pred_label
stringclasses 2
values | pred_label_prob
float64 0.5
1
| wiki_prob
float64 0.25
1
| text
stringlengths 44
1.02M
| source
stringlengths 38
43
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
__label__wiki
| 0.56898
| 0.56898
|
Glassdoor Raises Another $6.5 Million For Company And Salary Review Community
Glassdoor has added another $6.5 Million to its war chest, thanks to a Series B funding round led by Sutter Hill Ventures. Jim White, managing director of the venture firm will assume a seat on the company’s board of directors.
Initial seed funding for Glassdoor was provided in 2007 by its co-founders Hohman, Tim Besse and Richard Barton. The startup remained in stealth mode before picking up $3 Million in Series A funding from Benchmark Capital last March (they’ve also participated in this round), and ultimately launched in the beginning of June.
Glassdoor enables anyone to find and share real-time reviews, ratings and salary details about specific jobs for specific employers, free of charge and anonymously. A quick glance at the traffic stats shows that the site had a dip after the momentum of its public launch, but is now headed in the right direction. Glassdoor claims it has received 115,000 contributions for 14,000 companies across a wide section of global industries to date. CEO Robert Hohman told the NY Times that many of the site’s visitors are starting their travels at other online job boards and end up at Glassdoor.com to look for ratings and reviews before making a decision.
With the economy in a downturn, man who have been laid off in the past few weeks might want to take the time to join the Glassdoor community in search for the right new employer.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1771
|
__label__wiki
| 0.891549
| 0.891549
|
Confirmed: Salem Buys Michelle Malkin's Hot Air Blog
Christian media company Salem Communications this morning confirmed reports that it had acquired Hot Air, the conservative blog started by author and journalist Michelle Malkin, for an undisclosed sum.
The news comes after Mediaite yesterday reported the acquisition as a done deal, although neither party confirmed the agreement until earlier this morning.
Hot Air was started by Malkin on April 24, 2006 as a “conservative Internet broadcast network” and is currently managed by editors Ed Morrissey and (someone who goes by the pseudonym) AllahPundit on a day-to-day basis. The Hot Air blog will join Townhall.com as part of Salem’s Internet division, Salem Web Network (SWN).
Combined, the two conservative websites will reach 3 million unique readers, Salem claims, although the media company didn’t specify whether those are monthly uniques.
Salem Communications Acquires HotAir.com
Blog Site Joins With Townhall to Create Largest Conservative News and Commentary Voice on the Web
WASHINGTON, DC–(Marketwire – February 18, 2010) – Salem Communications (NASDAQ: SALM), a leading U.S. radio broadcaster, Internet content provider and magazine publisher targeting audiences interested in faith, family and conservative values, announced today at the Conservative Political Action Conference that it has acquired HotAir.com — the popular right-of-center blog showcasing the news, analysis and commentary of Ed Morrissey and AllahPundit — from Michelle Malkin.
HotAir.com — combined with Townhall.com — creates the largest conservative commentary, analysis, and news network on the Web with more than 3 million unique readers.
Best-selling author, blogger, and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, who started HotAir.com in 2006, said of the acquisition, “HotAir has experienced phenomenal growth — beyond our wildest expectations. With its established radio platform and fast-growing Internet brands, Salem is perfectly positioned to take HotAir to the next level as a conservative multimedia powerhouse.”
Jonathan Garthwaite, VP & General Manager of Townhall/HotAir, commenting on the acquisition said, “I have always respected Michelle Malkin and the insights and opinions presented by HotAir. I look forward to working with Ed Morrissey and AllahPundit during a critical period in determining our country’s future. The combination of the #1 conservative opinion and news site and the #1 conservative news and commentary blog creates a real force for conservative values in 2010 and beyond,” he added.
Townhall/HotAir is a part of Salem Communications’ Internet division, Salem Web Network (SWN). Tom Perrault, Senior Vice President of SWN, said, “The addition of HotAir doubles the size of Salem’s expanding footprint in online conservative commentary. It’s a perfect fit for us, since we can leverage talk radio, print and other online assets to aggressively grow the site, while offering political organizations and advertisers an even more effective way to reach and engage the conservative audience.”
“The acquisition by Salem Communications is an exciting step for HotAir. I am looking forward to working with my good friends at Salem with their large radio network and websites,” said HotAir blogger Ed Morrissey. “I have worked for a very good friend and mentor for the last two years, Michelle Malkin. Congratulations to Michelle for her vision and hard work in turning HotAir into one of the most frequented political websites,” Morrissey added.
“It’s an honor to work with a company as respected as Salem and an amazing opportunity to expand HotAir’s reach ahead of the midterm elections,” said AllahPundit, who blogs under a pseudonym. “Eternal thanks to Michelle Malkin, for having taken a chance on me when no one else would. I can never repay her for her kindness.”
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1772
|
__label__wiki
| 0.965836
| 0.965836
|
Panasonic Adds A Twitter App To Its Viera Cast Plasma HDTVS
You can’t escape Twitter anymore. It’s everywhere including in some of Panasonic’s Viera Cast Plasma TVs and eventually, in a few Panasonic Blu-ray players as well. It’s just the latest app available in the already-loaded Viera Cast IPTV offering. Twitter joins Netflix, Pandora, Fox Sports, Amazon Video-on-Demand, YouTube, Icasa, Bloomberg, and Skype’s Video calling service.
Sure it’s no iOS or Google TV, but these Panasonic TVs were doing the app dance three years ago and continue to gain new features. Is 3D the future of HDTVs? Nope, it’s apps. Click through for the release and list of compatible models.
Panasonic Launches Twitter on VIERA CAST Plasma HDTVs
Consumers Can Now Tweet – One of Many Ways to Communicate – On Their Panasonic VIERA® Plasma HDTV.
SECAUCUS, N.J., Aug. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Panasonic, a worldwide leader in High Definition technology and built-in TV web entertainment announced the activation of Twitter® on Panasonic VIERA CAST™ enabled HDTVs. Twitter will also be available on VIERA CAST-enabled Blu-ray Disc Players at a later date. The planned addition of Twitter, a real-time global information network, was announced in January at the International Consumer Electronics Show.
Twitter is the latest feature to be added to VIERA CAST, Panasonic’s proprietary IPTV function. Earlier this year, Panasonic added Skype™ voice and video calling(1), Netflix™, Pandora, and Fox Sports to an already robust list of popular entertainment and information sites including Amazon Video-on-Demand™, YouTube™, Google’s Picasa™ Web Album, Bloomberg and a weather service.
Twitter is an information network that enables its users to send and read other user messages called Tweets — text-based posts of up to 140 characters. Twitter has achieved enormous growth since its founding in 2006. Proof of that is evidenced by the fact that there are 70 million Tweets written per day by more than 145 million users worldwide.
For 2010 VIERA CAST-enabled HDTVs, Panasonic also introduced USB connectivity which enables the addition of a wireless LAN adaptor (802.11b or faster), a keyboard for more efficient site navigation and communication, and USB memory which supports AVCHD video and JPEG photos. VIERA CAST requires no external box or PC(2) and is accessed via a single button on the television remote control. There is no fee to use the VIERA CAST functionality (some VIERA CAST services such as VOD have a separate fee structure).
“Since we introduced Panasonic VIERA CAST™ IPTVs three years ago we have added more and more of the top entertainment and social networking sites in the world,” said Merwan Mereby, Panasonic’s Vice President, Corporate Development. “The addition of Twitter® to VIERA CAST further strengthens the interactive options Panasonic VIERA HDTV owners can now use to communicate with family and friends worldwide. Consumers with VIERA CAST-enabled HDTVs can now tweet on Twitter, video chat via Skype, share videos on YouTube and digital photos via Google Picasa right from the comfort of their living rooms.”
Panasonic VIERA Plasma HDTVs featuring VIERA CAST:
VT25 and VT20 Series of Full HD 3D Plasmas:
G25 Series:
Panasonic Blu-ray Disc Players featuring VIERA CAST (Twitter not yet available):
DMP-BDT350 (Full HD 3D)
DMP-BD85
DMP-BD70V
DMP-B500 (Portable)
About Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company:
Based in Secaucus, N.J., Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company (PCEC), a market and technology leader in High Definition television, is a Division of Panasonic Corporation of North America, the principal North American subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation (NYSE: PC) and the hub of Panasonic’s U.S. marketing, sales, service and R&D operations. Panasonic is pledged to practice prudent, sustainable use of the earth’s natural resources and protect our environment through the company’s Eco Ideas programs. Information about Panasonic products is available at www.panasonic.com. Additional company information for journalists is available at www.panasonic.com/pressroom.
(1) Skype is available exclusively on 2010 VIERA CAST-enabled Panasonic VIERA Plasma HDTVs (VT25, VT20, G25, G20 Series) and requires the Panasonic Skype-enabled camera (TY-CC10W) which is sold separately (SRP $169.85) to make video calls.
(2) Access to a broadband internet connection is required to access VIERA CAST features.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1775
|
__label__wiki
| 0.727614
| 0.727614
|
Zuckerberg Vs. D’Angelo, ‘Before They Were Stars’ And ‘Where Are They Now?’
“The playlist ran out on my computer, and I thought, ‘You know, there’s really no reason why my computer shouldn’t just know what I want to learn next,” he explains. “So that’s what we made.”
— Mark Zuckerberg, Harvard Crimson interview, 2004
Above is the Team page for Synapse, the Pandora-like music recommendation plugin Mark Zuckerberg and former Facebook engineer and Quora founder Adam D’Angelo built in 2002, while they were in high school together. You can access the entire site through the Web Archive here. Aol, Microsoft and WinAmp all expressed interest in buying the WinAmp program and Zuckerberg and D’Angelo reportedly received up offers of up to 2 million dollars, which they famously turned down.
Items in the above image presented without commentary: The fact that high school student D’Angelo is described as being “hung like a horse.” The consistent references to “Programmer Gods” woven throughout the site. The fact that the Synapse slogan is “My brain is better than yours.” The Coolio reference. Whatever “If you hit it and that thing feels deeper, say his name” means (shudder).
Hey, we’ve all written strange things on the Internet, and most of us would have lived our lives differently had we known they would one day be searchable (or in this case, Wayback Machine-able). However, what is most interesting about this Team page is the fact that D’Angelo’s Quora and Zuckerberg’s Facebook are now in direct competition over their respective Q&A products.
And there seems to be some contention over just how friendly this competition is: Facebook’s Director of Product Blake Ross is the subject of an entire thread on Quora called “The Oct 2010 Blake Ross Quoragate Farrago”where there is much speculation over exactly why he was unable to login to Quora and why his account there was deleted in early October.
There’s also lot of talk on Quora AND Facebook Questions about a possible dispute between Facebook and Quora, with one thread accusing Facebook of blocking Quora users from gaining access to Questions over the summer.
Ross tells TechCrunch that this is not the case and that, “We don’t feel animosity toward Quora. It’s a terrific product. I worked closely with all of the founders in the past”. I wish the media would stop trying to turn Silicon Valley into TMZ.”
Ross also tells TechCrunch that whatever happened with his Quora account has “been resolved.” Yet he still doesn’t know what exactly happened to his account. Busy Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who recently asked his first Facebook Question, hasn’t been active on Quora since January 2009.
No matter what Quora or Facebook Questions thread you subscribe to, the reality is that Facebook Questions, if rolled out to all users and executed correctly, could kill Quora. The Facebook Questions beta currently has one million users, while the Quora site has around 155K (very passionate) users.
Facebook wins the numbers game by default, but many hold that Quora retains a better user experience in terms of quality of answers and a strong community — So it remains to be seen which former Synapse co-founder will ultimately be “the king of the spreadsheets,” at least in the Q&A space.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1776
|
__label__cc
| 0.640881
| 0.359119
|
Google Takes Political Online Ads Local, Allows Campaigns To Target Congressional Districts
Google’s tools for tracking the upcoming U.S. election later this year mostly focus on the presidential election. It’s no secret that Google – thanks to its various advertising services – also makes a good amount of money from the various political campaigns that compete in smaller contests, including the 435 races for seats in the House of Representatives this year. This year, thanks to the recent redistricting of many congressional districts, quite a few of these races are very different from just two years ago and many districts now include new media markets that can make reaching voters hard.
Today, Google launched a new tool that allows political campaigns to simply select their district and ensure that their ads are shown only within their district. This tool, says Google, allows campaigns to “quickly and easily target their search, display, mobile and video ads solely within that particular district’s border.”
Google says it “built a sizeable team” that’s helping candidates with their online advertising efforts. With its “Four Screen To Victory” program, the company is clearly putting a strong effort on bringing political campaigns (and their advertising budget) on board with AdWords and its other tools.
Just last month, Google also launched the ability to target U.S. ZIP codes which gives political campaigns (and anybody else who wants to advertise locally) the ability to target specific areas in their district. While Google hasn’t announced how many political campaigns are using its tools, the company today said that “thousands” of political campaigns are using its tools.
As Gerrit Lansing, the digital director of the National Republican Congressional Committee told the Wall Street Journal earlier today, his team is already taking advantage of this new tool. ““Any time you can be more specific in your advertising it is a big benefit to a political campaign. The ability to draw a precise circle around these convoluted districts is a big deal, and we’ll be taking full advantage.”
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1777
|
__label__cc
| 0.722998
| 0.277002
|
Diveboard Targets Highly Active Niche Diver Community For Ecommerce Opportunity
French startup Diveboard was at TechCrunch Disrupt SF for day one of Startup Alley today, demoing its social network and e-commerce platform aimed at the thriving and avid niche of community of divers. According to the company, the market is worth approximately $2 billion annually in Queensland, Australia, alone, where the Great Barrier Reef draws plenty of tourists.
Diveboard lets users create profiles and then upload their dive history and information for each dive, reviewing dive spots and providing videos and pictures. They also review dive shops as well, so that you get a good idea of which shops to trust and book with, something that previously wasn’t available in any organized way on the web.
“We have a great community of more than 10,000 divers, and almost 80,000 dives have been logged on the website so far,” co-founder Pascal Manchon explained in an interview. “We’ve been in business for about a year, and we’ve had lots of growth and traction among both divers and among dive shops.”
It’s free to sign up for Diveboard for both divers and for dive shops, but the revenue for the startup is based on offering value-add marketing services for dive shops via premium plans. Diveboard also works as a fully featured e-commerce platform for dive shops, allowing proprietors of those businesses to bring their businesses to the web. Most of these types of shops barely have an online presence at all, Manchon explained, and almost none have any kind of online booking process. Diveboard automates the process of setting up on online shop, providing a simple embeddable widget to show owners to place back on their own sites.
Currently, Diveboard is in the process of building a next-generation mobile app, that adds many more social features (the current version is basically for divers to revisit their trips). The next version will also help shops better show off their content, fulfilling that side as well. The other big plan for the future of Diveboard is building relationships with other ecosystem companies like hotels and service providers that tie into the diving trip experience, which should offer even more opportunity for revenue generation.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1778
|
__label__wiki
| 0.705003
| 0.705003
|
Harvard Report Debunks Claim Surveillance Is “Going Dark”
Since the 2013 Snowden disclosures revealed the extent of government surveillance programs it’s been a standard claim by intelligence agencies, seeking to justify their push for more powers, that their ability to track suspects using new technologies is under threat because of growing use of end-to-end encryption by technology companies.
For example, in a speech in fall 2014, FBI director James Comey asserted: “The law hasn’t kept pace with technology, and this disconnect has created a significant public safety problem. We call it “Going Dark”… We have the legal authority to intercept and access communications and information pursuant to court order, but we often lack the technical ability to do so.”
More recently, in the UK, the government has claimed expanded surveillance legislation — including a proposal to record and store details of every website citizens visit for a full year — are necessary to plug so-called “capability gaps” for intelligence agencies. The wording of the draft Investigatory Powers bill even implies that end-to-end encryption will stand outside the law since comms providers will apparently be legally required to hand over data in a legible form.
However a new study, published yesterday, by Harvard University and funded by the Hewlett Foundation, debunks the notion that surveillance agencies are struggling with a data blackout. On the contrary, it argues, the rise of connected devices (the so-called Internet of Things) presents massive opportunities for surveillance, bolstered by technology companies having business models that rely on data-mining their own users — providing an incentive for them not to robustly encrypt IoT data.
As I wrote last year, when it comes to the Internet of Things and privacy, the risk is “that an embedded ‘everywhere Internet’ becomes a highly efficient, hugely invasive machine analyzing us at every turn in order to package up every aspect of our existence as a marketing opportunity”.
Or security expert Bruce Schneier — one of the signatories of the report — writing on IoT and privacy back in May 2013…
In the longer term, the Internet of Things means ubiquitous surveillance. If an object “knows” you have purchased it, and communicates via either Wi-Fi or the mobile network, then whoever or whatever it is communicating with will know where you are. Your car will know who is in it, who is driving, and what traffic laws that driver is following or ignoring. No need to show ID; your identity will already be known. Store clerks could know your name, address, and income level as soon as you walk through the door.
The aim of the 37-page Harvard report, which involved contributions from technical experts like Schneier, along with US government counterterrorism officials, civil liberty advocates and Harvard law academics, is to bring a more balanced perspective to the policy debate around surveillance, according to Harvard’s Jonathan Zittrain (another report signatory), who convened the group, speaking to the New York Times yesterday.
“We managed to do that in part by thinking of a larger picture, specifically in the unexpected ways that surveillance might be attempted,” he said.
Discussing why intelligence agencies seem apparently so blind to the surveillance potential of the IoT, Zittrain told TechCrunch: “I think, as you suggest, it’s a difference between the capabilities they have right now and what they’re likely to have in the future. They’re focused on the here and now. Also, law enforcement is grounded in the old telephony model — one app in overwhelming use that can be regularly gone to for surveillance. Something as unruly as today’s IoT probably doesn’t seem like a good candidate for routine monitoring.
“But that will change as the IoT space likely consolidates, with a few go-to paths emerging for surveillance. I think that’s why it’s important to think through boundaries on that surveillance now — before it becomes routine. And IoT companies need to take seriously the privacy of the telemetry they receive — and what they *could* receive with a remote tweak to their devices.”
One notable signatory on the intelligence agency side is the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Matthew G. Olsen. Although two current senior NSA officials — John DeLong, the head of the agency’s Commercial Solutions Center, and Anne Neuberger, its chief risk officer — are also described as “core members” of the group, albeit the NYT notes they were unable to sign the report as they could not act on behalf of the agency or the US government in endorsing its conclusions.
The report asserts that “communications in the future will neither be eclipsed into darkness nor illuminated without shadow”, emphasizing the role played by commercial companies in eroding data privacy.
“Market forces and commercial interests will likely limit the circumstances in which companies will offer encryption that obscures user data from the companies themselves, and the trajectory of technological development points to a future abundant in unencrypted data, some of which can fill gaps left by the very communication channels law enforcement fears will “go dark” and beyond reach,” it adds.
Core findings of the report include:
that end-to-end encryption and its tech ilk are unlikely to be “adopted ubiquitously by companies” — given that the majority of businesses providing such services rely on “access to user data for revenue streams and product functionality, including user data recovery should a password be forgotten”
that the fragmentation of software ecosystems works against widespread and comprehensive encryption, given it would require “far more coordination and standardization than currently exists”
that projected substantial growth in the number of networked sensors/IoT devices has the potential to “drastically change surveillance” — with the report noting “still images, video, and audio captured by these devices may enable real-time intercept and recording with after-the fact access”, offering a workaround for intelligence agencies being unable to monitor a target through an encrypted channel
that metadata is not encrypted, and the report asserts the “vast majority” is likely to remain unencrypted because it is required for systems to operate (e.g. location data from cell phones and other devices, telephone calling records, header information in e-mail). “This information provides an enormous amount of surveillance data that was unavailable before these systems became widespread,” it notes
The report adds that the various trends it has identified raise “novel questions” about how to protect individual privacy and security in the future — a topic that was also worrying the FTC chairwoman at the start of last year, when she called for IoT companies to adopt security by design, engage in data minimization practices, increase transparency and provide consumers with notice and choice for unexpected data uses.
“Today’s debate is important, but for all its efforts to take account of technological trends, it is largely taking place without reference to the full picture,” the report concludes.
That in turn begs the question why governments and intelligence agencies are being so partial in their arguments as they seek to justify expanded surveillance powers. But if the imperative is to landgrab as much access to data as possible then narrowing the debate to focus on specific technologies such as end-to-end encryption makes sense as a way to distract attention from other potential surveillance avenues, such as IoT and location metadata. In other words, it’s pure misdirection.
In any case, whether such incomplete arguments will pass muster with legislators, the judiciary and the general public remains to be seen. But the tug-of-war between technology and politicians will of course continue.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1779
|
__label__cc
| 0.679228
| 0.320772
|
Brightwheel raises $10 million to keep parents in-the-know about their kids’ day at school
You may have seen the startup Brightwheel scoring an investment from Mark Cuban and Chris Sacca on Sharktank last year. Or you may know Brightwheel if you have kids in preschool, daycare, or other early education programs these days.
Brightwheel’s mobile app helps pre-K teachers and care providers to manage their business, while sending parents updates about their kids throughout the school day. The app handles payments, and records sign-in and sign-out data when parents drop off or pick up kids at school. Caregivers can also use it to share photos and information with parents through a secured platform rather than giving them notes on paper, or sending them ad hoc through text messages, or social networks like Facebook.
CEO and founder of Brightwheel, Dave Vasen, said, “It’s crazy to drop your kid off and have basically no connection to them for the rest of the day. And on the other side of things, it’s crazy for teachers to have so much paperwork to manage on a regular work day that they’d have to spend time away from kids filling out forms.”
Brightwheel has gained traction among child care providers ranging from small, in-home day cares with just a handful of kids, to multi-state chains that have 50 schools and hundreds of kids. Its product is available on a “freemium” or paid premium basis, meaning preschools can use a version of it with a limited feature set for as long as they wish without having to pay anything.
Maintaining a freemium approach makes Brightwheel accessible to lower income communities, Vasen said. That matters to his for-profit, for-good startup. “Something like 85% of brain development happens in the first 3 years of life. Quality, pre-K education is a major factor in overall childhood development, of course, but it even makes an impact on crime reduction and economic growth. Access to good pre-K care is low in the US, we’re ranked 26th globally. And we want think tech can help to change that,” Vasen explained.
Today, Brightwheel revealed that it has raised $10 million in a Series A round of venture funding. GGV Capital led the round, joined by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, ICONIQ, and Brightwheel’s earlier backers: Eniac Ventures, Golden Venture Partners, Lowercase Capital, Mark Cuban Companies, and RRE Ventures along with several angel investors.
While education tech has drawn serious venture funding in recent years, much of the investment has gone towards companies that provide corporate or employee training, or education tools and content to the college or K-12 market. What little has gone towards early childhood development has been primarily invested in educational toys and games.
GGV Managing Partner Jeff Richards says, “Brightwheel’s basic thesis is universal. Everyone cares about their kids! But we don’t see what they’re doing as ‘edtech.’ It’s a vertical SaaS play. They’re going after an industry relatively untouched by software. And they’re going to small and medium sized businesses with a tool that can help them deliver better service to their customers.”
Nursery schools, daycares and businesses that take care of infants and toddlers are highly regulated. That means they can be more complicated to please with a tech product, and that companies venturing into the pre-K market must invest in expertise around compliance to all local, state and federal laws even from their earliest days.
Some typical administrative requirements they face include: keeping a log of when kids check in and leave with a physical signature from the parent or guardian dropping off the child, annotating how kids are developing, and sending notes home to parents around payments, vacation days, field trips, or supplies that their kids will need.
Brightwheel intends to use its funding to double in size from about 12 employees to probably 25 over the next year, Vasen says, and to build out its product. It looks to create new features to help daycare providers and early childhood educators plan out lessons and activities for their kids. It may also provide some curriculum or activity ideas to parents so that they can continue to reinforce what kids learn at school over the weekends and at home.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1780
|
__label__wiki
| 0.546531
| 0.546531
|
Fitbit’s Ionic smartwatch and bluetooth headphones go on sale October 1
Brian Heater @bheater / 3 years
Those who’ve been eagerly awaiting Fitbit’s first real foray into the world of smartwatches will be able to get their hands on the thing in a matter of days. The company announced this morning that the Ionic will hit retailers October 1, along with the Flyer Bluetooth headphones.
Fitbit CEO James Park talked the device up at every opportunity possible ahead of its release — understandably so, as the company invested years and acquired three startups in order to bring the Ionic to market. The end result is a bit of a mixed bag. There’s are definitely things to like about the smartwatch, but it has many of the trappings of a first generation device, including a nascent app store and a design that probably won’t fit smaller wrists.
Still, Fitbit definitely has the market presence and the fitness know how to get people on board. And as the company handily pointed out ahead of launch, the Blaze rocketed to the top of Amazon’s Android-ready smartwatch charts, in spite of being more of a halfway point between a fitness tracker and smartwatch. There’s a pretty good chance the Ionic will do the same, being of particular interest to Android users.
The Flyer headphones felt more like a late addition to the line. Fitbit clearly realized that it could sell Ionic buyers a pair of bluetooth headphones with the promise of device compatibility and on-the-go music. They’re not a bad pair of workout headphones, but there’s nothing particularly compelling about them either. They can be used for audio coaching when connected to the Ionic, but Fitbit didn’t, say, build any kind of fitness tracking into the product.
The devices are priced at $300 and $130, respectively. There’s no bundle available at present, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if Fitbit were to go in that direction ahead of the holidays.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1781
|
__label__wiki
| 0.944507
| 0.944507
|
Apple Music is expanding student memberships to 82 new markets
Jonathan Shieber @jshieber / 3 years
Apple Music is expanding its subscription music service to 82 new markets — or nearly all of the countries where the service is available, according to people with knowledge of the company’s plans.
79 markets launched today and an additional three markets will go live February 26. Some countries where students memberships — verified by UNiDAYS — are now available include Israel, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal and Taiwan, the person said.
It’s been roughly two years since Apple first launched its student discount for its subscription Apple Music service.
At the time, the half-off offer for the monthly subscription was available for students in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
Like the initial offer, the sale price for students is available for up to four-years after an initial sign-up and those years have to be continuous. Students who are enrolled in Masters programs are also eligible for the discount.
Earlier this month The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple’s streaming service was on a pace to overtake Spotify in U.S. paid subscribers.
People with knowledge of both companies’ subscription rates said that Apple was growing its subscriptions at 5% per year in the U.S. versus Spotify’s 2% subscription rate.
While Apple may be approaching Spotify in its home market, the nordic company maintains a strong global lead over other music streaming services, with twice as many global subscribers as Apple.
Competitive pricing has been a big part of Apple’s gains in the music business. The individual plan is priced at $9.99 but Apple’s family plan — which permitted up to 6 people to stream — for $14.99 was a better bargain than Spotify’s which only let two people stream music on a group account.
And student discounts are a tactic that Apple has long-employed to woo new customers into the fold. The company’s hardware discounts have always been popular among the student set — and discounts on the software product internationally could further boost subscriber numbers.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1782
|
__label__wiki
| 0.976952
| 0.976952
|
An explosive breach of contract lawsuit against former Sequoia Capital partner Michael Goguen has been dismissed
Connie Loizos @Cookie / 1 year
Three-and-a-half years ago, a lawsuit hit the San Mateo, Calif. county courthouse that briefly attracted the attention of the worldwide venture capital community, given its salacious nature. The defendant: longtime VC Michael Goguen, who’d spent 20 years with Sequoia Capital in Menlo Park, Calif. The plaintiff: Amber Baptiste, a former intimate who described him through the filing as a “worse predator than the human traffickers.” She said in the filing that she would know, having become a “victim of human trafficking” at age 15 when she was “brought to America in 2001,” then “sold as a dancer to a strip club” in Texas, which is where she says she first encountered Goguen.
What she wanted from the lawsuit was money that she said was owed to her by Goguen: $40 million over four installments that the lawsuit stated was for “compensation for the sexual abuse and [a sexual] infection she contracted from him.” According to her suit, Goguen agreed to these terms, paying Baptiste a first installment of $10 million before refusing to make further payments.
At the time, Goguen called the allegations “horrific” and suggested Baptiste was a spurned lover, saying they’d had a “10+ year romantic relationship that ended badly.” He also filed a cross-complaint alleging extortion.
Today, that cross-complaint lives on, but Baptiste’s case against Goguen was just dismissed by arbitrator Read Ambler, a retired judge who served 20 years with the Santa Clara County Superior Court and who wrote in a ruling filed yesterday in San Mateo that Baptiste’s failures to undergo medical examinations doomed her case, as did her failure to produce documents necessary in the discovery process.
“The record presented further establishes that Baptiste’s’ failures were willful,” Ambler writes. “Baptiste appears to believe that the information responsive to the discovery at issue is either not relevant, or with respect to the medical examinations, not permitted by law. While Baptiste is free to believe what she wants to believe, the orders are binding on Baptiste, and her failure to comply with the orders is unacceptable.”
Baptiste doesn’t currently have legal representation, though four sets of lawyers have represented her over time.
Patricia Glaser, a high-powered attorney, originally took on Baptiste’s case (and later agreed to represent Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein), but she asked to be relieved from the case five months later, citing “irreconcilable differences.” More recently, an LA-based couple that operates the Sherman Law Group filed a motion to be relieved as Baptiste’s counsel, citing “irreconcilable differences and a breakdown in communication.”
Goguen’s attorneys say he will continue to pursue his counterclaims against Baptiste and looks forward to “complete vindication.”
Though Ambler never remarked on the merits of Baptiste’s claims, Goguen’s attorney Diane Doolittle further said today in a statement that: “Amber Laurel Baptiste’s sensationalized lawsuit against Silicon Valley venture capitalist Michael Goguen collapsed under the weight of its own falsehood yesterday, when a judge dismissed the case because of Baptiste’s repeated, egregious and willful misconduct. Over the course of this case, Baptiste perjured herself, concealed, destroyed and falsified key evidence, and demonstrated her contempt for the legal system by systematically violating numerous court orders.”
Baptiste could not be reached for comment.
Baptiste’s lawsuit against Goguen prompted Sequoia to part ways with him almost immediately. Later the very day that TechCrunch broke news of the suit in 2016, a Sequoia spokesman told us that while the firm understood “these allegations of serious improprieties” to be “unproven and unrelated to Sequoia” its management committee had nevertheless “decided that Mike’s departure was the appropriate course of action.”
Goguen, who sold an $11 million home in Atherton, Calif., in 2017, has spent much of his time in recent years at another home in Whitefish, Mont., where he has seemingly been wooing locals.
An August story about Goguen in The Missoulian about a separate case describes him as “known locally for philanthropic ventures.”
The piece dutifully continues on to note that: “Such donations have funded Montana’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and a Flathead group teaching girls to code. Two Bear Air, [Goguen’s] northwestern Montana search and rescue outfit free to anyone who has needed it, has performed well over 500 missions and 400 rescues, according to executive director and chief pilot Jim Pierce. Goguen has personally completed 30 rescues, the Daily Inter Lake reported in February. The Flathead Beacon reports he was honored with the Great Whitefish Award earlier this year.”
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1783
|
__label__wiki
| 0.717004
| 0.717004
|
Home » Annual Report 2013–14 » 5. Appendices
Management arrangements
The Commission has made Health and Safety Management Arrangements (HSMA) consistent with the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (WHS Act).
Under the HSMA there is a statement of commitment, a Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) policy, consultation arrangements, agreed employer/employee responsibilities and WHS structures and arrangements. There are also provisions relating to workplace inspections, training and information and emergency procedures. There are six Designated Work Groups (DWGs) in the Commission, six Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs), and a national Health and Safety Committee, which met twice in 2013–14.
Initiatives taken during the year
In 2013–14 the Commission continued to promote a proactive approach to work health and safety. During the year the most significant WHS initiatives were associated with:
strengthening quarterly reporting by managers through the provision of details of WHS matters raised, implemented and/or resolved
delivering organisational awareness Mental Health in the Workplace presentations in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane and made available to other locations via video conferencing facilities
delivering Resilience and Mental Health in Customer Relations workshops to frontline staff
providing workstation assessments and, where needed, rehabilitation case management services to meet the health, safety and rehabilitation needs of the workforce
making the flu vaccination program available for all staff
healthy lifestyle initiatives for the workforce, including Pilates and Yoga, and
participating in R U OK? Day which aims to promote the building of a more connected community and reducing the suicide rate.
Health and safety outcomes
The Commission is committed to maintaining and improving the health and wellbeing of its workforce. In 2013–14 there were three new compensation claims and 19 accidents/incidents reported by employees. The Commission closely monitors its compensation exposure and internal rehabilitation programs against broader APS considerations of compensation costs, the increasing incidence of longer-term injuries and more problematic claims, including those of a psychological nature. The Commission’s forecasted workers compensation premium rate has increased for 2014–15 to 0.68 per cent, from 0.47 per cent for 2013–14. The forecast premium rate is well below the 2014–15 forecast premiums for all agencies which is 2.12 per cent.
Reportable accidents and occurrences
Under section 38 of the WHS Act, the Commission is required to notify Comcare of any notifiable accidents or dangerous occurrences arising out of work undertaken by any of its employees. There were no occurrences in 2013–14.
Under Part 4 of the WHS Act, the Commission is required to report any investigations conducted during the year into any of its undertakings. No investigations were conducted in 2013–14.
Under Division 7, Part 5 of the WHS Act, HSRs are entitled to issue provisional improvement notices to address immediate risks to improve health and safety performance. No such notices were issued in 2013–14.
Information publication
The Commission is subject to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act). As such it is required to publish information to the public as part of the Information Publications Scheme (IPS). This requirement is in Part II of the FOI Act and has replaced the former requirement to publish a section 8 statement in an annual report.
Each agency must display a plan on its website showing what information it publishes in accordance with the IPS requirements. The Commission’s plan can be found at www.fwc.gov.au/about-us/legal/freedom-information.
FOI requests
This financial year the Commission received 29 FOI requests, down from 35 the previous year. This number includes requests which may have subsequently been transferred to another agency or withdrawn. FOI requests were managed by a dedicated FOI Officer.
The FOI Act requires the Commission to notify an FOI applicant that their request has been received no later than 14 days after the day on which the request is received. The Commission provided notification in accordance with this timeframe in 100 per cent of FOI requests received.
The FOI Act requires the Commission to notify the FOI applicant of a decision on their request no later than 30 days after the day on which the request was received. Where third-party consultation is required to process an FOI request, this timeframe is extended for a further period of 30-days under the FOI Act. The Commission issued decisions on FOI requests within the 30 day timeframe or the extended timeframe (where applicable) for 100 per cent of the FOI requests received, which were not withdrawn or transferred to another agency.
Further extensions of processing time are allowed under the FOI Act by agreement with the FOI applicant, or by application to the Information Commissioner where FOI requests are complex or voluminous. The Commission did not seek extensions of processing time in either of these circumstances.
Advertising and market research
In accordance with section 311A of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, the principal officer of every Commonwealth agency is required to include a statement in their annual report setting out particulars of all amounts paid by, or on behalf of, the agency during the reporting period to:
market research organisations
direct mail organisations, and
media advertising agencies.
The Commission did not conduct any advertising campaigns, engage polling organisations, or engage in direct mail activities, during 2013–14.
Where the total amount paid to an organisation is less than $12 400, details have not been included. Expenditure exceeding $12 400 is detailed in Table N1.
Table N1—Advertising and market research expenditure in 2013–14 (over $12 400)
Supplier Amount $1 Purpose
Media advertising agencies
Sensis $19 832 Directory listings
Empirica Research $18 920 A joint-agency branding recognition project undertaken with the Fair Work Ombudsman to gain an understanding of the general public’s, small business and HR Managers’ knowledge and understanding of the role and work of the two organisations.
(1) GST inclusive.
Legal services expenditure
In compliance with the requirements of the Legal Services Directions 2005, the Commission reports that the total legal services expenditure for 2013–14 was $1 286 034.13 (GST exclusive). The amount relates solely to external legal services. Details are available on the Commission’s website www.fwc.gov.au/about-us/operations/budgets-expenditure.
Ecologically sustainable development
Australian Government agencies are required to report on their performance regarding the environment and ecologically sustainable development in line with section 516A of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.
The Commission operates to ensure energy resources are utilised as efficiently as practicable in the context of a working tribunal and that it maintains a healthy working environment for both the staff and the public.
The Commission’s procurement decisions have regard to environmental management requirements including purchasing locally produced recycled paper and energy efficient lighting.
Programs are in place for the recycling of paper, packaging, batteries, equipment, toner and other materials where possible to reduce the carbon footprint generated by the Commission.
The Commission formed a new relationship with Close the Loop, an organisation affiliated with Planet Ark, for toner replacement. Close the Loop reuses the plastics from toner cartridges for other purposes, such as manufacturing eWood which can be used in retaining walls and landscaping materials—and creates pens using ink leftover in the discarded cartridges.
Kitchens in a number of offices have separate bins to manage waste including organic, recycling and general waste.
The Melbourne and Sydney offices have sensor lighting installed in hearing, conference, meeting rooms and offices which have a timer mechanism to automatically switch lighting off when the rooms are not occupied. Energy efficiency T5 lighting has also been installed. Shower timers have been installed in all showers.
The Commission has reduced its carbon footprint by implementating a new video conferencing system that provides superior quality and reliability, thus providing a viable alternative to travel. The Commission has also reduced its travel significantly since the previous reporting period.
The Commission ensures that new leases over a certain size have a green rating. The Commission actively encourages its landlords to increase their NABERS rating, a national rating system that measures the environmental performance of Australian buildings, tenancies and homes.
The Commission participated in and supported Earth Hour 2014, a campaign to create awareness of global warming and encouraging people to take on better energy conservation habits, by turning off lights, appliances and desktop computers in all offices for Earth Hour on 29 March 2014.
Discretionary grants and grant programs
The Commission did not administer any discretionary or other grant programs during the reporting period, and no discretionary or other grants were made.
No research partnerships were awarded in 2013–14. Information on research partnerships that were awarded in other years is available on the Commission’s website www.fwc.gov.au/about-us/reports-publications/general-managers-reports/research.
Corrections to previous annual report
Page 48, Table 24: Registered Organisations—finalisations
The heading ‘Changes to eligibility rules’ is incorrect and should be ‘Change of name’. The heading ‘Change of name’ and the corresponding number ‘6’ are incorrect and the heading should be ‘Changes to eligibility rules’ and the corresponding number ‘9’. The number ‘4’ of cancellation of registration under section 30 of the Registered Organisations Act is incorrect and should be ‘7’. The number ‘14’ of total finalisations is incorrect and should be ‘20’.
Commonwealth Disability Strategy
Since 1994, Commonwealth departments and agencies have reported on their performance as policy adviser, purchaser, employer, regulator and provider under the Commonwealth Disability Strategy. In 2007–08, reporting on the employer role was transferred to the Australian Public Service Commission’s State of the Service Report and the APS Statistical Bulletin. These reports are available at www.apsc.gov.au. From 2010–11, departments and agencies have no longer been required to report on these functions.
The Commonwealth Disability Strategy has been replaced by the National Disability Strategy 2010–2020, which sets out a ten year national policy framework to improve the lives of people with disability, promote participation and create a more inclusive society. A high level two-yearly report will track progress against each of the six outcome areas of the Strategy and present a picture of how people with disability are faring. The first of these reports will be available in late 2014, and can be found at www.dss.gov.au.
Annual Report Footer
Back to Fair Work Commission main site
The content of the Fair Work Commission website is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, all other rights are reserved.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1784
|
__label__wiki
| 0.686597
| 0.686597
|
Musical feast
Memorial to host not one, but two national music conferences
By Marcia Porter
Two music conferences will bring seven days of presentations, workshops, choral concerts, popup performances and unique, interactive musical projects to the capital city from June 27-July 3.
Not to mention the best children’s choirs in Canada; the North American debut of Swedish vocal trio Solala; an opening gala concert titled Come and I Will Sing You, featuring 15 choirs from Newfoundland and Labrador in performance with the Ennis Sisters; a multimedia symphony titled Nordic Light by Latvia’s composing sensation Eriks Esenvalds; and the National Youth Choir of Canada.
From left are Memorial University-based The Singing Network, Dr. Andrea Rose, Prof. Ki Adams and Dr. David Buley.
Photo: Yu Hang
The International Symposium on Singing and Song II and Podium on the Edge: Singing from Sea to Sea to Sea are hosted by The Singing Network, a Memorial University-based network that owes its creation to music educators Dr. Andrea Rose and Prof. Ki Adams.
With support from Memorial’s Faculty of Education, School of Music, Bruneau Centre for Excellence in Choral Music and the Office of Public Engagement, the group has put together a program of events with the kind of depth and breadth that reflect their years of experience with Festival 500 and other international choral events.
“When the Festival 500 choral festival closed we missed it; we were all really sad,” said Dr. Rose, the festival’s former artistic director. “We met and wondered what trouble we could get into next.
“So in 2014 we formed the Singing Network to jumpstart some projects, and this is one of the outcomes,” continued Dr. Rose, as she sat across from her partners-in-music, Prof. Adams, a retired music educator professor, and Dr. David Buley, a new faculty member in Memorial’s music education program.
This is a network that dreams, and thinks, big.
Two years ago they committed to hosting the second international symposium on singing and song and also raised their hands when Choral Canada, Canada’s national choral association, went looking for a host for its 2018 conference.
Solala, from Guttenburg, Sweden, make their North American debut on Saturday, June 30, at the St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre.
Podium on the Edge
Podium on the Edge, running June 29-July 3,is being held for the first time in Newfoundland and Labrador.
“It’s going to be wonderful event with over 1,200 performers participants, including 350 delegates, 18 visiting choirs, 11 concerts and 13 cameo performances,” said Dr. Rose.
That doesn’t include the keynote speakers, presenters and scholars associated with both conferences.
“What a feast of choral activity it’s going to be,” said Prof. Adams. “Podium is particularly excited to host the Indonesia Children and Youth Choir, as well as three choirs conducted by Newfoundlanders and Labradorians now living away. “
There’s also a unique musical project, titled float, taking place at the Mount Scio Savoury Farm on Canada Day.
Conducted by St. John’s native and Memorial alumnus Craig Pike, a capaella ensemble That Choir combines high-calibre performance with storytelling through choral music. That Choir performs during Podium on the Edge 2018.
International Symposium on Singing and Song II
The International Symposium on Singing and Song II, running June 27-29, features keynote speakers Stephen Clift (U.K.), research director of the Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health; Aida Swenson (Indonesia), founder/conductor of the Indonesian Children and Youth Choirs; and Wendy Nielsen (Canada), soprano and voice pedagogue.
With 60 presentations, the focus is on sharing international perspectives, research and practices associated with singing and song. A lunchtime dialogue series, Close Encounters of the Musical Kind, will be open to the public and feature presenters and local community musicians. The series is sponsored by the Office of Public Engagement.
“There’s so much diversity,” said Dr. Rose. “There’s something for everyone, no matter if your interests lie in performance, folklore, health care or community music-making.”
Symposium sessions will take place in the School of Music, while Podium on the EDGE events will take place primarily at the Sheraton Hotel and various performance venues throughout St. John’s.
“We want people to go away with the joy of singing, and the idea of singing together,” said. Prof. Adams. “After all, that is our way of life here in Newfoundland and Labrador.
For more information and event tickets, contact any of the co-chairs for these events at Andrea Rose, David Buley, Ki Adams or Kellie Walsh.
Marcia Porter is a communications advisor with the Faculty of Nursing and the School of Pharmacy. She can be reached at mlporter@mun.ca.
Creative Arts, Culture and Heritage
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1787
|
__label__wiki
| 0.674719
| 0.674719
|
Cracking the mystery
Physics researcher creates model to explain Saturn's space storms
Pictures of Saturn have been mystifying scientists ever since they were beamed back to Earth from NASA’s Voyager mission in 1981 and, more recently, the Cassini mission in 2006.
The strange, hexagon-shaped jet stream circling the planet’s north pole and a huge, hurricane-like vortex at the pole have inspired many theories. The pictures also show much smaller vortices covering the entire surface of the gas giant.
Saturn’s cloud belts generally move around the planet in a circular path, but one feature is slightly different. The planet’s wandering, hexagon-shaped polar jet stream breaks the mold, a reminder that surprises lurk everywhere in the solar system.
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Dr. Iakov Afanassiev, a professor in the Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography at Memorial, was likewise inspired by those photographs. A paper featuring Dr. Afanassiev’s experiments that are described below was recently published in Nature Geoscience.
Known for his research on the dynamical processes that govern the behaviour of stratified and rotating fluids that comprise the Earth’s oceans, he believes the smaller storms are due to tilted convection.
Convection currents are formed when heated, and therefore less dense, air rises to the surface while colder, denser air sinks to the bottom – a cycle which can lead to hurricanes. Tilted convection occurs when buoyancy forces do not align with the planet’s rotation axis.
“My graduate student, Yang Zang, and I started doing experiments in the lab,” he explained. “Our experiments were conducted with a cylindrical water tank that is heated at the bottom, cooled at the top and spun on a rotating table we normally use for modelling the rotating ocean.
An image of the tank from above showing small vortices due to convection.
Photo: Iakov Afanassiev
“Convection is a very familiar thing, but when everything is rotating, different effects come into play,” he continued. “We saw that the warm rising plumes and cold sinking water generated small anti-cyclonic and cyclonic vortices similar to Saturn’s storms.”
‘Collective dynamics’
The experiments were supported by numerical simulations which further showed small-scale convection leads to larger-scale cyclonic flow at the surface and anti-cyclonic circulation at the bottom of the fluid layer, with a polar vortex forming from the merging of smaller cyclonic storms that are driven polewards.
“Basically, we are saying the whole circulation is created by the collective dynamics of these tiny vortices,” he said.
“Merging of small vortices into a large polar vortex was previously explained by an effect of a planet’s rotation and sphericity, but we believe that they join together because they are attached to convecting air parcels.”
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1788
|
__label__wiki
| 0.848675
| 0.848675
|
< A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z >
Ponsonby Barker
formerly Ponsonby
Catherine Jane
) + 1861
Chambre Brabazon
formerly Ponsonby (
Taylour
) 1762 - 1834
Copyright © 1996 - 2021 Camilla von Massenbach
HTML generated by
SoftLinks
, copyright © 1996 - 2021 Ben Laurie
Last updated: Fri Jan 8 10:51:43 GMT 2021
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1789
|
__label__wiki
| 0.653635
| 0.653635
|
No idea how much fun and slime you are missing
by Molly Ivins
ST. LOUIS -- Oh, you sweet, innocent, carefree citizens in non-swing states. You have no idea how much fun and slime you are missing.
In the swingers, wolves stalk us mercilessly (as the pro-wolf lobby points out indignantly, no one has ever been killed by wolves on U.S. soil, but try arguing that in the face of the relentless new TV ad campaign). Breaking news everywhere -- 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq left unattended, stock market down to year's low, leading economic indicators down, more tragedy in Iraq, the Swift Boat Liars are back, more Halliburton scandal, George Tenet says the war in Iraq is "wrong" -- it feels like you're dodging meteorites here in the Final Days.
Actually, the best evidence suggests we need to slow way down and go way back, because far from being able to take in anything new, it turns out many of our fellow citizens, especially Bush supporters, are stuck like bugs in amber in some early misperceptions that have never been cleared up.
It seems the majority of Bush supporters, according to recent polls, still believe Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda and even to 9-11, and that the United States found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Many of you are asking how that could possibly be, since everybody knows …
But everybody doesn't know. There it is. And if you are wondering why everybody doesn't know, you can either blame it on the media, always a shrewd move, or take notice that the administration is STILL spreading this same misinformation.
Both Donald Rumsfeld and Bush have publicly acknowledged there is no evidence of any links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. However, as Dick Cheney campaigns, a standard part of his stump speech is the accusation that Saddam Hussein "had a relationship" with Al Qaeda or "has long-established ties to Al Qaeda." He makes this claim up to the present day. The 9-11 Commission, however, found that there was "no collaborative relationship" between the two.
Cheney, of course, also has never given up his touching faith that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, recently referring to a "nuclear" program that had in fact been abandoned shortly after the first Gulf War. Bush and Cheney misled the country into war using these two false premises, and it turns out an enormous number of our fellow citizens still believe both of them to be true. It's not because they're stupid, but because an administration they trust is still telling them both phony propositions are true.
Normally, when you get a situation like that -- where people are simply not acknowledging reality -- it is considered a cult, a form of groupthink based on irrational beliefs propagated by what is normally a charismatic leader. So those Kerry volunteers earnestly engaging Bush supporters on the latest outrage are way off base. They need to go all the way back to the Two Great Lies that got us into this: Many American soldiers marching into Iraq believed it was "payback for 9-11."
A third slightly blinding fact (to me) is that more people now think Kerry behaved shamefully in regards to Vietnam than did W. Bush. Incredible what brazen lying will do, isn't it?
A friend of Bush's dad got him into the "champagne unit" of the Texas Air National Guard, a unit packed with the sons of the privileged trying to stay out of Vietnam, and he failed to complete his service there. Kerry is a genuine, bona fide war hero. The men who served on his boat are supporting him for president, but those who didn't serve with him, who weren't there, who don't know what happened, have been given more credence. Wolves will get you!
In further unhappy evidence of how ill-informed the American people are (blame the media), the Program on International Policy Attitudes found Bush supporters consistently ill-informed about Bush's stands on the issues (Kerry-ans, by contrast, are overwhelmingly right about his positions). Eighty-seven percent of Bush supporters think he favors putting labor and environmental standards into international trade agreements. Eighty percent of Bush supporters believe Bush wants to participate in the treaty banning landmines. Seventy-six percent of Bush supporters believe Bush wants to participate in the treat banning nuclear weapons testing. Sixty-two percent believes Bush would participate in the International Criminal Court. Sixty-one percent believes Bush wants to participate in the Kyoto Treaty on global warming. Fifty-three percent does not believe Bush is building a missile defense system, a.k.a. "Star Wars."
The only two Bush stands the majority of his supporters got right were on increasing defense spending and who should write the new Iraqi constitution.
Kerry supporters, by contrast, know their man on seven out of eight issues, with only 43 percent understanding he wants to keep defense spending the same but change how the money is spent and 57 percent believing he wants to up it.
So what's going on here? I do not think Kerry people are smarter than Bush people, so why are they better-informed? Maybe a small percentage of ideological right-wingers don't believe anything the Establishment media say, but I don't think this is a matter of not believing what they hear, but of not hearing what's factual.
