we’re calling on you, our readers, to let us know what you think. We want to keep writing...
Philanthropists urged to take more risks and ‘talk about failure’
Philanthropists need to be more daring and less afraid of failure, according to a leading economist. In a lecture at Al Bateen Palace in Abu Dhabi,...
Introducing: The Guide to Philanthropy & Giving 2013
Welcome to Blue & Green Tomorrow’s Guide to Philanthropy & Giving 2013. Whereas in the past we’ve focused on investment, banking and the stock market, our latest report...
The Guide to Philanthropy & Giving 2013
Welcome to Blue & Green Tomorrow’s Guide to Philanthropy & Giving 2013. Whereas in the past we’ve focused on investment, banking and the stock market, our...
Finance giant UBS: ‘sustainable investment has entered the mainstream’
Leading financial services firm UBS has released a report that outlines its commitment to sustainable investment – which it says “has entered the mainstream”. The report uses...
Abundance Generation: crowdfunding the future of energy
Bruce Davis talks to Blue & Green Tomorrow about Abundance Generation – a democratic renewable energy funding platform that allows investment of as little as £5....
Impact investment organisation provides guidelines for governance
The Impact Investing Policy Collaborative (IIPC) has launched the London Principles – a statement of intent that looks to give purpose and direction to the industry....
July’s top 10 green crowdfunding projects
Crowdfunding is the collective effort of individuals who gather around a cause, and contribute their money to make it happen. It offers everyone, from entrepreneurs and...
Wisdom, ingenuity, morals and investing
Joel Solomon, chair of Renewal Funds, on the morality and responsibility within investment and finance. The first investment I ever made was $25,000 in Stonyfield Farm, an...
Divestment might be more effective than climbing a building
Six Greenpeace activists are in the process of climbing the Shard, London and Europe’s tallest skyscraper, in protest against Shell’s exploration in the vulnerable Arctic. But...
Party funding and MPs’ pay: you get the democracy you pay for
On Wednesday, David Cameron and Ed Miliband traded blows on each other’s party funding structure. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) will on Thursday say MPs’...
Absence of women on British banknotes sparks debate
As the Bank of England embarks on a new era under Mark Carney, some have contested its decision to remove Elizabeth Fry’s image from £5 notes,...
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All posts tagged "Renewable Energy"
Independent Review Backs Plans For Tidal Lagoon Project
A UK Government commissioned review has backed plans for the £1.3bn Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project, to be built by British Hydropower Association [BHA] members Tidal...
Swansea Tidal Lagoon Could Provide Valuable Contribution To Electricity System
Swansea tidal lagoon has potential to make valuable contribution to the electricity system. Dr Simon Harrison, Chair of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) Energy...
Hendry Releases Final Report On Tidal Power
Today marks the release of Charles Hendry’s final report and recommendations of the Independent Review of tidal lagoons. Commenting Charles said: “I was appointed in May 2016...
Tidal To Play An Important Role In Clean Power According To FoE
In the build up to an independent review due to be published later today by Charles Hendry, Friends of the Earth have stated that a tidal lagoon in...
£50 Million In Positive Investment Raised by Ethex
Over £50 million has been raised in finance for charities and business with a social and environmental mission by Ethex, the online positive investment platform. Founded...
Individual Changes Lead to Greater Global Conservation
Over the past several decades, people have begun to realize that the actions they take in their daily lives merge with the actions of others to...
Demand For Electric Cars Boosts UK Car Market
2016 has been a successful year for the UK’s new car market thanks to a boom in the popularity of electric vehicles. The Society of Motor Manufacturers...
Electricity’s ‘Climate Impact’ reduced most in Scotland compared to UK
The average ‘climate change impact’ of generating a unit of electricity in Scotland has fallen by almost two-fifths (38%) between 2010 and 2014 (the most recent available figures)...
Renewable Energy: Opportunities and Challenges
We like renewable energy because – fundamentally – it will help to reduce CO2 emissions and combat climate change; now recognised as an existential threat to...
View from the Investment Community: Abundance Investment
As ever, the renewable energy industry has had another year of highs and lows. Feed-in Tariff levels across a number of technologies have been cut, causing...
Transforming the Future of Energy
These are extraordinary times for renewable energy. Records are broken, commitments are made and setbacks occur almost on a weekly basis. It would be too easy...
Energy Storage Poised for Growth
When looking to the future of renewable energy production in the UK, as a bank and as an investor, we believe that energy storage is poised...
The Current Sweet Spot in Renewables
Global energy markets are undergoing fundamental and rapid change towards a greater reliance on renewable energy. Growth in wind and solar markets is driven by government...
The Benefit of a Power System without Fuel is Partly from Technology – and Mostly from Mindset
In a world of flat or slow growth there are few industry sectors undergoing more exciting growth and technology innovation than power networks. We are moving...
UK Energy Transition
A fundamental change is underway in the way in which energy is generated and managed, both in the UK and on a global basis. We are...
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> Case Studies > Sally Peyman
Sally Peyman
October 25, 2017 | Simon Jenkins
Sally Peyman studied Chemistry with Forensic Science and Toxicology at Hull, before moving on to a PhD focussed on the design and application of microfluidic devices for biomedical applications. She moved briefly to Imperial College to carry out postdoctoral work on nanosensors before moving to Leeds to work on microfluidics for the fabrication of microbubbles as a novel cancer treatment.
She has recently been made a University Academic Fellow and has started her own research group. Over the last 11 years she has researched microfluidics for rapid clinical diagnostics, for the fabrication of novel therapeutics and for single cell analysis to understand disease.
Sally is now investigating organ-on-chip microfluidics for modelling disease states and the rapid screening of new therapeutics.
See our other Case Studies
Nele Warmke
Steve Evans
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How 20th Century Reform Became 21st Century Headaches
October 31, 2013 October 31, 2013 by Jeff Neal
This is the second of a series of posts on the history and future of the civil service. The first, addressing the Pendleton Act and Theodore Roosevelt’s role in civil service reform is here.
Although it is 130 years old, the Pendleton Act is still a relevant foundation for the civil service. The difficulty the system experiences in meeting today’s requirements is not because of the age of the system or lack of reform. In fact, many of the problems the Civil Service currently faces are an outgrowth of one of the largest reform efforts of the mid-20th century – the Classification Act of 1949. The Classification Act consolidated multiple classification systems into one “General Schedule.” President Harry Truman issued a lengthy signing statement outlining the benefits of the new system. The Classification Act made sense and was real reform in 1949, but changes in the workforce and the nature of work make it increasingly unsuited for a 21st century workforce. Let’s take a look at it through the lens of President Truman’s signing statement.
“This act completely revises and brings up to date the salary structure for nearly half the civilian jobs of the Government–that is, nearly all of the jobs in the executive branch except those in the postal service and those paid on an hourly basis which are covered by other legislation.” The General Schedule is no longer current. When it was established, more than half of Federal employees were GS-5 and below. Because so many lower graded jobs have been automated or outsourced, employees today are grouped at the higher end of the scale. This legislation makes a number of significant improvements in the pay structure of the Government. It greatly simplifies the salary system by reducing the number of pay grades from 41 to 28, and at the same time, corrects inequities among the different grades which were created by piecemeal legislation over a period of years. It authorizes longevity step-increases above the maximum scheduled grade rate for employees with long, faithful, and efficient service. The 21st century job market is far less stable than that of 1949. Employees change jobs more frequently and are more geographically mobile. A system where many of the pay increases are based on longevity rather than accomplishments presents problems that were not anticipated in post-war America. Back then, the idea of a life-long job was the norm.
The act also adds three new grades at the top of the pay schedule, which will permit a limited number of the top career positions to be paid up to a maximum of $14,000. As a result of this action, it will be possible to increase the salaries of some top career positions whose incumbents have been paid the same salary as many of their subordinates. The three new grades are now known as the Senior Executive Service. SES members often make less than their subordinates, and SES pay increases based on performance are so small that they are virtually meaningless. It will also make it possible for the Government to compete more effectively with higher-paying private employment for the services of outstanding people, and to offer a greater incentive to able young men and women considering whether to enter public service as a career. Federal entry-level salaries are adequate or generous for some occupations, but many lines of work are so competitive that the government struggles to recruit and retain talent. It is getting harder to attract high performers to the SES because the risks often outweigh the job satisfaction and benefits.
The new Classification Act also improves Federal personnel administration by decentralizing to the departments and agencies the responsibility for fixing the pay rate for each position, except those in the top three grades. This will eliminate one source of delay in appointing qualified personnel. The Classification Act may have helped at the time, but today’s hiring process is too complicated, too slow, and too unresponsive to changing labor market conditions. At the same time, it will increase the responsibility of the departments and agencies for meeting their own position classification problems. These responsibilities must be carefully exercised. Job classification in the 1950s and 1960s was a rigid and inflexible process. Some HR offices treated classification standards as though they were holy documents and would not let employees or managers read them. As a result, grade creep was contained (although at the expense of flexibility). Today, a classifier is a rare breed. Classification standards are available to anyone with an Internet connection. The authority to classify positions has been delegated to managers in many agencies, and grade levels are often not consistent with the classification standards. Grade creep is pervasive and has aggravated the grade compression at the top grades. The Civil Service Commission, in carrying out its responsibilities for maintaining the consistency of salaries on a Government-wide basis, must also exercise its authority for prescribing standards and reviewing and inspecting the operations and decisions under the act to assure that its provisions are judiciously administered by all alike. The Office of Personnel Management (successor to the Civili Service Commission) still writes classification standards. The process takes several years and requires coordination with many stakeholders. As a result, some classification standards are out of date, and others that should be developed in response to the realities of the labor market, simply do not exist. Cuts to OPM’s budget have limited its ability to address new requirements and effectively provide oversight of the classification process.
The management improvement provisions of the act further assure economy and efficiency by requiring the department and agency heads to review their operations on a systematic and continuing basis. This provision recognizes the importance of improving the management of Government operations which was emphasized so strongly by the Hoover Commission and which is the purpose of the program provided for by a recent Executive order establishing the Advisory Committee on Management Improvement. Interest in improving management of government operations has waxed and waned, but it would be difficult to argue that many people today truly have an interest in getting into the nuts-and-bolts of government. A few excellent organizations, such as the National Academy of Public Administration, the Partnership for Public Service, and the Volcker Alliance, are actively engaged in “good government” activities, but the national interest the Hoover Commission generated is just not there today. Furthermore, it provides for the reward of those persons or groups of persons who have done an exceptional job in promoting economy and efficiency in the Government’s work. Bonuses for SES members and employees have been reduced or eliminated, Presidential Rank Awards suspended, and legislation is moving in the House of Representatives to limit bonuses for employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs. In many agencies, if employee bonuses are awarded they are a few hundred dollars each. It would be hard to argue there is a lot of political support for substantial rewards for people who promote economy and efficiency in government.
The Classification Act is 64 years old. The rigidly structured pay and job classification processes it created were well-suited to the challenges of the post-war world. They provided stability, consistency, and a means of making it easier for citizens to build careers in public service. Unfortunately, the civil service system has not kept up with the labor market in which it competes. It is unresponsive to the market, challenging to administer, and pretends that it provides a high degree of precision in classification and pay setting. It does not really do that, and the job classification process is a mess. Because job classification drives hiring and pay, those are a mess too. Experiments in pay-for-performance have had mixed results at best, although the Department of Defense National Security Personnel System and the Homeland Security MaxHR programs were destroyed more by their attempts to eviscerate collective bargaining than their classification, performance and pay provisions.
The civil service regulations, policies and practices that have evolved over the years to implement the merit system have produced application processes that seem designed to test how desperately an applicant wants government employment, a job classification system that, when it isn’t being ignored, is hated by managers, employees and HR officials alike, and a promotion system that federal managers, employees, unions and HR officials loathe and distrust. The result is a Civil Service system that struggles to meet the challenges it faces today. As the Federal government became increasingly complex, little provision has been made for the highly educated and trained workforce necessary to do much of the work. The one-size-fits-all model might have worked for the government of the 1950s, but it does not work for the government of today.
There are many options for updating civil service to make it more responsive and effective. Future posts in this series will address aspects of the civil service system that must be changed in order to be competitive in today’s labor market and in the future, including more flexible position classification, pay reform, effective performance management, and simplification of the hiring process.
Chief HRO Chief Human Capital Officer Chief Human Resources Officer ChiefHRO CHRO federal federal employees federal HR federal workforce HR human capital human resources people
Vultures and 19th Century Civil Service Reform
Let’s Talk About TSA
2 thoughts on “How 20th Century Reform Became 21st Century Headaches”
Alex W. says:
I don’t think that the federal workforce has changed that much to demand such profound change, especially since in none of your posts you discuss the quality of the management that would do the rating. No job performance evaluation system in human history has had total acceptance; the General System has come the closest to being acceptable.
So, sir, what is the bottom line? Apply a forced-rank distribution performance model to the federal workforce that would have at its root a work environment based on instability, backstabbing, sabotage, and distrust?? (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2013/08/27/with-steve-ballmers-departure-a-look-at-microsofts-flawed-system-of-performance-reviews) I am not sure why this terrible system from GE’s Jack Welsh and Dick Grote is still in fashion. See this article–“Rank and Yank Retains Vocal Fans,” http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203363504577186970064375222. Recall that Enron, the failed corporation, wickedly used forced-rank distribution.
Because the federal government provides human services, there is not reasonable way forced-rank distributions can be fairly applied. [But if this system were to be advocated, employee ranking of their supervisors must be included to serve as a check on the process.]
Jeff Neal says:
I don’t support forced rankings at all. They are a terrible way to manage. I will be writing a post soon that will outline some ideas for rating processes that do not have the demotivating characteristics of the current processes.
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Skip to China Forum for Civilizational Dialogue Full Site Menu" Skip to main content
China Forum for Civilizational Dialogue
Seminar on A.I. and the Human Person: Chinese and Western Perspectives
On April 4-5, the China Forum for Civilizational Dialogue brought together Chinese and Western thought leaders to explore the implications of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution for the human person and society.
The seminar, hosted by Santa Clara University and cosponsored by the Pontifical Council for Culture, convened a dozen scholars from China, the United States, and Europe, to examine how revolutionary changes in communications, transportation, and other areas are positing challenges for Christian, Confucian, and other religious and secular traditions.
Key questions for discussion included: What dangers and opportunities does the rise of AI pose for the human person and human communities? Does AI threaten or enhance the capacity of humans for self-reflection and meaningful relationships—in the family, friendships, and society at large?
Seminar on A.I. and the Human Person: Chinese and Western Perspectives Video Player
Showing the A.I. and the Human Person Video
Bai Tongdong, Dongfang Chair Professor of Philosophy, Fudan University
Thomas Banchoff, vice president for global engagement, Georgetown University
Daniel Bell, dean, School of Political Science and Public Administration, Shandong University
Brian Green, director of technology ethics, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University
Li Silong, professor of Buddhist philosophy, associate dean of the Faculty of Humanities, and director of the Center for Buddhist Education and Research, Peking University
Peng Guoxiang, Distinguished Professor of Chines Philosophy, Intellectual History, and Religions, Zhejiang University
Julie Rubio, professor of social ethics, Santa Clara University
Antonio Spadaro, S.J., editor-in-chief, La Civiltà Cattolica
Tan Sor Hoon, professor of philosophy, Singapore Management University
Paul Tighe, secretary, Pontifical Council for Culture
Shannon Vallor, Regis and Diane McKenna Professor of philosophy, Santa Clara University
Wang Pei, assistant professor, The China Institute, Fudan University
Robin R. Wang, Robert H. Taylor Chair in Philosophy and director of Asian Pacific Studies, Loyola Marymount University
Founded in 2018, the China Forum for Civilizational Dialogue is a collaboration between Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.) and La Civiltà Cattolica (Rome). In August 2018 the Forum convened Chinese and Western educators at the University of San Francisco to address the future of humanities education in a global era. In December 2018 the forum brought journalist Thomas Friedman (New York Times) and professor Wang Jisi (Beijing University) to Rome at La Civiltà Cattolica for a dialogue about the global ecological crisis.
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence and the Human Person: Chinese and Western Perspectives
La Civiltà Cattolica
RSVP to Seminar on A.I. and the Human Person: Chinese and Western Perspectives
Sorry, the time period to RSVP to this event has ended. Please send any questions to:
chinaforum@georgetown.edu
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Dorothea Jensen
A Buss from Lafayette
SOMETIMES ONE LITTLE KISS CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING, ESPECIALLY ONE FROM A WORLD FAMOUS HERO OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION! Now available in print, digital, and audio editions. Gold Medalist (Middle School/Historical Fiction) Literary Classics Award; 1st Place Winner (Historical Fiction) Purple Dragonfly Book Awards; Bronze Medalist (Juvenile/Young Adult Fiction) eLit Awards; Finalist, (Historical Fiction) Red City Book Awards; Quarter Finalist (Middle Grade) Booklife Prize; Finalist (Young Adult) Book Excellence Awards. Also named on the Grateful American Kids website as one of the best history book for kids to read. Clever young Clara Hargraves has a couple of big problems. First of all, she has a new stepmother, formerly her old maid schoolteacher aunt, who keeps trying to make Clara behave like a lady. Secondly, she has red hair, which means she is constantly teased, especially by an older boy, Dickon, and her beautiful cousin, Hetty. During the last week of June, 1825, Clara's small New Hampshire town is buzzing about the upcoming visit to the state by the Revolutionary War hero, General Lafayette. Could an unexpected playful kiss from a charming, world-famous Frenchman change Clara's life forever?
Dorothea Jensen is proud to be one of a very few people who has boarded a pirate ship and attacked a Viking vessel manned by real Vikings wearing horns and furs. She was born in Boston, but grew up in Chillicothe, Illinois, site of the Viking adventure. She then earned a BA in English from Carleton College and an MA in Secondary Education from the University of New Mexico. She has served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in South America, taught middle and high school English, tutored refugees in ESL, written grant proposals for various arts organizations, written a play performed in Noh style, and raised three children. Her first historical novel for young readers, THE RIDDLE OF PENNCROFT FARM, has been used in classrooms for many years as an enrichment resource for kids studying the American Revolution. Her next novel, A BUSS FROM LAFAYETTE, is set in 1825 in the small town in New Hampshire where she has lived since 1991. Dorothea also writes modern Christmas stories in verse. Modeled on the 19th century classic poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas", these award-winning Santa's Izzy Elves story poems feature decidedly 21st century elves savvy in modern technology.
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The Redcoats Party in Philly
I have always found it fascinating to read about the British occupation of Philadelphia during the winter of 1777-8. Apparently it was traditional for armies at that time to take a recess from battling during the winter months. And what a recess the Redcoats had that winter! Many wealthy loyalist families stayed in town and entertained British officers. One such family, the Shippens, had a pretty blonde daughter, Peggy, who later captivated and married none other than Benedict Arnold. When he turned traitor, no one knew at the time that she had not only influenced his decision to do so, but provided the conduit for him to negotiate with the British. This was done through John Andre, the charming young British officer who was hanged as a spy when caught out of uniform after meeting with Arnold at West Point which was under his command. It was there that "the best general in the Continental Army." explained how the British could easily capture that key fort overlooking the Hudson.
Dickon flushed a bit at his father’s words. Then he told us how Washington had given Lafayette the command of twenty-two hundred men to scout British movements out from Philadelphia, which the Redcoats had occupied all winter. Washington had wanted to find out if the British were coming to attack their encampment at Valley Forge or were returning to New York City, which was held by the rest of their army.
Barnes&Noble
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Human diet causing ‘catastrophic’ damage – Lancet
A major report on healthy diets and food systems commissioned by the Lancet Medical Journal has called for a comprehensive shift in how the world eats.
The EAT-Lancet Commission involved a three-year collaboration between 37 scientific experts from 16 countries.
It concluded that our food systems are faulty and a major contributor to climate change, leaving civilisation in crisis.
The Commission’s report calls for a dramatic reduction in the consumption of meat and dairy and a sharp increase in plant-based foods.
It warned that we can no longer feed our population a healthy diet while balancing planetary resources.
Almost one billion people are hungry, almost two billion are eating the wrong food, and unhealthy diets account for up to 11 million avoidable deaths per year.
The dominant diets of the past 50 years are a major contributor to climate change and are no longer nutritionally optimal.
The scientists set out what they call a new universal healthy reference diet.
It largely consists of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and unsaturated oils, with very moderate amounts of seafood and poultry.
However, it allows no or only very low quantities of red meat, processed meat, added sugars, refined grains and starchy vegetables.
The recommendations would imply a 90% reduction in red meat and milk consumption in Ireland, a 70% reduction in chicken, as well as substantial reduction in the consumption of potatoes and some other vegetables.
The report suggests policies to eliminate and restrict food choice, including new taxes and charges, as well as withdrawing products from sale and in some cases rationing.
The commission says food is the single strongest lever to optimise human health and environmental sustainability on Earth.
Professor Tim Lang, one of the authors from City, University of London, said: “The food we eat and how we produce it determines the health of people and the planet.
“We are currently getting this seriously wrong … we are in a catastrophic situation.
“We need a significant overhaul, changing the global food system on a scale not seen before in ways appropriate to each country’s circumstances.
“While this is uncharted policy territory and these problems are not easily fixed, this goal is within reach and there are opportunities to adapt international, local and business policies.
“The scientific targets we have devised for a healthy, sustainable diet are an important foundation which will underpin and drive this change.”
Professor Johan Rockstrom, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who co-led the commission, said a sustainable system that could deliver healthy diets for a growing and wealthier world population required “nothing less than a new global agricultural revolution”.
He added: “Our definition of sustainable food production requires that we use no additional land, safeguard existing biodiversity, reduce consumptive water use and manage water responsibly, substantially reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, produce zero carbon dioxide emissions, and cause no further increase in methane and nitrous oxide emissions.
“There is no silver bullet for combating harmful food production practices, but by defining and quantifying a safe operating space for food systems, diets can be identified that will nurture human health and support environmental sustainability.”
US colleague and co-lead commissioner Dr Walter Willett, from Harvard University, said: “The world’s diets must change dramatically.
“More than 800 million people have insufficient food, while many more consume an unhealthy diet that contributes to premature death and disease.”
Additional reporting PA
https://www.rte.ie/news/2019/0117/1023724-lancet_global_diet/
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“The Right Way”: Ethics and Compliance Best Practices with Ford's Raphael Richmond
"The Right Way": Ethics and Compliance Best Practices with Ford's Raphael Richmond
The Moral Stress of Speaking Up About Sexual Harassment
Aiming Higher Interviews
Raphael Richmond - Global Director of Compliance / Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company enjoys the longest ever streak (2010-2017) of being named one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute, an independent organization devoted to defining and measuring corporate ethics standards. Several of those years fell under the tenure of Raphael Richmond, Ford’s Global Director of Compliance.
Richmond’s mission for Ford’s ethical culture can be summed up in five words: “Go Further—The Right Way.” One step along that right way for the company has been the development of a smartphone app. “We know that in our fast-paced world, in order to be successful as an ethical company, we must make it as easy as possible for employees to do the right thing, and as hard as possible to do the wrong thing,” she says. That’s why Ford decided that an app with short summaries of key policies, frequently asked questions, and a decision-making tree was the perfect fit for their global workforce. The Right Way app also includes a reporting feature, which employees can use to report suspected violations directly to Richmond’s compliance team.
Ford also knows what it’s like to weather an ethics-related controversy and begin to rebuild trust. In 2017, the New York Times published their investigation into unsettling accounts of sexual harassment and retaliation at Ford plants in Chicago. CEO Jim Hackett, in an open letter to employees, said that “it was gut wrenching to read the accounts of these women,” adding, “This has been a learning experience about how difficult it can be to root out bad behavior.” Hackett’s sentiment might be less than comforting to employees who made repeated complaints about harassment and abuse to Ford and to union representatives, but it also signals the motivation for a new kind of reporting mechanism. Tools like AllVoices, STOPit, tEQitable, and Callisto, which have emerged in the wake of the #MeToo movement, are designed to send aggregated complaint data directly to the C-suite. While some suggest this strategy may be problematic, it could be one more avenue toward accountability.
Read more about Ford and the integration of technology into ethics and compliance programs in our curated resources below.
Easing Compliance: Expanding an Ethical Culture Through Technology
Ford Ethics and Compliance Page: Ethics Advice at Our Finger Tips
Compliance? There Should be an App for That!
Tools and Apps for the Compliance Practitioner
Code of Conduct App – Xcelus
Compliance App for Smartphones—Got Ethics
You can access our Spring Ethics Luncheon Event Packet here
Ford’s The Right Way app is available for free download via public app stores on mobile phones and tablets by searching “Ford Motor The Right Way.” Because Ford considers compliance to be a community project, they are pleased to offer the application’s source code and content under an open source license for any entity that might find it useful. The information can be accessed at one of the following sites:
www.GitHub.com/Ford
http://corporate.ford.com/ford-open-source.html
The websites contain a README.md file describing how to use, build, run, and test the application. You will also find a LICENSE file containing the license agreement for the software and a CONTRIBUTING .md file explaining how to contribute software modifications to the application. If you have any questions about downloading the code, please reach out to their Intellectual Property team at FGTAdmin@ford.com.
Ford’s only request is that you share any feedback about The Right Way application with them – including any cool new ideas you might come up with to enhance the experience. Ford will also use any feedback you share about the process to improve The Right Way application’s content, availability, and code.
Copyright © 2018 KRACHER & BUSINESS ETHICS ALLIANCE. All rights reserved.
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C&C at the NR&B
Jessica Kitchin / Blog, News /
Chester-based C&C Catering Equipment Ltd is pleased to be exhibiting at this year’s Northern Restaurant & Bar show. The event, taking place from 20th-21st March at Manchester Central, will showcase exhibitors from throughout the hospitality industry, as well as speciality theatres, areas and events.
Across the two day event, well-known chefs will be taking to the stage, just across from C&C’s stand at C18. Some of those undertaking cooking demonstrations include individuals C&C are delighted to have worked with in the past, such as Gareth Ward, Lisa Goodwin-Allen, and Gary Usher.
As well as being a north-west based company, C&C are pleased to have completed many projects in the local area, including Randall & Aubin, Tattu, Thaikhun, Liverpool Echo Arena, The Warehouse Bar & Grill, and The Church Bar & Restaurant.
Managing Director Peter Kitchin commented, “Having visited the NR&B show last year, we are delighted to be exhibiting this month and are looking forward to a great exhibition. Manchester is an important city for the hospitality sector, and we’re proud to have completed many jobs in the area. We look forward to seeing some familiar faces at the show, and introducing our award winning company and team to those exploring new ventures.”
« C&C Shortlisted at CEDA Grand Prix Awards 2018 » C&C Highly Commended at Awards Ceremony
C&C supports local hospices
C&C Muddy Runners fundraise for Cancer Research UK
The John Kitchin Memorial Award
© C&C Catering Equipment 2018
website by Creation ADM
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Home > Volume 82 Issue 16 > UCSD SELECTS FOX
Volume 82 Issue 16 | p. 9 | News of The Week
Issue Date: April 19, 2004
UCSD SELECTS FOX
NCSU chancellor will become chancellor of UC San Diego
By Sophie L. Rovner
Department: ACS News
Credit: PHOTO BY ROGER WINSTEAD, NCSU
Word leaked prematurely, but now it’s official: Chemistry professor Marye Anne Fox is leaving her post as chancellor of North Carolina State University to assume the same position at the University of California, San Diego, in mid-August. Fox, who will earn $350,000 annually, will succeed acting chancellor Marsha A. Chandler, a political scientist.
In announcing the appointment on April 12, University of California President Robert C. Dynes said Fox “is one of the nation’s most highly regarded physical organic chemists. She has a complete passion and devotion to students and the quality of their education. She has a strong commitment to faculty excellence. And she is well-known as a national spokesperson on science policy.”
Fox, 56, said this was “one of the most momentous days of my life.” She pledged to work closely with UCSD’s faculty and academic senate—possibly an acknowledgment of her mixed experience at NC State. In January 2003, NC State’s faculty senate censured Fox for firing two respected vice provosts and for straining the faculty’s relationship with the administration. On the positive side, NC State Provost James L. Oblinger credits Fox with transforming the university and bringing it to national prominence.
Fox earned a B.S. degree in chemistry at Notre Dame College in 1969 and a Ph.D. degree in physical organic chemistry at Dartmouth College in 1974. She joined the University of Texas, Austin, faculty in 1976 and served as vice president for research at the university from 1994 until 1998, when she moved to NC State.
Fox’s many honors include the American Chemical Society’s 2005 Charles Lathrop Parsons Award for outstanding public service (C&EN, April 5, page 16).
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Home Outreach Leaders Articles for Outreach & Missions Better Together: Partnering with Your Community
Better Together: Partnering with Your Community
Is your church struggling to meet the needs of your community alone? You don’t have to. Learn from churches that have forged ongoing partnerships with their local schools or civic organizations to make a holistic impact on their community.
Located in a wealthy bedroom community outside Washington, D.C., Loudon County’s Cornerstone Chapel (cornerstonechapel.net) had never considered a homeless outreach. That was until Assistant Pastor Mike Emerson took a church trip to rehabilitate houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina. After seeing the devastation there, Emerson found a new passion to minister to the homeless people in his own community.
But when it came to actually addressing the needs of the several hundred homeless—many suffering from a housing shortage caused by a 50% population increase in the last five years—he was at a loss. The planning and logistics necessary to create this type of ministry were daunting. A longtime Loudoun County resident, he knew about The Good Shepherd Alliance (loudounhomeless.org)—a local, private homeless service organization providing shelter for the poor and connecting volunteers to those in need.
“I thought, Why not just find out what God’s doing there and get in on it?” Emerson recalls.
What resulted was a partnership between 2,000-member Cornerstone and Good Shepherd that now provides the church an easy avenue to serve hundreds of homeless.
Churches like Cornerstone are finding that formal partnerships with their local government offices, Chamber of Commerce, food bank, park district, community thrift shop or public school can make a much more powerful impact on the unchurched than they ever could alone. Successful partners complement each other, overcoming weaknesses and highlighting strengths. Hear from churches that have succeeded in partnerships and discover how your church and a local organization can be better together.
Cutting Through the Red Tape
When Emerson approached Good Shepherd about piggy-backing on their resources, he was welcomed by Mark Gunderman, Good Shepherd’s vice chair of board of directors.
“Churches that are intent on reinventing the wheel are often the biggest obstacles to civic programs like ours,” Gunderman says, indicating that having “too many cooks in the kitchen” adds confusion and fails to capitalize on combined resources. With Gunderman’s consent, Emerson joined the city and county governments, along with other volunteer groups and organizations in the area that were already volunteering to help and support Good Shepherd’s homeless ministry.
Soon, Cornerstone Chapel volunteers found instant projects with Good Shepherd’s connections. Members renovated a family shelter. They also tore down part of a donated house to prepare it for remodeling and use as a home for pregnant, unwed and homeless women.
“We have a sense that this might be our niche with Good Shepherd: construction and renovation for housing,” Emerson says, adding that recently he met a 17-year-old girl who reinforced that idea. Unmarried and pregnant, she was kicked out of her house and left to fend for herself on the streets. Now, Emerson’s church is able to house her at the shelter it helped build.
The same partnership mentality is working for other churches around the country. In Nashville, Tenn., 1,000-attendee Midtown Fellowship (midtownfellowship.org), also needed help to avoid getting bogged down in the details of starting a ministry for local at-risk children. In 2004, the downtown church created a partnership with the nationally known mentoring organization Big Brothers, Big Sisters (bbbs.org).
“Our congregation, comprised mainly of 20- and 30-something professionals, couldn’t navigate all the red tape that matching kids from nearby public schools with mentors would involve,” says attendee Claire Emerick, who initiated the partnership.
But she knew Big Brothers, Big Sisters relied on volunteer support and believed busy church members would be more than willing to mentor at-risk kids as long as they didn’t have to spend extra time figuring out the logistics.
“I had visions of children building relationships with Midtowners,” Emerick says. “I wanted to see families of kids coming to church because of the role our congregation was playing in their lives.”
Her dream became a reality. In fact, Midtown Fellowship’s seven dedicated volunteers, the pastor’s encouragement and Emerick’s heavy involvement led to Midtown being named 2005 Church of the Year by Big Brothers, Big Sisters, and the partnership continues to flourish today.
Says Emerick, “When I think about our partnership, 1 Thess. 2:8 is so fitting: ‘We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the Gospel of Jesus but our lives as well … .’ ”
Making the Connection
If your church desires to engage people outside your normal sphere of influence, a partnership could be a good connection point. Take Refuge Worship Center in Amarillo, Texas, for example. The church may only have 160 members, but it interacts with more than three times that number of people each week through an ongoing partnership with a local public high school. When Caprock High School needed a place to host its Thursday lunches—a fundraiser for the agriculture department—the church was there. Now, each week 500 to 600 students from the high school follow the aroma of smoked meat across the street to Refuge. When kids arrive, part-time Pastor Eddie Ortega ensures that volunteers are there, prepared to mentor and counsel them.
“Kids don’t hesitate to come to the church now,” Ortega says. “I tell our group to encourage these kids, to uplift them, not to bring them down.”
The partnership is now a forum for church leaders and volunteers to get to know high school students. A few have trickled into worship services at the church with their families, and some share personal problems with Ortega.
For the school, the church is now much more than a place to eat on Thursdays—it is a place of community.
“It’s basically an open-door policy,” Ortega says. “Originally, the school asked to use only the parking lot for its barbecue. But now teachers have their own key code for our building alarm, so they can come and go as they need to, using the facilities for after-school and extra-curricular groups and meetings.”
Wanting similar expansion of its circle of influence, LifeBridge Christian Church in Longmont, Colo., (lbcc.org), also made community connections by serving its local school system. Though the 3,000-member congregation led by Senior Pastor Rick Rusaw had a long history of working with its rural and growing community, six years ago the church decided to become more intentional about partnering with its surrounding public schools.
“We really wanted to see how we could support the schools in our area,” explains Tricia Richardson, director of involvement at LifeBridge. “So initially, we went to them and asked, ‘How can we help you? What school is in the most need?’”
The church’s approach—setting up a meeting with the school district board and presenting its desire to help with no strings attached—worked. However, Richardson says it’s helpful to have an ally on the inside, like the several former schoolteachers on LifeBridge’s community involvement team.
Richardson then met with the school custodian to do a walk through of the building, and asked, “What is your dream for your school?” The custodian submitted a list of prioritized projects, and over the next few weeks, LifeBridge brought in a few hundred church volunteers to tackle the tasks—primarily painting rooms. Volunteers now regularly do carpentry work and help in the classrooms as well.
“This summer we did two schools—painted every room in one of them, and in the other, did things like resurfacing doors that saved the school district a ton of money,” Richardson explains.
With each job, LifeBridge asks the schools to provide the paint, tools or tile, as materials are included in the school’s budget, and then the church supplies the manpower to do the work. Though they’ve been welcomed into the school system, LifeBridge is careful not to make evangelism the target in their service projects. But the ongoing partnership has built valuable relationships with school staff.
“It’s amazing to watch how at first, people are not involved in the church, but then they realize it might be something they’re interested in,” Richardson relates. And when their interest is piqued, LifeBridge is ready. New believers, many of whom were somehow impacted by volunteers from LifeBridge, now attend the church eager to join the congregation that helped improve their schools.
“Teachers and school staff have sought out church volunteers to discuss personal issues and problems,” says Rusaw, author of The Externally Focused Church (Group). “And some faculty members have migrated to the church to worship and become a part of the community of volunteers they got to know at their own school.”
More and more churches are discovering that a partnership can build bridges with civic groups that otherwise would have nothing to do with a church. Vineyard Christian Fellowship (vineyardboise.org) of Boise, Idaho, learned this lesson when it launched its environmental outreach initiative called Let’s Tend the Garden (LTTG) in 2005; an ongoing partnership with the area’s U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management soon followed.
“I realized there were people in our church who were waiting for someone to say ‘we care about creation,’ ” Vineyard Boise Senior Pastor Tri Robinson explains. “Not only that, but there were people in Boise waiting for our church to care about it.” So church leaders went to the fish and game, and forestry services to ask what their church could do for them.
“We said, ‘Do you need our help, and if so, how can we serve you?’ ” Robinson says. Vineyard Boise’s LTTG outreach and involvement with the city’s civic and environmental service organizations have provided the 3,000-member church multiple ways to bust negative stereotypes of Christians as people who don’t care about the environment, and build trust within the environmentally conscious community.
As a result of this partnership, volunteers from the church now serve in places like the city zoo, the parks and recreation department and local campgrounds doing conservation work, environmental clean up and trail work. Vineyard Boise’s attitude of teamwork and service is speaking volumes to people in the Northwestern city of 103,000 where the environment is one of the main barriers between Christians and the unchurched, says Robinson.
While he admits it took some time to build trust with environmental civic groups, the church has seen its faithfulness come to fruition. In 2005, the Forest Service commended Vineyard Boise for its volunteerism and, more importantly, Robinson reports, “I’ve built some rich relationships with people who don’t understand the Church, or who weren’t raised in a church and have no paradigm for it.”
Through these unconventional relationships, Robinson believes pathways leading toward sharing the Gospel with those working in civic organizations are built.
“People ask why we’re doing this. We say because it’s biblical. And that totally messes with them. It opens so many doors.”
A frequent contributor to Outreach, freelance writer and editor Rebecca Barnes resides in Littleton, Colo. For this piece, she listened to multiple churches’ stories to discover how forming a civic partnership permanently transformed their ministry.
Good Will, Then Good News
Ultimately, a partnership’s success is often based on the church’s ability to minister on another organization’s territory, with the possibility of never reaping converts or more church attendees. It requires a shift in ministry philosophy and a focus on building what’s most valuable—relationships.
“Good deeds create good will,” says Rick Rusaw, senior pastor of LifeBridge Christian Church in Longmont, Colo., and co-author of The Externally Focused Church (Group). “Then we get the opportunity to talk about good news.” What’s important, Rusaw maintains, is that members stay focused on doing the work that needs to be done, building relationships with people and trusting God to do what He needs to do in the lives of the people they are serving. Get your church in effective community partnerships by following these simple steps.
Be proactive. Call your local civic organizations and ask what their needs are and how your church can help.
Secure congregation buy-in. Present ideas to your congregation to ensure everyone is on board before you forge a partnership with a civic organization.
Identify allies. People in your church who work in a civic organization may be able to help you get in the door more easily than a “cold call.”
Take baby steps. While consistency may be your goal, partnerships take time to develop.
Be specific. Once you forge a partnership, make sure both your church and the organization fully understands how you’ll work together.
Take it seriously. Once you commit to an ongoing partnership, do what you say you’ll do. The quickest way to build mistrust is to shirk your responsibility when people are counting on you.
Have a clear vision. Sometimes knowing what you want the end result to be helps you identify who or what you’ll need to get there. For example, if you have a vision for seeing homeless people in your community meet Christ and worship at your church, then you might want to partner with a city organization that’s already serving the poor instead of re-creating the wheel.
A frequent contributor to Outreach, freelance writer and editor Rebecca Barnes resides in Littleton, Colo.
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Broadband, Special Events
Net Neutrality, 5G Policy and Finance: A Discussion with FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel
Robertson Hall Dodds Auditorium 100, Robertson Hall Bowl 016
This talk is co-sponsored with the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy & Finance.
A discussion about net neutrality, 5G policy, and financial considerations with Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and Nick Feamster, Professor of Computer Science and Deputy Director of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy.
Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel believes that the future belongs to the connected. She works to promote greater opportunity, accessibility, and affordability in our communications services in order to ensure that all Americans get a fair shot at 21st century success. She values expanding opportunity through technology and finding creative solutions to our most pressing policy questions.
From fighting to protect net neutrality to ensuring access to the internet for students caught in the Homework Gap, Jessica has been a consistent champion for connectivity. She is a leader in spectrum policy, developing new ways to support wireless services from Wi-Fi to video and the internet of things. She is also a responsible for developing policies to help expand the reach of broadband to schools, libraries, hospitals, and households across the country.
Named as one of POLITICO’s 50 Politicos to Watch, Jessica brings over two decades of communications policy experience and public service to the FCC. Prior to joining the agency, she served as Senior Communications Counsel for the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, under the leadership of Senator John D. Rockefeller IV and Senator Daniel Inouye. Before entering public service, Jessica practiced communications law in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University and New York University School of Law.
Nick Feamster is the deputy director of CITP and a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University. Before joining the faculty at Princeton, he was a professor in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from MIT in 2005, and his S.B. and M.Eng. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT in 2000 and 2001, respectively. He received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the Technology Review “TR35” award, a Sloan Fellowship, and the SIGCOMM Rising Star Award for his contributions to cybersecurity, notably spam filtering. His research focuses on many aspects of computer networking and networked systems, with a focus on network operations, network security, and censorship-resistant communication systems. His research interests overlap with technology policy in the areas of censorship, broadband access networks, and network security and privacy.
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Global 360 Continues Momentum with Quarterly Increase of 25% in BPMS Revenue
Demand for Persona-Based Process and Document Management Drove Q3 Growth
DALLAS – FEBRUARY 23, 2010 – Global 360, a leading provider of Process and Document Management solutions, reported strong results for its fiscal third quarter ended December 31, 2009, compared to the same quarter a year ago, led by a 25 percent year-over-year increase in revenue from its strategic Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) business.
Global 360 President and CEO David Mitchell attributed the company’s success to its recent launch of persona-based, out-of-the-box user applications. “Because we involve process participants in the design and development of process improvements, we deliver systems that uniquely address the way that work actually gets done. The result is an improved process that people actually use and help promote throughout the enterprise. This “design-for-people” approach was the driving factor in the addition of five significant new account wins as we expanded our global presence during the quarter. We believe this approach, along with our focus on SharePoint-based process solutions, positions us strongly for the future.”
Other Major Product and Partner Announcements in Q3
In the third quarter, Global 360 introduced next generation products and partnered with Microsoft and KnowledgeLake to deliver solutions that enhance fast-growing SharePoint and Visio platforms.
Key announcements included:
Support for Microsoft SharePoint – Case360 and Process360 are the first enterprise-wide solutions to enable both strategic process and document management applications on Microsoft SharePoint Server products and technologies. These scalable Global 360 solutions accelerate the development, deployment and adoption of SharePoint Server enterprise-wide, improving ROI for existing SharePoint Server investments.
KnowledgeLake Partnership – Global 360 and KnowledgeLake are integrating their offerings to deliver the first complete process and document management solution for Microsoft SharePoint. The partnership brings together the leading Microsoft-centric BPMS provider, according to Forrester Research, and the market-leading Microsoft SharePoint document imaging and content management provider.
The Insiders' Guide to BPM: 7 Steps to Process Mastery – A market and product strategy advisor to Global 360, Terry Schurter is an award-winning author and well-known BPM analyst and consultant. He has published a new book co-written with David Fingar, The Insiders' Guide to BPM: 7 Steps to Process Mastery, a simple, real-world guide to help businesses take full advantage of BPM in transforming their processes to achieve new levels of performance, quality, cost reduction and business value.
Global Customer Wins
Highlights of recent customer wins in Q3 include the following organizations that recognize the power of a persona-based approach to BPM to increase ROI and significantly improve productivity:
Coventry Building Society, the third-largest financial institution of its kind in the UK, selected Global 360 to migrate its mortgage application and other processes, such as Savings & Investments, to Process360. Under its enterprise license, Coventry will automatically distribute and allocate work to process participants as well as automate and improve operational processes.
Credit One Bank, one of America’s leading issuers of Visa Platinum credit cards, selected Process360 to support a broad range of document management and workflow needs in support of Business Transaction Services, Treasury and Finance, and Account Services and to support future company growth. The solution for the bank was built on and fully compatible with the Microsoft development infrastructure including .NET, BizTalk and others.
First United Bank, one of the largest privately held regional banks in the Southwestern U.S., selected Global 360’s process and case management solution to more efficiently handle its growing number of commercial and consumer loan applications and better serve its growing customer base. The bank has already identified as many as 200 additional processes that will benefit from a case management approach.
Statewide Superannuation, a retirement services Fund Manager in South Australia, chose Global 360’s process and case management solutions to increase overall performance of its Statewide Financial Management Services (SFMS), improve customer service through more accurate and timely information being provided to members, eliminate manual filing, logging and work allocation tasks, provide greater security for confidential documents and data, and improve overall staff performance levels.
The Wellcome Trust, the UK’s largest non-governmental source of funds for biomedical research, has purchased Process360 to support its grant application, grant award and funding activities.
The Pinellas County, Florida Clerk of Circuit Court was named finalist in the 2009 Global Awards for Excellence in BPM and Workflow by BPMFocus, BPM.com & the Workflow Management Coalition. The County Clerk's office worked with Global 360 to implement a case management solution for its Probate Department that has dramatically improved customer service and access to information - and should potentially save the Clerk millions of dollars in storage, labor, and supply costs in the future.
About Global 360
With more than 2,000 customers in 70 countries, Global 360, Inc. is a leading provider of Process and Document Management solutions. Global 360 is headquartered in Texas with operations in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and South Africa. For more information, call 1-214-520-1660 or visit the company web site at www.global360.com.
Web: www.global360.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Global360IncBPM
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Global360IncBPM
YouTube: www.youtube.com/Global360PersonaBPM
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MoneyFeb 28, 2019
Lagging in current technologies, Brazil eyes a 5G spectrum auction
Brazil plans to enter the 5G era next year, according to Anatel—the country’s telecommunications regulator. The government’s goal is to auction the 5G spectrum in March 2020, hoping to foster investments and make sure there will be enough coverage throughout the country, something that has been lacking only 20 years after the sector was opened for private actors.
“We are not going to donate the spectrum as China did, but to consolidate the 5G ecosystem in Brazil we need an invitation for bids that compels companies to make it, not to pay for it. It is not going to be an auction to raise money, because what we will get from revenues and taxes further down the line will be much bigger than the value of the auction,” said Leonardo Euler de Morais, to newspaper Valor.
</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bidding proposals may start as soon as the second half of 2019, he said. Meanwhile, the government is working out how to split up the spectrum. Brazil currently uses a portion of 3.5 GHz frequencies—the most commonly used for 5G—for satellite television, so there is about half of the average space available for 5G. Anatel now will evaluate whether it will offer two larger packages, increasing competition in a highly concentrated sector, or if it will auction four smaller parts, diminishing its efficiency.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Regardless, the move may put Brazil closer to countries such as </span><a href="https://g1.globo.com/economia/tecnologia/noticia/china-lidera-corrida-mundial-do-5g.ghtml"><span style="font-weight: 400;">China, the United States, South Korea, and Japan</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, which are leading investments in this new upgraded mobile technology. Besides being faster than current technologies, 5G is considered crucial to support the so-called Internet of Things. In the future, when many devices—from fridges to cars—will be connected, this spectrum will be necessary to provide them fast and reliable connectivity. Having a structural advantage on this front may attract investments and have large implications on industry and the economy as a whole.</span></p> <h2>Roadblocks</h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While the country seeks new horizons, there are problems on the ground. According to broadband and internet analysis firm Ookla, </span><a href="https://brazilian.report/money/2018/11/21/brazilian-internet-speeding-lagging/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Brazil is in 65th place on a global broadband download speeds ranking</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, and falls to 71st when it comes to mobile internet.</span></p> <p><a href="http://www.anatel.gov.br/setorregulado/component/content/article/115-universalizacao-e-ampliacao-do-acesso/telefonia-movel/423-telefonia-movel-municipios-atendidos"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Anatel data</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> shows that 21 percent of Brazilian towns still do not have access to 4G services, although the coverage has been growing in the past few years. Companies have also increased investments: TIM Brasil, a Telecom Italia company, is currently the leader in 4G coverage in Brazil and projected </span><a href="https://www.tim.com.br/sp/sobre-a-tim/sala-de-imprensa/press-releases/institucional/novo-plano-industrial-projeta-a-tim-com-a-maior-rede-4g-e-melhor-custo-beneficio"><span style="font-weight: 400;">BRL 12 billion in investments</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> from 2017 to 2019. Even Oi, recovering after the </span><a href="https://brazilian.report/money/2017/12/19/oi-telecom-crony-capitalism/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">biggest court-supervised reorganization request in Brazil</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, is directing investments</span><a href="https://www.valor.com.br/empresas/6033891/oi-aposta-em-ciclo-de-investimento-sustentavel-no-curto-prazo"><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to expand its mobile networks</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p> <hr /> <p><img class="size-large wp-image-14416 aligncenter" src="https://brazilian.report/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/5g-brazil-1-1024x694.png" alt="5g brazil" width="1024" height="694" srcset="https://brazilian.report/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/5g-brazil-1-1024x694.png 1024w, https://brazilian.report/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/5g-brazil-1-300x203.png 300w, https://brazilian.report/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/5g-brazil-1-768x520.png 768w, https://brazilian.report/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/5g-brazil-1-610x413.png 610w, https://brazilian.report/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/5g-brazil-1.png 1240w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Quality issues remain, though. According to Fundação Procon, an entity that advocates for consumer rights, in 2018, the top three companies in </span><a href="http://sistemas.procon.sp.gov.br/rank_estadual/?m=rank_atend"><span style="font-weight: 400;">number of complaints</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in São Paulo state are telecommunication services providers. Problems such as service interruptions and slow speeds are quite frequent.</span></p> <h2>A new legal framework</h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Although a 5G auction wouldn’t be connected to the bill that aims to upgrade Brazil’s telecom regulation, it is a pending demand from the sector. The project was approved in Congress in 2016, but due to a Supreme Court ruling it was sent back to the Senate and has been bouncing between committees ever since. </span><a href="https://link.estadao.com.br/noticias/cultura-digital,projeto-de-revisao-da-lei-geral-de-telecomunicacoes-segue-para-plenario-do-senado,70002594909"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The bill updates Brazilian regulation</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, which dates back to the 1990s, transforming fixed telephony concessions into authorizations, in which fees are free. It also allows companies to keep assets obtained in concession, as long as they invest the same value in broadband connections, an amount estimated at BRL 20 billion.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Brazil’s Science and Technology Minister, Marcos Pontes, </span><a href="https://www12.senado.leg.br/noticias/audios/2019/02/davi-alcolumbre-diz-que-votacao-do-projeto-das-teles-depende-da-cct"><span style="font-weight: 400;">has been negotiating with the president of the Senate</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Davi Alcolumbre, to take the bill to a vote—but no date has been scheduled yet.
Tags: Urbanism - Telecommunications - headline
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Tag: #britishnowandthen
Manon Designs Now & Then
Manon Designs Now
If you have seen the beautiful promotional video for English National Ballet’s Manon, with Alina Cojocaru and Isaac Hernández, you cannot fail to have been struck by the location and designs: the building through which the dancers move, with their longing glances and soft sensuous caresses, is furnished with plush deep red drapes and sparkling chandeliers; and yet, at the same time, it shows signs of disrepair in the crumbling walls and ragged upholstery.
This video, lasting only 32 seconds, encapsulates some of the driving themes of the three-act ballet by Kenneth MacMillan, choreographed in 1974. Based on the 1731 novel by Abbé Prévost entitled Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, the ballet is frequently described as a tale of Manon’s struggle between love and riches, for example on the current ENB promotional flier: “The young and naïve Manon is torn between two lives: privilege and opulence with the wealthy Monsieur GM, or innocent love with the penniless student Des Grieux”. Equally it could be interpreted as a battle for survival versus a desire for love.
English National Ballet, Manon. Dancers: Alina Cojocaru and Isaac Hernández © Jason Bell. Art Direction and Design Charlotte Wilkinson Studio.