The great triumph of the political right in this country has been the creation of a network of alternative media. There are people who listen to Rush Limbaugh for more hours every day than the Branch Davidians listened to David Koresh. Watch Fox News, read The Washington Times -- hey, that's what the Bush administration does, according to its own words.
But it's not just the right-wing media purveying lies -- they are quoting the administration. These misimpressions come directly from the Bush administration, still, over and over.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2004 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1792
|
__label__cc
| 0.669833
| 0.330167
|
Jan Pawlowski in Werner Herzog's movie "Encounters at the End of the World"
In November 2006, Professor Jan Pawlowski went to Antarctica, to the camp of New Harbor (near scientific station of McMurdo) to collect samples of Foraminifera, the unicellular organisms that he is studying to understand the molecular evolution of eukaryotes.
At the same time, the movie director Werner Herzog (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes; Grizzly man; Rescue Dawn) also visited McMurdo and New Harbor. His aim was rather to meet the people working in Antarctica. He wanted to know the reasons that drive them to stay in such hostile environment. From his quest came out a documentary called "Encounters at the End of the World" which should be released worldwide today and in which Jan makes an apparition. You can see him in the movie trailer around 1:22.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1798
|
__label__cc
| 0.613014
| 0.386986
|
Lina Iris Viktor
A Visual Artist and Performance Artist, raised in London, lives in New York and London…on her views on Art and Africa
“My goal as an artist is always to resonate, connect, and hopefully uplift the viewer on a universal level. However, my subject matter and source materials are mostly derived from the Continent and as an African, the ties that bind me to other Africans are stronger. Authenticity, integrity, and vision are an artist’s strongest arsenal–and my project is to use those values to create imagery that can reinstate those that look like me into positions of power. Our history extends beyond the past few hundred years, rather, it extends over millennia. We have a rich and glorious past. Our future will also be very bright – of that I am certain,” Viktor, born of Liberian parents, says emphatically.
“In the longer span of time, our recent history has been a blip on the radar. We must forge our present-day histories accurately so that our future histories as Africans can be built stronger upon them. That is what I hope to contribute to the African narrative within my short lifetime as an artist–and I hope I can inspire others to do the same.”
She clarifies that: “My work focuses on re-positioning the way Africans view themselves within the global context–hopefully to a position of self-proclaimed power and pride. This directive relates to Africans who actually live on the continent and have to contend with very negative and skewed global discourses that are prevalent through most media and educational outlets. However, more urgently, this conversation matters most for those within the diaspora that are removed from the continent. Most people of African descent have never traveled to their point of origin, and at this point in history, are so mentally and emotionally disconnected from their source due to the catalogued, subversive tactics that have been practiced and taught to us since the rise of slavery. The negative priming now thrives via propaganda and the media. I call attention to this reality as it affected me at an earlier age: a Liberian growing up in London.”
Viktor shares: “It took a great deal of personal exploration, travel, and research to reconfigure my viewpoints and dispel many of the untruths I was taught, and to excavate our collective histories that were completely negated from educational systems.”
She has but modest aspirations about the impact of her oeuvre. “If my work can be a vehicle to dispel the stereotypes and misrepresentations surrounding what it means to be African in a modern, contemporary context–then a lot of what I am aiming to achieve is done.”
Constellations III
She also acknowledges the concerted effort of Africans in various fields and industries. “I am aware that what I offer as an artist is a ‘soft power’–but that is no less concretely influential. ‘Change your thought, change your world’ is a wise quote most should be familiar with. There are many African intellectuals, entrepreneurs, architects, et al. working today whose focus is to re-build Africa on an infrastructural and economic level–the nuts and bolts of making industry within the continent competitive and self-reliant. What African artists offer within this framework is aspiration: a vision of alternative futures. Since the beginning of recorded time, the utilization of images and the idea behind said images have been the backbone of ancient and modern civilizations, and has helped build the power structures that exist today.
“So I often wonder: How ‘soft’ is the power that we wield as artists? If an image can plant a seed that changes a person’s mind, it can indeed also change their world. And consequently, the way they view themselves within it. And that makes all the difference.” There is no doubt that Viktor is one of many who aim to make a difference.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1801
|
__label__wiki
| 0.678781
| 0.678781
|
Home/Breaking News/Why did the Congress-led government ignore four intelligence inputs on Mumbai 26/11 terror attack?
Breaking NewsCurrent AffairsExposeIndiaIndia
Why did the Congress-led government ignore four intelligence inputs on Mumbai 26/11 terror attack?
The Mumbai 26/11 terror attack was a dastardly act of cowardice unleashed on the innocent people of Mumbai by Pakistan-ISI backed and trained terrorists.
Both the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), 10-days prior to the terror attack had credible intelligence about a possible terror attack in Mumbai by Pakistani-based terrorists.
GoaChronicle.com through our discussions with sources in IB and RAW has zeroed down on four vital intel that the intelligence agencies had alerted the Indian government led by UPA about a possible terror attack in Mumbai.
On November 18, 2008, RAW had intercepted a satellite phone conversation that a hotel at the Gateway of India would be targeted by a group of terrorists.
On November 19, 2008, IB receives intelligence that a boat (Al Husaini) with terrorists had set sail to attack Mumbai. The IB had even received input about the probable mobile numbers that could be used by the terrorists.
On November 21, 2008, the naval authorities, spotted the boat in Pakistani waters, the information was escalated to the Internal Security Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
The former bureaucrat of the Internal Security Department of MHA, RVS Mani in an interview with GoaChronicle.com stated that on November 23, 2008, his department did have such escalated information from the naval coastguard.
However, the Al Husaini boat was not intercepted. The naval authorities were redeployed on November 24, 2008, and no action was taken on the intelligence. Subsequently, terrorists then boarded and took over the M.V. Kuber which was a fishing trawler. From the M.V. Kuber closer to Mumbai, they got into a dinghy on November 26, 2008.
The inflatable dinghy used by the terrorists after abandoning M.V. Kuber had an outboard engine manufactured by Yamaha Motor Corporation, Japan. The investigation revealed that the engine was shipped to a firm called Business & Engineering Trends in Pakistan with the address: 24, Habibulla Road, Off Davis Road, Lahore, Pakistan.
On November 24, 2008, RAW intercepts another conversation. In this conversation on a possible terror attack, the hotels’ Taj and Trident were mentioned. The terrorists were focused on these two hotels, one near Gateway of India and the other at Nariman Point.
Shockingly, no senior member of the Internal Security Department of the MHA was there to receive the input of RAW. Former bureaucrat RVS Mani was sent to Lucknow to attend a case and most of the ISD of MHA left to be present in Pakistan on November 25, 2008. The delegates arrived on November 25, 2008, and were to leave November 26, 2008, but instead, they left on November 27, 2008. Their stay was extended because their planned meeting schedule was altered and their meeting with the Pakistan Minister of Interior Rehman Malik was postponed to November 26, 2008, instead of November 25, 2008. The postponement of the meeting was agreed to by the majority of the Indian delegates.
Former bureaucrat, RVS Mani was in the control room of the Ministry of Home Affairs dealing with the crisis of the terror attack in Mumbai. According to RVS Mani, the Prime Minister Office had credible intelligence. Yet no action was taken.
RVS Mani also revealed that a well-planned strategy of Pakistan ISI had kept Indian delegates in Pakistan from the MHA – Internal Security Division busy in frivolities. The delegates arrived on November 25, 2008, and were to leave November 26, 2008, but instead, they left on November 27, 2008. Their stay was extended because their planned meeting schedule was altered and their meeting with the Pakistan Minister of Interior Rehman Malik was postponed to November 26, 2008, instead of November 25, 2008. The postponement of the meeting was agreed to by the majority of the Indian delegates.
According to a report by IB, based on Ajmal Kasab’s interrogation and confession revealed that the 10 terrorists were handpicked from a larger group and trained at various locations inside Pakistan and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. The training was also held at Muridke, Mansehra, Muzaffarabad, Azizabad and Paanch Teni.
Kasab also confessed that they got local help. The charge-sheet filed had no mention of David Headley, who was helped in his recce by Rahul Bhatt, son of Bollywood filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, now in prison in the US and who has confessed to laying the foundation for 26/11 by taking detailed videos of the Taj and Trident/Oberoi hotels where he checked in as a guest, as well as other targets like Chabad House.
Having credible intelligence Congress-led government at the Centre and state failed to prevent one of the most horrific terror attack in India. The acts of omission raise serious questions on the actions of the Congress-led government.
Ajmal Kasab Congress IB ISI Mumbai Terror Attack Pakistan RAW
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1802
|
__label__wiki
| 0.690704
| 0.690704
|
An 39-year-old Oregon man was arrested after firing several shots at a federal courthouse that was breached during George Floyd protests
By Guncelkal.net January 13, 2021
Leave a Comment on An 39-year-old Oregon man was arrested after firing several shots at a federal courthouse that was breached during George Floyd protests
Summary List PlacementAn Oregon man was arrested after firing several gunshots at a federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon on January 8, 2021, according to the Department of Justice. Cody Melby, 39, was charged with destruction of government property after trespassing at the Hatfield Courthouse grounds and discharging a handgun into...
Summary List Placement
An Oregon man was arrested after firing several gunshots at a federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon on January 8, 2021, according to the Department of Justice.
Cody Melby, 39, was charged with destruction of government property after trespassing at the Hatfield Courthouse grounds and discharging a handgun into the columns of the building. According to charges filed by the DOJ, Melby’s gunshots resulted in less than $1,000 of total damage to the courthouse.
Due to protests stemming from the death of George Floyd in May, the Hatfield Courthouse erected a large fence around the building and covered the stone facade and windows with plywood.
According to the affidavit of Senior Special Agent John Dean of the US Department of Homeland Security, Melby was spotted standing in front of the courthouse in a covered foyer area between the building and the fences. The courthouse security assumed Melby was a court employee that had inadvertently gotten locked out of the building and sent two officers to assist him.
When security arrived, Melby is alleged by Dean to have ignored the officers’ questions until they were five yards away, only to say “I have a gun.” He was quickly taken into custody without firing a shot at the officers.
Officers found Melby had a loaded handgun and a switchblade in his possession.
After being detained, Melby was asked what he was doing by an officer. Melby said he had been in front of the courthouse for 20 minutes and fired shots into the ground because no one had approached him. When asked why he had traveled to the courthouse, he told the officer, “because I am tired of all the s— you guys have to take.”
When inspectors arrived at the courthouse, they found several bullet holes from Melby in the protective plywood of the courthouse.
According to Dean’s affidavit, Melby published a video on January 5 where he said that there was an “illegal coup attempt” and that the presidential election saw “theft of votes.” The affidavit further notes that Melby’s video includes “statements that subscribe to the ‘Alt-Right’ ideology of ‘Stop the Steal’ and QAnon conspiracy theories.”
One day after Melby’s video, pro-Trump rioters in Washington, DC breached the US Capitol Building in an attempted coup, leading to the deaths of several protestors and one Capitol Police officer.
In June 2020, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on “protecting American monuments, memorials, and statues and combating recent criminal violence.” The order states that it is the policy of the US to prosecute “under Federal law, and as appropriate, any person or any entity that destroys, damages, vandalizes, or desecrates a monument, memorial, or statue within the United States or otherwise vandalizes government property.”
The executive order further notes that US Code authorizes a penalty of up to 10 years in prison for the “willful injury of Federal property.” It is currently unclear if the DOJ will utilize the executive order during the prosecution against Melby.
NOW WATCH: American Ballet Theatre ballerina Isabella Boylston shares her at-home leg workout
Previous Entry Being a MAGA Asshole On a Plane Could Soon Net You a $35,000 Fine
Next Entry Trump U-Turn: POTUS releases video condemning Capitol riots – ‘Attacking our country!’
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1805
|
__label__wiki
| 0.597632
| 0.597632
|
Commons: 9 September 2019
Prorogation of Parliament
Volume 664: debated on Monday 9 September 2019
Back to top Previous debate
Paul Scully
(Sutton and Cheam) (Con)
That this House has considered e-petitions 269157 and 237487 relating to the prorogation of Parliament.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I will read the wording of both petitions into the official record. The first petition is titled, “Do not prorogue Parliament”, and states:
“Parliament must not be prorogued or dissolved unless and until the Article 50 period has been sufficiently extended or the UK’s intention to withdraw from the EU has been cancelled.”
That petition received 1,721,119 signatures within a very short space of time. The second petition, which has already closed, is titled, “The Prime Minister should advise Her Majesty the Queen to prorogue Parliament”, and says:
“The Prime Minister should advise Her Majesty the Queen to prorogue Parliament suspending the current parliamentary session until 2nd April 2019”—
that is clearly out of date now—
“to prevent any attempts by parliamentarians to thwart Brexit on 29th March 2019. Preparations for no-deal/WTO will continue. The Prime Minister’s deal has been rejected. No further deal is available from the EU. Remaining in the EU is not an option. Extension or revocation of Article 50 is not an option. I believe the British people voted to leave with no mention of a deal and that WTO rules, to which Britain will default on 29th March 2019, are in Britain’s best interests. We may get a better deal after, but not until, we have left.”
As I said, the second petition is out of date; events were moving so quickly at the time that it was difficult to schedule a debate on it and to keep it topical. Naturally, with the Prorogation of Parliament upon us tonight, as I believe has been declared, it was deemed suitable to bring the two petitions together.
It is important that the Petitions Committee should always try to allow people to have their views aired. There is a reason why debates on petitions in Westminster Hall are some of the most read and watched debates: it is because we are talking about what people want us to talk about, rather than what we want to talk about. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the two coincide in this case. I have noticed that over the last three years we have wanted to talk about Brexit quite a lot; and because of the topicality of the issue, and because the Prime Minister has been clear that we will leave the EU by 31 October, come what may, people want to express their opinion, whether they want to stop no deal or stop Brexit in its entirety. It is important that we discuss that in the House of Commons.
There is a clear reason why Prorogation is a sensible idea. The Prime Minister was elected by members of the Conservative party, and people have asked what his domestic agenda will be. It is therefore right that we debate the wider domestic agenda, as well as Brexit, in this place. That can be done through a Queen’s Speech, in which the Prime Minister can set out clearly what he wants to do in the coming year, in a new Session of Parliament, to move the debate on, move Parliament on, and move the bandwidth of the media away from Brexit as we leave on 31 October.
Catherine West
(Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
I thank my London colleague for giving way. Does he believe that 100,000 votes from Tory party members is enough of a mandate for making such important decisions?
I will come back to the question of mandate, because in about five hours the Prime Minister will ask Members to vote for a general election. We have all said that we do not want one at this time, because we want to get on with the job in hand, but at the moment, that is the best way not only to resolve the conundrum that we face in the lead-up to 31 October, but to move on and to show that there is a mandate for the domestic agenda.
(Solihull) (Con)
As ever, my hon. Friend is doing sterling work in presenting the petitions. The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) mentioned the number of 100,000; he mentioned the number of 1.1 million—those people who signed the first petition. I have another number for him: 17,410,742. That is the number of people who voted to leave the EU, but due to parliamentary artifice, they are being denied that right.
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I could not agree more, and I was one of those 17.4 million people. I understand that there are many facets to this complex argument, but we Members are charged with showing political leadership. For three years, we have talked about what we do not want; we have um-ed and ah-ed; we have had political shenanigans; and there have been games afoot. In the last few weeks—it seems a long time since the summer recess—the debate has been like the trash talk in a press conference ahead of a heavy-weight boxing match, with people trying to win the fight before the first punch is thrown.
People clearly expect us to get on with the job and leave the EU, with or without a deal. By now, we should be talking about when, not whether, we will leave. The fact that we are still talking about whether we will leave, three years after the referendum, demonstrates the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) made: we cannot pick and choose the election results that we want to uphold, and 17.4 million people—the most people to have voted for anything in a British election—have charged us with leaving the EU.
Alex Sobel
(Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
Do we not need to know whether we are leaving with or without a deal in order to understand what legislation will be required? How can we have a Queen’s Speech on 14 October, before the European Council, and how can we frame legislation when we do not know whether we are leaving with or without a deal?
To be fair, I have allowed the last two interventions to distract me from the fact that the key purpose of a Queen’s Speech is to set out the domestic agenda—to talk about the 20,000 new police officers, and to ensure that people see the benefits of frontline funding for the NHS, levelling up funding for schools, and delivering full-fibre broadband across the country. However, as we ramp up preparation for no deal, we know exactly the kind of thing that we will need if we get a deal, although the deal that we are likely to get—if we get there—will be substantively different from the last withdrawal agreement. Also, we have been trying to pass legislation regarding no-deal preparations over the last few months.
Again, I am allowing myself to be distracted. We keep talking about deal or no deal, but actually we mean the withdrawal agreement; the deal is yet to come. We use the terms interchangeably. The deal, in terms of trade deals, is all about the future relationship with the EU, and we have not even got there yet. All we are talking about—I say “all”; of course it is complicated and significant—is how we physically leave the EU. Deciding what the trading relationship will look like will take time. One of my fundamental concerns—albeit from two and a half years ago, so it cannot be revisited—was accepting the sequencing that Michel Barnier and the EU put to us: that we had to get the divorce done before we could talk about the future relationship. It would have been far more sensible—this formed the basis of the Vote Leave campaign—to do both at the same time.
On the backstop, for example, instead of coming up with the convoluted system that has failed to get through this place so many times, it would have been far easier had we known what the ultimate trading relationship between Northern Ireland, in particular, and the Republic of Ireland would be. We would then have been able to work on solutions—alternative arrangements—not just in the last year, but in the last three years. That would have been a far better and more holistic approach to leaving.
(Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
I agree with my hon. Friend that the public are keen for us to move on to the domestic agenda. Is it not the case, however, that we are talking about having a Queen’s Speech either in October, or in November, which would be after Brexit has taken place, given the Prime Minister’s determination to leave on 31 October? As my hon. Friend says, we may leave with no deal, and I agree that it would not be desirable or possible to take that off the table. Does Parliament not have an obligation to scrutinise the Government’s no-deal preparations, and should we not spend the five weeks during which we are to prorogue doing that, rather than anything else, including holding party conferences?
My right hon. and learned Friend has a point in theory, but unfortunately only in theory. We have already cancelled two recesses, to the angst of several hon. Members, but what did we do during those sittings? We considered statutory instruments on the Floor of the House, because there was not enough business about Brexit coming from the Opposition. I remember walking around this place and seeing Opposition Members with their coats on, leaving early. If they had wanted to get involved in debates, and to add to the 500 or so hours of debate that we have had in this place about Brexit, they could have done so in those two weeks. They could also have cancelled summer recess, but clearly, that would have been a little too inconvenient.
My hon. Friend inadvertently makes the case for a Queen’s Speech. In reality, the Government have been splitting up Bills to ensure that parliamentary time is used up. We need a new agenda, and a new raft of legislation to put before the House, so that people can see Parliament do something other than argue over and frustrate Brexit. That would restore their confidence in Parliament.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We already have the odd addition of this fortnight, which, when coupled with the five weeks of Prorogation, smacks of, “Look busy, the boss is watching.” We are scratching around trying to find something to do. I do not dismiss the fact that scrutiny of the Government’s legislation and action is important, but I caution that actions need to match words.
Dr David Drew
(Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
I have never known a Parliament where the business has collapsed so often, yet the Agriculture Bill, the Fisheries Bill and the Trade Bill all need to come back for Report and Third Reading, and to then go to the Lords. Where are those Bills? Why have they not come back? Why have we not used the time properly? It is quite disgraceful.
The hon. Gentleman uses the word “disgraceful”; I have been in this place for only four years, but for three of them, I have sat here scratching my head, thinking, “I have some of the most intelligent people around me acting in the most stupid way.” I blame people on both sides of the argument equally; I am an equal opportunity critic. We should be talking about how we leave, not whether we leave.
Brexit is a big issue that divides parties, communities and families. None the less, we were asked a relatively simple question: do we leave or remain? Leave won, and it is not beyond the wit of man to give businesses, communities, EU nationals here and British citizens abroad the sense of certainly that they need and deserve. In the coming weeks, I hope that we move on and reach a resolution, so that we can get back to the domestic agenda that will be set out in the Queen’s Speech on 14 October.
We saw a lot of confected outrage, as the Leader of the House described it, when the Prorogation of Parliament was first discussed. People conflated two different sets of statements. When several Conservative leadership candidates said that it would not be good to prorogue Parliament to bring about Brexit, come what may, they were talking about a Prorogation that straddled 31 October, so that we would fall out of the EU without discussion. That is clearly not what is happening. The hashtag #StopTheCoup started to appear on Twitter and social media, but frankly, that would be the worst coup ever.
Parliament is coming back on 14 October, and on the week following that, we will debate the Queen’s Speech, which will no doubt involve Brexit, because that will clearly be a major part of it. We then have weeks after that, because a Brexit deal will come back to Parliament only if we get a deal on 18 October at the end of the EU Council. Hopefully, at that point we will achieve a deal and bring it back to this place; we can then discuss it. We will have something that we can all circle around, and that will allow us to say, “Nobody gets everything they want, but this is enough to allow us to say that we have respected the referendum, and to enable us to start looking at the opportunities that Brexit offers, rather than at whether we are leaving.”
Rachael Maskell
(York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
This is a national crisis; it is not business as usual. We elected parliamentarians should be in this House debating all the crucial issues related to Brexit, not least of which is what the Government will come up with in relation to the Northern Ireland backstop; at the moment, it looks like the emperor’s new clothes. The hon. Gentleman’s argument that we should use the façade of a Queen’s Speech to introduce a new parliamentary agenda, while we have the big cloud of Brexit over our heads, is weak.
I agree with the hon. Lady that this is a political crisis. It is grinding the country to a halt—certainly, to boredom. There is one way to sort it out. We can sit here contemplating our navels, or we can go out and speak to the people. We can have a general election, in which we can discuss Brexit and engage 70 million people, not just 650. To me, that is democracy in action.
Some hon. Members might say, “Let’s have a second referendum.” There are clearly issues with that. It took nine months to get the first one through this place and to hold it, and we would also have to decide on the question, and the electorate. Those issues, which would be hotly debated in this place, would have to be decided before we could even get to the referendum. People may say that the current situation creates uncertainty, but that option would perpetuate uncertainty. To those people who say, “The EU referendum caused division”, I say: why have another one?
Graham Stringer
(Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
A new argument has come forward. A number of parties have said that if there is a second referendum, they will honour the result only if people vote in a particular way. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that would completely undermine that referendum, and all future referendums?
The hon. Gentleman has argued passionately in this place alongside me against a second referendum. I agree with everything he said, including about the referendum result being undermined.
I mentioned #StopTheCoup, and how bad a coup the Prorogation of Parliament would be. Instead, parliamentary games are being played by those on the other side of the argument. Parliament took control, and took parliamentary time away from the Government to pass the Benn Bill, which passed due to an amendment that was granted by the Speaker, who was frankly making it up as he went along. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) has told me that even he did not expect the amendment to be made that allowed him to lay the path for Parliament to take the business away from the Government.
Martin Whitfield
(East Lothian) (Lab)
On the question of a referendum, would the hon. Gentleman have a similar concern about a confirmatory referendum? As was the case with the Good Friday agreement, people would be empowered to show their acquiescence with a result that could become law. Hon. Members in this place who seek to disagree with that result are 650 votes, 350 votes, or one vote among the entire electorate.
I come back to the point that any referendum, confirmatory or otherwise, takes time. We are trying to leave the EU so that we can get on to the next stage of this debate, which we have been having for three years. I am not entirely sure that a confirmatory referendum would resolve anything, although it is a step up from the so-called people’s vote—frankly, we have already had a people’s vote; this would be a second people’s vote.
A perverse situation would arise from a confirmatory referendum: it would almost predicate us getting a very bad deal, because the EU knows that if it gives us a bad deal, people will vote not to accept it. Frankly, it is Hobson’s choice.
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct, as always. As I say, every time we diminish the negotiating position of the Government, we inevitably create a more distinct possibility of a watered-down deal. In fact, why does the EU need to speak to us at this time anyway? Theoretically, the way the Benn Bill works is that the letter that Parliament has written for the Prime Minister to take to the EU allows the EU to dictate the date that the UK leaves the EU. It has been nicknamed the “surrender Bill” for a reason; frankly, it is about as surrendery as it gets.
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; he is being very generous with his time.
Again, I agree that it would be wrong to postpone our departure from the EU beyond 31 October. If we leave then, we leave either with or without a deal. If we do not have a general election—we will know by the end of this evening whether we are to have one—we will prorogue. Is the point not that we will come back on 14 October and give ourselves two weeks to either analyse a new deal, pass the old one, or decide how best to the Government can prepare us for no deal—which is simply not enough time?
We have discussed no deal over the past few months, to quite an extent. There would clearly be more specifics, if it seems that that is how it will go. Rather than us not having enough time, people will probably be moving a bit more quickly and frantically.
I have never voted to take no deal off the table, because it is a serious proposition. I have always wanted to get a deal, but I am prepared to leave with no deal if we have done everything we can to get there. However, too many hon. Members in this place have just dismissed it. This goes right back to the heart of the referendum. Not enough hon. Members have taken seriously what people charged us with doing. Many times, I have had people pat me on the head and explain to me why I voted to leave, rather than ask me—and I am a Member of Parliament. Imagine how patronised by the establishment Joe Public feels in parts of the country that voted to leave.
No deal has always been there, whether or not it has been taken seriously by the Government at various points. That is possibly an argument for another day. No deal absolutely should have been discussed as a serious proposition and scrutinised over the past three years. We are at a point at which that proposition has ramped up, and I believe that there will be plenty of time to debate it. I hope that we get a deal. I hope that being able to say “We will leave by 31 October” focuses all our minds on ensuring that we get rid of the backstop. Bear in mind that although we have said what we do not want to do, that is the only thing that has been voted for affirmatively.
In conclusion, I come back to the point that proroguing until 14 October for a Queen’s Speech allows the new Prime Minister to set out his bold, ambitious domestic vision for this country, which people are absolutely screaming out for. They want us to get Brexit done, so that they can talk about what affects them daily: their hospital, their children’s schools and their safety at home and on the streets. Having more policeman and infrastructure, be it rail or broadband, is what affects people daily when they walk out their door.
(Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I rise to speak on behalf of the 8,738 residents in Dulwich and West Norwood who signed the petition in opposition to Prorogation—the eighth-highest proportion of constituents in any constituency in the country—and on behalf of all my constituents, who will be denied their voice and democratic representation as a result of Prorogation today.
It has been argued that Prorogation is normal ahead of a Queen’s Speech, and that only three days of parliamentary time are being lost; we would normally break for conference recess anyway. However, we are not in ordinary times. Brexit has riven our country. We know that the Government’s own analysis shows that there is no version of Brexit that does not inflict damage on the UK economy, and that a no-deal Brexit will deliver a calamity for jobs, the supply of medicine and food, and peace in Northern Ireland. A no-deal Brexit poses a catastrophic threat to so many of the things that our constituents hold dear and on which they depend. To prorogue Parliament at such at time is not normal business; it is an outrage to our democracy.
My constituents voted overwhelmingly—77%—to remain in the European Union. I represent one of the most diverse constituencies in the country. We are internationalist and celebrate diversity. Our values are European values. The strength of feeling in my constituency of Dulwich and West Norwood has not diminished since 2016; it has strengthened and deepened. Since June 2016, however, 77% of my constituents and 48% of voters across the country have been told that we must be quiet, and that our views no longer matter. Even in the face of evidence that Vote Leave broke the law to an extent that might have been sufficient to influence the result of the referendum, we have been told that we must be quiet. We have been told that we must be silent in the face of evidence of the impact of Brexit, which was never discussed during the referendum campaign—most notably, the impact on the Good Friday agreement and peace in Northern Ireland. We have been told to be silent as the definition of Brexit, which was not discussed during the 2016 referendum, has become ever more reckless, right wing and extreme.
That is not how democracy works. It is never the case that, when we vote in a referendum or general election in this country, people who were on the losing side must simply change their views and acquiesce to those who won. It is never the case that, when we vote in an election in this country, everyone’s views are static from that point on for evermore. In our democracy, it is always the case that orderly discussion and debate continue in this Parliament—it is how we resolve our differences—and that we reflect on the result of a vote, on its consequences and impacts, and on what should happen next.
To shut down debate at this time—the House has not voted on the dates of conference recess, and extensive representations were made to the Prime Minister over the summer that Parliament should be recalled—is an insult to my constituents and an outrage to our democracy.
The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) spoke of the times when business has finished early and we have not had matters to debate before us, but the Prime Minister has not brought any solutions to Brexit to this House for discussion and debate. He wants to close down debate in this place to force through a reckless no-deal Brexit that will inflict harm on constituents across the country. That is irresponsible and will drive even more division through our country.
As the hon. Lady knows, I agree with the thrust of her argument that we should spend the bulk of the five weeks of possible Prorogation here discussing these issues, rather than elsewhere. Would it not be better if hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber made it clear we that we would use that time to discuss the best way for us to leave the European Union, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) said, rather than to re-fight the referendum campaign, as I fear the hon. Lady may be suggesting we should do? Is not the best way of proceeding for us to leave with a deal and forge what cross-party consensus we can to find a deal that we all agree on?
It is clear that my constituents do not want to leave the European Union. As a Back-Bench MP on the Opposition Benches, I reserve the right to represent their views and test with them how they feel and think about any deal that is on the table. We had a deal from the previous Prime Minister that was undeliverable in this House for a range of reasons on both sides of the House. We now have a Prime Minister who says he wants a deal but will not put one on the table or negotiate one in good faith with the European Union. In that context, I am not prepared to acquiesce to an “emperor’s new clothes” argument that this will somehow be fine for my constituents. I want the right to continue to represent their views and bring to this House in an orderly fashion their views and concerns, debate them with the Government and hold this reckless Prime Minister to account.
I will not be silent. My constituents’ voices will continue to be heard, and our values will continue to be represented in this debate. I urge colleagues on both sides of the House to continue to oppose this Prorogation vigorously and to remain sitting this evening. This cuts to the very heart of our democracy and the ability of Members of Parliament to hold to account the Executive, who seem determined recklessly to drive us over the edge of a cliff. We cannot stand for that.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for this very important debate, Ms Ryan. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for her excellent contribution: she spoke a great deal of sense. We probably disagree about some of the eventual outcomes, but her defence of democracy was first class, and I wholeheartedly support it.
The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) talked about a lot of issues, but something I regretted hearing from him was that we should not be here contemplating our navels. That is certainly not something that I do when I am here, and no hon. Member I am aware of spends their time here doing that. They are here representing their constituents and doing their very best for them. It would be wrong to suggest to the public at large that our time here is not important: it is normally well spent.
Many of my constituents signed the petition to block Prorogation. More than 10 times as many added their names to the petition against Prorogation as signed the one to support its implementation. I suspect that the number who are concerned about events will continue to rise. Many constituents have contacted me through social media and email. I agree with them that for the Prime Minister to shut down Parliament at such an important time in our country’s history, in the end stages of the Brexit process with by far the largest negotiations this country has undertaken in at least half a century, is nothing short of an outrage.
The Prime Minister is not content with ignoring Parliament: we know that he ignores his Cabinet colleagues, too. The number of people who were consulted about this decision before it was made was small. It is no wonder that most Cabinet members were not consulted, given that many of them spoke strongly against Prorogation during the Tory leadership campaign. For example, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) said:
“You don’t deliver on democracy by trashing democracy.”
The right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) said that the idea was an “archaic manoeuvre”. The right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) said:
“I think it would be wrong for many reasons. I think it would not be true to the best traditions of British democracy.”
I agree with what they said, even if they do not agree with themselves any more.
Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that all three of those quotes were in response to the idea of proroguing Parliament and bridging 31 October—in other words, taking Prorogation beyond the date when we are supposed to leave the European Union?
I do not know the precise context of those comments. What is clear is that Prorogation is designed to have the same effect—to shut down debate and stop Parliament analysing properly the effects of our exiting the EU by way of a deal or not. I am afraid that it amounts to the same thing—an absolute outrage for democracy.
That is where we are. Parliament will be suspended later today because the Prime Minister desires to avoid scrutiny and force us into a no-deal Brexit, despite the Government’s own analysis showing that a no-deal Brexit would mean food shortages, medicine shortages and chaos at our ports, and despite Parliament legislating to take no deal off the table.
The Government have no mandate from the British people to leave the EU without a deal, but what else would we expect from this Prime Minister? It was reported last week that his chief of staff described negotiations as a scam and an attempt to run down the clock. Even the right hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) has decided that she can no longer take part in this charade. She resigned from the Cabinet this weekend because the Government had not undertaken serious formal negotiations with the EU. That exposes the truth of what the Government are about.
Let us be absolutely frank: the Government are about hiding from scrutiny and running away from the reality and the consequences of their decisions. It is a desperate attempt to cut and run before the truth catches up with them. A string of local companies came to see me over the summer with genuine concerns about the impact of a no-deal Brexit. Between them, they employ thousands of people. The Government’s decisions have the potential to wreak havoc on the local economy.
This is about not just the consequences of leaving without a deal, but Government decisions relating to that that could be changed. There are industry-wide issues, and that will almost certainly mean that jobs in other parts of the country will be affected. We are denied the opportunity to hold the Government to account on these matters, because we know that the truth is that they cannot justify their decisions. We are in the middle of the biggest constitutional crisis that this country has ever seen. We are on the cusp of enacting the biggest changes that this country has made for a generation, yet the Government are acting as if there is nothing to talk about. What an outrage!
If we leave the EU on 31 October with or without a deal, we will be woefully underprepared. It is simply inconceivable that all the legislation needed for an orderly exit is place, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) said. To my knowledge, there are at least six Bills that have not been passed and would need to be enacted for that to happen. If we crash out on the 31st without a deal—let us not forget that, despite what the Prime Minister said, that is still an option if he can persuade Parliament that it is the right thing to do—there is still an enormous amount of contingency planning needed in transport, medicines and food, to name but a few areas. Members of Parliament should be scrutinising the Government and holding them to account for what they intend to do.
I read a very alarming report the other day that suggested that the plans for a no-deal Brexit involve relocating thousands of council staff from around the country down to Whitehall to deal with no-deal fallout. Bizarrely, the council staff will be replaced with members of the armed forces. I have no idea whether that is true—I hope it is not—but surely we deserve to know what is going on. Surely our role as parliamentarians is to scrutinise Government policies, particularly when the effect might be as dramatic as that. We should sit every day until 31 October to sort this out, which is what we were elected to do. The Prime Minister should not be going around the country electioneering at a time of national crisis. That is snollygostering of the highest order.
The Prime Minister’s game—that is what it is to him—has been clear for some time: make a load of spending announcements quickly, shut down any scrutiny of them, and hope that the traditional honeymoon period that all Prime Ministers experience lasts until mid-October. Well, we will not play that game. I have been on to him since his second day in office, when he announced a £3.6 billion fund for towns. When I heard about that, I thought, “That sounds pretty promising and is certainly something that Ellesmere Port and Neston could benefit from.” I was keen to see whether my constituency would be on the list, but as Parliament was not sitting, I submitted a freedom of information request to the Cabinet Office, which said in its response that it had no information at all.
Here we have a Prime Minister announcing a multibillion-pound expenditure, while his office does not have even one scrap of paper to set out how the money will be spent. What a complete charlatan. I want accountability, answers and a Minister at the Dispatch Box to explain where that money is going, how it is being spent and who made those decisions. Anything less than that and it looks like a political fix—a cheap stunt unworthy of a serious party of government.
That is not the only issue on which I want answers. A major employer in my constituency is talking about shutting down in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Two secondary schools are up in arms about the way that they have been treated. There are major concerns about the way that a company contracted by the NHS suddenly went bust over the summer, and about the future of the fire service. There are major problems with access to mental health services. There is rising unemployment and a chronic lack of affordable housing. We should be tackling all of those matters here and now, in Parliament.
In truth, however, we will not be able to talk about those things because the Prime Minister does not want scrutiny as what he says does not stand up to it. He tells us that he cannot negotiate with the EU if no deal is taken off the table, but given his claim that the primary change that he wants to make is on the Irish backstop—a very specific issue—I see no connection between the changes that he says he wants and the need to keep no deal on the table. He also tells us that the first thing that the EU will ask in respect of any proposals made by the Government is whether they have the support of Parliament. How can Parliament say that it supports the proposals if it does not even know what they are and it is not sitting to find out? That does not stack up; it is a nonsense that has unravelled in a matter of days since Parliament’s return.
No wonder the Prime Minister does not want Parliament to sit. The more exposure he gets, the more even his own party walks away from the circus. The clown routine is an insult to the office of Prime Minister, to Parliament and to the people of this country, who he thinks will be duped by Eton’s answer to Arthur Daley—we will not fall for it. One cannot claim, as the Conservative party has, to believe on one hand in parliamentary sovereignty, and on the other in shutting Parliament down.
I put on the record that I do not support the Prorogation of Parliament and believe it to be an unprecedented, antidemocratic and unconstitutional attack on our democracy. Taking back control means Parliament taking back control and standing up to the bully boys who want to shut us down.
Faisal Rashid
(Warrington South) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) on his excellent speech.
The Prorogation of Parliament is just the latest in a series of reckless and opportunistic gambles undertaken by Conservative Prime Ministers on the issue of Europe. As always, the hardworking people of this country will most suffer as a result. David Cameron refused to face the consequences of his own decision to hold the 2016 in/out referendum on Europe with no conditions at all. Theresa May argued that no deal was better than a bad deal and, after she brought a bad deal back to Parliament, we now, unsurprisingly, face crashing out without a deal. That outcome was not even part of the discussion in 2016, yet nothing else will now satisfy this Government’s far-right backers.
In the last few years, poverty, inequality and homelessness have risen. Against that backdrop, Parliament has been reduced to banging on endlessly about Europe. As the Prime Minister suspends Parliament to take us out of Europe without a deal, experts and the Government’s own advisers warn of food shortages and limited access to medical supplies. Just stop and think about that for a second—peacetime shortages of food and medicine. That is not the result of a natural disaster but a political disaster—the Conservative party.
The damage of a no-deal Brexit will not be temporary; it threatens profound systematic damage to our economy. The Bank of England says that that outcome would permanently—not temporarily—reduce the UK’s export potential. The Treasury believes that it would result in an economy 8% to 10% smaller in 15 years than if we were to remain in the European Union, with the north- west hit the hardest. The president of the National Farmers Union, Minette Batters, said that a no-deal Brexit would be
“socially and economically catastrophic for farming in Britain.”
Make UK, the manufacturers organisation, said that it would be
“disastrous for the majority of UK manufacturers and the livelihoods of the millions of people they employ and their families.”
Yet to realise this disastrous outcome, the Government have resolved to gag Parliament in these most critical days for our country. That they can proceed with such arrogance is astonishing, after all, it will not be their families who are on the breadline or their livelihoods that are destroyed. We need to prevent the irreparable damage of no deal at all costs.
The single greatest myth of a no-deal Brexit is the idea that it avoids the need for negotiations with the European Union. The day after we crash out without a deal, the need for a strategic relationship with our largest and nearest market would remain, and we would seek a free-trade agreement. The Government talk about strengthening our negotiating position with the EU, but in reality, the day after no deal, we would be forced to go cap in hand to the EU for a trade deal, with our economy in tatters. How would we negotiate then? We talk about keeping no deal on the table to negotiate, but if we crash out without a deal, how can we expect a good free-trade agreement afterwards?
MPs from across the House must fight with all our might to stop no deal. That is why I will vote against a general election this evening until the threat of leaving the EU without a deal is ruled out. Otherwise, we are up for a general election and we are ready for one.
This is a really important debate, not least because 1.7 million people signed the petition. We have had demonstrations up and down the country, including in Leeds both this and last Saturday. The previous Saturday saw the largest demonstration in Leeds since the protests against the Iraq war, with 5,000 people turning out to hear some of the city’s and the region’s MPs, who are all from the Labour party.
Those demonstrations happened because people think that we need to be in Parliament to scrutinise the Executive at this crucial time, rather than spending five weeks in our constituencies and at party conference. Nor, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) said, should the Prime Minister be electioneering using public money in that time, before general election spending rules apply.
It is vital that we are here because the country is in no way prepared for crashing out of the EU on 31 October as the Prime Minister seems intent on doing. Today, I read in The Times that our EU negotiating team is composed of just four people. How will four people negotiate a new withdrawal agreement with the European Union in the time that we have left before the European Council? That does not seem credible and does not stand up to scrutiny. That is why Parliament is being prorogued: so that scrutiny does not exist.
What else do we need in that period? A number of Bills that have started to go through the House have not completed the process, and they need to before we reach any watershed moment with the European Union. If they have not been completed, it will be absolutely chaotic—we will live in a chaotic country in which international law has not been properly legislated for; not enacted by our legislature.
The Trade Bill, for example, has not been finished. Why not, because it should have? We were on track to pass the Trade Bill in May—I do not mind if the Minister corrects me on that, but I think we should have completed the Bill then. We have not done so because of the attempts—which I would have supported—to insert a customs union into the provisions of the Trade Bill, and the Government, under both this Prime Minister and the previous one, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), did not want a customs union. Progress on the Bill was therefore slowed down, so we will not complete it in time for 31 October.
An immigration Bill would have provided some surety for EU citizens in this country—though perhaps not, depending on what happened with it—and regulated immigration post Brexit. What now happens to those EU citizens if the Prime Minister does not negotiate a withdrawal agreement and we leave with no deal on 31 October? I hope that the Minister has a good answer, because 3 million people in this country are interested to know what their status will be without the completion of such an immigration Bill. They do not believe the promises that have come from Ministers and the Executive.
What about the Fisheries Bill? Central to the leave campaign in 2016 was that the UK would take back control of fisheries and fishing rights, but how will that be possible without a Fisheries Bill? Without that legislation, will not other countries with which we share our territorial waters contest us in international courts? What a laughing stock we will be if we leave on 31 October without the legislation. The Agriculture Bill, too, is meant to frame what we will have post the common agricultural policy.
I am sure the Minister will say, “Oh, but these Bills will be in the Queen’s Speech”—obviously, he cannot give us a decisive answer on what will and will not be in the Queen’s Speech, but he will try to reassure us. However, I want to know how we will legislate for all those Bills by 31 October.
Is my hon. Friend aware—I am certainly not—whether any carry-over motions have been tabled to save those Bills? That would avoid the necessity of them having to appear in the Queen’s Speech and mean that we could get back to them in the ridiculously short time that we will have left.
We only have a few hours before the House is prorogued. I am sure that colleagues of the Minister are busily preparing to ensure that we do not have to bring those Bills back in the Queen’s Speech, but one Bill we will without doubt need to be in it is an environment Bill. We were expecting an environment Bill to be introduced; we were expecting to be through First and Second Reading and in Committee—I wanted to be on the Committee, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin), who is sitting next to me—but we have no environment Bill. I would like to know what regulations will exist, and how we will enforce them from 1 November, if the Prime Minister completes the task that he has set for himself.
In Leeds, we are due to have a clean-air zone, because our air quality is among the worst in this country. Three times the Government have been taken to court by ClientEarth and lost, on the basis of EU regulations forming part of UK law to enshrine, embed and widen air quality through a number of local authorities in the UK. The Government have failed to deliver to Leeds what it needs—a charging system, and equipment for such vehicles—so we in Leeds will be in breach of EU regulations on air quality for longer than we expected.
Who will provide the environmental protection that we need? I asked that question of the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), now the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, but until a few hours ago the Minister of State in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. She said that in a no-deal Brexit scenario, the new agency would not be formed until the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021, and that people would have to take environmental action retrospectively. That means that we will have no environmental protection in this country from 31 October until that date. I have an issue with effluent discharge into the River Wharfe, and I hope for some enforcement action on it. Will I be disappointed? Will people have to swim in effluent for two more years because there is no regulation? I would like to know.
The issues are not small and minor; they are huge, and Parliament should be here, sitting to debate those Bills, scrutinising them in Committee, and getting them through so that on 31 October we are not in a situation in which the people of this country have a far worse quality of life.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his speech. So many factors are important. On 5 August, we saw the incursion in Kashmir. My constituents want to debate that issue, and to call the Government to account for their actions in the light of the lockdown in Kashmir and the sheer catastrophic humanitarian risk in Indian-administered Kashmir. Surely proroguing Parliament prevents this House from scrutinising the Government’s actions on important global matters as well.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In Kashmir, the internet has been shut down, and there is a lack of reporting on the crackdown by the Indian Government. We also have the events in Hong Kong. Britain is a party to the Chinese-British agreement of 1984, so in some senses what happens in Hong Kong is a matter of foreign policy but, equally, it is not. We will not be able to hold any scrutiny of the Foreign Secretary on that matter either.
There is a whole raft of things over and above legislation, but over that period all that people will be able to see are the party conferences, when only one party’s view will be given. In the week of 20 September, it will be my party’s view, which I will support. Once a year, we get a platform and a fair hearing in the media, but that is not the same as the parliamentary scrutiny that we would have if we were here.
The idea that—this is complementary to the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes)—we could vote tonight for a general election, hold one and come back with the whole issue of Brexit cleanly resolved is absolute nonsense. In the current circumstances, in what would be a general election with only one issue on the ballot paper, no one can predict what the result would be. That would subvert the general election into a vote on one issue, when it should be about the economy, our health, our education system, our environment and every other issue that is important in the country. That is not the way to deal with Brexit; the only way to deal with it is to confirm the decision of the 2016 referendum, or not, by the Government’s negotiating a withdrawal agreement with the EU. The Prime Minister repeatedly tells us he has almost completed one, although today the Irish Prime Minister said that he had no evidence of any progress on it—I am not sure which Prime Minister I would like to believe at this stage, but on 14, 15, 16 or 17 October we will see which one is correct.
Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the Irish Taoiseach also said that if the UK is to leave, it should do so by 31 October? That was stated to be the viewpoint of the majority of EU member states.
This is an evolving situation on the EU side. If we prorogue tonight without a general election, I hope to go to Brussels tomorrow to meet a number of people in the European Parliament and the Commission, so that I can hear at first hand what is happening in the EU. It is difficult to know what is going on in the EU from the trial by media; it is hard enough to work out what is going on in our Government, never mind in 27 other Governments.
The general election is not an adequate alternative to solve our future relationship with the European Union. The only real way to finally address this question , as my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) said, is a confirmatory vote on whether to accept a withdrawal agreement, or not to and therefore stay in the European Union. That way, people would go to the ballot box on this issue in isolation and resolve it. Underlying Prorogation are attempts not to allow us the time for Parliament to decide that question. It concerns me that this is a politicised Prorogation of Parliament.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel). This is an interesting debate, founded on petitions launched by people who were desperate to indicate their view to this House and this Government.
I represent East Lothian, where 3,867 constituents signed the petition not to prorogue Parliament, and 86 constituents signed the petition to prorogue Parliament. That made me think about what Prorogation is really about. It dates back to when this House was cleaned to make it ready for the arrival of His or Her Majesty—that was the reason we all had to get out. The effect is much greater at a constitutional level—we heard about the Bills that will be lost, but let me talk about one small problem that comes to mind: I will not be able to lodge any questions on my constituents’ behalf when we are prorogued.
I think of an EU citizen who successfully registered online and received a letter containing a number. The letter confirms that it is not proof of her status; the only way to gain proof of status is to log on, send a code by mobile phone, get an access code and then successfully prove it. She intends to leave this country on 1 November for a holiday, but she is worried that she will not get back in. When she arrives back with her German passport, it will not be read correctly because the data will not have been transmitted. She is genuinely worried about what she is supposed to do when she tries to get access to her data, or when Border Force try to get access, as in some trials nothing has happened. I pose that question, unfairly, in the hope of an answer, because once we are prorogued later tonight, I will not be able to lodge a question. I will not be able to find out what my constituent is supposed to do.
That brings me to the length of Prorogation. We have heard that there were Government Ministers who disagreed with Prorogation and those who agreed with it. The fact remains that the Government have said in their many charts that, taking out conference recess, the number of days that we are being prorogued is not much greater than in the past. That is not true; it is much longer. The Government did not present the motion for conference recess and I genuinely believe that they had no intention of doing so because they are using that period to hide from being questioned. That is why they want us to go away—so they do not have to answer questions about data, medicines, transport, EU citizens, the missing Bills, the state of the environment and the state of the negotiations.
I have heard, “We have to keep this private. We can’t take no deal off the table. We have to keep our hand secret.” It is strange that the European Union seems to have taken entirely the opposite view. Right from the beginning of the negotiation, it set out the evidence and its asks; it debated them and it put all that in the public realm. We are unable to do that because, we are told, “that is not how you negotiate.” With the greatest of respect, I do not think the way we intend to negotiate—by holding our cards close to our chests and telling nobody anything, with four people left to do the negotiation—is respecting the United Kingdom.
The Government are attacking an element of our constitution. Prorogation is a relatively small backwater of our constitution. To use it to stop Parliament, so the Government do not have to answer questions posed by representatives of constituents around the United Kingdom, is an extremely dangerous precedent to make. With all due respect, if we were sitting on the other side and we tried to defend sending Members of Parliament away for five weeks so that something could happen, those opposite would not be silent.
I am delighted to speak with you in the Chair, Ms Ryan. I thank the thousands of people in my constituency who signed the petition.
I am angry. I am a mild-mannered person, as most hon. Members would agree, but I never thought I would see this in this mother of Parliaments. We created parliamentary democracy, which works because the Government run Parliament—sometimes that is not as clear as it should be—and there is a degree of fair play between Government and Opposition. That has completely broken down, to the extent that there have been a series of guns to our head for a general election and for no deal, as if that is what Parliament should accept. If this were a banana republic, we would understand that a president might manipulate us, but this is the British Parliament. Today is a hard day for Parliament.
I am reminded of an episode of “Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?” I apologise to all those who are too young to remember that. There is a wonderful episode where they are trying to avoid the result of the England football game. They spend the whole day in and out of pubs because they do not want to know the score and want to watch it on the highlights as if it were a live game. They get to the very end, and they find the result of the game written on a beer mat. That proves to me that, with Prorogation, the Government can hide and they can run, but they will always be held to account somewhere. Prorogation is about trying to avoid being called to account over some of the most important things.
I bear a grudge, because I spent 37 hours of my time debating the Agriculture Bill as the Opposition spokesperson, along with other hon. Members. No matter how badly I did, I tried my best, and I will never get back those 37 hours. I might be fortunate enough to have another 37 hours, because hopefully the Bill will come back in some form. Why does that matter? If I am trying to plan my farm policy—trying to work out what I will grow next year and what animals I will keep—I need to know the system of agriculture, yet that is in abeyance. Yes, we can carry on with the existing common agricultural policy, but I thought we were trying to get out of it—that was one of the drivers for leaving the EU. That is bad enough, but I also spent a lot of hours debating statutory instruments, some of which will be out of date by now.
It was not our decision to have a two-year Session—that happened at the behest of the Government. Some of us feel it was a mistake, and that Parliament should have an annual programme, but this Government decided they would have a two-year programme. It has come back to haunt us. The Agriculture Bill left this place well before Christmas last year. Therefore, we have been waiting for it to come back for the best part of nine months. I understand through the usual channels that we were offered a deal—let it through and we will not say anything else about it. With the best will in the world, we had arguments against the Bill in its current form.
That is bad enough, but as two of my hon. Friends have said, the situation of fisheries is even more drastic. If we drop out with no deal, the scallop wars over the Christmas period will be just a foretaste. People will start taking the law—whatever that may be at this moment in time—into their own hands.
If we had not been debating this petition today, I would have been summing up for the Opposition in a debate about cages, animal sentience and so on. Again, all that is in abeyance. We do not have a clear statement of the law. The law does not exist anymore. We chose not to put it in the Trade Bill. We have an animal sentience Bill, but I do not know whether that will be carried over. Does that matter? Of course it does. If someone is trying to prosecute a person who has mistreated an animal, what law do they use? Do they use the law that used to exist or the law that could have existed if we had allowed it to go through? Those issues really matter. This is not Opposition Members just kicking off; it is about the way we are being prevented from doing our job.
I would have raised this as a point of order, but I have been told by various Departments—the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which I shadow; the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—that parliamentary questions I tabled over the recess cannot be answered because of the Prorogation of Parliament. We could all go on about how wonderful Speaker Bercow has been, but one of the great things he has put in place is the ability to ask questions for answer during recess. That was a dramatic improvement on our not being able to do our job of holding the Government to account.
I now have three Departments telling me, in advance of Prorogation, while anything could still happen—we could choose not to prorogue tonight—that they will not answer questions. That does not mean they will answer them in the future; it means they will not answer them. The questions will fall. That is wrong—particularly for me, because I will have to table them all again. However, other Departments have answered questions, so will the Minister put on the record, on behalf of the Government, the process for determining whether Departments should answer a question when we are about to prorogue? Dare I say it, some civil servants seem to work very hard to get us an answer, but others just say, “Here’s a two-line thing. We’re not going to answer it.”
To me, a lot of this demonstrates how Parliament is not really running by the rules any more. The idea is that Parliament should hold the Government to account, but at the moment it seems that Parliament is being held to account by the Government, who say, “Well, we’ll answer when we want to, we’ll let you take part in debates if you have to, but really, this is subject to our whims.” My friend Graham Allen, as Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee—when we had one—looked at whether we should have a written constitution. I feel strongly, on the basis of the past couple of weeks, that we must. It is wrong that Parliament cannot hold the Government to account. We should have rules on when Prorogation should take place and on whether Departments should answer questions.
This really matters. As parliamentarians, whatever party we come from and whether we are in government or opposition, we must have the security and knowledge that our job cannot be undermined; otherwise, the people will increasingly lose confidence in Parliament, because they will think the Government just use it to rubber-stamp whatever they want. In a time of a hung Parliament—and of a very hung Government, for all sorts of reasons—it is important that we have a justification for what is going on and that that is put into some form of arrangement so the rules are much more transparent, open and fair.
What is going on is undemocratic; it is unconstitutional, given that we do not have a written constitution; and it is a mess. It is not easy trying to explain to our constituents what we are all up to at the moment. Sometimes, when I write an email, I think, “Do I understand what I’m writing?” It changes from minute to minute, and whether we are in government, opposition or whatever, it is very unclear what our stance is. Deep down, I think this is a shameful period for our Parliament. We should do something about it.
Anna McMorrin
(Cardiff North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Ryan. I thank the thousands of people in my constituency who signed the petition to defend democracy against this Prorogation, which certainly is not in the spirit of our values as an open, free and transparent parliamentary democracy—although it is not hard for anyone to see the motive behind the Prime Minister’s actions. This is a blatant act of trickery by the Prime Minister and those around him in No. 10, designed only to shield a weak and divided Government from the wave of dissatisfaction among Members across the House and people across the country. It is a disingenuous act.
The Prime Minister makes much fanfare about our parliamentary democracy and lauds historical figures who led our country through past emergencies. Although he might try to compare himself to those who held the highest office before him and draw similarities between their strife and his own, the situation we find ourselves in is entirely of his making. His attempt to subvert democracy in this way is not at all fitting of comparison to the actions of any of the figures he holds in such high esteem, and it is not fitting of the office of Prime Minister.
The events of the past days and weeks have stretched the capacity of our constitutional norms, but what have they taught us? We have a Prime Minister who is prepared to stretch the limits of democracy and abuse the parliamentary system. I agree with my colleagues that urgent reform is needed, although perhaps that is a debate for another day.
In kicking MPs out and suspending Parliament—in dismissing them and locking the door—the Prime Minister is denying my constituents the right to have their voices heard. In silencing the voices of MPs, he is silencing a nation. People and businesses in Cardiff North all tell me that. People came up to me at the weekend wanting to know what is going on. They asked, “Why is the Prime Minister doing this to our country? Why are the Government doing this?” They are worried about their future and about how this will affect them. They are worried that we are on the path to a devastating no deal that will have an impact on their livelihoods and their families.
All this is taking place in the eye of a storm, amid a growing emergency—a national crisis—during which people expect us to be present here. They want us to be here, standing up for them and working hard to resolve the crisis. As has been said, suspending Parliament means that important Bills, which we all worked hard on, will fall by the wayside. We heard about the environment Bill and the Agriculture Bill. I have my own Bill on plastics and packaging, which will fall by the wayside too. It would have extended producers’ responsibilities to ensure that the packaging they produce is far more environmentally friendly—it would have made them stand up and take notice—but it will fall by the wayside. What will happen then?
I have just come from a meeting with tens, if not hundreds of climate protesters, who are here to meet their Members of Parliament. What message does suspending Parliament send to the country and the world? That we do not care about the climate emergency? I am afraid the climate emergency will not stop just because Boris Johnson wants to massage his ego and get on with crashing us out with no deal.
Joan Ryan
(in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Lady needs to use the phrase “the Prime Minister.”
My apologies, Ms Ryan. I will say “Prime Minister” from now on.
If the hon. Lady is referring to the event in the Churchill Room, it is organised by the Extinction Rebellion Sutton group and hosted by me. It is perfectly possible to meet those people in our constituencies, as I did in organising the event, and bring the issue back over a period. We can still do our work when we are not here.
Order. If the hon. Lady wishes to use the phrase “the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip,” that will also be perfectly acceptable.
Thank you, Ms Ryan. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Absolutely, my job all summer and whenever this place is in recess is to work on all those issues in my constituency, as we all do. However, stopping Parliament from sitting stops vital legislation. It means that we stop scrutinising the Government on the action they are taking on this climate emergency. It is all very well to have words, but we need action, and that needs to be taken at the highest level.
The hon. Lady is generous in giving way. Does she agree that we did not hear much calling for action or scrutiny about all these other issues over the summer recess, when we could have been talking about any number of things?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I do not really understand it, because Parliament was not sitting. During the summer recess, I met protesters and held various events in my constituency.
I will not stand idly by while a Prime Minister in freefall runs roughshod over our country; a Prime Minister who will use this time to roam the country, electioneering on public money. Prorogation or not, his attempts to silence us will not work. I am here to protect the livelihoods, futures and businesses of my constituents.
With a threat as big as no deal looming large and with the Government choosing ruin over delay, I will continue to do whatever I can, by joining forces with my colleagues to protect vital jobs, services, communities and livelihoods. I will continue to campaign and fight for what I believe is the best solution to the crisis we find ourselves in: to put the decision on the future of Brexit back to the people for a final say. I will campaign firmly and loudly to remain as a full member of the European Union.
Jeremy Lefroy
(Stafford) (Con)
I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate; I was giving evidence to the review panel on High Speed 2. That issue is one reason why I am very concerned about the length of this Prorogation. HS2 phase 2a, which is being considered by Parliament and approaching the House of Lords, has a huge impact on my constituents, so it was important to be able to give evidence to the panel. I will come to the other things we will be prevented from doing in the coming weeks by this excessive Prorogation. It is right that we should have a Prorogation—I am fully in favour of a new Queen’s Speech—but it should not last until 14 October.
My plea to the Government is that we should come back at the latest on 7 October, if not on 3 October, once all party conferences have concluded. That is plenty of time. We are in the midst of a crisis in Parliament and in the country. We need to respect the result of the 2016 referendum and leave the European Union but do so with a deal in an orderly way, as set out by the manifesto on which I stood in 2017. The problem with coming back from Prorogation on 14 October is that that leaves little time for Parliament to consider the new deal or revised deal that I firmly hope the Prime Minister will bring back—even perhaps in draft, if it is in advance of the European Council on 17 October. It is our responsibility to look at that. Indeed, as a member of the newly formed grouping of MPs for a deal, I will work with Members of Parliament from across the House to ensure that there is an opportunity to arrive at a deal that achieves a majority in this House.
Andy Slaughter
(Hammersmith) (Lab)
Like the hon. Gentleman, I was giving evidence to the HS2 panel, as well as meeting Extinction Rebellion and indeed Dignity in Dying, and Shelter. I wonder why it can be said that we have little to do here if we have to try to be in five places at once. I admire what he said on Prorogation. Will he go a stage further and say that we should at least remain Members of Parliament so that we can still lobby and come back some time in October? Were an election to go ahead, we would have no control over that whatsoever. As the Prime Minister has said he may be equivocal about obeying the law, an election is to be avoided at all costs.
[Mrs Anne Main in the Chair.]
The hon. Gentleman and I were together at the HS2 panel and I listened carefully to the important points he made about Old Oak Common and the surrounding area that is affected by HS2. I am in a quandary about an election. On the one hand, it would be decisive. I suspect it would be run on the lines of remain, leave or leave with a deal, and it would be a chance for the people to decide, in a manner of speaking. On the other hand, I see what he says: if we have an election, we will not be able to make these points. Prorogation leaves us in a halfway house where we cannot raise points in Parliament and we do not have the decisiveness of an election; it is neither fish nor fowl.
There are two main reasons why I do not want to see Parliament prorogued for as long as proposed—and the Government could still request for Prorogation to be for less time. First, we need more time to consider really important matters such as the prospective deal, which I very much hope the Prime Minister is committed to bringing before this House, and which, in some form or other, will be passed by this House so that we can fulfil the referendum result and leave in an orderly fashion.
It is also extremely important to bring up constituency matters. With your permission, Mrs Main, I will give a few examples, because I will not be able to do so at business questions or other times. First, a constituent of mine, Staff Sergeant Proverbs, who has just left the Army after 20 years of active service to this country in a number of theatres, was injured on duty at NATO headquarters in this country, yet because of the intricacies of the rules around pensions and disability, he is being deprived of a proper disability payment and disability pension. I have taken up his case with the Minister for the Armed Forces, my right hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster) and the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) and had a sympathetic hearing, but the Ministry of Defence is not dealing with my constituent in a proper manner. As a result, he faces a much lower level of income, despite his disability, which was incurred in the course of serving our country.
I also raise the case again—I have done so before in the House of Commons—of my constituent, Mr Gray, on whose behalf on a serious matter I have written to Barclays a number of times to request a meeting, but Barclays has still not replied to me.
I also want to raise the fact that not long ago I had a debate on the manipulation of precious metal prices, which is a serious matter that is fundamental to the financial system of this country and the whole world. We had a good response from the Minister but there are serious outstanding matters that need to be raised in Parliament and discussed here.
I could go on, and I am sure other Members could do the same, but it is clear to me that we need the time in Parliament. Clearly, the Government need time to prepare the Queen’s Speech. I understand that, but a couple of weeks is more than enough. It is not as if they are starting on it ab initio or that as from tomorrow they will start thinking about the Queen’s Speech. They have been thinking about it for a long time, and rightly so. Two or three weeks maximum is more than enough time. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to communicate to his colleagues in Government and to the Prime Minister that if we could resume on 3 October or, at the very latest, 7 October, it would be welcomed across the House.
Tommy Sheppard
(Edinburgh East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Main.
I begin with a couple of points about the procedure we are engaged in here. Before members of the Petitions Committee leap up, I should say I do not intend any criticism of them. I have been at a number of these debates on matters on which the public have petitioned us, and I wonder if our procedures are effective and robust enough to deliver on the expectations of those who petition Parliament.
First, we are dealing with two petitions. I am not sure of the need to lump petitions together just because they cover the same topic, particularly in this instance, where they represent diametrically opposed views. One petition, which I presume has been organised by pro-Brexit campaigners because they believe this Parliament is made up of remoaners who are antipathetic to their case, has taken five months to get to the requisite threshold of 100,000 signatures. The other petition collected 1.7 million signatures in a matter of hours and reflects serious public outrage at a decision taken by the Government. To give parity of consideration to those two petitions is simply not fair.
I wonder how many people who sign such petitions understand that this is the place where their hopes and aspirations come to die on a wet Monday afternoon, in a Committee Room off the House of Commons Chamber, with 10 Members assembled who have no ability to advocate on behalf of the petitioners, or to influence, nevermind change, Government policy. It is too late for this Parliament, but if I come back to this place in the future, I will seek changes to our procedures and how we deal with those who petition this Parliament. I do not think we treat them fairly enough.
My concerns about how we deal with petitions are as nothing to my concerns about the inadequacy of our constitution when it comes to Parliament sitting. Is it not astonishing that our Parliament can be suspended for five weeks in the middle of a major political crisis, the ramifications of which are profound, legion, and no way near being concluded? Most people would find that astounding; I find it astounding myself that this can happen perfectly legally and normally.
The role of Parliament is to scrutinise and hold to account the Executive. It cannot be right that the Executive can relieve itself of that scrutiny by the simple expedient of suspending Parliament. It seems a bizarre situation, yet it is the one we are confronted by. By the time we get to 14 October, the Prime Minister will have held the most powerful executive office in the land for 82 days, and on only four of those days will Parliament have been able to hold him and his Government to account. That is frankly a shocking state of affairs. I do not buy the argument that that is because Government Ministers and their advisers need time to prepare a new legislative programme.
The hon. Gentleman just outlined that the Prime Minister will have been in office for 82 days, and that Parliament will have sat for only four of them. That means that there will have been only one Prime Minister’s Question Time. Members of this House will not be able to question the Prime Minister until after the Queen’s Speech, even though by then he will have been in office for over three months.
I know; it is staggering.
We need to ask ourselves why this is happening. It is because we have a Prime Minister who has no mandate, no majority in the House and no ability to get legislation through Parliament. Rather than compromise with Parliament or seek a majority, he is determined simply to walk away from it and not have the debate. That is a very bad look for our democracy.
It is also bad that we have a Prime Minister who, in his public pronouncements, is uncertain whether he will deliver on the will of Parliament, and now the law of the land, which is that in the absence of a withdrawal deal with the European Union, we should seek an extension until 31 January to allow further time for an agreement to emerge. That the Prime Minister and his advisers are equivocal on that is a matter for deep concern.
I do not buy the Prime Minister’s suggestion that all we need to do in these circumstances is have a quick cut-and-run election. There is no point having an election if the main point of it—to decide whether or not to crash out of the European Union without a deal—cannot be altered by the outcome. We cannot allow an election simply so that the Prime Minister can escape the obligation that Parliament has placed on him. Parliament has not allowed that to happen, and I am sure that it will not allow it later on tonight.
An election will need to come soon; the delay will be only a matter of weeks. As soon as we are confident that we will not crash out of the European Union without a deal, and have more time to consider options and strategy, it will be frankly impossible to advance the process in the country without going back to the people. It is time for them to have another say.
I sense that an awful lot of Members of Parliament, on both sides of the House, understand very well the consequences of Brexit; they are not attracted to them, but they feel that they do not have a mandate to oppose Brexit because of the nature of the manifesto on which they stood in 2017. Shaking up the political cards and allowing a different Parliament to emerge with fresh mandates may open the possibility for reconsideration of this matter. I hope that an election will allow a new Parliament to consider putting the matter back to the people who started the process.
It is not the role of Parliament to overturn, set aside or ignore the will of the people, but it is the role of Parliament to interpret it. If we have found, three years later, that what the people asked us to do—that is, to leave the European Union and make things better—is simply undoable, and if what they ask cannot be done, and the circle cannot be squared, then we need to go back to the people, explain that, and ask them whether they want to reconsider. It may well be that they do not want to do that, and that they are content to leave the European Union knowing that it will impoverish them and their families, and diminish the character and culture of this country. That choice should be for them, and they should be allowed to make it, but I am confident that if we are given the opportunity to fight that election, we can get an alternative point of view to emerge—one that will look at the benefits of remaining in the European Union, and changing it so that it delivers for people’s aspirations.
When that election comes in Scotland, my party will not just say, “Stop and reconsider the process of Brexit,” and campaign for an alternative Government to the one that we have had for nearly a decade, but demand and assert the right of the people of Scotland to choose an alternative future. It should be their right not to go down the path that they are being led down by the Prime Minister, and to say that they want to consider an alternative, independent future, in which they take political control of their affairs and determine their relationship with the rest of the people in Britain and Europe. That is the manifesto that we shall put before people in the election that I am sure will come in November, and I look forward to returning to this Chamber to argue that case.
Jo Platt
(Leigh) (Lab/Co-op)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I thank all Members who have taken part in the debate for their speeches, which have highlighted the seriousness of the debate. Tonight, Parliament is to suspend for up to five weeks at this most crucial time in our country’s recent history. That slippery manoeuvre by the new Prime Minister is designed to scupper proper accountability and silence scrutiny when it is most needed.
The Government are already operating with even more secrecy than the previous Government, who were certainly not known for their transparency. As we saw last week when the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster came to the House to provide an update on Brexit preparations, the Government are determined to conceal what is really going on. Indeed, what we know about the Government’s preparations for Brexit has come mostly from leaks, and from insight from former Tories, including the former Work and Pensions Secretary, the right hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), who resigned this weekend in protest at the inaction. According to newspaper reports, the Yellowhammer papers, which outline scenarios in the event of a no-deal Brexit, speak of delays at the channel stretching over two days, food and medical shortages, and potentially even protests on the streets.
Depending on who we listen to, the Government’s negotiations with Brussels are either going well or going nowhere at all. I suspect that the Minister himself does not know which. Such is the way the Government are run. They are run by a small ring of unelected advisers who are more concerned with their reputations than the interests of the country. Clearly, then, there are serious questions that Parliament and the public need answers to over the coming weeks, but in closing down Parliament, the Prime Minister has denied the chance for questions to be asked, let alone answered. As my hon. Friends have pointed out, he has shown contempt not only for Parliamentary democracy, but for the British public, who deserve reassurances that the Government have their interests front and centre. It is yet another case of the old Etonian, entitled arrogance that seems to characterise so much of this Government’s policies. What this boils down to is the feeling among the Prime Minister and his allies that they know best. Clearly they do not, and every time the Prime Minister loses yet another vote in the Commons, we are reminded that far from knowing best, they have misjudged Parliament. Labour believes that they have also misjudged the mood of the public.
If the Government use the suspension of Parliament to ram through a no-deal Brexit, as many believe they will, they will not be delivering on the will of the people, but setting the country up for a period of more stagnation and hardship. We must expose no deal for what it is. It is not a quick fix to solve Brexit, but a path of more chaos, more negotiations, more unrest and no consensus across the country. Far from settling the chaos, it will take us back years, while we build from scratch the economic relationship that we want with our closest and nearest trading partners. It would be a path of more delay, rather than allowing us to forge our future relationship with the EU. We would see years of turmoil that we simply cannot afford. After a decade of Conservative austerity, that is the exact opposite of what our country needs at this key turning point.
That is why Labour is determined to use every possible means to expose and prevent the no-deal Brexit that has only ever been the desired option of a small group of hard-liners in the Conservative party, obsessed with deregulation and mythical free trade deals. Indeed, it is their obsession with a no-deal Brexit and the failure of successive Prime Ministers to show leadership that has stopped us reaching a consensus and getting a deal that works for the whole country. The Chancellor’s repeated refusal to rule out an electoral pact with the Brexit party only confirms that this Government are prepared to hang on to the coat-tails of hard-liners, just like the last one.
Setting aside the question of Brexit for the moment, let us consider the shock with which so much of the public reacted not only to the news that the Prime Minister was closing down Parliament, but to the very fact that he could do that. For many people, the past few weeks have provided a crash course in how the British constitution works. I hear that Parliament overtook “Love Island” in the TV viewing ratings. Viewers are probably unhappy with the characters in both programmes.
People often talk of our unwritten constitution in glowing terms; they say it is flexible, but that flexibility has allowed the Prime Minister to sidestep Parliament completely. Consider for a moment the precedent that that sets—a Prime Minister who does not like the view of Parliament simply shutting it down and silencing elected representatives. In doing so, he has shown contempt for democracy, but he has also revealed how archaic our political system really is. Brexit is about many things, but for many people, it was a chance to express their dissatisfaction with how our political system works— and they are right to be dissatisfied. The Westminster system is over-centralised, and the second Chamber is unelected. Parliament is dominated by those from privileged backgrounds, and our elections are captured by big and dark money.
That the Prime Minister can suspend Parliament so easily is yet another feature of our political system that points towards the urgent need for reform. That is why the Labour party is committed to delivering a constitutional convention when it is in government—a convention that will examine and advise on reforming the way Britain works at a fundamental level. We hope that the convention will provide the impetus for a programme of democratic reform that puts power in the hands of the people. However, in the meantime, it is essential that the Labour party, working with the other Opposition parties, does everything it can to prevent a disastrous no deal. The suspension of Parliament will make that task all the more difficult, but as the last week has shown, the Government’s tricks and attempts to rig the system are collapsing like a house of cards. If they continue to show contempt for Parliament and the British public, they may find themselves leaving No. 10 as quickly as they entered it.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office
(Kevin Foster)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) for opening the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee and for speaking to the petitions that are before the House, which more than 1.7 million people have signed.
It has been quite an interesting debate and I have enjoyed sitting here listening to all of it. I have heard many passionate speeches with statements about not wanting to silence voters, about there being no mandate and no majority, about the Government not having a mandate, and about voters being silenced. If Members have those concerns, there is an opportunity to do something about it later this evening—have a general election and ask the country and electorate to make the decision about who they want to govern the country. It is somewhat telling that it is the Opposition who are likely to block that, although I hope, after some of the speeches we have heard today, that Opposition Members will get into the Aye Lobby this evening to vote for a general election. I hope they will vote for their constituents to have the loudest say of all—their vote in a general election.
Will the Minister give way?
Briefly, and then I will answer the hon. Gentleman’s other question.
I am grateful for the Minister’s indication that he is seeking debate. On the off-chance of tonight’s vote being unsuccessful, would he consider revoking the Prorogation motion so that we could have the debate here?
No. The reasons for the Prorogation have been set out. To the arguments of those who have been shouting “Stop the coup!” and “Defend democracy!”, but then do not want to have a general election, it must be said that I cannot think of any example of a coup in history where a free and fair general election was offered immediately afterward. That argument is absolute nonsense.
Coming on to the more serious question that the hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) asked, he decided to raise a bit of a scare story about what would happen for an EU citizen coming to our border on 1 November. Luckily, he can visit the Government website; it is being promoted now and he can have a good read of it afterward. There is a section on crossing the border after Brexit and another section on EU citizens moving to the UK after Brexit, which would have answered his question.
However, the hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that, as people come across the border on 1 November, which was the example he gave, nothing will change. They will still be able to use e-gates if they are travelling on a biometric passport, and will not face routine intentions testing. The website also goes on to say that those coming here between 31 October this year and 31 December next year will be able to move to the UK and live, study, work and access benefits and services as they do now. Bluntly, a simple Google would have revealed all that interesting information, and I certainly encourage people who have queries to look on that website.
It has been pointed out in the debate that these petitions are clearly distinct from one another in what they ask of the Government. The first, from March 2019, calls on the Government to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament. The second, launched last month, calls on the Government not to prorogue or dissolve Parliament unless and until the Government either revoke article 50 or seek a further extension. Like so much in Brexit, that makes it a debate where we cannot please everyone. In responding to these petitions, I will begin by setting out the process for proroguing Parliament, before turning to the specifics of the points made in the petitions.
May I gently point out that there might be a way to please everyone, which is to prorogue for a shorter time, as I have suggested? A Prorogation for two or three weeks would be in accordance with previous precedent and allow the Queen’s Speech to be prepared while, at the same time, hon. Members would have more time to discuss all those matters. That is in addition to the international crises that may occur during this time. We are talking about more than five weeks here.
I always have great respect for my hon. Friend, but the Government have set out the period of Prorogation and the reason for it, which is the Queen’s Speech. I can reassure people that we will still be sitting for three weeks before the scheduled exit date and, as we have seen over recent days, it does not take long, if the House is minded, to pass a particular piece of legislation. There will still be ample and adequate time to debate Brexit and, as many would reflect on, we have certainly not been short of opportunities to do so over the past year.
Can Minister indicate how many days the Government intend to schedule for debate of the withdrawal agreement Bill, assuming that we have one?
Of course, any discussion of the number of days will be a matter for the usual channels when and if a deal is agreed. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) likes to shout, “No to no deal!”, but he regularly voted no to a deal earlier this year.
Prorogation is the normal end to a parliamentary Session. It remains a matter for the Prime Minister to advise the sovereign on, as it is a prerogative power. That has not changed since the Labour party was in Government. It is for the Government to determine the length of a parliamentary Session and to advise the Queen on the date for the state opening of Parliament. The state opening is marked by the Queen’s Speech, which sets out the programme of legislation the Government intend to pursue in the forthcoming parliamentary Session.
Normally, each parliamentary Session runs for a period of 12 months before Parliament is prorogued. The current parliamentary Session is an exception to the ordinary 12 months, as was touched on during the debate, with the last state opening of Parliament having taken place more than two years ago, on 21 June 2017. This has been the longest parliamentary Session for almost 400 years, far in excess of any of the others.
Very briefly, why does it take five weeks?
The Prime Minister set out in his statement on 2 September 2019 the many reasons why we want to have the Queen’s Speech on the date when we will be having it. The Government have committed to recruiting another 20,000 police officers, improving both national health service and schools funding, and completing 20 new hospital upgrades. It is to progress the Government’s agenda on these and many other fronts that the Prime Minister has sought to commence a new Session of Parliament with a Queen’s Speech on 14 October.
As I have touched on already, if Opposition Members are confident in their argument, they will have the chance tonight to take that debate out to the whole country, to go and face their constituents and explain their position on this subject. If many of them are thinking of voting no this evening, that will be a rather interesting contrast.
I will not give way for now; I will make progress.
Interestingly, senior Opposition MPs have been calling for a Queen’s Speech. The shadow Leader of the House has called for a new Session and a Queen’s Speech five times in five months, while the Shadow Chancellor called for a new session back in May. As I have said, the Government want to bring forward a strong domestic legislative agenda, and ending the parliamentary Session and bringing forward a Queen’s Speech is the legal and necessary way to deliver that.
It is worth pointing out, though, that the larger petition asks that Parliament is not dissolved. Parliament is only dissolved before a general election. The effect of a dissolution is that all business comes to an end and every seat in the House of Commons is vacated until a general election is held. The Prime Minister has been clear that an election should take place ahead of the European Council on 17 to 18 October. That would allow the Prime Minister, elected by the British people—either my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) or the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)—to go to that European Council and for a newly elected Parliament to be in a position to consider what is agreed, and hopefully to pass the withdrawal agreement Bill.
Colleagues will be aware that, as I have referred to several times, a motion for an early general election will be debated later today. They will have the opportunity to give a voice to their constituents, who they have repeatedly claimed in this debate will be silenced. They can give them the most powerful voice they have in this country—their vote in a general election. I look forward to seeing many of those hon. Members in the Aye Lobby. I hope that nobody will make what are, in some ways, contradictory arguments by shouting about defending democracy and stopping a coup, and then vote no on the biggest exercise of democracy that we can have in this country—a general election.
The Government’s position remains clear: we will not revoke article 50 or seek a further, pointless extension. The UK will leave the European Union on 31 October. I point out to some Opposition Members that there is no automatic right to extensions. An extension is not a solution in itself. After three years, merely kicking the can will not solve the problem.
The 17.4 million who voted to leave the EU represent the largest mandate ever given for any UK Government to deliver. Both main parties pledged to respect that result in the 2017 election, and now we must deliver on that pledge. The Prime Minister believes that Parliament must have time to consider further the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, and to hold the Government to account. Parliament has sat ahead of the European Council and will sit for three weeks prior to exit day. That means there will be ample time to debate the UK’s leaving the EU in the coming weeks, on both sides of the summit on 17 October—ideally, with a mandate from the British people to resolve this matter.
The Government would prefer to leave the EU with a deal, and we are working in an energetic and determined way to achieve that. The Government are very willing to sit down with the Commission and EU member states to talk about what needs to be done to achieve that. If it is not possible to reach a deal, we will have to leave with no deal. The Government are preparing for that outcome, and further delay will only increase the sense of distrust that many in the public feel and the uncertainty that is so damaging to our economy.
We take note of all of the points that have been raised in the debate today, but the decision to prorogue Parliament is one for the Government, because Prorogation is a prerogative Act of the Crown, exercised on the advice of Ministers. Therefore, in responding to both of these petitions, I must be clear: it is for the Government to determine when is the appropriate time to bring about an end to a parliamentary Session and bring forward a Queen’s Speech.
The Queen’s Speech and the debate that follows form one of the great set-pieces of the parliamentary calendar, where the Government are rightly scrutinised and held to account. The decision to prorogue Parliament is one for the Government of the day to make, as it always has been. We have set out our reasons for doing so—to ensure that a fresh, new domestic legislative agenda is put before Parliament.
There are those who, in recent weeks, have claimed that they wanted to stop a coup, to defend democracy and to give people a say. Tonight, they have the chance to do just that, and to give the electorate the chance to pass its own judgment. If they do not, many voters across the country will conclude that those comments were as hollow as their pledges to respect the people’s vote in the referendum in 2016.
It has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the second half of this debate, Mrs Main. I thank colleagues for their contributions.
Earlier today, the Taoiseach, after meeting our Prime Minister, said:
“If it comes to a request for an extension, I think the vast majority of countries around the table would prefer that there not be an extension. We would like to see this dealt with. If the UK is leaving, it should leave on the 31st of October.”
Pretty well every other debate that we have had over the last three years has boiled down to Brexit. We have failed over the last three years. What we are asking for by moving the Benn Bill, not proroguing Parliament and not having a general election continues our failure. Too many people in this place have caused Parliament’s failure, and we continue to fail. We are voting to continue to fail, because there is no clear plan as to what would be achieved by simply kicking this issue into the long grass to 31 January. That is not good enough for the vast majority of people in this country.
We have seen quotes used out of context for why Prorogation would not be a good idea if it were to kick this issue beyond 31 October. We have talked about the lack of ability to debate other issues, but I did not hear Members asking for recesses to be cancelled when it would have affected their holidays, at Easter or other recess periods in which the House was not sitting. There are always unfortunate events around the world that we can discuss and debate. We can raise them in a variety of ways, or we can stock them up, or we can recall the House.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I think I only have two minutes, if my hon. Friend does not mind.
The no deal that people have been talking about is the default option in terms of article 50, but not of the Government, as we have heard. It is really important that we retain that in our minds. There are simple ways to avoid no deal. So far as we are concerned, we could have voted for the withdrawal agreement, which Opposition Members did not do, or we can now vote for an election, to try to unlock the situation ahead of 31 October, so that someone else could go to Brussels to ask for that extension that Opposition Members want.
However, 14 October has been determined as the date for the Queen’s Speech because we want to set out our domestic agenda. We want to set out our ambitions apart from Brexit over the next 12 months. It is so important that we do so; it is what members of the public are crying out for.
Question put,
The Chair’s opinion as to the decision of the Question was challenged.
Question not decided (Standing Order No. 10(13)).
Sitting adjourned.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1806
|
__label__cc
| 0.510167
| 0.489833
|
Democrats are Not Likely to Filibuster Supreme Court Nominee Gorsuch
The Blaze – Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said on Tuesday that there was no disagreement that President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch should get an up-or-down vote instead of being subjected to a filibuster which would require a cloture vote.
“I haven’t heard any Democrats saying we don’t think that Judge Gorsuch should get a hearing or that he should get an up-or-down vote,” Shaheen said on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon. “Everybody I’ve talked to agrees he should a hearing and an up-or-down vote.
SEN. SHAHEEN: Mr. President, I just wanted to take a minute – I know we have several people waiting to speak – but I wanted to respond to my colleague from South Dakota because I think for Senator Thune to come to the floor and castigate Democrats for holding up Judge Gorsuch, who has just been nominated, and for suggesting we’re going to filibuster, the fact is, throughout most of last year we saw the Republican Majority in this body hold up the nominee of Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee. For the first time in history this body refused to hold a hearing on a nominee for the Supreme Court, refused to give an up-or-down vote. And, to suggest that we should not get a fair hearing on the nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Gorsuch, I think is just not something that’s going to be good for the American people. Unlike the Republican Majority, I haven’t heard any Democrats saying we don’t think that Judge Gorsuch should get a hearing or that he should get an up-or-down vote. Everybody I’ve talked to agrees he should a hearing and an up-or-down vote.
An up-or-down vote would only require Gorsuch to receive a simple majority, not a 60-vote supermajority, to pass the nomination through. Republicans currently hold 52 seats in the Senate.
Shaheen’s comments came shortly after her party’s Minority Leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), made clear that he intended to lead a filibuster of Gorsuch’s confirmation. Schumer penned a column for Politico explicitly stating that Trump’s nominee should have to pass a cloture vote by achieving support from 60 or more senators. “Nominees to our nation’s highest court must demonstrate that they are mainstream and independent enough to earn the support of at least 60 senators from both parties,” Schumer wrote on Tuesday. “Both of President Obama’s nominees to the Supreme Court exceeded that level of support.” Schumer did not mention that former President Obama’s third nominee did not enjoy enough support to receive a hearing or a vote.
“The simple question we are asking is: Can President Trump’s nominee meet that same test? If the nominee fails to meet 60 votes, the answer isn’t to change the rules; it’s to change the nominee.” he added.
It is not clear whether Shaheen was unaware of Schumer’s comments on his intention to filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination or whether she was firmly disagreeing with Schumer’s position. Shaheen’s office did not immediately return a request for comment from TheBlaze seeking clarification.
Image Source: acslaw.org
Congratulations Hillary Clinton
Congress May have a Tough Road to Obamacare Repeal
I would say this is a pretty great start, Here is a look at the President’s First Week
LGBT Activists Throw a Dance Party In Front of Mike Pence’s House….When He Wasn’t Even Home?
Congress is Moving Too Slow. They Need to Stop Dragging Their Feet.
IMF Sticks With Lagarde Even After Negligence Conviction
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1807
|
__label__wiki
| 0.957952
| 0.957952
|
U.S. Establishes New Sanctions Upon Iran Because of Newest Ballistic Missile Tests
Iran will not be permitted to have a nuclear missile program. Period. It cannot and will not be allowed.
Bloomberg – The U.S. imposed fresh sanctions on Iran as President Donald Trump seeks to punish Tehran for its ballistic missile program after warning the Islamic Republic that it is “playing with fire.”
In a statement Friday morning, the Treasury Department published a list of 13 individuals and 12 entities facing new restrictions for supporting the missile program, having links to terrorism or providing support for Iran’s hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The entities include companies based in Tehran, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and China.
The Trump administration has sought to take a harder line on Iran, banning its citizens from entering the U.S. and accusing the nation of interfering in the affairs of U.S. allies in the Middle East. But the sanctions announced Friday were limited in scope, serving mostly as a warning signal.
“These are not major players,” Sam Cutler, a sanctions lawyer at Horizon Client Access in Washington, said of those on the list. “It seems to be a follow-up on a previous action that the Obama administration took in terms of identifying people in existing networks that had been previously sanctioned. I see this as consistent with prior policy rather than anything new, the rhetoric notwithstanding.”
Read analyst reaction to Trump’s new sanctions against Iran.
The sanctions wouldn’t affect a deal signed between Boeing Co. and Iran’s national carrier in December, according to a Trump administration official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. The agreement to sell 80 planes is valued at $16.6 billion and is the first of its kind since 1979.
“This action reflects the United States’ commitment to enforcing sanctions on Iran with respect to its ballistic missile program and destabilizing activities in the region,” the Treasury Department said in its statement. It called the actions “fully consistent” with a nuclear accord Iran reached with the U.S. and five other world powers.
While Trump’s decision to take action against Iran early in his administration pleased U.S. lawmakers in both parties who were never comfortable with President Barack Obama’s tentative rapprochement with Iran, it could unsettle domestic Iranian politics as President Hassan Rouhani seeks re-election in May.
“With the increase in sanctions, the perception that the U.S. might be rolling back on the Iran deal — and the anti-Iran mood that is emerging in Washington — will further empower hardliners in Iran, where the rhetoric will be, ‘we told you so — these people cannot be trusted,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center.
A second administration official said the sanctions were pulled together after extensive consultation between various government agencies and the National Security council. The official said the U.S. wants to work with Iran when it abides by its international commitments, but will continue to pressure Iran to change its behavior.
“Iran is playing with fire — they don’t appreciate how ‘kind’ President Obama was to them. Not me!,” Trump tweeted early Friday.
For a QuickTake Q&A on Trump’s escalating row with Iran, click here
The added sanctions were praised by Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who said it “makes clear that it is a new day in U.S.-Iran relations and that we will no longer tolerate Iran’s destabilizing behavior.”
Ahead of the announcement, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said, “Iran unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people.” He added later: “We will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defense.”
Payload Parameters
Tensions between the two sides were already escalating before the missile tests. While they didn’t contravene the nuclear accord signed in 2015, the missile tests are seen by some nations as going against a UN Security Council resolution that enshrines the agreement.
A third administration official said the recent missile test defied the resolution because the missile met payload and range parameters that make it capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The official called Iran’s missile launches extremely provocative and destabilizing.
Still, the new sanctions weren’t directed at Iran’s nuclear program and wouldn’t directly affect the agreement forged under Obama’s administration that eased restrictions in exchange for Iran’s promise not to develop nuclear weapons.
For its part, Iran has urged the U.S. not to overreact to the tests. Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan insisted they were part of Iran’s ongoing defense program and were not illegal, according to the Tasnim news agency.
Image Source: forte.jor.br
Paul Ryan and the House Republicans Promise Funding to Complete The Wall in Two Years
Breitbart Editor Milo Yiannopoulos Creates Scholarship Only Eligible for White Men
Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Looks Clear for Confirmation
Merry Trump Day!
Marco Rubio Attacks Rex Tillerson in Secretary of State Confirmation Hearing
Russia is Up to Some Shady Stuff…. They Deployed a Spy Warship and Are Launching Stealth Missles
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1808
|
__label__wiki
| 0.917871
| 0.917871
|
[Weekly Review]
In a caucus call, Nevada representative Steven Horsford told his colleagues he thought the unrest in the U.S. Capitol was “an inside job,” implying a tactical alliance between the Capitol Police and rioters.
By Harper’s Magazine, on January 12, 2021
“We will never concede…. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” President Donald Trump said at a rally just south of the White House on the morning of January 6.1 “Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore.” After the president concluded his remarks, rally attendees—who believed, incorrectly, that Vice President Mike Pence had the power to reject Electoral College votes during the largely ceremonial congressional count and certification of the election results—walked to the U.S. Capitol building and gained entry by force, though some officers of the U.S. Capitol Police were recorded moving barricades aside to let the mob through.2 3 4 5 “We’ve just got to let them do their thing now,” one officer told a reporter.6 Once inside, many of the insurgents stole art and photographs wandered around, destroyed property, livestreamed, and posted selfies to social media.7 Members of Congress, their aides, and journalists were removed to secure locations after rioters breached both chambers, though many were forced to hide in closets and conference rooms for hours.8 Rosanne Boyland, a QAnon believer with a don’t tread on me flag draped across her shoulders, was either trampled to death by fellow protesters or collapsed while inside the Capitol Rotunda; Brian Sicknick, a Capitol policeman who had an account on Parler, a social media app favored by the right that was among the platforms used to plan the attack on the Capitol, was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher during a clash with rioters and later died from his injuries; Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and QAnon believer who had struggled with civilian life, was fatally shot in the neck by a Capitol Police officer while attempting to enter the Speaker’s Lobby; an Alabama man suffered a fatal heart attack and a Pennsylvania man experienced a fatal stroke in the crowd outside the building; and a Capitol Police officer died by suicide three days after the insurgence.9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” the president tweeted during the riot.17 Mike Pence certified the results of the 2020 presidential election at 3:41 am on January 7.18 Missouri senator Josh Hawley, who was photographed pumping his fist to a crowd of Trump supporters before the attack and was among six Republicans who objected to the certification after it ended, had his book contract with Simon & Schuster terminated.18 19 “This is the Left looking to cancel everyone they don’t approve of,” wrote Hawley in a statement posted to Twitter. “I will fight this cancel culture with everything I have.”
In a caucus call, Nevada representative Steven Horsford told his colleagues he thought the unrest in the U.S. Capitol was “an inside job,” implying a tactical alliance between the Capitol Police and rioters.20 Multiple Republican lawmakers, including John Wiik, a South Dakota state senator; David Eastman, an Alaska state representative; and Jim Olsen, an Oklahoma state representative and the chair of the House Committee on Elections and Ethics, blamed the violence and property destruction on Antifa, communists, Black Lives Matter, and other leftist agitators who had infiltrated the group, while the Q Shaman—aka Jake Angeli, aka Jacob Anthony Chansley—who stormed the Capitol wearing a horned fur hat and with visible neopagan and neo-Nazi tattoos, was smeared online as a crisis actor.22 23 24 25 26 27 28 South Carolina representative Jim Clyburn told reporters that his iPad had been stolen from an unmarked office.29 “Whip Clyburn’s iPad is safe and sound. In the chaos on Wednesday, a staffer moved it to a more secure location and other staff was unaware,” a spokesperson for Clyburn later clarified.
Pro-Trump rallies concurrent with the storming of the U.S. Capitol took place at the state capitols of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington, most of which, though peaceful, were attended by armed protesters.30 When asked by reporters whether a guillotine was permitted on the steps of the capitol, the Arizona Department of Public Safety stated that officers monitoring the rally were “aware it’s there.”31 YouTube announced that it would penalize accounts that uploaded videos about election fraud and, after a third violation, remove them.32—Annie Geng
More from Harper’s Magazine
On Justice and Open Debate
Harper’s Index
Percentage of native-born French who think they receive half as much government aid as immigrants : 24 Average percentage by which a native-born Frenchperson receives more aid than an immigrant…
What Is It Good For? The earnest ruminations of military experts, convened at West Point by Harper’s Magazine, about our “endless war” never once addressed how to actually bring about…
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1815
|
__label__cc
| 0.732712
| 0.267288
|
Our goal is to provide as much information as possible about Bladder Cancer treatments.
We spend a lot of time and make great efforts to provide news as quickly as possible for the people they need most.
We only send notifications regarding important Bladder Cancer news.
If you want to be notified in time, then click "Ok" here and click "Allow" on the next popup box
Signup for our weekly newsletter to get the latest news, updates and amazing offers for
The Study of the Expression of CGB1 and CGB2 in Human Cancer Tissues
Genes (Basel). 2020 Sep 17;11(9):E1082. doi: 10.3390/genes11091082.
Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is a well-known hormone produced by the trophoblast during pregnancy as well as by both trophoblastic and non-trophoblastic tumors. hCG is built from two subunits: α (hCGα) and β (hCGβ). The hormone-specific β subunit is encoded by six allelic genes: CGB3, CGB5, CGB6, CGB7, CGB8, and CGB9, mapped to the 19q13.32 locus. This gene cluster also encompasses the CGB1 and CGB2 genes, which were originally considered to be pseudogenes, but as documented by several studies are transcriptionally active. Even though the protein products of these genes have not yet been identified, based on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database analysis we showed that the mutual presence of CGB1 and CGB2 transcripts is a characteristic feature of cancers of different origin, including bladder urothelial carcinoma, cervical squamous cell carcinoma, esophageal carcinoma, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, ovarian serous cystadenocarcinoma, lung squamous cell carcinoma, pancreatic adenocarcinoma, rectum adenocacinoma, testis germ cell tumors, thymoma, uterine corpus endometrial carcinoma and uterine carcinosarcoma.
Get Latest Health News
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1816
|
__label__wiki
| 0.677345
| 0.677345
|
THE GOLDMAN STATE
For Some of Us, Memorial Day is a Day of Atonement
Reflections on a life altered by six numbers
By Ed Goldman
Memorial Day has always been a day of atonement for me since only six numbers prevented my being called up to serve in the U.S. Army in 1969.
It was during the height of the Vietnam War and the reboot of the Selective Service System’s draft lottery for the first time since 1942. Men born from January 1, 1944 through December 31, 1950, were eligible. I was born on November 15, 1950. If I’d been able to hang around in utero for another 17 days, I’d have been home free.
As the process was explained in the occasionally accurate Wikipedia, “The 366 days of the year (including February 29) were printed on slips of paper. These pieces of paper were then each placed in opaque plastic capsules, which were then mixed in a shoebox and then dumped into a deep glass jar. Capsules were drawn from the jar one at a time and opened.”
I remember the drawing was televised as almost a game show. But instead of having Pat Sajak and Vanna White there to do dad jokes and sashay across the stage, respectively, a congressman from New York, Alexander Pirnie—the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee—was given the singular honor of randomly dispatching or preventing young men from going to war.
Tired of seeking asylum in college, a few months earlier I’d dropped my student deferment and was rapidly reclassified as 1-A. While that may sound like a guarantee of quality, like triple-A bonds or Grade-A steaks, in this instance it just meant that I was supremely eligible to be drafted—provided I were to pass the physical exam and not show up for it with firecrackers attached to my body: “Trust me, Doc, if you touch one of these poppers, snakes, snaps, Roman candles or sparklers, this clinic is toast!”
Obviously, compiling a compelling arsenal has never been my long suit. I’m not even sure if a stunt like that would have removed me from consideration. In those days, people did all kinds of things to get out of going into the army and, more to the point, getting shipped off to Vietnam.
I knew a guy who had his girlfriend repeatedly run over his right hand with her car, predictably resulting in fractures, not to mention unsightly tread-marks on his knuckles. He was drafted anyway but told he wouldn’t have to report for swearing-in for four months. He never told anyone he was left-handed, though, clearly, it wouldn’t have helped much.
Meanwhile, one of my younger college professors, who volunteered at night as a draft counselor, gave me a questionnaire that sought to uncover maladies or conditions I had that could make me a very bad risk as a soldier. The only thing that leapt out at me was a question about whether I had allergies, which I did: to wool and penicillin. The latter, he said, wouldn’t help because modern medicine had come up with all sorts of substitutes, like the whole family of tetracycline drugs. But my allergy to wool might be a plus, he said, because army uniforms were made of that. At the time, I think it was mainly the dress uniform, though about a year ago, a decision was made to make all army uniforms out of wool, which I’m sure delighted sheep farmers but, less likely, sheep.
I thought about this long and hard and decided if it was in the cards for me to go, and even be killed, I wasn’t going to literally dodge a bullet by hiding behind an allergy whose effect on me was not much more than itchiness, alleviated by the liberal application of Calamine lotion.
Even so, in the few months after I dropped my student deferment and the lottery was held, I went to enlist in the army reserves, thinking I’d be able to serve my country but probably “stateside.” Not surprisingly, I was called to an orientation meeting a few days later, and joined by at least 500 other guys who had the same “stateside” hope.
The sergeant who looked us over, whose name was Al Lowenstein, came on like Jack Webb in the movie “The D.I.” (or George C. Scott in the opening monologue of “Patton”): a barking, no-nonsense, ramrod-straight military man who inspired fear in a lot of the guys—though not in me, mainly because he reminded me of a friend I’d had in the second grade in New York, Sheldon Laube (pronounced like “loud” but ending in a b). The sarge had a high-pitched strangulated voice and a Bronx accent which can make a speaker go soft on his r’s and l’s. He was scary to most of the attendees but to me he was Sah-gent Woe-wenstein fwum da Bwonx, a crisply uniformed Elmer Fudd.
After he told us what despicable characters we were for trying to get out of active military duty, he suddenly switched to a soft, nasal semi-sweet tone and asked if any of us happened to play the trombone because there was an opening here in the base’s marching band. Hands and arms suddenly flew up with a fervor you’d expect to be accompanied by the word ”Heil!” Until that moment, I’d had no idea I was in a room filled with trombonists.
Well, I took the written test and did well enough to receive a call a week later ordering me to report for duty the very next morning. That night, my dad—who’d always wanted to serve in World War II but was exempted because he was a firefighter, a father and, at 26, older than most recruits—stayed up all night to talk me out of going to get sworn in the next morning. He said if this were a just war he wouldn’t have stood in my way. The combination of his logic and my exhaustion finally made me conk out about 5 a.m., at which time he showered and drove to work, sleepless but victorious.
That summer, I was visiting my brother Stuart, who lived in Seattle at the time. We, too, had an all-night yak session, during which I told him the story about Sergeant Al Lowenstein. Around noon, after a picnic lunch on the shore of Lake Washington, my brother, his girlfriend and I went to the Space Needle. As we were walking into the elevator to head back downstairs—and you needn’t believe this but it’s absolutely true—Sergeant Al Lowenstein was getting off the elevator.
“Stu,” I screamed to my brother, “that’s the guy I was telling you about last night!” Stuart, who was an engineer hot-wired to deal exclusively in facts, uttered a familiar profanity indicating that what I was full of might not just be a picnic lunch. I ran out of the elevator, Stuart and his girlfriend in tow, and yelled, “Lowenstein! Sergeant Al Lowenstein!”
He was wearing a bowling shirt, chinos and running shoes. He whipped his head around with a big smile at hearing his name—then recognized me. “Hey, you never showed the hell up!” he said, no longer smiling. My brother was impressed.