Autumn 2018 saw a rare UK tour of the ballet, by ENB, and this month the Company brought it to the London Coliseum. But not with the original designs by Nicholas Georgiadis. Instead ENB uses the designs by Mia Stensgaard, which she created for the Royal Danish Ballet in 2003, almost three decades after Manon’s premiere. Although the choreographer’s widow Deborah MacMillan describes the production as “a very worthy alternative to Nicholas Georgiadis’s version performed by The Royal Ballet”, Stensgaard’s designs give the ballet a very different visual impact, and some aspects have come up against criticism. However, being more familiar with the Georgiadis designs, and having now seen ENB’s production in both Milton Keynes and in London, we were struck by a number of design features that to us seemed to bring new life to the ballet. Here are our thoughts …
The lighting
Alina Cojocaru and Fabian Reimair in Manon © Laurent Liotardo
Stengaard’s sets and costumes are complemented by Mikki Kunytu’s evocative lighting. Two moments in particular were literally and metaphorically illuminated by the lighting: the fight in Act II and the opening of Act III. As the swords clash and Monsieur GM’s rage flares up, shadows of the combatants loom over their brawl, making the tension palpable, creating a sense of foreboding, and highlighting the centrality of this scene for the narrative.
As the curtains rise on Act III a feeling of stifling heat seems to emanate from the stage and engulf the auditorium air. In the narrative Manon is transported to New Orleans as a convict; in the theatre the audience is transported with Manon, as bright haze and shadows conjure up the heat and with it the sense of discomfort and alienation Manon feels in her new unknown environment.
The make-up
James Streeter, Alina Cojocaru, Jane Haworth and Jeffrey Cirio in Manon © Laurent Liotardo
Before tanned skin came into fashion in the early part of the 20thcentury, pale skin was prized. The faces of 18thcentury portraits are pale, even white, the paleness accentuated by pink cheeks of various shades. This look was fashionable amongst the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie for men and children as well as for women. It denoted a particular status, or at least aspiration to that status, as tanned skin was associated with outdoors manual labour of the lower classes that exposed them to the sun.
In this production artificial pale skin is prominent amongst The Clients perusing the prostitutes, but two pivotal characters stand out for us in particular: Monsieur GM and the Gaoler. As performed by Fabian Reimar and James Streeter respectively, even at a distance from the stage their white faces seemed mask-like; and in the production photographs by Laurent Liotardo, where the roles are reversed, equally so. In performance their denaturalised/synthetic features remind us of the Diplomats from Kurt Jooss’ 1933 The Green Table, whose masks strip them of their humanity as they debate the fate of the land. The 18thcentury trend for prominent dark eyebrows, particularly for men, is a conspicuous addition to the Gaoler’s make-up, starkly framing his features and hiding any emotion or compassion that might live beneath the surface, if indeed there is any.
Monsieur GM and the Gaoler (who are frequently performed by the same dancers on different nights) are both characters who benefit from the lot of the prostitutes and more particularly play a decided role in the events that lead to the doom of Manon and Des Grieux. Again, The Green Table springs to mind: the Profiteer, the figure who gains from the loss of others in war, has a painted white face that makes him more visibly impervious to the suffering of those around him. In contrast to the depersonalised faces of Monsieur GM and the Gaoler, the faces of Manon and Des Grieux look natural and real, underlining their social status, as well as their humanity and vulnerability.
English National Ballet in Manon © Laurent Liotardo
Brightly coloured frou-frou dresses with their frills, flounces and ruffles fill the stage in Act II. Vibrant pinks, reds, yellows, greens and blues vie for attention with lustrous whites. The girls are adorned with cute hats and fascinators. A sense of light and fun pervades. And into this hive of colour and light walks Manon in her shimmering white cloak and gown bringing a focal point to the drama that radiates over the stage.
This atmosphere of frivolity and youthfulness never returns to Manon. So, in our opinion, the costumes in this scene in all their decorativeness and blasts of colour serve a crucial purpose in highlighting the mood of this scene, which seems so distant from the dark drama of the ensuing scenes.
Manon Designs Then
Ballet productions are regularly redesigned to give them a fresh “look”, or when a work is taken into the repertoire of a different company. Frederick Ashton’s 1948 Cinderella has acquired fresh sets and costumes several times over the years, while Birmingham Royal Ballet and La Scala Milan all have their own designs for MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet (1965).
The nineteenth century classics are sometimes retained in the same production for decades, as in the case of Anthony Dowell’s Swan Lake, replaced by Liam Scarlett’s production last year only after thirty-one years. And a new production comes with a new design concept, which can suggest new meanings to the viewer.
The Royal Ballet has kept Nicholas Georgiadis’ original sets and costumes for Manon, perhaps because choreographer and designer were frequent collaborators, working together over a substantial period of MacMillan’s choreographic career. In addition to Manon, notable collaborations were The Burrow (1958), The Invitation (1960) Romeo and Juliet, and Mayerling (1978).
Like Romeo and Juliet, Manon is a work performed by companies across the globe, including Australian Ballet, The Mariinsky and Paris Opera Ballet. Mia Stensgaard is not the first to have created new designs for the ballet, but Peter Farmer’s sets and costumes for the Australian and Mariinsky Companies strike us as closer to Georgiadis’ original concept than Stensgaard’s version of Manon’s world. So let’s have a look at why that might be …
The rags
In the tradition of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, such an influence on the development of British ballet, MacMillan believed that design was absolutely integral to the identity and meaning of a choreographic work (Woodcock, 19). One of the aspects of Manon’s story that he felt passionate about and wanted to convey in no uncertain terms was the poverty that was a driving force in her life and the decisions that she makes. Therefore, crucial to Georgiadis’ décor is a cyclorama of rags cascading down the full height of the stage space. Characters emerge on to the stage through these rags from their carriages, representing the poverty that divides the population of Manon: the Beggars and the Gentlemen; Des Grieux and Monsieur G.M.; the Gaoler and the deported Prostitutes. Manon herself is a liminal character, who in the course of the ballet inhabits different worlds according to the decisions she makes. But the rags are a recurring reminder of how fragile the border is between survival and destitution.
The richness
Critics have highlighted how rich the original designs are compared to Stensgaard’s more recent offerings, which in comparison can look quite sparse. The word “sumptuous” has been used to describe both the costumes (Clarke 31) and the sets (Mead). There are undoubtedly a number of reasons for this, the first being Georgiadis’ style. Consider the splendour of the ballroom scenes in both Romeo and Juliet and Mayerling for example. You will probably be less familiar with his designs for Rudolf Nureyev’s Nutcracker (1968), which have been described by critic and historian Jack Anderson as “far too grand”, “autumnal” and “somber” (168).
Manon was created for the UK’s premiere ballet venue – the Royal Opera House in London – and as full-evening narrative ballet of high drama, a certain degree of ostentation would be expected. But also, in terms of the subject matter, Manon is a sombre tale, so that a heaviness of tone and hue – the burnt orange, dark brown and olive greens worn by Lescaut’s Mistress, for example – seems appropriate. And the richness of the costumes makes for a thought-provoking contrast with the rags of the cyclorama.
Despite the fact that we love Stensgaard’s designs for Act II, and Manon’s light luminous dress is both in keeping with the colour palette and marks her out as the jewel in the crown onstage, we miss Georgiadis’ glorious gown for Manon. Here she is at her most ravishing. As she whirls seductively through her solo with Des Grieux and Monsieur GM circling around the rest of cast freezes. The solo crystallises Manon’s predicament and the choices available to her. And the dress with its ornate black lace embellished with silver detail complements her tantalising but perturbing dance.
Georgiadis’ sets undoubtedly emphasise the gulf between the haves and the have-nots, in accordance with the choreographer’s wishes. In Stensgaard’s designs this theme is perhaps not so prominent. However, characterisation, drama and atmosphere, all vital to MacMillan’s oeuvreare writ large in her costumes and sets. In our opinion, we are really fortunate to have both of these productions in the British ballet repertoire. With two such distinct design concepts, the choreography is enriched, opening further opportunity for insight and interpretation from performers and audiences alike.
Next time on British Ballet Now and Then… March sees the world premiere of Cathy Marston’s new ballet Victoria commissioned by Northern Ballet to commemorate the bicentenary of the monarch’s birth. So we will be discussing bio-ballets with some thoughts on this new work and Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling based on the life of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austro-Hungary.
© British Ballet Now and Then
Anderson, Jack. The Nutcracker Ballet. Bison Books, 1979.
Clarke, Mary. “Manonin Copenhagen”, The Dancing Times, vol. 93, no. 1113, 2003, pp. 31-33.
MacMillan, Deborah. “Manon”. Manon, English National Ballet, Oct.-Nov. 2018.
Mead, David. “Jurgita Dronina Spellbinding in English National Ballet’s Manon”, SeeingDance, 4 Oct. 2018, http://www.seeingdance.com/enb-manon-26102018/. Accessed 21 Jan. 2019.
Woodcock, Sarah C. “MacMillan and Design”, The Dancing Times, vol. 93 no. 1108, 2002, pp. 19-25.
Author britishballetnowandthenPosted on January 25, 2019 February 1, 2019 Format ChatCategories DesignsTags #adaptation, #balletdesign, #balletlighting, #balletmakeup, #britishnowandthen, #deborahmacmillan, #design, #ENB, #ENBallet, #Georgiadis, #jasonbell, #kurtjooss, #LaurentLiotardo, #MacMillan, #manon, #MiaStensgaard, #RoyalBallet, #royaldanishballet, #sarahwoodcock1 Comment on Manon Designs Now & Then
ENB Voices of America: in conversation with British Ballet Now and Then
Last weekend Julia, Libby and Rosie went to the closing night of Voices of America at Sadler’s Wells. After discussion and reading reviews of the first night performance, here are our thoughts.
There was a lot of publicity around Forsythe’s new work Playlist (Track 1,2), and the reviews emphasised the strength and skills of the company in their performance of it. What are your thoughts on this?
Over the past few years, it’s become clear to us that the company has been growing in strength and becoming very versatile in adapting to different styles. Rosie has written about this in our recent post The Rise & Rise of ENB: Style Matched by Substance. Therefore, it came as no surprise to us that the dancers were able to show off a lot of tricks and that they also worked cohesively as a group to give the performance its exuberant ambiance.
Libby thought that the dancers’ ability to work as group was particularly evident in the first work Fantastic Beings by Aszure Barton, where there was a collective energy between the dancers which united them. The unison sections evidenced precise movement and impressive timing that didn’t suffer from “over rehearsal” but rather remained fresh and vibrant.
Emma Byrne from the Evening Standard refers to Fantastic Beings as a “fantasy fairytale”. Did it strike you like that?
Yes, absolutely! It reminded Julia of watching Disney films as a child with all the stars in the backdrop, the glittery and magical feel in the music, and the black creatures creeping across the stage. For Rosie, in contrast to its first showing as the closing work of She Said in 2016, this worked much better as an opening piece, due to its fragmented, less climatic structure.
In fact, Jann Parry from DanceTabs comments on this saying “there’s no apparent structure, other than one quirky number following another for a different combination of dancers. The music keeps promising dramatic climaxes that come to nothing”.
For us this means that as a whole evening there’s a sense of moving up to a satisfying climax of the final Forsythe piece Playlist (Track 1,2).
So are you saying that these climaxes are partially dependent on the music choices?
We are sure they are. The audience reaction to Playlist (Track 1,2) was particularly interesting. There was already a sense of anticipation because Forsythe had not choreographed for a British company for more than 20 years, and after the premiere an online video of Forsythe himself freestyling with the dancers increased the anticipatory excitement making it palpable in the theatre.
Playlist is beautifully crafted and easily legible in terms of spatial patterning, rhythm, and vocabulary, despite some examples of typical Forsythe deconstruction of classical lines and codified steps. This is Forsythe at his most buoyant. Rosie went to see it twice and found it as delightful the second time around as the first time, but not as intellectually engaging. On both occasions, however, the audience as whole were clearly enthralled from start to finish.
Do you think then that the music is as important for the audience as the choreography?
Libby was the first to ask to what extent the audience reaction was dependent on the house and club music in Playlist.Would the work have had the same impact if danced to 19thcentury ballet music, like Le Corsaire for example, we wondered. Or if “Black Swan pas de deux” were danced to Playlist? It made us think of the YouTube clip of the Royal Ballet dancing excerpts of their repertoire to Tinie Tempah’s Pass Out.
As Julia pointed out, basically Forsythe’s vocabulary in Playlist (much more obviously than in Approximate Sonata 2016) is drawn from la danse d’école: épaulement, tendus, brisés, and pirouettes are central to both Playlist and daily class. But the combination of the music and the way in which Forsythe inflects the movement gives a sexier quality to the classroom steps, like the sensuous skimming sideways courus.
For Rosie, the music scores were striking for the whole evening. The subject matter of predatory female insects in Jerome Robbins’ 1951 The Cage seemed oddly juxtaposed to Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for string orchestra, which reminded her too much of Apollo, whereas Sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring) with its ritualistic pounding force would have offered a more fittingly violent soundscape to the choreography, making the kind of fusion that Forsythe created in Playlist.
On the other hand, for Approximate Sonata 2016 Forsythe eschews this type of fusion, highlighting the independent rhythms of the movement. For us, the complexity of movement, particularly in the duets, is counterbalanced by the bright costumes on the one hand and the understated music on the other. Here the technical challenges are presented in a much subtler and more fascinating way than in Playlist.
Three of the works are new to ENB, Barton’s Fantastic Beings is the only one that wasn’t – are there any of these works that you would like to see again?
Yes, we really appreciated seeing the Forsythe works because there’s restricted opportunity to see his works in this country currently. How about an all-Forsythe evening? ENB already perform In the Middle Somewhat Elevated and it would be a delight to see perhaps the ebullient The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude (1996) or the witty pas de deux from Herman Schmerman (1992).
Byrne, Emma. “ENB – Voices of America review: Fast and furious movement from English National Ballet”. London Evening Standard, 16 Apr. 2018, http://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/enb-voices-of-america-review-fast-and-furious-movement-from-english-national-ballet-a3814641.html. Accessed 27 Apr. 2018.
Parry, Jann. “English National Ballet – Voices of America bill – works by Forsythe, Robbins & Barton – London”. DanceTabs, 16 Apr. 2018, http://dancetabs.com/2018/04/english-national-ballet-voices-of-america-bill-works-by-forsythe-robbins-barton-london/. Accessed 27 Apr. 2018.
“The Royal Ballet. Not What You Think” YouTube, uploaded 16 Feb. 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-46BZD4zNlk. Accessed 27 Apr. 2018.
Author britishballetnowandthenPosted on May 1, 2018 May 3, 2018 Categories In conversationTags #AszureBarton, #ballethistory, #britishnowandthen, #ENB, #JeromeRobbins, #RB, #shesaid, #TinieTempah, #VoicesofAmerica, #WilliamForsytheLeave a comment on ENB Voices of America: in conversation with British Ballet Now and Then
Female Choreographers Now & Then
Female Choreographers Now
At British Ballet Now and Then we have been following the debate on female choreographers. In 2009 The Guardian critic and historian Judith Mackrell asked “Where are all the great female choreographers?”, and considered reasons why we see so few dance works choreographed by women, particularly on major stages by the world’s most prestigious companies. Since then the question seems to have become simply “Where are all the female choreographers?”. Luke Jennings, author and dance critic of The Observer, has published thoughts on this topic on several occasions (“Female Choreographers”), highlighting work by Vanessa Fenton and Cathy Marston that he had admired in the smaller venues of the Royal Opera House that had not led to opportunities to create for the main stage (“Sexism in Dance”), and culminating in his response to Akram Khan’s position on redressing the gender balance in choreography (“You’re Wrong, Akram. We Do Need More Female Choreographers”). Female ballet choreographers, including Cathy Marston (qtd. in Jennings), and Crystal Pite (qtd. in Mackrell), whose work we discuss below, have joined in the debate.
The current Artistic Directors of the UK’s two most prestigious companies have been tackling this conundrum. As soon as Kevin O’Hare was in post as Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet (RB) in 2012, he commissioned the much-sought-after Canadian Crystal Pite to choreograph a new work for his company. By the time the work, Flight Pattern, premiered in March 2017, the company had not performed a work from a female dance maker for 18 years. Under Tamara Rojo English National Ballet had already the previous year taken more radical action by staging a triple bill of new works created by female choreographers entitled She Said, thereby highlighting the voice of women in the creative process. Mackrell referred to the programme as a “campaigning first for an industry in which most of the repertory is created by men”. And indeed David Bintley, Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, a company that already has a “strong record” of performing works by female choreographers (Anderson “Birmingham Royal Ballet”), has followed suit with plans for a triple bill of choreographies by Ruth Brill, Jessica Lang and Didy Veldman next season.
So, in case you haven’t had a chance to see Flight Pattern or She Said, here is a short outline of the works to at least give you some impression of their focus and diversity.
Characteristic of Pite’s oeuvre is her concern with the human condition, and the world as it is with all its conflict and trauma. Referring to Flight Pattern she says: “This creation is my way of coping with the world at the moment” (qtd. in Spencer). On this occasion, the plight of refugees is her theme. But the work also demonstrates her skill in moving large numbers of dancers in imaginative and compelling patterns, groupings and configurations around the stage, ideal for a large-scale company such as the RB.
At the heart of She Said were two iconic women (one real, one mythological), and the act of dancing itself. Broken Wings by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa portrayed the life of Frida Kahlo in a swathe of vibrant colours and imaginative stage sets evoking the artist’s work. Kahlo’s life of love and suffering was portrayed in quite a literal way in terms of movement content, unlike Yabin Wang’s M-Dao, a sparse, pared down but searing account of the Medea myth, in which Medea’s dead children were represented by fallen drapes that she gathered in her arms, and her vulnerability portrayed by one bare foot. In stark and satisfying contrast, Aszure Barton’s virtuosic Fantastic Beings “inflects the classical language with a wonderful strangeness – brooding missed beats, skittering deviations, and an exhilaratingly bold eye for pattern” (Mackrell), and the choreography skilfully captures the unique movement style of each dancer (Kechacha).
The theme of strong women is an important focus for British choreographer Cathy Marston (qtd. in Winter), whose 2016 Jane Eyre is currently being performed by Northern Ballet (NB). Marston has been choreographing professionally for almost two decades in this country and internationally, and Jane Eyre is her third work for NB, the first being Dividing Silence, as early as 2004. Three years prior to this a pas de deux by the name of Three Words Unspoken was premiered in the Clore Studio at the Royal Opera House with Brian Maloney and a young Tamara Rojo whose intense and dramatic performance enriched the compelling choreography. Nonetheless, even though Marston held the position of Associate Artist at the Royal Opera House from 2002 to 2006, she was not given the chance to create work for the main stage.
Happily, over the coming months two of Marston’s works will be touring in various locations throughout the UK, giving thousands of people the opportunity to see her work. In addition to NB’s tour of Jane Eyre, Ballet Black is performing a brand new work that she has created for the company entitled The Suit. This is based on a fable by South African author Can Themba, and has already received positive reviews highlighting her skill and inventiveness in conveying various relationships, emotions and dramatic situations (Anderson, Roy, Wonderful News).
Christopher Hampson, Artistic Director of Scottish Ballet (SB) since 2012, has been proactive in expanding his company’s repertoire with works by female choreographers, including Kristen McNally from RB and former resident choreographer for the Atlanta Ballet, Helen Pickett. Although he may not have commissioned choreography from Crystal Pite, in 2016, while the Royal Ballet were waiting for work to begin on Flight Patterns, SB in fact performed the European premiere of Pite’s 2009 Emergence, originally created for National Ballet of Canada (Crompton). Four years previous to this SB had premiered A Streetcar Named Desire, created for them by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, later to choreograph Broken Wings for ENB. This work has been seen in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Inverness, and London.
It would seem then that it is possible to see a variety of work created by female choreographers here in the UK, but it takes time, and either patience, or the willingness and means to travel. Thanks to forward-looking directors, next season we have more to look forward to: as well as BRB’s triple bill of new choreographies by women, ENB are staging She Persists, a triple bill of Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring, Broken Wings and a new work by first artist Stina Quagebeur.
Female Choreographers Then
While we have been appreciating the opportunities we now have to experience a range of works by female choreographers (limited though it still is), as we ponder on two female choreographers from the past, we are focussing on the crucial contributions they made to shaping British ballet style, contributions that are perhaps not generally fully recognised or acknowledged. One of them, Ninette de Valois, we tend to associate more with her crucial role in establishing the Royal Ballet; the name of the other, Andrée Howard, may even be completely unfamiliar to you.
Despite de Valois’ inestimable role in the establishment of British ballet and the fact that she was quite a prolific choreographer, few of her works are still performed. Amongst her most celebrated ballets are The Rake’s Progress (1935) and Checkmate (1937), available on DVD in a 1982 performance by Sadler’s Wells (now Birmingham) Royal Ballet, and her 1931 Job. With their moral themes of faith against all the odds, human frailty, and the battle of good against evil, these works are rather sombre in tone. However, amongst her hundred or so works were a 1950 single act version of Don Quixote to a score by the Spanish Catalan Roberto Gerhard featuring Robert Helpmann as the Don and Margot Fonteyn as Dulcinea, as well as the comic 1940 Prospect Before Us about two rival 18th century theatre managers.
If you watch the scene with the Dancing Master from The Rake’s Progress, with its swift and intricate footwork complemented by quick changes in direction and bends and twists of the torso, you might be forgiven for thinking that this is a ballet by Frederick Ashton, the Founder Choreographer of the Royal Ballet, who is generally thought of as the architect of the English style. Critic Alastair Macaulay has pointed out the similarity in the styles of de Valois and Ashton in this scene (205), while Judith Mackrell has presented an intriguing and perspicacious argument that particular aspects of de Valois’ choreographic style were more inherently English in nature than were Ashton’s: “… De Valois’ choreography was in certain respects even more British in temper than Ashton’s – uncluttered, clear-eyed, and almost literary in its detailed realisation of character and plot” (“Vanishing Pointe?”). So, even though most of her works are no longer performed, it seems that de Valois made a significant contribution to the development of a recognisably English style in her capacity as a choreographer as well as in her role of founder-director of Britain’s national ballet company.
And so to Andrée Howard. Even though you are probably unacquainted with Howard’s choreography, she was in fact a founding member of The Ballet Club (later renamed Ballet Rambert, the company that eventually became Rambert Dance Company) and started choreographing in the 1930s. In 2005 the RB revived her best known work, La Fête étrange (1940), and the following year Rambert Dance Company revisited her Lady into Fox, the work that initially made her name in 1939. Other than these two ballets all of Howard’s works have been lost. Nonetheless, she is a truly fascinating figure in British ballet; in fact historian and archivist Jane Pritchard describes her as a “key choreographer from the founding years of 20th century British ballet”.
Both La Fête étrange and Lady into Fox are characteristic of Howard’s oeuvre in that they deal with dark subject matter based on literary themes. La Fête étrange tells the story of a young man who chances upon an engagement party and precipitates the break-up of the betrothal. More startling is the subject matter of Lady into Fox, as the title summarises exactly the narrative of the work: a young woman metamorphoses into a vixen. Howard’s choice of daring subject matter is perhaps at its most pronounced in her 1947 adaptation of David Garnett’s novel The Sailor’s Return concerning a mixed race couple trying to settle in Victorian England. Important for the current debate on female dance makers is Professor Susan Jones’ assessment of Howard’s oeuvre as “evoking in dance a specifically female experience” (261): “In several ballets Howard returned to the theme of the abandoned woman, isolated by social and patriarchal forces beyond her control, where the dissemination of narrative through choreographed movement principally charts the inner conflict of the female protagonist” (261-62).
In the late 1940s to early 50s Howard staged works for both Sadler’s Wells Opera/Theatre Ballet and Sadler’s Wells Ballet (now BRB and RB). It is very interesting to us that a young Kenneth MacMillan was performing with these companies at that time and even danced in her ballets Assembly Ball (1946) and La Fête étrange (Parry 64, 71). This means that he had plenty of exposure to her work. With her penchant for disturbing, or at least unsettling, subject matter, it seems inconceivable that Howard would not have made a lasting impact on this giant of British ballet, celebrated for bringing realism to the art form. (You can read about MacMillan’s choral works in our January 2018 post.)
Therefore, in our opinion, it not only important to give female choreographers opportunities to create ballets, but also to ensure that their most effective works are preserved and that their influence as choreographers appropriately acknowledged.
Next time on British Ballet Now and Then … Next month, just one year after its creation, Aszure Barton’s Fantastic Beings will be the first of the three works from ENB’s She Said to be revived (with some reworking). It is being performed as part of the Voices of America bill, which will be reviewed by our editor, Libby Costello.
© Rosemarie Gerhard 2018
Anderson, Zoë. “Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler’s Wells, London, Review”. The Independent, 6 Nov. 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/birmingham-royal-ballet-a8040666.html. Accessed 23 Mar. 2018.
—. “Ballet Black, Barbican Theatre, London, Review”. The Independent, 20 Mar. 2018, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/ballet-black-review-barbican-a8264861.html. Accessed 23 Mar. 2018.
Crompton, Sarah. “Scottish Ballet: Crystal Pite; Angelin Preljoçaj review – one great, one good”, The Guardian, 21 Aug. 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/aug/21/scottish-ballet-crystal-pite-emergence-angelin-preljocaj-mc-14-22-edinburgh-festival-review. Accessed 25 Feb. 2018.
Jennings, Luke. “Female Choreographers: further thoughts”, Luke Jennings, 2 Mar. 2015, https://thirdcast.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/female-choreographers-further-thoughts/. Accessed 25 Feb. 2018.
—. “Sexism in Dance: where are all the female choreographers?”, The Guardian, 28 Apr. 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/apr/28/women-choreographers-glass-ceiling. Accessed 25 Feb. 2018.
—. “You’re Wrong, Akram. We Do Need More Female Choreographers”, The Guardian, 18 Jan. 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jan/18/akram-khan-more-female-choreographers-for-the-sake-of-it-luke-jennings-reply. Accessed 25 Feb. 2018.
Jones, Susan. Literature, Modernism and Dance. Oxford UP, 2013.
Kechacha, Rym. “She Said: the enduring power of the female voice in dance at ENB”. Bachtrack, 14 Apr. 2016, https://bachtrack.com/review-she-said-lopez-ochoa-wang-barton-english-national-ballet-sadlers-wells-april-2016. Accessed 21 Feb. 2018.
Macaulay, Alastair. “Ashton and De Valois”. Ninette de Valois, Adventurous Traditionalist, edited by Richard Allen Cave and Libby worth, Dance Books, 2012, pp. 199-208.
Mackrell, Judith. “Crystal Pite: ‘In ballet, girls are less likely to be prized for being mavericks’”. The Guardian, 2 May 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/12/crystal-pite-girls-ballet-choreographer-prized-mavericks. Accessed 14 Feb. 2018.
—. “English National Ballet: She Said review”. The Guardian, 14 Apr. 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/apr/14/english-national-ballet-she-said-review-sadlers-wells-london. Accessed 14 Feb. 2018.
—. “Vanishing Pointe: where are all the great female choreographers?”. The Guardian, 27 Oct. 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/oct/27/where-are-the-female-choreographers. Accessed 14 Feb. 2018.
—. “Where would we have been without her?”. The Independent, 6 June 1993, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/dance-where-would-we-have-been-without-her-dame-ninette-de-valois-celebrated-her-95th-birthday-1490132.html. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Masterpieces of British Ballet: Checkmate, The Rake’s Progress. Choreographed by Ninette de Valois , performance by Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet. 1982, VAI, 2006.
Parry, Jan. Different Drummer: the life of Kenneth MacMillan. Faber and Faber, 2009.
Pritchard, Jane. “Women Choreographers and English National Ballet”. ENB, 8 Mar. 2018, http://www.ballet.org.uk/blog-detail/women-choreographers-english-national-ballet/. Accessed 18 Mar. 2018.
Roy, Sanjoy. “Ballet Black review – Shakespeare in tutus for enchanting double bill”. The Guardian, 18 Mar. 2018, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/mar/18/ballet-black-review-shakespeare-in-tutus-for-enchanting-double-bill. Accessed 20 Mar. 2018.
Spencer, Mel. “Crystal Pite: Flight Pattern is my way of coping with the world at the moment”. Royal Opera House, 9 Mar. 2017, http://www.roh.org.uk/news/crystal-pite-flight-pattern-is-my-way-of-coping-with-the-world-at-the-moment. Accessed 25 Feb. 2018.
Winter, Anna. “Cathy Marston: ‘Many of my works are led by strong women’”. Exeunt, 28 June 2016, http://exeuntmagazine.com/features/cathy-marston-many-works-led-strong-women/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2018.
Wonderful News. “Ballet Black’s The Suit & A Dream Within A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an emotional and joyous journey”. The Wonderful World of Dance, 16 Mar. 2018, http://www.thewonderfulworldofdance.com/ballet-blacks-suit-dream-within-midsummer-nights-dream-emotional-joyous-journey. Accessed 20 Mar. 2018.
Author britishballetnowandthenPosted on March 26, 2018 March 28, 2018 Categories Female ChoreographersTags #andreehoward, #balletblack, #ballethistory, #balletnow, #balletthen, #britishballet, #britishnowandthen, #christopherhampson, #devalois, #ENB, #femalechoreographers, #NB, #RB, #SB, #shesaid, #tamararojo, cathymarstonLeave a comment on Female Choreographers Now & Then
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info@bstars.eu
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Shaggy – American reggae artist
Shaggy’s real name is Orville Richard Burrell. He was born on 22 October 1968 in Kingston, Jamaica. The boy showed passion for Jamaican music since childhood. He also followed the new music trends. In 1988, the aspiring musician decided to enlist in the army. He served in the USA Marine Corps. He was sent to the Persian Gulf during the operation Desert Storm. While serving in the military, Orville worked on his music skills. He sang in the choir.
After leaving the army, the musician started looking for ways to earn money. While serving, Orville came up with lyrics for many songs. In 1993, he released his first single “Oh Caroline”. The song was a big hit. It reached high spots on many charts and topped UK Singles Chart. The single was featured in the artist’s debut LP Pure Pleasure, which came out in August 1993.
Shaggy became very successful. Many hip-hop artists started asking him to participate in their projects. One of the big results of such collaborations was Kenny Dope’s album, The Unreleased Project. At the same time, many fans wanted to book Shaggy for private events. However, he was mostly busy recording new music.
In 1994, the artist released his second studio album, Original Doberman. It featured such popular songs as "Kibbles and Bits", "Jump and Rock", "Get Down to It", and "We Never Danced to the Rub-a-Dub Sound"
In 1995 and 1996, Shaggy released new hits "Boombastic" and "That Girl". “Bombastic” climbed to high spots on the charts and earned platinum and gold certifications. The album with the same name came out in 1995. It reached the 34th spot on Billboard 200. The lead single “In The Summer Time” came in third on Billboard Hot 100.
In 1997, the artist presented another LP, Midnite Lover, which included such popular songs as "Piece of My Heart" and "My Dream". The album didn’t chart and sold only 50,000 copies.
In 2000, Shaggy presented Hot Shot. The album turned out to be very popular in the UK with more than 300,000 copies sold. In the USA, the LP collected six platinum certifications and topped Billboard 200. Two years later, the artist released a new LP, Lucky Day. It earned a gold status but couldn’t repeat the success of Hot Shot.
The next LP, Clothes Drop, came out in 2005. It was less popular than the artist’s previous work and barely made it into Billboard 200, settling on the 144th position.
In 2007, Shaggy presented Intoxication. It featured such popular songs as "Can't Hold Me", "Bonafide Girl", "Woman Scorn", and "Wear di Crown". The album didn’t make it into the USA, UK, and Australian charts.
In 2011, the musician presented two studio albums, Shaggy & Friends and Summer in Kingston. The former was recorded together with Rayvon and RikRok. The latter featured hip-hop tracks.
In 2012, Shaggy recorded Rise. Such songs as "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", "World Citizen", "End of the World (Drink Up)", "Fired Up (Fuck the Rece$$ion!)", and "Get Back My Baby" made it popular. The LP came out in Europe only.
After a pause, in 2018, Shaggy released a new album, 44/876. The single "Don't Make Me Wait" he recorded together with Sting.
Shaggy continues recording new songs and performs live.
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Redwood City intends to transition to district-based elections
Published on September 24, 2018 in Community/Featured/Headline/Uncategorized Staff and Staff
In response to the threat of costly legal action, the Redwood City council on Monday unanimously announced its intent to transition from an at-large elections system to a district-based elections system.
As first reported last month by Climate Magazine columnist Mark Simon, Redwood City recently joined a long list of state jurisdictions in receiving a letter from the law firm Shenkman & Hughes alleging that its current system of at-large elections discriminates against minority voters and candidates.
While at-large elections allow voters of the entire city to elect the seven councilmembers, a district-based system has voters voting solely for the councilmember who resides in and aims to represent their particular district of the city.
In the letter to Redwood City officials, Malibu attorney Kevin Shenkman said the at-large system violates the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) of 2001. His letter threatened litigation if Redwood City did not voluntarily switch to district-based elections.
In its report to council, Redwood City staff did not defend the at-large election system. Rather, staff advised that challenging the legal threat would likely be costly and unsuccessful.
According to a staff report, “the threshold to establish liability under the CVRA is extremely low, and prevailing CVRA plaintiffs are guaranteed to recover their attorneys’ fees and costs. As a result, every governmental defendant that has challenged the conversion to by-district elections under the CVRA has either lost in court or settled/agreed to change its election system and been forced to pay at least some portion of the plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees and costs.”
When the City of Palmdale attempted to defend its at-large council election system in court, it was forced to pay $4.7 million in plaintiff’s legal fees, not counting nearly $2 million in legal defense fees. Santa Barbara, Whittier, Anaheim and Modesto incurred legal fees of between $600,000 and $3 million in settling such challenges, staff said.
“All of these cases ended with those cities adopting by-district elections,” the staff report says.
Locally, seven jurisdictions have either chosen to adopt district elections or are preparing to do so, including Half Moon Bay, Menlo Park, South San Francisco, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and two local school districts. Santa Clara was court-ordered to implement district elections even though voters in the city rejected such a system in June.
Proposals by Redwood City staff include reducing council seats from seven to six under a district-based elections system, with the mayor’s position elected in at-large system. Other alternatives include red “ranked choice voting,” “cumulative voting” and “from district” elections formats, according to the staff report.
Should council approve the transition to district elections, public hearings will be held to seek input on drafting district maps. The conversion to district elections is expected to cost Redwood City about $175,000.
Redwood City begins controversial transition to by-district election system – Climate Online says:
[…] voters voting solely for the councilmember who resides in their particular district of the city. Approved last month by City Council, the transition follows threats of legal action that alleges the city’s current at-large […]
What is the history behind this decision?
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How Mahalo Works
The Mahalo homepage welcomes you to the site.
Screenshot by HowStuffWorks
One of the most important navigational tools on the Internet is the search engine. Search engines have come and gone, but most of them followed the same strategy -- using a search algorithm to scan Web pages for the user's search terms. Web page publishers figured this out pretty quickly, and soon users were browsing through irrelevant sites just because the page's owner had hidden every search term imaginable in the page's html code.
Mahalo is revolutionizing search engines with a new mission -- to give users a hassle-free, informative and relevant experience. Instead of relying on a complex algorithm to generate search results, Mahalo uses human beings. Real, live people research each search term, seeking out the sites that best fit the user's request. While most search engines depend on complex algorithms developed by a small group of people, Mahalo searches are the result of hundreds of people working to sort out the absolute best of the Web.
Even though people power the search engine, they aren't feverishly typing results as users send in requests. Instead, Mahalo contributors submit search results pages (SeRPs) to a centralized database, called the Mahalo Greenhouse. When the SeRP has a few great links in it, Mahalo publishes it to the Web, giving users access to the search results. Each SeRP includes a completion percentage, indicating how close Mahalo employees feel the results fit their ideal of 100 percent of the best links on the Web relating to that topic.
The easiest way to understand the philosophy behind the Mahalo search engine is to use it. When you search for a term like "Hawaii," for example, you'll see that links are organized into subcategories. The first subcategory is "The Mahalo Top 7," a list of seven sites Mahalo employees feel are the most relevant to the term. Other subcategories include Hawaii Vacations, Hawaii State Government, Hawaii State History and Hawaii State News, among others. You can scan a search result to look for the information you need and continue browsing other links, knowing that each one is the result of careful research.
In this article, we'll learn about Mahalo's internal structure and explore what the Mahalo search experience is like. We'll look at the Mahalo Greenhouse database, where employees build and tweak search results. And, we'll find out how to build a SeRP and work for Mahalo.
In the next section, we'll learn what happens when you enter a search into Mahalo.
Hawaiian for "Search Engine?"
Mahalo is a Hawaiian word that means "thank you." The company's motto is "We're here to help," and the site has a Hawaiian print motif. Even Mahalo's symbol for excellent links is a Hawaiian reference -- it's an icon representing the shaka sign, a hand with the thumb and pinky finger extended, often used in Hawaii for greetings or hanging ten.
More on Search
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Section 67 of NDPS Act-Power to call for information.
Power to call for information-u/s 67 of NDPS Act., sec.67 of NDPS Act.
Power to call for information, etc.
Any officer referred to in Section 42 who is authorised in this behalf by the Central Government or a State Government may, during the course of any enquiry in connection with the contravention of any provision of this Act, –
(a) Call for information from any person for the purpose of satisfying himself whether there has been any contravention of the provisions of this Act or any rule or order made thereunder;
(b) Require any person to produce or deliver any document or thing useful or relevant to the enquiry;
(c) Examine any person acquainted with the facts and circumstances of the case.
68. Information as to commission of offences.
No officer acting in exercise of powers vested in him under any provision of this Act or any rule or order made thereunder shall be compelled to say whence he got any information as to the commission of any offence.
Husen Bhenu Malad vs State Of Gujarat on 26 February, 2003
Equivalent citations: 2003 CriLJ 5070, (2003) 4 GLR 916
Author: A Kapadia
Bench: A Kapadia, H Mehta
A.M. Kapadia, J.
1. This appeal which is filed under Section 374 (2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (‘the Code’ for short) read with Section 36B of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (‘the NDPS Act’ for short) through jail, is directed against a judgment and order dated February 4, 1997 rendered by Special Judge, Kachchh at Bhuj, in Special Case No. 122 of 1994 by which appellants/original accused Nos. 1 to 5 (‘the accused’ for short) have been convicted of the offences under Section 20(b)(ii) read with Section 29 of the NDPS Act and sentenced to undergo R.I. for 15 years and fine of Rs.1 lakh, i.d., S.I. for two years whereas A-1 and A-4 have also been convicted of the offences punishable under Section 23 read with Section 29 of the NDPS Act and sentenced to undergo R.I. for 15 years and fine of Rs. 1 lakh i.d., S.I. for two years. It is also ordered by the learned Special Judge that both the sentences awarded to A-1 and A-4 to run concurrently and all the five accused are given the benefit of set-off.
2. Facts of the case have been detailed in the judgment of the learned Special Judge and, therefore, it is not expedient to repeat the same all over again in verbatim and in detail in this judgment. However, the basic facts which are necessary to be discussed in this appeal are that:
2.1. One Yashwantsinh Rupsinh (P.W.1), Officer Commanding, BSF Water Wing, in company of Narpatram, S.I., A.K. Devnath, Head Constable, Engine Driver Mandal, Arjun Singh and other officers, on 20.7.1994, while patrolling creek area of Koteshwar, at about 4.30 P.M., saw a wooden boat having engine, in a suspicious condition. When the boat of B.S.F. was seen by the persons fishing in the wooden boat, they tried to run away with their boat. However, since the BSF personnel had a high-speed boat they reached at the wooden boat within 5/6 minutes. The said wooden boat was stopped at the creek by the BSF officers and the persons who were found in the boat were directed to be alighted from it. In the said boat there were five persons.Upon preliminary inquiry they stated that they were Pakistani citizens and they were doing fishing illegally in the water of Indian territory. In the meanwhile, because of low tide, water level receded and the wooden boat in which they were fishing was kept stationary there. A night halt was done there near the creek and all of them were placed under the surveillance of the guards.
2.2. On the next day, i.e., 21.7.1994, P.W.1 and other BSF officers reached Koteshwar Jetty around 9 A.M. and alighted there from the boat alongwith them. During the inquiry made by P.W.1 with them, he informed them that if they give information regarding smuggling or some illegal activities which may be known to them, they would be released. Thereupon they told that if they were to be released they would show something to the BSF personnel. Thereupon, Husen Malad, A-1 was taken in the BSF Boat with PW 1 and they went in creek area. As per information given by A-1 the boat was taken to Vaniya Vadi creek area where he showed Charas secreted in mud which was recovered. Thereafter around 5 P.M. PW -1 and other BSF officers came back to BSF Camp at Koteshwar with charas. In the BSF camp P.W.1 instructed his subordinate Inspector Tulshasing to inform the fact of recovery of Charas to the Inspector of Customs. Accordingly, this fact was informed to the Customs Department and pursuant thereto Sanjay Baviskar, Customs Inspector and N.C. Bildani, Customs Superintendent came alongwith panch witnesses.Muddamal Charas was thereafter seized after following due procedure and after making panchnama in presence of Panchas. During the aforesaid procedure, police from Narayan Sarovar Police Station reached there and they were handed over to Narayan Sarovar police on 21.7.1994 itself.
2.3. Initially, during the pendency of investigation into this case, complaint for violation of provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946 and the Indian Passport Regulations Act was filed against the accused. Thereafter Customs Officer made an application on 6.8.1994 before learned Chief Judicial Magistrate, Kachchh at Bhuj for custody of the accused for the purpose of inquiry which was granted. Pursuant to the order passed by the learned Chief Judicial Magistrate, Kachchh at Bhuj, the Customs Department was given the custody of the accused on 7.8.1994. Statements of the accused under Section 108 of the Customs Act and under Section 67 of the NDPS Act were recorded on the same day. Second statement of A-1 was recorded on 8.8.1994 and his third statement was recorded on 9.8.1994. Second statement of A-2 was recorded on 9.8.1994. No further statement of other accused was recorded.
2.4. On 8.8.1994 formal arrest of the accused was made for violation of the provisions of the NDPS Act by the Customs Department and arrest report was submitted to the Assistant Commissioner of Customs on 8.8.1994 itself. During the investigation, report of Forensic Science Laboratory (‘FSL’ or short) on the sample which was collected in presence of panchas and sent for analysis was received which revealed that the contraband article was Charas. On the basis of the statements of the accused recorded under Section 67 of the NDPS Act and Section 108 of the Customs Act it was divulged that all the accused have committed offence under the provisions of the NDPS Act and, therefore, a written complaint for the offences punishable under Sections 20, 23 and 30 of the NDPS Act came to be filed by K.S. Joshi, the then Superintendent of Customs, Kachchh at Bhuj on behalf of the Union of India, in the Court of Special Judge (Sessions Judge), Kachchh at Bhuj which was registered as Special Case No. 122 of 1994. Alongwith the complaint, list of documents like Panchnama, seizure report under Section 57 of the NDPS Act, statements recorded under Section 67 of the NDPS Act and Section 108 of the Customs Act, arrest report, inventory report and FSL report, was also produced.
2.5. The learned Special Judge, on the basis of the averments and allegations made in the complaint, framed charge against all the accused at Ex. 9 for commission of the offences punishable under Sections 20(b)(ii), 23, 29 and 30 of the NDPS Act. The charge was read over and explained to the accused. The accused pleaded not guilty to the charges levelled against them and claimed to be tried.
2.6. In order to bring home the charge framed against the accused, prosecution has examined following witnesses and relied upon their oral testimonies:
P.W.1 – Yashwantsinh Rupsinh – Officer Commanding, BSF, Water Wing, Bhuj- Ex.21.
P.W.2 – Sava Vela Maheshwari – Ex.25.
P.W.3 – Mulji Khimji Joshi – Panch No.2 – Ex. 27. P.W.4 – Narendra Chandumal, Superintendent of Customs, Kandla – Ex. 28.
2.7. Prosecution also placed reliance on the following documents to prove the culpability of the accused:
Sr. Particulars of documents Ex. No. No. ———————————————————
1. Copy of letter F.No.Elops/Seizure/KOT/
94 dated 21.7.1994 of 141 BN BSF
addressed to the Customs Officer,
Narayan Sarovar, Kutch. 29
2. Original seizure panchnama prepared
in presence of panch witness Sava
Vela Maheshwari and Mulji Khimji
Maheshwari before N.C. Bildani,
Superintendent of Customs. 30
3. Copy of letter F.No.VII/10-1/KOT/
94/702 of Inspector of Customs,
Koteshwar addressed to Incharge
Police Station, Narayan Sarovar
dated 22.7.1994. 31
4. Original report of seizure u/s. 57
of NDPS Act submitted by N.C. Bildani,
Superintendent of Customs, Gadhuli to the
Assistant Collector of Customs, Bhuj
5. Copy of letter F.No.LIB/BA/2665/94
of DSP, Bhuj addressed to the
Assistant Collector, Customs, Bhuj
dated 6.8.1994. 35
6. Copy of application in the Court of
CJM, Bhuj (K) bearing F.No.VIII/17-8/
LEGAL/94 for the transfer of custody
of five Pak nationals, dated 6.8.1994. 36
7. Copy of letter F.No. VIII/17-8/LEGAL/
94 addressed to Superintendent of Sub
Jail, Nakhatrana of Superintendent of
Customs, Bhuj dated 6.8.1994 37
8. Original statement of Husen Bhenu
Malad recorded by N.C. Bildani,
Superintendent of Customs, Gadhuli
under Section 108 of the Customs
Act and under section 67 of NDPS
Act dated 7.8.1994. 38
9. Original statement of Siddique Umar
under Section 67 of the NDPS Act
and 108 of the Customs Act dated
7.8.1994. 39
10. Original statement of Aechar Umar
under Section 67 of NDPS Act and
108 of the Customs Act dated
11. Original statement of Khemu Alaya
12. Original statement of Hanif Ishaque
108 of Customs Act dated 7.8.1994. 41
13. Original further statement of
Husen Bhenu Malad recorded by
N.C. Bildani, Superintendent
of Customs, Gadhuli under Section
67 of NDPS Act and
108 of Customs
Siddique Umar Malad recorded by
16. Report of arrest under Section 57 of
NDPS Act to the Assistant Collector,
Customs, Bhuj by A.R.Chavda,
Inspector of Customs, Gadhuli dated
17. Copy of NCB 1 (Test Report) sent to
FSL, Ahmedabad for testing dated
22.7.1994, alongwith the forwarding
letter and its dated receipt 33
18. Inventory in original in respect of
seized charas prepared before
Executive Magistrate, Bhuj as per
the provisions of NDPS Act dated
12.9.1994. 47
19. Original test report received from
FSL, Ahmedabad alongwith letter
addressed to the Superintendent of
Customs, RCP, Gadhuli dated 4.10.94. 34
2.8. After recording of the evidence of the prosecution witnesses was over, the learned Judge explained to the accused the circumstances appearing against them in the depositions of the witnesses. Thereafter further statements of the accused were recorded under Section 313 of the Code. In further statement also they denied the prosecution case in toto and reiterated that they are innocent, they have not committed any offence, they are Pakistani citizens doing fishing and without interrogation after beating them their signatures were obtained on blank papers and they have been falsely entrapped in the alleged commission of offences under the NDPS Act. They did not lead any evidence in defence nor they examined themselves on oath.
2.9. On appreciation, evaluation and analysis of the evidence adduced by the prosecution, the learned Judge held that the prosecution has proved beyond doubt that all the accused who are Pakistani citizens have illegally under the guise of fishing entered into the water of Indian Territory, near Savla Pir, as per the information supplied by A-1 about Charas, large quantity of Charas weighing 265 Kgs. valued at Rs.1.28 crores was taken out from the place shown by him, and therefore, all the accused were connected with the said illegal trafficking of Charas by aiding each other and thereby they have committed offences under Section 20(b)(ii) read with Section 29 of the NDPS Act whereas A-1 and A-4 have also committed offences under Section 23 read with Section 29 of the NDPS Act and resultantly the learned Judge has convicted and sentenced the accused to which reference is made in earlier paragraphs of this judgment, which has given rise to the present appeal.
3. Mr. G. Ramakrishnan, learned advocate who is appointed by Legal Aid Committee to render assistance to the accused, contended that the prosecution has not been able to establish the involvement and indulgence of the accused in the alleged offence beyond reasonable doubt and the learned Judge has also committed grave error in outrightly believing the so-called evidence of the prosecution which was not tenable in the eye of law. It is emphasised by him that when it is undoubtedly the fact to reckon with that the mandatory as well as directory provisions of law have all been flouted with, no credence can be given to such evidence laid therein by the prosecution as also to the findings of the learned Judge. It is also emphasized by him that there has been clear flouting of the mandatory provisions as well as directory provisions contained under Sections 42 (1) and (2), 55 and 57 of the NDPS Act which in the resultant would render the conviction unsustainable. What is asserted by him is that various provisions of the Code, though directory in nature, have not been complied with and noncompliance of the same would invite adverse inference against the prosecution case. It is also highlighted by him that even several provisions contained in the Constitution of India as well as in Customs Act have not been complied with. According to him, it, therefore, goes to show that means of justice have been taken for granted.
4. In support of the aforesaid contention, Mr. G. Ramakrishnan, learned advocate for the accused, elaborately highlighted certain aspects which, according to him, are serious infirmities to the prosecution case which can be catalogued as under:
(i) The complaint is a delayed one as there was delay of 4 months and 10 days in filing it, which has not been explained.
(ii) The complainant has not been examined before the trial court.
(iii) The nature of involvement of the accused with the contraband article is not spelt out in clear terms in the complaint.
(iv) The investigating officer is also the complainant and hence the said complaint and trial thereto are not maintainable.
(v) The complaint otherwise could have been filed by the BSF personnel who are also empowered with extended powers of the Police under the Code as also envisaged under the BSF Law Manual. Therefore, there was no requirement to involve the Superintendent of Customs and the said Department.
(vi) The alleged offence is pertaining to one under the NDPS Act and not the one for evasion of Customs Duty which ought to be under the Customs Act, 1962.
(vii) The complainant is only a hearsay witness to the alleged incident.
(viii) The complainant has not followed the mandatory provisions of the NDPS Act.
(ix) The entire complaint failed to establish even prima facie the aspect of conscious possession of the accused with the contraband article.
(x) Mere knowledge about the contraband article does not establish the fact of guilt of conscious possession.
(xi) P.W.1 was not present at the place of incident or during the interrogation of the accused.
(xii) So-called information supplied by A-1 ought to have been reduced into writing by BSF personnel as Section 42 of the NDPS Act is applicable and on the facts of the case Section 43 cannot be made applicable.
(xiii) BSF personnel have no right to entrust the muddamal to the Customs Department.
(xiv) Doubt is raised about the authenticity of the sample taken from the contraband article whether it is the same substance which was sent to FSL for analysis from the original contraband article Charas.
(xv) Panch witnesses have turned hostile and it has not come on record who has weighed the muddamal while sample was taken for sending to FSL. According to Panch witnesses presence of the accused at the time of drawing sample and preparing Panchnama is not established.
(xvi) Statements of the accused recorded under Section 108 of the Customs Act and Section 67 of the NDPS Act are hit by Article 20(3) of the Constitution of India as they were in judicial custody.