I realize that silly anecdotes can’t accurately convey the guilt I sometimes feel about having landed number 131 (out of 366) in that lottery. For months, people had been telling me that I’d drawn a low number and I might as well accept the fact I’d be called up.
But they stopped drafting guys that year at number 125. Overnight, I went from being classified as 1-A to a category I vaguely remember as 1-Y (which I also vaguely recall was Donald Trump’s classification because of the presumably life-threatening bone spurs in his feet; this doesn’t exactly assuage the guilt).
It meant I could remain in college because I wanted to be there—not because, with the student deferment I’d dropped months earlier, it was a hiding place.
I’d be lying if I said that today, my annual day of atonement, I wish I’d been drafted and seen combat. In the many years since, I’ve tried to support and write about causes beneficial to those who did serve and continue to serve. Listing what I’ve done would be asinine but doing them always feels and felt okay. And I thank God for the courage of those who gave me the opportunity to have a relatively uninterrupted life, family and career in the greatest country in the world.
Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).
PreviousA British Study Proves Women Are Better Drivers Than Men
NextThe Invention of Limitless Phone Calls, and Other Modern Miracles
Breaking News: Pandemic Restrictions Aren’t Restricted Enough!
Tell Your Troubles to Replika’s New “Chatbot”
A Career-Long Freelance Writer Goes (Pro-)Postal
Get a reminder in your mailbox every time a new column appears. We will not share or sell your email address.
Wait! We Figured Out Trump Just in Time for the Inauguration!
Dr. King’s Righteous Anarchy Lives On, Whether on His Birthday or Not
A Social Security Windfall Changes My Entire Life
Young Women Get Business Fashion Help from Two of Their Own
Gerry and the Pacemakers Founder Passes—but Memories Linger
For Nearly Three Decades, EditPros Have Helped Others Tell Their Stories
To support the publication of this website, this site runs banner ads and is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Also other ads may result in commission payments or other compensation.
Copyright © 2019 – 2021 Goldman Communications, Inc. | Site design by Ligon Media | Portrait photo courtesy Sacramento Business Journal | Privacy
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1818
|
__label__wiki
| 0.756838
| 0.756838
|
HomeEncyclopedia of Communist BiographiesSSinger Eleanor
Singer Eleanor
September 20, 2008 admin S 0
Eleanor Singer
Dr Eleanor Singer, was one of pioneers of consultation centres for contraceptive advice to young people that were the precursors of the Brook clinics. These were established in the 1950s when there was still enormous official resistance to allowing young unmarried women to get family planning advice. She worked for more than 30 years in the Sheffield clinic, only retiring when she was 80 years old.
She was born on November 12th 1903 in Hampstead into a Jewish family. Her grandfather was a rabbi, a founder of the Reformed Synagogue and a friend of Karl Marx. Her mother's sisters were active suffragettes, one of whom worked with Sylvia Pankhurst in the east end of London.
She studied biochemistry at University College, London, obtaining her MSc in 1929 and then taught at the University of California at Berkeley, returning to London to do research on the study of vitamins.
In the 1930s, she joined the Communist Party influenced by Yvonne Kapp (See entry for Kapp) They were friends and, for a time, lovers. In 1935, Singer attended the International Physiological Conference in Moscow, organised by Bukharin.
In 1939 she began to study medicine and qualified as a doctor in 1941. By this time she had left Kapp to marry Sidney Fink (see separate entry), a full-time organiser for the Communist Party, who was killed in an air raid during the war. Eleanor immediately offered her services to the Save the Children Fund to head a medical unit for post-war relief work in the Balkans. With victory in Europe, she was sent to Sarajevo, where she ran children's clinics and was decorated for her work by Marshall Tito when she left the country. She returned to England in 1948, having met the economist Michael Barratt Brown in Sarajevo. After Kruschev's revelations to the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the events in Hungary, she left the Party.
In the post-war period, she worked as an assistant medical officer of health and with the Family Planning Association clinics on Essex. She and Barratt Brown moved to Sheffield and Derbyshire in the early 1960s. She was then schools medical officer for North Derbyshire, and researched a study of the local incidence of goitre. She learned to be a potter when she finally retired in 1984 and died on September 10th 1999.
Source: Guardian September 13th 1999
Morrison R
Wilson David Arnold
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1820
|
__label__wiki
| 0.76396
| 0.76396
|
HERITAGE POST
Looking at the Sublime and Beautiful
Tag: Southgate Street
Monuments to Enterprise
In 1693 a man was born who would change the country’s postal service and create the City of Bath as we know it.
Ralph Allen was from Cornwall and from a very early age he helped his grandmother run the St Columb’s post office. In 1708 he went to work for Joseph Quash, the Exeter post master. About a year later Quash was granted the contract to extend the cross post between Exeter and Oxford via Bath. When Mrs Mary Collins, the post mistress of Bath, resigned in 1712 over allegations of nepotism, Allen was appointed in her place. Allen built his reputation on hard work and honesty, gaining the friendship and backing of notable people. In 1715 Allen came across a Jacobite plot and informed General George Wade who successfully confiscated a shipment of arms and horse from the West. Wade built a house in Bath and was elected MP for Bath in 1722.
General George Wade’s House with the later Regency Shop Front
Wade’s house dates from about 1720 and is architecturally important as it is the first house in Bath to use the Palladian giant order. There is no documentary evidence as to who was the original architect, various names have been put forward such Thomas Greenway who was probably responsible for an adjoining property. Lord Burlington has also been mentioned simply because he designed Wade’s house in Cork Street London.
In 1718 the Countess of Kingston was granted the lease of the Post House in Lilliput Alley, on a property dating from c1620. Ralph Allen became the subtenant in the same year and ran his business from the building. In 1720 he successfully negotiated his first contract with the General Post Office for taking over the cross post between Exeter and Oxford and all bye-posts. The contracts were renewable every seven years, which he did up until his death. He completely reformed the postal service, opening up more routes, allowing mail to be delivered efficiently and securely throughout England, eventually without having to go via London. In the beginning he ran the business at a loss, but as time went on and he introduced his new methods he became a wealthy man.
Allen a young man with a head for business, created his own luck, he was the right person in the right place at the right time. He married his first wife in 1721, Elizabeth the daughter of a London merchant and his fortunes were on the rise. When Wade became MP, he was able to help Allen, as a result Allen became chief treasurer of the Avon Navigation Scheme in 1725. The scheme was to improve access between the Port of Bristol and Bath by deepening the river, bringing down the cost and ease of transporting goods. It would also provide an alternative means of transport for potential visitors to the spa resort, especially when the road system was dangerous and impassable at times. The same year saw him become freeman of the city and a member of the council.
Ralph Allen’s Town House
In 1722 Ralph Allen acquired the lease on the Post House in Lilliput Alley. He built a north wing, which was originally attached, at a right angle so its principal front faces east and overlooked a large garden. The new Palladian front contained a rusticated ground floor with a central wide arch with narrow arched openings on either side. Above this is a large central arched window with rectangular windows on either side there are blind balustrades at the base of each window. There are three smaller windows on the second floor, sandwiched by four columns with moulded bases on plain pedestals with Corinthian capitals. The steeply pitched triangular pediment is framed by a modillioned cornice with three acroterial ornaments of stone balls. The centre contains a small circular opening surrendered by elaborate scrolled foliage. From the windows he could view Claverton Down. There is a pen and ink 18th century drawing showing the town house as a U shaped mansion with wings on either side, this has been disputed for making the property grander and larger than it actually was. At a later date it was subdivided into three properties, the original Post House became 1 and 2 North Parade Passage; the detached north wing is now known as the Ralph Allen Town House.
In 1726 Allen bought land south of the River Avon, which included the Combe Down followed by Bathampton Down mines in 1727. These underground workings had been used since Roman times to extract Oolite limestone for building. The stone had to be mined rather than quarried, this hilly area around Bath was a mass of honeycombed excavations. The top layer of stone was suitable for paving and the Lower layers could be used for building, but the process was not straightforward. Though the stone is relatively easy to extract, because it is soft and can be sawn in any direction, it needs after care. The honey coloured stone must be allowed to mature in the open air for weeks so the water drains away. The stone dries out and becomes a pale white or grey colour. When building a wall the stone must be laid in the same position as it was extracted from the mine or otherwise it will crack and decay.
Allen experienced a very negative response to Bath stone when he tried to obtain the contract to supply building material for Greenwich Hospital in 1728. The Governors preferred the cheaper Portland Stone. To counteract this negativity he needed to undertake a large building project to show off the versatility of the stone closer to home.
Principal Front of Prior Park
Prior Park was designed by John Wood the Elder based on designs by Andrea Palladio. The property would consist of a central house with wings on either side connected by arcades. The wings would be used for administration of his postal business and stables. The principal front is the north facade overlooking the park where the ground falls away down to lake. The Portico has six giant columns with an additional full column on either return and a half column against the building wall. The columns have moulded bases and the plain shafts are topped with Roman Corinthian capitals. These support an entablature with a triangular pediment. The balustrade on the parapet flanks either side of the triangular pediment and is above each window, which is segmented by a plain solid section. The whole house would be used to publicise the wonders of Bath stone. Every Thursday afternoon he opened the grounds to the public to showcase the wonders of Bath Stone. The beautiful gardens were full of ornate features and statues as examples of the stones versatility.
Bath Stone can vary in type and from quarry to quarry, therefore the stone proved to be versatile. Once the Kennet and Avon canal was completed in November 1810, it enabled a more efficient and cost effective means of transporting the quarried stone to London. Its use for building in London and beyond became more wide spread.
Unfortunately Prior Park ended Allen and Wood’s friendship and working relationship. Wood’s design was in the style of a Palladian villa and based to some extent on Colen Campbell’s Wanstead House design, which appeared in Vitruvius Britannicus (1715), and was never built. Wood’s design was altered by Richard Jones the Clerk of Works, causing an argument between Wood and Allen, resulting in Wood’s dismissal. Jones completed to his own design the east wing as one pavilion instead of two, and completely changed the west wing’s intended appearance as a Palladian agricultural building.
Allen purchased the lower slopes in 1743 and created the lakes and Richard Jones built a Palladian Bridge in 1755. This is a copy of the bridge at Wilton Wiltshire designed by Robert Morris (1737), and to a lesser extent the bridge at Stowe in Aylesbury Vale Buckinghamshire attributed to James Gibbs (1738). The roofed bridge has two end pavilions with an open colonnade with four Ionic columns on either side. Unlike Wilton the width between the middle columns on either side is wider. Also the ceiling is plain plaster with a simple entablature, whereas Wilton’s ceiling is coffered and the entablature is carved.
Palladian Bridge
The Open Colonnade and the Ionic Columns
In 1830 Prior Park became a Catholic College it has endured two fires, the first severely damaged the interior in 1836, which was rebuilt using the salvaged interior of Huntstrete House, Marksbury Somerset. The major damage to the building was a result of the 1991 fire. It started in the roof and the downward destruction eventually obliterated the roof, third floor and a majority of the second floor. Half of the first floor and two thirds of the ground floor survived. The massive work of reconstructing the building was undertaken and completed in 1995.
Prior Park college is a Catholic independent co-educational public school and the 28 acres of landscaped gardens and pleasure grounds have been the property of the National Trust since 1993.
Allen moved into Prior Park in 1735 living in one wing while the work progressed on the main block. Two years later he purchased Bathampton Manor the home of his second wife’s family, it became the residence of his brother Philip Allen (1694-1765). Later he built a house in Weymouth as a summer residence for his wife. The final edition to his property portfolio was Claverton Manor. Ralph Allen purchased Claverton Manor for £18,000 in 1752 as it adjoined Prior Park and consisted of 1300 acres, a great edition to his landscaped park. Though he did not live in the Elizabethan manor House he occasionally used it as a entertainment venue.
The American Museum
In 1817 John Vivian, a barrister purchased the manor and built a large house above the village. This new Claverton Manor is now the American Museum. The original property was not maintained and ultimately demolished in 1823. The remains of the original manor house’s terrace garden is grade 11* listed. The lower terraces still retain the garden walls of pierced strap work stone, with two balustrades. There are gate piers with pierced stone obelisks and iron gates.
Pierced Strap Work Stone Wall
Pierced Stone Obelisks and Garden View
In 1764 Robert Parsons recorded in his commonplace book of a meeting with Ralph Allen to discuss designs for tombstones and memorials, the next day Allen died. It is believed that Allen’s mausoleum in the churchyard of St Mary’s Church Claverton is the work of Robert Parsons.
St Mary’s Church Claverton
Robert Parsons was a stonemason who made his living carving garden vases, ornaments and chimneys from Bath stone, though he also worked in marble producing chimneypieces and monuments. In 1751 he became a Baptist minister in Bath, and a year later he built a meeting house in Southgate Street. He also built a meeting house for the Anabaptists in Horse Street. He was employed by both John Wood the Elder and Sanderson Miller, working on the Bristol Exchange and the new gothic hall at Laycock Abbey.
Ralph Allen’s Mausoleum
Ralph Allen’s mausoleum is a square grade 11* structure of ashlar raised on two steps. The walls comprised of three arches each side, which were originally open, but at a later date railings were inserted. Behind the ashlar parapet the stone slab roof rises to a pyramidal shape. Below the parapet is a moulded cornice echoing the moulding on the arches piers and the tombs cornice.
View of Arches and Pyramidal Shape Roof
On the interior the pyramid has a vaulted ceiling, and the mausoleum contains a stone chest tomb with inscribed marble inserts. The tomb contains not only Allen and his second wife, but later members of the family, the last interned was in 1993. The mausoleum was restored in 1975 by Bath Preservation Trust.
Interior Vaulted Roof and the Stone Chest Tomb
The photos are from the author’s own collection.
Author heritagehistorianPosted on May 3, 2020 Categories Architecture, Bridge, Church, City Of Bath, Country House, Mausoleum, PalladianTags Anabaptist, Andrea Palladio, Avon Navigation Scheme, Baptist, Bath, Bath Preservation Trust, Bath Stone, Bathampton, Bristol, Bristol Exchange, Claverton Down, Claverton Manor, Colen Campbell, Combe Down, Corinthian columns, Countess of Kingston, Exeter, Greenwich Hospital, Horse Street, Huntstrete House, Ionic columns, John Vivian, John Wood the Elder, Joseph Quash, Kennet and Avon canal, Laycock Abbey, Lilliput Alley, Lord Burlington, Major-General George Wade, Mausoleum, National Trust, North Parade Passage, Oolite limestone, Oxford, Palladian Bridge, Philip Allen, Portland Stone, Prior Park, Pyramid, Ralph Allen, Richard Jones, Robert Parsons, Sanderson Miller, Southgate Street, St Mary's Church Claverton, The American Museum, Thomas Greenway, Vitruvius Britannicus (1715), Wanstead House, WeymouthLeave a comment on Monuments to Enterprise
HERITAGE POST Blog at WordPress.com.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1824
|
__label__wiki
| 0.549709
| 0.549709
|
Researchers track perfluorinated chemicals in the body
Author: Jessica Sieff
Graham Peaslee
They are the chemicals that made consumers think twice about using nonstick cookware. New research in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters shows scientists have developed a method to track perfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) in the body. PFAS are potentially toxic chemicals found in stain-resistant products, nonstick cookware, fire-fighting foams and — most recently — fast food wrappers.
For the first time, scientists radiolabeled PFAS with a fluorine isotope used in nuclear medicine to track the accumulation of these chemicals in the mouse models. Some of these chemicals have already been linked to kidney cancer, testicular cancer, low birth weight, hypertension, decreased fertility and thyroid problems.
The method used to track the chemicals also allowed researchers to measure precise quantities of the radiolabeled compounds in various organs and tissues. According to the study, the highest amounts of PFAS were recorded in the stomach and the liver — but the chemicals were also found in the lungs, kidney, heart and the brain, as well as in skin, muscle and bone.
“The findings are significant because of the type of chemicals we studied and the potential for harm,” said Graham Peaslee, professor of experimental nuclear physics in the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame. Peaslee co-authored the study, as well as the study done on fast food wrappers. “Long-chain PFAS compounds have been largely phased out in the U.S. and simply replaced by short-chain PFAS compounds, which some have deemed safer, though we don’t know their toxicity yet. Two of the three compounds we studied were short-chain PFAS compounds. These results suggest that these chemicals not only bind more effectively to blood, but they accumulate in different organs such as the brain and the stomach.”
PFAS chemicals have the potential to pass from fast food wrappers to the food inside them, hitching a ride into the body. They also possess environmental longevity, so there’s an even higher potential for these chemicals to pass through the landfill once the wrapper has been discarded and end up in drinking water. Once ingested, the chemicals bind to blood, traveling to multiple organs, and can take many years before they leave the body. Using radiolabeled compounds will allow, for the first time, scientists to determine which organs are likely to accumulate which PFAS. Studies have shown the presence of PFAS, man-made chemicals, in the blood of a majority of Americans.
Co-authors of the study include Suzanne E. Lapi, Jennifer L. Burkemper and Tolulope A. Aweda at the University of Alabama at Birmingham – School of Medicine, Adam J. Rosenberg at the Washington University School of Medicine and Vanderbilt University and David M. Lunderberg at Hope College.
Contact: Graham Peaslee, 574-631-7554, gpeaslee@nd.edu
Originally published by Jessica Sieff at news.nd.edu on March 29, 2017.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1826
|
__label__wiki
| 0.943072
| 0.943072
|
Corporations grapple with slavery reparations
By IBW21June 29, 2020Editors' Choice, Reparations
You Are Here: Home » Reparations » Corporations grapple with slavery reparations
By Courtenay Brown, Axios —
Note: Dr. Ron Daniels, President of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and Convener of the National African Reparations Commission (NAARC) is quoted in this article.
The debate over reparations for slavery has moved from the political realm to the corporate one. At least two big British companies — insurer Lloyd’s of London and brewer Greene King — promised to make certain amends for their role in slavery. But activists want them and other companies to do more.
Why it matters: We usually hear about reparations as a political issue — a “societal obligation” of the federal government, as The New York Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote this week. But corporations, too, are being called out for how their involvement in slavery — and their modern-day policies and practices — perpetuate racism.
Driving the news: Protests over systemic racism have pushed more of the world’s oldest institutions to reckon with how they profited from slavery.
Lloyd’s of London, the world’s largest insurance marketplace, apologized for insuring slaving ships in a release earlier this month. The334-year old company was sued in 2004 by descendants of Black American slaves, but this is the first time Lloyd’s listed out remedies for its history.
Among them: reviewing its policies to “ensure they are explicitly non-racist and providing “financial support” to charities that support Black and minority ethnic groups.
The company did not respond to questions about how much they’re giving or which organizations they’ll support.
Greene King, the biggest pub and brewery company in the U.K., was founded in 1799 by a man who owned slaves and argued against abolition. The company now plans to make a “substantial investment” to support the Black community and to “support our race diversity in the business,” its CEO said last week. Greene King offered no other details.
What they’re saying: “I don’t want corporations or anyone to get the idea that, ‘Okay I donated some money, I did it, I made up for slavery.’ That’s not how that works,” says Karran Royal, who was part of a group of descendants of slaves sold by leaders of Georgetown University that helped pressure the school to make amends for its historic ties to slavery.
“Economic justice goes at the very top, as far as I’m concerned with companies as they are looking at how to repair the damage,” Royal says.
Where it stands: Protesters are now calling on specific corporations to take concrete steps to atone for their pasts — steps that go beyond mere feel-good public relations efforts.
For example, one Florida-based activist group is asking Bank of America and other companies to pay monetary reparations, as the Tampa Bay Times reported this month.
There is pressure on banks, regardless of whether they were directly involved with slavery, for their role in other racist practices like redlining.
“We’re not just talking about enslavement. We’re talking about all of the post-emancipation racially exclusionary policies that occurred right up to the present,” Ron Daniels, the founder of the National African American Reparations Commission, tells Axios.
The backstory: As the BBC and others have reported, predecessor banks to Citigroup, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase had ties to slavery.
JPMorgan acknowledged its predecessor banks allowed slaves to be used as collateral for loans. When those loans went bad, the bank ended up owning over 1,000 enslaved people in Louisiana.
In 2005the bank set up a $5 million scholarship fund for Black undergraduates to attend college in the state.
Between the lines: Other industries are getting pressured to pay up for racist practices.
In music for instance: Jeff Tweedy, lead singer of the rock bank Wilco, called on royalty companies to make amends for the stolen “wealth that rightfully belonged to Black artists.”
“No one artist could come close to paying the debt we owe to the Black originators of our modern music and their children and grandchildren,” Tweedy said in an open letter posted to Twitter.
The bottom line: Reparations have been debated in Congress for years, ever since the late Rep. John Conyers of Michigan began introducing a bill to study them, annually, starting in 1989. Now it’s a campaign issue and was a prominent topic during the Democratic presidential debates.
And amid global protests over systemic racism, the question of reparations for slavery is re-capturing the nation’s attention.
Corporations are just starting to be pulled into the conversation.
This article was originally published by Axios.
Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photos: MPI/Getty Images, Bettmann/Contributor, GraphicaArtis/Getty Images, Corbis via Getty Images.
Dr. Ron DanielsEconomic JusticeNAARCReparationsReparatory Justice
Reparations Now: A White Man’s Appeal For America To Pay What Is Due
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1827
|
__label__cc
| 0.715999
| 0.284001
|
Stephen King To Get The Rights Back To Several Films Based On His Work
By Tyson Hanks on August 31, 2017 in Horror, News
Stephen King had a busy week, as he was filing to get the rights back to several 80s films based on his work. As it turns out, the films in question are The Dead Zone, Cujo, Creepshow, Cat’s Eye, Firestarter and Children of the Corn. The question on many horror fans’ minds is “why”? One […]
What’s The Salary Of You’re Favorite Superhero?
By Jeffrey Scott on August 31, 2017 in Movie News
While superhero’s tend to fight monsters rather than celebrate them like we at Horrorfuel do, they’re still a huge part of pop culture. And plenty of comic book characters can be suitably horrific in their own right (The New 52 Joker comes to mind). The folks over at Zippia.com, who love tight wearing do-gooders […]
An Interview With Actor-Producer Demetrius Stear Star Of The Domicile – Now On DVD
By Kelli Marchman McNeely on August 31, 2017 in Actors/Actresses, Interview, Movie News, TV
Actor-producer Demetrius Stear and I recently had a conversation about his role in the upcoming supernatural thriller The Domicile and more. Stear is a busy man between his acting career and the projects he is producing. The Kentucky native spent several years in the US Army before beginning his career in film which is heading […]
The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival Announces Amazing List Of Films
By Grimm Deathwish on August 31, 2017 in Film Festivals
Wow! The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival drops its second announcement with wave two of the program, locals only showcase, shorts and more! Bringing the best of horror to Brooklyn from October 12 till the 15th. Horrorfuel.com is thrilled to report on the unveiling the full lineup of films and events. Here is a partial […]
Short Film Review: ‘Dark Tenet’ Doesn’t Finish What It Starts
By T. Love on August 31, 2017 in Horror, Movies, Review, Reviews, Short Film
Three friends sit relaxing and enjoying the tranquility afforded them by the secluded location of their cabin. Suddenly the serenity is shattered by frantic screaming and banging at the cabin door. When they open the door to see what the commotion is all about, a young woman stripped down to her undies runs inside seeking […]
Redbox And Haste Team Up For Video Game Day
By Grimm Deathwish on August 31, 2017 in Gaming
September 12 is Video Game Day! I admit, I am not a huge gamer, but this is really exciting for even the casual gamer. Redbox and Haste have created a better tandem than Freddy and Jason! Instead of shelling out more than $100 for a new video game, gamers can choose from dozens of […]
Comet Announces A Monsterous Labor Day Marathon And September Schedule
By Kelli Marchman McNeely on August 31, 2017 in Comet TV, Movie News, News, Sci-Fi
With Comet TV, you don’t have a monthly subscription to watch great movies. Be sure to tune in, they have a monstrous marathon planned for Labor Day! Run…it’s Godzilla!! The Godzilla features don’t stop there, they will continue all month long! This Labor Day, join Comet for a movie marathon on a monster scale! Starting at […]
Official Poster Unveiled For ‘What The Waters Left Behind’
By Kelli Marchman McNeely on August 31, 2017 in Movie News, Trailer
The official art (above) for What the Water Left Behind has surfaced ahead of its October premiere at the Sitges Film Festival. From the Press Release: What the Waters Left Behind” will make its world premiere at the upcoming SITGES Film Festival on October where it will compete in the “Midnight X-treme” category. […]
Annie Clark To Direct ‘The Picture Of Dorian Gray’ Reboot
By Kelli Marchman McNeely on August 31, 2017 in Movie News, Remake/Reboot
Following her directorial debut in a segment of the female driven horror anthology XX, musician Annie Clark (St. Vincent) will be rebooting 1945’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Clark will put a twist on the story that originally centered on a man whose portrait ages while he stays forever young. In the new version, the main […]
New Pokémon Go-like Game Unveiled: ‘The Walking Dead: Our World’
By Kelli Marchman McNeely on August 30, 2017 in Gaming, The Walking Dead
AMC’s mega-hit ‘The Walking Dead’ is coming soon to a phone near you. Fans of the zombie series will be excited to learn that ‘The Walking Dead’ is getting a new game from Next Games that will allow players to bring zombies into the real world. We’ve all heard of the game Pokémon […]
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1831
|
__label__cc
| 0.598013
| 0.401987
|
Daily Mail Uses Photographer’s Photos to Invent a Global Warming Story
Photo by Josh Anon – Used with permission
I don't really care what you think about the politics or science of global warming. Some say it's the greatest threat to the world, and others think it's a far overblown hoax. That's actually not at issue in this article at all.
But a hilarious story came out this week that the Daily Mail published an article using photos from photographer Josh Anon and spun them in a completely different way than the story that the photos actually told. The photographer posted the full, scientifically-accurate story on his blog.
Photographer Josh Anon recently traveled to the arctic and spotted four healthy-looking polar bears, two of them on a fresh kill of a seal. The bears were at the edge of the ice (obviously, that's where the seals are) and appeared to be thriving. He submitted the photos to a wire news agency that wrote more information about the photos and eventually the story was published on the Daily Mail. Whether the fault of this story is from the Daily Mail or the wire service is not clear.
I'm not quite sure how the author of the article could claim this is a lone bear, isolated from his friends and his meal, stuck on an ice floe. Photo by Josh Anon.
The Daily Mail spun the story to say that the polar bears came to see the boat traveling through the water that the photographer was on, and when the bear got to the edge of the ice, the ice broke off and stranded the polar bear on the ice floe. The story was supposed to show the polar bears losing their ice habitat due to global warming, but it completely ignored science, as the photographer pointed out to the writer multiple times.
The story also cut out all of the photos showing the bear feeding quite happily on a seal. The story also stated that the polar bear was “isolated from his friends” when actuality there were four polar bears together. The Daily Mail cut out all of the photos showing more than one bear in the picture.
Anon told the Daily Mail that the story was not accurate at all to what he witnessed, and was factually untrue. So what did the Daily Mail do? Published it.
Here's what Anon wrote to the Daily Mail:
[x_blockquote cite=”Josh Anon” type=”left”]Hmm, that's not at all accurate to how the bears live unfortunately. What you might focus on is how the bears travel on the ice, and while they can swim a bit, they use the ice to hunt and live. When there's no ice and they get stranded on land, they don't eat/can't hunt until the ice returns (or at best ravage eggs from a bird colony which barely gives them a snack but destroys the colony: I have pics of this I can provide)…[/x_blockquote]
At this point, Anon wrote back and said that the story was “more fiction than fact” and that “It’s so scientifically wrong it’s a bit embarrassing.” The Daily Mail has yet to comment on the actual story from the photographer, despite the fact that he posted a comment right on their website about the story.
To be clear, the photographer does not seem to be taking issue with global warming, but with the scientific falsity that a bear would be trapped forever on a piece of ice when it is not far from shore.
Anon wrote in his comment:
This is one of the photos from photographer Josh Anon that the Daily Mail felt was far too graphic for a newspaper. Soo…… it just skipped over the fact that the bears were engaged in a healthy feast.
[x_blockquote cite=”Josh Anon” type=”left”]I'm the original photographer, and I agree this story is scientifically inaccurate and more fiction than fact. The original story was that I was on a small boat, and we found two bears with a seal kill in the ice pack. We were able to stay with them for a good amount of time, and over the course of that time, two more bears joined, and they would check us out and then ignore us. I also originally posted a message about hunting being a more immediate and actionable concern than global warming. Unfortunately since there's seal blood in many of the pics, this fictional, G-rated story went out to the wire instead. If you search my name, you can find my blog and the original story.[/x_blockquote]
The Daily Mail said they couldn't publish the photos of the polar bears eating the seal because it was “too graphic.” Yet, the Daily Mail failed to even mention the fact that the bears were successfully hunting in their habitat. It gave the sad excuse that the photos of the bears hunting was “too graphic” for their publication. Yet, they have no issue with publishing far more graphic photos of people destroying one another in war. That's fine, but a little seal blood from a natural hunt as part of the circle of life would be too horrific for a newspaper… right….
Again, to be clear, I don't care what you think of global warming. But I do care when a “journalist” falsifies the stories that photos clearly tell in order to drum up a fantastic tale that simply was not true.
3 thoughts on “Daily Mail Uses Photographer’s Photos to Invent a Global Warming Story”
its the Daily Mail. I’m surprised they didn’t blame migrants for global warming.
Newspapers don’t care about the story behind the picture, they only care how they can match a photo to the story they want to sell.
Dunstan
The Daily Mail’s only prints stories that reinforce its readers’ prejudices. They don’t care whether the stories are true or not, so long as they are not actually libelous. And the online edition, of course, has the famous “sidebar of shame”, packed with titillating clickbait stories.
Being outraged with the DM is like wrestling with a pig: the pig really enjoys it.
The Daily Mail’s business model is writing stories so absurd that angry americans share them on fb. They’re like buzzfeed crossed with the worst tabloid at your grocery store. They’re also very, very conservative-leaning, so they likely did this on purpose to give fuel for deniers. It’s a beautiful photo, paired with an obviously false story, exactly their kind of sharable junk.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1833
|
__label__wiki
| 0.879167
| 0.879167
|
Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine Went Back to Work Immediately After Cancer Battle, Says David Ellefson
Santiago Bluguermann, LatinContent via Getty Images
Megadeth have completed recording bass and drums for their newest album, David Ellefson recently told us. The thrash legend also broke down a little info on what fans can expect and how Dave Mustaine’s cancer diagnosis, and subsequent recovery, affected the process.
“Dirk [Verbeuren] and I put down drums and bass on the new Megadeth album,” Ellefson begins. “Slamming stuff. There’s moments where there’s very progressive stuff. I can’t say too much about it, because it’s still a work in progress, but I definitely walked out of the studio feeling like, ‘Job well done.’”
“That, to me, is the thing that’s really inspiring, when you come up with stuff that’s like, ‘We carved another new path that we haven’t been down. I don’t think anyone else has been down it.’ I think that is probably one of the most satisfying things to walk away from. We’ve still got it.”
As for Mustaine’s health affecting the new album, Ellefson reveals the band “shut everything down” once the news of his throat cancer came through. “Once he was through that… it’s funny, we share files on a Dropbox and sometimes I’d see a little Dropbox activity happening and go, ‘Yep, nothing’s gonna keep Dave down. He’s gonna keep working.’”
“I think having an album in front of us kept us all inspired. I can’t speak for any of the other guys, but I feel like as a group, it kept us all inspired.”
Watch our full interview with David Ellefson below and click here to check out the new Ellefson album, Sleeping Giants.
David Ellefson: Megadeth's New Album + Dave Mustaine's Cancer Recovery
25 Legendary Metal Albums With No Weak Songs
Source: Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine Went Back to Work Immediately After Cancer Battle, Says David Ellefson
Filed Under: Dave Mustaine, Megadeth
Categories: News, Videos
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1837
|
__label__wiki
| 0.60872
| 0.60872
|
Country / Philippines
“Conversations with the Pope” Advocates Reincarnation in Catholicism
Conversations with the Pope
Simon Ioannou
Simon Ioannou’s novel portrays journalist’s discussion with patriarch regarding differing views on afterlife
AUSTRALIA, December 21, 2020 /EINPresswire.com/ — The late Simon Ioannou was a proponent of changing Catholic Church doctrine to support the belief in reincarnation. His novel pushes for this advocacy and presents a persuasive body of historical facts and religious arguments, all within an entertaining narrative framework following a journalist who engages in “Conversations with the Pope.”
Albert Magnusson is an Australian journalist with a keen interest in religious affairs and receives the distinction to visit the Vatican and speak with the Pope for six weeks. There he engages in conversations with the pontiff, and this serves as the author’s framework to present the arguments for reincarnation. The protagonist gives his arguments and requests the Pope to have the Church make a renewed examination.
“Obviously, any decision by the Roman Catholic Church to adopt reincarnationist elements, which do not conflict with Christian dogma, would be a revolutionary and pivotal development in the history of Christianity.” Ioannou said.
Aside from the attempt to reconcile these differing religious viewpoints, the author also provided a chilling dive into contemporary Vatican Curial politics. Ioannou depicted the attempts by conservatives there to avoid serious religious changes, such as those regarding the ordination of women and alterations of the power within the hierarchy should Catholicism and reincarnation be reconciled. Ioannou depicted a contemporary conservative papacy attempting to reverse the liberalizing reforms sparked by the Second Vatican Council.
Simon Ioannou was born in Athens, Greece, and migrated to Australia with his parents at the age of seven. He was brought up in Melbourne and graduated from Monash University in economics and mathematics. He worked as a research economist and statistician. However, a love of film took him to London, where he graduated from the London International Film School.
Film-maker, writer, television presenter, he also held positions with the Film Censorship Board and, for more than ten years, worked in a senior capacity with the SBS Television Network. In 1984 he was at the centre of a widely-publicised and successful challenge in the High Court of Australia, as a result of which the protection of natural justice was extended to thousands of non-permanent federal public servants.
Becoming interested in Catholicism in 1977, he researched deeply into its history and theology, as well as the spiritual relations between Christianity and other faiths. He entered the Catholic Church in 1980, and was a Council Member on the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, a national body advising the Catholic hierarchy on matters of justice and development.
Driven by a passion for justice and the law in general, he practised as a barrister in the last ten years of his life. He died in December, 2012.
BookTrail Agency
EIN Presswire: Book Publishing Industry Press Releases December 22, 2020 Country / Philippines, Country / United States, Topic / Book Publishing Industry, Topic / Media, Advertising & PR, Topic / Religion, Topic / World & Regional No Comments Read more
James and the Fire Works
James is full of energy and starts off the day with a dream of seeing fireworks.
The Vampire’s Curse : Life Eternal
When it's time to choose and those are your only choices, what would you choose?
Chasing Cinderella: Broken Dreams
Chasing Cinderella confronts man's nature and discusses if life has any meaning. Storytellers strive to assert their dominant narrative in hell to win the coveted prize of rebirth.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1838
|
__label__wiki
| 0.940103
| 0.940103
|
Get The JACK FM App
Listen To JACK FM on Alexa & Google Home
Win $10,000 Cash!
Intellicast Forecast
107.9 Jack FM107.9 Jack FM
Court Records: New Casper City Councilman Violated Protection Orders, Was Jailed
Bruce Knell, Jr via Facebook
“John, don’t you think that if I wanted her dead; if I wanted her killed she would have been dead a long time ago.’’
Before he moved from Lander about four years ago, Casper City Councilman-elect Bruce Knell, Jr., pleaded guilty to violating three protection orders and “threaten death by phone,” was jailed, and violated his probation and was jailed again, according to Fremont County and state district court records.
During that time, Knell also petitioned for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection.
Wyoming U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Cathleen Parker dismissed the petition, citing unreasonable delays in the process to set up a repayment plan and acts of “bad faith” with his filings she called “deceitful.”
Knell denied most of these assertions in an interview with K2 Radio News, saying these issues are in the past and publishing them will only harm the city and his efforts to accomplish what he was elected to do.
Knell who will represent Ward I in central Casper, is scheduled to be sworn into office at the City Council meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
“I think I can do a lot of good for the city,” he said.
Knell, 54, ran a self-funded campaign with $21,388.58 of his own money, with $10,300 spent on a campaign manager, and the rest on a billboard, mailings and signs, according to his campaign documents filed with the Natrona County Clerk.
He garnered 2,513 votes, second to Amber Pollock who received 3,432 of the total 9,902 votes cast, and both defeated two other candidates.
He had lived in Natrona County for three-and-a-half years when he filed to run for office, according to a change-of-address document filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Jan. 4, 2017.
Before that, Knell had been a long-time resident of Lander, where he and his ex-wife had a trucking company called Knell Transport, LLC, incorporated in May 2006, according to Wyoming Secretary of State records. (She was divested of her interest in the company at the end of 2013.)
He later sold the company for $8.2 million, he said.
Knell also has had other businesses including Knell Enterprises, LLC, which later would factor in events following his divorce filed against his wife in Fremont County District Court on Feb. 28, 2014.
The judgment and decree of divorce was issued on May 19, 2015, which granted his ex-wife, among other things, 49% of the assets of Knell Transport, LLC, valued at $541,973.10.
The state court granted her a lien against Knell’s property including the assets of the company, according bankruptcy court records.
Four months after the divorce decree, Knell filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection on Sept. 17.
Two weeks later, Knell was charged in Lander Circuit Court with one misdemeanor count of “telephoning another and threatening to inflict injury or harm” to his ex-wife, and four misdemeanor counts of violating a temporary protection order.
According to an affidavit filed with the court on Oct. 6, 2016, a Fremont County Sheriff’s deputy on Oct. 1 was executing an arrest warrant for criminal contempt against Knell, and allowed him to move his vehicle before being taken into custody.
During that incident, Knell borrowed an employee’s phone, called his ex-wife and said, “When I get out of jail, I’m gonna kill you,” according to the affidavit.
Knell denied that to K2 Radio News, saying he told the deputy, “'John, don’t you think that if I wanted her dead; if I wanted her killed she would have been dead a long time ago.'’’
Instead of the threat, he told K2 Radio News that he told her, “‘I said to her, ‘why are you doing this, we have children together; why are you trying to do this; why are you trying to put me in jail?’”
The affidavit cited four protection order violations:
Aug. 31, 2015 — “same location as petitioner/at or near petitioner’s residence.”
Sept. 22 — “act intended to harass, bother, annoy, aggravate, intimidate, interfere with or cause petitioner to suffer undue stress or anxiety.”
Aug. 31 — “communication by telephone.”
Between Sept. 16 and Sept. 25 — “communication by other electronic means."
Knell was released from jail on Oct. 9. Five days later, he was jailed again for violating bond conditions, according to Fremont County Circuit Court records.
On Nov. 30, Knell pleaded guilty to the death threat count and three protection order violations before Fremont County Circuit Court Judge Robert Denhardt, according to the court filing on Dec. 1.
Knell told K2 Radio News that he disputed that. “I was convicted of them, I never pled guilty. I fought them from Day 1. I spent $100,000 fighting them. It was all BS.”
However, the “misdemeanor judgment and sentence” minutes from Fremont County Circuit Court filed on Dec. 1, 2015, show that he did plead guilty.
“The court finds the defendant knowingly and intelligently entered said plea(s), was competent to enter the plea(s), that it was voluntarily and not entered as a result of threats, force or promises, that there is a factual basis supporting the pleas and that the defendant is guilty as charged in counts 1., 2., 3., & 5.” (The first count was the threatening phone call, and the counts 2, 3 and 5 were the violation of a protection order. Count 4, the “communication by telephone” count, was dismissed.)
Denhardt ordered Knell to pay a $910 fine, and sentenced him to four consecutive 180-day jail sentences, awarded him credit for 54 days served in jail. He suspended the rest of the jail time on condition that he complied with four 180-day terms of probation to end Nov. 29, 2017.
Terms of the probation included not being arrested for other crimes, comply with the 2015 family violence protection order, attend counseling and complete programs for cognitive behavior change, anger management, parenting and batterers.
In an apology filed with the court, Knell wrote to his ex-wife saying, “I’m sorry — I’m sorry for threatening you and for harassing you. I never thought I’d be capable of that type of behavior. … I will respect yours and the courts direction from here on and I will have no contact with you in any way. …”
Less than seven months later, Knell again violated the protection order, according to Fremont County Circuit Court records.
His ex-wife filed a complaint with the court on July 14, 2016, saying he placed himself in close proximity to her at a beach at Boysen Reservoir on June 17 and July 9, in Lander on July 4.
On July 22, a deputy Fremont County Attorney cited those violations and filed a petition to revoke Knell’s probation.
Three days later, Knell denied the allegations in court, was arrested and held without bond.
On Aug. 23, a Fremont County treatment court official wrote to the court, saying Knell had completed the parenting and anger management programs, and said his children seemed comfortable during supervised visits.
On Aug. 24, the court held an evidentiary hearing before Circuit Court Judge Curt Haws, who was appointed to the case after Denhardt recused himself.
On Sept. 6, Haws revoked Knell’s probation.
The judge wrote Knell’s presentation at the evidentiary hearing “was designed to relieve him from responsibility for the events of June 17 and July 9, 2016,” adding that Knell blamed the courts for issuing confusing orders and saying he wasn’t too familiar with the contents of the orders.
“This Court finds that any lack of clarity is the product of Defendant’s desire to read any and all orders in a way that allows him to do as he pleases,” Haws wrote.
On Sept. 21, Haws sentenced Knell to a 90-day jail term, with credit for time served.
Several weeks later, Knell asked the court to be released from jail to supervise his crew to keep a water hauling contract, that he would be traveling to Casper and Midwest for work, and the job would enable him to meet his obligations for child support, bankruptcy court and other bills.
The state agreed with the request “with considerable reservations.”
But on Oct. 16, a Deputy Fremont County Attorney filed a motion with the court to revoke the permission for work release. Among other things, he spent Oct. 9 in Casper playing golf with his girlfriend and her father: “The Defendant has used his ‘work release’ time for personal and recreational reasons which are unrelated to his business interests and which do nothing to meet his financial obligations to the Court or to the victim.”
Knell told K2 Radio news that the father was a land man and the two talked business during the golf outing, but the court decided against him.
On Oct. 27, Judge Haws revoked Knell’s probation and ordered him to serve the rest of his jail sentence.
Regarding his future work with the Casper City Council, which has made domestic violence prevention a priority, Knell told K2 Radio News that he’s an advocate for domestic violence victims. He never once laid a hand on his ex-wife, he said.
Meanwhile, Knell’s bankruptcy petition was winding its way through the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
After nearly a year-and-a-half of court filings and hearings, Bankruptcy Judge Parker on Feb. 24, 2017, agreed with Knell’s ex-wife and the Standing Chapter 13 Trustee and dismissed Knell’s petition. (A successful Chapter 13 bankruptcy petition ends with a “discharge” of the petition, with the court approving a debtor's plan to repay creditors.)
In her dismissal, Parker noted that the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act “fast-tracked” the Chapter 13 plan confirmation process, which requires debtors to file a plan within 14 days of filing the petition.
Knell requested, and was granted, an initial extension and subsequent amended extension for the first plan, which Parker rejected.
Knell was later granted the opportunity to file a second amended petition after the court granted extensions because he was in jail, Parker wrote.
However, that second plan drew objections from the Internal Revenue Service, the Trustee, and Knell’s ex-wife, who was the primary secured creditor. The IRS objected because the amended plan based on Knell’s 2014 tax return decreased the amount owed to it stated on the first plan. (Knell’s bankruptcy attorney later disagreed with Parker’s order, saying Knell received a refund in 2015, contrary to him owing the IRS.)
Despite being allowed to file an amended plan, Parker wrote Knell acted in bad faith because he failed to list a significant asset, and failed to provide accurate and complete bankruptcy petition schedules that listed assets, debts and valuations.
Knell also inflated the value of an airport hangar he had in North Dakota, failed to pay property taxes on it, and inflated the value of depreciable Knell Transport assets, such as trucks, from the time of the divorce to the time of filing the second amended plan, Parker wrote.
“Of greater distaste to the court is Mr. Knell’s attempt to avoid payment of Ms. Knell’s debt by siphoning off assets from Knell Transportation, LLC and moving them to a new transportation business, Knell Enterprises, LLC, just before the bankruptcy,” she wrote.
Knell testified at a hearing that the transfers were to pay him back for personal loans to Knell Transport, but he didn’t provide any documentation about the loans he made to that company, Parker wrote. “Mr. Knell’s decision, in his first plan, to surrender Knell Transport, LLC to Ms. Knell in satisfaction of her lien when he knew he transferred substantial assets out of the business and incurred loans to finance the new businesses evidences more deceptive behavior.”
The differences in the repayment plans and moving the assets is like participating in a shell game, she wrote. “The court repeatedly must guess under which cup the assets may be.”
Parker finally wrote: “Debtor’s conduct does not only evidence a lack of good faith, but of actual bad faith, causing this Court to conclude that Debtor is not deserving of the fresh start the bankruptcy laws of this country affordable honest but unfortunate debtors. Debtor has not dealt honestly with this court and his creditors and such actions warrant dismissal.”
Knell told K2 Radio News that he’s never had a problem with money, has no debt, has always paid his bills.
“The bankruptcy was literally me trying to wipe out the debt to her that the court had awarded her,” he said. “That’s all it was.”
LOOK BACK: Casper's Top News Stories of 2020
Filed Under: Bruce Knell Jr, casper city council
Categories: Casper News, Wyoming News
2020 Casper Municipal Golf Course Season Pass Giveaway
Casper Business Listings
2021 107.9 Jack FM, Townsquare Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1839
|
__label__wiki
| 0.564856
| 0.564856
|
What It Takes To Race In The Indy 500
Image credit: Sarah Crabill/Getty Images
What It TakesTrue stories of the amazing women who work in cars.
It’s probably safe to say more women are involved in the world of motorsports than ever, but starting grids are still largely dominated by male racers. Pippa Mann, currently an IndyCar racer and one who finished 17th in last year’s Indy 500, is actively seeking to change that by building a community for female drivers through a scholarship at the Lucas Oil School of Racing.
The Lucas Oil School of Racing teaches you how to properly drive an open-wheel race car. Last year, it partnered with Mann to create the Pippa Mann Scholarship, where their goal is to find talented female drivers and help them hone their driving skills, prepare to win races and championships and foster their relationships with the racing community.
Based on their level, drivers who have been picked for the scholarship will be offered a seat in either the basic two-day class or the advanced two-day lapping program.
Here's What Really Happens At A Racing School
Jalopnik’s Deputy Editor Michael Ballaban: Journalist. Lover. Patron of the arts. Anchovy syrup…
Mann clarified that all kinds of racing experience is welcome, anywhere from karting to dirt racing, and is open to anyone who wants to give road racing a shot. Ages typically range from 14 to 24.
As a seasoned professional driver herself, Mann has made no secret of her derision for women-only racing series in the past. Being put in a segregated series helps nobody, she says. In response to women-only series, she started the #WeRaceAsEquals hashtag on social media.
This Proposed All-Women Racing Series Is Some Bullshit
The idea seems straightforward enough: promote women in racing by creating an all-new series, just…
Mann wants to use her experience and help shepherd in a new generation of women race car drivers and aid them in becoming the best drivers they can. With her efforts, we could very well start to see the ratio of men to women on the starting grid finally start to equal out.
This is how she plans to do it.
(Note: this conversation has been edited for grammar, brevity and flow purposes.)
Kristen: After all the work you’ve done in racing, what’s something you’ve noticed about working with young female drivers?
Pippa: So, I do work in lower-level, drag street-level and karting. And it’s always amazed me how many female racers we lose specifically from karting to open-wheel. Really front running female racers who never even make it into the open-wheel ladder.
And you look right now at the state of the current open wheel ladder here in the U.S., there are so few female racers even on the ladder trying to make their way up to Indy Cup. I ask myself, “What can I do, what can we do to try and help this scenario?” And that’s where the Lucas Oil School of Racing came in.
Kristen: Why do you think that happens, that drop-off between karting and open-wheel?
Pippa: I think there’s a lot to be said for the fact that girls do lose confidence right at that age when they’re going through puberty, when they’re 14, 15, 16 years old. And that’s the age that so many of them need to be pushing harder with their families to make the transition. So, I think there’s a little bit of that lack of confidence involved. I think many just don’t know where the opportunity is, especially if their families haven’t been as involved in racing. It’s about trying to get those racers that opportunity to continue on their path.
Image: Lucas Oil School of Racing
Even though we have these girls coming through individually as part of the big school, it’s not a contest where we’re trying to find one person. The idea behind the scholarship is we’re trying to help more female racers take that step. Then they actually have the opportunity to not only get connected through the Lucas Oil School of Racing, but actually get connected to me, personally. And through me, I can then try and connect them to other female racers where appropriate and where it works with what they’re doing. We’re trying to build a network of female racers.
So many guys in racing become friends, everybody kind of helps one another. Often, as a female racer, you can feel pretty left out with that. And for years and years, there was this attitude of, “Oh, you can only have one female racer, and everybody else needs to go away.” So we were sort of pitched against each other in a very different way, instead of working on that solidarity and sisterhood between each other.
Whenever you have any singular female racer, you tend to think that she represents all female racers in a way that we really don’t.
Slowly and slowly, I think we’re starting to see that emerge more in the next generation of female racers. That’s really something that I’m working hard to foster, and that was one of the reasons why we didn’t want this to be a search for one driver. We wanted this to be an opportunity to help more female racers take the step.
Kristen: What are some issues that you’re currently trying to overcome?
Pippa: Whenever you have any singular female racer, you tend to think that she represents all female racers in a way that we really don’t do when it’s male racing drivers. One American racing driver does something, we don’t come around and say that he represents all American racing drivers.
So that’s sort of something that I’m trying to get away from. We’re coming up to 2020, it’s about time we started treating female racers as individual human beings, the same way we treat male racers.
Kristen: Like calling another female racecar driver “the next Danica Patrick.”
Image: Ali Markus Photography/Lucas Oil School of Racing
Pippa: You do see that very occasionally for male racers, but you’re right. With any up-and-coming female racer, it’s much more prolific, and they specifically want to model you after somebody who has come before you. And maybe you do or don’t have similarities to that person. That can often be much more to do with your personality, how you work, to how you go about racing, what you do on the race track, and not as much about your gender, but you tend to get grouped together.
Kristen: What are your thoughts about the Formula One drama with the grid girls?
Pippa: There’s a saying, in racing especially, about being quite careful about the battles you choose to pick. And for me, personally... Is it my favorite part of racing? No. Is it something that’s going to make me stop racing tomorrow? No. As far as I’m concerned, they’re models, they’re doing a job and they are paid to be there. Maybe it does foster an image. It’s not my favorite image of racing, but I sort of feel like I’ve got bigger fish to fry.
I’m focused on how I can help get more female racers into racing, through the scholarship program, either coming from dirt, or coming from karting, so we can get more female racers populating the ladder, all the way up to the Indy 500.
Kristen: And how did you get into racing?
Pippa: My dad was a race fan, so I grew up watching racing on TV as a little girl, playing with cars in the hall of our house, my father taking me to watch racing when I was about eight years old, which you probably know is the age most kids actually start racing, but we had no idea. When I was 11 years old, we moved house. New house, new friends. One of the new friends had a birthday party at the local indoor go-kart track, and that for me, that was the beginning of the end.
I’d always loved cars. I was always encouraging my dad to drive me faster. He was just a race fan. We have no background in racing. No family in racing, no friends in racing. We didn’t know. We had no idea.
Kristen: You moved to the U.S. in 2009. Are women and girls in karting and racing perceived differently in the UK?
Pippa: That is a really interesting question. The answer is yes, but it’s not necessarily the perception. It’s more how you’re treated. So, when I was racing in Europe, there was still this consistent, low level disapproval. “You don’t really belong here, etc.” But you just learned to ignore, rise above, whatever. But there’d be times on the race track when you’re racing people, and you’re trying to pass somebody, you actually are able to have a clean race with somebody. That would stand out to you, you’d really notice it. Or a team would treat you a certain way, and it would stand out to you.
Here in the U.S., when somebody actually races me dirty on the race track, it stands out to me, and I pay attention to it, because for nearly all of the other drivers out there, they don’t care what gender I am, or what color my helmet is. All they care about is where I’m putting my car on the race track and what I’m doing with my racing car.
I think the first thing is you have to be really, really determined in this field—whether you’re male or female.
That was a really interesting transition to me, that it went from the people who actually raced me clean who stood out, to being in the U.S., with pioneers for women in racing, such as Janet Guthrie, Lyn St. James, Sarah Fisher, we mentioned Danica earlier. Because of all of those racers who came before me, I’m just another racer on the race track, and to my team, I’m just another racing driver for them, too. And I love being able to fit into that atlas there.
It would be very difficult for me now to want to go back and race in the UK, or really even race in Europe, knowing how the attitude shifted when I was here in the U.S. I hope it’s gotten better since I’ve been gone, but seeing recent events in Europe, I don’t think it has. So I’m very happy living here, racing here, and I’ve lived at Indianapolis long enough that I actually call myself an honorary Hoosier.
Image: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
The other thing that’s very interesting is the different attitudes. I used to find that racing in Europe, nine times out of 10, the only way to get things done was to be extremely hard, pointed and, quite frankly, fairly aggressive about them. That was the only way to get anywhere. When I first moved here, I actually struggled my first season not only with learning all of the new tracks and new style of driving, and new car, and new theories, et cetera, but also with the fact that I had to change how I went about doing things.
Because that sort of attitude in the U.S. actually just kind of gets people’s backs up against you. I find that you do much, much better working with people here in the U.S. when you’re speaking that cooperation, collaboration and the goal of trying to work together. That was a really interesting adjustment for me, too.
Kristen: So what’s your dream car?
Pippa: Well, obviously my dream racing car is an Indy car at the Indianapolis 500, followed by any racing car that I can get my hands on that has my name on it. And then for a dream road car, that’s actually much more difficult than you would think for me to be able to answer. I currently drive a second-hand Honda Civic that’s coming up to 100,000 miles.
So, I think my dream road car wouldn’t be something too out there. It would be nice to be able to have just a really nice, modern, fairly expensive car that I could cruise the long distances I drive if I have to go to work, out on the highways without any issues. And not to have to worry about the maintenance costs of it. Unfortunately, I work with too many different brands, so I don’t want to put a specific brand out there, because that will get me in trouble with everyone else whom I work with!
Kristen: Totally get that. And as a final question, do you have any advice for a young female driver who is thinking about pursuing a career in racing? What would you tell her?
Pippa: I think the first thing is you have to be really, really determined in this field—whether you’re male or female. You have to have a level of determination to do this that almost goes beyond anything else. That’s partly because racing is such a tough sport, because so much is dependent not only on you as a driver but also the car you’re in, the equipment you have, and the funding you’re able to bring to the table. There are so many hurdles and obstacles to overcome.
The second piece of advice I would give is to be really smart about the people whom you’re surrounding yourself with. I think it’s very easy as a racing driver, whether male or female, to only surround yourself with people who only want to build you up and only tell you the good things and only want to create hype around you for the results you have.
Image: Chris Graythen/Getty Images
As a female racer, when you have a tough day at the race track, you tend to come in for so much criticism than a male driver who has the same kind of day. When you have a good day, if you let things run away with it, you can pretend that your good day was much better than it actually was.
I would say surround yourself with people who are really honest with you and keep you grounded, and that’s the most important thing. If you have a good day, you can celebrate that things went well. But this does not mean you are the female reincarnation of Mario Andretti. It means we had a good day, and things are looking up. If you have a good attitude and stay grounded, people tend to be much more understanding when you have the tough days out there on the racetrack.
Finally, don’t be scared to try and connect with other female racers. Look for the resources that are out there. Whether it’s female racers like myself who may be further down the line, whether it’s female racers of the same age as you, racing with you out there. Don’t view your other female competitors as your main competition. View everyone as your competition, and try and make allies. Lift each other up. Support each other, and as an entire group, by doing that, I think we’ll grow stronger.
You find out more about Mann, the Lucas Oil School of Racing and the Pippa Mann Scholarship here.
Writer at Jalopnik and consumer of many noodles.
shop-teacher
Pippa’s episode of The Marshall Pruett Podcast is well worth a listen. I really didn’t know much about her, and I gained a ton of respect for her. She is brutally honest and very insightful. She also tells the incredible story of her qualifying for the Indy 500 for the first time. Racers aren’t often good story tellers, but she really is.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1840
|
__label__wiki
| 0.792478
| 0.792478
|
Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes, Formerly Worth $4.5 Billion, Now Worth 'Nothing'
Joanna Rothkopf
Last year, Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of troubled blood-testing company Theranos, was at the top of Forbes’ Richest Self-Made Women list with an estimated net worth of $4.5 billion, making her the first youngest self-made female billionaire. On Wednesday, the magazine revised its estimate to “nothing.”
Forbes wrote that its estimate was based solely on her 50 percent ownership in Theranos, which was valued at $9 billion in 2014. Without it, Holmes’s net worth looks quite different:
Forbes spoke to a dozen venture capitalists, analysts and industry experts and concluded that a more realistic value for Theranos is $800 million, rather than $9 billion. That gives the company credit for its intellectual property and the $724 million that it has raised, according to VC Experts, a venture capital research firm. It also represents a generous multiple of the company’s sales, which Forbes has learned about from a person familiar with Theranos’ finances.
The company has recently become the subject of a criminal investigation and potential forced moratorium in services after its blood testing methods were found to be suspect and the company had recklessly put tens of individuals (edit: 81) in danger by failing to disclose a specific hematology test’s deficiencies. Last week, Theranos announced it had voided two years of blood test results because of potential inaccuracies.
Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos May Be Facing a 2-Year Ban From the Blood Testing Business
Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos CEO and founder, our favorite blood-fearing, turtleneck-loving,…
Because Theranos investors own preferred shares, Forbes explains, they would get reimbursed before Holmes, who owns common stock. Were the company to be liquidated at its current value, Holmes wouldn’t get anything—as Forbes puts it: “Holmes’ stake is essentially worth nothing.”
Senior Editor, Jezebel
fighting polish, white sox rememberer
honestly becoming a billionaire on the back of absolutely nothing and stealing money from Silicon Valley dumb dumbs is sort of my dream so YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE LIZZIE HOLMES
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1842
|
__label__cc
| 0.68484
| 0.31516
|
Tag Archives: Melodiya
You Better Move On
The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones by Rich Cohen (Spiegel & Grau, $30.00, 381 pages)
When I mentioned to a couple of Rolling Stones fan that I was reading the new book by Rich Cohen, they asked, “What’s new in the book?” I told them I didn’t know, as I had not finished reading it. Now that I’ve finished, I can answer the question. There’s nothing new here; it’s the same band bio as you’ll find in any book about the Stones or Mick Jagger. And it’s told in chronological order, so you can guess what’s coming up next even if you have just a smattering of knowledge about the old boys.
In theory, Rolling Stone reporter Cohen was going to tell a new and unique story because he spent some time with the group on tour. But that information is minimal and far from being substantively interesting. In fact, the only new factoid I came across is Cohen’s claim that Eric Clapton unsuccessfully auditioned for the group after Mick Taylor’s departure. According to Cohen, Ron Wood was selected because it was felt he would fit in better with the band’s quirky personalities. Well, maybe this is factual and maybe not.
There are factual concerns. For example, Cohen writes that Jagger destroyed all of the outtakes of “Brown Sugar.” But anyone who owns the Russian-made Melodiya CD of Sticky Fingers possesses two outtakes.
Cohen makes a bold attempt at arguing that the Stones were “even greater than the Beatles” – clearly appealing to fanatics who might purchase his account. But he rather quickly dispenses with this, first admitting that Their Satanic Majesties Request was “terrible, a disastrous by-product of an overripe era.” And he proceeds to quote multiple sources regarding how sloppy and undisciplined the band is in rehearsals. So, he set up a straw man only to knock it down. Yawn.
All in all, there’s not much to see here, folks. You better move on.
Tagged as a book review by Joseph Arellano: The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones, A book review site, band biography, book review, book review site wordpress, book reviews, Brown Sugar, Brown Sugar outtakes, December's Children, Eric Clapton, hardbound book release, Joseph Arellano, Joseph's Reviews, Melodiya, Mick Jagger, Mick Taylor, Rich Cohen, rock music, Rolling Stone magazine, Ron Wood, Russian made CD, Spiegel & Grau, Sticky Fingers, Sticky Fingers+7, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties Request, Wordpress book review site, Yesterday's Papers, You Better Move On
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1845
|
__label__wiki
| 0.500751
| 0.500751
|
togo goes to the polls
Posted on March 4, 2010 by Ken Ochieng' Opalo
Togo, a tiny West African country of 6.6 million, goes to the polls today. Faure Gnassingbe, President of Togo and son of the late strongman Gnassingbe Eyadema, is hoping to be re-elected for a second term. His father ruled the country uninterrupted between 1967 until his death in 2005. The younger Gnassingbe was then installed by the military as interim president before elections were held. Most observers believe that these elections were not free and fair. Many hope that this time round things will be different.Yeah right.
African democracy’s teething problems will not go away just yet. 2010’s busy elections schedule will surely bring some of these problems to the fore. The top four to watch include the elections in Rwanda, Ethiopia, Madagascar and Ivory Coast. Paul Kagame will most certainly win in Rwanda, but the question is how much room he will give the opposition this time round. Mr.Kagame has been president since his forces ended the Rwanda genocide in 1994 and has been touted to be among the more economically liberal strongmen on the Continent (he is no Tutu but he is good for business). In Ethiopia Meles Zenawi’s party, Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDP), is also expected to win. Mr. Zenawi has been in power since he deposed the tin pot despot Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991. Here too it remains unclear just how much opposition Mr. Zenawi will tolerate in parliament.
Madagascar, as you may remember had a coup in March of last year. It will be interesting to see who emerges as winner in this election. The contest is between the factions led by former DJ and mayor of Antananarivo Andry Rajoelina and the man he kicked out of office Marc Ravalomanana.The political instability in this island country off the east coast of the Continent has not gone without economic consequences.
Ivory Coast, once a paragon of stability in West Africa, is also holding elections this year. This year’s polls were originally planned to be held in 2005 before a bloody civil war that divided the country in half got in the way. The land of Houphouet-Boigny has not known peace and stability since the strongman’s passing in 1993. Mr. Houphouet-Boigny was president between 1963 until his death in 1993. Among his accomplishments was the relocation of the capital of Ivory Coast to Yamoussoukro, his home town, and the construction there of the US $ 300 million Basilica of Our Lady of Peace (which the Guinness Books of records lists as the largest church in the world).
This entry was posted in africa and tagged Abidjan, african democracy, african elections, Andry Rajoelina, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Eyadema, Gnassingbe, Houphouet-Boigny, Ivory Coast, laurent Gbabo, Madagascar, Marc Ravalomanana, meles zenawi, Paul Kagame, Rwanda, togo, yamoussoukro by Ken Ochieng' Opalo. Bookmark the permalink.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1853
|
__label__wiki
| 0.524368
| 0.524368
|
Published June 21, 2020 7:18 pm
UC Santa Barbara students hold Minecraft graduation with speeches, awards, fireworks and games
ISLA VISTA, Calif. - A group of dedicated UC Santa Barbara students held a graduation ceremony for themselves and others on Sunday in the online game Minecraft after nearly three months of planning and building.
The ceremony started around 5 p.m. Students and family members were welcome to join the server, dress up their character in a graduation gown, and sit in the audience in front of a large stage on the recreated UCSB campus. Guests were able to listen and talk together through a group voice call on the platform Discord. A livestream of the event was also held on Twitch for those unable to join in person.
To kick off the ceremony, "Server Chancellor" Charles Neumann, and organizer of the project, welcomed the audience and gave a short speech. His speech acknowledged important events such as Father's Day and the global COVID-19 pandemic that led to the need for this virtual graduation. A moment of silence was held to remember and recognize everyone who has been impacted by the virus.
Kevin Braza, one of the server administrators, was then welcomed onto the stage to give a speech of his own and present awards.
"Without a ceremony, this is our chance to experience the campus, be able to share that moment with our families, and reflect on all the memories that we had," Braza said. "And none of this would really be possible without the people who have been coming on close to every day for these past three months to be able to make what you see when you walk around this reality. Just take a look around and you'll see some of the great sights that we spent here at UCSB, throughout our time here, it's something that we're very fond of and that will continue to be in our memories fondly, and that's something that we're very proud of."
The impressively built campus featured many furnished buildings including dorm halls, the cafeteria, the UCen and Storke Tower. The entire campus was built to scale at one block per one meter.
Specific players were then recognized by name for their Excellence in Minecraft Building and the roles they played in bringing the virtual campus to life.
The group then turned the Minecraft sky dark and set off a series of blue and gold fireworks while participants chanted for the Gauchos.
After-ceremony games followed the formalities and included one-vs-one battles to the death, Hunger Games and Mario Party.
Coronavirus / Education / Health / Lifestyle / Santa Barbara - South County
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1854
|
__label__wiki
| 0.597241
| 0.597241
|
Ted West—Hulton Archive/Getty Images
(1902–79). Along with his collaborators Lorenz Hart (1895–1943) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), Richard Rodgers was one of the most innovative and creative figures in American musical comedy. On Your Toes (1936), with its jazz ballet “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,” established serious dance as a component of the medium. The songs Rodgers composed found a permanent place in the catalog of U.S. popular music. Among them are “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning”, “My Funny Valentine,” “Climb Every Mountain,” and “Some Enchanted Evening.”
Rodgers was born in New York City on June 28, 1902. He attended Columbia University—where he met Hart—for a year and a half before studying composition at what is now the Juilliard School. Their first professional success was Garrick Gaieties in 1925. Their other musicals included The Girl Friend (1926), A Connecticut Yankee (1927), Present Arms (1928), On Your Toes (1936), The Boys from Syracuse (1938), Pal Joey (1940), and By Jupiter (1942).
Hart died in 1943, and Rodgers began working with Hammerstein. They turned the play Green Grow the Lilacs into the greatest musical-comedy success Broadway had seen: Oklahoma! (1943). They followed it with Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), Pipe Dream (1955), Flower Drum Song (1958), and The Sound of Music (1959). Oklahoma! and South Pacific both won Pulitzer prizes. After Hammerstein’s death in 1960, Rodgers wrote the words and music for No Strings (1962). He had written the music for the motion picture Victory at Sea in 1952. He died in New York City on Dec. 30, 1979.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1855
|
__label__wiki
| 0.861853
| 0.861853
|
Number of COVID-19 cases in Waterloo Region increases by 75
KITCHENER -- The number of COVID-19 cases reported in Waterloo Region grew by 75 on Friday, marking the third straight day of reporting 70 or more new cases.
There were 74 cases reported on Friday, along with one case added to Thursday's total.
The total number of lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the region now sits at 3,362. Of those cases, 2,776 are now considered resolved and there are 460 active cases. The number of deaths in the region remains unchanged at 124.
There are currently 28 people in the hospital with disease, including eight in the ICU.
There are currently 23 active outbreaks in the region, including a new outbreak in a unit at Grand River Hospital. Three patients and two staff members have tested positive in that outbreak, and visitors and admissions are closed to the unit.
The region's testing partners have performed a total of 206,459 tests to date.
15 RESOLVED CASES IN VILLAGE MANOR OUTBREAK
St. Mary's General Hospital said Friday that 15 residents living at Village Manor in St. Jacobs are now considered recovered from COVID-19, which officials say means they can move around the community and have "moved through COVID-19 themselves."
Hospital officials are still managing two residents at the home and four in hospital who have tested positive for the disease. The hospital took over the facility last weekend. An outbreak was declared on Nov. 14.
RECORD-BREAKING CASES IN ONTARIO
Ontario set another record number of new cases on Friday at 1,855.
The province also completed a record-setting 58,037 tests in the past 24 hours.
There have been a total of 111,216 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ontario to date.
Specimens to be tested for COVID-19 are seen at LifeLabs after being logged upon receipt at the company's lab, in Surrey, B.C., on Thursday, March 26, 2020. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck)
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1857
|
__label__wiki
| 0.899857
| 0.899857
|
Jayhawks fly into Superhero Day against No. 2 Baylor
Game 17: Kansas vs. No. 2 Baylor
Date Sunday, Jan. 15
Time 1 p.m. Central
Location Lawrence, Kansas
Venue Allen Fieldhouse
TV ESPNU
Audio Jayhawk Radio Network
Stats KUAthletics.com
STATS KU BU
Record 6-10 16-1
Points/Gm 63.4 92.6
3-Point Field Goal % 28.6 39.6
Free Throw % 63.7 67.3
Rebounds/Gm 41.4 54.3
Assists/Gm 12.3 23.5
Blocks/Gm 3.6 8.9
Steals/Gm 9.5 7.6
LAWRENCE, Kan. – Kansas women’s basketball will host its annual Superhero Day inside Allen Fieldhouse when the Jayhawks take on Baylor on Sunday, Jan. 15, at 1 p.m. The game will be broadcast on the ESPNU and the Jayhawk Radio Network.
AROUND THE GYM
Children under 13 that attend the game dressed as their favorite superhero will receive $3 admission. Superheroes of all ages can enjoy the fun zone and the Batmobile will be on site for photos and tours, weather permitting. For more information on Superhero Day, log on to KUAthletics.com.
Fast Breaks
Sunday’s matchup is the final meeting between KU and Baylor this season. The Jayhawks look to even the series with an upset over the Lady Bears.
The Jayhawks have an 8-26 mark against Baylor since 1978 and a 5-9 record when hosting BU inside Allen Fieldhouse.
Six of Kansas’ first seven Big 12 Conference games are against a nationally-ranked opponent. Kansas is 0-4 against teams ranked in the top 25 this season.
When Brandon Schneider-coached teams are leading with less than five minutes to play, his overall record is 355-12, and 9-0 at Kansas.
Kansas has played four overtime games in 2016-17 and is 3-1 on the season in extended games. Under Schneider, the Jayhawks are 4-1 in overtime games.
Kansas’ bench is averaging 23.9 points per game and recorded its best effort of the season after providing 42 points against UC Riverside (12/21).
The Jayhawks are averaging 14.2 offensive rebounds per game, good for the third-best average in the Big 12.
KU forced Texas (1/4) to turn the ball over 31 times, a season-high mark for the Jayhawks’ defense.
Kansas recorded 14 steals against Iowa State (1/8), marking the eighth time this season to record 10 or more steals, including three of the last four games.
Kansas dished out 14 assists against Kansas State (1/11) and has recorded 10 or more assists in six of its last nine games.
Redshirt junior guard Jessica Washington has led all scorers in four of five Big 12 contests in 2017. Washington leads the league in scoring in Big 12 only games with 19.6 points per contest and is ranked sixth in the conference in all games with 15.2 points per game.
Washington made 7-of-10 (.700) attempts from the 3-point line at K-State and ended the contest one triple shy of tying KU’s single-game record of eight set in 1996 by Charisse Sampson.
Kansas looks to even the series with Baylor on Sunday afternoon with a victory, its first inside Allen Fieldhouse against the Lady Bears since 2014. A win on Sunday for the Jayhawks would snap a five-game losing skid. After Wednesday’s loss at Kansas State (1/11), KU dropped to 6-10 on the season and 0-5 in league play.
Redshirt junior guard Jessica Washington leads the team with 15.2 points per game behind 33.2 percent shooting from the field. During Big 12 Conference play, Washington leads the league with 19.6 points per game after leading all scorers in four of her last five outings. In conference action, Washington is connecting on 36.4 percent of her attempts, including 42.9 percent of her shots from long range. Redshirt sophomore guard McKenzie Calvert is also averaging double digits with 12.5 points per game.
Sophomore guard Kylee Kopatich is third on the squad with 9.2 points per game and has recorded double-digit scoring performances in her last three starts. Junior forward Cayla Cheadle is grabbing a team-best 5.5 boards per game, leading the squad in offensive (27) and defensive (61) rebounds.
Scouting the Lady Bears
After opening Big 12 Conference action with five-straight victories, Baylor extended its win streak to 14 games. The Lady Bears are 16-1 on the season and their only loss of the year was a 72-61 decision at No. 1 UConn (11/17).
The Lady Bears lead the league in points per game with 92.6 and have a +42.2 scoring margin. Baylor is the only team in the conference shooting above 50 percent after converting 50.0 percent of its attempts from the floor. Additionally, the Lady Bears are connecting on 39.6 percent of their shots from long range. Defensively, BU is averaging 54.3 rebounds, 7.6 steals and 8.9 blocks per game.
Redshirt senior guard Alexis Jones leads BU’s offense with 15.8 points per game, while shooting 43.2 percent from the field and dishing out 74 assists. Sophomore Kalani Brown is averaging 13.6 points and is connecting on 67.4 percent of her attempts. Brown also leads the team with 8.6 boards and 2.3 blocks per game. Three more Lady Bears are averaging double figures this season: senior forward Nina Davis (11.4), redshirt senior guard Alexis Prince (11.0) and sophomore forward Beatrice Mompremier (10.3).
This Day in Kansas Women’s Basketball History
Record on Jan. 15: 7-7
Sunday afternoon is the 15th time in program history that Kansas has played on Jan. 15. On Jan. 15, 2012, forwards Aishah Sutherland and Carolyn Davis combined for 48 points as the duo powered Kansas to a 72-63 win over Missouri.
Big 12 Conference Corner
Kansas is among the top five in several Big 12 Conference statistical categories with league play just underway. The Jayhawks have forced the most turnovers per game this season in the Big 12 after averaging 19.5 per contest. KU is third in the league in steals per game (9.5) and offensive rebounds (14.2). Individually, redshirt junior Jessica Washington recorded the most made free throws in a single game after converting all 12 attempts from the charity stripe against UC Riverside (12/21). Washington’s 14.1 points per game ranks No. 11 in the Big 12 in scoring per contest.
Named in honor the late Dr. F.C. “Phog” Allen, the Jayhawks’ head coach for 39 years, Allen Fieldhouse is labeled by many as one of the best places in America to watch a college basketball game. This astounding basketball monument has been home to Jayhawk basketball for 63 years, including the inaugural year of KU women’s basketball (1969). In 48 seasons playing inside Allen Fieldhouse, Kansas women’s basketball has amassed a 415-181 (.696) record when playing in front of a home crowd.
Kansas continues its two-game home stretch with No. 18 West Virginia on Wednesday, Jan. 18. Tipoff against the Mountaineers is slated for 7 p.m., on the Jayhawk Television Network/ESPN3 and the Jayhawk Radio Network.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1864
|
__label__wiki
| 0.814683
| 0.814683
|
Home/Singers/Banda Calypso
How much is Banda Calypso worth? – Wondering how wealthy & rich is Banda Calypso? Or maybe you’re just curious about Banda Calypso’s age, body measurements, height, weight, hair color, eye color, bra & waist size, bio, wiki, wealth and salary?
Banda Calypso was a Brazilian group of tropical music, specifically with MGP pop, formed at the end of 1990 in the city of Belém, state of Pará. It was created by guitarist and producer Cledivan A. Farias “Chimbinha” and his wife, singer and choreographer Joelma. At the beginning of dissemination work is limited only to the North and Northeast regions of Brazil. The band enjoyed a success throughout Brazil and has consolidated abroad with excursions to the United States, Latin America, Africa and Europe.
Even with prejudice of its musical genre and its origin, the band became the absolute leader in the sale of CDs and DVDs of the year 2000, with approximately 22 million discs sold, approximately 16 million CDs and there are more than 6 million DVDs spread on Brazilian soil, making it one of the bands with the record for sales in the country.
The band had an attractive and contagious rhythm, known as corny pop or calypso. Many confuse the rhythm of calypso with the forró, however, the similarities are only in the hallucinatory and hot content of the dance, as the calypso is a rhythm totally different from everything we have seen; in fact, it is a mixture of several rhythms of Pará and Latin roots, such as Cumbia, merengue and carimbó.
Last great DVD 15 years recorded in Belém do Pará https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHQrlCJTgqM
During its existence, Banda Calypso is considered one of the oldest bands in the country with 15 million discs sold and achieved popularity in the United States, Europe and Angola, without afflicting an external record company, and several recognitions including two Latin Grammy nominations.
On August 19, 2015, the end of the Joelma and Chimbinha wedding was announced, and this led to some frictions that hurt the band. Joelma then begins to dedicate himself to his solo career from January 1, 2016 as “Joelma Calypso” and Chimbinha with his new band, the XCalypso that was announced in November 2015, which goes on to stylize his stage name ” X “, so it is Ximbinha. The Calypso Band ended its activities on December 31, 2015, with a farewell concert in Macapá.
More Facts about Banda Calypso
The Banda Calypso’s statistics like age, body measurements, height, weight, bio, wiki, net worth posted above have been gathered from a lot of credible websites and online sources. But, there are a few factors that will affect the statistics, so, the above figures may not be 100% accurate.
Candela Márquez
Lanny Barby
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1866
|
__label__wiki
| 0.842117
| 0.842117
|
Issues of law and religion in the United Kingdom – with occasional forays further afield
Clergy employment and Sharpe v Worcester DBF
Posted on 7 December 2013 by Frank Cranmer
On 29 November we reported that an Employment Appeal Tribunal (Mrs Justice Cox, sitting alone) had concluded in Sharpe v Worcester Diocesan Board of Finance Ltd & Anor [2013] UKEAT 0243 12 2811 that the decision of the lower tribunal that the Revd Mark Sharpe, former incumbent of Teme Valley South Benefice in the Diocese of Worcester, could not be a “worker” within the terms of the Employment Rights Act 1996, as amended, was flawed. She allowed the appeal and remitted the case to the Employment Tribunal for a fresh hearing “in accordance with the legal principles set out in this judgment” (para 244). We said then that we hoped to post a longer, more detailed analysis of the case in the near future – so here we go.
Mr Sharpe’s relationship with the local community broke down. He resigned, accusing the Church of failing to support him and claiming that his dog had been poisoned, his telephone lines cut and his tyres slashed because he was considered an “outsider”. He took the DBF and the Bishop of Worcester (in his corporate capacity) to an Employment Tribunal, arguing that he had suffered detrimental treatment as a result of making protected disclosures and that he had been constructively and unfairly dismissed. After a pre-hearing review the ET held that there was no jurisdiction to determine his claims because there was no contract in existence between the parties and, further, Mr Sharpe did not fall within the statutory definition of “worker”. After oral argument, the appeal was stayed pending the decision of the Supreme Court in Methodist Conference v Preston [2013] UKSC 29.
The judgment
The concept of freehold tenure
Traditionally, the right to the benefice has carried with it the right to the freehold of the parsonage house and a rector with freehold who is below the mandatory retirement age of 70 under the Ecclesiastical Offices (Age Limit) Measure 1975 cannot be removed except in circumstances such as a suspension or inhibition for an ecclesiastical offence (para 72). The few clergy with freehold who were already in their current post on 31 December 1975 and who are still in office do not have a compulsory retirement age at all. An incumbent with freehold can only be removed from office on disciplinary grounds after due process before a court or tribunal: the system does not provide for summary dismissal, whatever the alleged misconduct (para 73): see the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963 and the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003.
An incumbent (but not a cleric on common tenure) is regarded as having a freehold right to the office and is still often referred to as a freehold office-holder or freehold incumbent (para 20). Cox J noted that the Ecclesiastical Offices (Terms of Service) Measure 2009 and the Ecclesiastical Offices (Terms of Service) Regulations 2009 postdated the appointment of Mr Sharpe in 2005 (para 21), though the committee chaired by Professor McClean which reviewed the terms under which the clergy of the Church of England hold office and the position of the clergy in relation to statutory employment rights concluded that Church of England clergy had no employment status (para 21).
Was there a contract?
The Employment Judge had found that there was no written contract between Mr Sharpe and either of the respondents and held that there was no express contract because:
though there was an offer of appointment which Mr Sharpe had accepted, that appointment did not take effect as a matter of law until due ceremony was observed, so any contract did not depend upon the will of the parties alone;
the offer of appointment was made by the patron of the living, Mrs Miles; and, although she was party to an agreement that Mr Sharpe be appointed as rector, it did not follow that she entered into a contract governing the terms and conditions on which he was to undertake his duties there.
Mrs Miles did not make the offer on behalf of the DBF, which had no part to play in the appointment process; nor had she done so as agent on behalf of the Bishop because she had the right of presentation of the rector and the right of veto – and she could not have been the Bishop’s agent if she had the right to refuse his choice: she was therefore “… acting as her own principal in exercise of the right given to her by ecclesiastical law to appoint to an office … and an intention to create legal relations about terms and conditions on which the office should be performed really cannot be attributed to her” (para 86).
Cox J began from the proposition that, following the Supreme Court’s decision in Preston,
“… it is now unnecessary to refer to all the earlier cases. The Claimant’s first ground of appeal is that the Employment Judge failed to apply binding authority when determining whether there was a contract between the parties. That must now be considered in light of the decisions of the House of Lords in Percy and of the Supreme Court in Preston, the Employment Judge not having the benefit of this latter decision when he was considering the law” (para 111).
She pointed out that in Percy v Church of Scotland Board of National Mission [2005] UKHL 73, in which the appellant was a (associate) minister, the main question for the House of Lords was whether or not her relationship with the Church constituted “employment” as defined in s 82(1) Sex Discrimination Act 1975, Ms Percy having contended not that she had entered into a contract of service, but that she had been employed under a contract for services, in that she had agreed personally to execute certain work. On the facts, the majority decision had been that the agreement between Ms Percy and the Board had indeed displayed an intention to create enforceable legal obligations between the parties and that the terms and conditions of her appointment and the services she was required to provide in return for her salary and other benefits, constituted a contract personally to execute work within the definition of “employment” in s 82(1 (paras 116 & 117). Cox J cited with approval the conclusion of Lord Nicholls that the question at issue was not whether Ms Percy held an office but whether she had entered into a contract under which she had agreed to provide defined services and, moreover, that holding an office and the existence of a contract to provide services were not necessarily mutually exclusive (para 119).
Following the decisions in Percy and Preston, therefore, it was now “abundantly clear” that the employment status of clergy
“… cannot be determined simply by asking whether the minister is an office holder or is in employment … [A]n individual appointed to work in a particular post may be both the holder of an office and an employee working under a contract of service. Whether there is payment of a salary, whether it is fixed, and whether the worker’s duties are subject to the control of the employer are important matters to be considered in determining this issue” (para 146).
As to the distinctions between the facts of the present case and Preston, “the rights and duties of ministers in the Methodist Church were found to arise entirely from their status in the constitution of the Church, and not from any contract” (para 139). There were a number of important differences between the rules and practices of the Methodist Church and those of the Church of England – not least that there is nothing in the Church of England that appears comparable with the process of full connexion and “stationing” in the Methodist Church (paras 159 & 160). In the present case, the Employment Tribunal had rejected the possibility of an express contract
“… in brief terms. The only reasons given for rejecting it are that the written offer and acceptance of appointment on terms did not take effect in law until due ceremony was observed; that the Patron, Mrs Miles, could not be said to be the other contracting party; that she could not be said to have been making the offer of appointment on behalf of either the DBF or the Bishop, whose choice she had the right to refuse; and that an intention to create legal relations about terms and conditions could not be attributed to her” (para 180).
She continued:
“In failing to carry out the full analysis that Preston now establishes is required, and in approaching the issue by asking whether it was necessary in this case to imply a contract between the parties, I consider that the Employment Judge was in error” (para 181).
She also rejected the Employment Judge’s conclusion that regulation by canon law precluded a contractual relationship. Though many of the terms attaching to the post of rector were dictated or shaped by canon law or explained by the nature of the claimant’s office, that did not preclude a finding that the claimant was also carrying out his work pursuant to a contract of employment (para 185). Nor did the fact that the Bishop had only limited powers as defined by canon law preclude the existence of any consensual, contractual arrangement (para 217).
Was Mr Sharpe a “worker”?
Cox J concluded that the ET’s decision that Mr Sharpe was not a “worker” within the meaning of s 230(3)(b) had been arrived at in error. S 43K(1) Employment Rights Act 1996, as amended, provides that:
“(1) For the purposes of this Part ‘worker’ includes an individual who is not a worker as defined by section 230(3) but who:
(a) works or worked for a person in circumstances in which–
(i) he is or was introduced or supplied to do that work by a third person, and
(ii) the terms on which he is or was engaged to do the work are or were in practice substantially determined not by him but by the person for whom he works or worked, by the third person or by both of them,
(b) contracts or contracted with a person, for the purposes of that person’s business, for the execution of work to be done in a place not under the control or management of that person and would fall within section 230(3)(b) if for ‘personally’ in that provision there were substituted ‘(whether personally or otherwise)’,”.
Cox J took the view that, properly construed, the words “terms on which he is or was engaged to do the work” did not imply the existence of a contract and the Employment Judge had been wrong to determine that issue on that basis (para 237).
In addition, she concluded that Mr Sharpe did not have an unfettered right to delegate the functions of his office to a suitably qualified person, at any time and for any reason, since that was contrary to the provision of Canon C24(8) that “if at any time, a priest is unable to discharge his duties, ‘whether from non-residence or some other cause, [they] shall provide for [their] cure to be supplied by a priest licensed or otherwise approved of by the Bishop of the Diocese.’ ” (para 240). The claimant’s right to delegate could be exercised only in the case of his inability to discharge his duties, not in case of his unwillingness to do so; and he could delegate only to a priest licensed or approved by the Bishop (para 241). He could not simply choose not to attend his parishioners or conduct services (para 243). The claimant’s qualified right to delegate did not detract from the personal obligation to carry out his work. The Employment Judge had applied the wrong test (para 244).
Where the judgment appears to be at least questionable is on the issue of the intention to create an employment relationship.
Classically, a contract in English law is founded upon offer, acceptance, intention to create legal relations, consideration and certainty as to terms. In the present case there were clearly offer, acceptance and consideration; but whether there was either certainty as to terms or an intention to create legal relations in a sense that was understood in the same way by both parties is rather more open to question.
Regulation 9 of the Ecclesiastical Offices (Terms of Service) Regulations 2009 gives clergy who hold office under common tenure the right in certain circumstances to resort to an employment tribunal as if they were “workers” for the purposes of the 1996 Act – but not because they are “workers” for the purposes of the 1996 Act. The Ecclesiastical Offices (Terms of Service) (Amendment) (No.2) Regulations 2010 specifically disapply the 2009 Regulations in the case of an office holder who holds an office in pursuance of a contract of employment. But neither the 2009 nor the 2010 Regulations apply to clergy with freehold. One might reasonably assume, therefore, that if clergy on common tenure can have resort to an Employment Tribunal only because of express legislative provision to that effect, a fortiori clergy who are not on common tenure or engaged under contracts of employment cannot. Moreover, the specific reference in the 2010 amending Regulations to clergy who hold office “in pursuance of a contract of employment” must assume that there is a class of clergy who do not hold office under such terms.
Moreover, the discussion of Preston relates Lord Sumption’s judgment purely to the particular circumstances of Methodist ministers and their relationship with the Methodist Conference, without exploring any of the wider principles of contract law that were considered in that case and which are of wider applicability to the employment status of clergy generally. One might also note in that connexion Macdonald v Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland [2010] UKEAT S/0034/09/BI, in which Lady Smith, sitting alone, upheld the conclusion of the Employment Tribunal that a minister of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland was not an employee because it was a foundational belief of the FPCS that it was “not appropriate, in the case of important offices including that of Minister, to set up a legal relationship that is subject to control by the Civil Magistrate” (para 42).
Finally, if the basic reason why Hayley Preston lost in the Supreme Court was that it is the corporate understanding of the Methodist Church that it is not in a contractual relationship with its ministers, why should the judgment in Sharpe have ignored the fact that it is the corporate understanding of the Church of England that it is not in a contractual relationship with its freehold incumbents (or, indeed, with clergy on common tenure)? As Philip Jones points out over at Ecclesiastical Law, “the EAT missed a factual distinction of critical importance to Mr Sharpe’s dismissal claim. Ms Percy and Ms Preston did not have the parson’s freehold“.
It will be interesting to see what the Court of Appeal makes of it all.
This entry was posted in employment law and tagged Church of England, employment by Frank Cranmer. Bookmark the permalink.
6 thoughts on “Clergy employment and Sharpe v Worcester DBF”
Pingback: Clergy employment: Church of England rector wins appeal on jurisdictional issue | Law & Religion UK
Pingback: Religion and law round-up – 8th December | Law & Religion UK
Pingback: Religion and law round up – 27th July | Law & Religion UK
Pingback: Religion and Law round-up – 8th February | Law & Religion UK
Pingback: Scandalous priests and bishops | Turbulent Priests
Pingback: Law & Religion 2013 and 2014: retrospect and prospect | Law & Religion UK
Subscribe Proudly powered by WordPress
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1869
|
__label__wiki
| 0.586847
| 0.586847
|
Walker Percy’s American Apocalypse
H. Collin Messer
In an unpublished essay from the late 1950s called “Which Way Existentialism,” Walker Percy offered his assessment of contemporary American life:
Something is dreadfully wrong with the world of the emotionally mature, integrated man. What it is becomes clear in the writings of Heidegger and Marcel. The modern world, not merely the slums of Paris but the pleasant American suburb, is implicated in a special sort of tragedy. This tragedy is not the catastrophic wars of the 20th century—though God knows these are tragic enough. These particular events are only symptoms of the tragedy; indeed they might even be said to be desperate attempts to escape it. The tragedy has rather to do with the fundamental banality, the loss of meaning, of modern life—what Heidegger calls the “every-day-ness” and the homelessness of life in the modern world, a world which Marcel refers to as a broken world.
To use one of Percy’s favorite (if grim) expressions, it is death-in-life. Such a turn of phrase powerfully captures the malaise, the noxious particles, the despair that beset his fictional characters, and at times perhaps even Percy himself. He often wondered in his essays and novels how we are to undertake the task of living in the world “without falling prey to the worldliness of the world.”
By the same token, for Walker Percy (1916-1990), this world was not an abstraction. Like many of his literary neighbors in the South, he recognized the formidable claims that place and particularity make upon the writer. It is therefore no surprise that Percy’s work reveals an abiding concern with politics that is robust enough to inspire a rich collection of scholarly essays on the same. It is equally unsurprising that his diagnosis of the human condition—while compellingly dramatized for us in a world of Southern manners and politics—reveals pathologies that reach far beyond mere politics or even political philosophy. Percy well understood that the writer, in Flannery O’Connor’s words, “operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet.”
Hence the political maladies we observe in Percy’s writing are not first causes but symptoms of what he always regarded as a deeper ontological impoverishment. Among many commendable qualities, the chief strength of A Political Companion to Walker Percy is that Peter Lawler and Brian A. Smith have collected a fine group of essays that not only explore the political implications of Percy’s work but also take seriously its philosophical and theological foundations. The essays, like much of Percy’s writing, seem remarkably propitious, even prescient, as they remind us time and again of our fundamental predicament. “A theory of man,” as Percy himself wrote, “must account for the alienation of man.”
In the rough-and-tumble decades of the 1950s and 1960s during which he found his voice as a writer, politics was unavoidable, at least for Southerners. A lifelong Democrat (but seldom a political partisan of any stripe), Percy was an astute observer of and erstwhile participant in some of the most significant political movements of his lifetime. When it came to the vexing southern question of race relations, Percy never lost a deep sense of respect and gratitude for the courageous—if paternalistic—example of his cousin and surrogate father William Alexander Percy. After all, Will Percy, the great Southern poet and stoic, joined his father (U.S. Senator LeRoy Percy) in facing down the Klan in Mississippi in the 1920s. After his conversion to Catholicism in 1947, Walker Percy’s embrace of the Church’s liberal teachings on social justice eventually moved him to support racial integration.
As Percy makes clear in his finest essay on Southern politics, “Stoicism in the South” (1956), to take such a stand was to break significantly with his family’s patrician past, which was shaped much more profoundly by the stoic virtue of noblesse oblige than by any New Testament notion of Christian brotherhood. Percy’s progressive racial politics became even more public and pronounced in 1970, when he boldly decided to testify as an expert witness in the U.S. District Court in New Orleans regarding the meaning of the Confederate flag in Southern life. Percy spoke in support of a group of African American public high school students who had objected to the principal’s hanging the Stars and Bars in his office. Percy concluded that the flag’s meaning (at least since the Brown decision) had become largely representative of “segregation, white supremacy, and racism.”
In national politics, Percy’s fervent Catholicism undoubtedly fired his enthusiastic embrace of John F. Kennedy. So deeply did he grieve Kennedy’s assassination that his second novel, The Last Gentleman (1966), was delayed by more than a year. Given his inveterate shyness, it is most surprising that he appeared on William F. Buckley’s national television show Firing Line in 1972, along with the great Southern writer Eudora Welty. With winsome perspicacity, Percy turned a rather predictable discussion of “the Southern imagination” into a seminar on the predicament of modern man.
I find it helpful to read A Political Companion to Walker Percy against this backdrop, especially because Percy’s literary and philosophical project seldom fails to comment on the American enterprise, including politics. He once described his existentialist fictional mode as being characterized by “the apocalypse of the country club.” As he affirmed in 1986, “I wouldn’t dare write of the twentieth century as such.” He continued:
Most writers, I believe, sense that these evils are too vast and too close to be portrayed in any aesthetic mode; in fact, my own hunch is that only a major theological vision like Dostoevsky’s can accommodate such evils, that a truly demonic age is too much for writers of sociological realism. . . . But show me a couple, a man and wife, who have moved into the condo of their dreams on the Gulf Coast or fronting the Heritage golf course at Hilton Head to live the good life, except that the man is spending seven instead of six hours in front of his cable TV and has graduated from a six-pack to an eight-pack, and the woman is spending more and more time at Gloria Marshall’s and reading Nancy Friday and Judith Krantz—and neither man nor wife has said a word to the other for days, let alone touched each other—and I’m on home grounds.
Whatever political questions Percy pursues are never divorced from a sharply drawn contemporary American setting. The ephemeral satisfaction derived from the American dream is ever impressed upon us. His America is often suburban, and, as we saw above, his characters typically haunt the increasingly prosperous Sunbelt. Whether we view it from the freshly minted sidewalks of Binx Bolling’s Gentilly (a new suburban neighborhood outside of New Orleans) or the golf links on Will Barrett’s mountain in western North Carolina, the pursuit of happiness often comes in for rough treatment. Whenever Percy brings his Roman Catholic faith to bear on the American scene, we find much wanting even in the best of environments. He relentlessly calls into question, as he said, “modern man’s fondest assumption, that he has made the world over for his happiness and that therefore he must be happy.”
Because Lawler and Smith so clearly understand the contours of Percy’s polemic, they present us with a strong and varied group of essays that take fruitful approaches to the essays and novels. A number of writers take up Percy’s theory of man and its political implications. Among the best in this group is James V. Schall’s “On Dealing with Man.” Focusing largely on Percy’s philosophical essays and Lost in the Cosmos (1983), Schall explicates Percy’s complaint against modern political philosophy, especially his concern that Enlightenment political projects generally go astray as they seek (in Eric Voegelin’s words) to “immanentize the eschaton.”
Such hubris cuts across the grain of Percy’s most basic insight into the human situation. Upon receiving the National Book Award for The Moviegoer in 1962, he proclaimed that
Man is more than an organism in an environment, more than an integrated personality, more even than a mature and creative individual, as the phrase goes. He is a wayfarer and a pilgrim.
Thus, Percy believes that to embrace modern liberalism and its politics is to imbibe the Gnosticism of our age. As Schall contends, Percy frankly satirizes any promises of a blithe autonomy that frees us from the nitty-gritty particularities of intersubjective life among people who share our pilgrim status.
A second grouping of critics forthrightly addresses Percy’s musings on the American dream. Elizabeth Amato’s essay on “the pursuit of happiness” explores Percy’s critique of the self-forgetfulness that the American dream often inspires. Amato undertakes keen readings of The Moviegoer, Lost in the Cosmos, and The Thanatos Syndrome (1987) in her explication of one of Percy’s most provocative insights.
Remarkably, he sees our unhappiness not as something to be gotten rid of, but rather as a fact of human existence that might prompt us to consider, as Amato puts it, “what our lingering discontent may indicate about ourselves.” The liberal pursuit of happiness, she continues, “does not properly understand the human being as a needy, dependent being who, above all, needs other people to live well.” Amato shows how Percy, albeit often through negative examples, insists upon a true community that might nurture authentic human flourishing while still embracing our pilgrim predicament.
Usefully building upon Amato’s clear-sighted discussion is Richard Reinsch’s consideration of marriage in Love in the Ruins (1971) and The Second Coming (1980). Marriage is foundational to Percy’s social ethics. Indeed, as Reinsch rightly recognizes, many of Percy’s novels achieve hopeful resolution only as they recover the healthful practice of married life. This sacred relation provides perhaps the best antidote to the dissatisfaction and death-dealing that are endemic to the “theorist-consumer” role that this age foists upon us.
Beyond his thematic analysis of the novels, Reinsch also argues for Percy’s political relevance even in our own vexing times, especially in light of our current national conversation on marriage. Given the South’s enduring social conservatism in favor of traditional marriage and family, Reinsch suggests that the region’s religious folk (both Protestant and Catholic) might yet have a role to play in helping the rest of the country to recover the “twofold love between man and God and husband and wife” that Percy celebrates.
I applaud Reinsch’s optimism, but only as it is tempered with Flannery O’Connor’s insight that while “the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.” O’Connor well instructs us. Nearly every happy marriage in Percy’s novels (Binx and Kate, Tom and Ellen, Will and Allie) appears exceptional, even in the South. And among these unions, only the marriage of Will and Allie inspires hope that they will prove truly capable of restoring each other and their neighbors to a polis that reflects Biblical values. Whatever aspirations we have for realizing the Biblical beloved community and offering a winsome Southern witness to its viability, we may not be able to hope for more than what Percy dares to dramatize in the lives of his most redemptive characters.
Finally, for those of us who come to Percy chiefly because of our love of literature (more so than politics), a couple of essays address Percy’s novels via a more forthright focus on literary history and analysis. Chief among these is Farrell O’Gorman’s very fine chapter on Lancelot (1977). In “Confessing the Horrors of Radical Individualism in Lancelot: Percy, Dostoevsky, and Poe,” O’Gorman situates the author within two disparate veins of the Western philosophical tradition (scientific humanism and romantic idealism) with particular attention to literary genre.
In his essay on Herman Melville and the writer’s craft, Percy once said “there’s no occupation in the universe that is lonelier and that at the same time depends more radically on a . . . commonwealth of other writers.” For O’Gorman, this provides the impetus for discovering in Lancelot what he calls a “problematically” confessional mode that partakes of Dostoevsky’s romantic alienation and Poe’s Gothic despair. In Dostoevsky and Poe alike, such a manner of confession is unwittingly aided and abetted, suggests O’Gorman, by the Protestant Reformation’s promise of autonomy and liberation from a medieval (Catholic) past.
O’Gorman is most persuasive in demonstrating Percy’s debt to Poe. That Percy alludes to Poe’s stories throughout the novel is obvious, but O’Gorman deftly uses these congruities to elucidate the prodigious negativity that distinguishes Lancelot Lamar among all of Percy’s characters. More importantly, O’Gorman also explains how Percy reconfigures the idea of confession. Lance Lamar’s only hope of recovering from the solipsism of his murderous and tormented self, says O’Gorman, is to reach beyond the radical autonomy so celebrated by Enlightenment liberalism and romantic self-reliance alike. As he seeks to connect with his fellow inmate, Percival, Lance must risk a sacramental confession that might just unite him with the communion of saints.
This collection of essays reminds me of a number of conferences dedicated to Percy’s work that I’ve attended in recent years at Loyola University in New Orleans. To give or listen to a paper at such a gathering is not to participate in the hermeneutics of suspicion. All too often, academicians gather in an atmosphere fraught with prideful cynicism, determined to persuade everyone that their ideas are more compelling than those of the author they’ve (ostensibly) gathered to discuss. Readers of Percy seldom get together for such purposes. In their own delightful way, Percy’s novels and essays offer too much joy and pleasure—even hope—to sustain much academic scorn.
On the contrary, Percy is the kind of writer who inspires in his readers the emergence of their best selves: philosophically sound, persuasively sincere, graciously good-humored. This is not to say that the refreshing and original essays that Smith and Lawler have put together here constitute some sort of uncritical festschrift. However, without apology they give us good cause to be once again impressed by, and thankful for, Walker Percy’s artful and wise oeuvre.
Whatever political questions Percy pursues are never divorced from a sharply drawn contemporary American setting.
Adam Smith, Rationalized
David Conway
H. Collin Messer is Professor of English at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. He is currently working on a book-length study of Walker Percy.