(xvii) P.W.4 is a hearsay witness who ought not have gone to the creek at Vaniya Vadi nor he was present at the time of seizure or preparing panchnama and drawing sample.
5. Pointing out the aforesaid infirmities which, according to the learned advocate, are serious in nature and fatal to the prosecution case, it is contended that the accused are innocent and not in any way involved in the alleged incident and there was noncompliance of various provisions of the NDPS Act and, therefore, serious doubt is raised on the prosecution case and the so-called statements recorded under Section 67 of the NDPS Act and Section 108 of the Customs Act during the arrest and at the time of their being in judicial custody, would not be sufficient as conclusive piece of evidence to sustain conviction as there has also to be other corroborative and independent piece of evidence to establish the authenticity and credibility of those so-called confessional statements and hence the entire prosecution case fails as there is no substratum in the prosecution case and thus the order of conviction and sentence passed by the trial court against the accused deserves to be quashed and set aside by allowing this appeal. He, therefore, urged to allow this appeal and thereby to acquit the accused.
6. To buttress the aforesaid submission, the learned advocate also relied upon following decisions of the Supreme Court:
(i) Revatram Ratanchand Thakur v. State of Goa, III (1995) CCR 217 (DB) Bombay High Court, 217.
(ii) Koluttumottil Razak v. State of Kerala, 2000 SCC (Cri) 829.
(iii) Abdul Rashid Ibrahim Mansuri v. State of Gujarat, (2000) 2 SCC
(iv) State of Punjab v. Balbir Singh, (1994) 3 SCC 299.
(v) Roy V.D. v. State of Kerala, (2000) 8 SCC 590.
7. In answer to these submissions, Mr. Asim Pandya, learned counsel who appears on behalf of the Union of India, has supported the impugned judgment and order throughout. According to him, no infirmity is found in the judgment and order rendered by the learned trial Judge as he has given cogent reasons for coming to the conclusion that the accused are guilty of the offences with which they are charged. It is also asserted by him that the prosecution has proved beyond doubt the involvement and indulgence of the accused in the alleged offences as large quantity of contraband article – Charas was recovered at their instance. What is asserted by him is that there is a positive evidence that all the accused have illegally entered into the water of Indian territory for the purpose of illegal trafficking of the contraband article – Charas which they were to export from the Indian territory to Pakistan territory, which was concealed in Indian territory. Not only that in past also they exported 225 Kgs., of Charas from the same place but on that particular day, i.e., 20.7.1994 they came to the water of Indian territory to export Charas from Vaniya Vadi creek to Pakistan. Therefore they had knowledge about the contraband article and since they were to lift the said contraband article it is proved that they were in conscious possession of the same. It is also emphasised by him that the prosecution evidence is consistent in this regard. Panchnama was prepared in the presence of Panchas. They have supported the procedure carried out by the Customs Department while taking sample which was sent to FSL for analysis. It is true that the Panchas have not supported the prosecution case so far as presence of accused is concerned. However, on this ground the entire evidence of the panchas cannot be treated as effaced or washed off the record altogether as part of their evidence which is otherwise acceptable can be acted upon. It is also stressed by the learned counsel that all the accused are consistent in their statement recorded under Section 108 of the Customs Act and Section 67 of the NDPS Act and they have given detailed background of their families which otherwise would have been impossible if they have not voluntarily given their statement. It is emphasised by the learned counsel that while the statement of the accused was recorded they were not in police custody but were in judicial custody in connection with the offences for violation of the provisions of the Foreigners Act and Indian Passport Regulations Act. At that time neither complaint was lodged against the accused in connection with the offences under the NDPS Act, nor they were arrested in connection therewith, therefore, much credence can be given to the said statement as the same got corroboration from other independent witnesses like P.W.1, P.W.4 as well as panch witnesses P.W.2 and P.W.3. While criticizing the submission made by the learned advocate for the accused with regard to the so-called infirmities it is contended by the learned counsel for the Union of India that those infirmities which have been pointed out by the learned advocate for the accused cannot be termed as infirmities. Besides this it is also pointed out that the statutory and mandatory requirements of the provisions of the NDPS Act have been fully complied with. Lastly it is contended that the accused had never retracted their statements at any point of time inspite of the fact that several opportunities were given to them to retract from it. A-1 has only for the first time stated in his further statement that his statement was recorded under compulsion, duress by beating him and it was not voluntarily made by him.
8. On the aforesaid premises, the learned counsel for respondent No. 2 submitted that there is no infirmity in the impugned judgment and order. The learned trial Judge has also considered all the aspects and reached to the correct conclusion as on the facts and in the circumstances of the case no other conclusion was possible except the one reached by the learned trial Judge in connection with the guilt of the accused. In this view of the matter, the appeal lacks merit and deserves to be dismissed. He, therefore, urged to dismiss the appeal and thereby to confirm the impugned judgment and order of conviction and sentence of the accused passed by the learned trial Judge.
9. To buttress the aforesaid submissions, learned counsel has relied upon following authorities:
(i) Sayar Puri v. State of Rajasthan, (1998) 7 SCC 441.
(ii) Aslambhai Ibrahimbhai Memon and another v. The State of Gujarat, 1990 Cri.LJ 1787.
(iii) Ravishankar Bhagwatiprasad Mishra v. State of Gujarat, 2000 (1) GLR 137.
(iv) Raghubhai Gandabhai Bharwad v. State, judgment dated 5/6-2-2002 delivered by this Court (Coram: J.M. Panchal & JR. Vora, JJ.) in Criminal Appeal No. 12 of 2002.
(v) Ramji Duda Makwana v. The State of Maharashtra, 1994 Cri.LJ 1987.
(vi) K.C. Jaya Kumar v. The State, 1997 Cri.LJ 10.
(vii) Utpal Mishra, Air Customs Officer, IGI Airport v. Nicelai Christensen, 1997 (4) Crimes 108.
(viii) Satyanarayan Das v. State of Orissa, 1999 Cri.LJ 974.
(ix) Karnail Singh v. State of Rajasthan, 2000 Cri.LJ 4635.
(x) K.I. Pavunny v. Assistant Collector (HQ), Central Excise Collectorate, Cochin, (1997) 3 SCC 721.
(xi) Bipinbhai A. Patel v. State of Gujarat, 1998 (1) GLR 589.
(xii) Gulam Hussain Shaikh Chougule v. S. Reynolds, Superintendent of Customs, Marmgoa, AIR2001 SC 2930.
(xiii) Sumarkhan Sidiqkhan Sindhi v. Collector of Customs (Preventive), 1999 (1) GLR 863.
(xiv) Bhana Khalpabhai Patel v. Assistant Collector of Customs, Bulsar and another, 1998 (2) GLR 1319.
10. Mr. B.D. Desai, learned APP who appears on behalf of respondent No. 1 – State of Gujarat has supported the impugned judgment and order recorded by the learned trial Judge and has adopted all the submissions advanced by Mr. Asim Pandya, learned counsel for respondent No. 2 – Union of India and urged that the appeal may be dismissed by confirming the impugned judgment and order of conviction and sentence recorded by the trial court.
11. We have considered the submissions advanced at the bar by the learned advocates appearing for the parties and reappreciated, reevaluated and reanalysed the whole evidence on record. We have gone through the entire record of the case. We have also considered the judgments cited at the bar by them.
12. Before dealing with the contentions advanced by the learned advocates appearing for the parties, it would be profitable to refer to the salient aspects emerging from the oral testimony of the prosecution witnesses, in brief, which would throw abundant light on the prosecution case.
13. P.W.1 – Yashwantsinh Rupsinh, Officer Commanding, BSF Water Wing, testified at Ex. 21, has stated that he and other BSF Officers spotted the accused on 20.7.1994 while fishing in the Water of Indian Territory in a suspicious condition. He stopped the boat of the accused and asked them preliminary questions. On 21.7.1994 he took A-1 Husen Malad to Vaniya Vadi Creek and Charas was recovered from the place shown by him. He confirmed the presence of Custom Inspector Baviskar and Superintendent of Customs N.C. Bildani. He instructed Tulshasing to inform Narayan Sarovar Police Station about the recovery of Charas. Ex. 29 which is claimed to be the seizure memo was prepared as per the instructions given by Company Commander. When the accused were handed over to Customs Department and at the time of preparing Panchnama he was present.
14. Now adverting to the evidence of P.W.4, Superintendent of Customs, N.C. Bildani recorded at Ex. 28 it is seen that on 21.7.1994 at about 5.30 P.M. a person from BSF Camp came to give a message regarding recovery of Charas by BSF. He was informed by Tulshasing that BSF personnel took A-1 to the spot where Charas was secreted and came back with Charas. On sample covers he put his signature. He also identified his signature on Muddamal cover. Panchnama and seizure procedure was carried out in his presence and he submitted seizure report on 22.7.1994 to Assistant Commissioner of Customs, Bhuj. On 24.7.1994 he wrote a letter to FSL, Ahmedabad and the said letter as well as sample were taken to Ahmedabad by himself. On 6.8.1994 he received letter from D.S.P., Kachchh at Bhuj in which it was stated that Customs Department should take the custody of the accused from Nakhatrana Jail. On 7.8.1994 custody of the accused was obtained and thereafter statements of accused were recorded under section 67 of the NDPS Act and 108 of the Customs Act. He put his signature beneath the same. On 8.8.1994 he prepared arrest memo and thereafter the accused were produced before the learned Chief Judicial Magistrate and remand was sought. Thereafter further statement of A-1 and A-2 was recorded on 8.8.1994 and 9.8.1994 respectively. On 12.9.1994 he informed the Executive Magistrate, Bhuj about the Charas.The Executive Magistrate came and inventory of the recovered Muddamal was made. The inventory contained hand writing of the Executive Magistrate and himself. Thereafter he was transferred and in his place one Joshi who took charge filed complaint on the basis of the inquiry papers. In cross-examination he unequivocally stated that he had explained the accused about the provisions of Section 108 of the Customs Act and Section 67 of the NDPS Act before recording their statements. It may be appreciated that nothing substantial has been brought out by the defence during cross-examination of P.W.1 and P.W.4 which is capable of raising a doubt on their oral testimony, their presence and the procedure which they have undertaken. According to us, both P.W.1 and P.W.4 withstood the test of cross-examination.
15. Now coming to the evidence of P.W.2 -Sava Vela Maheshwari, Ex. 25 (Panch witness No. 1) and P.W.3 Mulji Khimji Joshi Ex. 27 (Panch witness No. 2), it is gathered that P.W.3 has completely supported the prosecution case except stating that at the time of preparation of Panchnama he did not see the accused. Otherwise his examination-in-chief and cross-examination unequivocally suggested that he was present while panchnama was being prepared. He also specifically stated that Yashwantsinh BSF Officer was present in the BSF Camp. Panchnama was prepared in his presence. He specifically denied the suggestion put forward by the advocate for the accused that their signatures were obtained on 22.7.1994 i.e., on the next day. He also admitted his signature on all the pages of the Panchnama and the covers in which samples were drawn by the Customs Department for sending them to FSL. It may be noted that P.W.2, Save Vela Maheshwari, is not very consistent and he denied the presence of the accused at the time of preparing Panchnama. However, he admitted that he had signed the covers containing muddamal as well as the Panchnama. He also stated that Panchnama was read over to him and only thereafter he had put his signature. He confirmed that another Panch was also present.
16. In view of the aforesaid evidence of Panch Witnesses there is no manner of doubt that they have supported the prosecution case so far as preparation of Panchnama, taking sample and sealing the same in their presence and their signatures on the Panchnama as well as the covers in which samples were drawn by the Customs Department for sending them to FSL for analysis. They have not supported the prosecution case so far as the presence of the accused at the relevant time is concerned.
17. In the aforesaid backdrop of the prosecution evidence, now let us examine the contentions advanced by Mr.G. Ramakrishnan, learned advocate for the accused and replied by Mr. Asim Pandya, learned counsel for respondent No. 2 – Union of India.
18. According to Mr. G. Ramakrishnan, learned advocate for the accused, since A-1 gave prior information regarding Charas which was secreted in Vaniya Vadi Creek, the information ought to have been reduced into writing and procedure contemplated under Section 42 of the NDPS Act should have been complied with but since the said procedure is not complied with, the trial is vitiated and hence conviction and sentence should be set aside.
18.1. According to us, this contention is without any merit and substance as in the present case provisions of Section 42 of the NDPS Act are not at all attracted. Section 42 of the NDPS Act applies to the case where search or seizure is to be carried out in respect of contraband goods kept or concealed in any building, conveyance or enclosed place. In the present case, the contraband article – Charas was not concealed or kept in any building, conveyance or enclosed place but it was recovered from the mud in the Creek area which is a public place within the meaning of Section 43 of the NDPS Act. The explanation of Section 43 of the NDPS Act provides inclusive definition of the term “public place”. The explanation reads as under:-
“Explanation:- For the purposes of this section, the expression “public place” includes any public conveyance, hotel, shop, or other place intended for use by, or accessible to, the public.”
There is no manner of doubt that Creek area is a place used by and accessible to public and the said area is also used for fishing by Indian fishermen and hence it squarely falls within the aforesaid term “public place”.
18.2. In Sayar Puri’s case (supra), the Supreme Court held that evidence showed that the accused was found to be in possession of opium while sitting on a bench on a particular public road and in such circumstances, procedure under section 42(2) of the NDPS Act was not required to be followed.
18.3. In Aslambhai’s case (supra) a Division Bench of this Court held that whenever any search or seizure is to be made in any public place or in a vehicle in transit or any person is to be arrested or detained from a public place, it is not intended by the Legislature to take down the said information in writing. It is further held that it is important to know that wordings of Sections 41 and 42 of the NDPS Act with regard to information taken in writing have been deliberately omitted by the legislature in Section 43 and that has been done advisedly inasmuch as the police officer may get information about the person in public place at the last moment and if he has to undergo the procedure of taking it in writing and recording the reasons for his belief, possibly such information may not be useful.
18.4. In Ravishankar’s case (supra) a Division Bench of this Court had an occasion to consider the question whether the provisions of Sections 41(2) and 42(2) of the NDPS Act should be complied with when search and seizure of a person sitting on otta portion of a building is made. In the said case, the appellant who was sitting on otta portion of a building, was searched. The contention which was raised before the Division Bench was that the provisions of Sections 41(2) and 42(2) of the NDPS Act were not complied with and, therefore, the conviction of the appellant was illegal. The Division Bench after interpreting the provisions of Sections 41(2) and 42(2) of the NDPS Act held that those provisions would not be applicable inasmuch as it was not a case where a building or a conveyance or a private place was required to be searched. The ratio laid down by the Division Bench of this Court in that case is squarely applicable to the present case and, therefore, it was not required for the officers to comply with the mandatory provisions of Sections 41(2) and 42(2) of the NDPS Act as search and seizure were made at a public place.
18.5. Similar question arose before a Division Bench of this Court (Coram: J.M. Panchal & J.R. Vora, JJ.) in Raghubhai’s case (supra), in Criminal Appeal No. 12 of 2002 which was decided on 5/6-2-2002. The Division Bench aptly considered this question and replied in paragraphs 10.3 and 10.4 of the said judgment by referring to Sayar Puri’s case (supra) and Aslambhai’s case (supra) and held that provisions of Section 42 of the NDPS Act would not be applicable where search or seizure is made at any public place or in a vehicle in transit or any person is to be arrested or detained from any public place.
18.6. Applying the principles laid down by the Supreme Court as well as this Court in the above referred to four judgments to the facts of the present case and more particularly in view of the evidence which we have adverted in earlier paragraphs of this judgment, there cannot be any dispute that contraband article Charas was recovered from a “public place”. It hardly needs to be emphasized that “public Place” described under Section 43 of the NDPS Act is inclusive and it is settled principle of law that when there is inclusive definition of any term given in a statute, that term would not only embrace within its sweep the things embodied in the definition but also other things. In substance, when inclusive definition is given, it should be construed in the widest possible sense and the restricted meaning of the term should be avoided.
18.7. In aforesaid view of the matter, we are of the considered opinion that the contraband article Charas was recovered from a public place as per the explanation given in Section 43 of the NDPS Act and, therefore, compliance of provisions of Section 42 are not at all required and hence the first contention raised by Mr. G. Ramakrishnan, learned advocate for the accused lacks merit and it is accordingly rejected.
19. The second contention advanced by Mr. G. Ramakrishnan, learned advocate for the accused, is that presence of P.W.1 has not been established by the prosecution and, therefore, no credence can be given to his oral testimony.
19.1. This contention, according to us, appears to be absolutely feeble as it is without any basis. From the evidence of P.W.3 (Panch witness) and P.W.4 (Officer of Customs Department) presence of P.W.1 is established. It may be noted that so far as the oral testimony of the witnesses are concerned, they are consistent in saying that at the relevant time they all were together. Therefore, this contention is required to be rejected and accordingly it is rejected.
20. The third contention canvassed by learned advocate for the accused is that information regarding recovery of Charas should have been given to the nearest police station and complaint ought to have been given to the police or Magistrate immediately. It is also canvassed by him that BSF has no power to entrust the muddamal to Customs Department and, therefore, adverse inference should be drawn against the prosecution. It is contended that Muddamal should have been handed over to the concerned police officer for safe custody under Section 55 of the NDPS Act as the Customs Department is not entitled to keep the muddamal with them.
20.1. According to us, the aforesaid contention raised by Mr. G. Ramakrishnan, learned advocate for the accused, is contrary to the provisions of NDPS Act. Under the provisions of Sections 36A and 42 read with sections 67 and 53 of the NDPS Act, the Central Government has issued Standing Order Nos. 822 (E), Standing Order No. 823 (E) and Standing Order No. 763 (E) empowering the officers of Customs, Central Excise, D.R.I. etc., to carry out search, seizure, to file complaint and to exercise same powers of “officer in-charge of police station” as available under the Code. In view of this, BSF is entitled to give information regarding recovery of Charas to any of the empowered agencies and the requirement of law is not that the said information should be given to the State Police only. It is relevant to note that from the facts disclosed by the accused in their statements recorded under Section 67 of the NDPS Act and under Section 108 of the Customs Act, it is very clear that the muddamal Charas was imported into Indian Territory from Pakistan without any valid licence or permit. It is also disclosed in their statements that on one occasion a part of Charas brought into Indian Territory from Pakistan was exported (transported) by the accused to Pakistan illegally. Thus, essentially the case was pertaining to illegal export and import. In such a circumstance, the Customs Department is the only appropriate Department to whom the information should be given and BSF has rightly done so in informing the Customs Department and handing over the muddamal to Customs Department. The Customs Officers are entitled to keep the seized goods in safe custody at their own godown or head quarters and there is no illegality in handing over and retaining the said goods by the Customs Department. Thus the contention that the muddamal article should have been kept by the police in safe custody under Section 55 of the NDPS Act is without any merit and hence the said contention is also rejected.
20.2. In Ramji Duda’s case (supra), a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court held that if raid conducted by specialized authority such as Narcotics Control Bureau, Customs, Central Excise, etc. they are not precluded from retaining contraband in safe custody at their own headquarters.
20.3. In K.C. Jaya Kumar’s case (supra) similar question arose before a Single Judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court. In the said case the boxes containing psychotropic substances seized were not deposited in any police station. The learned Single Judge held that there was no question of affixing of seal of officer in-charge of police station as provisions of Section 53 of the NDPS Act and not Section 55 of the NDPS Act are attracted.
20.4. In Utpal Mishra’s case (supra), similar question arose before a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court. In the said case Customs Officer at Airport recovered Hashish. The learned Special Judge convicted the accused. The said conviction was challenged before a Division Bench of the Delhi high Court on the ground that the sample had not been kept in custody of local area of police station. The said plea was negatived by the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court holding that Custom Officer being invested with powers of an officer, incharge of police station, sample could be legally kept in the malkhana of Customs and there was no requirement in law that same should be sent to local police station.
20.5. In Satyanarayan Das’s case (supra), similar question arose before learned Single Judge of the Orissa High Court. In the said case safe custody of seized articles and samples were kept in Excise Malkhana in custody of Inspector Incharge of Malkhana with personal brass seal till same were sent to chemical examination. The report of chemical examiner showed that seals were intact and identical. In the said case the learned Single Judge held that there was no infraction of Sections 52, 55 and 56 of the NDPS Act.
20.6. In Karnail Singh’s case (supra) the Supreme Court held that Officer in charge of police station required to affix seal etc., under Section 55 of the NDPS Act is distinct agency than “officers” contemplated under Section 53 of the NDPS Act. The arrested person and seized articles were forwarded under Section 52(3)(b) of the NDPS Act to officer empowers under Section 53 of the NDPS Act and hence mandate of Section 55 need not be complied with.
20.7. Applying the principles laid down by the Supreme Court and various High Courts in the judgments referred to hereinabove to the facts of the present case and in view of the various Standing Orders which we have referred to in para 20 (1) of this judgment, there is no manner of doubt that the Officers of the Customs and Central Excise and D.R.I. etc., are empowered to carry out search, seizure, to file complaint and exercise same powers of the officer incharge of a police station as available under the Code. Therefore there is no need to comply with the provisions contained in section 55 of the NDPS Act and hence the third contention advanced by Mr. G. Ramakrishnan, learned advocate for the accused is also devoid of any merit and is accordingly rejected.
21. The fourth contention put forward by the learned advocate for the accused is that there is a delay of about four months in filing complaint which is fatal to the prosecution case. It is submitted that when the complaint for violation of provisions of the Foreigners Act and the Indian Passport Regulations Act is filed immediately there was no reason for not filing complaint under the NDPS Act on that day by the police.
21.1. In our view, this contention is also without substance. In this regard it is required to be noted that no complaint could be filed under the NDPS Act unless there is prima facie material or evidence against the accused connecting them with the alleged offence under the NDPS Act. In the instant case, inquiry regarding recovery of Charas was handed over to the Customs Department on the same day and unless the inquiry is completed by the Customs Department, it was not possible to file FIR or complaint. In completing inquiry and gathering material against the accused some time was taken and, therefore, it cannot be said that there was a delay in filing complaint. It is also relevant to note that once inquiry was undertaken by the Customs Department, there was no need to file F.I.R. for the same cause before the police. For recording statements of the accused who were in judicial custody in connection with the offences for violation of provisions of the Foreigners Act and the Indian Passport Regulations Act, some procedural formalities were to be undertaken by the Customs Department which took sometime. The application for obtaining custody of the accused was made on 6.8.1994 and the same was granted on the same day. In pursuance of the said order, the custody of the accused was in fact given on 7.8.1994. The complaint was, therefore, filed only after gathering evidence against the accused and after conclusion of the inquiry under the Customs Act. Thus, there is no substance in the contention that there was delay in filing the complaint and hence same is rejected.
22. The fifth contention which is advanced by the learned advocate for the accused is that there was total noncompliance of provisions of Section 57 of the NDPS Act as BSF Officers have neither reported the arrest nor the seizure in compliance of provisions of Section 57 of the NDPS Act.
22.1. According to us, this contention is also without any substance as the BSF officers have neither arrested the accused nor seized the contraband article – Charas. The BSF officers have simply caught the accused and thereafter immediately on the same day handed them over to the State Police to register complaint against them for violation of the provisions of the Foreigners Act and the Indian Passport Regulations Act. The BSF officers also on the same day handed over the Muddamal Charas to the Customs Department who seized the said goods under the Customs Act read with the NDPS Act. The formal arrest of the accused in connection with the NDPS Act was made by the Customs Department on 8.8.1994. The Customs Department had fully complied with the provisions of Section 57 of the NDPS Act by reporting seizure as well as the arrest. In this connection, it is appropriate to refer to Ex. 32 page 194 of the paper book which is a letter dated 22.7.1994 written by the Superintendent of Customs, Gadhuli to the Assistant Collector of Customs, Bhuj wherein the Superintendent of Customs has informed seizure of 256 Kgs. of Charas on 21.7.1994 valued at Rs.1.28 crores at Koteshwar and thus intimation to superior officer, that is, Assistant Collector of Customs, Bhuj was given. It is equally important to refer to Ex. 46 at page 228 which is a letter dated 8.8.1994 written by the Superintendent of Customs, Gadhuli to the Assistant Collector of Customs, Bhuj wherein the arrest report of five accused was made to the immediate superior officer. In view of the aforesaid two documents, it cannot be said that the Customs Department has not fully complied with the provisions of Section 57 of the NDPS Act. In view of the aforesaid state of affairs, the fifth contention advanced by Mr. G. Ramakrishnan, learned advocate for the accused, is without any merit and substance and it deserves to be rejected and accordingly it is rejected.
23. The sixth contention which is canvassed by the learned advocate for the accused is that the samples which were sent to the FSL were not properly sealed as the signatures of the officers as well as Panch witnesses were not affixed at the place where covers can be opened or closed.
23.1. In this connection it is required to be noted that covers have been properly sealed and there is clear cut evidence that one seal was affixed by the Customs Department at the place from where covers can be opened. Thus there were no chances to tamper with the samples drawn by the Customs Department. Not putting the signatures at the place of opening of cover does not ipso facto lead to the conclusion that there was tampering as the seal was applied at that very place. The report of the FSL also mentions that the seals on the covers were found to be in tact and, therefore, no inference of tampering can be drawn when prima facie the prosecution has established that the samples were sealed properly. Thus when the prosecution has discharged its burden of proof by showing that covers were properly sealed, it is for the accused to prove otherwise if they allege tampering with the samples. In this case there is no such allegation of tampering with the samples and no evidence was led by the accused to show that there was in fact tampering with the samples. Thus this contention is also without any merit and substance and hence deserves to be rejected and accordingly it is rejected.
24. The seventh contention raised by Mr.G. Ramakrishnan, learned advocate for the accused, is that this is a case where the accused have only knowledge of the muddamal Charas secreted at a particular place and they were not found to be in possession of the said article and it is settled principle of law that mere knowledge of the contraband article does not establish the guilt of conscious possession.
24.1. In this connection, it would be appropriate to refer to the statements of the accused recorded under Section 67 of the NDPS Act and Section 108 of the Customs Act. It is very clear from the statements of all the accused that they had knowledge of the Charas concealed in the creek area and they entered into the Water of Indian territory with a specific intention to illegally transport the Charas back to Pakistan. Their statements also reveal the fact that on an earlier occasion prior to about 3/4 months of the present incident, the accused had in fact transported about 225 Kgs. of Charas back to Pakistan in their boat and thereby violated the provisions of the NDPS Act. Thus this is not merely a case of knowledge but it is a case where in fact the accused have committed an offence earlier and in the second attempt they were caught before the illegal transportation took place.
24.2. The reported decision of a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court in Revatram’s case (supra) relied upon by Mr. G. Ramakrishnan, learned advocate for the accused, is of no avail or assistance to the accused as it is not applicable to the facts of the present case. In the said case, the Division Bench of the Bombay High Court held that the manner in which the recovery was recorded, the exclusion of the owner of the building from the guilt, non-examination of photographer by the prosecution, doubt cast by the witness in identifying the accused, etc., all will go to show that recoveries in the Flower Scene Restaurant have not been proved, but cast doubt in the guilt of the accused. On the aforesaid factual situation of that case it was further held that in order to fasten liability under Section 20(b)(ii) of the NDPS Act possession of the contraband article Charas has to be proved positively and mere knowledge of the person or the place where the Charas could be found cannot be equated with the possession in order to come under the ambit of Section 20(b)(ii) of the NDPS Act.
24.3. The above referred to decision of the Division Bench of the Bombay High Court rested on the facts of that case. In the instant case, there is ample evidence to establish that the accused have illegally entered into the water of Indian territory with a specific purpose and intention to take back the Charas concealed in the creek area of Vaniya Vadi and in past also they had successfully illegally imported about 225 Kgs. of Charas from the said lot to Pakistan and they again came to take back the remaining stock of Charas and, therefore, according to us conscious possession of the accused is established. In this case, it is not that merely the accused had the knowledge but knowledge together with the conscious possession is established and, therefore, this contention also, according to us, does not have any force and deserves to be rejected and accordingly it is rejected.
25. The eighth and the last contention which vociferously canvassed by Mr. G. Ramakrishnan, learned advocate for the accused, is that the statements of the accused recorded under Section 67 of the NDPS Act and Section 108 of the Customs Act cannot be relied upon to hold them guilty and cannot be made basis for their conviction for the alleged offences.
25.1. In this regard, it is required to be borne in mind the nature and tenor of the statements of all the accused. The statements of all the accused, for the first time, were recorded on 7.8.1994. In their statements all of them have given minute details of their family background. All the accused have also narrated the previous incident of illegal transportation of charas to Pakistan by them and the amount paid to A-1 and other persons. In their statements the accused have given details as to how the consignment of charas was unloaded into the water of Indian territory by Jat Gang of Pakistan and how they came to know about unloading of charas. In their statements they disclosed name of Major Mohmedkhan Pathan of Pakistan Army and how Major Mohmedkhan Pathan and his four colleagues and Omar Malik with the army jeep took the delivery of Charas from A-1. Their statements also disclosed the fact that A-1 was arrested by Chuhad Jamali Police Station for bringing the charas to Pakistan illegally. Their statements also disclosed the fact that Major Mohmedkhan Pathan got A-1 released from police by exercising his influence. Their statements also gave details as to how A-1 came in contact with Major Mohmedkhan Pathan. Their statements also corroborated the fact that the present consignment of charas was brought to BSF, Koteshwar Camp and there the Charas was weighed in presence of BSF Officers and Officers of the Customs Department. A-3, A-4 and A-5 have also stated that seizure had taken place in their presence. The panchnama was also prepared in their presence and the officers of the BSF and Customs Department put their signatures in their presence on the Panchnama and samples. Further statements of A-1 and A-2 were recorded by the Customs Department. The second statement of A-1 was recorded on 8.8.1994 and his third statement was recorded on 9.8.1994 whereas second statement of A-2 was recorded on 9.8.1994 only and there is no third statement of A-2. In second statement dated 8.8.1994, A-1 gave detailed description of Major Mohmedkhan Pathan and how be came in contact with him. He gave more details about the first illegal transportation of Charas to Pakistan from India and selling it in Pakistan. He also gave names of the police officers who arrested him in Pakistan. In his third statement dated 9.8.1994, A-1 gave description of Gulam Husen Brohi to whom he intended to sell Charas. He also specifically stated that he and A-2 had entered into the water of Indian territory with an intention to illegally transport the charas back to Pakistan from Vaniya Vadi creek.
25.2. In the second statement of A-2 dated 9.8.1994, he gave more details about the first illegal transportation of charas to Pakistan. He stated that in the water of Indian territory where they were doing fishing, many other fishing boats were also there and he knew other persons doing fishing in this area by their face.
25.3. In the statement of Aechar Umar Malad, A-3, in addition to family background and other common details, he also stated that he came in the boat “Abdul Gani” but before that he used to work with A-2 on his boat “Dillagi”. He confirmed that on 20.7.1994 he was with Husen Malad A-1 and other persons and they were caught by BSF officers. He also stated that he was to get his share from the sale proceedings of charas and the responsibility of selling charas was taken by A-1.
25.4. In the statement of Hanif Ishaque Malad – A-4, in addition to his family background he stated that he had been doing fishing for the last four months and he did not have his own boat. He stated that he did fishing with A-1. He confirmed that he accompanied Husen Malad A-1 while illegally transporting 225 Kgs. of charas to Pakistan from India on the first occasion. He also confirmed the fact that Husen Malad A-1 handed over Charas to Mohmedkhan Pathan and A-1 was rewarded with Rs.1100/- and he was paid Rs.200 and a new pair of clothes.
25.5. In the statement of Khemu Alaya, A-5, he also gave common details like family background and in addition he stated that he was unable to maintain his family by farming and that he had joined A-2 and had been doing fishing with him for the last two years. He stated that he had been to Chauhan Creek 4 to 5 times in these two years. He also confirmed his presence while charas was unloaded in the Indian territory. He gave names of other persons also who were with him on the first occasion. He confirmed that on 20.7.1994 he was there with A-2 and others in creek area and they were caught by BSF Patrolling party.
25.6. All the above statements clearly involved all the accused with commission of the offences under the NDPS Act. As their statements have not been retracted by any of them, they appear to be voluntarily made by them. The accused have also not complained before the Magistrate or Special Judge that their statements have been recorded by coercion, threat, duress, etc. Thus, in view of these facts and detailed facts given by all the accused, it is very clear that their statements are voluntarily made and they are genuine in nature. The details which have been given by the accused in their statements cannot be in any case mere imagination or concoction by the officers of the Customs Department. These statements are wholly reliable and conviction can be sustained on the basis of these statements.
25.7. In Bipinbhai’s case (supra), a Division Bench of this Court upheld the order of conviction based on confessional statement made before Customs authorities. It is also held that since maker of the statement was not “person accused of offence” Article 20 (3) of the Constitution of India would not be attracted. In that case pursuant to summons issued under section 108 of the Customs Act and Section 67 of the NDPS Act inculpatory statement was made by the accused before the Customs Authorities who made formal arrest of the accused thereafter. The ratio laid down by the Division Bench of this Court in the above referred to decision is squarely applicable to the facts of the present case as in the instant case the accused were initially arrested for violation of provisions of the Foreigners Act and the Indian Passport Regulations Act and their custody was obtained under the order of the Court and thereafter statements were recorded. Therefore they were not accused of the offences under the NDPS Act at the time when their statements were recorded and, therefore, provisions of Article 20(3) of the Constitution of India would not be attracted.
25.8. In Sumarkhan’s case (supra), a Division Bench of this Court held that confessional statement made before Superintendent, Central Excise is admissible in evidence as Officers appointed under the provisions of Section 53 of the NDPS Act are not police officers within the meaning of Section 25 of the Evidence Act. The ratio laid down in the above referred to decision is squarely applicable to the facts of the present case as in this case also when the confessional statements were recorded by the Customs Department the accused were not arrested for the offences under the NDPS Act and their custody was obtained under the orders of the learned Magistrate as the accused were arrested for violation of the provisions of the Foreigners Act and the Indian Passport Regulations Act.
25.9. In Bhana Khalpabhai’s case (supra), Supreme Court held that statements recorded under Section 108 of the Customs Act by the Customs Officers are admissible in evidence.
25.10. In Gulam Hussain Shaikh’s case (supra), Supreme Court held that confessional statement recorded under Section 108 of the Customs Act is not inadmissible in evidence on the ground that safeguards prescribed under Section 164 of the Code were not complied with while recording statement.
25.11. In K.I. Pavunny’s case (supra), Supreme Court held that person suspected by a Customs Officer of having committed an offence under the Customs Act is not an accused at that stage. He becomes an accused only when summons are issued by a competent Court/Magistrate pursuant to a complaint lodged by the competent Customs Officer. Hence his statement recorded during an inquiry under Section 108 of the Customs Act or during confiscation proceedings is not that of an accused within the meaning of Section 24 of the Evidence Act. The ratio laid down in the above referred to judgment is also squarely applicable to the facts of the present case as in this case also accused were suspected by BSF personnel of having committed offence under the NDPS Act and, therefore, they were brought to BSF Camp at Koteshwar and during interrogation they voluntarily gave information about the Charas which they secreted in Vaniya Vadi creek and thereafter their statements were recorded before filing complaint under the provisions of the NDPS Act. Thus, it is clear that their statements recorded during the inquiry under Section 67 of the NDPS Act are not that of an accused within the meaning of Section 24 of the Evidence Act.
25.12. It cannot be laid down as an absolute rule of law that the statement of an accused recorded under Section 108 of the Customs Act and Section 67 of the NDPS Act cannot form the sole basis of conviction unless it is corroborated. The rule requiring corroboration is merely a rule of prudence. To put it differently, there is neither rule of law nor of prudence that the statement cannot be acted upon without corroboration. If the Court is satisfied that the statement is true and voluntary in nature, it can base conviction on it without corroboration. The Court has to scrutinise the statement carefully and must ensure that the statement is not the result of coercion, duress or undue influence.
25.13. In aforesaid view of the matter, the statements made by the accused persons under the provisions of Section 67 of the NDPS Act and Section 108 of the Customs Act before the Customs Officer were voluntary, without coercion, duress or undue influence as their statements were recorded when they were not in police custody and in view of the fact that their statements were never retracted by them, they can be made basis for the conviction as they are trustworthy and also found general corroboration from the other documentary evidence as well as oral testimony of the witnesses.
26. From the foregoing evidence of the prosecution witnesses, we are of the opinion that the prosecution case against the accused has been fully established. P.W.1 who caught the accused while fishing illegally in the water of Indian territory has clearly deposed before the Court regarding the incident and recovery of the contraband article – Charas at the instance of A-1. In his cross-examination nothing inconsistent was brought out by the advocate for the accused. His oral testimony is corroborated by oral testimony of P.W.4 as well as that of P.W.3. Panch witnesses have supported all the formalities regarding preparation of panchnama, seizure and drawing of sample, handing over of the goods by BSF officers to Customs authorities and the statements of the accused recorded under Section 67 of the NDPS Act and Section 108 of he Customs Act which were voluntary and genuine in nature, recorded without any threat, coercion, duress or undue influence which were never retracted by them and also got corroboration from other evidence.
27. From the aforesaid facts there is no escape from the conclusion about the guilt of the accused. We are, therefore, of the considered opinion that the learned trial Judge has considered all these aspects properly and correctly held the accused guilty and rightly convicted and sentenced them.
28. Mr. G. Ramakrishnan, learned advocate for the accused, has referred to reported decisions of the Supreme court as well as various High Courts during the course of his submission which we have noted in earlier paragraphs of this judgment. But, in our view, since the ratio laid down by the Supreme Court as well as other High Courts in those reported decisions rested on the facts of those cases and interpreted the statutory provisions contained under various provisions of the NDPS Act and thus they are not applicable to the facts of the present case and, therefore, we do not deem it expedient to refer to those reported decisions in this judgment to burden the same.
29. On over all view of the matter, we do not find any infirmity in the impugned judgment and order. We are in complete agreement with the finding, ultimate conclusion and resultant order of conviction and sentence recorded by the learned trial judge as, according to us, on the facts and in the circumstances of the present case, no other conclusion is possible except the one reached by the learned trial Judge. We, therefore, confirm the order of conviction and sentence recorded by the learned trial judge.
30. Seen in the above context, there is no valid reason or justifiable ground to interfere with the impugned judgment and order of conviction and sentence. Hence the appeal lacks merit and deserves to be dismissed.
31. For the foregoing reasons, the appeal fails and accordingly it is dismissed. The judgment and order which is under challenge in this appeal is hereby confirmed.
Procedure to declare Proclaimed Offender under sec.82/83 of Cr.P.C.
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Should your state establish an Obamacare health insurance exchange?
John Graham Contributor
Obamacare is unpopular, unwieldy, expensive, likely unconstitutional, and will shortly be a prime target for repeal. And the worst is yet to come: Obamacare expects states to do much of the law’s dirty work. Obamacare presumes that states will establish “exchanges” to limit the health-insurance choices of many of their residents. States should not swallow this poison pill.
To be sure, the letter of the law prescribes states’ “flexibility” in structuring exchanges, and some believe that it is possible to design an exchange that increases consumer choice. Two states, Massachusetts and Utah, already have exchanges. Some claim that the Utah Health Exchange is a consumer-friendly model that can blunt the most harmful consequences of Obamacare.
Pre-Obamacare, exchanges were suggested as a way to get around the major government failure in American health care: Congress’s grant of monopoly control of our pre-tax health dollars to our employers, which limits our choices.
The Utah Health Exchange allows spouses to aggregate defined contributions from different employers. For example, suppose a husband’s employer contributes $300 per month to the exchange for health insurance. His wife works for another employer which does the same. The household has $600 to spend on a family policy that they, not their employers, choose. The husband and wife can then decide to which of their employers they wish to affiliate, satisfying federal regulations for group coverage.
So far, so good: However, enthusiasm for the Utah Health Exchange must be tempered. This “premium aggregator” has never been tested: It won’t go into effect until next January. Indeed reports from only a few months ago describe the exchange as a disappointment. Although 20 businesses enrolled on the first day of operations in August 2009, and 136 businesses in total signed up, only 13 remained enrolled by last December.
Even if the new, improved Utah Health Exchange has figured out a way to increase consumers’ choices, it is unlikely that such choices will survive the Obamacare take-over. Official sources estimate that about half a trillion federal dollars will flow into Obamacare exchanges between 2014 and 2019, and these likely underestimate the true costs of the subsidies. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 3 million of the 24 million people who will enter the exchanges in 2019 will come from the 162 million who would have otherwise enjoyed employer-based benefits. The actual number will be far greater. Independent analysis concludes that anyone who earns less than $80,000 annually will be dumped into an exchange.
This fire hose of subsidies explains why it is far more likely that Obamacare will corrupt Utah than Utah will manage to redeem Obamacare. President Obama and Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services, want to eliminate private choice of health insurance in favor of a government monopoly. Once the subsidies start flowing, Secretary Sebelius will be able to impose whatever restrictive regulations she wants.
States establishing exchanges will also find that they are very expensive to operate. The Utah Health Exchange only costs about half a million dollars annually, but it has just been a pilot with a dozen businesses participating. Massachusetts’ Commonwealth Connector spent more than $26.6 million on vendors and contractors in 2009, and $3.4 million on employee compensation. This comprises fully 3.5 percent of the money that businesses and enrollees paid into the exchange.
Soon, Congress is likely to be controlled by a majority committed to repealing Obamacare, and which will attempt to take away Secretary Sebelius’ check-book. If advocates of repeal fail, Secretary Sebelius will surely sweep away any “consumer-friendly” accommodations with a vengeance.
States establishing Obamacare exchanges are making a one-way, lose-lose bet. If Obamacare persists, exchanges will become bloated administrative nightmares. If Obamacare is defeated, states will have wasted time and energy that should have been directed towards that effort. Obamacare is President Obama’s problem. Don’t make it your state’s too.
John R. Graham is director of Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute.
Tags : congressional budget office healthcare reform in the united states kathleen sebelius obamacare
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DVS Arrives In Detroit
Yesterday, Will and I arrived in Utica, a city north of Detroit, to begin our season-long study of the United Shore Professional Baseball League. The USPBL is a new independent professional baseball league founded by General Sports and Entertainment and is the product of a ten-year effort by General Sports and Entertainment to bring professional baseball to Metro Detroit.
Main entrance to Jimmy John's Field
The USPBL will begin its inaugural season May 31st at Jimmy John's Field in downtown Utica. The league consists of three initial teams, made up top level collegiate baseball players, who will compete in a full 75 game schedule. Unlike most professional leagues, the USPBL has structured their games so the majority of games played will be from Thursday to Sunday, reserving Monday through Wednesday for practice and skill development.
One of the primary goals of the USPBL is to serve as a "finishing" school for players who need additional development before being signed by an MLB Organization. The league will facilitate a system of player development that blends major league experience with the latest research in analytics and strength and conditioning.
Over the last five months, I was in frequent conversations with Brian Berryman, executive director of baseball operations, to create a throwing program unique to the structure and goals of the USPBL. Berryman wanted a program that could push a player to their performance potential but took into account the health and functionality of the throwing arm.
Will and I began to author the program with the idea of incorporating our DVS Model into a season-long format. We started by accounting for a player's individual characteristics (mechanics, height, weight, velocity, ROM) and prescribing formidable throwing distances that suit their position specific needs. We then decided to create a system of checks and balances whereby a player or coach can implement the most efficient throwing schedule based on their daily soreness/recovery.
Eventually, we designed a throwing program that consists of two distinct phases; training phases and performance phases. Training Phases are designed for players to enhance and develop their skills at less than 100% intensity, and Performance Phases are designed for players to test their position specific throw at 100% intensity.
One of the biggest benefits of The USPBL Throwing Program is that it will teach players always to understand when, how much, how far, and at what intensity to throw during the season.
We are very thankful for the USPBL for giving us the opportunity to work with and follow their players over the course of the 2016 season. This summer, we hope to draw a variety of correlations between a pitcher's DVS Score and their recovery times, pitch counts, ROM patterns, and other performance variables.
Over the last few years, Will and I have observed strong correlations between a pitcher's DVS Score and their shoulder ROM Patterns. As higher scores correlate with better timing, more efficient energy transfer, and thus less stress on the arm, it's not surprising that player's with higher DVS Scores exhibit less injurious symptoms. If you're not familiar with what these patterns entail, click here to learn more. Every pitcher entering the season will be given a DVS Score and over the course of 75 games, we will track each pitcher's ROM patterns on a daily basis in order to monitor their recovery time, and gather further data that links DVS Scores to pitch counts and injury.
We will also be infusing the DVS Arm Care System into the warm-up and recovery routines for all pitchers to ensure all thrower's are efficiently supporting the demands of throwing. The DVS Arm Care System has been researched and proven to facilitate healthier ROM patterns than stretching and other band routines. It also serves as a complete upper body workout routine specifically tailored to the demands of the overhead athlete. To learn more about The DVS Arm Care System and the research that was conducted, click here.
The 100 pitches barrier has become an arbitrary value placed on the maximum number of pitches a starting pitcher is confined to in a single game. We hope to explore this figure in more detail but also see if relievers should abide by specific pitch counts in games and more specifically in back to back games. If a pitcher with a higher DVS Score recovers quickly, this could potentially tell managers/organizations their pitcher can pitch longer in games and endure more innings compared to a pitcher with a lower DVS Score.
Thus far, the DVS Model hasn't been correlated to predict any performance related variables such as velocity, earned run average, strikeouts, walks, etc. Our focus has primarily been on risk and time to injury for a pitcher, but this summer gives us the opportunity to assess whether or not a pitcher's DVS score has relevancy to other performance related statistics.
One of the areas of study we are most excited is the relationship a pitcher's DVS Score will have on sustainable velocity; how long a pitcher can maintain his peak velocity before getting fatigued. A positive correlation could have many positive benefits to organizations and coaches regarding player decisions and the evaluation of long-term potential.
The season kicks off Monday May 30th at Jimmy John's Field. Will and I will be keeping you updated through our Facebook page and blog on all the latest findings that begin to surface as the season unfolds. Also, this summer, a version of The USPBL Throwing Program will be made available online to the both players and coaches. The release date has yet to be determined.
-Justin Orenduff
News & UpdatesJustin Orenduff May 15, 2016 United Shore Professional Baseball LeagueComment
Arm HealthWill Fox May 22, 2016
DVS Analysis: What do the top 5 highest paid pitchers in baseball have in common?
Model AnalysisJustin Orenduff April 25, 2016
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/ Dallas Museum of Art appoints Julien Domercq As Its Lillian and James H. Clark Assistant Curator of European Art
Dallas Museum of Art appoints Julien Domercq As Its Lillian and James H. Clark Assistant Curator of European Art
Dallas, Texas—April 29, 2019—Julien Domercq has been named The Lillian and James H. Clark Assistant Curator of European Art at the Dallas Museum of Art. The appointment was announced today by Dr. Agustín Arteaga, the DMA’s Eugene McDermott Director. Domercq joins the DMA after serving as the Vivmar Curatorial Fellow at the National Gallery in London from 2016 to 2018. He will begin his new role in Dallas on May 14, 2019.
Under the direction of Dr. Nicole R. Myers, the Museum’s Barbara Thomas Lemmon Senior Curator of European Art, Domercq will actively contribute to the European department’s robust research, exhibition, and collection programs. The DMA’s European collection encompasses more than 1,900 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from the Renaissance to the mid-20th century. Domercq will focus his efforts on the Old Master collection, rethinking its presentation and interpretation in the galleries and strategizing on collection growth in this area. Among his first exhibition projects are focused presentations of master paintings by Caravaggio and Frans Hals.
“Julien is a remarkable young talent, with impressive scholarship and international experience working in one of Europe’s most important public art institutions,” said Arteaga. “He has an incredible passion for making the presentation of European art exciting and accessible to a wide and multi-generational audience. This practice aligns well with the DMA’s mission to connect people and art. As we usher in a dynamic chapter in the European Art Department that was announced by the extraordinarily generous gift in 2013 of the Marguerite and Robert Hoffman Fund for European Art Before 1700, we are excited to welcome Julien to Dallas, and look forward to the work that he and Nicole Myers will accomplish together.”
At the National Gallery, London, Domercq curated the exhibition Drawn in Colour: Degas from the Burrell (2017), a presentation of 23 works by Edgar Degas loaned from the Burrell Collection in Glasgow paired with selections from the National Gallery’s collection. The Guardian praised the exhibition as “a ravishing, revealing window on Degas’s inner world.” He assisted in the final stages of the exhibition Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck (2016) and also worked on major redisplays of the post-1800 and Italian Renaissance galleries, including reimagining the presentation of the National Gallery’s paintings by Titian and Raphael.
“With his breadth in European Old Masters, Julien will bring fresh eyes and new scholarship to the extant collection while expanding our holdings to reflect the DMA’s encyclopedic aim. I am excited for us to work together to reinvigorate the Museum’s Old Master exhibition program, an area that has been relatively underserved,” added Myers. “We are thrilled to welcome him to the curatorial team.”
Additionally, Domercq has contributed to a number of catalogues published by the National Gallery, London; Houghton Hall, Norfolk; and the Royal Academy of Arts, London. He has written articles as well as online reviews for Apollo magazine.
Domercq earned his bachelor’s (with first class honors) and master’s (with distinction) degrees in art history from King’s College, Cambridge, where he is currently completing his PhD. While there, his doctoral research was supported by a prestigious Gates Scholarship. His dissertation research explores shifts in European depictions of indigenous people in the Pacific Islands at the end of the 18th century.
“I am delighted to be moving to Dallas to join the curatorial team of the DMA at a time it is being dynamically reimagined under Dr. Arteaga’s direction,” said Domercq. “From my very first visit to Dallas, I was impressed by the central role the Museum plays for its community. Today, I am thrilled to be joining this great civic institution, with encyclopedic collections that reflect the vibrant multicultural city it serves. I am looking forward to immersing myself in the Dallas community and to devising ambitious Old Master exhibitions in partnership with other institutions internationally, collaborating on innovative programming and research with my new colleagues, and caring for, interpreting, and growing the DMA’s European Old Master collection, making it ever more accessible to the people of Dallas, and beyond.”
The collection of European art at the DMA is an exquisite grouping of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper that span the Renaissance through mid-20th century, with strengths in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Highlights include artwork by Derick Baegert, Julio Cesare Procaccini, Jacques-Louis David, Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Canaletto, Claude-Joseph Vernet, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Edouard Manet, Gustave Courbet, Rosa Bonheur, Pablo Picasso, and Henry Moore. The collection is also distinguished by its outstanding holdings in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art by Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Gustave Caillebotte, Camille Pissarro, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Paul Signac, and Édouard Vuillard, among others.
At the heart of the Museum’s modern European collection is a world-renowned group of 11 paintings and drawings by Piet Mondrian, as well as works by Constantin Brancusi, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fernand Léger, René Magritte, Henri Matisse, Käthe Kollwitz, Kazimir Malevich, and other masters of the avant-garde.
About the Dallas Museum of Art
Established in 1903, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is among the 10 largest art museums in the country and is distinguished by its commitment to research, innovation, and public engagement. At the heart of the Museum and its programs is its global collection, which encompasses more than 24,000 works and spans 5,000 years of history, representing a full range of world cultures. Located in the nation’s largest arts district, the Museum acts as a catalyst for community creativity, engaging people of all ages and backgrounds with a diverse spectrum of programming, from exhibitions and lectures to concerts, literary events, and dramatic and dance presentations. Since the Museum’s return to free general admission in 2013, the DMA has welcomed more than 4 million visitors, including more than 800,000 in 2018. For more information, visit DMA.org.