Atticus Finch’s American Stoicism
Peter Augustine Lawler
The American Pursuit of Happiness
Elizabeth Amato
Percy’s novels may have unresolved endings, but all of Percy’s stories end with good news.
Self-Help for Crazed Democratic Souls
James Poulos' Art of Being Free is the kind of self-help book democratic souls really need.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1870
|
__label__wiki
| 0.674177
| 0.674177
|
Databases by Subject Toggle Dropdown
English, Foreign Language, & Humanities
Health & Sports Science Education
Learn about the research databases available at the library.
The A–Z Database List contains our entire suite of research databases, which house peer-reviewed journals, newspapers, magazines, and books.
If you can’t find what you need, please contact the research librarian at dgdavidson@nwosu.edu or 580-327-8572.
A–Z Database List
This dropdown menu contains a complete, alphabetical list of the available databases.
To see a complete description of each database, use this link:
Follow this link to see the complete list of available databases.
Additional Search Tools
Current Events Databases
See a list of research databases containing sources such as newspapers and news blogs.
Multidisciplinary Databases
These databases contain a wide range of subject matter and may be useful for almost any research project.
Looking for a specific journal, magazine, or newspaper title? Search here to find out if NWOSU provides full-text coverage.
These links will take you to the online platforms of our major database providers, from which you can get direct access to their resources.
EBSCOhost is an intuitive online research platform used by thousands of institutions and millions of users worldwide. With quality databases and search features, EBSCOhost helps researchers of all kinds find the information they need fast.
See more info …
See less …
Access to EBSCOhost is a project of the Oklahoma Library Technology Network and is funded with state and federal funds through the Oklahoma Department of Libraries. This link will take you to the complete suite of EBSCO databases available at NWOSU.
Browse all Gale research databases available from your library. Select See more info to learn about these resources.
We subscribe to three Gale databases:
Gale eBooks
Explore this database of encyclopedias and reference sources within the Gale eBooks platform. For multidisciplinary research.
Gale Literary Index
Search this digital master index to find coverage of authors and works in products published by Gale.
Gale Literature Resource Center
Find up-to-date biographies, overviews, full-text criticisms, audio interviews, and reviews on writers from all eras.
To honor our core value of corporate citizenship, Hein offers three of its databases free of charge to its core American and international subscribers, and to the libraries of any other interested organizations or institutions.
This Social Justice Suite contains the following:
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture and Law
This HeinOnline collection brings together a multitude of essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world.
Gun Regulation and Legislation in America
This timely database brings together essential periodicals, compiled legislative histories, CRS reports, Congressional hearings, United States Supreme Court briefs, monographs, and other related materials on the difficult and controversial topic of regulating firearms in the United States.
Civil Rights and Social Justice
HeinOnline’s Civil Rights database brings together a diverse offering of publications covering civil rights in the United States as their legal protections and definitions are expanded to cover more and more Americans.
JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. We subscribe to three multidisciplinary collections through JSTOR . Select See more info to learn about these collections.
We subscribe to three JSTOR collections:
Arts & Sciences 1Ⅰ
Core research and society publications in the represented disciplines (economics, history, political science, & sociology).
Arts & Sciences 12Ⅻ
Extends coverage in the social sciences, focusing on disciplines with high usage and broad appeal across all levels of higher education; education, law, and political science disciplines anchor the collection, and include journals from the American Bar Association, Brill, Lynn Reiner, and Springer.
Merges the Biological Sciences and Health & General Science Collections together into a single multidisciplinary collection; extraordinary depth in the field sciences and coverage in medicine, nursing, epidemiology, and public health.
Put simply, our Mometrix eLibrary delivers the most comprehensive list of study guides and practice questions on the market, all at your fingertips. Mometrix eLibrary is a cloud-based web application that gives your organization access to our entire database of test preparation materials.
Since 2002 , Mometrix has developed and fine-tuned study materials for over 1800 different standardized exams including teacher certification, nursing and medical, college and graduate school admissions, K–12 state standards, professional certification, and many more!
The Mometrix eLibrary includes test-preparation materials for:
ASWB
OGET
OPTE
Open-Access Databases
These scholarly databases are freely available on the internet.
The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. The directory links to thousands of full-text, peer-reviewed books from hundreds of publishers.
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high-quality open-access, peer-reviewed journals.
The DOAJ ( Directory of Open Access Journals ) was launched in 2003 at Lund University, Sweden, with 300 open-access journals. Today, the independent database contains ca. 12,000 open-access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social science, and humanities.
Because this is a directory of peer-reviewed journals freely accessible on the web, the titles cover a wide range of topics; careful searching may be necessary to discover relevant articles.
EBSCO Open Dissertations
EBSCO Open Dissertations now includes the content from American Doctoral Dissertations . It is a free database with records for more than 1.2 million electronic theses and dissertations from around the world.
This new collaboration extends the work started in 2014 , when EBSCO and the H.W. Wilson Foundation created American Doctoral Dissertations , which contained indexing from the H.W. Wilson print publication, Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by American Universities, 1933 – 1955 . In 2015 , the H.W. Wilson Foundation agreed to support the expansion of the scope of the American Doctoral Dissertations database to include records for dissertations and theses from 1955 to the present.
Elsevier Open Access
All articles in open-access journals which are published by Elsevier have undergone peer review and upon acceptance are immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download.
Published articles :
Are fully peer-reviewed
Are immediately free to access and download from ScienceDirect
Permitted re-use defined by the author’s choice of Creative Commons user licenses
Published with CrossMark to maintain the publication record
Project Euclid Open Access
Project Euclid ’s mission is to provide powerful, low-cost online hosting and publishing services for theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics scholarship worldwide.
Project Euclid was developed and deployed by the Cornell University Library, with start-up funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and is now jointly managed by the Cornell Library and Duke University Press. It was originally created to provide a platform for small, scholarly publishers of mathematics and statistics journals to move from print to electronic in a cost-effective way.
Through a combination of support by subscribing libraries and participating publishers, over 70% of the journal articles hosted on Project Euclid are openly available. As of 2018 , Project Euclid hosts 1.8 million pages of open-access content.
Project MUSE Open Access
Project MUSE offers complete, full-text versions of scholarly journals and books from many of the world’s leading university presses and scholarly societies.
Project MUSE offers open-access (OA) books and journals from several distinguished university presses and scholarly societies. Through our open-access hosting programs, we are able to offer publishers a platform for their OA content, which ensures visibility, discoverability, and wide dissemination. These books and journals are freely available to libraries and users around the world.
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Open
PQDT Open provides the full text of open-access dissertations and theses free of charge.
You can quickly and easily locate dissertations and theses relevant to your discipline and view the complete text in PDF format.
PubMed Central ( PMC ) is a free, full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM). In keeping with NLM’s legislative mandate to collect and preserve the biomedical literature, PMC serves as a digital counterpart to NLM’s extensive print journal collection.
Since its inception in 2000 , PMC has grown from comprising only two journals, PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Molecular Biology of the Cell , to an archive of articles from thousands of journals.
Today, PMC contains more than 6 million full-text records spanning several centuries of biomedical and life science research (late 1700s to present).
Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process. Retraction Watch is an open-access database of peer-reviewed articles that have been retracted, or about which concern has been formally expressed. Database entries contain citation information, the article’s current status, and the reasons why the article has been retracted or is considered questionable.
In addition to the database, Retraction Watch maintains a blog of news stories about prominent retractions.
These research databases contain full-text reference works.
Their content includes encyclopedias and specialized dictionaries but may also include journal articles and other sources.
Consumer Health Reference eBook Collection
This ebook reference collection offers a rich selection of eBook titles covering a broad range of general health topics including cancer and diabetes; weight management and exercise; allergies; senior care; social–emotional health; developmental disorders; and natural health.
Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia
For students and adults alike, the Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia database indexes over 25,000 records, covering an array of topics.
Full text for each record may be easily accessed by double-clicking on the topic from the display. The database contains various images and offers brief biographies as well as information in a variety of subject areas. This database is updated annually.
Gale eBooks is a database of encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.
In addition to full-text short stories, plays, poems, and articles on literature, the Gale Literature Resource Center offers access to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature .
The resource provides researchers with unbounding literary resources to support their literary responses, literary analysis, and thesis statements through a diversity of scholars and critics that ensure all views and interpretations are represented.
Researchers can find up-to-date analysis, biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism, and reviews on more than 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods, and from around the world. Gale Literature Resource Center brings together materials that support interdisciplinary approaches, information literacy, and the development of critical-thinking skills. Researchers with a literature, history, arts, gender-studies, or cultural-studies focus can use this resource to analyze authors and works throughout time.
Hobbies & Crafts Reference Center
Intended for public libraries, this database dedicated to home improvement and repair includes full-text reference works.
Including full text for more than 740 magazines and books as well as access to more than 720 videos and over 140 hobby reports, this database offers detailed ‘how-to’ instructions and creative ideas to meet the interests of virtually every hobby enthusiast. Subject areas include arts & crafts; collecting; games & electronics; model building; home & leisure; needlework; outdoors & nature; and scrapbooking & papercraft. The database also features extensive information on over 140 topics. Hobbies & Crafts Reference Center provides full text from the leading hobby and craft magazines, including Bead & Button , Birder’s World , Creative Knitting , FineScale Modeler , PaperWorks , Scrapbooking , Quilter’s World , and many more.
Home Improvement Reference Center
The main navigation will direct researchers to high-quality repair information. Thousands of repairs will be available in the areas of outdoor projects, electrical projects, remodeling projects, plumbing projects, wood projects, decorating projects, and maintenance. In addition to the repair information, other magazines and reference books focusing on home improvement will be included in the database. The intent of this new product is to provide full-text articles that show instructions, tips, and suggestions for a variety of home-improvement projects.
Legal Information Reference Center
In addition to 225 full-text journals, this database features full-text legal reference books from the organization Nolo.
A majority of the full-text legal reference books are provided through Nolo, the nation’s oldest and most respected provider of legal information for consumers and small businesses. This database will offer the everyday user the necessary tools and detailed ‘how-to’ instructions to independently address a wide range of legal issues including business law, financial planning, family law, property & real estate, and rights & disputes.
MAS Complete
Although designed for high schools, MAS Complete includes the contents of 440 full-text reference books that may be useful for beginning research or quick overviews of subjects.
MAS Complete also provides more than 440 full-text reference books, 85,670 biographies, 105,786 primary-source documents, and an image collection of over 502,000 photos, maps, and flags, color PDFs, and expanded full-text backfiles (back to 1975 ) for key magazines.
MAS Reference eBook Collection
This eBook reference collection offers a rich selection of eBook titles covering a broad range of general reference subjects for high-school students.
Topics include biography, history, careers, language arts, literature, government, health, math, science, current events, and social–emotional health.
Designed for public libraries, MasterFILE Premier includes the full text of 500 reference books that may be useful for general information or beginning research.
This database also contains full text for nearly 500 reference books and over 164,400 primary source documents, as well as an image collection of over 502,000 photos, maps, & flags. MasterFILE Premier offers PDF backfiles (as far back as 1975 ) for key publications including American Libraries , Foreign Affairs , History Today , Judaism , Library Journal , National Review , Saturday Evening Post , etc.
MasterFILE Reference eBook Collection
This eBook reference collection offers a rich selection of eBook titles covering a broad range of general reference subjects.
Topics include biography, history, careers, cooking, literature, genealogy, health, parenting, personal finance, politics, architecture, science, current events, social–emotional health, sports, and travel.
Middle Search Reference eBook Collection
This eBook reference collection offers a rich selection of eBook titles covering a broad range of general reference subjects for middle-school students. Topics include social studies, math, history, language arts, technology, geography, culture, and science.
Oxford English Dictionary Online
The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words—past and present—from across the English-speaking world.
As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from dictionaries of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings. You’ll still find present-day meanings in the OED , but you’ll also find the history of individual words, and of the language—traced through three million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.
Poetry & Short Story Reference Center
In addition to full-text stories and poems as well as critical essays, this database contains articles from reference works on poetry and literature.
This multifaceted database incorporates information from major respected reference works, books, and literary journals as well as proprietary content from EBSCO Publishing, and includes hundreds of thousands of full-text poems and tens of thousands of short stories ranging in period from antiquity to the present. The most studied poems are supplemented with indexing covering subject, poetic forms, poetic themes, techniques, and literary periods, schools, and movements.
Primary Search Reference eBook Collection
This eBook reference collection offers a rich selection of eBook titles covering a broad range of general reference subjects for primary-school students. Topics include social studies, history, language arts, geography, culture, math, and science.
Small Business Reference Center
This databases contains over 450 reference books related to business.
The database contains nearly 400 full-text periodicals and over 450 full-text reference books. The user-friendly interface guides through small business and entrepreneurial subject areas, common business types, and a help-and-advice section, and it provides information on how to create business plans that lead to successful funding. Business videos provide critical information for business owners: Interviews, ‘lessons-learned’ features, lectures, and ‘how-to’ videos help foster success in all aspects of managing a business. A collection of state-specific resources supports the researcher with demographic data and other local information. The Small Business Reference Center is updated daily.
URL: https://library.nwosu.edu/research-databases
Tags: articles, databases, eBooks, EBSCO, Gale, HeinOnline, JSTOR, peer review
Featured Databases
Downloading eBooks?
eBook Help Page
Tips on downloading eBooks from our library catalog, EBSCOhost, Gale eBooks, and more.
Useful eBooks
The Invisible Web by Chris Sherman; Gary Price
Only 16 percent of net-based information can be located using a general search engine. The other 84 percent is what is referred to as the invisible web, made up of information stored in databases. Unlike pages on the visible web, information in databases is generally inaccessible to the software spiders and crawlers that compile search-engine indexes. … The tips provided in this resource will ensure that those databases are exposed and Net-based research will be conducted in the most thorough and effective manner.
Alternate EBSCO Interfaces
EBSCOhost offers a variety of interfaces appropriate to different subjects.
Below are all of the interfaces, some with their own unique databases, available to Oklahoma libraries courtesy of the Oklahoma Digital Prairie Project.
Research Librarian
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1880
|
__label__wiki
| 0.548309
| 0.548309
|
Tag Archives: sign singing
Oh Andy!
Posted by Karen Lloyd AM in Culture and deaf
allies, Andy Dexterity, Auslan, communication, cultural appropriation, culture, Deaf community, sign language, sign singing, The Voice TV
I don’t watch Channel 9’s ‘The Voice’. I’m deaf and it has no interest for me. But last Sunday night I watched it because in the past few weeks there’s been so much controversy in the deaf community about Andy Dexterity’s plan to perform using Auslan. I wanted to see for myself what all the fuss is about.
I knew nothing much about Andy Dexterity. I had no idea what he even looked like until I watched ‘The Voice’. Having watched him, it was easy to decide he isn’t someone I have any interest in. But equally, I don’t wish him any ill.
Andy obviously isn’t a natural or proficient signer and he isn’t deaf. So the question is, why is he performing on national television using Auslan, and why is he claiming to give a voice to deaf people?
Auslan has a high profile at the moment. It’s a good time to be cashing in on it. The summer bushfires and COVID, with all their televised press conferences where Auslan interpreters stood beside the Prime Minister, Premiers and experts, brought it into everyone’s lounge room. People have been grateful, they’ve cheered, been curious, expressed a desire to learn it, made fun of it, dismissed it, but whatever their reaction, they’ve noticed it.
For deaf people, Auslan is vital, it’s at the core of our community, it is cherished by those of us who use it in our everyday lives. For a long time it was an underground language, forbidden, hidden. It wasn’t called Auslan until the 1980s when Trevor Johnston, a CODA (hearing Child of Deaf Adults), fluent Auslan user and linguist formally studied it for his PhD, named it, compiled a dictionary of it and proved it is a bona fide language. His work has been liberating for deaf people.
Since then, Auslan has come steadily into the light and many hearing people have learned it. Most only learn it for fun, but some go on to fluency and become interpreters or allies for the deaf community. Whether they are born into the deaf community and acquire Auslan as their first language or whether they learn it and join the deaf community later, hearing people who use Auslan in a respectful way are highly valued in the deaf community.
But there are cowboys: hearing people who learn some Auslan, see its potential, and appropriate it for themselves and their own benefit, while claiming to be helping deaf people. This is cultural appropriation. Andy Dexterity is one of those. There are many others, and from time to time, in Australia and overseas, they come under scrutiny, but at the moment it’s Andy in the spotlight. And many people in the deaf community are furious.
Social media has been awash with attacks on him, to the point of vilification. It seems Andy first came to the deaf community’s notice in 2017. He does have some friends in the deaf community, and he did initially try to learn from deaf people and improve his signing. Deaf Australia saw potential in him and because of his high profile in the mainstream invited him to be an Ambassador for Deaf Australia, raising awareness about Auslan and the deaf community. But a lot of deaf people didn’t like him and he was roundly criticised. Some deaf people have continued to work with him, but it seems that the criticism of him over the past few years has been so ferocious he has stopped listening to it. Many deaf people are now frustrated that he won’t talk to them or listen to them.
They are angry because we are fiercely protective of Auslan. It is the language of our community, the language most accessible to deaf people. It opens up our life, gives us access to pretty much everything. Generations of deaf children have suffered because we were forbidden to use it. Even today, hearing ‘experts’, usually doctors, audiologists and speech pathologists, routinely discourage parents of deaf children from using Auslan. Among the many falsehoods parents are told is that signing will interfere with learning speech. The advice from most deaf people is: give them both Auslan and speech from the beginning.
They are angry because Auslan is a beautiful language and an incompetent Auslan user is mangling it in public. It’s painful for fluent Auslan users to watch this. Now that Auslan is coming out into the light, we want hearing people to learn it but we want them to use it respectfully. It’s painful when hearing people treat it as some cute plaything, change it to suit themselves, butcher it and make it ugly or silly. It’s one thing for deaf people to teach a hearing person to use Auslan; we will be patient and tolerant of mangled signs. But if that person then goes out and purports to be an accomplished Auslan user before they are, and an authority on deaf people without first establishing their credibility, it’s infuriating and insulting.
They are angry because Andy is sign singing and he’s doing it badly. On his first appearance on ‘The Voice’, he signed the first verse of ‘Imagine’, but many of his signs were incomprehensible or strange. In the second verse he sang in English and signed some words in Auslan at the same time. English and Auslan are two different languages. Trying to use them both at the same time doesn’t work, and it’s always Auslan that suffers. When it’s done well, sign singing can be very beautiful. We have plenty of talented deaf people who can sign sing beautifully. We don’t need incompetent Auslan users to sign sing. We especially don’t need them to do it on national television.
They are angry because Andy is claiming to speak for us, to give us a voice. I have a voice, and so do other deaf people, we use speech and we use Auslan and interpreters. We don’t need Andy, or anyone else, to be our voice. We especially don’t need a hearing person, who knows little about us, to spread misinformation about us on national television, to patronise us, talk about us as if we are ‘poor little deaf people who don’t have a voice’.
Deaf people are marginalised and we do need allies. But Andy is not behaving like an ally. An ally is a person who understands us, shows respect, and walks beside us, helps us to make our voices heard. An ally does not take all the attention for themselves and claim to be our voice, an ally brings us into the spotlight with them.
In a way, Andy has tried. And some deaf people have tried to help him do better. For ‘The Voice’ he had a deaf Auslan consultant, Sue, who helped him with his signing. She was seen backstage on Sunday night. I didn’t see Andy acknowledge or introduce her, but we don’t know everything he did or said – TV programs never broadcast everything that’s filmed so we only saw what ‘The Voice’ chose to broadcast.
There is no black and white way to interpret English into Auslan. Songs in particular can be, and are, interpreted in many different ways by different people. And we don’t know how much of Andy’s signing was edited out and what impact this had on what we saw on TV. Film/video editors who aren’t themselves fluent in Auslan can easily mangle it. This is why credible Auslan video producers who aren’t fluent in Auslan use Auslan consultants for both filming and editing. We don’t know if ‘The Voice’ did this, we only know a deaf Auslan consultant worked with Andy on his signing.
And we don’t know if Andy gets any better as ‘The Voice’ progresses. He isn’t finished on ‘The Voice’ yet. All the criticism and anger on social media, and now being picked up by the mainstream media, is actually achieving more attention for ‘The Voice’ and Andy. It is making Andy more famous!
Sue appears to have tried to do the right thing and support Andy to be better at Auslan. All the criticism of him must be devastating for her because it can be seen as criticism of her as well. Sue has also been an Auslan consultant with Emma Watkins (Emma Wiggles) but the deaf community seems to like Emma’s use of Auslan.
There’s another aspect too that I think we need to consider. When people have complained that Andy won’t talk to or work with the deaf community, are they saying that Sue isn’t a member of the deaf community? How hurtful that must be for her and others who have tried to help Andy! What do they mean by ‘the deaf community’? Do they mean themselves? But it’s not just the most publicly vocal or the most Auslan-fluent of us who are ‘the deaf community’. Surely all of us who sign, respect Auslan and identify with the deaf community are ‘the deaf community’. But no one does or even can consult with everyone, or even the majority, in the deaf community.
How do we decide who should be consulted in these situations? There are guidelines on how to identify who is an ‘acceptable’ Auslan consultant, contained in the English to Auslan Video Production guidelines developed by Melbourne Polytechnic and Macquarie University in 2015 (1). The first requirement is ‘a proficient Auslan signer’. But there is no definition of what ‘proficient’ means.
Andy does need to try harder, do better. If he truly wants to be an ally for deaf people, rather than indulging in cultural appropriation and keeping the attention and the benefit for himself, he would do better to work side by side with one of our many accomplished Auslan performers, himself singing in English and his deaf performance partner signing in Auslan. And rather than talking for deaf people, he would do well to show respect and defer to his deaf performance partner to discuss Auslan and deaf people. But again, we don’t know how much of what Andy has done on ‘The Voice’ has been edited out. We don’t know if he wanted to have a deaf Auslan performer with him and ‘The Voice’ wouldn’t allow it.
We in the deaf community also need to think about and discuss some things among ourselves and we need to do some things better.
How effective is it to constantly criticise? What do we do when people continually criticise us? We turn away from them. If Andy ever wanted to be an ally – and it’s possible that in the beginning, he did – he has been criticised so relentlessly and so publicly he turned away from most of us some time ago. Is that really surprising?
Andy is one person. One cowboy. There are plenty of others. There are plenty of videos out there of incompetent signers sign singing badly, ‘teaching’ Auslan and other sign languages badly. Why are we giving so much attention to Andy? There are so many other important issues that need our attention. Why are we expending so much time and energy on just one person?
I do think that Deaf Australia made a mistake asking Andy, back in 2014, to be an Ambassador for them. I expect they had faith in his ability and passion to raise awareness of the organisation and Auslan, and in a way he is doing that: hearing people who aren’t familiar with Auslan don’t know he’s mangling it. If some of them then go and learn Auslan they will find out, but would they have bothered to learn if Andy hadn’t exposed them to it? Deaf Australia couldn’t have known he would go rogue. But now that he has, and even though, since December 2019, he is no longer a Deaf Australia Ambassador, I think they do need to do more to distance themselves from him.
I was actively involved with Deaf Australia for 25 years until I retired in 2014, I still help out sometimes behind the scenes, and I’m very loyal to Deaf Australia, I believe we need this organisation. But Deaf Australia, and people involved in it, do make mistakes sometimes. We all do.
Admitting our mistakes, cutting our losses and moving on is important for all of us. So is forgiveness. The deaf community can be very unforgiving. Not just to outsiders but to our own. Someone makes a mistake and some people hate them forever, for them it wipes out all the good things this someone does. Is this reasonable? Does it really help us?
Deaf Australia and many of our leaders suffer because of this. It probably scares off potentially great leaders. This inability to forgive makes it so much harder for leaders and organisations like Deaf Australia to cut through when people in the community won’t listen to what they say or do, with an open and objective mind and work with them to make things better. So we all suffer collectively from a lack of support for our leaders and organisations. There are many layers to this. Some of them, for example, our history and experiences that make us angry, are easy to understand; some we need to explore further.
We need to think about this situation with Andy from many different perspectives. There is our own, the anger and disappointment. There are others. What is all this anger doing to the people who do want to be allies? Is it scaring them off? Does it make them afraid to get involved with us because we might criticise them too, refuse to forgive when they make mistakes? Are we scaring away hearing parents who are thinking about learning Auslan and letting their deaf children be part of the deaf community? Will they want their children to be involved in a community that behaves like this? Even I feel a little nervous writing this: will other deaf people attack me for questioning them, for asking them to think about these things?
As Gandhi is supposed to have said (but apparently didn’t): We need to be the change we want to see in the world.
We need to show people what good Auslan looks like, how we want to be portrayed.
We need to support our deaf Auslan performers in any way we can, to get out there and be seen. When we think they could do better, we need to encourage and support instead of criticise.
We need to provide a framework for people who work in the Auslan space. As mentioned, there are guidelines for who is an ‘acceptable’ Auslan consultant. We also need Auslan proficiency testing; and something similar to the interpreters’ NAATI accreditation system so that people not fluent in Auslan will know what is good Auslan and whether they should use particular materials or advisers. And maybe other things. But who should develop these things? The deaf community of course, but who in the deaf community?
In the past, Deaf Australia tried, within its limited resources, to do some of this, with their Auslan Endorsement System and their Deaf Friendly Scheme. But many deaf people didn’t like either of these frameworks so they haven’t taken off. If deaf people don’t like what Deaf Australia has tried to do, what kind of framework do we want to address these issues? And if they don’t want Deaf Australia to do this type of thing, who do we want to do it? How should we decide who should do this?
What’s happening with Andy is not new. It’s happened before with other people who have appropriated Auslan and used it badly and it will happen again unless we decide on a different approach. Anger and criticism, while understandable, hasn’t worked and usually doesn’t with most things. Let’s learn from this experience with Andy and respond to it differently next time.
Let’s all take a deep breath and think about the bigger picture. We are living in a time of transformation. It’s a time to do things differently.
What’s really important? What do we really want? How can we get there? What do we want for our community? What do we want Deaf Australia to be and do? How can we support Deaf Australia to do what we want it to do? Do we want to kill off Deaf Australia and set up a completely different organisation? What kind of organisation? How can we support our leaders and encourage more people to become allies? How can we make them feel welcome and appreciated when they try? How can we encourage and support them to be better? Our leaders, our allies, our organisations, our community are what we make them, what we build them up to be.
We can do this! We need to stop putting so much of our energy into fighting with outsiders and with each other and we need to work better together. We can do it!
Auslan translation by Robert Adam:
https://accan.org.au/files/Grants/English-into-AuslanTranslationGuidelines_Web.pdf p9.
Grateful thanks to those deaf people who gave me constructive feedback on early versions of this blogpost, and to Robert Adam, who did the Auslan translation, and Colin Allen for video editing.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1881
|
__label__cc
| 0.507227
| 0.492773
|
Ozone Treaties ‘Inspiring Examples’ Of Political Will, UN Chief Says On International Day
By: UN News
Found high up in the atmosphere, the ozone layer shields Earth from Sun’s harmful UV-B rays. Photo: UNEP
The United Nations commemorated the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, on Wednesday, recognizing the success of landmark global agreements in helping restore the protective layer around Earth.
In a message, UN Secretary-General António Guterres applauded the 1985 Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, its Montreal Protocol, and the Protocol’s Kigali Amendment.
“The ozone treaties stand out as inspiring examples that show that, where political will prevails, there is little limit to what we can achieve in common cause,” he said.“Let us take encouragement from how we have worked together to preserve the ozone layer and apply the same will to healing the planet and forging a brighter and more equitable future for all humanity.”
Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic and its devastating socio-economic impacts, the Secretary-General urged efforts to build stronger and resilient societies.
“As we look ahead to global recovery from the social and economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we must commit to building stronger and more resilient societies,” said Mr. Guterres.
“It is imperative that we put our efforts and investments into tackling climate change and protecting nature and the ecosystems that sustain us,” he added.
The Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, which celebrates its thirty-fifth anniversary this year, was the first step in fixing the hole in the planet’s ozone layer. In 1987, countries adopted the Convention’s Montreal Protocol, committing to replace gases used in aerosols and cooling appliances that were causing the hole. So far, about 99 per cent of these gases have been replaced, helping the ozone layer heal.
But the work of the Montreal Protocol is not over, said Mr. Guterres
“Through the Protocol’s Kigali Amendment, the international community is finding alternatives for coolants that contribute to the growing menace of climate disruption,” he continued, adding,
“If fully implemented, the Kigali Amendment can prevent 0.4 degrees Celsius of global warming. I congratulate the 100 Parties that have been leading by example,” added Mr. Guterres.What is ozone?
Ozone is a special form of oxygen with the chemical formula O3. The oxygen we breathe and that is so vital to life on earth is O2.
Most ozone resides high up in the atmosphere, between 10-40 kilometres (about 6-25 miles) above Earth’s surface. This region is called the stratosphere and it contains about 90 per cent of all the ozone in the atmosphere.
Though it constitutes a very small part of the atmosphere, ozone’s presence is vital for life on Earth, as it shields the planet from Sun’s biologically harmful ultraviolet UV-B radiation.The International Day
In 1994, the UN General Assembly proclaimed 16 September the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, commemorating the date of the signing, in 1987, of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
The 2020 theme for the International Day, “Ozone for life”, is a reminder that not only is ozone crucial for life on Earth, but that we must continue to protect the ozone layer for future generations.
By: Gordon Campbell
H ong Kong and Washington DC. On the same morning, the tyrants in power in Beijing and their counterpart in the White House have shown how they refuse to accept the legitimacy of any different points of view, and the prospect of losing power. The ...
Guterres To Seek Second Five-year Term As UN Secretary-General
By: United Nations
António Guterres confirmed on Monday that he will be seeking a second five-year term as UN Secretary-General, which would begin in January 2022. <img src="https://img.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/2101/8264df571a08913567bd.jpeg" width="720" height="432"> Briefing correspondents at UN ...
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1882
|
__label__wiki
| 0.86275
| 0.86275
|
Eying White House, Jindal says America needs spiritual revival
Indian-American Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has called for a “spiritual revival” to “fix” the ailments plaguing America as the rising Republican star courted Christian conservatives in advance of a possible presidential run in 2016 to succeed incumbent Barack Obama.
In a 15-minute speech at a controversial Christian evangelical rally, Jindal said: “We can’t just elect a candidate to fix what ails our country. We can’t just pass a law and fix what ails our country,” he said in Baton Rouge, capital of the US state of Louisiana.
“We need a spiritual revival to fix what ails our country,” Jindal, the 43-year-old leader, said while skipping an Iowa event yesterday that drew a number of Republican presidential hopefuls for the White House.
Jindal, who was raised by Hindu parents, described his conversion to Catholicism in high school, though the self- described “evangelical Catholic” did not reference his denomination as he spoke to the crowd of mostly evangelical Protestants.
Jindal also recalled a girl in high school who said she wanted to grow up to be a Supreme Court justice, so she could “save innocent human lives” from abortion.
It was his second major speech in a week to touch on religion. In London on Monday, he told an Anglo-American think-thank Muslims had established “no-go zones” in a number of European cities. Those comments attracted criticism, though Jindal refused to back down.
Jindal had insisted the day-long evangelical event hosted by the American Family Association on the campus of Louisiana State University was a religious and not political gathering.
But Jindal’s keynote address at the event came as he has been courting Christian conservatives in advance of a possible run for president, meeting with pastors in the early battleground states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Former Texas governor Rick Perry hosted the same event, known as “The Response,” in 2011, just before announcing he was running for president, The Washington Post noted.
“Let’s all go plant those seeds of the gospel,” he said, describing how his conversion would not have occurred without the influence of his friends. “Share the good news with all whom we encounter.”
Comments Off on Eying White House, Jindal says America needs spiritual revival
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II is now the world’s oldest monarch
London : Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II is now the world’s oldest monarch following the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Abdullah (90), who passed away on Friday, was two years older than the Queen, who will be 89 in April this year.
She is one of the eight octogenarian monarchs in the world, the others including the King of Thailand and the Emperor of Japan.
An anecdote has also emerged on Twitter about the Queen’s interaction with the former Saudi monarch based on the memoirs of former Saudi ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles.
It refers to a visit to the Queen’s Balmoral Castle in Scotland in 1998 when she offered to show the then Crown Prince Abdullah around her Scottish Estate.
“To his surprise, the Queen climbed into the driving seat, turned the ignition and drove off. Women are not — yet — allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, and Abdullah was not used to being driven by a woman, let alone a Queen,” Cowper-Coles writes.
“His nervousness only increased as the Queen, an Army driver in wartime, accelerated the Land Rover along the narrow Scottish estate roads, talking all the time. Through his interpreter, the Crown Prince implored the Queen to slow down and concentrate on the road ahead,” it adds.
The Queen is also the second-longest reigning monarch in British history, behind her great-great grandmother Queen Victoria, whose record she is due to surpass in September 2015.
Comments Off on Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II is now the world’s oldest monarch
Lanka Recalls 29 ‘Political’ Ambassadors
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka has recalled 29 non-foreign service envoys in order to lessen the politicization of its diplomatic corps at the top level.
Thirty five out of the country’s 65 missions overseas have been under non-foreign service envoys, many of whom being relatives or supporters of politicians, including former President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
They had been appointed without tests or examinations only to serve the political constituencies or the families of the powers-that-be.
Delhi Untouched
However, the envoys in New Delhi and Washington have been left untouched in the current shake-up. While the Lankan Ambassador in Washington, Prasad Kariyawasam, is a retired career diplomat, and is not an outsider as such, the High Commissioner in India, Prof Sudarshan Seneviratne, is expected to continue at his post at least until the completion of two high-level visits in February-March. President Sirisena is to visit India in February, and Prime Minister Narendera Modi is to come to Sri Lanka in March.
Prof Seneviratne and some others could even stay on for a long period because the Lankan government is not thinking of doing away with the practice of appointing non-foreign service persons lock, stock and barrel.
The earlier norm was to give 60 per cent of the posts to career diplomats and 40 per cent to others. The Sirisena government has raised the career diplomats’ share to 70 per cent. This is in reaction to the excessive recruitment of non-foreign service people during the Rajapaksa regime.
At the end of Rajapaksa’s nine year rule, 54 per cent of the envoys were non-career diplomats, a very high share even by the Lankan yardsticks.
Comments Off on Lanka Recalls 29 ‘Political’ Ambassadors
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1887
|
__label__wiki
| 0.601261
| 0.601261
|
Beechcraft Logo Women's T-Shirt
5.4 OZ. RINGSPUN GARMENT-DYED CREW NECK T-SHIRT
100% ringspun cotton
1/2" ribbed collar with double-needle topstitched Crew neckline
Beechcraft was founded in 1932 by husband and wife team Walter and Olive Ann Beech in Wichita, Kansas. The Beech‘s along with designer Ted Wells began working out of an idle Cessna factory, developing the Model 17 Staggerwing. The Staggerwing would have a production run of over 750 planes, including 270 made for the United States Air Forces during WWII. Other popular models included the Model 18 and the revolutionary v-tailed Beechcraft Bonanza, which has been produced since 1947, giving it the longest production run of any airplane in history. The fourth Bonanza ever built, called the ‘Waikiki Beech‘ set a non-stop distance record in 1949, flying from Honolulu, Hawaii to Teterboro, New Jersey. Beechcraft was acquired by the Raytheon Company in 1980, and continued to change hands over the next few decades. Beechcraft is now owned by Textron who also controls several other aviation names such as Cessna and Bell Helicopter.
You're reviewing:Beechcraft Logo Women's T-Shirt
Plastic Fantastic Surf Team T-Shirt
Endless Summer Men's Zip Hoodie
Aloha Airlines Funbirds 1966 Men's T-Shirt
Road to Hana Magnet
War Bonds Metal Sign
Stubbies Logo Men's T-Shirt
Hawaiian Masters Men's Long Sleeve T-Shirt
100% Cotton Black Face Mask
Pan Am Clipper Poster
Hawaiian Billfish Series Men's T-Shirt
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1889
|
__label__cc
| 0.636141
| 0.363859
|
Crafting Design in Italy, by Catharine Rossi
There are some periods in the history of design that rarely seem to escape the academic or public spotlight: be it the Arts & Crafts movement, the Bauhaus or Postmodernism. I’d add another one: Italy’s post-war design culture. From the 1940s to the 1980s designers such as Vico Magistretti, Gio Ponti and Ettore Sottsass created desirable and progressive designs admired by critics and consumers alike, and which aided Italy’s post-war resurrection and modernisation.
That’s how the story of Italian design goes anyway, retold in multiple books, exhibitions and magazines. Arguably Crafting Design in Italy: from Postwar to Postmodernism, published by MUP in 2015, only adds to this bevvy of writing. But in writing the book I wanted to argue that this story is incomplete, and that a key factor has been left out of these repeated retellings: craft.
The underside of the Casablanca, designed by Ettore Sottsass in 1981, photographed in the Vitra Design Museum, showing the construction of the sideboard. Image taken by Catharine Rossi
Crafting Design in Italy is the first book to examine craft’s overlooked but central place in the history of Italian design. Based on research conducted for a AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award at the Royal College of Art and V&A Museum, I argue that craft – multiply conceived as a method of making, a series of disciplines and traditions, as well as a series of concepts such as skill, amateurism and luxury – was fundamental to the design, production, mediation and consumption of Italy’s post-war design culture.
Writing the book offered the opportunity to explore people, places and objects left out in existing narratives of Italian design history, as well as provide re-readings of well-known design objects. This included scrutinising the craft origins of design “icons” such as Gio Ponti’s celebrated Superleggera chair (1957) and looking again at Memphis, the loud, brash design collective whose 1981 launch signalled the arrival of an identifiable postmodern design style. While Memphis aimed to reject the craft foundations of post-war Italian design, it was deeply dependent on this wealth of skills and traditions for its production; a complex relationship of contingency and negation that has defined much of design’s relationship with craft in Italy and elsewhere.
In the conclusion I described how I hoped the book would offer arguments around the relationship between design and craft relevant to other contexts and time periods. This includes the current popularity of craft amongst designers today, such as the Sardinian-born duo Formafantasma. This statement led to exploring Formafantasma’s manual-based material experimentation in projects such as Botanica (2010) in the article “Bricolage, Hybridity, Circularity: Crafting Production Strategies in Critical and Conceptual Design”, which I published in Design and Culture (2013) during the book’s development.
Academic books take a long time to put together and can be slow burners: I think that interest in the book and its arguments has only grown following its publication two years ago. Since starting the book I’ve mobilised the craft-based approach to examine other overlooked stories in Italian design. This has included The Italian Avant-Garde (Sternberg Press, 2013) which I co-edited with Alex Coles, which sought to revisit Italy’s mythologised Radical Design movement, and which in turn sparked a curatorial interest in Italy’s post-war discotheque phenomenon, another previously unknown but fascinating chapter in this compelling period. Most recently I authored a chapter on Sottsass’s journeys to California and South East Asia in the early 1960s for the exhibition catalogue Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia, edited by Andrew Blauvelt (Walker Art Center, 2015). His travels had informed works such as his primitivist Ceramiche della tenebre (1962) and Offerta a Shiva (1963) ceramics, which I first discussed in Crafting Design in Italy.
Crafting Des ign in Italy has been the fulcrum of much of my ongoing research in Italy’s fascinating, and multi-faceted, post-war design culture, and I am hugely grateful to Manchester University Press for publishing and continuing to support the book.
Read a sample chapter.
By Bethan Hirst
Category: Art History, Design, material culture 0 Comments.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1890
|
__label__cc
| 0.6096
| 0.3904
|
Mango Remittance are finding ways to alleviate the poor of the country | CEO’s message
The Philippines is an Archipelago composed of more than 7,000 islands, A good part of these islands does not have any bank presence. Boracay, the hottest tourist spot in the country had only one bank and one ATM machine back in 2003.
Its population is more than 104 million and this is growing at a very fast rate. Based on the most recent study, for every death there are three child births every minute.
In a few years, the population can reach the 110 million mark.
We are almost half of the population of Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world (which has 260 million). A country that is five and a half times larger than the Philippines in term of land area. Japan actually has a bigger land are than the Philippines yet it only has a population of 127 million and its average age is at 47 years old.
The average age of the Filipinos is one of the youngest in the world at 23 years. The Visayan ethnic group is the biggest at 34%.
Most of the country’s Overseas Workforce come from the Visayas Region. There are 2.2 million OFWs, and this figure only pertains to those with proper documents.
The country has its share of social inequity. More than 26 million of the Filipinos are poor with half of that living below the poverty line. Only 14% of the adult population can be considered rich and they account for more than 70% of the country’s wealth.
Despite these statistics, the Philippines is considered to have the fastest growing economy in Asia in the last three years.
Considering the average age of the country’s population, it is safe to claim that majority of us Filipinos are what we consider as “MILLENIALS”. This generation wants fast and quick responses. You could not keep their attention for a long time. They will not wait in line and they will always be moving.
Given these two indicators, the potential for the country is huge. Provided with the right technology and sufficient capital, it can be one of the best economies in the region.
Hence, it is imperative that the country is able to keep up with the latest technology and innovation and even the most advanced investment opportunities.
We at MANGO REMITTANCE are finding ways to alleviate the poor of the country.
Provide them with services that can cut their transaction cost to a minimum. Provide them the technology that is efficient and secure to help them in their daily needs.
We gathered you today to help achieve this dream.
To offer you an investment opportunity that will not only help this country reach the economic level that it has been struggling to achieve and provide you with handsome returns.
Business Alliance for using debit cards
Business alliance with Minny Casino
Manila turns into a ghost town amid coronavirus lockdown
Notice of MGC token swap implementation
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1891
|
__label__cc
| 0.507839
| 0.492161
|
Unlocking the secrets of cellular energy holds promise for obesity, diabetes and cancer
by McGill University
(PhysOrg.com) -- A breakthrough on how cells regulate their energy is promising for clinical gains into diseases such as obesity, diabetes and cancer. Researchers at McGill University and University of Pennsylvania have uncovered new insights into how a protein known as the AMP-activated protein kinase, or AMPK, a master regulator of metabolism, controls how our cells generate energy. AMPK has previously been linked to a number of biological functions including cancer, diabetes, and proper immune function.
In discovering these new functions of AMPK, researchers are one step closer to understanding how cells in the body manage their energy resources. The team discovered that AMPK plays a role in this process in part by directly modifying gene expression, acting as a type of cell energy "rheostat." Their findings are published in the journal Science.
McGill Professor Russell Jones, of the Rosalind and Morris Goodman Centre in the Department of Physiology in the Faculty of Medicine; Shelley Berger, PhD, Prof. Daniel S. Och, and David Bungard, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Berger lab, in collaboration with Dr. Craig Thompson, MD, director of the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, found that AMPK mediates "epigenetic regulation" of gene expression by binding directly to sites on chromosomes.
"What we have discovered is a paradigm shift concerning the role of AMPK," Jones explained. "It has long been known that AMPK can affect how genes are turned on and off, but we have been in the dark as to how this actually works. We found that when cells are subjected to an energy crisis, AMPK goes directly to specific genes and turns them on. This allows cells to adapt to the environmental stress and lets them survive."
Unlike genetic changes, which involve a change or mutation in DNA sequence, epigenetic changes in the nucleus leave the DNA sequence unaltered but modify the histone proteins, which comprise the backbone of the chromosome. Histones are proteins found in the nucleus that package and order DNA into structural units. Epigentic changes alter how DNA folds in chromosomes, changing how accessible genes are to regulatory proteins and enzymes that copy genes into RNA messages.
"The discovery that AMPK goes directly to the DNA to affect gene transcription is a breakthrough in our understanding how signals from outside the cell are transmitted to change gene expression," said Jones. "It is like an electrical circuit. We have figured out how AMPK mediates the connection."
Thus far, the investigators have identified two genes that are regulated by AMPK at the histone level in the nucleus. These initial observations were made in tissue-culture cells and the team is now working to confirm them in animal models.
AMPK's main role is to sense cell stress. In this study, cells were stressed with ultraviolet radiation and low levels of glucose, a common source of cell energy. In the sequence of events after stress, AMPK picks up the cell-stress signal and travels to the nucleus to bind to the tumor suppressor gene p53. This in turn, causes a phosphate to be added to a histone near the p21 gene, which activates transcription. The function of the p21 protein is to stop or slow down the cell cycle.
The researchers were surprised by this finding on many fronts: This is the first time that investigators have shown that AMPK is present on chromatin, that it targets histones, and that p53 is involved in sensing stress via AMPK.
The work conducted by the researchers holds promise for new therapies for a number of diseases including diabetes and cancer. For example, AMPK is a target of metformin, the most commonly prescribed drug for the treatment of Type II diabetes. By understanding how AMPK can directly change gene expression, this may lead to the identification of new disease-associated targets and potential therapies.
New role for master regulator in cell metabolism, response to stress
Provided by McGill University
Citation: Unlocking the secrets of cellular energy holds promise for obesity, diabetes and cancer (2010, July 20) retrieved 21 January 2021 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2010-07-secrets-cellular-energy-obesity-diabetes.html
Researchers uncover potentially promising therapeutic combination for renal cell carcinoma
Scientists determine 3-dimensional structure of cell's 'fuel gauge'
Oncogene inhibits tumor suppressor to promote cancer: Study links B-RAF and LKB1
Gene predicts heart attack response and cardiac damage
Well-known enzyme is unexpected contributor to brain growth
Power-boosting signal in muscle declines with age
Proteomic analysis reveals when and how which proteins are degraded in cancer cells by autophagy pathways
NAD+ can restore age-related muscle deterioration
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1896
|
__label__wiki
| 0.780902
| 0.780902
|
We have submitted a Planning Application for a new-build flatted development at Green Street in Saltcoats, on behalf of Cunninghame Housing Association.
24 new flatted dwellings for elderly-amenity residents are provided, with passenger lifts ensuring that high levels of accessibility are achieved throughout. Located on a prominent corner site in the centre of the town, a vacant supported accommodation and office building will be demolished to make way for the new block, which rises to three storeys across two closes.
Consideration of the built form has sought to create a series of grouped masses which reflect the existing pattern of development plots within the town – rather than be seen as a single ‘block’, the proposal is broken down into a series of individual elements to aid its integration into the surrounding townscape. A palette of masonry and precast concrete is used to articulate the primary elevations, utilising tones which complement neighbouring buildings, including the Saltcoats Town Hall (located due south of the development).
In light of the site’s central location, a reduced level of parking is proposed, held within a shared parking court to the interior side of the site. This space also accommodates an amenity area for residents, incorporating seating and planting, with the two close entrances also served from the rear.
We’re looking forward to progressing the detailed design for the project, ahead of a site start in 2021.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1901
|
__label__wiki
| 0.947019
| 0.947019
|
Privacy Group Of The Year: Ropes & Gray LLP
Home > Blog > Privacy Group Of The Year: Ropes & Gray LLP
09 Feb Privacy Group Of The Year: Ropes & Gray LLP
Posted at 15:26h in Blog, law, News by Michael Daugherty
By Kat Sieniuc
Law360, New York (February 2, 2017, 6:53 PM EST) — Ropes & Gray’s work on what’s sure to be one of the most important privacy decisions coming down the pipe in 2017 — LabMD’s appeal against the Federal Trade Commission over its data security practices — makes the firm’s privacy team one of Law360’s Practice Groups of the Year.
Ropes & Gray defended some of the biggest privacy cases of the year, including taking on the role of lead counsel in the LabMD appeal against the FTC, which will serve as an important test deciding whether the Federal Trade Commission has authority to bring cases on intangible consumer injuries.
LabMD tapped the firm in August to bring the case to the Eleventh Circuit, part of a sprawling grudge match with cybersecurity company Tiversa that started with the alleged theft of a patient data file.
The FTC began its investigation into LabMD’s data security practices in early 2010 after cybersecurity firm Tiversa Holding Corp. allegedly stole medical data from the company’s systems. The commission then opened an administrative complaint against the lab in August 2014, saying the company violated the FTC Act’s prohibition on unfair acts and practices on the basis that its security measures didn’t provide reasonable security against theft.
In that case, Ropes & Gray attempts to portray an FTC that has too rigorously flexed its regulatory muscle. The firm argues that an order issued by the commission against the cancer-testing company in July, which requires that LabMD take measures like setting up an information security program and obtaining biennial assessments by an outside auditor — would “effectuate a breathtaking expansion of the FTC’s authority that the legal community and members of Congress have already called into serious question” if allowed to stand.
”What the FTC did here was so egregious in so many different ways,” co-chair Doug Meal said about the case, adding that an appeal win for LabMD “will make the playing field way different.”
In Ropes & Gray’s view, the FTC’s enforcement authority in the privacy and data security space will be dramatically expanded if the FTC decision is upheld.
When it comes to those high-stakes cases like LabMD, it’s all hands on deck, said the group’s co-chairs Meal and Heather Sussman in Boston, and Rohan Massey in the UK. Ropes & Gray has a big team of privacy attorneys that work together across geographies to bring to bear the right expertise and strategies on a case. Sometimes that means being selective with bringing arguments, Meal said.
“We really pressure tested every argument at length to identify which arguments we thought would be the ones to advance,” Meal said about the LabMD case, which meant leaving “some very, very substantial issues on the cutting-room floor because we felt there were better tactics to make certain arguments in detail, and tellingly.”
“Those are the kind of choices you have to make when you’re arguing an appeal,” he added.
But the LabMD litigation, as Meal puts it, isn’t the group’s first rodeo when it comes to handling a major appeal, and the case adds to an already meaty list of data breach clients, including Wyndham, Hilton, Genesco, Aldo, Target, TJX, Heartland, Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, Sony, and Supervalu, among others.
In the Wyndham case — the first-ever lawsuit challenging the FTC’s authority to regulate data security practices and to hold a franchisor liable for alleged data security infractions committed by its franchisees — Ropes & Gray negotiated a consent order with the FTC that dismissed the lawsuit and imposed narrower obligations on Wyndham than the FTC has typically obtained against targets of its data security actions.
That groundbreaking dispute over the scope of the commission’s data security authority was sparked in June 2012, when the FTC filed its complaint alleging Wyndham had violated both the unfairness and deception prongs of Section 5 by failing to maintain reasonable and appropriate security measures. The security failures allegedly led to at least three data breaches between April 2008 and January 2010, which exposed more than 600,000 consumer payment card account numbers and led to more than $10.6 million in fraud loss, according to the regulator.
Also this past year, Ropes & Gray’s privacy group continued advising and representing Target stores in the company’s response to the highly-publicized data breach that Target announced in December 2013, securing approval of a proposed settlement of the class actions filed by banks and credit unions on May 12, 2016, and a dismissal of those class actions in May.