Jill Bernstein
JBernstein@DMA.org
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How many women and minorities have jobs in American radio and TV news?
Bob Papper, Hofstra University RTDNA Survey
Thursday 2/8
Was it Bill Clinton who first coined the concept, “a government that looks like the American people?” Google claims it doesn’t know, but you can bet it was some Democrat, since that’s the party that courts participation by racial and ethnic minorities and women, while the Republicans have almost always been the party of governments that look like the membership at American country clubs.
I’ve liked the conceit because I believe that American governments govern best when they do represent the most elements of our uniquely diverse society. The more elemental voices at the table, the more likely, I believe, the discussion will reflect our collective national interests, and the policies will spread benefits most widely across our population.
At some level, I’ll admit, this is hooey…what I like to call “face-ism,” the assumption that the beauty of a person’s face or physical bearing or the color of their skin or their gender is a better indicator of worth than less visible ambition, integrity or character. Presenting a perfect image of Blackness or Whiteness, manliness or femininity is no guarantee of personal authenticity, much less of governing capability.
But writ large, these surface signs do provide deep insights. The White maleness of the Trump Administration is certainly reflected in its policies. It looks and acts like the short-term and self-interest-obsessed CEOs and Boards of Directors of America’s most rapacious corporations. Would it govern better with a few Black people more attuned to that community’s needs than Dr. Ben Carson? Could it stand a few more women whose experiences better mirror those of most women than the billionaire heiress and fundamentalist religious fanatic Betsy DeVos? How about an Attorney General whose brain and social circle are less constricted than Jeff Sessions’, who doesn’t know one “good person” who smokes marijuana?
But even more than government, an institution that functions best when it most resembles the people to whom and on whom it reports is the news media. America’s newsrooms, I believe, should look like America.
My profession is making progress. It certainly better reflects both the ethnic and gender make-up of the population at large than it did when I first joined the trade in 1959, but only a little. Over those close to 60 years in which the percentage of America’s racial, ethnic and national minorities has grown dramatically, the news business, particularly the broadcast news business, has not kept up.
Bob Papper is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Journalism in the Department of Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations at Hofstra University. He retired from full time work at Hofstra in 2013. He’s also Professor Emeritus at Ball State University, from which he retired in 2007.
For 23 years, including the upcoming 2016-2017 survey period, Papper has overseen the RTDNA/Hofstra University Annual Survey on the state of local radio and television news, and he continues to do that — even in semi-retirement. He also conducts Future of News studies for the RTDNF; he originated the Middletown Media Studies (which morphed into the Video Consumer Mapping Study funded by The Nielsen Company), and is co-editor of Electronic News, the official journal of the Electronic News Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Papper’s Broadcast News & Writing Stylebook is going into its 6th edition with Routledge/Taylor & Francis, and he’s won more than a hundred state, regional and national awards, including four regional Edward R. Murrow Awards and a DuPont-Columbia for “Excellence in Broadcast Journalism.”
He’s worked at television stations in Minneapolis, Washington, DC, San Francisco and Columbus, OH.
https://www.rtdna.org/article/rtdna_research_women_and_minorities_in_newsrooms_2017
https://www.rtdna.org/article/rtdna_research_salary_survey
https://www.rtdna.org/article/rtdna_research_newsroom_staffing_2017
https://www.rtdna.org/article/rtdna_research_local_news_by_the_numbers_2017
https://www.rtdna.org/article/rtdna_research_the_business_of_tv_news_2017
https://www.rtdna.org/article/rtdna_research the_business_of_radio_news_2017
TAGS: Bob Papper, Dave Marash podcast, local news
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List of substances included in Annex XIV of REACH ("Authorisation List").
Important notice: transitional measures apply to companies established in Croatia for application for authorisation. For more details see the related "Q&A for Croatian companies pre-registering and registering under REACH" and more specifically the referred PDF document under point "7. What kind of transitional measures are regarding Applications for Authorisation?".
Notes to the Authorisation List
The following notes are inserted for the entries 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31:
in ‘Latest application date’ column:
1 September 2019 for the use of the substance in the production of spare parts for the repair of articles the production of which ceased or will cease before the sunset date indicated in the entry for that substance, where that substance was used in the production of those articles and the latter cannot function as intended without that spare part, and for the use of the substance (on its own or in a mixture) for the repair of such articles where that substance on its own or in a mixture was used in the production of those articles and the latter cannot be repaired otherwise than by using that substance.
in ‘Sunset date’ column:
1 March 2021 for the use of the substance in the production of spare parts for the repair of articles the production of which ceased or will cease before the sunset date indicated in the entry for that substance, where that substance was used in the production of those articles and the latter cannot function as intended without those spare parts, and for the use of the substance (on its own or in a mixture) for the repair of such articles, where that substance was used in the production of those articles and the latter cannot be repaired otherwise than by using that substance.
The following note is inserted for the entry 40:
does not meet the criteria for identification as a carcinogen if it contains < 0,005 % (w/w) benzo[a]pyrene (Einecs No 200-028-5)
Recommendation for inclusion in Annex XIV of REACH ("Authorisation List")
Authorisation process under REACH
Applications for Authorisation under REACH
Q&A on Authorisation
Entry number in Annex XIV:
Sunset Date:
Latest application date:
Intrinsic property(ies) referred to in Article 57: - All - Carcinogenic (Article 57a) Endocrine disrupting properties (Article 57(f) - environment) Equivalent level of concern having probable serious effects to environment (Article 57 f) Mutagenic (Article 57b) PBT (Article 57 d) PBT (Article 57d) Toxic for reproduction (Article 57c) vPvB (Article 57 e) vPvB (Article 57e)
Substance name
EC No.
Entry No.
Latest application date
Sunset Date
2,2'-dichloro-4,4'-methylenedianiline (MOCA)
Anzeige von 1 Ergebnissen.
Recommendation for inclusion in the Authorisation List
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Home > GJICL > Vol. 32 > No. 3 (2004)
Democracy in Disguise: Assessing the Reforms to the Fundamental Rights Provisions in Guyana
Arif Bulkan, Department of Law, University of Guyana
Arif Bulkan, Democracy in Disguise: Assessing the Reforms to the Fundamental Rights Provisions in Guyana, 32 Ga. J. Int’l & Comp. L. 613 (2004).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/gjicl/vol32/iss3/5
Administrative Law Commons, Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, Criminal Law Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, International Law Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Law and Politics Commons, Legislation Commons, Sexuality and the Law Commons
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Posted September 25, 2014 by Alice Wong DVP Blog Posts and Essays
Disability Visibility Project: Mia Mingus, Part 1
The following are some excerpts from an interview conducted by Alice Wong, Project Coordinator of the DVP, with Mia Mingus on August 23, 2014 at StoryCorps San Francisco.
This is the first of three blog posts featuring Mia and Alice’s interview.
On having a politicized queer and disability identity
Mia: I was just like, well, people are going to stare at me for the rest of my life, or things are just going to be inaccessible and that’s just the way the world is. You have to work around it. And being politicized for a disability has really helped me. And I think also, like, I mean, at least for me, like, being queer has, it’s totally. Such a gateway and like a an influence on even how I was able to come into understanding myself as disabled and coming to loving myself as disabled. My queer identity and my identity as a person of color…are all part of that. And so I really, like, give thanks to those movements, and those frameworks, because without them I don’t know that, I don’t know that I would have been politically disabled, in terms of like, you know, I often talk about the difference between descriptively disabled and politically disabled. And descriptively disabled people are just anybody who is disabled, but they may not understand themselves in a political way. And being politically disabled is really about folks who have an analysis about ableism, who feel a solidarity with other disabled people who understand their disabled experience as having political meaning and value and weight. And I don’t know that I would have come into that because I meet so many disabled people who are descriptively disabled and living disabled lives, but who are not politically disabled. Even though, they’re descriptively, you know, queer and politically.
On the intersections of multiple movements and communities
Mia: I think, well first off, I think being somebody who lives with multiple oppressed identities, it has always been just kind of ground level for me like it was something that was instinctual. And so coming into political movements and people being like we’ll talk about that, that’s a new thing. What do you mean by that, what do you mean your ways of connecting to your queerness and your sexuality’s connected to being disabled? But, an explicit example I feel like is, or a really concrete one, is Iike I think about the ways through my upbringing in a really close-knit feminist community, I learned about like. You know? Just the value of what it means to love yourself, and, in a world that doesn’t love you, right? In a world that, especially for women of color, not just women and girls, but women and girls of color, is trying to erase us. And then, what it means to love ourselves is profound. And that that is something that gets pathologized all the time. That gets demonized all the time. And that, we get told that it. It’s wrong and that it’s not okay to do that. You should be all of the regular stereotypes. I feel like that helped me so much, and was so aligned with what like, a queer narrative and a queer politicized understanding of what it means to love who you love.
On desire, sexuality and love
Mia: Whether that’s other queer people, like that who you love is a beautiful thing, and that love is a beautiful thing, and, and with that sexuality and who you desire, those are, those are magnificent things as well. And that those are as well politicized things that are important. And I feel like that type of, those two really close paths and, like, frameworks of, like, loving things and desiring things that, like, as women that we would desire other women, right? Whether they’re, whether, whether it’s a romantic relationship with other women, whether it’s friendships with other women, whether it’s supporting other women, whatever it is that we would desire each other is so powerful, and…those things… that path really lined up with disability because disability is something that, I mean, at least in my life, I was consistently told and received all of the regular messages that everybody else receives. That disability is wrong, that it’s something sad, it’s something… And I think also, just radically transforming these concepts, right? Like, who do you love? Love where people are really transforming the way, these rules, right? And I think people with disabilities often. Transforming the idea of what is a disability?
On building community for queer POC disabled people
Mia: And like the ways that Korean community hasn’t been accessible and the ways that the adoptee Korean community is totally inaccessible and the ways that thePOC community is totally inaccessible also and like the hard complications around that, that so it’s even hard to build your POC community, because you’re like building it underground, and you don’t have a lot of resources either. And then, but then it’s also like right, but there’s so many queer disabled of color who need access to queer POC community too, and like, how do we build access, when under capitalist system, access is always about money now. and is always about like exploiting more resources. And so, I mean, it’s, I’m just saying…I think it’s complicated….It’s something that I think about really differently, I feel like, than a lot of able-bodied friends.
Mia Mingus is a writer, community educator and organizer working for disability justice and transformative justice responses to child sexual abuse. She identifies as a queer physically disabled Korean woman transracial and transnational adoptee, born in Korea, raised in the Caribbean, nurtured in the U.S. South, and now living on the west coast. She works for community, interdependency and home for all of us, not just some of us, and longs for a world where disabled children can live free of violence, with dignity and love. As her work for liberation evolves and deepens, her roots remain firmly planted in ending sexual violence.
Mia is a core-member of the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective (BATJC), a local collective working to build and support transformative justice responses to child sexual abuse that do not rely on the state (i.e. police, prisons, the criminal legal system). She believes in prison abolition and urges all activists to critically and creatively think beyond the non-profit industrial complex. Her work on disability justice has been cited and used in numerous texts and events around the world.
Mia was recognized by the White House as a Champion of Change, an honor bestowed on Americans doing exemplary things to uplift their communities. Along with 14 other women, Mia was recognized as an Asian and Pacific Islander women’s Champion of Change in observance of Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Mia was a 2005 New Voices Fellow, was named one of the Advocate’s 40 Under 40 in 2010, one of the 30 Most Influential Asian Americans Under 30 in 2009 by Angry Asian Man, one of Campus Pride’s Top 25 LGBT Favorite speakers for their 2009, 2010 and 2011 HOT LISTs, and was listed in Go Magazine’s 2013 100 Women We Love. Mia was honored with the 2008 Creating Change Award (below) by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and a community activist award for her “dedication and steadfast activism” in 2007 by ZAMI in Atlanta, GA.
Blog: http://leavingevidence.wordpress.com
Twitter: @miamingus
Alice Wong, is a Staff Research Associate, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF. Alice works on various research projects for the Community Living Policy Center, a Rehabilitation Research and Training Center funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research and the Administration for Community Living. She is an author of online curricula for home care providers and caregivers for Elsevier’s College of Personal Assistance and Caregiving. Currently, she is the Project Coordinator for the Disability Visibility Project: A Community Partnership with StoryCorps and an advisory board member of APIDC, Asians and Pacific Islanders with Disabilities of California. Alice is also a Presidential appointee to the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency charged with advising the President, Congress, and other federal agencies on disability policy.
Twitter: @SFdirewolf
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alice-wong/65/7b4/441
DVP Blog Posts and Essays, Guest Blog Posts
Ableism, Asian Americans, Blogger, Disability, Disability Culture, Feminism, history, Identity, Oppression, POC, Queer culture, Race, San Francisco, Sexuality, StoryCorps, storytelling
Previous Previous post: Guest Blog Post: Problematizing the Down Syndrome & Selective Abortion Debate
Next Next post: Media Partner #53: I’m the Evidence
Disability Visibility Project Disability Visibility Project: Mia Mingus, Part 1
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The dangers of tweeting for employers
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Blog The dangers of tweeting for employers
Employees posting inappropriate social media messaging has implications for employers.
Recent examples of misjudged posts by celebrities have demonstrated the importance of thinking before you tweet, and highlighted the implications for organisations.
Last year, comedienne Roseanne Barr hit the headlines after she made a potentially offensive tweet in which she compared Barack Obama’s former aide Valerie Jarrett, who is African-American, to an ape.
The poorly-judged post led to her eponymous television sitcom being cancelled and caused shockwaves amongst the rest of the cast, crew and audience – with ABC’s Entertainment President Channing Dungey branding the comment “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values”.
Danny Baker’s poor-taste tweet
More recently, Danny Baker has been dismissed from BBC 5Live after he tweeted an image of a couple holding hands with a chimpanzee dressed in clothes with the caption: “Royal Baby leaves hospital”. The 61-year-old Saturday morning show presenter was accused of mocking the duchess’s racial heritage.
This prompted the BBC to let him go, stating that the tweet “goes against the values we as a station aim to embody”. Baker, who initially apologised for his actions in another Twitter post, later seemed to retract this sentiment, calling the BBC’s decision “a masterclass of pompous faux-gravity”.
He said: “[It] took a tone that said I actually meant that ridiculous tweet and the BBC must uphold blah blah blah,” he added. “Literally threw me under the bus. Could hear the suits’ knees knocking.”
The social media headache
Although social media can be a fantastic tool for employers, it can pose a risk to an organisation’s confidential and proprietary information and cause reputational damage. Employers may also be held vicariously liable for the actions of their employees. This means that an employer is held responsible for acts of, for example, harassment committed by its employees. Aside from potentially jeopardising an employer’s image, the excessive use of social media at work can significantly lower employees’ productivity.
Dismissing an employee for social media misuse
We have seen a number of cases in the UK where employees have misused social media and their actions have constituted misconduct or even gross misconduct and provided their employer with a fair reason to dismiss.
The decision to dismiss will depend on the specific circumstances of each case, but you need to think about the answers to the following questions:
What does your social media policy say? All employers should have a clear and robust policy in place to outline the appropriate use of social media. Employment Tribunals have made it clear that the policy must be carefully worded for an employer to be able to rely on its provisions. If it isn’t clear enough, or it’s considered that an employer’s response was not proportionate to the offence committed, an Employment Tribunal may find an employee’s dismissal unfair. If you don’t have a Social Media Policy in place, our Employment Law experts can draft one for you.
How serious is the misconduct? Is it reasonable in all the circumstances to dismiss or to impose disciplinary action?
What is the employee’s role and seniority? A senior employee, or one with a high profile, may be held to a higher standard than other colleagues.
Has it impacted your organisation’s reputation? In these cases, you need to think about how many people saw the comments, whether people complain about them, whether there’s a sufficient work-related link, etc. Remember that if you’re alleging that it has damaged your reputation, you need actual proof of the damage that has been caused by the employee’s misconduct.
What is the employee’s disciplinary record like? An employee with a clean disciplinary record will expect that to be taken into account as mitigation, although there will always be cases where the alleged misconduct is so serious that this no longer becomes relevant.
Are there any mitigating factors? Anything an employee raises in his or her defence should be taken into account as mitigation (for example, strenuous personal circumstances at the relevant time) and it’s the Tribunal’s job to weigh all that up and decide whether or not the dismissal was within the range of reasonable responses.
What sanctions have you imposed in other similar cases? If you decide to dismiss one employee and only give another a first written warning for the same offence, you must be able to justify this decision.
All employers should have a clear and robust social media policy. Employment Tribunals have made it clear that the policy must be carefully worded for an employer to be able to rely on its provisions.
James Tamm
With all the controversy around Danny Baker’s tweet and subsequent sacking, it’s interesting to look at this purely from the perspective of unfair dismissal law. In the modern age, it’s fairly common for employees to land themselves in hot water due to their use of social media. Many employers have a social media policy and part of that will usually make clear the consequences for posting something the employer regards as inappropriate or that may damage its reputation. We can probably assume that an organisation the size of the BBC has a social media policy that contains such a provision. It would appear that the BBC believed Mr Baker had committed a potential act of misconduct under the terms of that policy.
When an employer discovers that an employee has committed an act of misconduct, it will normally need to carry out a reasonable investigation. In this case, the investigation into the act itself would be relatively short – the tweet was there for all to see. The employer is also required to have reasonable grounds for believing that the employee was guilty of that misconduct. Again, that doesn’t seem in doubt in this case.
Instead, if this were an issue before the Tribunal, the focus would be on the final part of the legal test for unfair dismissal: whether, taking into account all relevant circumstances, dismissal was within the range of reasonable responses open to the employer. That is where many of the points listed above become relevant, including the seriousness of the conduct, the employee’s role/profile, their seniority, the impact on the employer’s reputation and any mitigation the employee may raise.
In this case, the conduct seemed potentially very serious. Despite Mr Baker’s apology, it’s easy to see why the picture he posted may have been regarded as racist. His profile is high, as is that of his employer, and no doubt the BBC would cite a danger of reputational damage if action were not taken. The mitigation here boils down to this being a mistake and a poorly-chosen picture that was intended to lampoon the royal family. Debate on social media seems to have polarised, with many people emphasising what they would have done had the decision about Mr Baker’s continuing employment been in their hands.
However, and this I suspect is often not fully understood by the wider public, such a substation of views is something the tribunal is specifically prohibited from doing in a case of unfair dismissal. The Tribunal’s only remit, as I have said above, is to decide whether dismissal was one of the potential reasonable responses open to the employer. Whether the Tribunal would have dismissed Mr Baker is irrelevant, as they are not permitted to substitute their own view on what should have happened. In that context, you can see how the bar is set relatively high for a claimant in an unfair dismissal case. However, it is important that employers investigate allegations of misconduct properly and follow the relevant procedures so as not to lower that bar for employees.
Social Media Dismissal Checklist
In line with your Social Media Policy?
Is the misconduct serious, therefore making it reasonable to dismiss?
Have you taken into account role and seniority?
What is their disciplinary record like?
Are there any mitigating factors?
In line with other sanctions from similar cases?
It’s always wise to seek legal advice before dismissing an employee. Your Employment Law Adviser can guide you through the correct procedure to follow to minimise the risk of unfair dismissal claims.
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January 28, 2017 June 20, 2019 dreddymd Nutrition, Plants for Health
What Are the Health Benefits of Passion Flower?
Source: What Are the Health Benefits of Passion Flower?
Passion flower is the common name of any one of the approximately 400 species of the plant genus Passiflora. Native to warm climates in North and South America, many species are now cultivated around the world for their colorful flowers and tasty fruit. Passion flower is also known for its therapeutic benefits. For hundreds of years, people used it as an herbal sedative, stress reducer, sleep aid, and many other applications.
History and Etymology
Natives of both North and South America used passion flower for food, drink, and therapeutic purposes for hundreds of years before the plant was first introduced to European explorers. By the 18th century, passion flower gained popularity in Europe as a remedy for epilepsy and insomnia. Today, the plant is cultivated worldwide.
With a name like “passion flower,” you might think the plant was traditionally used as some sort of aphrodisiac, like horny goat weed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The “passion” in passion flower actually refers to the passion of Christ. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish missionaries in Peru saw the unusual flower as a symbol of the crucifixion. The blue and white colors of the flower were thought to stand for heaven and purity, the radial filaments symbolized the crown of thorns, and the tendrils represented Roman whips.
Passion Flower Species
The genus Passiflora contains over 500 different species, many of which are hybrids. Passiflora incarnata is the species most appreciated for its therapeutic benefits. Also known as maypop, P. incarnata is native to the southern United States but used throughout the world.
Passiflora edulis
Passiflora edulis is a South American species widely cultivated for its fruit. While many species of Passiflora bear edible fruit, P. edulis is the one that bears “passion fruit.” Passion fruit comes in two forms—the standard purple fruit and a yellow variety.
Passiflora alata
Passiflora alata, also known as wing-stem passion flower or fragrant granadilla, is another South American species. It’s known for its therapeutic applications and prized for its fruit. It’s earned the British Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit, a prestigious distinction of excellence in the gardening world.
Passiflora quadrangularis, also known as giant granadilla, produces the largest fruits (about the size of a football) of all Passiflora. These fruits are used in desserts, juice, and medicine. The leaves are made into tea and poultices.
Health Benefits of Passion Flower
In the United States, passion flower is regarded as alternative or complementary medicine, but it has more mainstream acceptance around the world, particularly in Europe. The plant is listed in the European Pharmacopoeia, a book that provides Europe’s legal and scientific standards for medicine. In Germany, P. incarnata is approved for nervous restlessness, sleeplessness, and anxiety-related gastrointestinal problems. All the above-ground parts of the plant—the stem, flowers, and particularly the leaves—are thought to be helpful.
Promotes a Balanced Mood
Passion flower is best known for its relaxing and calming effects. Multiple human and animal studies have confirmed it’s effective at supporting a balanced mood without harmful side effects. Studies have found that while prescription medications work faster, they also produce problems, including dizziness and job-related impairment. Passion flower is far more gentle.[1]
Combining passion flower with other calming herbs can increase its potency. A randomized, placebo-controlled study revealed that a combination of passion flower, valerian, and St. John’s wort had positive effects on mood without causing cognitive impairment.[2]
Promotes Restful Sleep
Passion flower is commonly used to support restful sleep and the evidence to support this use isn’t just anecdotal. Multiple studies confirm the plant’s ability to help you get a good night’s rest.[3] In 2011, a double-blind investigation found that participants who drank passion flower tea reported better sleep quality than the placebo group.[4]
Effect on Involuntary Muscle Contractions
Some studies have found that passion flower extract delays the onset and decreases the duration of involuntary muscle contractions. Interestingly, it also seems to reduce unhappy feelings after involuntary muscle contraction episodes whereas standard treatments tend to increase them. No conclusions can be drawn at this time but further research could uncover hope for those who suffer from involuntary muscle contractions and irregular electrical activity in the brain.[5]
May Ease the Symptoms of Withdrawal
Passion flower may provide gentle relief for symptoms of withdrawal. A double-blind, randomized study found that a daily serving of passion flower extract helped address both physical and mental symptoms of withdrawal. What’s more, the extract had no detrimental side effects.[6]
Many smokers start and fail cessation programs because they can’t overcome the nicotine withdrawal. Can passion flower help? Animal studies have found that administration of passion flower extract reduces nicotine withdrawal symptoms. More research is necessary to determine if these effects carry over to humans.[7, 8]
Other Health Benefits
Passion flower offers many more potential benefits. A compound isolated from passion flower extract was found to have aphrodisiac effects in mice. Recent animal testing also hints that P. incarnata promotes balanced blood sugar, a property that traditional Ayurvedic medicine has known for years.[5]
Further, research suggests that passion flower could help promote comfort, respiratory health, digestive health, balanced blood sugar, and even attention and focus.[9, 10]Laboratory testing has found that passion flower extract may enhance the absorption and effectiveness of some types of medicine.[9] If even half of these abilities prove effective, the therapeutic benefits could be huge.
Passion Flower Active Components
Different species of passion flower contain similar, but chemically distinct, compounds.
With so many species, identifying the exact components that account for passion flower’s health benefits can be somewhat difficult. And, despite intense investigation, the source of its calming properties is still up for speculation.
One theory attributes credit to a particular alkaloid compound in the plant. The many species of Passiflora contain many different alkaloid compounds and the most studied is harmine. Harmine is a beta-carboline alkaloid known to possess a variety of pharmacological effects. It helps slow the breakdown of neurotransmitters, improves insulin sensitivity, relaxes blood vessels, encourages bone health, and supports a balanced mood.[5]
Passion flower is also host to several flavonoids including apigenin, orientin, swertiamarin, quercetin, kaempferol, vitexin, and chrysin. Any one of, or combination of, these phytochemicals could contribute to the plant’s therapeutic effects.[9] Flavonoids are a large group of phytochemicals that have been analyzed for neuroprotective activity. They also exhibit soothing, equilibrium-seeking effects.[11]
One other possible mechanism of action could be gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA. GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter, which means that it helps induce relaxation and sleep. It’s produced naturally in the brain. Research finds that passion flower may boost GABA levels and promote relaxation. Due to the variation of passion flower species and methods of passion flower administration, these findings are not yet conclusive.[5]
Passion Flower Side Effects and Safety
When used as recommended, passion flower is considered safe for most people. However, adverse effects may result from taking extremely large servings. Do not combine passion flower with sedatives like drugs or alcohol. The combination can magnify their effects and cause dizziness or confusion.
Pregnant women should also avoid passion flower. One animal study found it may contribute to uterine contractions. Whether this effect carries over to humans is still unknown but exercising caution seems appropriate.[5] Always consult a trusted health care practitioner before starting a new supplement routine.
Available Forms of Passion Flower
There are several ways to consume passion flower. The fruit can be eaten raw or made into juice, jams, dessert toppings, and smoothies. The leaves, flowers, and stem can be dried or used to make powders, tinctures, infusions, and extracts. Passion flower herbal tea is popular and frequently used as a sleep aid. Passion flower can also be found in nutritional supplements, both by itself and blended with other botanicals. Because of its support for balanced mood, Global Healing Center incorporates passion flower into our brain and mood support supplement NeuroFuzion®.
The first Americans knew of the mood-supporting, sleep-enhancing powers of passion flower. Now, we are rediscovering these benefits and more. If you have experience unhappiness or restless sleep, passion flower might be worth a try.
Have you tried passion flower? What benefits did you notice? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
Akhondzadeh, S, et al. “Passionflower in the Treatment of Generalized Anxiety: A Pilot Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial with Oxazepam.” Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics., vol. 26, no. 5, 27 Oct. 2001, pp. 363–7. Accessed 29 Dec. 2016.
Dimpfel, Wilfried, et al. “Early Effect of NEURAPAS®balance on Current Source Density (CSD) of Human EEG.” BMC Psychiatry, vol. 11, no. 1, 2 Aug. 2011.
L, Krenn. “[Passion Flower (Passiflora Incarnata L.)–a Reliable Herbal Sedative].”Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift (1946), vol. 152, no. 15-16, 1 Jan. 2002, pp. 404–406. Accessed 29 Dec. 2016.
Ngan, A., and R. Conduit. “A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Investigation of the Effects of Passiflora Incarnata (Passionflower) Herbal Tea on Subjective Sleep Quality.” Phytotherapy Research, vol. 25, no. 8, 3 Feb. 2011, pp. 1153–1159.
Braun, Lesley, and Marc Cohen. Herbs and Natural Supplements: An Evidence-Based Guide: Volume 2. Australia, Churchill Livingstone, 21 Nov. 2014. Print.
“Passionflower in the Treatment of Opiates Withdrawal: A Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial.” Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics., vol. 26, no. 5, 27 Oct. 2001, pp. 369–73. Accessed 29 Dec. 2016.
Dhawan, K, et al. “Nicotine Reversal Effects of the Benzoflavone Moiety from Passiflora Incarnata Linneaus in Mice.” Addiction Biology., vol. 7, no. 4, 28 Oct. 2003, pp. 435–41. Accessed 29 Dec. 2016.
Breivogel, C, and B Jamerson. “Passion Flower Extract Antagonizes the Expression of Nicotine Locomotor Sensitization in Rats.” Pharmaceutical Biology., vol. 50, no. 10, 10 Aug. 2012, pp. 1310–6. Accessed 29 Dec. 2016.
Enna, S. J., and Stata Norton. “Herbal Supplements and the Brain: Understanding Their Health Benefits and Hazards.” Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT, 2012. Print.
Akhondzadeh, Shahin, et al. “Passiflora Incarnata in the Treatment of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Adolescents.” Therapy, vol. 2, no. 4, July 2005, pp. 609–614.
“Flavonoids.” Linus Pauling Institute: Micronutrient Information Center, Oregon State University, Nov. 2015. Accessed 29 Dec. 2016.
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Tagged Foods, Healthy Foods, Herbs, Mental Wellness, Mind and Body, Nutrition, Plants for Health, sleep
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Voting & Points 1974 Monaco
Eurovision 1974 Monaco:
Romuald - "Celui Qui Reste Et Celui Qui S'en Va"
4.2 stars ★ 8 ratings
Add video of "Celui Qui Reste Et Celui Qui S'en Va"
Monaco finished 4th at Eurovision 1974 with 14 points.
Who gave points to Monaco at Eurovision 1974?
Celui qui reste et celui qui s'en va
À la fin d'un amour, celui qui reste est le perdant
Celui qui part sait déjà que quelqu'un l'attend
À la fin d'un amour, à l'instant du dernier regard
Il y a toujours, toujours sur terre quelque part
Celui qui parle et celui qui n'ose pas
Celui qui pleure, celui qui baisse les yeux
Il y a toujours, toujours à l'instant d'un adieu
Celui qui triche et celui qui ne sait pas
Celui qui va très bientôt trouver l'oubli
Et l'autre qui restera seul toute sa vie
Toute sa vie
Bien sûr je te comprends, il fallait en arriver là
Tu as la force de partir, je ne l'ai pas
Bien sûr que je comprends, bien sûr que je ne t'en veux pas
Mais déjà 'nous' voilà devenus 'toi et moi'
The one who stays and the one who leaves
At the end of a love affair, the one who stays is the loser
The one who leaves already knows somebody is waiting
At the end of a love affair, at the moment of the last glance
There's always, always on earth somewhere
The one who talks and the one who doesn't dare
The one who cries, the one who lowers his eyes
There's always, always a moment of farewell
The one who cheats and the one who doesn't know it
The one who very soon is to be forgotten
And the other who will stay alone all his life
All his life
Of course I understand you, things had to happen this way
You have the power to leave, I don't have it
Of course I understand, of course I'm not mad at you
But lo and behold, 'we' already became 'you and me'
Eurovision Song Contest 1974 Brighton
PLACE 4/17
Real name: Romuald Figuier
Luxembourg 1969: Cathérine (artist)
Monaco 1964: Où Sont-elles Passées? (artist)
Jean-Pierre Bourtayre
Monaco 1971: Un Banc, Un Arbre, Une Rue (composer)
Michel Jourdan
Raymond Donnez
France 1977: L'oiseau Et L'enfant (conductor)
Monaco 1976: Toi, La Musique Et Moi (conductor)
Sophie Hecquet
Monaco 1975: Une Chanson C'est Une Lettre (artist)
Real name: Pierre Tcherniakowski
France 1974: commentator
Monaco 1973: commentator
Monaco • News
The youngest ever entrant was 12-year-old Jean Jacques from Monaco. He represented Monaco in Eurovision 1969 with the song "Maman, Maman". The oldest was 95-year-old Emil Ramsauer from the Swiss 2013-band "Takasa"
The previous year’s winner hosts Eurovision but it’s so expensive that nations have pleaded poverty to get out of it. The countries who have opted out include the Netherlands, France, Monaco, and Luxembourg and the job went to the UK four times
The 60th Eurovision Song Contest in 2015 had a record number of countries in the Grand Final: 27
Eurovision Song Contest is normally held every year in May. The earliest Eurovision date was in 1957, on 3rd March and the latest was in 1999 when it was held on 29th May
Portugal holds the record of most points in a Grand Final. In 2017 Salvador Sobral won with record breaking 758 points with the song "Amar Pelos Dois"
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Pan Enfield Alliance
English (39VN)
King's College London (University of London)
http://www.highlands.enfield.sch.uk/
English at the Pan Enfield Alliance has a history of training colleagues very successfully - with all trainees having found employment immediately after training. Previous trainees have commented on the extent of support they received as well as the practical and pedagogical skills they learnt during their time with us.
You will be interviewed by a panel - including the Head of Department or Faculty and a member of the Senior Leadership Team. There will also be a test of literacy and a short lesson observation to see how you relate to young people.
Students apply to the Pan Enfield Alliance and can request the school in which they wish to train. Most of our previous trainees have lived locally, but due to our reputation, we have trained colleagues from across London. You will be teaching 11-18 year olds and will be within an alliance of 6 schools, in 2 placements and with the opportunity to spend some time in additional schools. Your placements run for the whole training year, with 1 day per week at university.
Lower second degree or equivalent in the subject (or closely related) you wish to teach.
Level 3 (A Level or equivalent) in the subject you wish to teach).
Level 2 (GCSE or equivalent) “good” pass in Maths and English (A*-C/9-4).
Significant classroom experience is a must. We are looking for confident, knowledgeable and enthusiastic people who will be classroom practitioners currently or in the near future. Preferably, you will currently hold a role within a school which requires you to work directly with children.
We prefer candidates who can show evidence of their working with children and who possess the personal attributes which suggest real potential in the classroom: independence, flexibility and charisma.
You will also be expected to complete Literacy and Numeracy skills tests by August 31st prior to commencing training and a DBS check.
An "Outstanding" School in Enfield, Highlands is the lead school of the Pan Enfield Alliance. We have a strong track record of training School Direct colleagues in a diverse range of settings - with secondary schools, primaries, a special school and a tuition centre . Over the last 5 years, over 90% of our trainees have found employment in a school of their choice - with the remaining staying in further education. We are relatively small and tightly focussed, giving our trainees a real sense of community and support.
Located in the heart of London, PGCE courses at King’s are rated Outstanding by Ofsted with excellent tutors on hand to support you through your training. In the last research assessment exercise, the department was rated second in the UK (REF, 2014). You will have the opportunity to work with experienced tutors who are actively engaged in research in their subject and in pedagogy more widely. 96% of 2017 graduates who sought teaching posts were employed within 6 months of qualifying. In our 2018 student survey, 92% of trainees rated the quality of their training as very good or good.
We welcome and are committed to complying with our duties under the Equality Act 2010 and any subsequent legislation.
Under the Equality Act 2010, there are certain ‘protected characteristics’ that qualify for protection against discrimination. These are age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.
Highlands was built in 2000 and as such all facilities are accessible to staff with additional need. Interventions include lifts, wide corridors, coloured edges to steps, tactile edges on fire exits. Lifts have tactile buttons. Students who use wheelchairs can move freely around the school.
steinert@highlands.enfield.sch.uk
Highlands School
148 Worlds End Lane
N21 1QQ
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Baroque pop
Baroque pop (sometimes called baroque rock) is a fusion genre that combines rock music with particular elements of classical music.[4][2][3] It emerged in the mid 1960s as artists pursued a majestic, orchestral sound[2] and is identifiable for its appropriation of Baroque compositional styles (contrapuntal melodies and functional harmony patterns) and dramatic or melancholic gestures.[1] Harpsichords figure prominently,[5][3] while oboes, French horns, and string quartets are also common.[3]
Baroque Rock/Pop
An electric harpsichord
Baroque rock
Stylistic origins
Rock[1][2]
classical[1][2]
orchestral pop[1]
Baroque[1]
Cultural origins
1960s, United States and United Kingdom
Typical instruments
Harpsichord[1][2]
string sections[1][2]
French horns[1]
oboes[1]
Derivative forms
Philadelphia soul[2]
chamber pop[2]
List of baroque pop artists
avant-pop
Although harpsichords had been deployed for a number of pop hits since the 1940s, starting in the 1960s, some record producers increasingly placed the instrument in the foreground of their arrangements.[5] Inspired partly by the Beatles' song "In My Life" (1965), various groups were incorporating baroque and classical instrumentation by early 1966.[6] The term "baroque rock" was coined in promotional material for the Left Banke, who used harpsichords and violins in their arrangements[7] and whose 1966 song "Walk Away Renée" exemplified the style.[5][8]
Baroque pop's mainstream popularity faded by the 1970s, partially because punk rock, disco and hard rock took over; nonetheless, music was still produced within the genre's tradition.[8] Philadelphia soul in the 1970s and chamber pop in the 1990s both incorporated the spirit of baroque pop[2] while the latter contested much of the time's low fidelity musical aesthetic.[9]
CharacteristicsEdit
The Left Banke – "Walk Away Renée" (1966)
Excerpt of "Walk Away Renée". Journalist Matthew Guerriri named the song the "quintessence" of baroque pop, citing its "elegantly jangling harpsichord".[5]
In classical music, the term "Baroque" is used to describe the art music of Europe approximately between the years 1600 and 1750, with some of its most prominent composers including J. S. Bach and Antonio Vivaldi.[10] Much of the instrumentation of baroque pop is akin to that of the late Baroque period or the early Classical period, chronologically defined as the period of European music from 1690 to 1760 and stylistically defined by balanced phrases, clarity and beauty,[11] using string sections, woodwinds and brass instruments.
Baroque pop, stylistically, fuses elements of rock with classical music, often incorporating layered harmonies, strings, and horns to achieve a majestic, orchestral sound.[2] Its prominent characteristics are the use of contrapuntal melodies and functional harmony patterns.[1] It was intended to be a more serious and mature outgrowth of rock music.[2] "English baroque" is used by journalist Bob Stanley to describe a subset that existed between 1968 and 1973.[8][nb 1] "Baroque rock" may be invoked as a synonym of "baroque pop"[13] or as its own distinct term.[14]
Precursors (early 1960s)Edit
Starting in the 1960s, pop musicians and record producers like Phil Spector and the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson began placing the harpsichord in the foreground of their arrangements.[5] Harpsichords were widely available in recording studios, and had been used in popular music since as early as the 1940s, but it would not gain prominence until the 1960s.[5] One of the first pop rock hits to use a harpsichord was the Jamies' "Summertime, Summertime" (1958).[15] Later examples range from the Beach Boys' "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)" (1965) and "Wonderful" (1967) to Simon & Garfunkel's "Leaves That Are Green" (1966) and The Mamas and the Papas' "Monday, Monday" (1966). The Boston Globe's Matthew Guerrieri speculates that the harpsichord may have been desirable for its buzzing, stinging timbre, which suited "the treble-heavy pop soundscape" of the time.[5][nb 2]
The Beatles working in the studio with their producer George Martin, circa 1965
Slate's Forrest Wickman credits Wilson and the Beatles' producer, George Martin, as some of the men "most responsible" for the move into baroque pop.[16] Along with Burt Bacharach, Spector had melded pop music with classical elements before they were melded with rock.[4] Writer Andrew Jackson suggests that "the era of baroque pop" in which "rock melded with classical elements" was prefaced by the Rolling Stones ("Play with Fire", February 1965) and Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys Today!, March 1965).[4] Author Bob Gendron argues that, rather than assuming that the Beatles themselves instigated the link between their music and its classical components, it is more plausible that they were responding to various classical and baroque readings of their work, such as the 1965 album The Baroque Beatles Book, which reimagines their songs in a tongue-in-cheek Baroque setting.[17]
The Beatles benefited from the classical music skills of Martin, who played what sounded like a baroque harpsichord solo on the song "In My Life", released on their December 1965 album Rubber Soul.[18] (The instrument used was actually a piano recorded on tape at half speed and then sped up.[15]) Author Joe Harrington noted that after its release, many "baroque-rock" works would soon appear.[18] Producer Tommy LiPuma believed: "Once the Beatles featured that harpsichord sound on 'In My Life,' pop producers began working it in."[15]
Emergence (mid to late 1960s)Edit
See also: Psychedelic music
The Left Banke, 1966
The genre is traced to the United States and the United Kingdom.[1] By early 1966, various groups began using baroque and classical instrumentation, described as a "baroque rock" movement by Gendron.[19] The Zombies' single "She's Not There" (1964) marked a starting point for British baroque pop. Stanley explains that the song "didn't feature any oboes but stuck out rather dramatically in 1964, the year of 'You Really Got Me' and 'Little Red Rooster'".[8] "She's Not There" would inspire New York musician Michael Brown to form the Left Banke, whose song "Walk Away Renée" (1966) is considered by Stanley to be the first recognizable baroque pop single.[8] "Baroque rock" was the label devised by the band's publicists and the music press. According to Richie Unterberger, "the sobriquet may have been ham-fisted, but certainly there were many Baroque elements in the Left Banke's pop—the stately arrangements, the brilliant use of keyboards and harpsichords, the soaring violins, and the beautiful group harmonies."[7] Guerriri says that, in Britain, the song "bridged the passage from rock into psychedelica for numerous groups: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Zombies, [and] the Kinks."[5]
Conversely, Decider wrote that the Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds (May 1966) "almost single-handedly created the idea of 'baroque pop.'"[20] The only track on the album that employs a harpsichord in conjunction with a string section is "God Only Knows".[21][nb 3] The Sydney Morning Herald deemed the song a particularly "exquisite" example of baroque pop,[22] whereas The Record's Jim Beckerman called it "baroque rock" in the same "retro instrumentation and elegant harmonies" vein as the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" (August 1966) and Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (1967).[23] Gendron's "baroque rock" examples include "Walk Away Renée" with Spanky and Our Gang's "Sunday Will Never Be the Same" (1967), and the Stone Poneys' "Different Drum" (1967) – all of which used harpsichord and strings.[24][nb 4]
Stanley highlighted a strand of baroque pop he calls "English baroque", it being a combined simulacrum of the Zombies' album Odessey and Oracle (1968), Paul McCartney's contributions to The White Album (1968), Honeybus' single "I Can't Let Maggie Go" (1968), Scott Walker's chamber pop, and Crosby, Stills & Nash vocal harmonies.[8][nb 5]
Dissipation and revival (1970s–present)Edit
See also: Philadelphia soul and Chamber pop
The Irish band the Divine Comedy contributed to a baroque pop revival beginning in the 1990s.[1]
The "quaintness" of baroque pop and the use of violins and classical guitar became the target of parody at the end of the psychedelic era.[25] In the 1990s, chamber pop would derive from the "spirit" of baroque pop, characterized by an infusion of orchestral arrangements or classical style composition. It originated as a response to the lo-fi production that dominated in the 1990s.[9] Between the 1990s and 2010s, baroque pop has enjoyed a revival with bands like the Divine Comedy.[1]
^ A compilation, Tea & Symphony: The English Baroque Sound 1967–1974 (2007), features music that reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine says is mostly inspired by Paul McCartney, the Zombies and Gilbert O'Sullivan.[12]
^ In the 1960s, most recordings were monaural, and AM radio was the dominant form of musical consumption.[5]
^ Of the album's 12 tracks, only two more feature a harpsichord: "You Still Believe in Me" and "Caroline, No".[21]
^ Further listed are the Rolling Stones' "Lady Jane" (1966, harpsichord and dulcimer) and the Lovin' Spoonful's "Rain on the Roof" (1967, harpsichord-sounding guitars).[24]
^ Stanley believes that this "lost corner of pop history" climaxed with the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, "which mixed everyday lyrics with music hall and Edwardiana to create lysergically enhanced parlour music". One year later, he writes, the "predominant trend was to get hairier, heavier, more long-winded". English baroque survived for the next few years, during when record labels sought to capitalize on the nascent singer-songwriter movement by offering lavish string arrangements to unknowns; Nick Drake was one such beneficiary.[8]
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Hawkins 2015, p. 193.
^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Baroque pop". AllMusic.
^ a b c d Smith, Steve (November 29, 2012). "Steve Smith: Wyman and Taylor join the Rolling Stones onstage; Coldplay takes a break". Pasadena Star-News. Archived from the original on December 3, 2012.
^ a b c Jackson 2015, p. 22.
^ a b c d e f g h i Guerrieri, Matthew (January 22, 2016). "Via Spector and serendipity, the harpsichord invaded pop". The Boston Globe.
^ Gendron 2002, pp. 174, 343, various groups using baroque instrumentation in early 1966; Harrington 2002, p. 191, baroque rock inspired by "In My Life"
^ a b Unterberger 2014, p. 416.
^ a b c d e f g Stanley, Bob (September 21, 2007). "Baroque and a soft place". The Guardian.
^ a b "Chamber pop". AllMusic.
^ Essentials of music: Baroque composers Archived 2008-12-19 at the Wayback Machine.
^ Oxford Music Online 2[dead link]
^ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Tea & Symphony: The English Baroque Sound 1967-1974". AllMusic.
^ Perný 2014, p. 37.
^ Saas, Don (May 14, 2015). "The Baroque Rock Of The Spring Standards". Baeble Music.
^ a b c Myers, Marc (October 30, 2013). "Bach & Roll: How the Unsexy Harpsichord Got Hip". The Wall Street Journal.
^ Wickman, Forrest (March 9, 2016). "George Martin, the Beatles Producer and "Fifth Beatle," Is Dead at 90". Slate.
^ Gendron 2002, p. 173.
^ a b Harrington 2002, p. 191.
^ Gendron 2002, pp. 174, 343.
^ Smith, Benjamin H. "The Album May Be Dead, But The Beach Boys' Classic 'Pet Sounds' Lives On In New Documentary". Decider. Retrieved 20 April 2017.
^ a b Boyd, Alan; Slowinski, Craig (2016). "Pet Sounds Sessionography". Pet Sounds (CD Liner). The Beach Boys. Capitol Records.
^ Valentish, Jenny (December 5, 2015). "Pet Sounds acknowledged as a masterpiece, as Brian Wilson brings it to Australia". The Sydney Morning Herald.
^ Beckerman, Jim (March 21, 2015). "'Walk Away Renee' collaborator Michael Brown of Englewood Cliffs, dies at 65". The Record.
^ a b Gendron 2002, p. 343.
^ White 2015, p. 190.
Gendron, Bernard (2002). Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-Garde. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-28737-9.
Harrington, Joe S. (2002). Sonic Cool: The Life & Death of Rock 'n' Roll. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 978-0-634-02861-8.
Hawkins, Stan (2015). Queerness in Pop Music: Aesthetics, Gender Norms, and Temporality. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-58972-3.
Jackson, Andrew Grant (2015). 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music. Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 978-1-250-05962-8.
Perný, Lukáš (2014). Music Counterculture at the Break of 1960s and 1970s in the Culturological Perspective (in Slovak). Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre, Filozofická fakulta, Katedra kulturológie. ISBN 978-80-558-0677-8.
Unterberger, Richie (2014). Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring Strangers: Overlooked Innovators & Eccentric Visionaries of '60s Rock. BookBaby. ISBN 978-0-9915892-4-1.
White, Michael (2015). Popkiss: The Life and Afterlife of Sarah Records. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-62892-220-2.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Baroque_pop&oldid=903960815"
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Black Prince's Ruby
The gemstone at the front of the Imperial State Crown
The Black Prince's Ruby is a large, irregular cabochon red spinel weighing 170 carats (34 g) set in the cross pattée above the Cullinan II diamond at the front of the Imperial State Crown of England.[1] The spinel is one of the oldest parts of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, with a history dating back to the middle of the 14th century. It has been in the possession of England's rulers since it was given in 1367 to its namesake, Edward of Woodstock (the "Black Prince").[2]
SpinelEdit
All red gemstones used to be referred to as rubies or "balas rubies". It wasn't until 1783 that spinels were chemically differentiated from rubies.[3] A red spinel is a compound of magnesia, iron, oxygen, and chromium, while a ruby is a type of aluminium oxide.[4] The rarity of this spinel, however, is that it is the biggest uncut spinel in the world, given that it has only been polished slightly, and has never received a proper cut, gemologically speaking.[citation needed]
Don Pedro of SevilleEdit
Find sources: "Black Prince's Ruby" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
The Black Prince's Ruby dates back to the middle of the 14th century as the possession of Abū Sa'īd, the Arab Muslim Prince of Granada. At that time, the rule of Castile was being centralized to Seville and the Moorish Kingdom of Granada was being systematically attacked and reverted to Castilian rule as a part of the Christian Reconquest of the Iberian peninsula. Abū Sa'īd in particular was confronted by the belligerency of nascent Castile under the rule of Peter of Castile, also known to history as Don Pedro the Cruel. According to historical accounts, Abū Sa'īd wished to surrender to Don Pedro, but the conditions he offered were unclear. What is clear is that Don Pedro welcomed his coming to Seville. It is recorded that he greatly desired Abū Sa'īd's wealth. When Abū Sa'īd met with Don Pedro, the King had Abū Sa'īd's servants killed and may have personally stabbed Sa'īd to death himself. When Sa'īd's corpse was searched, the spinel was found and added to Don Pedro's possessions.
In 1366, Don Pedro's illegitimate brother, Henry of Trastámara, led a revolt against Don Pedro. Lacking the power to put down the revolt unaided, Don Pedro made an alliance with the Black Prince, the son of Edward III of England. The revolt was successfully put down and the Black Prince demanded the ruby in exchange for the services he had rendered. While historians speculate that this was contrary to Don Pedro's desires, he had just suffered a costly civil war and was in no position to decline. It can be assumed that the Black Prince took the Ruby back to England, although it is absent from historical records until 1415.
A wartime adornmentEdit
During his campaign in France, Henry V of England wore a gem-encrusted helmet that included the Black Prince's Ruby.[5] In the Battle of Agincourt on October 25, 1415, the French Duke of Alençon struck Henry on the head with a battleaxe, and Henry nearly lost the helmet, along with his life. The battle was won by Henry's forces and the Black Prince's Ruby was saved. Richard III is supposed to have worn the gemstone in his helmet at the Battle of Bosworth, where he died.
Crown JewelsEdit
Henry VIII's inventory of 1521 mentions "a great balas ruby" set in the Tudor Crown,[6] thought to be the Black Prince's Ruby.[7] It remained there until the time of Oliver Cromwell in the 17th century. With the exception of the Coronation Chair and several other items, Cromwell had the principal symbols of the king's power – the Crown Jewels – disassembled and sold, and the gold was melted down and made into coins. What happened to the Black Prince's Ruby, then valued at £4[8] (equivalent to £524 as of 2018)[9], during the Commonwealth of England is not clear, but it came back into the possession of Charles II when the monarchy was restored in 1660. At the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838, she was crowned with a new Imperial State Crown made for her by Rundell and Bridge, with 3,093 gems, including the spinel at the front. This was remade in 1937 into the current, lighter, crown. A plaquette on the reverse of the gemstone commemorates the crown's history.[1]
^ a b "The Imperial State Crown". Royal Collection Trust. Inventory no. 31701.
^ Sir Thomas Butler (1989). The Crown Jewels and Coronation Ceremony. Pitkin. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-85372-467-4.
^ "Spinel". Gemological Institute of America. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
^ Elie L. Ménasché (1954). Ceylon: Island of Gems. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services. p. 18. ISBN 978-81-206-1932-6.
^ The Jewelers' Circular. 99. Jewelers' Circular Company. 1930. p. 121.
^ John Plowfeld (1521). "King Henry VIII's Jewel Book". In Edward Trollope (ed.). Associated Architectural Societies Reports and Papers. 17. James Williamson. p. 158.
^ Jennifer Loach; G. W. Bernard; Penry Williams (1999). Edward VI. Yale University Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-300-07992-0.
^ George Herbert Smith (1962). Gemstones. Pitman. p. 247.
^ UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 27 January 2019.
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(Redirected from Century City, Los Angeles)
This article is about the neighborhood in Los Angeles. For other uses, see Century City (disambiguation).
Century City is a 176-acre (71.2 ha) neighborhood and business district in Los Angeles, California, United States. Located on the Westside to the south of Santa Monica Boulevard around 10 miles (16 km) west of Downtown Los Angeles, Century City is one of the most prominent employment centers in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and its skyscrapers form a distinctive skyline on the Westside.
Century City on January 25, 2009
Location within Western Los Angeles
The district was developed on the former backlot of film studio 20th Century Fox, and its first building was opened in 1963. There are two private schools, but no public schools in the neighborhood. Important to the economy are the Westfield Century City shopping center, business towers, and Fox Studios.[1]
According to the City of Los Angeles Department of City Planning, Century City constitutes census tract 2679.01.[2] As shown on the map published on the Century City Chamber of Commerce website, Century City is generally bounded by Santa Monica Boulevard to the north, the city of Beverly Hills to the east, Pico Boulevard to the south, and Century Park West to the west (including the west side of Century Park West between Santa Monica Boulevard and Constellation Boulevard).[3] These boundaries correspond with those recognized by the Century City Business Improvement District Association.[4][5] Neighboring Century City are Beverly Hills to the east, Cheviot Hills to the south, West Los Angeles to the west, and Westwood to the north.
The Mapping L.A. project of the Los Angeles Times extends Century City's western boundary to Beverly Glen Boulevard.[6] However, this more expansive definition is not consistent with other L.A. Times reports: a 1999 article sets Century Park West as Century City's western boundary,[7] and a 2017 article refers to the neighborhood to the west of Century City (between Century Park West and Beverly Glen Boulevard) as distinct from it.[8]
Two specific plans cover the neighborhood: "Century City North Specific Plan for the retail, office, and entertainment functions in Century City," and "Century City South Specific Plan for multi-family homes, office tower, hotel and Fox Studios," according to the community plan set forth by the Los Angeles Department of City Planning.[9][10]
Avenue of the Stars, 1978
The land of Century City belonged to cowboy actor Tom Mix (1880-1940), who used it as a ranch.[11] It later became a backlot of 20th Century Fox, which still has its headquarters just to the southwest.[11] The area is named for the 20th Century Fox's Century Property.
In 1956, Spyros Skouras (1893-1971), who served as the President of 20th Century Fox from 1942–62, and his nephew-in-law Edmond Herrscher (died 1983), an attorney sometimes known as "the father of Century City", decided to repurpose the land for real estate development.[11][12] The following year, in 1957, they commissioned a master-plan development from Welton Becket Associates, which was unveiled at a major press event on the "western" backlot later that year.[11]
In 1961, after Fox suffered a string of expensive flops, culminating with the financial strain put on the studio by the very expensive production of Cleopatra, the film studio sold about 180 acres (0.73 km2) to developer William Zeckendorf and Aluminum Co. of America, also known as Alcoa, for US$300 million (US$2.4 billion in 2014's money).[11] Herrscher had encouraged his uncle-in-law to borrow money instead, but once Skouras refused, he was out of the picture.[11]
The new owners conceived Century City as "a city within a city".[13] In 1963, the first building, Gateway West Building, was completed.[11] The next year, in 1964, Minoru Yamasaki designed the Century Plaza Hotel.[11] Five years later, in 1969, architects Anthony J. Lumsden and César Pelli designed the Century City Medical Plaza.[14]
Much of the shopping center's architecture and style can be seen in numerous sequences in the 1967 Fox film, A Guide for the Married Man, as well as in a sequence in another Fox film of the same year, Caprice. Century City's plaza as it appeared in the early 1970s can be viewed in several scenes of still another Fox film, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972).[15]
PopulationEdit
2009 aerial view of Century City; Fox Studios occupies the lower left quadrant
Mapping L.A. dataEdit
The following data applies to Century City within the boundaries set by the Mapping L.A. project:
The 2000 U.S. census counted 5,513 residents in the 0.70-square-mile Century City neighborhood—or 7,869 people per square mile, an average population density for the city and county. The Southern California Association of Governments estimates that the daytime population amounts to 48,343 on a working day. In 2008, the city estimated that the resident population had increased to 5,934.[16]
In 2008, the median age for residents was 46, older than average for the city and the county. The percentage of residents aged 65 and older (26.4%) was the highest for any neighborhood in Los Angeles County. The percentages of widowed men and women and of divorced men were among the county's highest. Military veterans accounted for 11.9% of the population, a high rate for the city and the county.[16][17]
The neighborhood was considered "not especially diverse" ethnically, with a high percentage of white residents. The breakdown was whites, 82.5%; Asians, 8.6%; Latinos, 4.4%; blacks, 1.4%; and others, 3,0%. Iran (21.2%) and Canada (6.1%) were the most common places of birth for the 25.5% of the residents who were born abroad—a low percentage, compared to the city at large.[16]
The median yearly income in 2014 was $95,135, a high figure for Los Angeles. The percentage of households that earned $125,000 and up was high for Los Angeles County. The average household size of 1.8 people was low for Los Angeles. Renters occupied 39.6% of the housing stock and apartment owners held 60.4%.[16]
Constellation Place (formerly the MGM Tower)
Westfield Century City and Fox Studios occupy important[clarification needed] acreage in the neighborhood. Westfield Century City underwent an $800 million renovation and expansion aiming to maintain the center's status as one of the Westside's premier shopping and entertainment destinations.
One tower, Constellation Place (formerly the MGM Tower),[18] has the headquarters of Houlihan Lokey,[19] ICM Partners,[20] and International Lease Finance Corporation.[21] Crystal Cruises is also headquartered in Century City along with haircare manufacturer, John Paul Mitchell Systems.[22][23]
Government and infrastructureEdit
Santa Monica Airport, facing east toward Century City
The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services SPA 5 West Area Health Office serves Century City.[24]
Los Angeles Fire Department Station 92 is the assigned fire station for the district.[25] The Los Angeles Police Department operates the West Los Angeles Community Police Station at 1663 Butler Avenue, 90025, serving the neighborhood.
Santa Monica Airport is nearby. Major roads including Santa Monica Boulevard, the Santa Monica Freeway (I-10), and the San Diego Freeway (I-405) are all located next to Century City. Olympic Boulevard goes through Century City.
Lycée Français de Los Angeles Century City Campus, Pico Blvd.
Fifty-five percent of Century City residents aged 25 or over had earned a four-year degree by 2000, a high figure for Los Angeles.[16]
Los Angeles Unified School District is the school district of Century City.
Three private schools are located in or near Century City — VINCI Academy Daycare & Preschool, at 1940 Century Park East; Lycée Français de Los Angeles, at 10361 Pico Boulevard; and Temple Isaiah Preschool and Kindergarten, at 10345 West PIco Boulevard.[26]
Century City skyline as seen from Runyon Canyon Park. Feb. 19, 2006
Century Plaza Towers
Fox Plaza
^ Groves, Martha and Stevens, Matt (June 18, 2014) "Do all roads to Century City's future lead to more traffic?" Los Angeles Times
^ Environmental Impact Analysis
^ Century City Interactive Map (map of Century City showing both commercial and residential developments)
^ CCBID Map (Note: The map shows non-participatory members in the district as well.)
^ Century City Business Improvement District Management District Plan (final)
^ [1] Colored map, Mapping L.A., Los Angeles Times
^ Julie Tamaki (September 12, 1999). "At Home : Living in an Urban Aerie : Century City offers convenience, security, a prestigious business district and views that are terrific". Los Angeles Times. Century City, which is part of the city of Los Angeles, is bounded roughly by Little Santa Monica Boulevard to the north, Pico Boulevard to the south and Beverly Hills and Century Park West to the east and west.
^ David Zahniser (April 4, 2017). "When developers strike deals with homeowner groups: 'Hush money,' or a way to defend L.A. neighborhoods?". Los Angeles Times. The Tract No. 7260 Assn., which represents homeowners west of Century City, has repeatedly challenged Westside projects on the grounds that they increase traffic and place new burdens on city services. (emphasis added)
^ WEST LOS ANGELES Community Plan
^ Specific Plans Affecting the West Los Angeles Community Plan Area
^ a b c d e f g h Gary Baum, Why Century City Ranks Among the Worst Real Estate Deals in Hollywood History, The Hollywood Reporter, September 26, 2013
^ Online Archive of California: Edmond Herrscher papers, ca. 1890s-1935, 1947-1982 (Collection LSC.1829)
^ Vincent, Roger (June 3, 2008), "Next Century Associates buys the 1960s-era landmark built on a former studio back lot.", Los Angeles Times
^ Century City Medical Plaza, laconservancy.org; accessed December 15, 2015.
^ "Riots and Revolutions: Confronting the Times", Conquest of the Planet of the Apes Blu-Ray
^ a b c d e [2] "Century City," Mapping L.A., Los Angeles Times
^ [3] "65 and Up," Mapping L.A., Los Angeles Times
^ Vincent, Roger. "Energy cells help power Century City skyscraper." Los Angeles Times. February 5, 2012. Retrieved on February 5, 2012.
^ Steinberg, Julie. "Bucking the Trend, Houlihan Lokey Still Hiring." Finance (The Wall Street Journal). January 24, 2012. Retrieved on February 5, 2012. "Houlihan Lokey, the Los Angeles-based investment bank,[...]"
^ Nash, James. "Lights, camera, Katrina: rebuilding of Louisiana will affect production in L.A." Los Angeles Business Journal at AllBusiness. Retrieved on February 5, 2012. "[...]International Creative Management Inc., the Los Angeles-based talent and literary agency."
^ "Contact Us Archived 2011-05-12 at the Wayback Machine." International Lease Finance Corporation. Retrieved on 6 May 2011. "10250 Constellation Blvd. Suite 3400 Los Angeles, CA 90067 USA"
^ "Contact Us". Crystal Cruises. Retrieved on January 20, 2010. "Crystal Cruises 2049 Century Park East Suite 1400 Los Angeles, CA 90067"
^ "Article: Los Angeles-Based Crystal Cruises Moves to Nearby Location[dead link]." PR Newswire. August 19, 1998. Retrieved on January 20, 2010. "Effective September 8, Crystal Cruises is relocating to larger headquarters a few blocks from its current location in the Century City area of Los Angeles, California."
^ "About Us." Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. Retrieved on March 18, 2010.
^ "Fire Station 92," Los Angeles Fire Department
^ [4]"Schools: Century City," Mapping L.A., Los Angeles Times
Century Cityat Wikipedia's sister projects
Data from Wikidata
History of the Century Plaza Hotel
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Century_City&oldid=904345830"
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Hadi al-Bahra
Hadi al-Bahra (born in Damascus on Feb 13 1959)[1] is a member of the Syrian opposition movement who was the President of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces from 9 July 2014[2] until 4 January 2015.[3] Al Bahra holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Wichita State University in the United States. He held the position of Executive Director of Erfan and Bagedo general hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in the period 1983–1987. In the period from 1987 until 2003, became CEO of Horizon of Commercial development Co, then general manager of Horizon International Exhibitions for the period 2004–2005, a company operating in the free zone in Damascus, Syria and then the CEO of Techno Media from 2005 until 2011. Bahra has extensive experience in communications systems, information technology, interactive display systems, and the organization of conferences and events. He has employed his expertise in communications to serve the Syrian revolution since it erupted, where he contributed to the establishment of support groups to coordinate communication between the Syrian activist and the regional and international media, he worked with the opposition inside Syria, contributing to the media, relief activities and the political side of the revolution.[4] Bahra joined the SOC in the recent expansion that took place on 31 May 2013. He was then elected to be the general secretory of the political committee. The coalition chose him to be the chief negotiator of its delegation to the Geneva II Conference on Syria. al-Bahra was elected as president in Istanbul, Turkey[4] on 9 July 2014, with 62 votes, defeating his nearest rival Mouaffaq Nyrabia, who received 41 votes.[5]
President of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces
9 July 2014 – 4 January 2015
Ahmad Tu'mah
Ahmad Jarba
Khaled Khoja
Damascus, Syria
This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
^ "Hadi Al Bahra". National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
^ "Syrian opposition body elects new president". Reuters. 9 July 2014. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
^ "Syrian opposition bloc appoints new leader". Al Jazeera English. 5 January 2015. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
^ a b Theiler, Mike (9 July 2014). "Syria's Western-backed opposition elects new president". Reuters. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
^ "Syrian opposition elects Hadi al-Bahra as new leader". Agence France-Presse. Istanbul: Hurriyet Daily News. 9 July 2014. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
The president of the Syrian National Coalition, Hadi al-Bahra, discusses the opposition movement's fight to defeat ISIS and gain liberation from Bashar al-Assad
فرنسا تهنئ السيد هادي البحرة لانتخابه رئيسا للائتلاف الوطني السوري
كلمة رئيس الائتلاف الوطني السوري هادي البحرة في جامعة الدول العربية
هادي البحرة لـ"الجارديان": التحالف الدولي يركز على "داعش" ويتجاهل تجاوزات النظام
بيان لوزارة الخارجية الأميركية حول انتخاب السيد هادي البحرة رئيساً كواليس جينيف 2 – حوار مع هادي البحرة
فاجأ رئيس الائتلاف السوري هادي البحرة، اللاجئين السوريين في مخيماتهم في تركيا، بزيارة أضفت على شفاه الأطفال الابتسامة
Syrian National Council profile
Ahmad Jarba President of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hadi_al-Bahra&oldid=812793160"
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US Marshals arrest former Peruvian President Toledo pending extradition
Enigma code breaking genius chosen to be on new £50 English banknotes
US qualifies Uruguay as a safe country to invest but warns about union power
Pilots started class-action lawsuit accusing Boeing of covering up the 737 MAX faulty sensor
Tuesday, June 25th 2019 - 08:51 UTC
The legal action was joined by over 400 fellow pilots, trained to fly the fourth-generation narrow-body 737 MAX aircraft.
An airline pilot, identified only as ‘Pilot X’ in court documents, started a class-action lawsuit against Boeing, accusing US plane maker of covering up the 737 MAX’s faulty sensor issue and keeping pilots in the dark about the feature in the pursuit of quick returns.
The legal action was joined by over 400 fellow pilots, trained to fly the fourth-generation narrow-body 737 MAX aircraft. They accuse the Chicago-based aviation corporation of hushing known concerns about the glitch-ridden equipment installed on the jets.
The main problem with the jets is rooted in the “inherently dangerous aerodynamic handling defects” of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), designed to prevent the plane from stalling. Its smooth operation depends on data it receives from two Angle of Attack (AoA) alert sensors. There are two of them for a reason: if the data from the sensors does not match, then a AoA Disagree alert should light up, notifying the pilots of the discrepancy.
For the latter to work properly, an optional set of indicators needs to be installed on the plane, and only 20 percent of the 737 MAX jets had them. Boeing recently admitted that it knew of the problem since at least 2017, but did not notify the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) until after the Lion Air flight with 189 people on board crashed in Indonesia last October. Moreover, it did not plan to update the software until 2020.
The lawsuit, which demands compensation for lost wages and mental suffering that the pilots endured due to the grounding, alleges that the aviation giant should have known that by sweeping the issue under the rug, it set the stage for exactly that outcome.
The complaint says that Boeing “engaged in an unprecedented cover-up of the known design flaws of the MAX, which predictably resulted in the crashes of two MAX aircraft and subsequent grounding of all MAX aircraft worldwide.”
Pilots “suffer and continue to suffer significant lost wages, among other economic and non-economic damages,” it claims.
In addition, the pilots accuse Boeing of providing little instruction on how to handle the anti-stalling feature, which is only briefly mentioned in the flight manuals. They allege that such casual approach to familiarizing pilots with new software was deliberate – and was meant to save the cost of introducing new simulator-based training so that pilots would take up “revenue-generating routes as quickly as possible.”
The plaintiffs say that their ultimate goal is to prevent tragedies such as the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, which claimed 346 lives, from happening in the future by deterring “Boeing and other airplane manufacturers from placing corporate profits ahead of the lives of the pilots, crews, and general public they service.”
The lawsuit will be heard by a Chicago court in October.
Categories: Investments, International, United States.
Tags: 737 MAX, 737 sensor, Boeing, United States, US plane maker.
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Fictionary
(Redirected from Dictionary (game))
Fictionary, also known as The Dictionary Game or simply Dictionary, is a word game in which players guess the definition of an obscure word. Each round consists of one player selecting and announcing a word from the dictionary, and other players composing a fake definition for it. The definitions are collected by the selector and read aloud, and players vote on which definition they believe to be correct. Points are awarded for correct guesses, and for having a fake definition guessed by another player.
2 Strategy
4 Other versions of the game
The game requires a large and preferably unabridged dictionary, a pencil, pen or other writing implement for each player, and notecards or identical pieces of paper for each player.
Individual house rules may vary when playing Fictionary, but play usually proceeds like this:
One player, the "picker" for the turn, chooses an obscure word from the dictionary and announces and spells it to the other players. The chosen word should be one that the picker expects no other player to know. If a player is familiar with the chosen word, they should say so and the picker should choose a different word. If a word has more than one definition listed, the Picker privately chooses which one to use, but in such a case must specify, "X, when it does not mean so-and-so." Generally, the Picker can edit the dictionary definition as they desire.
Each player writes a crafty and credible definition of the word, initials it, and submits it to the word picker.
The Picker collects and shuffles the definitions, including their own, which is the correct one. As definitions are handed in, the picker should check them over to ensure that they can read the handwriting and to clarify any questions. Stumbling over or misreading a definition is usually a sign that it is not the correct one—unless the picker is trying to bluff.
Once all definitions have been handed in, the picker reads the list aloud, once. On the second reading, each other player in turn then votes for the definition they believe is correct. Because the picker selected the word and knows the definition, the picker does not vote.
Players earn one point for voting for the correct definition, and one point for each vote cast for the definition they wrote. (Other traditions for scoring award more points for guessing the correct definition than a player gets for picking their own.) The Picker earns three points if no one selects the correct definition. There are variations where the picker earns no points during their round as picker, fairness being achieved by ensuring that all players take equal numbers of turns as picker.
Play then proceeds with the dictionary going to another player, which starts a new turn. A full circuit of the dictionary constitutes a round.
One variation allows a player to vote for their own definition, although they do not get points for doing so. (This can encourage other people to vote for that definition as well, and the player would get those points.) Another variation does not allow a player to vote for their own definition.
Strategy[edit]
Often simple words (e.g., strunt) are more successful than complicated words with detectable Latin roots. Stock phrases such as "Any of several..." or "One or more..." sometimes lend authority to definitions. Players may decide beforehand whether lexicographic labels (e.g., obsolete, geology, dialect, etc.) are to be included. The dictionary might be passed around first, to remind players of its characteristic style.
Variants[edit]
One variation uses a book of assorted poems instead of a dictionary. A rhyming quatrain is chosen by the picker. The first three lines are read and a fake fourth line must be made up by the other players which acts like the fake definitions.
Another variation asks players to write the first line of a novel using the title and the blurb read out from the back of the book as clues.
Other versions of the game[edit]
The board games Balderdash, Dictionary Dabble, Flummoxed, and Weird Wordz are based on Fictionary. In one round of the board game Derivation, players describe or fabricate a word's etymology; players who provide a correct etymology receive one point for doing so, but their entries are then removed from play, and they lose their chance to receive multiple points by drawing multiple votes from other players. Similarly, in the board game Wise and Otherwise, the Picker randomly chooses a quotation and reads the beginning, and other players try to create realistic endings to the quotation.
Fictionary is featured as a segment on the weekly US National Public Radio quiz show Says You!, where it is known as the bluffing round.
In the UK, Call My Bluff was a popular daytime BBC television panel game based on Fictionary. Two teams of three players (journalists, B and C list celebrities, etc.) compete. A player from one team has to decide between the three proposed definitions provided by the opposing team. If the first player correctly identifies the true definition of the word, they earn their team a point. If they are wrong, the team which provided the definitions are awarded the point. Call My Bluff was first aired in October 1965, with Robin Ray as chair. Presenter Robert Robinson chaired it for many years. As of 2003[update] the programme was chaired by Fiona Bruce.
Other television game shows based on the concept include Take My Word For It and Wordplay. In Japan, Tahoiya (たほいや) featured the game under the same name. The 30 minute late night game show aired on Fuji TV in 1993, and was rebroadcast on Fuji TV 739 satellite channel in 2008. Tahoiya, originally meaning "a cabin used for boar hunting", was one of the chosen words in early game play.
A version of the game called Dixonary has been running online since July 4, 1989, for the first fifteen years on CompuServe in its Tapcis Forum. It is believed that this game is the longest-running on-line game, and has run for more than 2,950 rounds. In May 2005, the game moved to its own website when CompuServe disconnected the forum. Since May 2007 it has been played in a Google Group, found at Dixonary.net. There is an archive of the game that goes back, with minor gaps, to its inception in 1989.
Jackbox Games has produced multiple editions of Fibbage, a game in which the players use their mobile devices to choose categories, write fake answers, and vote for the real answers.
Fictionary Game has been created for iOS devices by Enrique Sureda. It is a Pass & Play game, that is, the device is passed among all of the players. This way people can play Fictionary with a device instead of using paper and pen.
"Oxford Dictionaries Word Games". AskOxford.com. Oxford University Press. 2008.
Sachs, Lisa Roy; Patty Sachs (1997). Pick A Party. Meadowbrook. p. 45. ISBN 0-671-52123-3.
Look up fictionary in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Frictionary - an online Wikipedia-based Fictionary word crawler for various languages.
Bruno Faidutti's Ideal Games Library describes other variants.
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The Brave are the Dead: Barbarism in Bangladesh
Home/Activism, Avijit Roy, Bangladesh, Bangladeshi Bloggers, Blogger killings, Free Speech, Freethinking, History, Human Rights, Religion, Terrorism, war crimes, Women/The Brave are the Dead: Barbarism in Bangladesh
By Guest Writer|2016-04-24T15:34:47+00:00April 24th, 2016|Activism, Avijit Roy, Bangladesh, Bangladeshi Bloggers, Blogger killings, Free Speech, Freethinking, History, Human Rights, Religion, Terrorism, war crimes, Women|0 Comments
By: Chris Emmanuel Dsouza
The cult of ISIS style king has penetrated into Bangladesh society. This has been well orchestrated in the series of street murders of Secular Bloggers in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a country, which was carved out of Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1971, after a bloody battle against the Pakistan Army, costing over three million Bengali Lives. One of the predominant factors of its separation from Pakistan was the nature of racist Islam that was practiced in the Islamic Republic.
The killing of blogger Nazimudin Samad last week, by Islamists outfits, is the fourteenth of such brutal attacks on Secular, humanist, and Anti-Islamist bloggers in the country over a year and a half. Most of the victims of the series of brutal assassinations have been the Social Media activists rebelling against the rise of radical and political Islam in Bangladesh, a nation founded on the principles of secularism, Coexistence, and pluralism. One of the high-profile murders was of renowned activist and blogger Avijit Roy in January 2015. Roy was the founder of Mukta Mona, a Bengali Website dedicated to fighting Religious Myths and restore Free Thought and reason in Bangladesh. He had also authored several books and had held a celebrity status among progressive social circles. On his return from a Book Festival in Dhaka, Roy and his wife were pulled out of the Auto-Rickshaw and attacked with Machetes, slaughtering Roy to death and nearly killing his Wife. Nevertheless, Roy’s works and activism continues to hold ‘, iconoclastic image, in the thriving Secular Humanist movement in Bangladesh.
Despite worldwide outcry to the level of Barbarism, the country’s lethargic approach has left its liberals, seculars and minorities in a petrified condition. The sad part in these tempestuous events has been the timid and impotent response from Bangladeshi politicians, media, and the civil society. Above that, There has been a vicious attempt from the political establishment to stifle free speech and silence the voices of reason in the country. The Islamists are on the run, they have no fear of law or death, they marshal sermons ordering the killings of secularists and minorities and are left totally untouched by the Cops.
Over a year ago, the Al Qaeda branch in Bangladesh had released names of eighty bloggers to be executed for their atheistic and Secular writings and posts. It was issued as an edict for all Muslims, to carry out the act. Since then, things have worsened, and the region has become increasingly dangerous place to live for secularists, as Bangladesh is inching closer to total Islamisation. The murder threats and horrifying edicts have been spectacularly effective, as the slightest resistance against Islamism can snuff out one’s life.
To make matters worse, the country’s population has been exploding geometrically and stands Eighth worldwide with a mammoth 168 Million and at the same time with a reeling per capital income of $1190 US Dollars as of 2015, ranking 155th in the world (3). Although the ruling party of Bangladesh is run by a woman, who happens to be the daughter of nation’s founder, the socialist progressive Sheik Mujiber Rehman and the main opposition party is also led by a woman, widow of country’s first dictator Zia Ur Rehman, the overwhelming status of women in the country is dismal. There have been numerous reported and unreported crimes of rape, assaults, kidnapping and forcible conversion of women, mostly of minority faiths and lower strata of country’s caste system. Most of the perpetrators have had links to Islamists evangelical outfits, and so far the Law enforcement and the government has failed to confront these influential goons. The Secular movement in Bangladesh has been fighting a hard battle; cut, wounded and blood spilled for the rights of assaulted women, endangered minorities and against the onslaught Islamists lobby that is pushing Sharia in every institution in the country.
However, what can Bangladesh do to counter Islamic extremism after all? The infamous Jamiat Cleric involved in the 1971 genocide of Bengali civilians, has been hanged to death, but that has not restrained Extremists to back off. During the time of its Independence in 71’ , about 15% of the population made up Hindus, today it’s less than 8% (1)(2). As Saudi Funded Evangelical outfits gained momentum in the region, a substantial portion of Hindus, fled to neighbouring India and Burma. In 1992 following the destruction of Babri Masjid, a disputed Mosque located at Ayodhya (India), by the Hindu Right Wing Outfits; saw an adverse effect in neighbouring Bangladesh. Over 200 Temples were destroyed and several attacks were aimed at Hindus as Islamic fundamentalism in the subcontinent surged in the 90’s, catastrophically triggering Far Right Hindu Nationalism in India (4).
During the time, The incredibly gutsy Novelist and Women’s right Activist, Taslima Nasreen, penned a Novel’ Lajja’, written with the backdrop of persecution and oppression of hindu families. In “Lajja” Taslima placed the cause of Islamic Extremism to the doctrines of 7th century Faith itself and emerged as one of the first Feminist writers in the oriental to take such position (5). Taslima’s work created a huge uproar in the country, the Muslim clergy’s hauled decrees from the loudspeakers calling for the murder of the then thirty-one-year-old female writer, thousands of angry demonstrators barged into the streets of Dhaka, and the Novelist was forced by the government to move out of the country and seek refuge elsewhere.
Shooting forward to 2016, As the situation seems to further deteriorate in Bangladesh, with predictably more killings that would follow, the growing secular and humanistic movement on the social media is showing no signs of defeat, in the turbulent times it is bursting with undisputable strength and rushing with courage. The backing from the US State department and other world wide rights organizations for the Bloggers, is a Silver Lining, in this Dark, Pathetic and sinister episode.
https://web.archive.org/20130330094858/http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/BGD.html
http://archive.prothom-alo.com/detail/date/2012-09-22/news/291536
http://bdnews24.com/economy/2014/05/21/bangladesh-s-per-capita-income-1190
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Bangladesh_violence#cite_note-sgd209-1
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904E1D9143AF93BA35755C0A962958260
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Fairytalez.com » William Elliot Griffis » The Legend of the Wooden Shoe
The Legend of the Wooden Shoe
William Elliot Griffis December 14, 2014
In years long gone, too many for the almanac to tell of, or for clocks and watches to measure, millions of good fairies came down from the sun and went into the earth. There, they changed themselves into roots and leaves, and became trees. There were many kinds of these, as they covered the earth, but the pine and birch, ash and oak, were the chief ones that made Holland. The fairies that lived in the trees bore the name of Moss Maidens, or Tree “Trintjes,” which is the Dutch pet name for Kate, or Katharine.
The oak was the favorite tree, for people lived then on acorns, which they ate roasted, boiled or mashed, or made into meal, from which something like bread was kneaded and baked. With oak bark, men tanned hides and made leather, and, from its timber, boats and houses. Under its branches, near the trunk, people laid their sick, hoping for help from the gods. Beneath the oak boughs, also, warriors took oaths to be faithful to their lords, women made promises, or wives joined hand in hand around its girth, hoping to have beautiful children. Up among its leafy branches the new babies lay, before they were found in the cradle by the other children. To make a young child grow up to be strong and healthy, mothers drew them through a split sapling or young tree. Even more wonderful, as medicine for the country itself, the oak had power to heal. The new land sometimes suffered from disease called the val (or fall). When sick with the val, the ground sunk. Then people, houses, churches, barns and cattle all went down, out of sight, and were lost forever, in a flood of water.
But the oak, with its mighty roots, held the soil firm. Stories of dead cities, that had tumbled beneath the waves, and of the famous Forest of Reeds, covering a hundred villages, which disappeared in one night, were known only too well.
Under the birch tree, lovers met to plight their vows, and on its smooth bark was often cut the figure of two hearts joined in one. In summer, the forest furnished shade, and in winter warmth from the fire. In the spring time, the new leaves were a wonder, and in autumn the pigs grew fat on the mast, or the acorns, that had dropped on the ground.
So, for thousands of years, when men made their home in the forest, and wanted nothing else, the trees were sacred.
But by and by, when cows came into the land and sheep and horses multiplied, more open ground was needed for pasture, grain fields and meadows. Fruit trees, bearing apples and pears, peaches and cherries, were planted, and grass, wheat, rye and barley were grown. Then, instead of the dark woods, men liked to have their gardens and orchards open to the sunlight. Still, the people were very rude, and all they had on their bare feet were rough bits of hard leather, tied on through their toes; though most of them went barefooted.
The forests had to be cut down. Men were so busy with the axe, that in a few years, the Wood Land was gone. Then the new “Holland,” with its people and red roofed houses, with its chimneys and windmills, and dykes and storks, took the place of the old Holt Land of many trees.
Now there was a good man, a carpenter and very skilful with his tools, who so loved the oak that he gave himself, and his children after him, the name of Eyck, which is pronounced Ike, and is Dutch for oak. When, before his neighbors and friends, according to the beautiful Dutch custom, he called his youngest born child, to lay the corner-stone of his new house, he bestowed upon her, before them all, the name of Neeltje (or Nellie) Van Eyck.
The carpenter daddy continued to mourn over the loss of the forests. He even shed tears, fearing lest, by and by, there should not one oak tree be left in the country. Moreover, he was frightened at the thought that the new land, made by pushing back the ocean and building dykes, might sink down again and go back to the fishes. In such a case, all the people, the babies and their mothers, men, women, horses and cattle, would be drowned. The Dutch folks were a little too fast, he thought, in winning their acres from the sea.
One day, while sitting on his door-step, brooding sorrowfully, a Moss Maiden and a Tree Elf appeared, skipping along, hand in hand. They came up to him and told him that his ancestral oak had a message for him. Then they laughed and ran away. Van Eyck, which was now the man’s full family name, went into the forest and stood under the grand old oak tree, which his fathers loved, and which he would allow none to cut down.
Looking up, the leaves of the tree rustled, and one big branch seemed to sweep near him. Then it whispered in his ear:
“Do not mourn, for your descendants, even many generations hence, shall see greater things than you have witnessed. I and my fellow oak trees shall pass away, but the sunshine shall be spread over the land and make it dry. Then, instead of its falling down, like acorns from the trees, more and better food shall come up from out of the earth. Where green fields now spread, and the cities grow where forests were, we shall come to life again, but in another form. When most needed, we shall furnish you and your children and children’s children, with warmth, comfort, fire, light, and wealth. Nor need you fear for the land, that it will fall; for, even while living, we, and all the oak trees that are left, and all the birch, beech, and pine trees shall stand on our heads for you. We shall hold up your houses, lest they fall into the ooze and you shall walk and run over our heads. As truly as when rooted in the soil, will we do this. Believe what we tell you, and be happy. We shall turn ourselves upside down for you.”
“I cannot see how all these things can be,” said Van Eyck.
“Fear not, my promise will endure.”
The leaves of the branch rustled for another moment. Then, all was still, until the Moss Maiden and Trintje, the Tree Elf, again, hand in hand, as they tripped along merrily, appeared to him.
“We shall help you and get our friends, the elves, to do the same. Now, do you take some oak wood and saw off two pieces, each a foot long. See that they are well dried. Then set them on the kitchen table to-night, when you go to bed.” After saying this, and looking at each other and laughing, just as girls do, they disappeared.
Pondering on what all this might mean, Van Eyck went to his wood-shed and sawed off the oak timber. At night, after his wife had cleared off the supper table, he laid the foot-long pieces in their place.
When Van Eyck woke up in the morning, he recalled his dream, and, before he was dressed, hurried to the kitchen. There, on the table, lay a pair of neatly made wooden shoes. Not a sign of tools, or shavings could be seen, but the clean wood and pleasant odor made him glad. When he glanced again at the wooden shoes, he found them perfectly smooth, both inside and out. They had heels at the bottom and were nicely pointed at the toes, and, altogether, were very inviting to the foot. He tried them on, and found that they fitted him exactly. He tried to walk on the kitchen floor, which his wife kept scrubbed and polished, and then sprinkled with clean white sand, with broomstick ripples scored in the layers, but for Van Eyck it was like walking on ice. After slipping and balancing himself, as if on a tight rope, and nearly breaking his nose against the wall, he took off the wooden shoes, and kept them off, while inside the house. However, when he went outdoors, he found his new shoes very light, pleasant to the feet and easy to walk in. It was not so much like trying to skate, as it had been in the kitchen.
At night, in his dreams, he saw two elves come through the window into the kitchen. One, a kabouter, dark and ugly, had a box of tools. The other, a light-faced elf, seemed to be the guide. The kabouter at once got out his saw, hatchet, auger, long, chisel-like knife, and smoothing plane. At first, the two elves seemed to be quarrelling, as to who should be boss. Then they settled down quietly to work. The kabouter took the wood and shaped it on the outside. Then he hollowed out, from inside of it, a pair of shoes, which the elf smoothed and polished. Then one elf put his little feet in them and tried to dance, but he only slipped on the smooth floor and flattened his nose; but the other fellow pulled the nose straight again, so it was all right. They waltzed together upon the wooden shoes, then took them off, jumped out the window, and ran away.
When Van Eyck put the wooden shoes on, he found that out in the fields, in the mud, and on the soft soil, and in sloppy places, this sort of foot gear was just the thing. They did not sink in the mud and the man’s feet were comfortable, even after hours of labor. They did not “draw” his feet, and they kept out the water far better than leather possibly could.
When the Van Eyck vrouw and the children saw how happy Daddy was, they each one wanted a pair. Then they asked him what he called them.
“Klompen,” said he, in good Dutch, and klompen, or klomps, they are to this day.
“I’ll make a fortune out of this,” said Van Eyck. “I’ll set up a klomp-winkel (shop for wooden shoes) at once.”
So, going out to the blacksmith’s shop, in the village, he had the man who pounded iron fashion for him on his anvil, a set of tools, exactly like those used by the kabouter and the elf, which he had seen in his dream. Then he hung out a sign, marked “Wooden blocks for shoes.” He made klomps for the little folks just out of the nursery, for boys and girls, for grown men and women, and for all who walked out-of-doors, in the street or on the fields.
Soon klomps came to be the fashion in all the country places. It was good manners, when you went into a house, to take off your wooden shoes and leave them at the door. Even in the towns and cities, ladies wore wooden slippers, especially when walking or working in the garden.
Klomps also set the fashion for soft, warm socks, and stockings made from sheep’s wool. Soon, a thousand needles were clicking, to put a soft cushion between one’s soles and toes and the wood. Women knitted, even while they walked to market, or gossiped on the streets. The klomp-winkels, or shops of the shoe carpenters, were seen in every village.
When rich beyond his day-dreams, Van Eyck had another joyful night vision. The next day, he wore a smiling countenance. Everybody, who met him on the street, saluted him and asked, in a neighborly way:
“Good-morning, Mynheer Bly-moe-dig (Mr. Cheerful). How do you sail to-day?”
That’s the way the Dutch talk—not “how do you do,” but, in their watery country, it is this, “How do you sail?” or else, “Hoe gat het u al?” (How goes it with you, already?)
Then Van Eyck told his dream. It was this: The Moss Maiden and Trintje, the wood elf, came to him again at night and danced. They were lively and happy.
“What now?” asked the dreamer, smilingly, of his two visitors.
[Illustration: The kabouter took the wood and shaped it on the inside.]
He had hardly got the question out of his mouth, when in walked a kabouter, all smutty with blacksmith work. In one hand, he grasped his tool box. In the other, he held a curious looking machine. It was a big lump of iron, set in a frame, with ropes to pull it up and let it fall down with a thump.
“What is it?” asked Van Eyck.
“It’s a Hey” (a pile driver), said the kabouter, showing him how to use it. “When men say to you, on the street, to-morrow, ‘How do you sail?’ laugh at them,” said the Moss Maiden, herself laughing.
“Yes, and now you can tell the people how to build cities, with mighty churches with lofty towers, and with high houses like those in other lands. Take the trees, trim the branches off, sharpen the tops, turn them upside down and pound them deep in the ground. Did not the ancient oak promise that the trees would be turned upside down for you? Did they not say you could walk on top of them?”
By this time, Van Eyck had asked so many questions, and kept the elves so long, that the Moss Maiden peeped anxiously through the window. Seeing the day breaking, she and Trintje and the kabouter flew away, so as not to be petrified by the sunrise.
“I’ll make another fortune out of this, also,” said the happy man, who, next morning, was saluted as Mynheer Blyd-schap (Mr. Joyful).
At once, Van Eyck set up a factory for making pile drivers. Sending men into the woods, who chose the tall, straight trees, he had their branches cut off. Then he sharpened the trunks at one end, and these were driven, by the pile driver, down, far and deep, into the ground. So a foundation, as good as stone, was made in the soft and spongy soil, and well built houses uprose by the thousands. Even the lofty walls of churches stood firm. The spires were unshaken in the storm.
Old Holland had not fertile soil like France, or vast flocks of sheep, producing wool, like England, or armies of weavers, as in the Belgic lands. Yet, soon there rose large cities, with splendid mansions and town halls. As high towards heaven as the cathedrals and towers in other lands, which had rock for foundation, her brick churches rose in the air. On top of the forest trees, driven deep into the sand and clay, dams and dykes were built, that kept out the ocean. So, instead of the old two thousand square miles, there were, in the realm, in the course of years, twelve thousand, rich in green fields and cattle. Then, for all the boys and girls that travel in this land of quaint customs, Holland was a delight.
Next Story The Oni on His Travels
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Soccer Business Bits: Digitial Mag, Cup Qualifiers & More
Posted on March 22, 2013 by Ben Berger
MLS unveiled Overlap Magazine, a digital app available through the itunes store that offers featured and essays about the league, its players and more. The league promoted the app through direct e-mail, Twitter and other online sources in an effort to capture its tech savvy fan base. Per the official description “OVERLAP is a digital magazine about North American soccer, with original writing, photography, illustration and audio from the editors of MLSsoccer.com and Howler Magazine. Issue One includes a profile of Sporting Kansas City’s Graham Zusi, a feature about three rookies and their roads to MLS, an essay by the NYT’s George Vecsey, and a wide-ranging season preview from four of North America’s leading pundits, and a lot more original artwork and storytelling.”
The USSF announced the various homes of the upcoming US home matches for the World Cup qualifiers scheduled for the next few months. Among the venues are Columbus, Kansas City and perhaps most notably, Seattle. After 40 years, the US Men will return to Seattle and will play at Century Link Field. The game comes to Seattle despite the requirement of a temporary grass field and an attendance restriction of 42k because of a Mariners game next door.
One final note. The US Qualifier from Colorado is set for Friday night. The game will be televised on ESPN. At the same time, MLS will offer a full slate of weekend matches including a nationally televised game on NBCSN and Sunday game on UniMas.
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Expansion Update: 2013 Wrap
Posted on December 31, 2013 by Ben Berger
After a slow period at the beginning of the year, the expansion news really heated up in 2013. Teams 20 and 21 have been announced, with New York City FC and Orlando set to join Major League Soccer in 2015. The new franchise in the Big Apple will combine the wealth and soccer background of Manchester City with the New York savvy of the Yankees. The wealth of City’s owners is well known to soccer fans, but the wildcard in this relationship is the New York savvy and television power of the New York Yankees. Among Regional Sports Networks, the Yankee owned Yes network is a powerhouse. With large national penetration and lock down carriage agreements in the all important New York Metro area (this includes New Jersey, Long Island and Connecticut), the Yes Network offers MLS a huge opportunity to become a tv presence. Even though most of the national agreements do not allow for the broadcast of live games (and that could change for soccer), it seems likely that any relationship will include non match programming. While a relationship with Yes has not been confirmed, it seems almost a certainty given the Yankees involvement. Moreover, with all of the league’s national television deals set to expire in 2014, the presence of a new New York franchise that will likely spend on players will be a big negotiation carrot for the league.
Later, Orlando joined the party in November with its eyes also set on 2015. The reported entry fee will be $70 million, far in excess of prior fees (other than NYC) and supportive of the higher MLS valuations noted by Forbes Magazine (see below). The minor league version of Orlando City averaged just over 8,000 per game in 2013, a number the franchise hopes more than doubles with the team’s entry into the top tier of American soccer. The permanent home of Orlando City S.C. will hold 18,000 and the home team will be the first MLS squad to sport purple uniforms. The team’s jersey sponsor will be Orlando Health.
In addition, franchises in Miami, Atlanta and the Twin Cities were in the news as prospective owners lobbied the league and local communities for a spot in the next group of three teams. From David Beckham to LeBron James to Arthur Blank, this is a varied group of potential franchise owners. These are exciting times for Major League Soccer and its fans, and 2014 promises to provide plenty of MLS expansion news.
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Board index Holocaust Revisionism (English) 'Holocaust' Debate / Controversies / Comments / News
Blobel, Treblinka
Read and post various viewpoints or search our large archives.
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Postby nathan » 8 years 2 months ago (Fri May 06, 2011 5:05 am)
Following Himmler’s visit of July 17 1942, SS-standartefuher Paul Blobel arrived in Auschwitz from Eichmann’s office bearing a verbal order from Himmler that “all the mass graves were to be opened and the corpses burnt. In addition the ashes were to be disposed of in such a way that it would be impossible at some future time to calculate the number of corpses burnt.” So wrote Hoess in his memoirs. Blobel “had been authorised to seek out and obliterate the mass graves in the whole of the eastern districts.” Hoess said that Blobel, who served with Einsatzgruppe C in the southern sector, had a fairly exact knowledge of all the eastern graves.
Supposing all this to be true, an obvious question is why Himmler chose this moment to allow a program involving the burial of some 800,000 bodies at Treblinka.
The first railway transports of victims destined for destruction arrived at the camp on July 23, 1942, and from that time until approximately the middle of December, 1942, there was a constant stream of fresh arrivals. After New Year, 1943, the number of transports began to diminish. In February or March, 1943, Himmler visited the camp, and after this a whole-sale burning of corpses was undertake
-The 1946 Polish Central Commission investigation:
AT Sobibor and Belzec, things happened earlier.
Hundreds of thousands of corpses of people murdered in the death camps during the spring and summer of 1942 lay in huge mass graves. In the autumn of 1942 the camp commandants of Sobibor and Belzec decided to incinerate the corpses; in Treblinka, a start on this was made only in 1943. However, the idea to remove all signs of the crimes was not new. In the spring of 1942 Himmler had decided that in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, the corpses of the murdered Jews and Russian prisoners of war were to be exhumed from the graves and incinerated without leaving any traces. The same was to be done with the past and future victims of the extermination camps.
From: Operation Reinhard': Extermination Camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka," Edited by Aharon Weiss, Yad Vashem Studies XVI, Yad Vashem Martyr's and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem, 198
Regarding Chelmno::
In the spring of 1942 two crematoria were built, and after that, all the dead were burnt in them (and the bodies previously buried as well).
From: -The Polish Central Commission
I shall assume that Himmler’s February visit to Treblinka is a figment of propaganda, quite probably derived from Wiernik’s seminal memoir A Year in Treblinka. I shall also assume, as against Wiernik, that the Katyn massacre cannot explain the chronology of the German exhumation decisions.
The Yad Vashem explanation is that no explanation is necessary. It was all up to the local commanders. Easy come, easy go. Commanders could choose to to bury rather than to burn, even if they knew, on one reading, that one day they would have to unbury and then burn.
It might be more rational to synchronise the Treblinka concealment with the fortunes of war, although though I have never seen anyone make the case. Some accounts read as if the purpose of the alleged exhumations was to conceal “the eternal shame” from posterity. But the Nazis had no shame and were not afraid of posterity; they were afraid of the Red Army. Yet for some reason it was not until September 1942 that Blobel, by his own account, was able to convey Mueller’s June 1942 order to the German civil authority in Kiev, who were mysteriously “disinclined” to carry it out. It was not until June 1943 that any action was begun - the resurrections at Treblinka apparently coming earlier than resurrections four hundred miles closer to the eastern front. Putting that long delay aside, one might still argue that before Stalingrad the Nazis had never ever been expected to reach the borders of “Greater Germany” and its burial grounds. In June 42 the eastern front was unthreatening. But on March 1943, in the wake of calamity, Himmler might have adopted a defeatist perspective. Better get cracking on those AR camps - even though the Russians were nearly a thousand miles away from Lublin.
However, that would not at all explain why they had in 1942 already got cracking on Sobibor and Belzec, to say nothing of the more westerly Auschwitz and Chelmno.
According to Blobel’s second written affidavit:
Obergruppenfuehrer Heydrich and Gruppenfuehrer Mueller, and in June 1942 I was entrusted by Gruppenfuehrer Mueller with the task of obliterating the traces of executions carried out by the Einsatzgruppen in the East. My orders were that I should report in person to the commanders of the Security Police and SD, pass on Mueller’s orders verbally, and supervise their implementation. This order was top secret and Gruppenfuehrer Mueller had given orders that owing to the need for strictest secrecy there was to be no correspondence in connection with this task
....In May and June 1943 I made additional trips to Kiev in this matter and then, after conversations with Dr. Thomas and with SS and Police Leader Hennecke, the order was carried out
.....During my visit in August [1943]I myself observed the burning of bodies in a mass grave near Kiev. This grave was about 55 m. long, 3 m. wide and 2½ m. deep. After the top had been removed the bodies were covered with inflammable material and ignited. It took about two days until the grave burned down to the bottom. I myself observed that the fire had glowed down to the bottom. After that the grave was filled in and the traces were now practically obliterated.
4. Owing to the moving up of the front-line it was not possible to destroy the mass graves further south and east which had resulted from executions by the Einsatzgruppen. I traveled to Berlin in this connection to report, and was then sent to Estonia by Gruppenfuehrer Mueller. I passed on the same orders to Oberfuehrer Achammer-Pierader in Riga, and also to Obergruppenfuehrer Jeckeln. I returned to Berlin in order to obtain fuel. The burning of the bodies began only in May or June 1944. I remember that incinerations took place in the area of Riga and Reval. I was present at such incinerations near Reval, but the graves were smaller here and contained only about 20 to 30 bodies. The graves in the area of Reval were about 20 or 30 kms. east of the city in a marshy district and I think that 4 or 5 such graves were opened and the bodies burned.
5. According to my orders I should have extended my duties over the entire area occupied by the Einsatzgruppen, but owing to the retreat from Russia I could not carry out my orders completely....
I have made this disposition of my own free will, without any kind of promise of reward, and I was not subjected to any form of compulsion or threat
From NMT Einsatzgruppen trial affidavit NO-3947, 18 June 1947:
See: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... obel1.html
I do not know what Blobel said when he took the stand. But we have been told something that someone said he had previously said, in the account written by the colourful presiding Judge, Michael Musmanno.
Although Blobel asserted that he acted legally at all times, he was concerned about the evidence he left of his executions. So also were Himmler, Mueller and Eichmann back in Berlin because it was not too certain now [=June 1942] that Germany could hold the terrain taken from Russia. The long graves spoke too clearly of mass murder. Blobel was called back to Eichmann's headquarters at 116 Kurfürstenstrasse where he was given orders signed by Mueller to erase evidence of the killings, by opening the graves and burning the corpses. The burning process was not too successful, so Blobel resorted to dynamiting.
Rudolf Hoess, commandant of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, co-operated with Blobel in the operation and reported that "the ashes, ground to dust in a bone mill, were thrown in the vast forests around".
Despite these attempts to dissolve the ghosts which could rise to haunt him, Blobel was boastful of his bloody handiwork. A witness, Albert Hartel, called by Blobel himself, testified to being with the red-bearded defendant in Kiev in March 1942. One day Blobel took him into the country to show him around. Suddenly Hartel became frightened, he recalled, by the fact that the earth was heaving beneath their feet. Under questioning by Dr Heim, Blobel's own lawyer, Hartel explained: "There were some kind of eruptions, a kind of explosion, and I asked Blobel what it was, and he said: 'Here my Jews are buried."' just as a wild-game hunter might proudly point to a tiger he had bagged in the jungle –
- Michael Musmanno, JUSTICE, 1961
Hoess recalls that he visited Chelmno in order to learn from Blobel’s early experiments in body disposal. He relates that dynamiting the corpses had proved a failure; open air cremation was better. But Musmanno, having presided over the long court case, remembers it the other way round.
Re: Blobel, Treblinka
Postby Hans » 8 years 2 months ago (Sat May 07, 2011 11:17 am)
nathan wrote:
Nathan, I think this link may be of some interest for you.
Postby nathan » 8 years 2 months ago (Sun May 08, 2011 5:33 am)
Skimming through the fragmented polemic linked by Hans, I did not catch any direct evidence that Himmler went to Treblinka. But I am quite ready to assume that he did so. I had not known that there was a wartime document placing Himmler in Lublin in March. Why did I not know? “Ignorance,madam, pure ignorance” It was not through “blindly” following Mattogno but through incredulously reading Wiernik that I had concluded the visit itself might be a figment. I find it so hard to credit anything he says.
Wiernik:
This was the period when the Germans talked a lot about Katyn, which they used for anti-Soviet propaganda purposes. One day, by accident, we got hold of a newspaper from which we learned about that mass killing. It was probably these reports that made Himmler decide to visit Treblinka personally and to give orders that henceforth all the corpses of inmates should be cremated. There were plenty of corpses to cremate-there was no one who could have been blamed for the Treblinka killings except the Germans who, for the time being, were the masters of the land which they had wrested from us [Poles] by brute force. They did not want any evidence of the mass murders left.
[ie, it being impossible, in this case, falsely to accuse the Russians]
Work was begun to cremate the dead. It turned out that bodies of women burned more easily than those of men. Accordingly, the bodies of women were used for kindling the fires. Since cremation was hard work, rivalry set in between the labor details as to which of them would be able to cremate the largest number of bodies. Bulletin boards were rigged up and daily scores were recorded. Nevertheless, the results were very poor. The corpses were soaked in gasoline. This entailed considerable expense and the results were inadequate; the male corpses simply would not burn. Whenever an airplane was sighted overhead, all work was stopped, the corpses were covered with foliage as camouflage against aerial observation.
All this made no impression whatsoever on the German murderers, who stood around watching as if they were checking a machine which was not working properly and whose production was inadequate.