As for the success of the privacy group, the co-chairs agree Ropes & Gray’s “one-firm” approach and culture of collaboration across practice groups and geographies (the firm has offices in New York, Boston, London, Tokyo and Shanghai, to name a few) has been very effective in servicing clients.
“We always have and continue to work together as a team and very collaboratively on all of our matters,” Meal said, noting that “everyone on the team knows pretty much what everyone else is doing,” helping each other out on projects.
Sussman agreed, noting companies around the world increasingly tap the compliance arm of Ropes & Gray’s privacy practice to get in line with data security regulatory requirements, knowing the firm has a network of the best local experts to call on.
— Additional reporting by Cara Salvatore and Allison Grande. Editing by Ben Guilfoy.
cyber security, cybersecurity, cybersecurity legislation, data security, federal trade commission, government, internet security, LabMD, Michael J Daugherty, Ropes & Gray, Tiversa
Michael Daugherty
mdort@aol.com
Michael Daugherty is President & CEO of LabMD, an Atlanta-based clinical and anatomic medical laboratory with a national client base. Mike founded LabMD in 1996 after 14 years in surgical device sales with U.S. Surgical Corp. and Mentor Corporation. Outside of LabMD, enjoys playing tennis, travel, and flying his Cirrus SR22 Turbo single engine aircraft.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1902
|
__label__wiki
| 0.770308
| 0.770308
|
Tag Archives: Autumn McEntire
Album Review: Reba McEntire – ‘Stronger Than The Truth’
Back in the 1980s Reba McEntire was the leading female neo-traditionalists as well as the best selling female artist of her generation. Then around the time of her second marriage, to music industry executive Narvel Blackstock, her music began to take a more contemporary turn, one which became more pronounced as the 90s wore on. It brought her a new fanbase and enormous sales, but many of her older or more traditional-leaning fans regretted her choices.
Then a couple of years ago, after Reba’s marriage came to an end she chose to make a wonderful album of religious material, much of which harked back to older times. Now her first studio album is=n several years shows a definite return to traditional country sounds. It has been vaunted her her most country album ever, which I would disagree with – 1984’s My Kind Of Country, whose name inspired this very blog, and 1987’s The Last One To Know, would both fit that description better. But it is undoubtedly a country album, and a very good one, produced by the estimable Buddy Cannon.
For a start, Reba calls on her Oklahoma roots with two fabulous Western Swing number. Opening track ‘Swing All Night With You’ was written by Jon Randall and Sidney Cox, and is a true dancefloor delight. She wrote the equally charming ‘No U In Oklahoma’ herself with Ronnie Dunn and Donna McSpadden.
Many of the songs are slow sad ones. Jonathan has already reviewed the lead single and title track, a subtle song about heartbreak written by Reba’s nice Autumn McEntire and Hannah Blaylock. ‘Tammy Wynette Kind Of Pain’ was written by Brandy Clark, Mark Narmore and Shelley Skidmore, and is another devastating depiction of a broken heart set to a traditional country soundtrack:
‘Standing by your man’
That’s a broken plan
When he breaks your heart and all your trust
With his two cheatin’ hands
So it’s ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E’
And you don’t want him to see you cryin’
So you’re ‘crying in the rain’
And this is Tammy Wynette
We’re talkin’ Tammy Wynette kind of pain
There’s a sky full of tears in every single note
And every single word is wine and whiskey soaked
So I guess it’s me and her together in this alone
‘Til I can make it on my own’
Also reflecting on a failed marriage, but from the point of view of the husband, is ‘In His Mind’, which was written by Liz Hengber and Tommy Lee James based on Reba’s idea.
In ‘The Bar’s Getting Lower’, written by Kellys Collins, Erin Enderlin, Liz Hengber and Alex Kline, the unhappy protagonist settles for a one night stand when old dreams of marriage and family haven’t been realised:
Her dreams are disappearin’ like smoke from his cigarette
She hasn’t said yes but she’s thinkin’ she might
The closer it gets to closing time
A lonely heart will take a pick-up line
Anything to get her through the night
‘Cactus In A Coffee Can’ is a heartwrenching story song written by Steve Seskin and Allen Shamblin, and previously recorded by Jerry Kilgore and Melonie Cannon. Reba’s version is superb, and the arrangement has a mournful feel as we hear the story of a young woman who has been reunited with the drug addict and prostitute mother who gave her up at birth, just before the latter’s death. This might be the highlight of an excellent group of songs.
Another ballad, but a little more sophisticated AC in its feel, ‘The Clown’ is a beautifully detailed story about the horrifying moment of finding out her marriage is over in public, and having to keep a brave face on it. It was written by Dallas Davidson, Hillary Lindsey and James Slater.
The minor-keyed ‘Your Heart’, written by Kellys Collins, has a classical Spanish guitar accompaniment and is atmospheric and moody. Reba sings it beautifully, but it isn’t really a country song.
A couple of more commercial contemporary up-tempo songs are well performed if less to my personal taste, and may be included to appeal to Reba’s younger fans and possibly with an eye on radio play. ‘Storm In A Shot Glass’ is quite catchy in a 90s pop country way. ‘Freedom’ is more of a rock ballad rejoicing over finding love.
The album closes with the gentle piano-led ‘You Never Gave Up On Me’, dedicated to Reba’s late mother.
While not quite as traditional as one might have been led to believe from the publicity, this is definitely the best thing Reba has released in decades. It is highly recommended, and a strong contender already for album of the year.
Album Reviews Alex Kline, Allen Shamblin, Autumn McEntire, Brandy Clark, Buddy Cannon, Donna McSpadden, Erin Enderlin, Hannah Blaylock, Jerry Kilgore, Jon Randall, Kellys Collins, Liz Hengber, Mark Narmore, Melonie Cannon, Narvel Blackstock, Reba McEntire, Ronnie Dunn, Shelley Skidmore, Sidney Cox, Steve Seskin, Tammy Wynette, Tommy Lee James
Single Review: Reba McEntire — ‘Stronger Than The Truth’
3 Comments Posted by Jonathan Pappalardo on February 28, 2019
You’ll have to go back twenty years to find the last time Reba McEntire introduced a new studio album with a ballad. It’s exceedingly rare, and a welcomed change of pace, especially when it introduces a project McEntire is calling one of the most country of her career.
She’s introduced the album with the title track, which was co-written by former Eden’s Edge frontwoman Hannah Blaylock and her niece Autumn McEntire. The song finds Reba in the wake of learning her husband has taken up with someone new:
I never dreamed of wantin’ more
Than a small town, simple life
A little money in our pockets
You’re my husband, I’m your wife
But then I fell in icy water
Standing in the grocery line
I overheard my name and yours
And one I did not recognize
Now everything I thought I knew is walking out the door
There’s a bottle on the table tellin’ me the only thing I know for sure
Is there’s not a sound, a sound as loud as silence
There’s not a blade sharper than a lie
There’s not a low lower than being the last one to know
You got a brand new start with someone new
And there’s no whiskey stronger than the truth
“Stronger Than The Truth” comes just four years after McEntire and her manager husband Narvel Blackstock divorced after 25 years, a decision she has said, “wasn’t her idea.” It’s an excellent lyric and I love how the writers take us back to her eighties hits, by overtly name-checking “The Last One To Know” and placing her in a grocery store line, like she was in “What Am I Gonna Do About You.”
This time around, though, she has a plan, even if it’s a faulty one:
Is pour a glass and pretend
That this pain’s gonna end
“Stronger Than The Truth” isn’t as dynamic as her biggest heartbreakers nor is it as traditional as I would’ve liked. Pedal steel and fiddle are in the mix, but their presence is too subtle for a ballad with such a mournful lyric. But “Stronger Than The Truth” is a formidable first taste of McEntire’s new album, which comes out April 5, two days before she returns as host of the 54th annual Academy of Country Music Awards.
NOTE: To wet our appetites further, McEntire will be releasing a new song from the album every Friday until April 5. Last week she evoked “Have I Got A Deal For You” with the charming “No U in Oklahoma,” which you can hear HERE.
Single Reviews Autumn McEntire, Hannah Blaylock, Reba McEntire
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1917
|
__label__wiki
| 0.588424
| 0.588424
|
In Defense of Peter Jackson
by Antonio del Drago
Sir Peter Jackson
Since the announcement that The Hobbit will be a trilogy, the Internet has been abuzz. The Tolkien fan base has been divided into two camps: those who are elated at the news, and those who believe that it’s a terrible idea.
Those who are apprehensive of the films becoming a trilogy have raised some valid concerns. For this post, I’ve identified three of the most repeated concerns, and will show why they should be dismissed.
This is About Money
It’s a recent trend to take the final book in a series, and divide it into two films. Famous examples of this are the finales of the Harry Potter series and the Twilight Saga. Whether or not this is positive, one thing is for certain: the studio will make more money from two guaranteed hits, as opposed to just one.
When Peter Jackson began talking about extending his two film adaption into a trilogy, there’s little doubt that MGM and Warner Brothers were excited by the thought of more money. But what about Jackson himself? What is motivating him?
I’ve never met Peter Jackson, but I feel like I know the man. Having sat through countless hours of DVD commentaries and special features, including extensive behind the scenes documentaries, I know how he works as a filmmaker. And if there’s one truth that I’m convinced of, it’s that Peter Jackson is an artist with integrity. He is driven first and foremost by his desire to tell a good story, with all other considerations being secondary. If you doubt this, watch the four and half hour documentary by Costa Botes.
If Jackson wants to film The Hobbit as a trilogy, it’s because he believes that this is the best way to tell the story that he envisions.
The Hobbit is Too Short
Another common objection is that The Hobbit is only one book. It made sense for The Lord of the Rings, which is three volumes, to be filmed as a trilogy. But it’s impossible to stretch The Hobbit into a trilogy without running out of material.
To see the other side of this, first consider how much was cut out of Jackson’s interpretation of The Lord of the Rings. Think about the absence of the Barrow-Wights, Radagast, Tom Bombadil, not to mention the Scouring of the Shire. There simply wasn’t enough time to fit everything into just three films.
Still, even if Jackson includes every event in The Hobbit, it is hard to imagine filling three epic-length movies. So what does Jackson plan to do with presumably nine hours of screen time?
As he has stated, Jackson intends to film other events that were in the background of The Hobbit. As fans of the book know, Gandalf alludes to an evil Necromancer taking residence in Mirkwood, and vanishes for half of the adventure. What was Gandalf doing during his absence?
As explained in the appendices of The Return of the King, Gandalf and the White Council were planning an assault on the fortress of the Necromancer, which culminated in the epic Battle of Dol Guldur. The details of this storyline are fleshed out even further in Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. The Necromancer, as it turns out, is none other than Sauron himself, and the events in this storyline set the stage for The Fellowship of the Ring.
Again, these are events alluded to in The Hobbit. The difference is that rather than having characters speak of them in passing, Jackson is going to show them to us as they unfold. And if he does justice to this storyline, he has more than enough material to fill an epic trilogy.
The Hobbit is a Children’s Book
This objection stems from the perception that The Hobbit is a light, whimsical children’s book. Jackson cannot translate it into a Lord of the Rings sized epic without drastically altering the tone.
There is some truth to this. The tone of The Hobbit is considerably different from the later trilogy, and to keep it consistent with his Lord of the Rings films Jackson will have to make it more “grown up.” But the good news is that if you are looking for a whimsical, child-friendly interpretation of The Hobbit, one already exists. The Rankin-Bass version of The Hobbit still holds its own, and there’s no reason to revisit that approach.
Instead, Jackson is following Tolkien’s own lead by reframing The Hobbit in light of the greater history of Middle-Earth. When Tolkien first wrote The Hobbit, he didn’t realize that he was setting the stage for a three-volume history of the War of the Ring. After The Lord of the Rings was published, Tolkien went back and revised his children’s book to make it fit into the larger picture. This involved changing some events, as well as including the allusions to the Necromancer storyline. This was in keeping with what he did in the appendices of The Return of the King, where Tolkien spelled out the epic events taking place in the background of The Hobbit.
While Jackson’s version of The Hobbit will differ from the children’s book, it will be consistent with Tolkien’s larger vision of how the story fits into the history of Middle-Earth.
A Cause for Rejoicing
Peter Jackson did what was thought to be impossible: he delivered a faithful, spell-binding adaptation of a book that was thought to be “unfilmable.” While his version of The Lord of the Rings differs in some respects from the source material, it is faithful to the spirit of Tolkien’s work.
There is no reason to believe that Jackson would do anything to deviate from his prior faithfulness to Tolkien’s vision. On the contrary, the evidence shows that he will once again deliver a film that captures the essence of the source material. His behind the scenes videos from filming The Hobbit, as well as the footage shown at Comic-Con, make this clear.
For those who cherish every minute spent in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, there is no reason to fear a third Hobbit film from Peter Jackson. Instead, this is a cause for rejoicing.
Do you disagree? Tell me where I’ve gone wrong.
Antonio del Drago
Antonio del Drago is a writer, philosopher and professor.His latest book, The Mythic Guide to Characters: Writing Characters Who Enchant and Inspire, is now available.
Latest posts by Antonio del Drago (see all)
Mythic Guide to Heroes & Villains — Intelligent and Immoral Villains - July 25, 2020
Mythic Guide to Heroes & Villains — The Shadow Archetype and Powerful Villains - June 28, 2020
Mythic Guide to Heroes & Villains — The Importance of the Villain - November 3, 2019
Categories Opinion Tags Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson, Tolkien
Rob Furey
One movie, not three.
Patricia Rickmar Young
I am glad, we need something good, am tired of some of the things out there.
Brian Nelson Wills
Before LOTR came out in movie form, I got ahold of an old radio broadcast of both The Hobbit and LOTR. I was intrigued by both stories and am glad that The Hobbit will now come out in a film trilogy. Great stories.
Polgara
I have to admit that I was dead set against the story being turned into 3 movies. I was never concerned about it being too childish as I’ve never really considered The Hobbit as a child’s book. I was questioning where they would get enough material that would not end up being boring. You have allayed that concern very nicely.
Lyrie
Reply to Polgara
Polgara I can see why The Hobbit is considered a child’s book, as it’s much more juvenile in tone than LOTR, although I do think it’s for older children due to its length.
Beida
Reply to Lyrie
Lyrie I second that, Lyrie. I remember being forced to read The Hobbit in 4th grade and I just couldn’t stay focused on it. It took me years before I decided to give it another chance and found that I actually enjoyed it.
javaguysammckee
@KellySGamble @mythicscribes No surprise if Hobbit films have no Misty Mountains but plenty of stuff that wasn’t in the book at all.
mythicscribes
Reply to javaguysammckee
@javaguysammckee Misty Mountains are in the film. Jackson’s latest video blog shows them, along with the Great Goblin (Barry Humphries).
@KellySGamble @mythicscribes I’d love to see a 3-film Hobbit IF he doesn’t completely bastardize the story like he did with LOTR.
@KellySGamble @mythicscribes Almost any novel is way too big for just 1 film.
I only hope they don’t do to “The Hobbit” what they have done to so many of the Arthurian works. Some of those movies have gotten so far away from the legends that it hurts to watch them.
Lynn Easton
annedreshfield
Antonio, thank you for this post. You’ve alleviated a lot of my concerns about The Hobbit. I should know better than to question Peter Jackson, to be honest.
SeanDavid
I think it would be wonderful that he wants to expand the novel. It’s really just more to enjoy for the fans of the series. The writers did a fantastic job with the first trilogy and I have no reason to think that they won’t do the same with this novel. I’m sure they would be able to come up with a storyline that will please the producers and the public.
Mythic Scribes
Mike Rapino, for an explanation as to how this will work, please read the above article. It lays out how Jackson is using Tolkien’s other writings to flesh out the story. In particular, it explains that there is an epic storyline in the background of The Hobbit, in which Gandlalf and the White Council go to war against the Necromancer in Mirkwood. All of this is spelled out by Tolkien in his Unfinished Tales, as well as the appendices of The Return of the King. There’s more than enough material there for three films.
Mike Rapino
I just don’t think there is enough material for 3. Can you reasonably come up a Act 1, 2, and 3 that will each justify a two hour plus movie? I’m open to someone suggesting in outline how this could work. There just imo enough material without taking a lot of creative liberties. IF and I don’t think this is true the Tolkien family has allowed liberal use of Tolkien’s other writing such as Similarion, then maybe. But last I heard Similarion was out of bounds for Jackson.
My biggest issue is the lack of material for a trilogy. Even if they are going to show the assault on the Necromancer (and didn’t he flee instead of give battle?), that still doesn’t seem like enough for three full-length movies.
I am very happy to hear that Peter Jackson is making The Hobbit into a trilogy. The more detail the better, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m excited at the prospect of him delving into the details of things that were only alluded to in the book. Count me in Camp Elated.
DarrenFanBoi
Peter Jackson loves a challenge PLUS he knows he is representing Tolkien in his movie adaptations. I think his care is well placed here rather than worrying about what Hobbit or LOTR fans think. Jackson will make the Hobbit bigger and better than LOTR because he & his team are far more experienced now and will help blend The Hobbit seamlessly into the following trilogy of the Ring. Well done Peter…
DomynoeLoeb
If anyone can do it, it would be Jackson. I know a lot of people hate what he did with LOTR, but I thought the films were excellent. If he’d attempted anything more than what he did, we’d have ended up with 5 or 6 films, but he kept them focused on the journey of the ring, and that meant not using a ton of material that I’m sure even he hated leaving behind. I suspect even with 3 films, he’ll have the same issue with The Hobbit, and he’ll still manage to do it justice.
Mel McWilliams-Chesley
No matter what he does people won’t be happy. I think The Hobbit deserves the same consideration and attention to detail as the LotR trilogy. If Jackson DOESN’T make this movie into a trilogy, people will complain about the lack of something. So what do you do?
As stated in the article, doesn’t it seem more likely that Peter Jackson is motivated by artistic ambition than greed?
Philip Overby
I don’t think Jackson is solely motivated by money, but I know his studio is. As far as The Hobbit being light and whimsical, I think the trailer for the movie has some of that, but it bears a much darker tone than I expected. I’ll reserved judgment until I see the movies for sure, and I think Jackson will deliver.
Aaron Cornett
He may be, but still not a good idea. BUT i will see them.
I agree with Mike. I think it’ll be good for fans to able to see more than one movie, but stretching a short book like The Hobbit into three movies is really “stretching” it. It’s the same strategy they’ve used for Harry Potter and Twilight. Either way, I’ll probably go see them all, but I’d rather they just make one big, long epic movie than three.
Reply to Philip Overby
@Philip Overby Actually, turning The Hobbit into a 9 hour film trilogy isn’t much of a stretch at all. The unabridged audio version of The Hobbit is 11 hours long! We’ve just gotten used to books being severely cut to fit into a film. Jackson wants to tell the whole story this time.
Worried it isn’t going to represent the book at all, but I’m sure it will be good.
I think it’s a terrible idea. The Hobbit is 310 pages, and then there’s the extra material. 2 movies was a stretch. This is a money grab nothing more. It’s a bad Hollywood trend (see breaking dawn, Harry potter, now the last book of hunger game). It made my decision to not see it until it is fully available to buy.
Daniel J. Newman
But if he does another king kong I’m kicking him in the friendlies.
What about him? He is getting paid.
If it was anyone else I would be worried but he did a good job on the last 3 so I’m going to let it slide.
Aaron Cornett It may be about the money for the studios, but what about Peter Jackson?
All about the money.
CiaraBallintyne
The mere fact so much is cut from amny books just to turn them into films is argument enough for me. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was a full-length movie from a book that is around 100 pages. It’s the most faithful adaptation I know (as in, very few deviations from the book) and demonstrates just how much film time comes from very few pages if you actually tell the whole story. LOTR was filmed in three movies. But it could just as easily have been 9, or more. It wouldn’t be, because most audiences wouldn’t stand for it, I expect, but the material was there. I don’t believe in 1 movie, 1 book. I want the STORY. The whole story. I don’t care how many movies it takes.
I loved reading The Unfinished Tales and delving deeper into the Hobbit through it. I’m so excited that he’s going to pull from that. And of course I still have my fingers crossed that he’ll move on to The Silmarillion (another trilogy?)
Meg_the_Healer
Tony,While I think you wrote an excellent article, I just want (for once) ONE movie for ONE book. To add the appendicies and the “in the background” I feel shouldn’t be there. This is the story of The Hobbit and was told from Bilbo’s perspective, so it should stick to Bilbo’s perspective. Bilbo only heard about what was going on, he wasn’t there which is why it wasn’t written in his journey. Even you stated that Tolkien didn’t realize he was going to do this, so he had to go back and fit in a plot he never intended. While I think it’s interesting – because I do like The War of the Ring- it takes you out of the journey that you’re watching which is Bilbo’s journey. If Peter Jackson wanted to tell the story of The Necromancer, he could have an an independant film about the appendicies and “Gandalf’s Journey.” I just don’t think it belongs in the movie about The Hobbit and Bilbo’s Journey.
thetruereaver
Great stuff Tony! I think that The Hobbit is going to be awesome.
Follow Mythic Scribes
Articles will be sent to you weekly.
Fantasy Writing Discussions
Obscure Non-European Historical Settings/Cultures
Religion vs. Magic
What are some good side quests?
Has Film Changed How we Write Fantasy?
History for Fantasy Writers: Medieval Mining
Browse Categories Select Category Announcements (11) Character Development (42) History (34) Inspiration (32) Interviews (14) Marketing (8) Miscellaneous (70) Mythology (10) Opinion (3) Plot & Story Structure (18) Publishing (17) Reviews (10) Story Analysis (25) World Building (63) Writing Craft & Technique (82) Writing Life (51) Writing Process (46) Writing Technology (3) Writing Theory (3)
Prince of Spires on History for Fantasy Writers: Medieval Mining
Nils Ödlund on Kishōtenketsu for Beginners – An Introduction to Four Act Story Structure
Liv on Swordplay for Fantasy Writers
plz respond on 5 Characteristics of an Epic Villain
We are a community that celebrates the art and craft of fantasy writing. We invite you to become a part of our fellowship of writers.
Join Our Forums
© Copyright 2021 • Mythic Scribes
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1920
|
__label__wiki
| 0.630346
| 0.630346
|
Report: Kristaps Porzingis wouldn’t meet with Sixers before draft
By Kurt HelinJan 29, 2016, 1:22 PM EST
This isn’t new news, we had heard before that Kristaps Porzingis didn’t want to land with the Philadelphia 76ers — heck, nobody did — so they couldn’t get a meeting with him before last June’s draft. This frost from agents is part of the reason GM Sam Hinkie was benched. The Sixers spun this as not being interested because Porzingis was more of a long-term project than their eventual pick at No. 3 Jahlil Okafor. There’s probably a little truth to that, too. But they never got a foot in the door with Porzingis.
As part of the launch of The Vertical at Yahoo Sports, Adrian Wojnarowski detailed how the Sixers tried to get a meeting with Porzingis and were shot down.
(Porzingis’ agent Andy) Miller didn’t make it easy for Philadelphia to draft Porzingis at No. 3. The Sixers wouldn’t be afforded Porzingis’ physical, nor get a private workout, nor even a face-to-face meeting. After most of the pro day executives cleared out of the gym in Vegas in mid-June, 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie lingered to meet with Miller. Hinkie stopped him in the lobby area and asked Miller about a chance to sit down and visit with Porzingis.
“You said that I would get a meeting with him here,” Hinkie told Miller.
“I said, ‘I’d try,’ and it’s not going to work out, Sam,” Miller responded.
An awkward silence lingered, the GM and agent, standing and staring. The Porzingis camp wanted no part of the Sixers’ situation at No 3. Miller couldn’t stop Philadelphia from drafting Porzingis, but he could limit the information they had to make a decision. And did. No physical. No meeting. No workout. The Sixers passed on Porzingis on draft night, clearing the way for the Knicks to select him.
That has worked out better than the Knicks had hoped — they know they had a player with great potential in the 7’3″ Latvian, but nobody expected him to play this well as a rookie. He’s performing better as an NBA starter than he did in the Spanish ABC league last season — his game has grown by leaps and bounds. Which portends well for the future in New York.
In New York Phil Jackson got a workout and an interview with Porzingis, plus a dinner. He got all the information he could want. (So did the Lakers, but they thought Porzingis too much of a project and chose D'Angelo Russell instead.) It still was a roll of the dice for New York — one that drew boos from Knicks fans at the draft — but it turned out to be a roll where Jackson hit the number. Now there is real hope in New York for the first time in a while.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1923
|
__label__cc
| 0.667298
| 0.332702
|
Home » John Fiore named 2020 Herb Wegner Memorial Award winner
John Fiore named 2020 Herb Wegner Memorial Award winner
In recognition of his boundless career spanning 50 years in the credit union movement living out “service before self”, the National Credit Union Foundation (the Foundation) is pleased to announce John Fiore, director, Andigo Credit Union and director emeritus, Alloya Corporate FCU in Illinois as a recipient of the 2020 Herb Wegner Memorial Outstanding Individual Achievement Award.
Fiore will be one of three Herb Wegner Memorial Award winners honored at the annual fundraising gala hosted by the Foundation at the Marriott Marquis on February 24th, 2020 in conjunction with the CUNA Governmental Affairs Conference in Washington, D.C. Tickets and sponsorships are available for this must-attend event by clicking here.
“John has had a tremendous impact on the credit union system through his work with the National Credit Union Foundation, Illinois League and the corporate credit union system,” said John Gregoire, chair of the Foundation’s Wegner Awards Selection Committee and president of The ProCon Group. “He has been a leader at all times and in all settings and we’re excited to add him to our list of Wegner Award winners.”
Instrumental Industry Pioneer
Fiore joined the loan department of Motorola Employee’s Credit Union (now known as Andigo Credit Union) 50 years ago. After 16 years of service and hard work, he earned the position of President and CEO, maintaining this role for 29 years until retiring in 2014. During his career, he was instrumental in pioneering projects and initiatives that continue to impact the credit union industry today.
Fiore was one of early Board members of Card Services for Credit Unions (CSCU). CSCU became the nation's largest electronic payments association exclusively serving credit unions. Working with Visa and MasterCard, CSCU ensured credit unions' voices were heard and prepared to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of electronic payments. With the help of his leadership, the card services membership increased from 1,700 to 2,600.
Fiore also recognized a need to help credit unions without the resources or expertise necessary to perform portfolio analysis and so he helped CSCU in creating the Virtual Card Consultant – the industry’s first online portfolio analysis software.
In the wake of the financial crisis, many credit unions began to lose sight of the importance of corporate credit unions, but Fiore never wavered. He worked tirelessly and fearlessly to secure members and $70 million in capital to build a new corporate - Alloya Corporate FCU. Today, Alloya Corporate FCU serves 1,500 members nationwide to provide services and solutions that enable them to support their members, local communities and so much more. Alloya continues to thrive and exceed financial goals, paying an unprecedented $36.6 million in cash dividends in 2018.
“John's name should to be synonymous with why corporate credit unions made it, and why that's a good thing”, said Amy L. Sink, CEO of Interra Credit Union. “Corporate credit unions provide critical support and services for credit unions across the country that would not survive otherwise.”
Additionally, while John was serving on the National Foundation’s Board of Directors, he played a critical role in creating and developing the Community Investment Fund (CIF), making it the National Foundation’s primary funding mechanism at the time. CIF has been responsible for funding millions of dollars for the National Credit Union Foundation and state foundations, assisting small and developing credit unions, improving cooperative development and financial education.
As a strong supporter of Filene’s i3 Innovation program, which develops new and innovative products and services for credit unions and their members, Fiore passionately encouraged his staff to become involved. The introduction of Debt in Focus, now Money Savvy, to credit unions was made possible by the participation of MECU staff on the i3 team under Fiore’s leadership.
Unwavering Member and Credit Union Advocacy
Not only is Fiore known as a fearless leader of innovation, but he’s also recognized for his passion and dedication to serve the common man, or the “little guy”.
"’What’s best for the members?’ is the question that epitomized John’s top priority,” said Todd Adams, CEO of Alloya Corporate FCU. “He believed that if all decisions were made in the best interest of the membership, then all things would fall into place. John never lost sight of that and had the foresight to think about what members might want or need down the road.”
Assets sprung nearly 95% under his tenure (from $50 million to nearly $900 million) and membership soared more than 60% to 38,000. Under Fiore’s leadership, MECU consistently ranked above every other major financial provider and substantially above the average credit union using Forester Research’s “customer advocacy” metric and benchmarks.
His focus was always about what is best for the credit union movement, his members and his community. He invested his personal time and commitment to make sure that members of his credit union were not taken advantage of by mainstream banking and were given products and services that were priced for their benefit.
He was also a tireless advocate for credit unions. A perfect example of this occurred in 2014 when he took on the role of key point person in representing Illinois credit unions opposed to the NCUA’s risk-based capital (RBC) proposal. Calling upon his detailed and effective negotiating skills, Fiore communicated with other credit union CEOs to develop and create a cohesive position and served as a speaker to represent that view at the NCUA’s Listening Session in Chicago. His fervent efforts, along with those from credit union professionals across the country, led to significant changes in the proposal.
As former Chairman of the Illinois Credit Union League, Fiore was a pioneer for the credit union movement and his voice still echoes on Capitol Hill today. He was constantly striving to uplift the entire community and movement by giving a voice to smaller institutions, forever advocating for those who couldn’t advocate for themselves.
Devoted to Volunteerism
In addition to member and credit union advocacy, Fiore has been an advocate for several charitable causes. Over the past 20 years, he has served as a director, committee member, delegate or trustee of 20 different credit union organizations. Of those organizations, he was or is chairman of 10, a true testament to his devotion to the credit union movement.
Serving as Chairman of the Board for each of the Illinois Credit Union System’s entities (Illinois Credit Union League, ICU Service Corporation (LSC), Services Credit Union, Illinois Political Action Committee (CUPAC), and Illinois Foundation), Fiore was the epitome of commitment, dedication, and professionalism as he worked alongside his fellow directors to ensure every side of an issue was heard, understood, and equally represented.
Fiore played a vital role in starting, organizing and promoting an annual fund raiser for the Children's Miracle Network on behalf of his chapter. Over the course of 10 years, the event raised over $165,000. To encourage philanthropy among the staff at MECU, he offered his employees the option to make a charitable donation to Children's Miracle Network instead of cashing out unused vacation time. These efforts helped double the amount of funds raised for Credit Unions for Kids from 2011 to 2013.
Furthermore, as a board member for the Illinois Credit Union Foundation and CUPAC, he helped raise tens of thousands of dollars on behalf of those organizations and CU LAC to assist those in need and to secure credit union's future operating needs. He has also served as a coach, mentor, and friend to the Illinois Young Professionals’ Group.
He also served on the National Credit Union Foundation Board of Directors as a member and Chairman. During this time, he was the driver for a “separate but equal” relationship between the Foundation and CUNA. This enabled the Foundation to grow significantly while maintaining a strong and trustworthy partnership with CUNA.
He has been widely recognized throughout the movement for his achievements including being named the CUES Executive of the Year (2001), Illinois CUES Executive of the Year (1995), and the ICUL Spirit of Service – Employee of the Year (1999). He was inducted into the CUES Hall of Fame (2002), the ICUL Hall of Fame (2000), and the Credit Union House of Leaders (2011).
Following his retirement, Fiore has remained active on the Boards of four different organizations, including Andigo Credit union, Alloya Corporate Federal Credit Union the Illinois Foundation and CUPAC.
“John embodies the credit union cooperative principles due to all his volunteer efforts on various industry boards,” said Sean Rathjen, CEO of Consumers Credit Union. “He’s consistently given back by serving on these boards and has always made sure that the credit union philosophy remains intact. His efforts have never been for personal benefit; he does it to make the system better.”
KEYWORDS foundation
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1926
|
__label__wiki
| 0.960618
| 0.960618
|
David H. Koch, prominent supporter of cancer research at MIT, dies at 79
Alumnus supported pioneering biomedical center, among many Institute causes and activities.
Sarah McDonnell
Email: s_mcd@mit.edu
Caption: David Koch during a visit to MIT on Oct. 4 2013 to dedicate the Koch Childcare Center on Vassar Street
David Koch during a visit to MIT on Oct. 4 2013 to dedicate the Koch Childcare Center on Vassar Street
David H. Koch ’62, SM ’63, one of the most important benefactors in MIT’s modern history, has died. He was 79 years old.
Koch’s willingness to back significant initiatives at the Institute was exemplified by his foundational gift establishing the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, a pioneering facility that brings research scientists and engineers together to advance the frontiers of cancer medicine. The Koch Institute has become a centerpiece of MIT’s pursuit of biomedical innovation and the useful application of knowledge to global health.
Koch had wide-ranging interests concerning the life of the Institute, however, and in addition to cancer research, he supported many other causes and activities at MIT, including chemical engineering, childcare for employees, and athletics. At any given moment around MIT, beneficiaries of Koch’s gifts included faculty with endowed professorships, students with fellowships he supported — and toddlers in the childcare center he helped found.
“David Koch had a brilliant instinct for opportunities where the lever of his philanthropy could make a transformative difference,” says MIT President L. Rafael Reif. “As one example, his gift to launch the Koch Institute dramatically advanced a new strategy in which engineers and scientists push the frontiers of cancer research by working side by side. At the same time, he saw that the David H. Koch Childcare Center could play an indispensable role in helping young faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students manage the balance of family and career. We are grateful for his longstanding devotion to the Institute. Very few graduates have left such a broad and indelible mark on the life of MIT.”
The Koch Institute, dedicated in 2011, was backed by a $100 million gift Koch made to MIT in October 2007, allowing for a new state-of-the-art facility at MIT and an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to the fight against cancer. The Koch Institute houses a wide array of world-leading scientists: Five current and former faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize, and nine current and former faculty have been awarded the National Medals of Science or Technology and Innovation. All told, Koch has given MIT $134 million to support cancer research and facilities.
“From my very first days as MIT’s president, David Koch became a friend, collaborator, supporter, and enthusiast,” says President Emerita Susan Hockfield, who led MIT from 2004 to 2012. “He already had a long history of generosity to MIT, but his commitment to accelerating progress against cancer gave particular force to MIT’s efforts to reimagine our own cancer research. David was one of this nation’s most generous donors to cancer research, and his engagement with many of the leading cancer research centers gave him an amazingly sophisticated understanding of the frontier of cancer biology and therapy.”
The Koch Institute emphasizes five main areas of research: the development of nanotechnology-based cancer treatments; new devices for cancer detection and monitoring; research about the molecular and cellular processes of metastasis; the advancement of personalized medicine, by studying cancer pathways and resistance to drugs; and research about how the immune system can fight cancer.
“This is a new approach to cancer research with the potential to uncover breakthroughs in therapies and diagnostics,” Koch said in 2007. “Conquering cancer will require multidisciplined initiatives and MIT is positioned to enable that collaboration. As a cancer survivor, I feel especially fortunate to be able to help advance this effort.”
President Emerita Hockfield, whose tenure included the period when David H. Koch made his initial gift funding the Koch Institute, as well as its opening, lauded Koch’s visionary support of the project.
“David provided resources, of course, but also wisdom and strategy to keep the project on time and on budget,” Hockfield says. “He took personal interest in the people and projects at what became the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.”
Koch’s embrace of an interdisciplinary center for fighting cancer advanced and enhanced MIT’s capabilities in this arena, notes Tyler Jacks, the David H. Koch Professor of Biology at MIT, and director of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
“As an MIT-trained engineer, David immediately saw the value in bringing together the great strengths in engineering on our campus with our cancer science efforts in order to solve the most challenging problems in cancer,” Jacks says. “As a cancer survivor, he has been deeply committed to supporting innovative approaches to improve outcomes for patients. David chose to invest in MIT because he believed that we were uniquely positioned to change the course of cancer, and his generosity has enabled us to do that.”
Jacks added that MIT benefitted from Koch’s high level of interest in the the research projects he backed.
“From the earliest days of planning the Koch Institute, David dug into the details,” Jacks says. “He was always inquisitive and really enjoyed asking probing questions, whether about the HVAC system in the building or the intricacies of nanotechnology-based cancer therapy. David was a huge supporter of what we do and rightly proud of what we have created in the Koch Institute. And we are extremely grateful for his support.”
In addition to the named chair Jacks holds, Koch endowed other professorships that bear his name, held by MIT faculty in the fields of biology, biological engineering, chemical engineering, and materials science and engineering.
David H. Koch was born in Wichita, Kansas, on May 3, 1940. He graduated from Deerfield Academy, a prep school in Massachusetts, and received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from MIT in chemical engineering, the Institute’s Course 10. He joined Koch Industries, the firm founded by his father, in 1970, and became president of a division of the company, Koch Engineering, in 1979. He served as executive vice president of Koch Industries until publicly announcing his retirement, due to his health, in June 2018.
Koch was also a Life Member Emeritus of the MIT Corporation. He first became a Member of the Corporation in 1988, and was elected a Life Member in 1998.
Beyond cancer research, Koch was also a significant supporter of MIT’s programs in chemical engineering. In the 1980s, Koch made a significant gift to sustain the School of Chemical Engineering Practice at MIT, whose roots go back to 1916. Now known as the David H. Koch School of Chemical Engineering Practice, this is a unique program for graduate students combining coursework with internships, to enhance both academic and professional development.
“David Koch was a model philanthropist who funded initiatives across a swath of cultural, scientific, and medical institutions,” says Robert Millard, chair of the MIT Corporation. “His generosity has benefited humanity broadly — from the arts to cancer research to science. MIT is deeply thankful for his many contributions to our community.”
In a different vein, Koch served as lead donor for the David H. Koch Childcare Center at MIT, which opened in 2013 and almost doubled the childcare capacity on campus. Situated on Vassar Street on the west side of the MIT campus, the center provides high-quality support for MIT faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and staff who are raising young families, often while pursuing intensive research careers.
Koch decided to give $20 million for the facility after serving on the Biology Visiting Committee at MIT — one of many such groups that advise the Institute — and recognizing the need for more extensive childcare facilities in order to help attract and retain talented personnel on campus. Along with Koch, Charles W. Johnson ’55 and Jennifer C. Johnson also helped fund the facility.
A less well-known but vital aspect of Koch’s relationship with MIT was his enduring support for the Institute’s basketball team. Koch was a standout basketball player as an undergraduate, and captained the MIT team during the 1961-62 season, his senior year; he played alongside his brother Bill on MIT’s varsity team. David Koch’s attachment to the program continued throughout his life.
Indeed, Koch not only followed the team, and attended team banquets, but endowed the position of coach for the men’s basketball team, a role that has been filled since the 1995-96 season by Larry Anderson. During that time, MIT has had a superb run of success, which includes making the NCAA Division III Final Four in 2012.
“My heart goes out the entire Koch family," says Anderson. “I know that David had lots of love and interests – we were lucky enough that MIT Basketball was one of them. He was proud to wear the MIT Cardinal red and silver gray as captain of the team. He was the record-holder for 47 years for the most points scored in a single game with 41, and his support meant so much to the MIT Basketball family.”
“David’s generous philanthropy allowed us to do many impossible things at MIT, but I have valued equally his curiosity, interest, engagement, and enthusiasm,” Hockfield says. “Coming from an MIT family, David Koch was truly a son of MIT who made the Institute a better place, for its students and faculty, and for the lives they change through their work.”
David Koch, an MIT alumnus known for his philanthropic work, has died at age 79, reports Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson and Lindsay Fortado for the Financial Times. Koch, who was a basketball star at MIT, “donated or pledged more than $1.3bn in total to causes including cancer research, hospitals and education."
Full story via Financial Times →
MIT alumnus and philanthropist David Koch has died, reports Steve Peoples and Jennifer Peltz for the Associated Press. Koch was an ardent supporter of cancer research and “donated $100 million in 2007 to create a cancer research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
Full story via Associated Press →
MIT Athletics
Technology Childcare Centers
Department of Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation (DAPER)
President L. Rafael Reif
MIT dedicates new Koch Childcare Center
David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research feted
David H. Koch gives $100 million to MIT for cancer research
David Koch '62 donates $25m for cancer research
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1928
|
__label__wiki
| 0.777916
| 0.777916
|
College Republicans Bring Former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul to Campus
Monday, March 10, 2014, By Keith Kobland
The College Republicans at Syracuse University have announced that former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul will speak on campus on Wednesday, March 26. “An Evening with Congressman Ron Paul: Defining Liberty,” will take place at Hendricks Chapel starting at 7:30 p.m.
“The Executive Board collaborates at the beginning of every semester about speakers that we think would truly educate and inspire the students at SU,” says Marissa Fenning ’15, who serves as club chairwoman. “With this event, we’re aiming to highlight all facets of the political landscape, including the growing number of Libertarians in office today.”
Fenning says the College Republicans are excited about Paul’s visit to campus, adding that it “really reflects upon our growth as a student group, and we greatly appreciate the support we have been given by the Syracuse University Student Association and a number of additional donors.”
Along with serving in Congress, Paul entered the ring for the presidential race in 2012.
The College Republicans have 30 active members, and meet on Mondays at 7:30 p.m. at the Hall of Languages room 101.
Paul’s discussion is free for all SU students (with a student I.D.) and $5 for non-students.
Keith Kobland
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1929
|
__label__cc
| 0.650759
| 0.349241
|
Caribbean Cinematic Festival to Highlight Richness of Caribbean Culture
Thursday, February 23, 2017, By News Staff
artCommunity Folk Art Center
This year’s Caribbean Cinematic Festival will take place Thursday, Feb. 23, through Sunday, Feb. 26, at the Community Folk Art Center, 805 E. Genesee Street, Syracuse. The festival will highlight the richness of Caribbean culture through a series of events, including film screenings, dance and spoken word performances, local Caribbean cuisine and a series of workshops and post film discussions.
The festival is an opportunity for Spanish, English and French speaking West Indians to meet and find common ground in a community that has residential divisions with Blacks living on the South Side and Latinos on the West Side.
This project is both an effort to showcase the beauty of Caribbean culture and foster community togetherness. Organizers would like to create an inviting space for Caribbean immigrants and non-Caribbeans to appreciate a culture that is not often highlighted within the Central New York community.
A complete schedule can be viewed on the CFAC website: http://communityfolkartcenter.org/.
More In Arts & Culture
Sound Beat: Access Audio Offering Children’s Audiobooks about Enslaved People by Cheryl Wills ’89
Sound Beat: Access Audio is providing two free family audiobooks written by Emmy Award-winning journalist Cheryl Wills ’89, the great-great-great granddaughter of Emma and Sandy Wills, enslaved people from Haywood, Tennessee. The audiobooks are narrated by the author and are…
Syracuse Stage Announces Changes to the 2020/2021 Season
Syracuse Stage announced adjustments to the schedule for the remainder of the 2020/2021 season. These adjustments include replacing previously announced shows with new titles and come in direct response to the evolving situation concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting in February,…
College of Visual and Performing Arts Flexes Creative Muscle to Address the COVID-19 Pandemic
“Visual and Performing Arts students wouldn’t have a reason to be here if they couldn’t sing or hold an instrument or act onstage or spend time in the studio. The arts are a social activity, not something that lends itself…
Special Collections Research Center Receives Grant to Process Forrest J. Ackerman Papers
The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation is providing Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) with a $17,000 grant to process the Forrest J. Ackerman Papers. Ackerman was a popular American science fiction author, editor, agent, collector and fan. His…
Architecture Students Help Design Street Renovation Project in China
Since April 2020, a team of students from the School of Architecture have been working on a master plan to transform a street scape in the future city of Xiong’an New Area in China’s Hebei province. After a long delay…
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1930
|
__label__wiki
| 0.93159
| 0.93159
|
COVERGENCE
UK incubators nurturing the next biotech generation
What type of environment is best to foster biotechnology startups through their first years? With more UK universities putting resources into supporting spinout companies, and dedicated life science incubators springing up at sites abandoned by large pharmaceutical firms (and elsewhere), the options for entrepreneurs are expanding in scope, style and availability.
Keith Powell, a London-based serial entrepreneur who is now chairman of Canbex Therapeutics and several other companies, was part of a panel debating the benefits of academic vs industrial incubation environments at the Genesis conference run by UK life sciences network One Nucleus in December. Powell got involved in biotech during the wave of investment in the UK and European biotech sector on the back of the turn-of-the-millennium dotcom boom. Investors who had rapidly made millions from technology firms invested heavily in drug development and biotech, but it didn’t last. ‘Many of the companies that invested in the UK didn’t understand that it can take decades to recoup an initial investment in drug discovery. The US market, particularly in California, invested more in early-stage discovery, was more experienced and more willing to be patient,’ he remembers.
Source: © Unit DX
Incubators can provide business support, as well as centralised facilities like NMR spectrometers, which would be too expensive for individual companies to buy and operate
In the early 2000s, Powell worked for the Bloomsbury Bioseed Fund, which supports commercialising research from University of London colleges in the Bloomsbury area of north London. At one point he was simultaneously chief executive of five embryonic companies. One of these, Domainex, was recognised by the Financial Times in 2018 as the ‘fastest-growing drug discovery contract research organisation in Europe’. It started with a discovery by Renos Savva at Birkbeck College in 1999 that introducing certain mutations into genes could enable bacteria to produce isolated protein domains.
Domainex survived its first years only through a combination of grant funding (£1.3 million over 5 years from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council); £250,000 from the Bloomsbury fund, and an initial deal with Inpharmatica, a bioinformatics company that had spun out of University College London a few years earlier. Deals with pharma companies including UCB followed, enabling Domainex to leave the University bench. It now employs over 60 scientists in one of the Cambridge research parks and a base in the US. ‘We couldn’t survive without strong international links, as there aren’t enough customers for our specialised drug discovery services in the UK alone,’ says Savva.
There are other reasons why biotech- and chemistry- based startups have a harder time in the UK than in, for example, California. One is the cost and availability of lab space: at one point, Domainex was paying £98,000 a year for two postdocs to work on a Birkbeck lab bench ‘the size of a large café table’, Powell explains. ‘Organic synthesis requires fume cupboards that are expensive to put in, and an incubator owner will expect a client to guarantee, say, 5 years’ use to justify installing them.’
It can be difficult to persuade non-specialist incubators to install fume cupboards for chemistry, and dedicated lab space is often in short supply
The nearest UK equivalent to California is the so-called ‘golden triangle’ of London, Oxford and Cambridge. The University of Oxford has its share of serial entrepreneurs who have been spinning out companies for over 20 years. These include Graham Richards, head of the university’s chemistry department from 1997–2006 and before then a founder of cheminformatics company Oxford Molecular. During his time as head of department he found a novel way to stimulate Oxford chemists’ interest in commercialising their research. He was searching for funds for a new building to house most of Oxford’s chemistry research; the investment bank Beeson-Gregory, now part of the IP Group, offered a significant chunk of the required amount, in return for a share of the revenue from any companies spun out of the department’s research in the following 15 years.
I’m sure some companies would have never been formed or would have left the city if they had not had our space to move into
ASHLEY BREWER, UNIT DX
Several successful companies emerged from the department during this period, starting with InhibOx, another cheminformatics company spun out of Richards’ own research. It grew out of a public-interest research project that used distributed computing – essentially the spare cycles of millions of individual home PCs – to search for compounds that could bind to cancer drug targets chosen by Oxford’s oncologists. The project was popular and successful, but not a financially viable model. InhibOx was founded to take the principles and data-management skills learned into cheminformatics services, and it has evolved – via a name change to Oxford Drug Design – into a drug discovery company focused on novel antibiotics. ‘Funding was very tight for little companies like ours after the financial crash’, says chief executive Paul Finn. ‘Changing our focus enabled us to survive and thrive with funding from both public and private sources.’ It is still a small company, but Finn explains that outsourcing ‘almost everything’ will enable a staff of five computational chemists to take new compounds into clinical trials.
Oxford University Innovation (OUI) has been supporting university spinouts for over a quarter of a century. It was originally known as Isis Innovation after Oxford’s river, but changed its name in the early 2000s. It grew gradually at first, in parallel with the UK’s life sciences ecosystem, but expanded rapidly after the arrival of Oxford Sciences Innovation as a preferred investor in 2015. In 2018, OUI supported over $500 million of investment in 125 companies including 24 new spinouts. The star of its portfolio is Oxford Nanopore Technologies, a next-generation DNA sequencing company founded in 2005 and now estimated to be worth £1.5 billion. ‘Nanopore is a truly international company with bases in the US and China and operations in many European countries’, says OUI’s marketing and communications manager, Gregg Bayes-Brown. ‘But its heart is in Oxford, within Oxford’s innovative ecosystem and, crucially, close to the lab where its founder, Hagan Bayley, still runs a research group.’
The commercialisation infrastructure is less well developed outside the golden triangle, even around the UK’s research-intensive universities, but it is growing. The universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey collaborate to run a business incubator, SETsquared, with facilities in each city. One of its earliest success stories was Ziylo, launched in 2014 by Bristol chemistry graduate Harry Destecroix and his supervisor Tony Davis. Ziylo develops glucose-binding molecules designed in the Davis lab, and was acquired by Danish diabetes specialist Novo Nordisk in 2018.
Frustrated by the lack of science incubator space in Bristol, but determined to stay in the city, Ziylo’s Harry Destecroix set up Unit DX
Bristol shares with Oxford and Cambridge the advantages of a vibrant, attractive environment but also the disadvantages of a crowded and expensive one. When Destecroix and Davis founded Ziylo, they found no lab space outside the University that the new company could use. Committed to staying in Bristol, they raised funds to convert a disused warehouse in the city centre into rentable lab facilities as Unit DX. ‘We now provide enough lab and office space for 26 companies of different sizes, with all labs fitted out to category 2 biosafety specification and 24 ducted fume cupboards,’ says centre director Ashley Brewer. ‘I’m sure some companies would have never been formed or would have left the city if they had not had our space to move into.’
However, if a UK-based startup expects to need a lot of lab space, it is unlikely to find a permanent home in a city centre. As larger pharmaceutical firms have retreated from early-stage drug discovery and to some extent from the UK, they have left behind sites that are well set up for research-based companies to move into – both in terms of laboratory space and connectivity to central resources. Alderley Park on the former AstraZeneca (AZ) site in Cheshire is a case in point. AZ’s decision to move its UK headquarters to Cambridge in 2013 proved unpopular with many of its scientists, not least because of the house price differential between the north west and what is sometimes known as Silicon Fen. The site now hosts over 200 companies, including startups (many of which were spun out from AZ itself) alongside more established life science companies. Companies can also take advantage of having the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, the public–private Antimicrobial Resistance Centre, and Innovate UK’s Medicines Discovery Catapult on site. ‘To enable these businesses to grow and develop, the Alderley Park Accelerator offers business support to startups and scale-ups, including a mentoring programme in which over 200 senior scientists and established entrepreneurs provide their advice and support,’ says managing director Chris Doherty.