Then, one day, an Oberscharfuhrer wearing an SS badge arrived at the camp and introduced a veritable inferno. He was about 45 years old, of medium height, with a perpetual smile on his face. His favorite word was "tadellos [perfect]" and that is how he got the by-name Tadellos. His face looked kind and did not show the depraved soul behind it. He got pure pleasure watching the corpses burn; the sight of the flames licking at the bodies was precious to him, and he would literally caress the scene with his eyes.
This is the way in which he got the inferno started. He put a machine for exhuming the corpses into operation, an excavator which could dig up 3,000 corpses at one time. A fire grate made of railroad tracks was placed on concrete foundations 100 to 150 meters in length. The workers piled the corpses on the grate and set them on fire.
......The gangsters are standing near the ashes, shaking with satanic laughter. Their faces radiate a truly satanic satisfaction. They toasted the scene with brandy and with the choicest liqueurs, ate, caroused and had a great time warming themselves by the fire.
The cremation of the corpses proved an unqualified success. Because they were in a hurry, the Germans built additional fire grates and augmented the crews serving them, so that from 10,000 to 12,000 corpses were cremated at one time. The result was one huge inferno, which from the distance looked like a volcano breaking through the earth's crust to belch forth fire and lava. The pyres sizzled and crackled. The smoke and heat made it impossible to remain close by. It lasted a long time because there were more than half a million dead to dispose of
Even if a Himmler March visit was as well attested as the two visits to Auschwitz, it would not answer the question why, as alleged, he ordered a cover-up at the other camps in 1942 while at the largest of all crime scenes he delayed the cover-up so vividly described by Wiernik until March1943. I should state here I am assuming that it was Himmler who gave all the important orders, and that that an important order from Himmler would never be disobeyed. Not everyone shares that assumption. I read on the Holocaust Education website that:.
During his visit to Treblinka, Himmler learnt that despite his orders, the corpses of the Jews had been buried and not cremated. In order to destroy all traces of the mass extermination, he commanded that the corpses be cremated, and this activity became the main task in the camp’s final months. –
- H.E.A.R.T
I think that such disobedience to Himmler’s orders is just a hypothesis. But people need a hypothesis only when there is something that needs to be explained.
Ray Barren
Postby Ray Barren » 8 years 2 months ago (Sun May 08, 2011 9:37 am)
nathan wrote: Even if a Himmler March visit was as well attested as the two visits to Auschwitz, it would not answer the question why, as alleged, he ordered a cover-up at the other camps in 1942 while at the largest of all crime scenes he delayed the cover-up so vividly described by Wiernik until March1943. I should state here I am assuming that it was Himmler who gave all the important orders, and that that an important order from Himmler would never be disobeyed. Not everyone shares that assumption. I read on the Holocaust Education website that:.
I am having a hard time working out your own thesis with this thread and therefore the point to your posts. Do you agree with the Holocaust Education website thesis? I don't but I generally find their articles poorly constructed and not very useful. The poster they have on this forum also weirds me out so I may be biased. Do you accept that these cremations took place? Did none of them? Some? Please clear this up for your audience.
I am also a bit shocked by your seemingly joyful negligence of research Nathan. remember, the almighty helps those who help themselves.
I am new to the Holocaust debate because I never knew anyone who questioned the event in history. Here for good and free exchange of ideas on Holocaust.
Postby nathan » 8 years 2 months ago (Mon May 09, 2011 12:10 am)
HEART explain the standard timetable for Treblinka by suggesting that Himmler’s order to bury the bodies was disobeyed for months. I say it is very unlikely that Himmler’s orders would be so disobeyed. It must follow that I think the HEART explanation is very unlikely. Think about it
Evidence for millions of bodies was never found. The standard explanation is a narrative in which millions of bodies were dug up and burned. The plausibility of that narrative is the subject of this thread. If Barren has anything to say on that subject, resulting from his very serious researches, let him say it. The subject of this thread is not me.
Location: 'Murica!
Postby The Warden » 8 years 2 months ago (Sun May 15, 2011 9:57 am)
I will never understand the reasoning behind the claims of German officials attempting to "cover up" the graves. They were already gathering and transporting people out of the territory. They were already at war. "In for a dime, in for a dollar". What was to be gained from a successful "cover up" of graves? A lighter sentence?
Why the Holocaust Industry exists:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A81P6YGw_c
Postby fountainhead » 8 years 1 month ago (Fri Jun 03, 2011 12:03 pm)
The Warden wrote: I will never understand the reasoning behind the claims of German officials attempting to "cover up" the graves. They were already gathering and transporting people out of the territory. They were already at war. "In for a dime, in for a dollar". What was to be gained from a successful "cover up" of graves? A lighter sentence?
I'm just throwing this out there, but isn't it possible they were trying to cover up the graves but not to hide evidence of a genocide? Perhaps Himmler, knowing how much of a propaganda victory it was to show the world the bodies from the Katyn massacre, didn't want to give the Soviets ammunition to carry out a similar propaganda campaign.
Who controls the past controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past.
Postby The Warden » 8 years 1 month ago (Fri Jun 03, 2011 1:36 pm)
fountainhead wrote:
Anything is possible, but plausibility is not fact. It's theory, and without physical evidence to support it, it remains theory.
Why would they care about propaganda if they were literally "executing" thousands of Jews a day in the middle of a war in their own occupied territory? It's not as if the propaganda would stop based on anything the Germans did. As stated already, they were already in a war, propaganda and otherwise. To think the Germans would execute millions in an effort to rid Germany of all Jewish influence, and then worry about what propaganda might result is ludicrous. What's to gain from spending all that time and those resources on a cover up when the propaganda was already showing them doing it anyway?
Postby Balsamo » 8 years 1 month ago (Fri Jun 03, 2011 3:12 pm)
Or just maybe, even in the third reich, such actions were illegal, or at least not backed by laws? And that even in case of a German victory, this "action" could have been a "bomb" that could later be used by some of his ennemies to get rid of him? Relations between Nazi leaders were far from friendly between each others...And in some cases, too much power led to "aticipate disgrace" (eg Röhm in the early days, or, later, Albert Speer, or at the very end Goering and Himmler themselves)?
Pure speculation, of course, but every government of the world tends to try "covering" their illegal actions one way or another...And in this case, the SS were not even a "government body"!
Postby fountainhead » 8 years 1 month ago (Fri Jun 03, 2011 3:45 pm)
The Warden wrote: Anything is possible, but plausibility is not fact. It's theory, and without physical evidence to support it, it remains theory. Why would they care about propaganda if they were literally "executing" thousands of Jews a day in the middle of a war in their own occupied territory? It's not as if the propaganda would stop based on anything the Germans did. As stated already, they were already in a war, propaganda and otherwise. To think the Germans would execute millions in an effort to rid Germany of all Jewish influence, and then worry about what propaganda might result is ludicrous. What's to gain from spending all that time and those resources on a cover up when the propaganda was already showing them doing it anyway?
Well, I was thinking even if, as we assert, there was no extermination program, the mere presence of thousands of bodies that had died from disease could be twisted by the Soviets for propaganda purposes both during and after the war. And whaddaya know, they still managed to use the propaganda without the bodies, possibly to an even greater extent than if the bodies had been there! The Germans cremated the bodies??? There's no telling how many they've killed! Probably millions!
hey, the topic is about Treblinka...
Why would many people die from Typhys in a transit-camp where they are supposed only to be deloused, fed, before being sent to their new home ?
Why, by the way, would their luggages and stuffs be taken from them there ?
Valuable asset
Postby Hannover » 8 years 1 month ago (Fri Jun 03, 2011 6:50 pm)
If Blobel really said this:
4. Owing to the moving up of the front-line it was not possible to destroy the mass graves further south and east which had resulted from executions by the Einsatzgruppen.
It would shatter the Holocaust Industry's claim that the Germans destroyed all the evidence. And the elephant in the room, if these mass graves were true, then why haven't they been excavated and their contents put on display? Surely Blobel could have directed the Soviets to the sites ... if the "holocaust by bullets" claim was true of course.
This is too easy.
- Hannover
If it can't happen as alleged, then it didn't.
Balsamo wrote: hey, the topic is about Treblinka...
To clarify; Treblinka I - labor camp, Treblinka II - transit camp.
for more see:
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p133_Allen.html
Treblinka Labor Camp
About one mile (1.5 km) from the "extermination camp," which was known as "Treblinka II," was a penal labor camp for Poles and Jews known as "Treblinka I." It was not at all secret. The 1941 directive announcing the establishment of the "Treblinka Labor Camp" was published in both Polish and German in widely distributed official journals. (note 31) Poles and Jews worked in a large sand and gravel quarry at the Treblinka labor camp. (note 32)
As wartime aerial reconnaissance photographs clearly show, the Treblinka T-I labor camp was located at the end of the rail spur on which the Treblinka T-II "extermination" (transit) camp was also located. This fact strengthens the thesis that the T-II camp was not particularly secret, since penal labor prisoners being taken by train to and from the publicly known T-I camp passed directly by the supposedly top secret T-II "extermination" camp. (note 33)Transit Camp
If Treblinka was not an extermination center, what was it? As already mentioned, the balance of evidence indicates that Treblinka II -- along with Belzec and Sobibor -- was a transit camp, where Jewish deportees were stripped of their property and valuables before being transferred eastwards into German-occupied Soviet territories. (note 43)
Transit Camp
The generally-accepted story is that Treblinka II was a "pure" extermination center, from which no Jew was permitted to leave alive. (note 44) However, credible reports of deportations of Jews from Treblinka refute the allegation that all Jews sent there were destined for extermination, and indicate instead that the camp functioned as a transit center.
In the aftermath of the April 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, for example, Jews were transported from Warsaw to Treblinka II. As some of the deportees later confirmed, after a "selection" in the camp, trainloads of hundreds of Jews were taken from Treblinka to Lublin (Majdanek), and possibly other camps. (note 45) Several thousand Jews (at least) were transferred by German authorities from Treblinka to other camps, a postwar German court determined. (note 46)
Letters and postcards that arrived in the Warsaw ghetto from Jews who, by all accounts, had been deported to Treblinka, indicate that the camp was a transit center from where Jews were resettled in the occupied Soviet territories. These messages, which arrived from settlements and camps in Belarus (Byelorussia), Ukraine, and even Russia proper (near Smolensk), were written by Jews who had been deported in 1942. Some letters and cards had been sent by mail and some had arrived through the underground. Many mentioned that the senders were working hard, but confirmed that they (and often their children) were being fed. (note 47)
Completely contrary to its supposed character as a top secret extermination center, Treblinka was neither secret nor even closely guarded, as both former inmates and officials have confirmed. "Secrecy? Good heavens, there was no secrecy about Treblinka," Jewish prisoner Richard Glazer later testified. "All the Poles between there and Warsaw must have known about it, and lived off the proceeds. All the peasants came to barter, the Warsaw whores did business with the Ukrainians -- it was a circus for all of them." Polish farmers worked the fields that directly adjoined the camp. "And many others," said Jewish survivor Berek Rojzman, "came to the fence to barter, mostly with the Ukrainians, but with us too." (note 48)
Even regular German concentration camps such as Dachau and uchenwald were much more closely guarded than Treblinka. As already mentioned, aerial reconnaissance photographs taken in 1944 confirm that the area around Treblinka was not cleared. The photos show that one perimeter of the camp passed through a wooded area, and that cultivated fields where Polish farmers worked were directly adjacent to the camp perimeter. (note 49)
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American Tragedy
Swan Songs (Collector’s Edition)
American Tragedy Redux
Notes From The Underground - Unabridged
Another Level
My Space Records Volume 1
À propos de Hollywood Undead
It's hardly groundbreaking, but it works -- they've won wide adoration from MySpace crowds, who have helped them break out of the social networking site and into mainstream pop culture on the strength of their singles. Hollywood Undead became the first act to sign on with MySpace Records in 2005, wearing hockey masks that introduced the band's puzzling public image -- another imitative nod to Insane Clown Posse. After a number of personnel changes (all of which happened behind the shroud of their veiled identity), the core duo of Deuce and J-Dog put together a lineup for live gigs in 2008. That same year Hollywood Undead signed to a major and released their debut, the encouragingly titled Swan Songs Nate Cavalieri
6:33, Asking Alexandria, Attack Attack!, Breathe Carolina, Brokencyde, Scars On Broadway
It's hardly groundbreaking, but it works -- they've won wide adoration from MySpace crowds, who have helped them break out of the social networking site and into mainstream pop culture on the strength of their singles. Hollywood Undead became the first act to sign on with MySpace Records in 2005, wearing hockey masks that introduced the band's puzzling public image -- another imitative nod to Insane Clown Posse. After a number of personnel changes (all of which happened behind the shroud of their veiled identity), the core duo of Deuce and J-Dog put together a lineup for live gigs in 2008. That same year Hollywood Undead signed to a major and released their debut, the encouragingly titled Swan Songs
Nate Cavalieri
Alt Metal
Contemporary Hard Rock
Gotta Let Go
Whatever It Takes (feat. Prodigal Sunn, Demrick...
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China Again Tests
Nuclear Hypersonic Missile
Sixth flight of DF-ZF glide vehicle indicates weapon a high priority for Beijing
An artistic rendering of a hypersonic aircraft / AP
Bill Gertz - November 25, 2015 5:00 AM
China carried out a sixth flight test of its new high-speed nuclear attack vehicle on Monday designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses or carry out global strikes.
The ultra-fast maneuvering strike weapon known as the DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle was launched atop a ballistic missile fired from the Wuzhai missile test center in central China’s Shanxi Province, according defense officials.
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The vehicle separated from its launcher near the edge of the atmosphere and then glided to an impact range several thousand miles away in western China, said officials familiar with details of the test.
The DF-ZF flight was tracked by U.S. intelligence agencies and flew at speeds beyond Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound.
Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Bill Urban declined to comment. "We do not comment on specific PRC weapons tests, but we do monitor Chinese military modernization carefully," Urban told the Washington Free Beacon.
It was the sixth time the hypersonic glider has been flight tested since last year.
The website China Spaceflight reported Sunday that the test would take place, based on the Chinese government announcement of airspace closures along what would ultimately become the zone used by the glide vehicle during the flight test. The website reported that the airspace restrictions were similar to closures announced prior to an August DF-ZF flight test.
Flight path of the test / China Space Flight
The airspace was closed to commercial and military air traffic between 12:53 a.m. and 1:40 a.m. Beijing time on Nov. 23—the likely timeframe of the test.
China’s most recent DF-ZF test took place Aug. 19, also from Wuzhai, and like Monday’s flight test was judged a success.
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed the DF-ZF to be a nuclear delivery vehicle for Chinese missiles, with maneuverability and high speeds that would allow it to defeat U.S. missile defenses, currently designed to counter non-maneuvering warheads with more easily-tracked ballistic trajectories.
China also could use the DF-ZF for conventional-armed rapid global strike capability, according to military specialists.
The vehicle is believed to reach speeds of between Mach 5 and Mach 10, or 3,836 miles per hour and 7,680 miles per hour.
The high rate of testing for the glide vehicle is an indication China has placed a high priority on the weapon program and that it is making rapid progress.
The Chinese conducted earlier flight tests on June 7, and on Jan. 9, 2014, Aug. 7, 2014, and Dec. 2, 2014. All the tests were first reported by the Free Beacon.
The commander of the U.S. Strategic Command told reporters last summer that hypersonic glide vehicles are new strategic warfare technology and an emerging threat.
"As I look at that [hypersonic] threat, clearly the mobility, the flight profile, those kinds of things are things we have to keep in mind and be able to address across that full kill chain," Cecil Haney said in an interview in July, using the military term for the process used to target and attack enemy missiles.
Air Force Lt. Gen. James Kowalski, then-deputy commander of Strategic Command, said at the same time that hypersonic missiles offer a number of advantages as strategic weapons.
"It offers a number of different ways to overcome defenses, whether those are conventional, or if someone would decide to use a nuclear warhead, I think gives it an even more complicated dimension," Kowalski said.
Currently, no nation has deployed hypersonic weapons but "it remains something that concerns us," Kowalski added.
The annual report of the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, made public Nov. 18, stated that China’s hypersonic weapons are in the developmental stages and are "progressing rapidly." The glide vehicle could be deployed by 2020, and a separate high-technology ramjet-propelled cruise missile could be deployed by 2025, the report said.
The Mach 5 to Mach 10 speeds allow the arms to "strike any target on earth in under an hour," it stated.
"The very high speeds of these weapons, combined with their maneuverability and ability to travel at lower, radar-evading altitudes, would make them far less vulnerable than existing missiles to current missile defenses," the report said.
The report said China’s hypersonic weapons, as well as the use of multiple-warhead missiles, are part of China’s efforts to assure its missiles can penetrate U.S. missile defenses.
Nuclear-armed hypersonic vehicles would be part of China’s retaliatory strike capabilities, while conventionally-tipped hypersonics could indicate long-range conventional strikes.
"Alternatively, China may intend its hypersonic program for both nuclear and conventional purposes, or may simply be following the United States in pushing the technological frontier and is not yet certain which it will pursue," the report said.
China is among three nations that are developing hypersonic arms, along with Russia and the United States.
Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the sixth test indicates Beijing may be seeking a conventional rapid global attack capability similar to the developmental U.S. program called Prompt Global Strike.
Fisher said analysis of Chinese solid fueled space launchers indicates the new Kuaizhou-2 launcher could be used with China’s anti-satellite missiles and also could boost the DF-ZF to intercontinental ranges.
"It is possible that Kuaizhou-2 could become the basis for China's first intercontinental non-nuclear armed Prompt Global Strike delivery vehicle," he said, adding the booster "could likely carry multiple DF-ZF derived hypersonic maneuvering precision strike warheads."
China also is building and deploying sophisticated surveillance satellites that could be used for the precision global strike weapons.
With some 138 satellites in space by 2030, "this means that an intercontinental [Prompt Global Strike] launched from China against U.S. targets could benefit from multiple target location updates," he said.
Since China has refused to negotiate limits on its strategic weapons and remains highly secretive about all its arms programs, "the safe course for Washington would be to avoid any further delay in developing its own Prompt Global Strike capability to deploy if China does the same."
This entry was posted in National Security and tagged China. Bookmark the permalink.
Bill Gertz is senior editor of the Washington Free Beacon. Prior to joining the Beacon he was a national security reporter, editor, and columnist for 27 years at the Washington Times. Bill is the author of seven books, four of which were national bestsellers. His most recent book was iWar: War and Peace in the Information Age, a look at information warfare in its many forms and the enemies that are waging it. Bill has an international reputation. Vyachaslav Trubnikov, head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, once called him a “tool of the CIA” after he wrote an article exposing Russian intelligence operations in the Balkans. A senior CIA official once threatened to have a cruise missile fired at his desk after he wrote a column critical of the CIA’s analysis of China. And China’s communist government has criticized him for news reports exposing China’s weapons and missile sales to rogue states. The state-run Xinhua news agency in 2006 identified Bill as the No. 1 “anti-China expert” in the world. Bill insists he is very much pro-China—pro-Chinese people and opposed to the communist system. Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld once told him: “You are drilling holes in the Pentagon and sucking out information.” His Twitter handle is @BillGertz.
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Home Page > Yardener's Plant Problem Solver > Dealing With Pest Insects > Biting Insects > Mosquito > Diagnose Mosquitos
Diagnose Mosquitos
What They Look Like
Mosquitoes are small, slender flies that are members of the family Culicidae. When viewed under a hand lens, adult mosquitoes are easily recognizable--scales cover the wing veins and the hind wing margin. The scale and setal (bristle) patterns of the adults are distinctive characteristics for species identification. Mostly you see that hypodermic needle they carry for a nose. There are at least 100 known species of mosquitoes in the United States and Canada.
Mosquito Biology
Like butterflies, mosquitoes undergo complete metamorphosis and have egg, larval, pupal, and adult stages. Of the blood-sucking mosquito species, a blood meal is usually (but not always) necessary for egg maturation. The eggs may be laid singly or in rafts but always in association with water and where it is quiet and protected. Females may lay up to 100 eggs per batch and deposit an egg batch every 7 or 10 days. Eggs can take from days to months to hatch. In general, during warm periods and under favorable conditions, eggs will hatch in a few days. However, the eggs of "flood-water" mosquitoes can remain dormant and are capable of surviving for months out of water until they are flooded. Eggs may be laid at the water surface, at the water-soil interface along banks, or on soil or vegetation that is subject to periodic flooding, depending on the species involved. Other sites where eggs may be deposited include tree holes, temporary puddles, freshwater and salt marshes, and containers in which water stands, such as discarded tires, cans, pet water dishes, and bird baths.
The larvae have no legs and have an enlarged thorax that is much wider than the head and abdomen. Larvae prefer quiet, still water, and are commonly referred to as "wrigglers," which describes their movement in water. They feed on decaying organic matter that includes microorganisms. After hatching, the larva goes through four molts, with the final molt resulting in a pupa. The larval stage typically is completed in about 7 to 10 days.
The pupa is a mobile but nonfeeding stage. The pupae are frequently called "tumblers" because when they are disturbed at the water surface, they will quickly tumble downward and then rise slowly rise to the water surface. After 2 or 3 days, the pupa molts into the winged adult.
The longevity of the adult varies greatly. During the heat of summer, most adult females do not live more than 2 weeks. The males have a shorter life span.
Although many species of mosquitoes have a wide geographic distribution in the United States, their local abundance varies greatly. Warmth, precipitation, and favorable microhabitats influence potential population levels of the immature stages. Eggs laid in flood-prone sites can accumulate for years until they hatch under favorable environmental conditions, thus resulting in explosive population levels within a relatively short period of time.
YARDENER is a registered service mark
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Albion bows out of D-III Women's Lacrosse Championship
Catholic (16-4) 15 4 19
Albion (14-5) 3 2 5
G: 5 Players (#3, #10, #14, #16, #17) - 1
A: 3 Players (#10, #16, #17) - 1
Sv: Alexis Robinson - 15
GB: 3 Players (#10, #16, #33) - 3
G: 2 Players (#2, #21) - 3
A: Molly Kelly - 3
Sv: Nanci Hernandez - 4
GB: Julia Clementi - 5
ALLIANCE, Ohio – Albion College had not seen an opponent with the talent of Catholic University until the teams met Saturday in the first round of the NCAA Division III Women's Lacrosse Championship.
Catholic defeated Albion, 19-5, as the Britons finished the season with a 14-5 record and a Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association Tournament championship.
Goalkeeper Alexis Robinson, the Rookie of the Year in the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association, made several impressive saves in the first half, and Jenina Villabroza did likewise in the second half, but the pressure Catholic displayed on the ride was just as impressive as Albion had trouble advancing the ball to the attacking end of the field.
Robinson stopped half of the shots she faced, making 15 saves. Villabroza was credited with stopping seven of the 11 shots she faced.
Still Albion made the most of its offensive opportunities. Chrystelle Lopez, Darcy Muns, Destiny Okon, Carly Schwarz, and Abby Sheklow scored goals for the Britons.
Lopez, an all-MIAA second team pick in the midfield, finished her first season at the collegiate level with 46 goals. That's the ninth-most in a season at Albion.
Muns, a two-time all-MIAA pick, scored 45 goals on the season to sit 10th on Albion's single-season list.
Twitter: @AlbionWLacrosse
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Home Home | News & Events | U.S. Citizen Services
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 21 March, 2019 | Topics: Messages for U.S. Citizens, U.S. Citizen Services, U.S. Passports | Tags: Crete, Herakleion
Demonstration Alert – U. S. Embassy Athens and U.S. Consulate Thessaloniki, Greece
Locations: Central Athens. In the areas of Athens University, Syntagma Square and the Exarchia areas. Downtown Thessaloniki—originating in the area of Kamara/Arch of Galerius Events: Athens: A series of demonstrations from student and leftist groups are planned today at 12:00, 18:00, 21:00 for the 10th anniversary of the death of Alexis Grigoropoulos. These demonstrations have turned violent in the past. Expect possible …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 6 December, 2018 | Topics: Alert, U.S. Citizen Services
Message for U.S. Citizens: Consular Outreach to Rhodes, October 16 and 17, 2018
American citizens of the Dodecanese can meet with representatives from the U.S. Embassy on Tuesday, October 16 and Wednesday, October 17, as they provide Consular and Federal Benefits Services in Rhodes. Consular services will include accepting passport applications for persons ineligible for mail-in application services and registering birth abroad to U.S. citizen parent(s) and are …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 3 October, 2018 | Topics: embassy, U.S. Citizen Services, U.S. Passports
Message for U.S. Citizens: Consular Outreach to Thessaloniki, October 4 and 5, 2018
American citizens of Northern Greece can meet with representatives from the U.S. Embassy on Thursday, October 4 and Friday, October 5, as they provide Consular and Federal Benefits Services. Consular services will include accepting passport applications for persons ineligible for mail-in application services and registering birth abroad to U.S. citizen parent(s) and are available by …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 20 September, 2018 | Topics: Federal Benefits, Messages for U.S. Citizens, U.S. Citizen Services, U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki, U.S. Passports
Demonstration Alert – U.S. Consulate General Thessaloniki
Demonstration Alert – U.S. Consulate General Thessaloniki (May 17, 2018) Location: Announced gathering point is Venizelos statue (78, Egnatia St.) followed by a march to the U.S. Consulate General Event: A demonstration protesting the relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel is expected to take place May 17, starting at 7:00 p.m. Actions to Take: Keep …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 17 May, 2018 | Topics: Messages for U.S. Citizens, Security & Emergency Messages, U.S. Citizen Services, U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki
Demonstration Alert – U.S. Embassy Athens and U.S. Consulate General Thessaloniki
Demonstration Alert – U.S. Embassy Athens and U.S. Consulate General Thessaloniki (May 15, 2018) Location: Athens – Announced gathering point is Megaro Mousikis metro station followed by a march to U.S. and Israeli Embassies Thessaloniki – Announced gathering point is Arch of Galerius – Kamara (142, Egnatia St.) followed by a march to the U.S. …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 15 May, 2018 | Topics: Messages for U.S. Citizens, Security & Emergency Messages, U.S. Citizen Services
Demonstration Alert – U.S. Embassy Athens
Demonstration Alert – U.S. Embassy Athens (April 17, 2018) Locations: Announced gathering point is Syntagma Square followed by a march to U.S Embassy Athens Announced gathering points are Arch of Galerius (Kamara) and the Venizelos statue (78 Egnatia St.) followed by separate marches to U.S. Consulate General Thessaloniki. Events: Athens – A demonstration is expected to take …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 17 April, 2018 | Topics: Messages for U.S. Citizens, Security & Emergency Messages, U.S. Citizen Services
Demonstration Alert – U. S. Embassy Athens, Greece (April 16, 2018) Location: Announced gathering point is Athens University (Propylaia- Panepistimiou Ave.) with a march to U.S. Embassy Athens. Event: A large demonstration is expected to take place today, April 16, 2018, beginning at 12 noon. Greek leftist groups intend to protest U.S. coalition action in …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 16 April, 2018 | Topics: Consular Affairs, Messages for U.S. Citizens, Notification, Security & Emergency Messages, U.S. Citizen Services
Demonstration Alert – U. S. Embassy Athens, Greece (April 14, 2018)
Locations: Syntagma Square to the U.S. Embassy Athens Event: Greek leftist and anti-war groups plan to protest U.S. action in Syria with a march to the US Embassy starting at 1800, April 14, 2018. U.S. government personnel have been advised to avoid the area. Actions to Take: -Avoid the area of the demonstration -Exercise caution …
By U.S. Embassy in Athens | 14 April, 2018 | Topics: Alert, U.S. Citizen Services
Demonstration Alert – U. S. Embassy Athens, Greece (April 13, 2018) Locations: Megaro Musikis station and park to the U.S. Embassy Downtown Thessaloniki – Venizelos Statue (78, Egnatia Street) Event: Athens – Greek leftist and anti-war groups plan to protest possible U.S. action in Syria and military presence in the Aegean and Mediterranean starting at …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 13 April, 2018 | Topics: Messages for U.S. Citizens, Security & Emergency Messages, U.S. Citizen Services, U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki
Demonstration Alert – U. S. Embassy Athens, Greece (April 3, 2018)
Demonstration Alert – U. S. Embassy Athens, Greece (April 3, 2018) Location: Announced gathering point is U.S. Embassy Athens, Greece with a march to the Israeli Embassy. Event: A demonstration is expected to take place on April 3, 2018, beginning at 5:30 p.m. Greek leftist groups and Palestinians living in Greece intend protest U.S. policy …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 3 April, 2018 | Topics: Messages for U.S. Citizens, Security & Emergency Messages, U.S. Citizen Services
Message for U.S. Citizens: Consular Outreach to Hania, Crete
Visit by Athens Consular Personnel to Hania, Crete on March 23, 2018 Athens – Residents of Crete are invited to join representatives from the U.S. Embassy on Friday, March 23, 2018, as they provide Consular, Federal Benefits and Immigration services. Consular Services will include accepting passport applications for persons NOT eligible for mail-in application services, …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 9 March, 2018 | Topics: Consular Affairs, Federal Benefits, Messages for U.S. Citizens, U.S. Citizen Services, U.S. Passports
Visit by Athens Consular Personnel to Chios on March 15 and 16, 2018
Athens – Residents of Chios are invited to join representatives from the U.S. Embassy on Thursday, March 15 and Friday, March 16, 2018, as they provide consular, federal benefits and Immigration services in Chios. Consular Services will include accepting passport applications for persons NOT eligible for mail-in application services, documenting children’s births in Greece to …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 5 March, 2018 | Topics: Consular Affairs, Federal Benefits, Immigrant Visas, Messages for U.S. Citizens, U.S. Citizen Services, U.S. Passports
Demonstration Alert – U. S. Embassy Athens, Greece (February 27, 2018)
Demonstration Alert – U. S. Embassy Athens, Greece (February 27, 2018) Location: March from Athens’ Syntagma Square up Vasilissis Sofias Avenue to the U.S. Embassy Athens. Event: PAME (Greek Trade Union Front) and the Communist Party (KKE) have announced plans to protest U.S. government policies starting at 18:30, Tuesday, February 27. Reports indicate the participants …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 27 February, 2018 | Topics: Consular Affairs, Messages for U.S. Citizens, U.S. Citizen Services, U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki
Demonstration Alert – U. S. Embassy Athens, Greece (February 4, 2018)
Demonstration Alert – U. S. Embassy Athens, Greece (February 4, 2018) Location: Announced gathering point is Syntagma Square in Athens, Greece. Event: Large demonstration (upwards of 500,000 participants according to media reports) expected to take place on February 4 beginning at 2 p.m. The group intends to protest the use of the term ‘Macedonia’ by …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 2 February, 2018 | Topics: Consular Affairs, Messages for U.S. Citizens, U.S. Citizen Services
Demonstration Alert – U. S. Embassy Athens, Greece (February 3, 2018) Location: Announced gathering point is Rigillis Square Square in Athens, Greece. Protesters will march to 131 Mesogion Avenue, political party Golden Dawn’s offices. Event: Demonstration by anarchists expected to take place on February 3 beginning at 6 p.m. The group intends to protest Golden …
Visit by Athens Consular Personnel to Thessaloniki, February 1 and February 2
Visit by Athens Consular Personnel to Thessaloniki, February 1 and 2, 2018 * U.S. Embassy Athens was unable to send this message until now because of the budget uncertainty and federal government shutdown. We plan to be in Thessaloniki again in late May (dates TBD).* American citizens of Northern Greece can meet with representatives from the U.S. …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 24 January, 2018 | Topics: Consular Affairs, Federal Benefits, Messages for U.S. Citizens, U.S. Citizen Services, U.S. Passports
Athens and Thessaloniki Demonstrations and Strikes
Demonstrations for today, Wednesday, January 24 Athens Area Time: 12:00 Where: U.S Embassy (91 Vas Sofias St) Who: Kurds living in Greece Time: 13:30 Where: Ministry of Education (37 A. Papandreou St, Marousi, near “The Athens Mall”) Who: Theater actors Thessaloniki Area Time: 15:30 Where: Thessaloniki Court House (5, 26th October St.) …
By U.S. Embassy in Athens | 24 January, 2018 | Topics: Security & Emergency Messages, U.S. Citizen Services | Tags: Demonstrations
New Travel Advisories for U.S. Travelers
Jan.10 – The State Department has launched improvement to how we share information with U.S. travelers. These improvement will provide U.S. citizens with clear, timely, and reliable safety and security information worldwide. Fact Sheet Briefing More
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 11 January, 2018 | Topics: Travel & Tourism, U.S. Citizen Services
Security and Emergency Message for U.S. Citizens: Health and Safety Announcements
U.S. Embassy Athens, Greece Security and Emergency Message for U.S. Citizens: Health and Safety Announcement from Hellenic Food Authority on Possible Tainted Food December 20, 2017 The Hellenic Food Authority (EFET) published an announcement concerning the claims of the Anarchist Group “Blackgreen Arsons” that it has poisoned specific brands and products in random …
By U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | 20 December, 2017 | Topics: Consular Affairs, Messages for U.S. Citizens, Security & Emergency Messages, U.S. Citizen Services
Travel Alert: Europe
The Department of State alerts U.S. citizens to the heightened risk of terrorist attacks throughout Europe, particularly during the holiday season. U.S. citizens should exercise caution at holiday festivals and events. This Travel Alert expires on January 31, 2018. Recent, widely-reported incidents in France, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Finland demonstrate that the …
By U.S. Embassy in Athens | 17 November, 2017 | Topics: Security & Emergency Messages, U.S. Citizen Services
Weekly Notary Service to Start at U.S. Consulate General Thessaloniki
Athens – Starting Tuesday, April 25, the U.S. Consulate General in Thessaloniki will begin offering weekly notarial service to residents of Northern Greece. The service, available to U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike, will be offered every Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. by appointment only.
By U.S. Embassy in Athens | 25 April, 2017 | Topics: News, Press Releases, U.S. Citizen Services, U.S. Consulate in Thessaloniki | Tags: Notarial Services
Ambassador Pyatt’s Remarks at the American Citizens’ Voting Party
Friday 14 October 2016 – 7:00 p.m. American Community School Good evening everybody. Thank you, Director Gialamas, for that very gracious introduction. I also want to say thank you to Rosemary and the whole team from our Consular Section. They do great, great work and I know they put a lot of effort into …
By U.S. Embassy in Athens | 17 October, 2016 | Topics: Ambassador, Consular Affairs, Events, News, Speeches, U.S. Citizen Services
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Spy Tech: Tiny Spy Plane Becomes Cold War Prize
What looks like something famous, is much smaller, and is embroiled in a web of cold war cloak-and-dagger intrigue? It sounds like the answer could be Mini-Me from the Austin Powers movies, but we were actually thinking of the D-21 supersonic spy drone. Never heard of it? It didn’t have a very long service life, but it was a tiny little unmanned SR-71 and is part of a spy story that would fit right in with James Bond, if not Austin Powers.
The little plane had a wingspan of only 19 feet — compared to the SR-71’s 56 foot span — and was 42 feet long. It could fly at about Mach 3.3 at 95,000 feet and had a range of around 3,500 miles. It shared many characteristics with its big brother including the use of titanium and a design to present a low RADAR cross-section.
The Spy Who Photographed Me
With today’s global economy and increased international cooperation, it is hard to remember just how tense the late 1960s were. Governments wanted to see what other governments were up to. Satellite technology would eventually fill that role, but even though spy satellites first appeared in 1959, they used film that had to be retrieved by an airplane as it fell from the sky and then processed. Not exactly real time. More effective satellites would have to wait for better imaging technology — see the video below for just how bad those old satellite images were. That left spy planes to do the bulk of the work.
The problem with spy planes is they can get shot down. This happened famously when Gary Powers was shot down while flying a U-2 over Russia. The best answer to that is getting higher than your adversary can shoot — and that’s the basic genesis of the famous SR-71 by Lockheed. However, Lockheed proposed several answers, including the D-21. This spy plane had no crew, so while having it shot down — as unlikely as that was — would have been embarrassing, it wouldn’t be as bad as having a pilot on the news confessing to espionage.
The Little Plane that Couldn’t
There were 38 D-21’s built. Lockheed skunkworks was responsible, so it is not surprising the craft looks a bit like a tiny SR-71 with swept back delta wings. In fact, the original plan was to launch the plane from a modified SR-71. The plane would streak over its target taking pictures, eject a film bucket — much like a satellite does — and then self destruct. A plane would either snag the film bucket or it could be recovered at sea by a ship.
In 1962, a full-scale mockup was ready, known as the Q-12. The CIA wasn’t very interested, but the air force wanted it not only as a spy plane but as a cruise missile. The 1964 initial tests carrying the thing aloft on a mothership were not promising. At first, the D-21 had aerodynamic covers put on its engines to reduce drag. They found there was no safe way to remove them at Mach 3, so they had to stop flying with the covers.
By 1966 they were trying to actually test launch the D-21. Flying at over Mach 3 at 90,000 feet, the plane was plagued with issues. A hydraulic pump failure took one plane. Another flight was successful, but the film bucket failed to eject.
It was the fourth launch that would convince Lockheed to stop launching from a modified SR-71. The video below shows disturbing footage of the result. The previous launches had the host aircraft make a loop to help separate the two craft. This time they tried from a straight and level flight path. The D-21 had an engine failure which caused it to strike the tail of the SR-71 host. The two crew ejected over the ocean, and the launch control officer, Ray Torrick, drowned before recovery.
The B-52s
This caused two major changes to the D-21 program. First, a solid rocket booster would push the plane off its carrier. Second, the carrier was to be a Boeing B-52 bomber. The drone would now attach from the top with the bottom carrying the rocket booster which was actually larger than the D-21 (now known as the D-21B).
These changes didn’t do much to change the drone’s luck. The first attempted launch in 1967 saw the drone fall off the carrier early due to a stripped nut. It would take five more attempts before there was a completely successful flight. Of the next five flights, two would be unsuccessful.
By late 1969, the D-21 started its brief operational life. The mission: spy on the Chinese nuclear test site at Lop Nor. The plan was the planes would launch from Guam, fly over Lop Nor, turn around, and fly back over the ocean to deliver the film and self destruct.
The first mission failed to turn and crashed in the Soviet Union. The second mission worked better but had a fault when trying to eject its film. While the third time was the charm for the D-21, the crew retrieving the film couldn’t say as much. The plane that should have snagged the film bucket in mid-air missed. The Navy destroyer sent to retrieve it in the ocean instead ran it over and the film sunk to the bottom of the ocean. The fourth, and mercifully final, flight crashed over China where it languished for years in a junkyard before going on exhibit at the China Aviation Museum.
By July 1971, the program was done. Satellite imaging was getting better and Nixon had been to China. Of the 38 built, 17 remain in storage at the Air Force boneyard. However, the really interesting thing is what happened to that very first lost D-21.
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
That first operational flight crashed in what might have been the worst possible place from the United State’s perspective: the Soviet Union. As you might expect, the Soviets gathered up the wreckage and studied it.
The Tupolev Experimental Design Bureau opened project Voron to produce an imitation of the D21. It never flew, but the work provided valuable insights on materials and techniques for supersonic aircraft and missiles. However, by the time Voron would be something to build, the Soviets, too, were betting on spy satellites.
It is amazing how much expense and trouble governments will go through to spy on each other. Of course, all of this was highly classified in its own time. Corona — the first spy satellites — were classified until 1995. Many of the D-21 records were classified until late last year. The last link on that page has some great pictures that are poorly scanned. There are other interesting tidbits including directions on how to deal with public sightings or a crash that is visible to the public.
We always find it interesting to catch up on recently declassified material, especially when it is high tech. Did you know the US stole a Soviet moon lander? But don’t worry, the Russians stole one from the US, too.
All photos are public domain except for:
D-21 wreck in Chinese Aviation Museum by [N Ezov], CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Posted in Hackaday Columns, HistoryTagged cold war, satellite imagery, soviet, spy plane, spy satellite, SR-71
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Read more from this series:
SpyTech
Spy Tech: Nonlinear Junction Detectors
Spy Tech: Stealing A Moon Probe
Spy Tech: How An Apollo Capsule Landed In Michigan After A Layover In The USSR
26 thoughts on “Spy Tech: Tiny Spy Plane Becomes Cold War Prize”
Jan Helebrant (@jhelebrant) says:
reminds me the XR-7 Thunder Dart project I heard some years ago:
http://www.hyperscale.com/2013/galleries/xr772pd_1.htm
But XR-7 was planned to be an piloted aircraft.
5trikeforCe says:
The XR-7 Thunderdart was a fictional aircraft designed by the Testor’s model company in 1/72 scale. That’s much too small to put real pilots on board. What is this? An airplane made for ants?
YGDES says:
” Ray Torrick ”
You can’t invent this name :-D
Survived by his twin brother, Rhett.
Well someone invented the name.
S_Hennig says:
Well, anything was better than project Pluto…
zh84stephen says:
Yes. One of the worst ideas in military history. The only weapon I have ever heard of that couldn’t even be tested because just flying the thing was nearly equivalent to declaring nuclear war.
Engine was tested. Actual cruise missile? Nope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
“In fact, the original plan was to launch the plane from a modified SR-71. ”
In fact, the original plan was to launch the plan from an M-21, which like the Air Force’s SR-71 and YF-12A aircraft was a design variant based on the A-12 aircraft that Lockheed built for the CIA. It’s a pedantic point, but these were all unique purpose built aircraft under separate programs, not modifications made to an existing aircraft.
The only remaining MD-21 Blackbird can be seen at Seattle’s Museum of Flight. It’s pretty cool.
smellsofbikes says:
I’ve seen three. I think there are quite a few more. Wikipedia lists 13. Those might not all be MD21’s, but they are all D-21’s of some variety.
There is only one surviving M-21 Blackbird in the world. It is on display at the Museum of Flight. It has a D-21 mounted on its pylon.
In 1997 I visited New York, there is a aircraft carrier from the vietnam era on display that i visited.
I was surprised to find a MD-21 on the deck
ar0cketman says:
Apparently, there are a dozen surviving examples on display:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21#Aircraft_on_display
Those are D-21 drones, not M-21 Blackbirds. The M-21 on display at Museum of Flight is the last of its kind. It also has a D-21 mounted on its pylon.
The M-21 was a purpose built aircraft for deploying the D-21 drones. Like the SR-71 and YF-12A, the M-21 is in the Blackbird family of aircraft which were based on the A-12 Oxcart design.
“It is amazing how much expense and trouble governments will go through to spy on each other. ”
Ever get that drone back from Iran?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-16095823
According to rumor about this, the only way the US public became aware of this program is some random person was wandering around the Montham Davis boneyard and found one sitting out in the open where anyone could see it, took some pictures, and people started asking questions. All this secrecy, and then they leave one where (at the time) any US citizen could walk in and look around.
iowncalculus says:
I distinctly remember seeing one, dusty as hell, behind a chain-link fence at Pima Air & Space. It’s since been properly restored and moved into the SR71’s hangar.
Daniel Duke says:
Yeah, I was at Pima Air & Space museum April last year and saw it sitting under the wing of the SR71, looking in great condition. https://tinyurl.com/y2qf3jsc
MRE says:
That’s Davis-Monthan. And the boneyard facility is not open to the public in wuchxa way thatxanyone can just walk in and wander around. It’s still a high security facility. There are scheduled tours, but you have to stay on the bus. There are areas not toured by the bus, and there are more and less secured areas.
While it is probable that it was sitting out, in a secured area, it’s unlikely that it was some random civi taking a Sunday stroll and just stumbled over it.
Despite the Corona program being officially declassified in 1995, I had an old copy of Popular Science or Popular Mechanics from years earlier that detailed how the Corona system worked. One of those “Gee, I guess we should *officially* declassify this, since we already released the information 20 or more years ago.” things.
scoldog says:
AMARC originally had all 13 surviving drones in their collection at the Davis Monthan boneyard
http://www.habu.org/lockheed/landis_D-21_Storage_At_DM_01.jpg
There are 13 off them on display.
AMARC at Davis Monthan originally had all 13 of them.
https://www.amarcexperience.com/ui/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23&catid=8&Itemid=159
One has been fully restored is in the Pima Air Museum next door, but apparently at least one is still in boneyard(as off 2013)
https://www.gettyimages.com.au/detail/news-photo/lockheed-d-21-reconnoissance-drone-is-seen-with-other-news-photo/473575928
Still looking on Google maps trying to find it
ulegan says:
It’s not there anymore.
You can still see it in Google maps https://www.google.com/maps/@32.15371,-110.84256,95m/data=!3m1!1e3
In Google Earth you can see it disappeared after August 2017
Google maps says that map was updated 2019
if anyone is interested the air museum at the Charles Schultz airport in northern California has a D21 (or at least did 2 years ago)
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You are here: Home » Regional news » Asia » ‘Evolution, not revolution key to Brunei’s continued prosperity’
‘Evolution, not revolution key to Brunei’s continued prosperity’
By Waleed PD Mahdini
Mr Robert Fenn, British High Commissioner to Brunei Darussalam, gestures during an interview with the
Borneo Bulletin. – SYAFIQ AFFENDY
“My first thought about Brunei-British relations is that it is in very good nick”, was how Mr Robert Fenn,
the new British High Commissioner to Brunei Darussalam, aptly summarised the strong bilateral relations
between the Sultanate and the United Kingdom in an exclusive interview with the Borneo Bulletin
The British envoy was responding to the question about what his plans were to further develop this
relationship, in which he said: “It ain’t broke, so don’t fix it. This is a phrase that I heard from many
stakeholders in London, from the Ministry of Defence, Shell and from many vice-chancellors in UK
universities.”
Mr Fenn also cited a timely quote from the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who had urged Londoners
“particularly during Ramadhan, to find out more about Islam, increase your understanding and learning,
even fast for a day with your Muslim neighbours and break your fast at the local mosque. I would be very
surprised if you didn’t find that you share more in common than you thought”.
“There are valuable lessons that people of all backgrounds can learn from Islam, such as the importance of
community spirit, family ties, compassion and helping the less fortunate, all of which lie at the very heart of
the teachings of Ramadhan,” he added.
Even though the basis of the bilateral relation has always been firm, “I’m not complacent. I don’t take the
strength of the relationship for granted”, the high commissioner said, adding that hard work from both
parties is needed to keep the ties in tip-top shape.
Mr Fenn, who presented his letters of credentials to His Majesty the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei
Darussalam on August 7, after having served as the British Deputy High Commissioner to Cyprus, added
that he had developed a catchphrase to summarise how best to further develop the strong bilateral
“Evolution, not revolution. I see both the UK and Brunei as organisms that can evolve, which is agile and
can respond to change. As the theory of evolution suggests – which was a scientific theory that came from
studies right here in Borneo by Alfred Russell Wallace, who was a contemporary of Charles Darwin – it’s
not the biggest animals that thrive, it’s the animals that are most responsive to change that do, and I see
both the UK and Brunei that can do just that,” the British High Commissioner said.
Oil and gas, education and defence are recognised as the main pillars in the bedrock of Brunei-British
relations, in which “these sectors are in the hands of experts”, said Mr Fenn, deferring to the fact that “these
highly technical areas should be developed through the hands of these experts”.
“Brunei has been an intelligent consumer of expertise, it has the best consultants and international partners,
and I am proud that over the years, many of these partners have been British,” he said. Further highlighting
his role here in Brunei, he added: “It’s my job to spot out opportunities to ensure that this relationship is not
a two-way street. That it’s not just Bruneian students studying in UK but also for faculties, institutions and
research centres in the UK to come to Brunei to study.”
“The UK has been the partner of choice for Brunei under its first economic paradigm that is oil and gas, so I
want to ensure that the UK is also your partner of choice as you embark on your next economic paradigm,”
affirmed Mr Fenn.
Mr Robert Fenn praised the example of the Brunei Economic Development Board that, “spots blockages in
the (economic) diversification process, tackles it one by one and makes things happen”.
Touching briefly on what that next economic paradigm could be for the Sultanate, the high commissioner
said: “We don’t know what that will look like yet, but there are already a number of niches that you are
targeting in the global economy, through this concept of purity and authenticity, such as your Halal
branding, Islamic banking and so on, which aims to deliver high-end products and services”.
“What’s important is not to impose some kind of ersatz, where the ideas that are proposed don’t fit here, so
I urge Bruneians to have the self-confidence to be themselves and utilise a unique cocktail of an intelligent
‘pick and mix’ for your next economic paradigm,” he added.
« The Halal Food Economy
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National Holiday – Independence Day (November 28)
Posted on November 28, 2014 by Hawaiian Kingdom
November 28th is the most important national holiday in the Hawaiian Kingdom. It is the day Great Britain and France formally recognized the Hawaiian Islands as an “independent state” in 1843, and has since been celebrated as “Independence Day,” which in the Hawaiian language is “La Ku‘oko‘a.” Here follows the story of this momentous event from the Hawaiian Kingdom Board of Education history textbook titled “A Brief History of the Hawaiian People” published in 1891.
The First Embassy to Foreign Powers—In February, 1842, Sir George Simpson and Dr. McLaughlin, governors in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, arrived at Honolulu on business, and became interested in the native people and their government. After a candid examination of the controversies existing between their own countrymen and the Hawaiian Government, they became convinced that the latter had been unjustly accused. Sir George offered to loan the government ten thousand pounds in cash, and advised the king to send commissioners to the United States and Europe with full power to negotiate new treaties, and to obtain a guarantee of the independence of the kingdom.
Accordingly Sir George Simpson, Haalilio, the king’s secretary, and Mr. Richards were appointed joint ministers-plenipotentiary to the three powers on the 8th of April, 1842.
Mr. Richards also received full power of attorney for the king. Sir George left for Alaska, whence he traveled through Siberia, arriving in England in November. Messrs. Richards and Haalilio sailed July 8th, 1842, in a chartered schooner for Mazatlan, on their way to the United States*
*Their business was kept a profound secret at the time.
Proceedings of the British Consul—As soon as these facts became known, Mr. Charlton followed the embassy in order to defeat its object. He left suddenly on September 26th, 1842, for London via Mexico, sending back a threatening letter to the king, in which he informed him that he had appointed Mr. Alexander Simpson as acting-consul of Great Britain. As this individual, who was a relative of Sir George, was an avowed advocate of the annexation of the islands to Great Britain, and had insulted and threatened the governor of Oahu, the king declined to recognize him as British consul. Meanwhile Mr. Charlton laid his grievances before Lord George Paulet commanding the British frigate “Carysfort,” at Mazatlan, Mexico. Mr. Simpson also sent dispatches to the coast in November, representing that the property and persons of his countrymen were in danger, which introduced Rear-Admiral Thomas to order the “Carysfort” to Honolulu to inquire into the matter.
Recognition by the United States—Messres. Richards and Haalilio arrived in Washington early in December, and had several interviews with Daniel Webster, the Secretary of State, from whom they received an official letter December 19th, 1842, which recognized the independence of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and declared, “as the sense of the government of the United States, that the government of the Sandwich Islands ought to be respected; that no power ought to take possession of the islands, either as a conquest or for the purpose of the colonization; and that no power ought to seek for any undue control over the existing government, or any exclusive privileges or preferences in matters of commerce.” *
*The same sentiments were expressed in President Tyler’s message to Congress of December 30th, and in the Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations, written by John Quincy Adams.
Success of the Embassy in Europe—The king’s envoys proceeded to London, where they had been preceded by the Sir George Simpson, and had an interview with the Earl of Aberdeen, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on the 22d of February, 1843.
Lord Aberdeen at first declined to receive them as ministers from an independent state, or to negotiate a treaty, alleging that the king did not govern, but that he was “exclusively under the influence of Americans to the detriment of British interests,” and would not admit that the government of the United States had yet fully recognized the independence of the islands.
Sir George and Mr. Richards did not, however, lose heart, but went on to Brussels March 8th, by a previous arrangement made with Mr. Brinsmade. While there, they had an interview with Leopold I., king of the Belgians, who received them with great courtesy, and promised to use his influence to obtain the recognition of Hawaiian independence. This influence was great, both from his eminent personal qualities and from his close relationship to the royal families of England and France.
Encouraged by this pledge, the envoys proceeded to Paris, where, on the 17th, M. Guizot, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, received them in the kindest manner, and at once engaged, in behalf of France, to recognize the independence of the islands. He made the same statement to Lord Cowley, the British ambassador, on the 19th, and thus cleared the way for the embassy in England.
They immediately returned to London, where Sir George had a long interview with Lord Aberdeen on the 25th, in which he explained the actual state of affairs at the islands, and received an assurance that Mr. Charlton would be removed. On the 1st of April, 1843, the Earl of Aberdeen formally replied to the king’s commissioners, declaring that “Her Majesty’s Government are willing and have determined to recognize the independence of the Sandwich Islands under their present sovereign,” but insisting on the perfect equality of all foreigners in the islands before the law, and adding that grave complaints had been received from British subjects of undue rigor exercised toward them, and improper partiality toward others in the administration of justice. Sir George Simpson left for Canada April 3d, 1843.
Recognition of the Independence of the Islands—Lord Aberdeen, on the 13th of June, assured the Hawaiian envoys that “Her Majesty’s government had no intention to retain possession of the Sandwich Islands,” and a similar declaration was made to the governments of France and the United States.
At length, on the 28th of November, 1843, the two governments of France and England united in a joint declaration to the effect that “Her Majesty, the queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and His Majesty, the king of the French, taking into consideration the existence in the Sandwich Islands of a government capable of providing for the regularity of its relations with foreign nations have thought it right to engage reciprocally to consider the Sandwich Islands as an independent state, and never to take possession, either directly or under the title of a protectorate, or under any other form, of any part of the territory of which they are composed…”
This was the final act by which the Hawaiian Kingdom was admitted within the pale of civilized nations. Finding that nothing more could be accomplished for the present in Paris, Messrs. Richards and Haalilio returned to the United States in the spring of 1844. On the 6th of July they received a dispatch from Mr. J.C. Calhoun, the Secretary of State, informing them that the President regarded the statement of Mr. Webster and the appointment of a commissioner “as a full recognition on the part of the United States of the independence of the Hawaiian Government.”
Concert at Ward – La Ku‘oko‘a (Independence Day)
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Waimanalo March – La Ku‘oko‘a (Independence Day)
Posted in Education, National | 8 Replies
O‘ahu Island Convoy – La Ku‘oko‘a (Independence Day)
OHA Trustees’ Legal Counsel Robert Klein Advises Board to Commit a Crime
The Office of Information Practices’s (OIP) investigation and conclusion that the Board of Trustees (BOT) of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) violated the Sunshine Law effectively voided the BOT’s May 9, 2014 letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry rescinding OHA’s CEO Dr. Kamana‘opono Crabbe’s May 5, 2014 letter to the Secretary seeking clarification on the legal status of the Hawaiian Kingdom under international law.
At the center of the controversy was whether or not the BOT violated the Sunshine Law, which according to the OIP Guide to the Sunshine Law for State and County Boards, “the intent of the Sunshine Law is to open up governmental processes to public scrutiny and participation by requiring state and county boards to conduct their business as openly as possible. The Legislature expressly declared that ‘it is the policy of this State that the formation and conduct of public policy—the discussions, deliberation, decisions, and actions of governmental agencies—shall be conducted as openly as possible.’”
The BOT attempted to justify their actions to rescind by taking the position that there was no Board meeting in Washington, D.C., that would have come under the scrutiny of the Sunshine Law. According to the OIP, “OHA’s argument is that the OHA Board’s decision to rescind the Crabbe Letter did not require a meeting, because the Crabbe Letter had no legal effect and the Rescission Letter was consistent with previously adopted OHA policy.”
It is unimaginable how the BOT could have construed Dr. Crabbe’s Letter as being inconsistent with OHA policy, when he was merely seeking information in order to inform the Trustees regarding policy. Dr. Crabbe’s Letter opened with, “As the Chief Executive Officer of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, being a governmental agency of the State of Hawai‘i, the law places on me, as a fiduciary, strict standards of diligence, responsibility and honesty. My executive staff, as public officials, carry out the policies and directives of the Trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs in the service of the Native Hawaiian community. We are responsible to take care, through all lawful means, that we apply the best skills and diligence in the servicing of this community. It is in this capacity and in the interest of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs I am submitting this communication and formal request.”
After Dr. Crabbe explained the situation and circumstances that led him to seek clarification on the legal status of the Hawaiian Kingdom under international law, he concluded, “While I await the opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel, I will be requesting approval from the Trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs that we refrain from pursuing a Native Hawaiian governing entity until we can confirm that the Hawaiian Kingdom, as an independent sovereign State, does not continue to exist under international law and that we, as individuals, have not incurred any criminal liability in this pursuit.”
OHA did hold a meeting in Washington, D.C., on May 9, 2014, where Dr. Crabbe could have made his request to the Trustees as stated in his letter, but instead the Trustees held a closed meeting that did not include Dr. Crabbe. In this meeting, not all of the Trustees were in Washington, D.C., but some were still in Hawai‘i.
The meeting was a haphazard mix of emails, telephone conversations and face-to-face conversations amongst the Trustees, which concluded Dr. Crabbe’s Letter to be “void as an ultra vires act.” This resulted in another letter, with OHA’s letterhead, sent to Secretary Kerry rescinding Dr. Crabbe’s Letter where all nine Trustees provided their signatures. This so-called letter to rescind clearly showed that the action taken by the Trustees was a Board matter and therefore subject to the scrutiny of the Sunshine Law. Since the OIP concluded that the meeting was illegal, anything stemming from an illegal meeting is “void,” which includes the Trustees decision that concluded Dr. Crabbe’s Letter was “void as an ultra vires act.” In other words, the only valid act by OHA in these circumstances is Dr. Crabbe’s May 5 letter to Secretary Kerry.
OHA Trustees Dan Ahuna and Hulu Lindsey removed their names from the May 9 letter after conferring with Dr. Crabbe and both concurred that he was authorized to send his letter to Secretary Kerry to seek clarifications.
The other violation of the Sunshine Law was when the Trustees refused to accept oral testimony on an agenda item of a BOT meeting on May 19, 2014 in Honolulu where the Trustees were going into closed session to discuss the fate of Dr. Crabbe and his letter to Secretary Kerry. It was stated on the agenda that the BOT would go into executive session for “Consultation with Board Counsel Robert G. Klein re: questions and issues pertaining to the Board’s powers and duties with respect to Contract Number 2744, Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Kamana‘opono Crabbe, and to consider appropriate action with respect to the conduct of Dr. Crabbe.”
According to the minutes of that meeting, attorney Dexter Kaiama, stated to the BOT:
“The Sunshine Law states that any meeting held by the Trustees is required to allow public community testimony. He respectfully submits that failure to allow public testimony prior to going into executive session would be a violation of the Sunshine Laws. He is aware that OHA is in receipt of an OIP complaint regarding its May 9, 2014, letter signed by the Board of Trustees. The complaint questions the appropriateness of the actions taken by the Trustees at that time. In order to keep with the spirit of the law, he offers that no executive session be taken regarding item II.A. relating to Dr. Kamana‘opono Crabbe. The letter is inextricably intertwined with the actions the Board seeks to discuss this morning concerning Dr. Kamana‘opono Crabbe. If those actions of May 9th violate Sunshine Laws then these additional actions may also be in violation. He asks that no action take place until the Office of Information Practices completes its investigation.”
Former Hawai‘i Supreme Court Justice Robert G. Klein, who is retained by the BOT as their legal counsel, responded by stating:
“the Board is entitled to go into executive session on this matter without public comment because this is purely an executive session matter. With respect to the letter it is irrelevant to the decision to go into executive session inasmuch as this meeting has been duly and properly noticed for the purposes of the agenda item. Due to the fact that there is no public portion of the meeting it is not necessary to take public comment. He respectfully disagrees with attorney Kaiama and advises the Board that it is free to go into executive session without public comment.”
In light of the OIP’s findings, the advise given to the BOT at this meeting by their legal counsel was not only bad advise, but it was Klein’s legal advise for the BOT to violate the Sunshine Law, which carries a punishment of up to a year in prison, a fine, and removal from the Board. It is not clear whether the BOT consulted Klein during their “unlawful” meeting in Washington, D.C., but he was clearly consulted during the Board meeting in Honolulu on May 19, 2014 as reflected in the minutes. If he was consulted in Washington, D.C., he again gave advice to violate the Sunshine Law in light of the OIP’s investigation. As a former Hawai‘i Supreme Court Justice, Klein cannot claim ignorance of the Sunshine Law and it would appear to be a case of legal malpractice at the very least.
The attorney that gave the best legal advice at the Honolulu meeting was Mr. Kaiama, but the Trustees didn’t listen when they should have.
Posted in National | 21 Replies
Office of Informational Practices Concludes Office of Hawaiian Affairs Violated Sunshine Law
An opinion published by the State of Hawai‘i Lieutenant Governor’s Office’s Office of Information Practices (OIP) dated November 7, 2014, concluded that the Trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs violated the Sunshine Law. Willful violation of the Sunshine Law is a misdemeanor. Hawai‘i misdemeanors are crimes that carry a maximum sentence of no more than one year imprisonment and a fine not exceeding $2,000, and removal from the Board. The opinion was authored by OIP Staff Attorney, Jennifer Z. Brooks.
The opinion stems from a letter by OHA CEO Dr. Kamana‘opono Crabbe to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry requesting answers to the following questions.
• First, does the Hawaiian Kingdom, as a sovereign independent State, continue to exist as a subject of international law?
• Second, if the Hawaiian Kingdom continues to exist, do the sole-executive agreements bind the United States today?
• Third, if the Hawaiian Kingdom continues to exist and the sole-executive agreements are binding on the United States, what effect would such a conclusion have on United States domestic legislation, such as the Hawai‘i Statehood Act, 73 Stat. 4, and Act 195?
• Fourth, if the Hawaiian Kingdom continues to exist and the sole-executive agreements are binding on the United States, have the members of the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission, Trustees and staff of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs incurred criminal liability under international law?”
After the letter was sent, the OHA Trustees lashed out at Dr. Crabbe and sought to terminate him for simply asking the questions. This action prompted massive support for Dr. Crabbe amongst the Hawaiian community, which ultimately led to the investigation by the OIP.
Kaua‘i and Ni‘ihau Island Convoy – La Ku‘oko‘a (Independence Day)
Royal Order of Kamehameha I Aligns with AHCC Resolution 14-28 Acknowledging Continuity of the Hawaiian Kingdom
A March in Celebration of Lā Kūʻokoʻa, Hawaiian Independence Day
Hōlualoa, Kona, Hawaiʻi
NAUE I KE ALOHA ʻĀINA!
Old Airport to Keauhou Small Boat Harbor
Hawaiians and supporters across the islands will march on Lā Kūʻokoʻa (Hawaiian Independence Day) on Friday November 28, 2014 in an effort to enhance awareness in our communities and throughout the world about one of the longest standing National Holidays of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. Marchers will gather at the Old Kona Airport across from Makala Blvd at 7:30am for opening thoughts and pule. The march will begin at 8:00am and will cover approximately eight miles starting from the Old Airport in the ahupuaʻa of Keahuolū and ending in the ahupuaʻa of Keauhou at the birth site of Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III).
In Hawaiian, naue means to march. It also means to move, to shake, to tremble, to vibrate and to quake, as the earth. Aloha ʻāina means love of oneʻs land or of oneʻs country. It means patriot, a patriot who illustrates a deep love for the land. On this day of national independence, we hope that our lāhui will naue. That is, this march is meant to illustrate a true and deep love that will shake, vibrate, tremble and move our land and people towards our true patriotism.
“This is a march of aloha. This is a march of love for our land and love for our country. We march together as one with the hope that our claim to national independence may be seen and heard by our local communities and throughout the world. Aloha ʻ āina is alive and it will never die,” says Hawaiian medium preschool teacher and march organizer, Kahoʻokahi Kanuha.
On July 8, 1842 King Kauikeaouli dispatched three delegates to America and Europe to ultimately secure recognition of Hawaiian independence by the major powers of the world. The Hawaiian Delegation, led by Timoteo Haʻalilio, was assured independence by the heads of state of the United States, Great Britain and France and on November 28, 1843 the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was officially recognized as an independent country by Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland along with King Louis-Philippe of France through the signing of the Anglo-Franco proclamation at the Court of London, thereby making Hawaiʻi the first non-European nation in the world to be recognized as an independent country. Lā Kūʻokoʻa was celebrated throughout the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi from 1843 until 1893, when Queen Liliʻuokalani was illegally overthrown on January 17th with the assistance of the US Minister to Hawaiʻi, John L. Stevens.
The United States of America’s only claim to acquiring Hawaiʻi is the Newland’s resolution, a joint resolution passed by Congress and signed by President McKinley on July 7, 1898. A joint resolution, though, is limited to United States territory, which Hawaiʻi obviously was not and is not a part of. Because a treaty was never ratified between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, Hawaiʻi has been and continues to be an independent country under an illegal and prolonged military occupation by the United States of America.
Building off of the momentum of the Department of Interior hearings held across the archipelago this summer, unity marches will also be held on the islands of Maui, Molokaʻi and Oʻahu to raise awareness in communities about Hawaiian history, our national heritage and of the ever-growing support for a free and independent Hawaiʻi.
Kaho‘okahi Kanuha
naueikealohaaina@gmail.com
Twitter: @nauekealohaaina
#naueikealohaaina
#lakuokoa
#alohaainaoiaio
The Forgotten War of Aggression Against a Neutral State
U.S. Representative Robert Hitt, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, introduced the joint resolution of annexation of the Hawaiian Islands into the House of Representatives for debate on May 17, 1898. Hitt and other members of Congress attempt to justify the violation of international law, which ultimately passes the House of Representatives on June 15th and moves over to the Senate the following day.
What these records reveal is that the act of war against the Hawaiian Kingdom, which stems from the United States admitted illegal overthrow of its government and deliberate failure to reinstate in 1893, was done with full knowledge and intent. The underlying purpose for the joint resolution was to take advantage of their puppet government that was installed by the United States Minister Stevens in 1893 calling itself in 1894 a so-called Republic, in order to seize the Hawaiian Islands during the Spanish-American War as a war measure. At the center of the plan was clearly the violation of Hawaiian neutrality under international law.
The Congressional record is foretelling of what the Hawaiian Islands have become today with 118 military sites that cover 20% of the territory of Hawai‘i and is headquarters for the United States Pacific Command together with its component commands of the U.S. Pacific Fleet headquartered at Pearl Harbor, U.S. Army Pacific headquartered at Fort Shafter, U.S. Marine Forces Pacific headquartered at Kane‘ohe Bay, and U.S. Pacific Air Forces headquartered at Hickam Air Base. All five of the headquarters are located on the Island of O‘ahu.
Here follows a snippet of Hitt’s testimony on the floor of the House of Representatives on June 11, 1898, and his reliance on military authorities that advocate seizing the Hawaiian Islands as a military necessity who testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (vol. 31, Congressional Record, p. 5771-5772):
Mr. HITT. I accept the opinion of men like Admiral Walker and Captain Mahan and General Schofield, Admiral Belknap, General Alexander, and Admiral Dupont and Chief Engineer Melville. It is a long list of great sailors and soldiers, distinguished strategists and authorities. The striking fact is that there is no dissent among them. These men, who are authorities, have all concurred as to the great importance of the islands. On one of the islands is Pearl Harbor, now unimproved, a possible stronghold and a refuge for a fleet, which, if fortified by the expenditure of half a million dollars and garrisoned and aided by the militia of the island and its resources, can be made impregnable to any naval force, however large.
I speak of a naval force. To capture it there must be a land force also. The possession of all the islands was stated by these able men, who were before the committee, to be essential, as they would furnish a valuable militia to promptly cooperate with a garrison of one or two regiments of artillery until, in the short distance from our shore, we could reinforce them with abundant military strength to repel the assault of the disembarking troops, who must come many thousands of miles farther than our own.
This is not my mere assertion or opinion on so grave a technical question. I am merely giving some of the leading points made by those whose names command the respect of the military and naval professions throughout the world and who have said that the possession not only of Pearl Harbor but of all that little group of islands is to us a necessity. I will give some expressions used by these distinguished authorities. I might give many more.
Captain Mahan, the most distinguished writer and authority of our time on the history of sea power, says:
“It is obvious that if we do not hold the islands ourselves we cannot expect the neutrals in the war to prevent the other belligerent from occupying them; nor can the inhabitants themselves prevent such occupation. The commercial value is not great enough to provoke neutral interposition. In short, in war we should need a larger Navy to defend the Pacific coast, because we should have not only to defend our own coast, but to prevent, by naval force, an enemy from occupying the islands; whereas, if we preoccupied them, fortifications could preserve them to us. In my opinion it is not practicable for any trans-Pacific country to invade our Pacific coast without occupying Hawaii as a base.”
General Schofield, who spent three months on the islands and made a careful survey of Pearl River Harbor, stated to our committee:
“Its secure anchorage for large fleets, its distance from the sea, beyond the reach of the guns of war ships, and the great ease with which the entrance to the harbor could be defended by batteries so as to make it a perfectly safe refuge for merchant shipping or naval cruisers, or even a fleet which might find it necessary under any circumstances to take refuge there; for coaling grounds, for navy-yard repair shops, storehouses, and everything of that kind.
The most important feature of all is that it economizes the naval force rather than increases it. It is capable of absolute defense by shore batteries; so that a naval fleet, after going there and replenishing its supplies and making what repairs are needed, can go away and leave the harbor perfectly safe under protection of the army. Then arises at once the question why this harbor will be of consequence to the United States. It has not been such subjects the study of a lifetime till now; but the conditions of the present war, it seems to me, ought to make it clear to everybody.
At this moment the Government is fitting out quite a large fleet of steamers at San Francisco to carry large detachments of troops and military supplies of all kinds to the Philippine Islands. Honolulu is almost in the direct route. That fleet, of course, will want very much to recoal at Honolulu, thus saving that amount of freight and tonnage for essential stores to be carried with it. Otherwise they would have to carry coal enough to carry them all the way from San Francisco to Manila and that would occupy a large amount of the carrying capacity of the fleet, and if they recoal at Honolulu all that will be saved. More than that, a fleet is liable at any time to meet with stress of weather, or perhaps a heavy storm, and there might be an accident to the machinery which will make it necessary to put into the nearest port possible for repairs and additional supplies. By the time it reaches there its coal supply may be well-nigh exhausted; it then has to replenish its coal supply to carry it to whatever port it could reach.
If I am not misinformed in regard to the laws of neutrality, the supply of coal that can be taken on board at neutral ports is only sufficient to bring it back to the nearest home port, and not enough to carry it across the ocean, so that if we had to regard Honolulu as a neutral port, we could only load up coal enough to bring us back to San Francisco. Now, let us suppose, on the other hand, that the Spanish navy in the Pacific as well as in the Atlantic, or both, were a little stronger than ours instead of being somewhat weaker. The first thing they would do would be to go and take possession of the Sandwich Islands and make them the base of naval operations against the Pacific coast.
You have only to consider to state of mind which exists all along the Atlantic coast under the erroneous apprehension that the Spanish fleet might possibly assail our coast to see what would be the case if the Spanish fleet were a good deal stronger than ours and took possession of Honolulu and made it a base of operations in attacking the points on the Pacific coast. We would be absolutely powerless, because we would have no fleet there to dispute the possession of the Sandwich Islands, whereas, if we held that place and fortified it so that a foreign navy could not take it, it could not operate against the Pacific coast at all, for it could not bring coal enough across the Pacific Ocean to sustain an attack on the Pacific coast. Then the Sandwich Islands would be a base for naval operations just as Puerto Rico is against the Atlantic coast. If Spain is strong enough to hold Puerto Rico, so that a squadron can replenish with supplies—coal, ammunition, and provisions—there, the whole Spanish fleet can raid our Atlantic coast at will.
It happens that in this war we have picked out the only nation in the world that is a little weaker than ourselves. The Spanish fleet on the Asiatic station was the only one of all the fleets we could have overcome as we did. Of course that can not again happen, for we will not be able to pick up so weak an enemy next time. We are liable at any time to get into a war with a nation which has a more powerful fleet than ours, and it is of vital importance, therefore, if we can, to hold the point from which they can conduct operations against our Pacific coast. Especially is that true until the Nicaragua Canal is finished, because we can not send a fleet from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We can no send them around Cape Horn and repel an attack there. If we had the canal finished, we would be much better off in that respect; but even then we would want the possession of a base very much.
We got a preemption title to those islands through the volunteer action of our American missionaries who went there and civilized and Christianized those people and established a Government that has no parallel in the history of the world, considering its age, and we made a preemption which nobody in the world thinks of disputing, provided we perfect out title. If we do not perfect it in due time, we have lost those islands. Any else can come in and undertake to get them.
So it seems to me the time is now ripe when this Government should do that which has been in contemplation from the beginning as a necessary consequence of the first action of our people in going there and settling those islands and establishing a good Government and education and the action of our Government from that time forward on every suitable occasion in claiming the right of American influence over those islands, absolutely excluding any other foreign power from any interference.”
The same eminent and experience soldier, when asked whether it would be sufficient to have Pearl Harbor without the islands, said we ought to have the islands to hold the harbor; that if left free and neutral complications would arise with foreign nations, who would take advantage of a weak little Republic with claims for damages enforced by war ships, as is frequently seen. If annexed, we would settle any dispute with a foreign nation; that we would be much stronger if we owned the islands as part of our territory, and would then also have the resources of the islands, which are so futile, for military supplies; that if we do not have the political control they may become Japanese; and we would be surrounded by a hostile people.
Admiral Walker, who has had long experience in the waters of the Hawaiian Islands, emphatically confirmed the views of General Schofield, especially that it would cost far less to protect the Pacific coast with the Hawaiian Islands than without them; that it would be taking a point of advantage instead of giving it to your enemy.
Admiral Dupont, in a report made as long ago as 1851, expressed his views in these words:
“It is impossible to estimate too highly the value and importance of the Sandwich Islands, whether in a commercial or military point of view. Should circumstances ever place them in our hands, they would prove the most important acquisition we could make in the whole Pacific Ocean—an acquisition intimately connected with our commercial and naval supremacy in those seas.”
Posted in Education, International Relations | 12 Replies
An Act of War of Aggression: United States Invasion of the Hawaiian Kingdom on August 12, 1898
Posted on November 8, 2014 by Hawaiian Kingdom
Incredible as it may sound, the United States committed an act of war of aggression against the Hawaiian Kingdom, being a neutral State, when it was at war with Spain in 1898, and that the United States has been in a war of aggression against Hawai‘i ever since. This war of aggression has lasted over 116 years, the longest ever since the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). According to Oppenheim’s International Law (7th ed.), p. 685, “hostilities against a neutral [State] on the part of either belligerent are acts of war, and not mere violations of neutrality. Thus the German attack on Belgium in 1914, to enable German troops to march through Belgian territory and attack France, created war between Germany and Belgium.”
The United States intent and purpose was to deliberately violate the neutrality of the Hawaiian Kingdom in order to fight Spain in its colonies of Guam and the Philippines, and after the war to use the Hawaiian Islands as a military outpost to protect the west coast of the United States as well as a base of operations for future wars. The action taken by the United States draws parallels to Germany’s occupation of neutral States during World War I and II, which at the time was thought of as unprecedented, but it wasn’t. The United States set the precedent in 1898.
On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded and occupied the neutral territories of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in order to fight France and Great Britain during World War II. The Nuremburg Tribunal concluded in its Nuremburg Judgment, that these invasions and subsequent occupations were unjustified acts of an aggressive war. The Tribunal stated:
“There is no evidence before the Tribunal to justify the contention that the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg were invaded by Germany because their occupation had been planned by England and France. British and French staffs had been operating in the Low Countries, but the purpose of this planning was to defend these countries in the event of a German attack.”
“The invasion of Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg was entirely without justification.”
“It was carried out in pursuance of policies long considered and prepared, and was plainly an act of aggressive war. The resolve to invade was made without any other consideration than the advancement of the aggressive policies of Germany.”
Of the three neutral States, the situation with Luxembourg bears the closest similarity to the Hawaiian Kingdom, whereby Germany also unilaterally annexed Luxembourg and initiated an aggressive campaign of “Germanization” and “Nazification” in the public schools. The United States also initiated an aggressive campaign of “Americanization” in the public schools that sought to obliterate the national character of the Hawaiian Kingdom and replace it with American patriotism.
Luxembourg was previously occupied by Germany for the same unjustified reasons from 1914-1918 during World War I.
The Hawaiian Kingdom also has Treaties of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation, with all three countries: Belgium (October 4, 1862), and the Netherlands and Luxembourg (October 16, 1862). William III, King of the Netherlands, who entered into the Dutch treaty, was also the Grand Duke of Luxembourg.
War, under international law, is considered an extension of a State’s sovereignty and therefore regulated by the laws of war as opposed to the laws of peace. International law separates the rights of belligerent States from the rights of neutral States. Laws of war—jus in bello, make up a part of customary international law until declared in law making treaties that began in the mid-nineteenth century. The first treaty was the 1856 Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law that abolished privateering, which later progressed to the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, and the 1949 Geneva Conventions. In order for the laws of peace to return, war must come to an end. If not, then the laws of war—jus in bello, remain over the regions that are affected by the war itself. For the case of neutral States being illegally occupied during a war, being an act of war of aggression, its state of war with the belligerent occupant will continue until the occupying State ceases to occupy the neutral State, and the laws of war would still apply according to the 1907 Hague Convention, IV, and the 1949 Geneva Convention, IV.
Hawaiian neutrality began with King Kamehameha III’s proclamation of neutrality during the Crimean War on May 16, 1854. Since then, the Hawaiian government worked with other Powers, to include the United States, to have Hawai‘i’s neutrality respected in all subsequent wars. Neutrality provisions were inserted in the treaties with Sweden/Norway, Spain, Germany, and Italy.
On April 7, 1855, His Majesty King Kamehameha IV opened the Legislative Assembly, and in his speech he reiterated the Kingdom’s neutrality.
“It is gratifying to me, on commencing my reign, to be able to inform you, that my relations with all the great Powers, between whom and myself exist treaties of amity, are of the most satisfactory nature. I have received from all of them, assurances that leave no room to doubt that my rights and sovereignty will be respected. My policy, as regards all foreign nations, being that of peace, impartiality and neutrality, in the spirit of the Proclamation by the late King, of the 16th May last, and of the Resolutions of the Privy Council of the 15th June and 17th July. I have given to the President of the United States, at his request, my solemn adhesion to the rule, and to the principles establishing the rights of neutrals during war, contained in the Convention between his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, and the United States, concluded in Washington on the 22nd July last.”
The aforementioned Declarations and the 1854 Russian-American Convention represented the first recognition of the right of neutral States to conduct free trade without any hindrance from war. Stricter guidelines for neutrality were later established in the 1871 Treaty of Washington between the United States and Great Britain that was negotiated during the aftermath of the American Civil War, which also formed the basis of the Alabama claims arbitration in Geneva, Switzerland.
Without justification, the United States of America is directly responsible for the violation of the neutrality of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the occupation of its territory for military purposes during the 1898 Spanish-American War. Article XXVI of the Hawaiian-Spanish Treaty of October 29, 1863, provides, “All vessels bearing the flag of Spain, shall, in time of war, receive every possible protection, short of active hostility, within the ports and waters of the Hawaiian Islands, and Her Majesty the Queen of Spain engages to respect, in time of war the neutrality of the Hawaiian Islands, and to use her good offices with all the other powers having treaties with the same, to induce them to adopt the same policy toward the said Islands.”
According to the well-known American publicist on international law, Quincy Wright’s A Study of War, 2nd ed., p. 787, “The status of neutrality reached its climax in the nineteenth century with the especial support of Great Britain and the United States.” According to Wright, the rules of neutral status “were to a considerable extent codified in the American Neutrality act (1794), the British Foreign Enlistment Act (1819), the Declaration of Paris (1856), the rules of the Treaty of Washington (1871), the Hague Conventions (1907), and the Declaration of London (1909).”
Article VI of the 1871 Treaty of Paris between the United States and Great Britain declared that a neutral government is bound “Not to permit or suffer either belligerent to make use of its ports or waters as the base of naval operations against the other, or for the purpose of renewal or augmentation of military supplies or arms, or the recruitment of men.” The United States regarded this rule as declaratory of existing customary international law of the time. This rule was reproduced in Articles 1, 2 and 4 of the 1907 Hague Convention, V, which contained these provisions—“The territory of neutral Powers is inviolable” (Article 1); “Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or convoys, whether of munitions of war or of supplies, across the territory of a neutral Power” (Article 2); “Corps of combatants cannot be formed nor recruiting agencies opened on the territory of a neutral Power to assist the belligerents” (Article 4).
There is no doubt of the binding force of the 1863 Hawaiian-Spanish Treaty, the 1871 Treaty of Washington, and customary international law, as well as assurances by the United States through diplomatic notes since 1854, which guaranteed the neutrality of the Hawaiian Islands during the Spanish-American War.
On December 18, 1893, an executive agreement was reached through exchange of diplomatic notes between United States President Grover Cleveland and the Hawaiian Kingdom’s Queen Lili‘uokalani, whereby the United States committed to the reinstatement of the constitutional government, and thereafter the Queen to grant a full pardon to a minority of insurgents who participated with the United States Legation in the unlawful overthrow of the Hawaiian government. Prior to the agreement, the United States initiated a presidential investigation on April 1, 1893 after ordering U.S. troops to return to the U.S.S. Boston that was anchored in Honolulu harbor. The investigation was concluded on October 18, 1893 and concluded that the United States was entirely responsible for the unlawful overthrow of the Hawaiian government by its military force.
President Cleveland declared in his message to Congress on December 18, 1893, “And so it happened that on the 16th day of January, 1893, between four and five o’clock in the afternoon, a detachment of marines from the United States steamer Boston, with two pieces of artillery, landed at Honolulu. The men, upwards of 160 in all, were supplied with double cartridge belts filled with ammunition and with haversacks and canteens, and were accompanied by a hospital corps with stretchers and medical supplies. This military demonstration upon the soil of Honolulu was of itself an act of war, unless made either with the consent of the Government of Hawaii or for the bona fide purpose of protecting the imperiled lives and property of citizens of the United States. But there is no pretense of any such consent on the part of the Government of the Queen, which at that time was undisputed and was both the de facto and the de jure government.” Cleveland also concluded that the provisional government that seized control of the constitutional government with U.S. troops, “was neither a government de facto nor de jure,” but self-declared.
After President Cleveland submitted a request to Congress for authorization to use force in order to reinstate the constitutional government of the Queen, which had been usurped by the United States, the House of Representatives and the Senate each passed resolutions calling upon the President to not carry out the executive agreements and also issued warnings to foreign States to not intervene in the Hawaiian situation.
U.S. Senate resolution, May 31, 1894, 53 Cong., 2nd Sess., 5499 (1894):
“Resolved, That of right it belongs wholly to the people of the Hawaiian Islands to establish and maintain their own form of government and domestic polity; that the United States ought in nowise to interfere therewith, and that any intervention in the political affairs of these islands by any other government will be regarded as an act unfriendly to the United States.”
U.S. House resolution, February 7, 1894, 53 Cong., 2nd Sess., 2000 (1894):
“Resolved, First. That it is the sense of this House that the action of the United States minister in employing United States naval forces and illegally aiding in overthrowing the constitutional Government of the Hawaiian Islands in January, 1893, and in setting up in its place a Provisional Government not republican in form and in opposition to the will of a majority of the people, was contrary to the traditions of our Republic and the spirit of our Constitution, and should be condemned. Second. That we heartily approve the principle announced by the President of the United States that interference with the domestic affairs of an independent nation is contrary to the spirit of American institutions. And it is further the sense of this House that the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to our country, or the assumption of a protectorate over them by our Government is uncalled for and inexpedient; that the people of that country should have their own line of policy, and that foreign intervention in the political affairs of the islands will not be regarded with indifference by the Government of the United States.”
Without Congressional support, the President could not deploy U.S. troops back to Hawai‘i in order to reinstate the constitutional government and the insurgents hired mercenaries from the United States to fill the vacuum left by the departure of U.S. troops. On July 4, 1894, the insurgency was renamed the Republic of Hawai‘i, which Congress over one hundred years later in its apology for the 1893 overthrow the Hawaiian Kingdom government, U.S. Public Law 103-150, admitted was “self-declared.”
The insurgents were desperately holding on to power until a new President entered office so that the original plan of annexation could be completed. On March 4, 1897, President William McKinley entered office and another attempt to annex by treaty failed as a result of protests by Queen Lili‘uokalani and by the people.
On April 25, 1898, Congress declared war on Spain. Battles were fought in the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba, as well as the Spanish colonies of the Philippines and Guam. After Commodore Dewey defeated the Spanish Fleet in the Philippines on May 1, 1898, U.S. Representative Francis Newlands, submitted House joint resolution no. 259 for the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on May 4, 1898. Six days later, hearings were held on the Newlands resolution, and in testimony submitted to the committee, U.S. military leaders called for the immediate violation of Hawaiian neutrality and occupation of the Hawaiian Islands due to military necessity for both during the war with Spain and for any future wars that the United States would enter.
U.S. Naval Captain Alfred Mahan stated to the committee: “It is obvious that if we do not hold the islands ourselves we cannot expect the neutrals in the war to prevent the other belligerent from occupying them; nor can the inhabitants themselves prevent such occupation. The commercial value is not great enough to provoke neutral interposition. In short, in war we should need a larger Navy to defend the Pacific coast, because we should have not only to defend our own coast, but to prevent, by naval force, an enemy from occupying the islands; whereas, if we preoccupied them, fortifications could preserve them to us. In my opinion it is not practicable for any trans-Pacific country to invade our Pacific coast without occupying Hawaii as a base.”
While the debates ensued in both the U.S. House and Senate, the U.S.S. Charleston, a protected cruiser, was ordered to lead a convoy of 2,500 troops to reinforce U.S. troops in the Philippines and Guam. These troops were boarded on the transport ships of the City of Peking, the City of Sidney and the Australia. In a deliberate violation of Hawaiian neutrality during the war as well as of international law, the convoy, on May 21, set a course to the Hawaiian Islands for re-coaling purposes. The convoy arrived in Honolulu on June 1, and took on 1,943 tons of coal before it left the islands on June 4.
As soon as it became apparent that the self-declared Republic of Hawai‘i, a puppet regime of the United States since 1893, had welcomed the U.S. naval convoys and assisted in re-coaling their ships, H. Renjes, Spanish Vice-Consul in Honolulu, lodged a formal protest on June 1, 1898. Minister Harold Sewall, from the U.S. Legation in Honolulu, notified Secretary of State William R. Day of the Spanish protest in a dispatch dated June 8. Renjes declared, “In my capacity as Vice Consul for Spain, I have the honor today to enter a formal protest with the Hawaiian Government against the constant violations of Neutrality in this harbor, while actual war exists between Spain and the United States of America.” A second convoy of troops bound for the Philippines, on the transport ships the China, Zelandia, Colon, and the Senator, arrived in Honolulu on June 23, and took on 1,667 tons of coal.
In a secret session of the U.S. Senate on May 31, 1898, Senator William Chandler warned of the consequences Alabama claims arbitration in Geneva, whereby Great Britain was found guilty of violating its neutrality during the American Civil War and compensated the United States with 15.5 million dollars in gold. Chandler cautioned, p. 278 of the secret session transcripts, “What I said was that if we destroyed the neutrality of Hawai‘i Spain would have a claim against Hawai‘i which she could enforce according to the principles of the Geneva Award and make Hawai‘i, if she were able to do it, pay for every dollar’s worth of damage done to the ships of property of Spain by the fleet that may go out of Hawai‘i.”
He later poignantly asked Senator Stephen White (p. 279), “whether he is willing to have the Navy and Army of the U.S. violate the neutrality of Hawai‘i?” White responded, “I am not, as everybody knows, a soldier, nor am I familiar with military affairs, but if I were conducting this Govt. and fighting Spain I would proceed so far as Spain was concerned just as I saw fit.”
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge answered Senator White’s question directly (p. 280). “I should have argued then what has been argued ably since we came into secret legislative session, that at this moment the Administration was compelled to violate the neutrality of those islands, that protests from foreign representatives had already been received and complications with other powers were threatened, that the annexation or some action in regard to those islands had become a military necessity.”
The transcripts of the Senate’s secret session were not made public until 1969.
Commenting on the United States flagrant violation of Hawaiian neutrality, T.A. Bailey wrote in his article The United States and Hawaii During the Spanish-American War, “The position of the United States was all the more reprehensible in that she was compelling a weak nation to violate the international law that had to a large degree been formulated by her own stand on the Alabama claims. Furthermore, in line with the precedent established by the Geneva award, Hawai‘i would be liable for every cent of damage caused by her dereliction as a neutral, and for the United States to force her into this position was cowardly and ungrateful. At the end of the war, Spain or cooperating power would doubtless occupy Hawai‘i, indefinitely if not permanently, to insure payment of damages, with the consequent jeopardizing of the defenses of the Pacific Coast.”
On July 6, the joint resolution passed both House and Senate, despite objections by Congressmen that annexation could only take place by a treaty and not by a domestic statute, and President McKinley signed the measure on July 7, 1898. On August 12, 1898, at 12 noon, the Hawaiian Kingdom was invaded by the United States with full military display on the grounds of the ‘Iolani Palace. The first military base was Camp McKinley established on August 16, 1898 at Kapi‘olani Park adjacent to the famous Waikiki beach and Diamond Head mountain.
Since the invasion, the Hawaiian Kingdom has served as a base of operations for United States troops during World War I and World War II. In 1947, the United States Pacific Command (USPACOM), being a unified combatant command, was established as an outgrowth of the World War II command structure, with its headquarters on the Island of O‘ahu. USPACOM has served as a base of operations during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghan War, the Iraq War, and the current war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). There are currently 118 U.S. military sites throughout the Hawaiian Kingdom that comprise 230,929 acres (20%) of Hawaiian territory.
The United States Navy’s Pacific Fleet headquartered at Pearl Harbor on the Island of O‘ahu also hosts the Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) every other even numbered year, which is the largest international maritime warfare exercise. RIMPAC is a multinational, sea control and power projection exercise that collectively consists of activity by the U.S. Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Naval forces, as well as military forces from other foreign States. During the month long exercise, RIMPAC training events and live fire exercises occur in open-ocean and at the military training locations throughout the Hawaiian Islands. In 2014, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, People’s Republic of China, Peru, Republic of Korea, Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Tonga, and the United Kingdom participated in the RIMPAC exercises.
Since the belligerent occupation by the United States began on August 12, 1898 during the Spanish-American War, the Hawaiian Kingdom, as a neutral state, has been in a war of aggression for over a century. Although it is not a state of war in the technical sense that was produced by a declaration of war, it is, however, a war in the material sense that Yoram Dinstein’s War, Aggression and Self-Defense, 2nd ed., p. 16, says, is “generated by actual use of armed force, which must be comprehensive on the part of at least one party to the conflict.” The military action by the United States on August 12, 1898 against the Hawaiian Kingdom triggered the change from a state of peace into a state of war of aggression—jus in bello, where the laws of war would apply.
When neutral territory is occupied, however, the laws of war are not applied in its entirety. According to Sakuye Takahashi’s International Law applied to the Russo-Japanese War, p. 251, Japan limited its application of the Hague Convention to its occupation of Manchuria, being a province of a neutral China, in its war against Russia, to Article 42—on the elements and sphere of military occupation, Article 43—on the duty of the occupant to respect the laws in force in the country, Article 46—concerning family honour and rights, the lives of individuals and their private property as well as their religious conviction and the right of public worship, Article 47—on prohibiting pillage, Article 49—on collecting the taxes, Article 50—on collective penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, Article 51—on collecting contributions, Article 53—concerning properties belonging to the state or private individuals, which may be useful in military operations, Article 54—on material coming from neutral states, and Article 56—on the protection of establishments consecrated to religious, warship, charity, etc.
Hawai‘i’s invasion and occupation was anomalous and without precedent. The closest similarity to the Hawaiian situation would not take place until sixteen years later when Germany occupied the neutral States of Belgium and Luxembourg in its war against France from 1914-1918, and its second war against France where both States were occupied again from 1940-1945. The Allies considered Germany’s actions to be acts of aggression. According to James Wilford Garner’s International Law and the World War, vol. II, p. 251, the “immunity of a neutral State from occupation by a belligerent is not dependent upon special treaties, but is guaranteed by the Hague convention as well as the customary law of nations.”
Now that this information is coming to light after a century of indoctrination through “Americanization,” the entire world is being transformed by the harsh reality that Hawai‘i has been in a region of war since 1898. Stemming from this reality is the ongoing commission of war crimes, as well as defects in real property ownership that affect investments, such as mortgage-backed securities. The subprime mortgage crisis took place as a result of mortgages in these securities going into foreclosures, but a new crisis on the horizon is that these mortgages that originated in the Hawaiian Islands were never valid in the first place. Hawaiian Kingdom law was not complied with in the transfer of real property and the securing of mortgages since January 17, 1893.
In light of this severity, the acting Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom has developed a comprehensive plan through the decree of provisional laws to address this problem head on that is based on international law and precedents. The acting government is in the process of implementation according to the laws of war.
Posted in Education, International Relations, War Crimes | 25 Replies
Weblog Etiquette
The acting government would like to extend a sincere gratitude and appreciation to all those who have visited this weblog and those that have provided commentary to the blog entries. Our intention is to inform the general public both domestic and abroad of the prolonged and illegal occupation of our country, the Hawaiian Kingdom. This blog is not run as a typical weblog with a webmaster that moderates the commentary. Comments are encouraged, but when commentaries are disrespectful and uses profanity, this weblog reserves the right to prevent the commentary from being posted. This blog has received many comments that were distasteful, disrespectful, and tattered with profanity.
As we are dealing with over a century of Americanization here in the islands, this blog has to maintain a standard of integrity when disseminating information regarding our country, the Hawaiian Kingdom, international laws, and the laws of occupation.
The weblog has also come under a very high volume of brute force cyber attacks that have attempted to penetrate the website and therefore this weblog has to maintain a high standard of security. Previously, the weblog installed a plugin where individuals logging into this blog could readily view the visitors, domain names and their geographic locations on google map, but after a short test run it was decided to remove the plugin because it opened the weblog to an outside link that we could not confirm to be safe. In other words, it could have opened a back door to cyber attacks.
Again the acting government extends its appreciation and is humbled by such a high volume of visitors from Hawai‘i and the international community and we will continue to provide information that we feel can serve to counter over a century of denationalization and to reinstate a Hawaiian national consciousness that was nearly obliterated through an institutional program of Americanization.
Posted in Education | 21 Replies
Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs Acknowledges the Continued Existence of the Hawaiian Kingdom
The first Hawaiian Civic Club was established in 1918 by Prince Kuhio Kalaniana‘ole. The Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs (AHCC) is a confederacy of 67 clubs that advocates “for improved welfare of native Hawaiians in culture, health, economic development, education, social welfare, and nationhood,” that was established in 1959. According to Dot Uchima, Recording Secretary, the AHCC “has established a reputation of serious consideration on community issues and mana‘o of the membership as it convenes annually at locations where clubs are represented,” and that “many resolutions adopted by the Association’s delegation at convention have served as the basis for proposed state and federal legislation.”
The AHCC is a very influential civic body that is comprised of many leaders in the community, business community and government. All resolutions adopted by the Association are also given to the Governor of Hawai‘i, State Senate President, State Speaker of the House, State Senate Committee on Hawaiian Affairs, State House Committee on Hawaiian Affairs, Office of Hawaiian Affairs Chair of the Board of Trustees, and all County Mayors. The President of the AHCC is Soulee L. K. O. Stroud.
From October 26 through November 2, 2014, Hawaiian Civic Clubs from across the Hawaiian Islands and the United States met at its annual convention held at the Waikoloa Beach Resort Marriot hotel on the Island of Hawai‘i. Ka Lei Maile Ali‘i Hawaiian Civic Club introduced resolution 14-28, acknowledging the continuity of the Hawaiian Kingdom. After a lively debate by the delegates of the many clubs in its plenary session, the resolution was passed on November 1, 2014.
ACKNOWLEDGING THE CONTINUITY OF THE HAWAIIAN KINGDOM AS AN INDEPENDENT AND SOVEREIGN STATE
WHEREAS, on November 28, 1843, both Great Britain and France jointly recognized the Hawaiian Kingdom as an independent and sovereign State and admittance into the Great Family of Nations; and
WHEREAS, the Hawaiian Kingdom maintained over 90 embassies and consulates throughout the world; and
WHEREAS, November 28th is a national holiday throughout the country called La Ku‘oko‘a (independence day); and
WHEREAS, fifty years after independence, the government of the Hawaiian Kingdom was illegally overthrown by United States forces on January 17, 1893; and
WHEREAS, negotiations for reinstatement of the Hawaiian government took place between Queen Lili‘uokalani and President Grover Cleveland, represented by U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary Albert Willis, at the United States Legation in Honolulu on November 13, 1893; and
WHEREAS, settlement and an agreement was reached on December 18, 1893, whereby the President would reinstate the Hawaiian government and thereafter the Queen would grant a pardon to all those who committed treason; and
WHEREAS, this agreement is called a sole executive agreement under U.S. constitutional law and a treaty under international law; and
WHEREAS, President Cleveland and his successor in office have not carried out this treaty in violation of international law; and
WHEREAS, the United States Congress purportedly annexed the Hawaiian Islands by a joint resolution of Congress on July 7, 1898; and
WHEREAS, neither a joint resolution or a statute enacted by the Congress can have any legal effect beyond the borders of the United States and affect the sovereignty of a foreign State; and
WHEREAS, the 1898 joint resolution of annexation is not a treaty whereby the Hawaiian Kingdom ceded its sovereignty to the United States of America; and
WHEREAS, on August 12, 1898 at 12 noon, during the Spanish-American War, the United States began the illegal and prolonged occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom; and
WHEREAS, in 2001, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, in Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom, acknowledged in its arbitral award that “in the nineteenth century the Hawaiian Kingdom existed as an independent State recognized as such by the United States of America, the United Kingdom and various other States, including by exchanges of diplomatic or consular representatives and the conclusion of treaties”; and
WHEREAS, under international law all States have sovereign equality, and have equal rights and duties as co-equal members of the international community regardless of their economic, social and political differences; and
WHEREAS, according to international law there is a legal presumption that occupation does not affect the continuity of the State even when there is no government claiming to represent the occupied State.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs at its 55th annual convention at Waikoloa, Hawai‘i, this 1st day of November, 2014, that it acknowledges the continuity of the Hawaiian Kingdom as an independent and sovereign State.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a certified copy of this resolution be given to the Governor of Hawaii, State Senate President, State Speaker of the House, State Senate Committee on Hawaiian Affairs, State House Committee on Hawaiian Affairs, Office of Hawaiian Affairs Chair of the Board of Trustees, and all County Mayors.
On November 1, 2014 at the AHCC Convention Annelle Amaral was elected to succeed Stroud as President.
Posted in Education, National | 49 Replies
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Heather Cleary
translator | writer | editor
Posted on June 14, 2012 by Heather Cleary
If there’s one thing translators and theorists of translation love to discuss, debate, and ultimately disagree about, it’s the extent to which a translated work should sound “natural” in the target language. It’s been a hot topic since at least 1813, when Friederich Schleiermacher presented his two opposing methods of translating—the first being to move the source text toward the reader by standardizing its usage in the target language, and the second being to move the reader toward the source text by preserving those images and constructions that might seem out of place in their new habitat. The latter has been championed by scholars like Antoine Berman and Lawrence Venuti—who advocates this “foreignizing” approach over and against the “cult of fluency” which, he claims, masks the ideological interventions that shape the work as it passes from one literary system into the next—as well as Gayatri Spivak, who sees it as an ethical imperative for those translating into “dominant” languages. On the other side of the fence are usually the translators themselves (as much as I hate to repeat the reductive opposition of theory and practice, it seems to play out this way, in this case), who want to highlight the literary value of the text; this often means making it, bluntly put, sound good.
But what happens when a certain foreignness is already present in the original?
Reading Sergio Chejfec, I’m always struck by the way his prose both deflects and draws the reader in, never allowing complete immersion in the narrative: whether explicitly or implicitly, the medium in which the story is told is under constant scrutiny. In other words, I’m struck by the way Chejfec’s language is never “natural.” He discusses this aspect of his work in a beautiful essay titled “Simple Language, Name,” which hinges on the capaciousness of the word “nombre” (both “name” and, grammatically, “noun”). The piece begins with a reflection on the necessary illusion of linguistic transparency, and then delves into the particular kind of access to personal histories and collective traditions that surnames allow.
It turns out that Chejfec is an imposed appellation: like so many before him, his father was forced to translate his name to one more in keeping with local orthography and pronunciation (for those of you who are wondering, parsed in English it would be Chay-feck) when he immigrated to Argentina. This primal alienation permeated his relationship with language: having adopted Spanish as an adult, Chejfec’s father was forced to express himself in the coarsest of terms. In the process of his translatio, he lost his nouns along with his name. Chejfec’s own prose style, he writes, emerged in response to the frustrated terseness he witnessed at home, to the deficiencies his father saw in his own usage.
There came a time when I decided to distance myself from everything my father’s speech and writing represented, from that strange, personal, and incorrect tongue, in favor of one I deemed more viable. In reality, I had no choice. But my father’s way of speaking was also my own, just like his writing and his misgivings. The result was an artificial language that I forced myself to adopt. I went out of my way to write in an obsessively cerebral style, as though I didn’t just want to exhibit a certain complexity and literary aptitude (this was the most explicit part, also the most obvious and naive) through long, difficult, and largely unvaried passages, but also to construct a baroque and ponderous style that was everything my father’s limited, but true, language was not. A similar structure, though one built with radically different tools and materials. […] This sense of foreignness, of seeing my writing as something outside me that writes itself, to which it is my role to attach ideas, is a constant for me.
Though the essay is predominantly about Chejfec’s experience of writing and language toward the end of his father’s life, the passage above might just as easily describe the sense of linguistic estrangement that pervades The Planets, out this week with Open Letter.
For one thing, there’s the bio/bibliographical proximity of the period on which the essay centers and the composition of the novel. More significant, though, is the notion of writing in—and through—the shadow of another’s voice. Just as Chejfec suggests that his adopted style bears the marks of his father’s speech, the narrator’s language in The Planets is haunted by that of his childhood friend, identified only as M “(M for Miguel, or Mauricio; it could also be M for Daniel since, as we know, any name at all can reside behind letters),” one of the thousands lost to state violence during Argentina’s Dirty War. The book, which weaves the narrator’s reflections on the friendship and its loss together with anecdotes told by M and his father, and almost clinical glosses of what has already been recounted, is in some ways one that M might have written, had he lived; at the same time, it can only exist in his absence.
The story about the pair of nomads absorbed me just as much as the one about the eye. Unlike me, who was unable to describe the events of the previous day except in the most confused terms, M abounded in stories and anecdotes that not only concerned him directly, relating to his own experience like the episode of the eye, but also encompassed broader, more diffuse—and therefore more debatable and controversial—material, which reached him from who knows where to adopt a new form through his voice. This is why it is clear to me that, were he still alive, he would have been the writer, the novelist.
In this sense, the project of the novel is the telling of a “story without an ending” (without any definitive proof of M’s fate, the experience of his loss can have no conclusion) by means of a language the narrator senses is only partially his own. Name and noun converge here again, as the years of fruitless searching for any mention of M among the lists of the deceased demonstrate the final cruelty of the dictatorship’s strategy of abduction and misdirection: having forcibly seized the bodies of its victims, the state enacted a similar violence upon the way their stories could be told by indefinitely prolonging, and exploiting, the proliferation of questions where answers were so dearly needed.
Shaped not only by the narrator’s struggle with a tragedy impossible to circumscribe, but also his ambivalence with regard to his own “adopted tongue,” the language of The Planets flits in and out of the familiar. As a complement to the complex rhythms of the prose, conventional phrases and constructions are often rendered nonstandard by the replacement of a single term, forcing the reader to reflect on the constellation of meanings implied not only by the word on the page, but also by the one that was withheld. This is characteristic of Chejfec’s writing, though it is especially pronounced here.
Holding the reader at arm’s length from the medium of its telling (the early image of the narrator attempting to read a newspaper and seeing only splotches of ink comes to mind), The Planets is therefore marked by a certain—productive—dissonance. That is, it strikes a minor note. For this reason, among others, translating the novel was not so much a matter of pulling a text or pushing a reader, but rather one of situating the work at a remove from colloquial English that was comparable to its relation to colloquial Spanish. Because from this vantage point just beyond the familiar we can observe, through the narrator’s dance with the shadow of his lost friend, the fundamental unnaturalness of the natural.
Postscript: I hear Margaret Carson is translating the entirety of “Simple Language.” I’ll be keeping an eye out for that (as should you).
Posted in BooksTagged Open Letter, Sergio Chejfec, The Planets, Translation
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Buenos Aires Review
Cedilla & Co.
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On the Waterfront: Riverdale’s Scenic Location
November 7, 2013 - In Your Neighborhood
Music lessons in Riverdale? The Bronx is on our itinerary!
“I believe we have the noblest roaring blasts here I have ever known on land; they sing their hoarse song through the big tree-tops with a splendid energy that thrills me and stirs me and uplifts me and makes me want to live always.”
Those words, written at the beginning of the 20th century by a quintessential American writer, Mark Twain, described the views of the Hudson, as seen from a chestnut tree on the grounds of his Riverdale, NY home.
From 1901 to 1903 Twain leased Wave Hill, an 1843 estate, which, at that time, was already a desirable piece of real estate, since the young Theodore Roosevelt had lived there previously, during the summers of 1870 and 1871.
Today, Twain’s chestnut tree is gone, but Wave Hill is still there in all its splendor: a 28-acre public botanical garden and cultural center, scenically located along the Hudson River in the Bronx’s Riverdale section.
A residential neighborhood in the Bronx, Riverdale doesn’t fit the picture long associated with New York City’s northernmost borough – that of widespread urban decay. (Heads-up to everyone who still believes this stereotype: today’s Bronx is rising from the rubble, with many areas boasting neat suburban-style houses and lush greenery).
Riverdale is the perfect example of the best the Bronx – and, for that matter, New York City – has to offer. Maybe because it borders the suburban Westchester County, Riverdale has the “laid-back” feel of a bedroom community rather than a hectic urban jungle. It is quiet, green, hilly, and generally softer around the edges than the city to the south.
And even though it is a relatively small section of the Bronx, Riverdale contains many small and pretty neighborhoods and estates – Fieldston, Bronx, Spuyten Duyvil , as well as South and North Riverdale.
Making their home in Riverdale
Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt were not the only famous Riverdale residents. The neighborhood also boasts other notables, both past and present:
As a child, John F. Kennedy lived with his family at 5040 Independence Avenue and attended Riverdale Country School from 5th through 7th grade.
Hungarian composer and pianist Bela Bartok lived at 3242 Cambridge Avenue between 1941 and 1943.
The Yankees’ baseball star Lou Gehrig lived and died at 5204 Delafield Avenue.
Fiorello LaGuardia, NYC’s mayor in the 1930s and 40s, called 5020 Goodridge Avenue “home.”
Baseball great Willie Mays still lives at The Whitehall, 3333 Henry Hudson Pkwy.
Eliot Spitzer, former Governor and Attorney General of New York, was born in Riverdale and graduated from the Horace Mann School
These are just some of many prominent Riverdale residents; more are listed here
Riverdale music lessons at your service
Do you live in Riverdale but don’t feel like coming to Manhattan for a music lesson? No problem, we understand! Hey Joe Guitar’s excellent teachers, who are “fluent” in all kinds instruments and singing styles will come to your home or office.
Contact us and we’ll be at your Riverdale doorstep very soon!
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< Previous Post At Manhattan Music Lessons, We Believe in the Power of Education! Next Post > See Music Through Rose-Tinted Glasses – With New York City Music Lessons
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About in situ: theatre
Orestia: Agamemnon
in situ: is a ground-breaking theatre ensemble based in Cambridge. We perform site-specific and environmental work in non-theatre spaces.
Professionally-run, in situ: works with a range of artists, actors and creative people on long-term collaborative projects.
Site-specific theatre
Formed in 2000, in situ: is the successor to Cambridge Experimental Theatre, the pioneering avant-garde group of the ’80s and ’90s.
in situ: creates performances outside the boundaries of conventional theatre. We perform in non-theatre spaces, such as houses, churches, museums – even an iron age hill fort.
Since 2000, in situ: has earned a reputation for employing the tools of theatre-making – especially voice, text and story – in new and surprising ways.
in situ: Theatre History
in situ: formed in April 2000 to produce high-quality theatrical work using space, environment, extended vocality and technology.
Since then, in situ: has given nearly 200 performances and taught hundreds of people who want to learn how to act.
in situ: teaches a range of acting skills. There are a range of options for creative people who want to get involved, from one- or two-day courses covering beginner’s acting skills to advanced residential workshops on specific techniques.
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When I was a lad living on a farm, I remember well my father’s morning ritual during the cold weather months of stoking up the furnace with coal. I have heard it said by those who had to contend with those old coal-fired furnaces that the sweetest sound in the world is the noise a modern gas furnace makes when it kicks on early on cold winter mornings.
Today, coal is still an economic factor in Illinois (although a fast-diminishing one), although the uses to which it is now put have drifted far from home heating and firing kitchen cookstoves. Its modern uses would no doubt astound the explorers who discovered the mineral in the Illinois of the 1600s.
Cartographer Louis Jolliet and missionary Father Jacques Marquette, S.J., were the first Europeans to discover coal in what would one day become the State of Illinois.
In 1673, Marquette and Jolliet were on their way up the Illinois River to Lake Michigan when they discovered an outcrop of what they called “Charbon de Terre” near the present city of Utica. Father Hennepin also saw the deposit in 1682, noting in his diary that he had “found in Several Places Some Pit-Coal.”
These two instances were, in point of fact, the first discoveries of bituminous coal on the North American continent. Nothing was done with the coal deposits of Illinois for many years, however.
In the 17th and 18th Centuries, coal’s efficiency for home heating was relatively unknown. It wasn’t until 1810 that coal was first commercially mined in Illinois along the Big Muddy River in Jackson County. Several barges of coal were shipped down the Mississippi to New Orleans that year.
As settlements moved further north in Illinois, coal continued to be found in some abundance. Coal was found near the salines (salt producing areas) in Gallatin and Vermillion Counties, and as early as 1822 coal was shipped down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers from Peoria to New Orleans.
Coal mining has always been a dirty, dangerous business. But it helped power Illinois as one of the nation’s premier industrial states.
Like the first settlements, early coal mines bordered the state’s rivers because of the problems transporting the stuff to market. Beginning in 1823, the growing city of St. Louis used coal that was mined from the bluffs along the Illinois side of the Mississippi for heating and to fuel steam engines.
John Reynolds, an early governor of Illinois, helped promote one of the first railroads west of the Alleghenies in order to increase the production of coal. The line’s cars were horse-drawn from the mines over six miles of wooden rails to Illinoistown—modern East St. Louis—where their cargo of coal was loaded on boats and shipped down the Mississippi.
And the first macadam road in the state, from Belleville to the Illinoistown ferry, was built to accommodate heavy coal wagon traffic.
By 1840, Illinois was producing 424,000 bushels of coal regularly—measurement in tons was several years in the future. The measurement in bushels indicates that at that time, coal was shipped in burlap bags, each of which had to be filled, and then moved on and off transports, from wagons to rail cars to riverboats for shipment.
Most of the early coal came from drift or slope mines exploiting easily-reached coal seams exposed along hillsides, river bluffs, or stream banks. Shaft mines were needed to reach the rich, thick veins of coal that lay deep under the prairie soil of central Illinois. As early as 1842, shaft mining was taking place at Belleville. Strip mining had to await a more advanced and rapacious generation.
Tons of coal were hauled annually through Ottawa on the Illinois & Michigan Canal, cheaper than by rail. But the canal was closed due to winter freezes for several months a year.
By 1841, coal was hauled overland to Chicago from mines in the upper Illinois River Valley. Mines on the east bank of the river were easily accessible to boats traveling on the new I&M Canal when it opened in 1848, which provided means to deliver coal to the growing city cheaper than it could be shipped via the Great Lakes from Erie, Penn.
Even before it was known that coal was a more efficient source of fueling locomotives than was wood, the Illinois Central Railroad leased coal fields in the Du Quoin area in order to procure fuel for their trains when they crossed largely wood-free prairies in the central part of the state. Other railroads soon followed their lead, and shaft mines were sunk along the Rock Island’s right-of-way in Grundy, Bureau, and Rock Island Counties. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad located and developed coal deposits in Stark and Knox Counties, and the Great Western Railroad found, to its pleasant surprise, that its right-of-way crossed a large coal bed in Vermilion County.
Here in the Fox River Valley, coal was a vital resource for homes and businesses, and the CB&Q’s monopoly on transporting it, and therefore feeling free to gouge it’s customers, led to building the independent Ottawa, Oswego & Fox River Valley Railroad linking the Vermilion coal fields in Streator with Geneva. From Ottawa north through Yorkville and Oswego on north, the tracks paralleled the course of the Fox River. But literally the minute the line was completed, the CB&Q managed to seize control of the new line and so was still able to dictate coal prices. The first railcar loads of coal on the new line arrived in Kendall County towns in January 1871, priced one-third higher than it had been promised when the line was being built.
As John R. Marshall, editor and publisher of the Kendall County Record complained in the paper’s Nov. 21, 1872 edition: The great card the defunct Fox River Valley Railroad Company played to get subscriptions on its line of road was cheap coal and good coal, but they failed us in both particulars.”
Throughout the 19th Century, continual efforts were made to secure adequate coal supplies for Kendall County’s farms and villages, even to the point of looking for it inside the county. And occasional coal seams were located. In 1887, coal was discovered by well-drillers in Fox Township, in Lisbon Township and in Oswego Township. But all the discoveries were too deep underground and the seams too thin to warrant sinking mine shafts.
The coal sheds at Oswego were located across the tracks of the CB&Q Railroad’s Fox River Branch from the Oswego Grain Company’s elevator. Oswego businessman John W. Chapman received the line’s first shipment of coal in January 1871. (Dwight Young photo in the collections of the Little White School Museum)
Since railroads, mining, and manufacturing—particularly producing iron and steel—were all interrelated, abundant coal reserves fueled Illinois’ explosive growth in the mid-1800s. Coal also helped Illinois’ farmers to become independent of wood for heating, contributing to the growth of prairie farming.
At the start of the Civil War, iron and steel production was a growing, but still not an overly important industry. With the outbreak of war, however, domestic sources of these important metals were badly needed, and during the next 25 years, the United States grew to become the world’s leading steel and iron producer.
Because of Chicago’s strategic location between the iron mines of Lake Superior and the coal fields of central Illinois, the city soon became one of the nation’s leading centers of manufacturing and transportation. That also spread to the areas nearby, particularly Joliet, where starting in 1869 the Joliet Iron & Steel Works produced pig iron and in 1873 started out producing thousands of miles of railroad rails from its rolling mill. The Joliet Iron & Steel Company owned a dam on the DesPlaines River that powered four blast furnaces that could turn out 2,000 tons of pig iron daily. The iron mill closed in 1936, and the steel mill was finally completely shuttered in the early 1980s.
Coal mining underwent many changes over the years, too, with shaft mines being gradually replaced by huge open pit mines, such as those operated by the Peabody Coal Company in Grundy County, just south of the Kendall County line.
Wind farms like this one in DeKalb County have popped all over northern Illinois’ rural countryside, part of the effort to replace fossil fuels to generate electricity.
Today, coal’s use as a fuel for electrical generating plants is rapidly dying out as more efficient and less environmentally damaging ways of producing power, such as wind and solar energy are displacing it. A new study released this past May found that replacing 74 percent of coal plants nationally with wind and solar power would immediately reduce power costs, with wind power in particular at times cutting the cost almost in half. Overseas, Sweden is pledging to be coal-free by 2040 and in South America, Costa Rica plans to be carbon-neutral by 2021.
Coal isn’t just inefficient and expensive, it’s also dangerous to the environment. Burning coal spews a dismaying amount of aggressive pollutants into the atmosphere, many of which have been proven to worsen global climate change. Climate data captured in tree growth rings; ocean and lake sediments; ice cores; and other forms of data show that the effect on the world’s climate by burning coal began to show up almost as soon as coal began to power the Industrial Revolution—and that was on top of climate changes already put in place as early man began farming and otherwise changing the landscape to suit himself.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the average coal generating plant, because of the trace elements coal contains, leaks more radiation into the environment than does a nuclear power plant. So it’s a good thing coal’s on its way out as a way to produce electrical power and that renewable resources from solar and wind to hydro and thermal are quickly replacing it.
But for decades, coal not only powered the nation in general, but it also powered Illinois’ ascension as one of the nation’s industrial powerhouses. Today, the challenge is to try to deal with all of the environmental problems we created for ourselves during that era.
Filed under Business, Environment, History, Illinois History, Kendall County, Local History, Oswego, Science stuff, Semi-Current Events, Technology, Transportation
Tagged as Business, environment, history, science, technology
One of the interesting, and not infrequently frustrating, things about studying local history is the speed at which significant individuals made their appearances and then disappeared from the historical record.
During the settlement era this was largely due to the kind of people—pioneer farmers—who settled in our neck of the woods. A footloose lot, they often remained in one place for only a short period of time. Down in the Yorkville area, for instance, Lyman Bristol settled, gave his name to a new village and eventually a township, and then headed farther west where he was killed in a wagon accident in California.
William and Rebecca Pearce Wilson settled at the busy modern intersection of Routes 34 and 25 in Oswego in 1833, becoming the village’s first residents.
Meanwhile in 1834, one of Rebecca’s brothers, Elijah Pearce, settled with his wife and children at today’s Montgomery with his son-in-law’s family where Pearce built and operated a stagecoach inn on the east bank of the Fox River.
On page 270 of the 1878 history of Kane County, The Past and Present of Kane County, Illinois, the author claims of Pearce that “for years he kept entertainment for man and beast” at his one-room log cabin inn on the banks of the Fox River.
But by “years” here, the author means two years. Because in 1836, the families of Elijah Pearce and William Wilson moved farther west in what would become Kendall County to a claim on Big Rock Creek near modern Plano, where the two men built a sawmill. And then, just a few years later, they sold the sawmill and moved their families out of Illinois altogether, settling in Jasper County, Missouri before moving even farther west to Kansas.
Levi F. Arnold, who with Lewis B. Judson mapped out the original village of Oswego in 1835 was also instrumental in Plainfield’s history—he was the first postmaster of both villages. He, too, appears and then quickly disappears from local history, but not by choice. Arnold died in 1844 in the same unrecorded epidemic that claimed his 2 year-old daughter, Josephine.
Main Street, Oswego, looking north about 1902. The building with the flagpole at right is the Star Roller Skating Rink. The Shoger-Park Building is at left center. (Little White School Museum collection)
This quick entrance and exit of folks who made important contributions to Oswego didn’t end with the settlement era, either, but continued right up through the 20th Century. A really good example of this phenomenon is A.P. Werve, who owned Oswego’s first automobile.
Anthony Peter Werve (pronounced WERE-vie) was born April 3, 1870 in Kenosha, Wis. He married Anna Margrete Christine Alsted on Oct. 4, 1893 in Kenosha, and the couple had two children.
A.P. was trained as a jeweler, but he also had a fascination for the new craze of automobiles and the internal combustion engines that powered them.
In 1899, Werve decided to move his family to Oswego where there was an open opportunity for a jeweler, since the community didn’t have one. On Sept. 6, 1899, the “Oswego” news column in the Kendall County Record reported that “A.P. Werve of Kenosha, Wisconsin, has opened a jeweler’s shop in the south room of the Shoger block.” The Shoger Block was a two storefront commercial block at the southeast corner of Main and Jackson streets. It was eventually torn down to built the Oswego Tavern—now the Oswego Inn.
The Shoger-Parke Building has been used for many purposes including the first Zentmyer Ford Garage in 1927. (Little White School Museum collection)
According to his business’s advertising, he dealt in watches, jewelry and musical instruments. He also gradually branched out in business. In the fall of 1901, he opened a feed mill in a frame addition at the rear of the limestone Shoger-Parke building kitty-corner across the street—better known today as the location of the former Jacqueline Shop, today’s Bella-gia Boutique and The Prom Shoppe. Within a few months, Werve moved his family to the upstairs apartment of the stone, and then in November 1901, he moved his jewelry store across the street into the same building.
There was plenty of room in the stone building where Werve’s jewelry and musical instrument business was located, and in April 1902 he was granted a license by the Oswego Village Board to install two pool tables.
A.P. Werve’s friction-drive auto, that he built in 1903. Taking a spin in the spring of 1904 are (L-R) Anna and Hattie Werve, Clarence Smith, Werve, and John Varner. (Little White School Museum collection)
But along with engaging in several kinds of businesses, Werve was also pursuing his automotive hobby. And in the spring of 1903 he unveiled the thing for which he became famous in Oswego history. As the Record’s “Oswego” news column reported on Oct. 28, 1903: “It should have been mentioned heretofore that Oswego has its first automobile. A.P Werve bought some of the parts, the rest he made himself and he has it now in successful running order.”
We should be ignorant of what Werve’s home-built auto looked like had not one of his tinkering buddies, Irvin Haines not snapped a photo of it while the Werve family took it out for a spin. Werve reportedly repurposed a used an inboard boat engine to drive the car, with power transmitted to the rear wheels via a friction pulley.
In Haines’ photo, Anthony Werve is at the wheel with his wife riding in back with their oldest daughter, Nettie. Also along for the ride were fellow auto enthusiasts Clarence Smith, riding in back with Mrs. Werve and Nettie, and John Varner in front with A.P. Both Smith and Varner were, at one time or another, employed as steam engineers to run Oswego’s water pumping operation. In addition, Varner was a skilled cyclist on the high-wheel bicycles of the era, while Smith enjoyed working on engines and, eventually, other Oswego autos.
Clarence Smith tinkers with an auto engine about 1905. Note the chassis on sawhorses behind Smith. (Little White School Museum collection)
Although A.P. Werve was celebrated for a significant Oswego first, he didn’t hang around very long to enjoy his fame as a local hero. In January 1904, he continued expanding his business by installing Oswego’s second bowling alley, also in the Shoger-Parke Building. Bowling had come to Oswego just weeks earlier with an alley being installed in the old Star Roller Skating Rink Building to capitalize on the latest community sports craze. As the Record reported on Dec. 23, 1903, “Oswego has been struck with a streak of unusual enterprises. The bank will soon go into operation and about the same time another new institution, a bowling alley. At the one where we can get money and at the other where we can spend it.”
Werve’s bowling alley, installed by Lou Young, Lew Inman, Irvin Haines, and Art Roswell, opened at the end of January, but even then, he was apparently looking to change professions and get into something where he could practice his automotive hobby—and get paid for it.
On April 13, 1904, the Record’s “Oswego” column reported that “A.P. Werve, our jeweler, is getting ready to move to Benton Harbor, Mich., where he has accepted a good position with the Searchlight Manufacturing Company.”
Searchlight manufactured internal combustion engines for early autos, along with other mechanical products, and Werve apparently found a good fit there. Unfortunately, Searchlight apparently got caught up in the financial Panic of 1907 and its operations were thrown into confusion, although it continued operating at Benton Harbor for a few years afterwards. According to a 1907 Benton Harbor city directory, Werve had gone back to his core business of owning a jewelry store.
Then, the Werve family, like so many others, headed west in search of new opportunities, and by 1914 were living in southern California where he ran a garage.
Werve also maintained his fascination with automobiles. In 1914, the Werve family came back to the Midwest to visit friends and family in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois, stopping for a few days in Oswego. The Record reported on July 29, 1914 that “Mr. and Mrs. A.P. Werve and children left Monday morning for Los Angeles, Cal., expecting to make the trip by auto taking from four to six weeks.” A hardy and adventuresome crew indeed during an era when there really were few, if any, marked interstate roads.
The couple remained in southern California for the rest of their lives. After a career as a jeweler, business owner, Oswego automobile pioneer, mechanic, and rancher, A.P. Werve died on Aug. 8, 1951 in Imperial County, California. He and his wife are buried in Riverview Cemetery in Brawley, California with nothing to mark his brief, though significant, claim to fame here in northern Illinois.
Want to do your part to preserve and protect the history of the Oswego, Illinois area at the Little White School Museum? Join the Oswegoland Heritage Association–dues are just $20 per person per year. Send your check made out to the Oswegoland Heritage Association to Box 23, Oswego, IL 60543.
Filed under Business, History, Local History, Oswego, People in History, Technology, Transportation
Tagged as Business, history, technology, travel
Anyone who knows me or who reads this blog regularly (or both, come to think of it) knows I really like food.
The other day, I got to thinking about the many different kinds of food I’ve had over the years, from childhood on, that I’ll not likely be able to enjoy again.
What brought on the introspection was starting off my meal at an area buffet restaurant with cottage cheese and pickled beets. Granted, that’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s been a favorite of mine since I was a little kid. And while pickled beets and cottage cheese are available in just about every grocery store in the country, it was the cottage cheese that prompted memories of my favorite kind when I was a little kid growing up out on the farm.
In those days, we had our own cow, a placid Guernsey my sisters had named Daisy. My dad milked her twice a day in a stall in the barn, sitting a three-legged milking stool, occasionally expertly aiming a shot of fresh milk from Daisy’s udder to one of the barn cats that crowded around waiting for a treat. When he was done milking, Dad would take the bucket of fresh milk in the house and down the basement to run it through the separator that separated (most of) the cream from the milk.
My family used Daisy’s milk for a number of things, from morning cereal to coffee cream (the real thing!) to ingredients for baking and cooking. That milk was also manufactured into two other products that we really enjoyed, meaning now we’re getting back to the cottage cheese part of the story.
Sort of, kind of the containers we’d get from Aunt Bess filled with homemade cottage cheese.
My mother would occasionally take a large container or two of Daisy’s milk over to Aunt Bess McMicken, who was one of the many aunts and uncles I had out in that neighborhood who were of absolutely no blood relation to me at all. But they were all like family, especially Aunt Bess and Uncle Jim. Aunt Bess would then somehow magically transform the milk my mother took to her into cottage cheese, which we were invited to go back and pick up a few days later. She always packaged in in two tall aluminum containers, and it tasted wonderful.
It’s extremely unlikely I’ll ever have the chance to taste Aunt Bess’s cottage cheese again, in this lifetime at least. Nor will I ever be able to taste the butter my grandmother made from Daisy’s cream. I remember her making it with an electric churn, and then working out the buttermilk and the salt in using a wooden paddle in a large wooden bowl. My dad loved buttermilk, but I was never able to acquire a taste for it, although using it in pancakes, banana nut muffins, and the like is a really good idea. The taste of my grandmother’s homemade butter is another thing I’m probably never going to be able to enjoy again.
A couple more of my grandmother’s foods I’ll likely never see again are her molasses cookies (my dad would sometimes crumble up a couple in a bowl and have them for breakfast with some of Daisy’s milk) and her homemade bread, which my grandfather didn’t particularly care for. My grandfather, instead, loved sliced commercial bakery bread delivered by the Peter Wheat Bread man. That, however, was fine with me because that meant more of grandma’s amazing homemade bread for me.
Grandma’s cookstove looked something like this, and it dominated her farmhouse kitchen.
Grandma’s baking was all done in her huge black and white porcelain wood-fired cook stove that dominated her kitchen. She had a modern propane-fueled range, too, but she favored her cookstove for baking. How, I once asked her, did she regulate the temperature to get the right results? “Well,” she said, “you just stick your hand in the oven and when it’s the right heat, then you do your baking.”
When I was really little, we still butchered our own pork and beef, using hogs and steers my dad had carefully picked out and fed especially for the purpose. After butchering, we’d get the occasional covered bowl of pickled heart or pickled tongue from grandma that made really great sandwiches. Those are things you just don’t see in the grocery store these days, at least not around these parts.
During those long ago summers, my family seemed to attend a never-ending series of picnics, each of which featured a wonderful potluck dinner or supper. My mother’s specialty for these occasions was her baked fried chicken, which was outstanding. She made it by first dredging the chicken parts in seasoned flour and then frying it in her big cast aluminum Pan-American frying pan. Then she finished it by baking it in the oven. It came out nearly falling off the bone, cooked through, moist and tasting wonderful. That kind of chicken used to be available at the Amana Colonies out in Iowa, but in recent years it’s been dropped in favor of regular fried chicken—a culinary loss to the Midwest.
At our annual family reunion in August, along with my mother’s chicken, we enjoyed a huge selection of desserts, some of which I’ll likely never taste again such as wonderberry pie and ground cherry pie. Both wonderberries and ground cherries are relatively labor-intensive to grow and as they are considered heirloom plants these days, are not easily available at your local garden center. But back in that day and age, they were found in lots of farm gardens. My grandmother had a ground cherry patch outside her back door. They always reminded me of tiny yellow cherries growing inside Japanese lanterns.
In the early spring each year, the Wheatland United Presbyterian Church just down the road from our farm held their annual pancake supper, put on by the young farming families. It was their major fundraiser for the year, and was extremely popular, drawing visitors from far and wide. One of the major draws was the sausage they served with their pancakes. It was whole hog sausage, made from a couple entire hogs, which were donated by a congregation member and made by the volunteer sausage committee members. For my taste, it was seasoned perfectly with just the right amount of salt, pepper and—most importantly—sage, because you can’t have decent breakfast sausage without sage.
About the only thing better for breakfast than fried mush and eggs is scrapple and eggs. Our neighbor Sam’s homemade scrapple was a true gourmet treat of my childhood.
Enjoying that quality of sausage ever again is unlikely, as is the scrapple our neighbor Sam made after we moved into town. He called it by another of its Pennsylvania Dutch names, pon haus, and it was wonderful. You can buy canned scrapple these days, but it resembles scrapple about as much as Spam resembles ham. If you can wait, it’s really best to make a special trip east to Pennsylvania Dutch country in Pennsylvania or Delaware and either buy it at a farmers’ market or at a small country diner. But however you are able to get hold of some these days, it won’t hold a candle to the taste of Sam’s pon haus.
On our summer Kansas trips during my childhood we’d keep a sharp eye out for a sign advertising a roadside watermelon stand, where an ice cold slice could be had for 15 or 20 cents, welcome relief in those pre-air conditioned auto days.
Some of the foods I enjoyed in my younger life tasted good, I suspect, just because of the situation I was in when eating them. Ice cold watermelon at the picnic table of a roadside stand on the dusty Kansas prairie during a hot summer trip to visit relatives; fresh lobster boiled while we watched at a picnic table at a roadside stand along the Connecticut shore; Yorkshire pudding and roast beef in a Yorkshire, England restaurant; a fountain-mixed root beer at the soda fountain in Oswego’s Main Cafe on a hot 1959 summer afternoon; and a 2” thick slice of raspberry pie at a country diner during the Kansas wheat harvest all left wonderful memories of those times and places.
I recall asking my grandmother one time whether she’d ever like to go back to visit “the gold old days” of her younger life. After thinking for a moment, she ventured “Maybe for supper.” She explained that she missed the canned roast beef they used to put up when she was a youngster and a young married woman in the days before home freezers. She said the taste and texture of the meat, tender and moist, was simply not available any more.
So I seem to come by my food nostalgia naturally; it’s apparently embedded in my DNA. Some of those eating experiences are gone forever—Aunt Bess’s cottage cheese—but there’s an outside chance that I may someday still get a chance to enjoy a good scrapple breakfast again or maybe even a slice of wonderberry pie. A person can certainly hope…
Filed under entertainment, family, Farming, Food, History, Local History, Nostalgia, Oswego, Semi-Current Events, Women's History
Tagged as eating, entertainment, family, memory, women
Summer has not yet quite officially arrived in the Fox Valley, although summer vacation has. Family vacations are on the horizon, and the newly out-of-school kids are able to ignore the fact they’ll have to get back in the academic harness in a few months. Instead, they’re settling into whatever summer routines their parents have mapped out for them.
These days, in fact, kids are heavily scheduled and deeply involved in a variety of organized sports, from the littlest tots to teens. Practice for upcoming Youth Tackle Football League games is starting along with soccer practice, tennis practice, and a variety of other sports leagues that would have astonished us here in Oswego 60 years ago. And that doesn’t even count the swimming lessons, craft activities, reading programs, and all the other things parents get their kids involved in.
Oswego kids line up at the Red Brick School for a 1958 fishing derby at Hafenrichter’s Pond sponsored by the Oswego Park District. (Little White School Museum collection)
Back in the late 1950s when I was just a kid, the group I traveled with loathed structured activities of any kind, which was probably a good thing, since there weren’t too many of those kinds of things to do anyway. We did have Little League baseball, provided by the park district, but I lost my enthusiasm for that when John Seidelman threw a high hard one inside and managed to hit me right in the ear hole of my batting helmet one day. After picking myself up off the batter’s box, I found my enthusiasm for baseball had disappeared. In fact, I haven’t liked baseball all that much ever since.
We also had the summer youth programs of the Oswego (later Oswegoland) Park District overseen by Ford Lippold up at the Little White School and the Red Brick School, but we weren’t much interested in them, either.
The Little Rascals, with Spanky third from the left.
Mostly, we hung around in a group and played along Waubonsie Creek and the Fox River. Our games were greatly influenced by two books, Penrod and Sam by Booth Tarkington and The Story of a Bad Boy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, not to mention “The Little Rascals” movie short comedies of the 1930s and 1940s.
Penrod and Sam concerned two boys growing up in the early years of the 20th Century. Their adventures enthralled us, and we tried to pattern ourselves after Penrod, Sam, and their friends. The Story of a Bad Boy, on the other hand, was Aldrich’s semi-autobiography about a boy growing up in a small New England town in the 1850s who wasn’t a bad boy at all. He did get into some interesting scrapes, though. And he and his friends had the neatest snowball war any of us had ever heard about. The “Our Gang” comedies, of course, involved Alfalfa, Spanky, the beautiful Darla, and their gang of friends who had the neatest adventures and cobbled together the most wonderful inventions ever.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (Daguerrotype in the Houghton Library, Harvard University)
Upon rereading as an adult, however, Penrod and Sam, published in 1916, is startling for its casual racism. During the 1950s growing up here along the banks of the Fox River, though, none of us knew what racism was. I recall being extremely confused when a friend who had traveled through the South reported there were separate bathrooms and water fountains just for black people, and it made us all wonder how come black people couldn’t drink out of everybody else’s water fountains. After all, we’d been going to school with black kids for years and they didn’t have to do that in Oswego. It really puzzled us. Even with its early 20th Century racism, however, Penrod and Sam is still an extremely funny book and we all read it several times.
The Story of a Bad Boy is still one of my very favorite books, although I can’t seem to persuade anyone else of its worth. And there, too, there was disappointment when I got old enough to learn more about Aldrich. Despite his charming book, Aldrich turned out to be an adherent of preventing immigration, particularly that of Catholics. But it’s possible to forget Aldrich’s foibles when submerged in his marvelous tale about his youthful hero, Tom Bailey, and his friends growing up in a small 19th Century seacoast town.
Nothing like cold watermelon on a hot summer day. The author, in his favorite cap won at a carnival in Oswego, is third from left.
“The Little Rascals” movies, that we watched as part of the numerous local kids’ TV shows of the 1950s have worn extremely well. Even so, every once in a while, some Hollywood genius decides to try reviving them with always disastrous results. It’s really impossible to improve on or recreate a true classic.
After having studied up using the right books and absorbed as much “Rascals” lore as we could, we ventured forth each summer to have fun—and have fun we did. The woods near my home became our special preserve. We built bicycle trails throughout the stand of young soft maples woods, and built a series of three villages located on those trails. We maintained the houses and trails in the woods for about two years, I think, before we were forced to move elsewhere by unfriendly neighbors.
We spent a LOT of time on the Fox River. Above, my fishing buddy Paul holds up a big carp he caught. We still go fishing together twice a year.
Shortly before the move, we obtained our first river boats, and so became even more independent. My boat was purchased from a young man in Aurora, as I recall. It resembled nothing so much as the kind of large wooden box that contractors mix cement in.
It was very heavy, made of one inch lumber throughout, with a three-quarter inch plywood bottom. It even had a keel, for what reason I was never able to determine. About all the keel did was to catch on the rocks on the bottom of the shallow Fox River.
Granted, my boat was very heavy, but that meant it was also very stable. Three of my friends could stand on the gunwale at one time, and the boat would come nowhere near to tipping over.
The nice thing about the Fox, of course, was that it was so shallow that it was difficult—though not impossible—to find a place deep enough in which to drown. There were holes, of course, but we learned where nearly all of them were and stayed away from them.
After it became too much of a hassle to keep our towns on the mainland, we moved to a large island in the river where we built similar houses and forts.
The move to the island occasioned the need for a communications system from the island to the mainland, and from there to our tree house. It was determined that tying letters to arrows and shooting them from the island to the mainland and from there to the tree house was the answer to our problems. On the first test of our new communications system, the fellow standing in the field on the mainland came within six inches of getting the arrow with the message through his foot, but he gamely picked up the arrow and message and shot it up to the base of the tree in which we had our fort. The plan was then to attach the note to a hunting arrow and shoot it up into the bottom of the trapdoor of the tree house. As he shot the arrow, however, the fellow on the ground yelled, “Here it comes!” Not quite hearing him, another of my compatriots opened up the trap door to ask what he said, just as the hunting arrow whistled past his ear. After narrowly averting disaster twice during the first message test, we decided to scrap the system for something a little less hazardous.
Elmer the Elephant: Gone but not forgotten.
I’m not sure what kids read these days, but I suspect that neither Penrod and Sam nor The Story of a Bad Boy are among the books parents will allow in the house. And, sadly, “The Little Rascals” comedies are not broadcast daily on the kind of live-action kids’ shows we tuned into back in the day like “Here’s Geraldine” or “Elmer the Elephant.”
I suppose, with the number of kids we have today, all these modern structured activities might really be necessary. I’m glad I never had to cope with them, though. For me, it was much more fun spending the summer with Penrod, Spanky, and Tom Bailey.
Filed under entertainment, Environment, family, Fox River, History, Local History, Nostalgia, Oswego
Tagged as entertainment, environment, family, history
On June 1, 1898, the Kendall County Record published an anonymous letter to the editor from an Oswego resident noting how the commemoration of Decoration Day—today’s Memorial Day—had changed over the years.
The commemoration started out with the girls of the community going to the cemetery to decorate the graves of Civil War soldiers. Gradually, it morphed into almost a celebration of the military, something that became really evident during 1898, when this letter to the editor appeared in the Record.
As we finish commemorating another Memorial Day, I thought it might be interesting and instructive to reprint that anonymous letter to give a slightly different take on this annual holiday:
AN OSWEGO VIEW
Former Civil War soldier George White leads Oswego’s Decoration Day parade through the downtown business district about 1898. (Little White School Museum collection)
For several years following the rebellion, the decoration of the soldiers’ graves was not thought of, and, if I mistake not, the practice was first begun in the South. Here in Oswego it was commenced by a few ladies–and such seemed to be the case more or less all over the country–who, on a nice day, would quietly go to the cemetery and place flowers on the graves of the soldiers of the late war. The spirit that then moved the decorators was that of pity; a pity that these young lives should have been sacrificed; that kind of practice would have tended towards aversion to war.
But a regular day was appointed for it; the affair was taken out of the hands of the women by the soldiers, especially by the organized G.A.R. To secure a band was the first move towards decoration; the procession in military order was made the great imposing feature; the oration the more bombastic the better; in short, the spirit of pity was changed to that of glory, and the affair made to stimulate militarism. Under this spirit and practice, it was no wonder that the sporting class improved the day for races, base ball games, etc.
The question now is: Which disposition for a people is the best, the civil or military? A temperance lecture here one evening, of course portrayed the liquor business as the great danger with which the country is threatened; it fully endorsed the war with Spain; closing with a peroration of the most popular sentiments in regard to it such as the holy cause of securing liberty to the oppressed.
To illustrate a point, the opinions of two great men as to the destiny of the United States were quoted: one by President McKinley to the effect “that the institutions handed down by the father are safe in the hands of the people;” the other by the historian Macaulay, in substance “that the government within itself will furnish its destruction by the leading up to a military dictator.”
Legendary Oswego music educator Reeve R. Thompson marches down Main Street on the way to the Oswego Township Cemetery with the OHS Band on Memorial Day 1957. (Little White School Museum collection)
Considering the military spirit and hero worship to which we are running, the Macaulay opinion is the more in line. The expression “We want to lick Spain like h–l” may not sound very patriotic, but there is such a thing that the greater the victory the worse for the victory. By fighting for liberty for others, you may thereby lose your own. The more fighting, the greater the prestige of the army. Militarism and nobility are going hand in hand. The rule now that when other things being equal, preference shall be given to the soldiers for federal offices can be easily enlarged. The islands to be conquered are to be governed by the army, of course, and Hawaii to be annexed by a small fraction of the inhabitants who, though not called nobility, constitute one all the same.
What makes millionaires and the sons of great men so readily enlist in the war but the fame to be realized from it?
Filed under Civil War, History, Kendall County, Local History, Military History, Oswego, People in History
Tagged as history, military
Wetlands and meanders: Old problems that could be new solutions…
When the first settlers arrived in the Fox Valley, they found tallgrass prairies dotted with open groves of mixed hardwood trees. The prairie, however, was not a simple grass monoculture.
In their descriptions, the settlers divided prairie into wet prairie and dry prairie, with dry prairie the most desirable for farming, but not always the most prevalent. Drier, higher prairie was quickly claimed by the first settlers, and later arrivals were forced to settle land with fens, sloughs, and marshes. Bristol Township was notorious among early pioneers for having a lot more than its share of wetlands, and was derisively referred to as “Slough Grass,” “Pond Lilly,” and “Bull Rush” by the pioneers.
While wetlands may have been viewed with sarcasm, they were no laughing matter in those early days. Although rich in wildlife, wetlands tended to come with a dismaying number of sicknesses for early residents. Outbreaks of ague—malaria—and other diseases were blamed on “miasmas” that supposedly emanated from wetlands. Not until the germ theory of disease was discovered and gained acceptance many decades later did people realize insects that favored wet habitats spread sickness, not mysterious invisible swamp vapors.
Since there was no effective chemical insect control available, that knowledge probably wouldn’t have saved the wetlands, because draining them had the desired effect by eliminating mosquitoes. As the area’s extensive wetlands were drained, malaria was virtually eradicated. And just as importantly for those early farmers, formerly wet prairie became productive farmland.
George L. Griffin and J.H. Carper of Dallas City, Illinois invented this improved mole ditcher in 1860. Their main improvement was to make the machine cut its drainage tunnel with less effort on the horses or oxen pulling it.
Drainage work on the thousands of acres of wetland really started as soon as the settlers arrived. Initial efforts were fairly simple and labor intensive as ditches were dug from wetlands to the nearest streams.
In 1854, the mole ditcher was invented, a sort of subterranean plow that created a small underground tunnel. It took a lot of oxen and muscle power, but a mole ditcher could drain about a half mile of wetland a day. But while the machine worked well in clay soils, drain tunnels pushed through more friable soils tended to quickly collapse, not only blocking the flow but also creating dangerous holes in fields into which men and animals frequently stepped.
The other major technique was to build underground drain pipes of wooden boards or stone, but that was expensive in both labor and capital.
Then in the 1860s, clay tile began to look like the best bet to drain wetlands. Tile plants in Joliet and Chicago began advertising in The Prairie Farmer magazine and drainage efforts accelerated and quickly expanded. Even more ambitious drainage projects became possible thanks to laws passed by the General Assembly in the 1870s allowing landowners to combine into drainage districts, financed by property taxes levied on affected landowners.
The move towards draining ever more land led to entrepreneurs starting to manufacture their own field tile using locally-available clays. In April 1879, Kendall County Record Editor John Marshall noted: “Samples of the [drainage] tile made at Millington can be seen at Willett & Welch’s implement room in Yorkville. Farmers should examine it.”
The new clay drainage tile technology allowed even the largest wetlands, such as the Great Wabasia Swamp, which covered 367 acres in northern Oswego and southern Aurora townships, to be drained by the 1890s.
By Jan. 1, 1884, according to the Illinois Department of Agriculture, farmers had laid the astonishing total of 800 miles of drainage tile throughout Kendall County alone.
Then in August that same year, the Record noted that tile making had come to Yorkville: “Joseph Tarbox is getting out a first quality of tile with his new machine, and has at his yard a general assortment of all sizes; and he will not be undersold by anyone. Address, Yorkville, Ill. Tile and brick yard on the north side, near the fairgrounds.”
On Nov. 17, 1897, the Kendall County Record’s Oswego correspondent could report that: “Mr. Job Wampah is hauling large size tile–12-inch–from Plainfield so as to close up an open ditch across part of his farm. Land is nearly all drained out in this part of the country. What a difference between now and 25 years ago when ponds and swales were on every farm. When politicians tell of the great change that came over the country in ‘73, they should not forget to state that farmers began tiling about that time.”
From 1905 to 1910, $60,000 (a small fortune in those days) was spent in Bristol Township alone to tile and drain a total of 3,200 acres of wetlands.
Water drained by the county’s vast tile systems had to have someplace to go, so creeks were modified for fast drainage by channelizing—straightening and deepening them—to speed run-off to either the Fox River or AuSable Creek. As a result, rainwater that was once stockpiled in the county’s numerous wetlands and allowed to run off slowly was encourage to quickly flow away. The increased velocity of stormwater and spring melt runoff is often destructive in the short term as raging waters create severe erosion and other damage.
Fast runoff from its watershed combined with destruction of wetland has also had a drastic long-term effect on the Fox River. By the early years of the 20th Century, according to C.W. Rolfe, writing in The Fishes of Illinois published in 1908, the volume of the Fox River’s flow at its low water rate in late summer was half of its estimated low water flow in the 1830s. Tiling, ditching, and draining did not stop, of course, something that continued to plague the river during the next century. A measurement taken by the U.S. Geological Survey on the Fox River in 1975 north of Aurora showed that its low water flow rate had further declined by about 15 percent from Rolfe’s time.
Another cause for concern reported in the mid-1970s was the discovery that between 1905 and 1971 two “indicator” species of small fish that require access to wetlands to spawn, the Blacknose Shiner and the Iowa Darter, had completely disappeared from the Fox River system, both casualties of wetland destruction.
The destruction of wetlands has caused the county’s streams to resemble aquatic yo-yos, their levels bouncing up and down during successive wet and dry periods, sometimes within a matter of days of each other. In addition, the descendants of the very farmers who drained the wetlands have been adversely affected as ground water levels, once maintained by extensive wetlands, declined over the decades.
The devastating Flood of 1996 turned Waubonsie Creek into a raging torrent that nearly destroyed the railroad bridge crossing it near downtown Oswego. Wetlands and creek meanders eliminated more than a century before might have mitigated some of the flooding.
Most of the county’s wetlands did not totally and completely disappear, however, as unfortunate homeowners living in developments built on former marsh and swamp land often discover following rain storms or fast snow melt. Even with drainage patterns changed by the engineering of new subdivisions, commercial developments, and roads, the land tends to revert to its natural state during high water periods—and for a lot of county land, the natural state was that wet prairie noted above. In fact, old survey maps and historical accounts of the county’s early days suggest residents of more than one new development may have cause for continuing concern as many of them found out during the huge Flood of 1996 that resurrected a number of ancient marshes and sloughs following 17” of rain.
At least one solution for the intermittent flooding that plagues the area has gradually become apparent during the past few decades: Restore some of the area’s wetlands. Just as they did 160 years ago, wetlands can be used to slow flood waters to decrease the water’s damaging velocity and store the runoff for slower release, which reduces or even prevents flood damage. Side benefits—although naturalists would class them as major benefits—are that wetlands cleanse the streams they empty into by filtering polluted run-off from roads and parking lots. They also enrich the area’s wildlife diversity by attracting birds and other animals and creating spawning grounds for fish. And unlike the pioneers, we know how to deal with disease carrying insects that might be attracted to wetlands through sound ecological management.
When you get right down to it, there’s nothing like persuading Mother Nature to use her own tricks to help solve problems we’ve caused ourselves.
Filed under Environment, Fox River, History, Illinois History, Kendall County, Local History, Oswego, Science stuff, Semi-Current Events
Tagged as current-events, environment, history, science
The huge impact of 19th Century roads on area towns is largely unappreciated
Downtown redevelopment frenzies seem to come and go with some regularity. From Montgomery to Yorkville to Plano and Sandwich, towns around this area keep looking for ways to revitalize their historic downtown business districts.
For instance, back in 2005, Oswego wrapped up a multi-million dollar downtown redevelopment project. Montgomery got into the act, too, with the end result being their wonderful new village hall, historic Settler’s Cottage, and extensive cleanup. Most recent was Yorkville’s (so far successful) attempt to preserve its downtown in the face of the widening Ill. Route 47 to five lanes right smack through the middle of their historic Bridge Street business district.
Oswego’s downtown business district (looking north from Van Buren Street) under construction in August 2001. The project wasn’t completed for a few more years. (Little White School Museum collection)
Each of these communities faces its own challenges, even though each town’s business district is so much different than the others.
Talk to an economic historian about why communities develop the way they do, and you’ll likely get an eye-glazing lecture on, among other things, modern interpretations of S.H. Goodin’s central place theory and the definition of hinterlands. Those things certainly have had great effects on municipal development. But here in the Fox Valley area, the single most important aspect of why and how our communities evolved the way they have seems to have had more to do with transportation—in particular, transportation routes that existed in the middle two-thirds of the 19th Century—than other factors.
The results are interesting to contemplate. Plainfield, for instance, has a large downtown business district situated along what used to be U.S. Route 30, which ran through the middle of its business district until it was rerouted around downtown some years ago. Oswego’s business district is bordered on two sides by busy U.S. Route 34, the main, and often traffic-snarled, route through the village. Montgomery’s tiny downtown is flanked to the west by Ill. Route 31 and to the east by the Fox River. Yorkville, in a situation somewhat similar to Plainfield, has its respectable downtown business district bisected by busy Ill. Route 47.
Meanwhile, the tiny Kendall County community of Plattville has what once passed for a business district that meandered along Plattville Road, which runs through the middle of the village. Likewise, the hamlet of Little Rock in northwestern Kendall County also rambles along the road through town, in this case the old state stagecoach road to Galena. Plano’s downtown was designed to be bisected by the main line of the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad while Sandwich’s Main Street (not to be confused with the street the business district is on) is perpendicular to the main line tracks, which inconveniently arrived after the village was platted.
Although Montgomery has a Main Street running parallel to the Fox River, it’s main business district became oriented to Mill Street and its bridge across the Fox River. (Little White School Museum collection)
In each case, transportation routes arguably had the largest influence on how and where these business districts were located and eventually laid out, while each community’s location in the hinterland of a nearby larger community had an important impact on the size and makeup of each downtown.
Although Montgomery has a Main Street, the business district is located to its east and stretches along Mill, River, and Webster streets, similar to the meandering layouts of the hamlets of Little Rock and Plattville. Oswego’s main business district, a three block section of Main Street, is located parallel to the Fox River while Yorkville’s, which is about the same size, is sited perpendicular to the river. How did it all happen?
Montgomery’s founder, Daniel Gray, actually laid the village out with a Main Street that, like Oswego’s, ran parallel to the Fox River. But economic realities changed Gray’s vision so that businesses gradually grew up along the streets that led to the modern bridge (located north of Gray’s original 1830s bridge) across the river. Thus the gentle S route formed by Mill, River, and Webster streets became the de facto business district.
Meanwhile, Oswego’s founders laid out Main Street along the economically vital Chicago to Ottawa Road and immediately adjacent to the Joliet to Dixon road that crossed the river at Oswego on its way west across the prairie. Probably because the Ottawa Road was the more economically important connection in the 1830s and 1840s, the business district remained strong along Main Street. By the time the first bridge was built across the river in 1848, Main Street was established as the business district.
Yorkville’s Bridge Street, shown here looking north in 1893, became the town’s main thoroughfare, even though it ran perpendicular to the community’s two Main Streets. (Little White School Museum collection)
But in Yorkville, a different dynamic was at work. The Fox River Road, the stagecoach and mail route from Ottawa to Geneva, did not pass through Yorkville. Instead it ran through neighboring Bristol on the north bank of the Fox River. And the post road from Ottawa to Chicago (now Ill. Route 71) bypassed Yorkville to the south. Yorkville had been named the county seat by a state commission in 1841, but voters decided to move it to Oswego in 1845. As a result, Yorkville didn’t get a post office until 1864 when the county seat moved back from Oswego (Bristol’s post office had been established in 1839). Because the post office used by Yorkville residents was on the north side of the river in Bristol, along with connection to the busy Fox River Trail, and the location of the Chicago to Ottawa Road was well south of the river, Yorkville’s business district grew in a north-south orientation. The main route through the business district is called Bridge Street, denoting the importance of the river crossing to the city’s economy. And that’s despite two Main Streets in Yorkville, one on either side of the river. one in the old village of Bristol running parallel to the river on the north side and one in Yorkville proper, running perpendicular to the river on the south side.
Just as their orientation and layout is different, so too are the sizes of the three communities’ business districts, which grow in size the farther they are from Aurora.
Plainfield, on the other hand, is far enough from either Aurora or Joliet to have developed its own large independent business district, similar to Naperville’s. Plano and Sandwich, both fairly typical railroad towns, were mercantile centers in their own right early on with downtowns fueled by the passenger and economic traffic brought by rail lines. Compare them to Little Rock and Plattville, hamlets that owed their existence to the roads to Galena and Ottawa, respectively. The two villages declined precipitately when the rail lines extending west of Chicago missed both.
Today, 170 years after most of Kendall County’s town-founding took place, transportation is still shaping the towns we live in—for better or (more often) for worse. And as change occurs, it might be useful to recall that this isn’t the first time such major transformations and dislocations took place. Nor, I think it’s safe to say, will it be the last.
Filed under Architecture, Environment, Fox River, Government, History, Illinois History, Kendall County, Local History, Montgomery, Oswego, Semi-Current Events, Transportation
Tagged as Business, current-events, environment, history, travel
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