Alderley Park in Cheshire, former UK headquarters of AstraZeneca, is now home to over 200 small and medium-sized companies, and several government and public-private institutions
Alderley Park is attracting companies from farther afield, including from within the golden triangle. Econic Technologies was spun out of Charlotte Williams’ lab at Imperial College London in 2011 to commercialise techniques for using carbon dioxide as a raw material in plastics. It occupied part of Imperial’s incubator in the basement of its School of Mines for four years, but moved north in 2016. ‘Since moving to Alderley Park, we have doubled in size,’ says Mike Kember, head of research. ‘We now have three labs on site with about 50 fume cupboards, and a pilot plant at the Heath in nearby Runcorn. With shorter commutes and lower house prices, it offers our employees a better quality of life.’
In the end, companies need three things to thrive: the right people, the right investment and the right infrastructure. Where these come together, success can arise anywhere in the UK: not just among dreaming spires or rolling hills.
Source: Nurturing the next biotech generation | Business | Chemistry World
By innovosource|2019-03-20T09:31:33+00:00March 20th, 2019|Accelerator/incubator, UK/England|0 Comments
About the Author: innovosource
innovosource is an awareness firm that connects high-tech companies and investors with innovation assets at research institutions and startups through relationship-building and knowledge exchange
Sign Up to Receive News
Organization Type Research University/Hospital/Foundation/Lab-TechTransfer,Venture Research University/Hospital/Foundation/Lab-Corporate/Foundation Relations Research University/Hospital/Foundation/Lab-Research Center, Faculty Accelerator/Incubator State or Government Authority Early-Stage Investor (VC, Angel) Industrial Affiliate Professional Organization Consultant/Service Provider Other
Copyright 205 - 2018 innovosource | All Rights Reserved | Powered by innovosource
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1931
|
__label__wiki
| 0.965806
| 0.965806
|
Yahoo News 360
New Kavanaugh claims: What’s the impact?
Mike Bebernes
·Editor
“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories.
What’s happening:
Allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh were the source of intense debate during his confirmation hearing last year. The issue has resurfaced, after a story published in the New York Times that adds detail to an account from Deborah Ramirez, one of Kavanaugh's Yale classmates, who says he exposed himself to her at a party.
The story also includes a previously unreported accusation from someone who said he witnessed Kavanaugh’s friends push “his penis into the hand of a female student” during the same period. The Times later revised its story to add the fact that the unnamed woman reportedly doesn’t remember the incident. Much of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing focused on a decades-old assault allegation from Christine Blasey Ford that the Times article’s authors said they found “credible” in their reporting. Kavanaugh denies all of the allegations.
The story also includes new claims that the FBI chose not to interview dozens of people who could have corroborated Ramirez’s account or follow-up when a Democratic senator brought the new accusation to its attention.
The claims have reignited tensions over Kavanaugh’s seat on the Supreme Court. Several Democratic presidential candidates have called for him to be impeached. President Trump, on the other hand, said Kavanaugh is being “Assaulted by lies and Fake News!” and said the Justice Department should “come to his rescue.”
Why there’s debate:
Much of the debate in recent days echoes the one that took place in the leadup to Kavanaugh’s appointment to the court. Republicans have questioned the validity of the allegations and claim they are politically motivated. Many Democrats have reiterated their view that his alleged behavior, and their belief he may have perjured himself during his confirmation hearing, should disqualify him from the court.
The information in the New York Times story might not be enough to shift people from these entrenched postures, whether they applaud or scorn Kavanaugh’s presence on the court. One of the story’s writers lamented the “rush to judgment” and “absence of truly introspective thinking” while discussing the response to its publication on Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast.
However, there may be consequences from the Kavanaugh saga being scrutinized in public again. The controversy has resurfaced at a time when the Democrats now control the House of Representatives and are in the midst of a presidential primary. Both of these factors could empower them to keep the issue in the news in a way they may not have been able to before.
One element of the new reporting that may lead to substantive action is intensified attention paid to the FBI's investigation into Kavanugh’s behavior before his confirmation. Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said the inquiry was a “sham” that was hampered by pressure from prominent Republicans.
What’s next:
Democratic leadership in the House has thrown cold water on the notion of impeachment proceedings against Kavanaugh, citing the unlikelihood that the Senate would come close to enough votes to remove him. It’s possible Democrats could launch their own inquiry into claims against Kavanaugh or whether the FBI’s investigation was credible.
Regardless, Kavanaugh's confirmation will likely be a major point of debate for the 2020 election, both at the presidential level and in crucial Senate races. It could be a defining issue in the reelection bid of Maine Republican Susan Collins, who is seen as casting a key swing vote in Kavanaugh’s favor.
From the Left
The new allegations further erode the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.
“It was Kavanaugh who said in his opening statement to the Judiciary Committee at his 2018 hearing: ‘The Supreme Court must never, never be viewed as a partisan institution.’ But it’s impossible not to view the court in exactly that way, thanks to a GOP determined to control it by any means at its disposal. It’s why questions — about Kavanaugh and the court itself — will continue to haunt us.” — E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post
The Kavanaugh hearing has shown Republicans they can get away with ramming through any judge they want.
“If you think this was a singular event, don’t be too sure. If given the chance, Republicans would surely rush through another Supreme Court confirmation, facts and investigations be damned.” — Robin Abacarian, Los Angeles Times
An inquiry into claims of an illegitimate FBI investigation could be damaging to Republicans.
“Democrats could use the scandal as another cudgel against Trump, who has ardently defended Kavanaugh and, in doing so, tied himself to the embattled judge. A congressional investigation into the Kavanaugh confirmation could paint a deeply unflattering portrait of Republicans’ conduct in ramming him through to a 50-48 confirmation.” — Eric Lutz, Vanity Fair
Kavanaugh will likely be a major issue in the 2020 election.
“The new allegations about him and the investigation into his conduct have reignited what is arguably the most contentious single political battle of the Trump era. It also was and is a fight worth having, and one that shouldn’t be forgotten come election year.” — Chas Danner, New York
The integrity of our institutions is at risk if the claims are not earnestly pursued.
“If presidents, cabinet members, and jurists who lie to Congress are not investigated and impeached when evidence of wrongdoing is revealed, then the system of checks and balances is rendered meaningless.” — John Nichols, The Nation
There will be no substantive results out of these new claims.
“The horrifying thing is that we knew enough to know all of this last fall — and then, as now, there was no road to accountability, no way to demand a real investigation, no path to delay the process that would end in a lifetime appointment.” — Dahlia Lithwick, Slate
Down the middle
Kavanaugh’s seat on the Supreme Court is safe.
“... no matter how many books get written about Kavanaugh’s past, his future is almost certainly on the Supreme Court.” — Chris Cillizza, CNN
There will be intense scrutiny on the court’s decisions in the near future.
“...this term, which opens in October, the Court could face high-profile cases involving sex discrimination, abortion rights, and more. The new details likely mean Kavanaugh and the Court as a whole will face even more scrutiny as they make decisions that affect Americans’ lives.”
— Anna North, Vox
Democrats will try to use Kavanaugh to delegitimize a possible decision on Roe v. Wade.
“The hope of the Democratic party and most of the media is to delegitimize Brett Kavanaugh and hence any Supreme Court decision in which he joins a 5–4 majority. The ground is being laid to make the case that, should Roe v. Wade be overturned in such a manner, that decision would exist under a cloud.” — Kyle Smith, National Review
A potential Democratic president will be forced to take action by political pressure.
“...it seems quite likely at this point that any Democratic president elected in 2020 would be under significant pressure from the Left to, at a minimum, reopen an FBI investigation into Kavanaugh that can be framed as an effort to uncover the truth and ensure the integrity of our institutions.” — Philip Klein, Washington Examiner
Democrats will rerun the Kavanaugh playbook if Trump nominates another justice.
“I think we have to worry about what happens if Trump eventually has another appointee that these kind of attacks are going to continue.” — Carrie Severino, Fox News
The fight over the Supreme Court makes 2020 Senate races more important.
“The partisan relitigation of Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation is an embarrassment to the country, but it is useful in putting the 2020 election stakes in sharp relief. The future of the Supreme Court is on the ballot in Senate races as much as in the presidential race.”
— Editorial, Wall Street Journal
Is there a topic you'd like to see covered in “The 360”? Send your suggestions to the360@yahoonews.com.
Read more 360s
Is Felicity Huffman’s jail sentence fair?
Would a four-day work week be better for everyone?
Is vaping a health crisis?
Cover thumbnail photo illustration: Yahoo News; photo: AP
With chants of “Long live Kamala Harris,” fireworks and prayers, residents of a tiny Indian village celebrated her inauguration as U.S. vice president. People flocked to the village and its Hindu temple in southern India, to watch Harris, who has ancestral roots in the village, take her oath of office on Wednesday in Washington. The villagers chanted “Long live Kamala Harris” while holding portraits of her and blasted off fireworks the moment she took the oath.
Ashley Biden: 'I will not have job in my father's administration,' unlike Ivanka Trump
Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley has said she will not have a job in her father's administration, unlike Ivanka Trump, in her first interview since the election. The only child of President-elect Biden and wife Jill, Ashley, a 39-year-old social worker in Delaware, said she instead wanted to use her new platform to ”advocate for social justice and mental health.” “I will not have a job in the administration,” she told NBC's Today Show, in what could be seen as a jibe at the current First Daughter, who, along with husband Jared Kushner, had adviser roles in the White House. “I do hope to bring awareness and education to some topics, subjects that are, you know, really important.” Ms Biden, who is married to plastic surgeon Howard Krein, was active in her father's presidential campaign, speaking at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, and hosting an event for women in Wisconsin.
Eugene Goodman, who diverted Capitol riot mob, escorted Kamala Harris to the inaugural platform
Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman was named an acting deputy Senate sergeant-at-arms to escort the vice president-elect
Fox News Fires a Key Player in Its Election Night Coverage
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1932
|
__label__wiki
| 0.724565
| 0.724565
|
Report: NHL willing to move on contract variance, with key stipulation
By Ryan DadounJan 4, 2013, 9:03 AM EST
The issue of contract variance — the amount a player’s salary can vary from season-to-season and start to finish in a multi-year deal — might be one that leads to some of the most noticeable post-lockout changes from a fan perspective.
Several teams took advantage of the old CBA’s loose rules when it came to how a contract could be structured to heavily front-load deals. That’s likely to change, but to what extent remains to be seen.
About a month ago, the NHL wanted to limit contract variance to 5%, but when it recently re-opened talks, it moved up to 10%. Now it looks like the NHL might be willing to go as high as 30% in terms of season-to-season variance, based on a CBC report.
The catch? They want the total variance capped at 60% of the highest-paid campaign.
In other words, Shea Weber, who was slated to earn $14 million in 2012-13 would have never been allowed to earn less than $8.4 million in any season of his contract if this proposed rule had existed last summer. Weber’s deal is heavily front-loaded and consequently, his cap hit is $7,857,143 despite his high initial salary.
The NHL’s reported offer is something the union might take issue with, as they previously wanted the minimum level to be 25% of the highest-paid season, according to the Globe and Mail.
Meanwhile, the NHL and NHLPA are expected to meet with mediators again today.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1934
|
__label__wiki
| 0.814158
| 0.814158
|
Kulikov contract details: two years, $5 million
Yesterday, it was reported that the Florida Panthers had signed restricted free agent defenseman Dmitry Kulikov to a two-year deal.
Today, we learn it’s a $5 million contract, rendering a cap hit of $2.5 million.
Kulikov, 22, had 28 points (4 G, 24 A) in 58 games last season while logging almost 22 minutes per contest.
Those numbers, by the way, are in the neighborhood of the ones produced by Montreal’s still unsigned 23-year-old defenseman PK Subban.
In 2011-12, Subban had 36 points in 81 games.
Michael Del Zotto’s new two-year, $5.1 million contract is another comparable. The 22-year-old d-man had 41 points in 71 games last season for the Rangers.
Related: Talks with RFAs Subban, O’Reilly “going nowhere fast”
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1935
|
__label__wiki
| 0.592961
| 0.592961
|
Radio Review: Blocked – Sitcom Pilot
So this is a weird one, but something that I wanted to talk about anyway, Now I’m not sure how many people will know about, let alone remember this Radio 4 Pilot but I think not only is it worth talking about but also worth listening to as well. I’ll include a link at the end for anyone that does want to give it a try.
‘Blocked’ is a Radio 4 Pilot written by Frankie Boyle and Steven Dick and starring David Mitchell, Lorna Watson, Poppy Rush, Chris Ramsey, Carolyn Pickles, David Cann and Joe Shavin. It was not well received by BBC executives when it was broadcast in 2014, in fact the word horrified was thrown about in regards to some of the content. And I can certainly understand that the material in the pilot wasn’t up to everyone’s taste but I believe that whoever commissioned the pilot in the first place should have been more aware that the content might have been controversial as it was penned by the king of dark comedy in Scotland, Frankie Boyle, a man who’s repeatedly been at odds with the censors at the BBC.
But anyway getting away from that let’s move onto more specifics about ‘Blocked’ it features Felix (David Mitchell) a disgruntled theatre owner, and struggling literary ‘Genius’ and his wife Nettie (Lorna Watson) their daughter Grace (Poppy Rush) and her boyfriend Chris (Chris Ramsey) as they attempt to keep their business afloat and manage each other’s personalities. Felix, is trying to make it work as a playwright but listening to his giant dwarf story it’s not likely.
David Mitchell is on perfect form here, playing into his public image with considerable skill, all the bit curmudgeonly and awkward as Mark Corrigan. Honestly this was genuinely funny, a lot of the typical Mitchell ranting and uptightness, but with more edge courtesy of Frankie Boyle. I appreciate both of their comedy styles and the blending of these styles creates something uniquely funny. This pilot does suffer from the ‘Family Guy Syndrome’ where it’s unclear why the family unit stays together at all considering they don’t seem to like each other all that much. The daughter even conditions the dog to pee on her father’s briefcase. It’s not something that I particularly find funny because it’s just lazy but I don’t think it drags down the pilot too much.
The one segment that causes considerable issues was when Felix and family are gathering around to read their CRB checks, just like a normal family does, with other members of the groups being involved in silly scrapes with the law whereas Felix is guilty of the IRA killing of Lord Mountbatten or at least someone with a similar name. He doesn’t hide the fact either, apparently having the man’s legs mounted on his wall. It’s exactly the type of extreme I’ve come to expect from Boyle and while I can understand people not liking the joke I do think that to react negatively shows a profound misunderstanding of both Frankie Boyle, and comedy in general. I’m paraphrasing here but I remember during a stand up routine that Boyle said that he often used comedy as a way of understanding and questioning things, it’s not trying to make light of the situation because a man was killed, but rather an attempt to talk about something under the guise of a joke. Plus the guy’s name is kinda silly. Now I don’t agree or disagree the BBC’s decision to axe the radio sitcom, its purely at their discretion but considering the longstanding relationship between Boyle and the BBC and his reputation for tackling subjects mired in controversy, dealing with dark material and yes sometimes going too far (see the I’m now so old my p***y is haunted’ bit) might it have been a bit naive, even ill informed to give him airtime at all if they were going to pull out the moment he made an inappropriate comment. I think in all honestly this was a calculated move to draw attention, because their are numerous checks before a broadcast and the joke got past them all, which is just so unlikely that it makes far more sense that they wanted controversy and attention and Frankie Boyle’s ‘Blocked’ gave them exactly that.
That being said other than the joke about the IRA’s murder of Lord Mountbatten (the queen’s cousin) in 1979 the script was relatively tame for Frankie Boyle, a lot more of the script focused on hijinks of a Fawlty Towers style, with Felix running about stealing sweets from kids and trying to keep the stray dog they have living with them away from an inspector. But as I said I think that Boyle and Mitchell who both have very defined comedy styles, manage to work really well together, and for the most part you never come away thinking that anything said by Mitchell was written for it, because he delivers it all in his quick fire, ranting, the world is against me way that’s made him a household name, and made him n my opinion at least, the best panelist on Would I lie to you.
Now this might just be me, but one of the funniest lines in the script was by Chris Ramsey’s character where he says “Oh my god Ricky Gervais tweeted something really funny!” to which Felix replies “Oh no he didn’t”
Another personal favourite was by Lorna Watson when describing Mitchell’s character where she says “You’ll have to excuse my husband he doesn’t know how to communicate with people at even the most basic level…he’s a writer”
Overall the writing is well timed and genuinely enjoyable even after a few listens and their was no member of the cast who let the pilot down in my opinion. The ending in particular tied all of the plot points together in an ideal example of a denouement, where the CRB Inspector discovers Felix, with pockets full of chocolate and puppies, trying to hide a confused diabetic child. Blocked is funny and I think that’s what’s most important, it’s just a shame it wasn’t part of a series, although as a self contained episode it works quite nicely. If you want to have a listen them follow this link.
Posted on November 19, 2017 December 28, 2020 by Tom NeilPosted in Off the Record, Reviews (TV & Film)Tagged BBC, Blocked, David Mitchell, Frankie Boyle, Freelancer Tom, Off the Record, Radio 4, TV Review.
Previous Previous post: Album Review: Steve Burns and the Struggle – Deep Sea Recovery Efforts
Next Next post: Album Review: Ninja Sex Party – Under the Covers Volume II
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1937
|
__label__cc
| 0.668468
| 0.331532
|
Actuators & Solenoids
Choke Parts & Miscellaneous
Engine Distributors
Pertronix Ignition Modules
ZEEMS Fuel System Parts
Shop Parts ▾
Home / Zenith Carburetor Floats / Zenith B85-139 Carburetor Float
Zenith B85-139 Carburetor Float
Zenith B85-139 float is used in Zenith 33 Series carburetors. JLG part 7023471. Zenith: 13845, 13847, 13850, 13858, 13882, 13887, 13898, 13901, 13905, 13907, 13908, 13921, 13972, 13982, 13986, 13988, 14010, 14024, 14030, 14043, 14047, 14050, 14053, 14054, 14070, 14074, 14075, 14076, 14077, 14080, 14101, 14105, 14109, 14111, 14112, 14113, 14117, 14118, 14120, 14122, 14123, 14124, 14125, 14129, 14132, 14134, 14135, 14141, 14142, 14153, 14156, 14163, 14165, 14168, 14169, 14173, 14174, 14176, 14180, 14181, 14191, 14192, 14193, 14194, 14199, and many more. JLG part 7023471. Also used with carburetor rebuild kits K2219 and K2220.
Ref, K2219, K2220, 33A8, 33AC8, 33AP8, 33AW8, 33AC8C, 33AV8GA, 33AC8GA, 33AV8CGA, 33AC8CGA.
Collections: Zenith Carburetor Floats
Zenith Carburetors
ZEEMS Zenith Fuel Systems Parts
Marvel Schebler TSX Carburetors
About Norfar
Zenith Carburetor Cross Reference Guide
Wisconsin Engine Carburetor Cross Reference Guide
Zenith Fuel Systems Parts
Zenith carburetors for sale, parts and rebuild kit for updraft, downdraft, new or old. Website has carburetor pictures and diagrams. We also sell Pertronix Ignition Parts, Turbo Chargers, Bridge Analyzers and other fuel - electrical system parts.
We take the extra step to satisfy our customer's requirements. Not sure whether you're ordering the right part? Need it right away?
Our knowledgeable sales staff are ready to assist you! - We have been proudly serving our customers for the last 20 years.
© 2021 NORFAR.COM | All Rights Reserved | Bellingham, WA
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1940
|
__label__wiki
| 0.825574
| 0.825574
|
Carl T. Rowan is named director of the United States Information Agency by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
log-in | register now
Forgot your password? email: password:
Today In Black America
Walter L. Fields Jr.
Saad and Shaw
NSEXTRAS
Black Orgs Directory
NMAAHC
NorthStar Archives
Today in Black America - January 19
Hold Donald Trump Accountable
Today in Black America: 05.01.09
From The Bottom Up: Segment 11
Today in Black America - April 9
Contradictions and Hypocrisy Haunt U.S. Policy in the Middle East
By Dr. Ron Daniels
POSTED: February 10, 2011, 12:00 am
CLEARPRINT
As the nation witnesses the rebellion against the autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt unfold, it is useful to reflect on the fact that the U.S. has almost always been on the wrong side of reform and revolution in the world. Though Presidents, public officials and Americans in general are quick to boast about this nation as the bright beacon of democracy, liberty and hope for the world, America’s history is filled with examples of cozy relationships with autocrats and ruthless despots. President Calvin Coolidge once famously proclaimed “the business of government is business.” And, all too often, in the name of protecting U.S. “vital interests” this dictum has trumped the lofty ideals of promoting democracy and liberty around the globe.
America’s “friends” reads like a who’s who in the hall of shame of dictators and unsavory autocrats: Samoza, Trujillo, Batista, Duvalier, Reza Pahlavi (Shah of Iran), Botha, Marcos, Mobutu, Pinochet, Cedras. Now, with legions of Egyptians pouring into the streets clamoring for Democracy, the U.S. is caught attempting to rationalize why our government has been in bed with Mubarak, whom former Vice-President Dick Cheney has hailed as “good friend and reliable ally.”
Cheney is correct. Despite presiding over a pseudo democracy where most opposition parties are banned, human rights violations are rampant and unemployment and poverty are staggering, Mubarak has been a reliable ally. Early in his tenure he was seen as a reliable alternative to the rise of another Gamal Abdel Nasser, who might ally with the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc in championing the cause of developing nations around the world. Indeed, what Martin Luther King called a “morbid fear of Communism,” is the principal reason the U.S. embraced so many despots during the Cold War. All that was necessary to receive a steady flow of foreign aid, much of which was military assistance, during the Cold War was to be part of the pro-western, anti-communist club. Second, the U.S. was eager to have a safe regime guard and provide preferential access to the Suez Canal to ensure that oil, the life blood of the American economy, could flow unimpeded. Finally, with Anwar Sadat’s dramatic visit to Jerusalem to make peace with Israel (an act which infuriated the Arab-Muslim “streets” and led to his assassination), the U.S. had a dependable partner in the Mid-East peace process and “bulwark” against Arab extremism. Post 9/11, Mubarak has been considered a crucial ally in the war against terrorism. In fact, there is solid evidence that during the Bush administration, suspected terrorists were secretly sent to Egypt where they were tortured to gain intelligence. The U.S. proclaims that torture is contrary to our “values;” therefore, it was necessary to render suspects to our trusted friends in Egypt.
It has been a costly friendship. By some estimates the U.S. shells out more than $2 billion annually to Egypt, $1.3 billion of which is aid to the military. This is more than the rest of the African continent. U.S aid has been dispensed to prop up a repressive and corrupt regime where according to a recent article in the New York Times, the armed forces “operate as a parallel economy, ‘a kind of Military, Inc.,’ involved in production of electronics, household appliances, clothing and food.” While the military is profiting within an oppressive society, millions of Egyptians eke out an existence on $2.00 a day, and there are more unemployed college graduates than in any nation in the world. In the meantime, Mubarak has hardly taken a vow of poverty. His family fortune is estimated at $40-60 billion! With that amount of loot you would think that he would retire from office willingly. But, like most despots, he is a “proud man” who is intoxicated by power.
The contradictions and hypocrisy in U.S. policy in the Middle East are mindboggling. America can be friends with an authoritarian regime in Egypt but wage war against Iraq to kindle democracy in the region. The Palestinians are encouraged to foster democratic institutions, but when Hamas wins a decisive majority in free and fair elections in Gaza, the U.S. refuses to respect the outcome, choosing instead to shun Hamas as a “terrorist” organization. The U.S. can tolerate the Royal Families of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, hardly showcases of democracy, but recoil at the prospect of Hezbollah leading the government in Lebanon. Beyond the obscene amount of taxpayer dollars that are going to support relationships and alliances that fly in the face of the nation’s professed values, the U.S. is paying an even greater toll in terms of fueling anti-American sentiments in the region and the world. It is quite apparent to the protesters in Egypt and the Arab/Muslim world that the U.S. has been subsidizing Mubarak and his repressive-regime for decades. There is also legitimate outrage that the Israeli-Palestinian crisis has not been resolved because the U.S. is not viewed as a neutral facilitator but a self-professed ally and defender of Israel first and foremost. And, it does not take a rocket scientist to discern that the U.S. addiction to oil dictates that it set-aside its “values” and ally with whoever has the goods in the interest of protecting America’s vital interests.
The contradictions and hypocrisy, however, reverberate far beyond the Middle East. It is the height of hypocrisy that the U.S. could have a 30-year alliance with the Mubarak regime and maintain an embargo against Cuba because it lacks “democratic institutions.” While one might concede that Cuba is more authoritarian than democratic, at least it is a regime which has consistently attempted to use the power of the state to promote social and economic policies to benefit the people. China arguably fits in the same category, but the U.S. has no problem not only engaging China but permitting the People’s Republic to hold a huge amount of U.S. debt. Venezuela and Bolivia are also on America’s list of maligned nations primarily because their populist leaders are dedicated to minimizing the penetration and exploitation of their resources by U.S. corporate interests. According to the “Coolidge dictum,” Mubarak is a good guy but Chavez and Morales are enemies.
The real tragedy is that the “sound and fury” of anti-Americanism precipitated by a history of contradictions and hypocrisy in U.S. international relations will proceed with the American public virtually oblivious to what is transpiring in their name. I dare say that most Americans had no clue about the despotic nature of the Mubarak regime. We are pre-occupied with debates over who is a real American, the deficit, size of government, efforts to further entrench Wall Street as the guardian of the economy, and a war on terrorism to protect the “home of the brave and land of the free” from the Jihadists. Despite the ignorance factor of the electorate, however, the U.S. cannot escape the consequences of its behavior on the world stage. America’s history of contradictions and hypocrisy will continue to haunt the U.S. until “we the people” compel our government to align its vital interests with the professed ideals of this nation and forge relationships, friendships and alliances accordingly.
Dr. Ron Daniels is President of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and Distinguished Lecturer at York College City University of New York. His articles and essays also appear on the IBW website and www.northstarnews.com. To send a message, arrange media interviews or speaking engagements, Dr. Daniels can be reached via email at info@ibw21.org.
Related References
Handbook of U.S. Labor Statistics 2008
Employment, Earnings, Prices, Productivity, and Other Labor Data
Black Politicians in New Jersey Reach New Low
NorthStar Network Editorial 2003
Justice for the Central Park Five
NorthStar Network Editorial from October 2002
DC Voting Rights
A NorthStar Network news report on voting rights in the nation's capital
Hate American Style
Violence in Iraq is eerily similar to what Blacks experienced in the era of Jim Crow
White House Seeks to Muzzle Foreign Press
Bush White House seeks to silence foreign press over criticism of Iraq War
African Development Institute Inc.
Lee Cassanelli: Director
Afro American Historical & Genealogical Society
P. O. Box 73067 Washington, DC 20056-3067
African Environmental Research Consulting Group (AERCG)
Dr. Peter A. Sam, Chairman/CEO
Poverty in the United States, 1969
Injustice Against African Americans, 2007
The nation's oldest civil rights organization monitors acts of injustice against Black Americans in 2007
HIV/AIDS Today, Issue 11
Black Elected Officials, 2000
One of the foremost Black think tanks looks at the status of Black elected officials in 2000
U.S. Senate Directory, 110th Congress
A directory of U.S. Senators in the 110th Congress
NorthStarNews.com on Facebook
ABOUT NORTHSTARNEWS.COM
The Circle of Hope
Our Readers React
How to become a Contributor
Designed by 6Sixty Group | Powered by Byte Studios Milwaukee Web Design
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1941
|
__label__wiki
| 0.748503
| 0.748503
|
Born: 22-Aug-1940
Birthplace: Suffern, NY
Party Affiliation: Democratic
Executive summary: Rhoda on Mary Tyler Moore
Valerie Harper began her career as a leggy showgirl at Radio City Music Hall. She made her film debut at 16, as one of the teenagers at the prom in Rock, Rock, Rock. She was a chorus girl in the musical film of Li'l Abner with Stubby Kaye. To most audiences, she is Rhoda Morganstern, wacky pal on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s. After spinning off to her own Rhoda sitcom, Rhoda consistently beat Mary Tyler Moore in the ratings.
Harper later starred in the sitcom Valerie, with a young Jason Bateman as her son. But she was considered "difficult", and Bateman soon came to be considered "the star" of the show, so when Harper didn't report to work one day, the next day she was fired. Her character was written into a car crash, Sandy Duncan was brought in to play her sister, and the show was renamed Valerie's Family. Harper sued, arguing that the title implied her continued involvement. She won $1.4 million, 12% of the show's profits -- and the show got its third title, The Hogan Family.
Harper ran for president of the Screen Actors Guild in 2002, but lost to Melissa Gilbert. When she charged that the voting had not been on the level, the union voted again, and again Gilbert won. No longer in demand for sitcoms, she was the voice of a chicken in Dog's Best Friend, and has toured extensively in a one-woman show about the life and times of Pearl S. Buck.
Husband: Richard Schaal (actor, m. 1964, div. 29-Jan-1978)
Daughter: Wendy Schaal (stepdaughter, actress, b. 2-Jul-1954)
Husband: Tony Cacciotti (producer, m. 8-Apr-1987, one daughter)
Daughter: Cristina Cacciotti (adopted, actress, b. 1983)
University: Hunter College
Friends of Hillary
PAC For a Change
Screen Actors Guild National Board of Directors
SAG-AFTRA Board of Directors
Emmy 1971 for Mary Tyler Moore
Emmy 1975 for Rhoda
Golden Globe 1975 for Rhoda
Risk Factors: Lung Cancer, Brain Cancer
Missing Persons Ellen Hartig (1994)
City Liz Gianni (1990)
Valerie Valerie Hogan (1986-87)
Rhoda Rhoda Morgenstern Gerard (1974-78)
The Mary Tyler Moore Show Rhoda Morgenstern (1970-74)
Shiver (Feb-2012)
My Future Boyfriend (10-Apr-2011) · Bobbi Moreau
Dancing at the Harvest Moon (20-Oct-2002)
Mary and Rhoda (7-Feb-2000)
The Great Mom Swap (23-Sep-1995)
Death of a Cheerleader (26-Sep-1994)
Strange Voices (19-Oct-1987)
The Execution (14-Jan-1985)
Blame It on Rio (17-Feb-1984) · Karen Hollis
Don't Go to Sleep (10-Dec-1982)
The Day the Loving Stopped (16-Oct-1981)
The Shadow Box (Sep-1980)
The Last Married Couple in America (1980)
Chapter Two (14-Dec-1979) · Faye Medwick
Freebie and the Bean (25-Dec-1974)
Thursday's Game (14-Apr-1974)
http://www.valerieharper.com/
Today I Am A Ma'am, and Other Musings on Life, Beauty, and Growing Older (2001, memoir)
NNDB MAPPER Create a map starting with Valerie Harper
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1943
|
__label__wiki
| 0.562526
| 0.562526
|
``Beowulf'': A formulaic translation with a critical introduction
David Hellstrand Gould, University of Connecticut
Literature, Medieval|Literature, English
The dissertation consists of a formulaic translation of Beowulf into modern English verse, designed for recitation, with a critical introduction explaining the novel approach to the poem taken in the translation. The introduction is divided into three parts: (1) A chapter on the Tone and Style of the poem, which deals particularly with the use of humor of various sorts in the poem; (2) A chapter on Formulaic Language in the poem, which attempts to show how the translation imitates the formulaic nature of the original poem; and (3) A chapter on Meter, which proposes a new theory of Old English based upon a study of formulaic language in Beowulf. My thesis in the chapter on tone and style is that scholars and translators have often ignored or suppressed humor in Beowulf because it does not fit in with their preconceptions about the nature of the poem, thereby perpetuating an erroneous idea of the poem. In the chapter on formulaic language, I show how translation usually obscures the formulaic nature of the poem because translators adopt a literary aesthetic which eschews repetition. I then demonstrate how imitating the formulaic language of the original creates a more accurate impression of it. The chapter on meter demonstrates that formulaic language in the poem can act as an objective check upon metrical theories, and that a study of formulaic language shows that about forty percent of the half-lines in the poem are made up of two parts, one which satisfies the metrical and alliterative requirements of the half-line, and which usually consists of formulaic language, and another which consists mainly of function words which is used to combine formulas into larger syntactic units, and which may be considered extrametrical. This extrametrical material produces syncopation, which prevents the rhythm of the poem from becoming monotonous. My translation uses a meter which imitates this property of the Old English meter and which demonstrates its practicality in modern English. ^
Gould, David Hellstrand, "``Beowulf'': A formulaic translation with a critical introduction" (1992). Doctoral Dissertations. AAI9304812.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1947
|
__label__wiki
| 0.641098
| 0.641098
|
Thursday: 1 US Soldier, 3 Iraqis Killed; 11 Iraqis Wounded
by Margaret Griffis Posted on December 10, 2009 December 10, 2009
Updated at 3:59 p.m. EST, Dec. 10, 2009
Although only three Iraqis were killed and 11 more were wounded in the latest reports, there were other significant developments coming out of Iraq. Tuesday’s bloody bombings in Baghdad continued to dominate the news from various angles, but the closing of Camp Ashraf could soon take the attack’s place in the headlines. One U.S. soldier was also killed as U.S. Secretary Gates dropped in on Iraqi officials.
The Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s massive bombing in Baghdad. The al-Qaeda related group seeks to create a caliphate in Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq. Although Iraqi officials believe the funding for the bombings came from Ba’athists in Syria, the U.S. is accusing Iran of helping militant groups in Iraq. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki later complained that Iraq’s own internal factions were contributing to the problems with security and elections. In the past, he has blamed Ba’athists for derailing peace, but some would accuse him of simply trying to undermine the campaigns of former Ba’athists and other Sunni politicians.
At the Syrian border, Iraqi and American forces say that most of the people arrested for illegally entering the country are smugglers, not Ba’athists. Also, work on a 149 km-long border trench was completed. Syria continues to deny any connection to bombings in Iraq.
The Prime Minister also announced that he would close Camp Ashraf and move the inhabitants to Baghdad later this week as a prelude to expelling them from the country. The group will then be housed at the secluded Nugrat al-Salman, a former prison used by Saddam to jail dissidents.
Camp Ashraf has been home to nearly 4,000 Mujahideen el-Khalq (MKO or MEK) fighters and their families for the last two decades. The group was expelled from Iran and given sanctuary by Saddam. They claim the Iraqi government has been abusing their rights, but the group fears returning to Iran where they could be tortured or executed. The MEK was under U.S. protection until the beginning of this year when their fate was handed over to the Iraqis. No third country has stepped forward to grant them asylum.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Baghdad during a tour of the war zones. The prime minister was unable to keep a meeting with the secretary, as Maliki was too busy defending himself in front of parliament. Meanwhile, Iraqi military officials are admitting they would like U.S. forces to remain in Iraq after the appointed withdrawal date.
In Mosul, an explosion wounded a civilian. Another bomb wounded two soldiers. Three bodyguards were wounded when a third bomb targeted a police motorcade. A fourth bomb wounded five more people.
In Baghdad, gunmen assassinated a sheikh. Bombs in Qanat and Yusufiyah left no casualties.
North of Mosul, two Christians were discovered shot to death. Iraqi Christians are but one of several minority groups subjected to targeted attacks in northern Iraq.
In Baghdad, police liberated a kidnapped child, defused bombs and confiscated armaments.
Thirty-one suspects were arrested in Basra province.
One suspect was detained in Kirkuk.
Author: Margaret Griffis
Margaret Griffis is a journalist from Miami Beach, Florida and has been covering Iraqi casualties for Antiwar.com since 2006. View all posts by Margaret Griffis
Previous Previous post: An Open Letter to The Norwegian Nobel Committee
Next Next post: US-Iran Talks: The Road to Diplomatic Failure
Margaret Griffis’s Latest Posts
Iraq Daily Roundup: 10 Killed
Iraq Daily Roundup: 14 Killed; Mass Graves Yield Hundreds of Victims
Iraq Daily Roundup: 14 Wounded
Iraq Daily Roundup: Nine Killed
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1951
|
__label__wiki
| 0.841545
| 0.841545
|
R-Rights: Rights to Rights
In 2005, after negotiating the release of some 60 men herded from a gay bar in a dawn raid, some of the gay and lesbian activists who were present and who are graduates from the UP College of Law decided to form an NGO that would provide a legal and policy think tank for the LGBT community. And so R-Rights was formed.
A closer look at Rainbow Rights Project (R-Rights) Inc.
In 2005, some 60 men were herded from a gay bar in a dawn raid and were kept in custody for a whole day without provisions – yet another of the widely accepted (yet largely ignored) occurrences of unscrupulous elements exploiting the fear of law enforcers by taking advantage of the lack of knowledge of members of the LGBT community on their legal rights. After successfully negotiating their release with no one being charged, some of the gay and lesbian activists who were present and who are graduates from the UP College of Law, decided to form an NGO that would provide a legal and policy think tank for the LGBT community.
And so Rainbow Rights Project (R-Rights) Inc. was formed – spearheaded by Germaine T. P. Leonin as founding president – as a one-of-a-kind LGBT legal NGO in the Philippines.
“Since there was no alternative legal organization composed of the LGBTs, and rendering services for the LGBTs, the founding members decided to organize with the goal of making sure the LGBTs will know their rights under the law, be empowered to fight for their rights, and have access to legal assistance and advice at their time of need,” notes R-Rights’ Angie Umbac. “R-Rights is an innovation to LGBT advocacy work in the Philippines. It seeks to create a legal and policy ‘think tank’ and resource center dedicated to LGBT issues. It is geared towards knowledge production, separate from the political base of advocacy groups, and is focused at developing ideas that will create major changes in the long run. It aims to contribute in the effort to eliminate discrimination and violence against LGBTs by producing strategic policy research papers and proposed legal reform measures, and by fostering an informed, rational, and objective discourse on LGBT issues.”
GRAINING GOOD GROUND
R-Rights has immediately gained good ground with its unorthodox method of imparting legal information free of charge to the LGBT community, students, and alternative law groups. R-Rights has, since its launching, expanded to include like-minded individuals from various disciplines like creative arts, education, media, psychology, reflective that “this is a community, and everyone can make a valuable contribution.
R-Rights’ activities and achievements include: Production of IEC and legal rights materials (i.e. Pink Card, which seeks to educate LGBTs about their basic human rights under Philippine criminal law; Blue Card, which is a primer for the legal protection of lesbians in intimate relationships; and Lilac Card, a legal guide that outlines the rights of lesbians in the work place); forums (Rainbow Exchanges/Dyke Dialogues) on specialized LGBT topics, best practices in LGBT rights advocacy, the need for sustained activism, and national and international updates, including special interest topics like lesbian literature, lesbian parenting, transgender rights under Philippine law, suicide risk of Filipino LGB youth, and election and party-list representation law. The forums were conducted in Quezon City, Baguio City, Metro Cebu and Cagayan de Oro., and were made possible with funding support from Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice; and free legal counseling, assistance, emergency hotline services including the preparation of legal instruments for the protection of rights of LGBT.
Still other efforts include: Preparing legal papers and resource materials on sexual orientation and gender identity law; serving as resource speakers/lecturers on gender and sexuality issues; and offering of LGBT-focused paralegal trainings for LGBTs.
“R-Rights wants to make sure that everyone knows his/her rights under Philippine law. But law is not exactly a hot topic for discussion. How can you get people interested enough to listen? In addition, there is a dearth of legal practitioners who are available or who have the heart to take on LGBT advocacy work,” Umbac says.
To address these, R-Rights tapped young activists from diverse fields, who understand the needs and language of the ever-changing LGBT community. “With them, legal discussions are packaged with current popular issues and conducted in fun activities. We are proud to say that these activists are already undergoing paralegal training so they can communicate the law better.”
R-Rights, of course, also taps into popular non-traditional media, using the tools of this generation to reach younger LGBTs – just as “we also work closely with other LGBT organizations and human rights groups, (since) having allies make the work easier and more fun.”
Most recently, R-Rights started a weekly LGBT community radio program: Rainbow Radio Pilipinas (launched last November 21, 2009), aiming to discuss LGBT issues, and feature personalities and talents from within the community. This was made possible with funding from the Global Fund for Women. Rainbow Radio Pilipinas airs at DWBL 1242 kHz, every Saturday at 2:30-3:30 in the afternoon.
FACING LGBT CONCERNS
A key issue for LGBTs, says Umbac, is “ignorance – we can spread the blame all around. For example, some members of the LGBT community do not believe we have rights, and do not think there is a need to assert our rights. On the other end of the spectrum is another form of ignorance, that there is no need to call for respect for LGBT rights because the oppression is not real, or even that the oppression is justified,” she says.
Umbac adds: “Ignorance is most dangerous in policy makers, people who make the rules. Where do we fit in this? We have the duty of making rationale and convincing arguments for LGBT rights. For example, if policy makers and legislators are unaware of discrimination committed against us, we need to make them aware, and give them the tools to adequately address our needs. If they do not listen, that is a different matter. But it is best we consider them allies first; we may be pleasantly surprised.”
R-Rights, thus, “works very hard at spreading information on LGBT rights through forums and now through the radio. In the grand scheme of things, every effort may appear to be a drop in the ocean. Such is the need for sustained activism. Yet, if in the crowd there is one student who will grow up to be a Supreme Court justice or senator, or a radio listener may be a teacher who help shape minds, and he/she makes decisions or teaches with compassion and understanding of the plight of LGBT, then our work will not have been in vain.”
In the long run, R-Rights hopes to be actively involved in an ambitious Asia-wide human rights documentation project on violence committed against non-heteronormative women, to be spearheaded by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. For this project, R-Rights /will be partnering with several LGBT organizations and activists for research in areas in Northern Luzon, Metro Manila, Metro Cebu and Cagayan de Oro.
The community, in itself, still has a lot to work on, of course. “There have been petty infighting. We can expect that; after all, we are a family of diverse and strong-willed individuals. But the best thing is, when confronted by a common enemy, we come together and put aside our differences, just like in a family,” Umbac says, adding, nonetheless, that the LGBT community continues to be inspiring – e.g. “How lavish we can be with our thank-yous and I-love-yous within the community; meeting young activists, and knowing their eagerness and vibrance can sustain the movement, even after we are gone; and how the community always, always finds the silver lining – how positive we are about things, how we love to laugh, how our parties and celebrations are never dulled by the negative vibes and homophobia around us.”
Related Topics:LGBT PhilippinesR-RightsRainbow Rights Project (R-Rights) Inc.
STRAP: A Natural Evolution
STRAP: The Gender Advocates
Introducing one of the oldest LGBTQIA organizations in the Philippines, Diwata ng Muntinlupa, which was established in 1977 to advocate for LGBTQIA human rights while offering the members companionship and peer support.
Luwela A. Rodrigo
Photo by Luwela A. Rodrigo
ARTICLE FILED WITH ZOE DENYS GULLON
In 1998, a member of the LGBTQIA community in Muntinlupa City was murdered inside his salon two days before a show he was part of was to take place. The murder made the news (particularly locally), but what may not have been widely circulated was that the murdered person was (then) the sitting president of Diwata ng Muntinlupa, one of the oldest LGBTQIA organizations in the Philippines, having been established in 1977.
“It was rough for us,” recalled Glenn Ricaroz, the current president of Diwata ng Muntinlupa. And yet, the organization’s members went on with holding the already-scheduled show “and brought happiness to the people even when happiness was nowhere near our hearts because of what happened.”
That macabre occurrence highlighted for the members of Diwata ng Muntinlupa why the organization exists in the first place – i.e. advocating for LGBTQIA human rights so that nothing like that could ever happen to LGBTQIA people ever again, but (while doing the advocating) also offering each other companionship and peer support.
As the first LGBTQIA organization in Muntinlupa City, Diwata ng Muntinlupa’s formation was backed by former city mayor Atty. Maximino A. Argana. And in 42 years, it has been “steadfast in its intention to connect, support and represent (the LGBTQIA people) in the eight barangays (villages) in Muntinlupa City.”
Annually, the members support each other in highlighting their “connection” through an already regularized performance for the feast of the Sto. Niño (Child Jesus); a way of showcasing LGBTQIA representation through a religious event. During this event, Diwata ng Muntinlupa becomes “a showcase of talents,” said Ricaroz.
Muntinlupa City (or at least as reported to the leadership of Diwata ng Muntinlupa) is “largely LGBTQIA-friendly,” Ricaroz said. But this does not weaken “our support for the passage of an anti-discrimination law.”
Obviously, as in any law, the implementation could become an issue, but Ricaroz said that the very act of having an anti-discrimination law that will protect the human rights of LGBTQIA people will validate their very being.
For example, “sa pulis (in the police station), when you report (there), ang treatment naman sa iyo is not bading or tomboy (you are not recognized as gay or lesbian/based on your SOGIE). You are just considered as man or a woman. So what will appear in the records/blotter is ‘pinatay ng lalaki yung kapwa niya lalaki (a man killed another man),” Ricaroz said. This erases not just the identity of LGBTQIA people, but could also inadvertently affect reporting on crimes committed against people because of their SOGIE.
After 42 years, the longevity of the group may be attributed to its ‘survivalist’ attitude. “Kahit sino naupo, nandyan kami (It doesn’t matter who is in power in the local government, we’re still here),” Ricaroz said. This is also a source of pride considering how local organizations are almost always formed and then dismantled only to serve the political dreams/intentions of politicians; they are – therefore – often at the whim of these same politicians. But “(for us), no matter who sits in the local government, Diwata is and will always be there.”
But – perhaps surprising considering the organization’s age; though perhaps unsurprising due to its very nature as a community-based organization – Diwata ng Muntinlupa also continues to face financial issues.
For instance, there are times, said Ricaroz, when “we struggle to keep (the annual show for the Sto. Niño going).” But benefactors almost always step up – e.g. founding member Mama Blanca, the local government, and community members. And “we are always overwhelmed with the support we get. This is why we still keep going.”
Diwata ng Muntinlupa continues to eye growth – e.g. the founding members total less than 20, but regular members now number over 120 people, not including allied LGBTQIA organizations/groups in Muntinlupa City. Meanwhile, there is broadening of efforts being made. After 42 years, it is finally getting itself registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). And aside from the annual show for the Sto. Niño, it is looking into organizing sports events for the LGBTQIA people in their communities, start HIV advocacy efforts HIV; and develop a livelihood and entrepreneurial project for the LGBTQIA community through educational scholarships and TESDA.
“We want to keep the legacy of Diwata ng Muntinlupa going,” Ricaroz said, hoping that – in the end – the organization becomes like the very people its members hold in esteem, inspiring others to be moved into action for LGBTQIA advocacy.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DIWATA NG MUNTINLUPA
For LGBTQIA Filipinos in Muntinlupa City who may want to join Diwata ng Muntinlupa, visit and coordinate with the officers via the organization’s Facebook account.
The unanswered needs of those in the HIV community, and how social networking sites – in this case, Twitter in particular – can help deal with these needs that triggered the formation of Courage Pilipinas in June 2018.
Photo by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay.com
In 2017, Rommel (not his real name; for privacy) created a Twitter account. As an HIV advocate, he noted that there are a lot of HIV-positive people there. “They ask: Ano ang gagawin namin (What do we do) after we test HIV-positive?” Rommel said. And so “I reached out to them.”
Initial “successes” included “getting some people tested for HIV, giving counseling to those who tested positive (but didn’t know who to turn to; specifically those with ‘alter’ accounts), and linking HIV-positive people to treatment, care and support.”
“Sadly,” Rommel said, “there were (also) a lot who were lost to follow up.”
It is this – the unanswered needs of those in the HIV community – and how social networking sites – in this case, Twitter in particular – can help deal with these needs that triggered Rommel to form Courage Pilipinas in June 2018.
Twitter, of course, is now also recognized as relevant in advocacy efforts, including in the promotion of HIV-related advocacy.
Image used for illustration purpose only; photo by Kevin Bhagat from Unsplash.com
TAPPING TECH
For those not in the know, Twitter is a free service that allows users to post messages of 280 (or fewer) characters. These posts can contain text, photos and videos.
It is reported that one out of three adolescents aged 13-17 use Twitter, making it one of the most popular in the world; closely following the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
Twitter is also used by professionals (including politicians like US Pres. Donald Trump, whose “official” positions are incoherently posted on the site).
Twitter, of course, is now also recognized as relevant in advocacy efforts, including in the promotion of HIV-related advocacy. Various studies have – in fact – been done about this.
When hookup apps can save lives
In 2015, for instance, Tamara Taggart, Mary Elisabeth Grewe, Donaldson F. Conserve, PhD, Catherine Gliwa, and Malika Roman Isler, PhD conducted a comprehensive systematic review of the current published literature on the design, users, benefits, and limitations of using social media to communicate about HIV prevention and treatment.
In “Social Media and HIV: A Systematic Review of Uses of Social Media in HIV Communication”, the authors recognized that “social media, including mobile technologies and social networking sites, are being used increasingly as part of HIV prevention and treatment efforts. As an important avenue for communication about HIV, social media use may continue to increase and become more widespread.”
The researchers used a systematic approach to survey all literature published before February 2014 using seven electronic databases and a manual search. The inclusion criteria were: (1) primary focus on communication/interaction about HIV/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), (2) discusses the use of social media to facilitate communication, (3) communication on the social media platform is between individuals or a group of individuals rather than the use of preset, automated responses from a platform, (4) published before February 19, 2014, and (5) all study designs.
The search identified 35 original research studies. Thirty studies had low or unclear risk of at least one of the bias items in the methodological quality assessment. Among the eight social media platform types described, short message service text messaging was most commonly used. These platforms served multiple purposes, including disseminating health information, conducting health promotion, sharing experiences, providing social support, and promoting medication adherence.
Social media users were also diverse in geographic location and race/ethnicity, with the studies commonly reported users aged 18-40 years and users with lower income.
An interesting research finding: Although most studies did not specify whether use was anonymous, studies reported the importance of anonymity in social media use to communicate about HIV largely due to the stigma associated with HIV.”
No longer just for gay trysts…
WIDE-REACHING ANONYMITY IN FOCUS
According to Ron* (not his real name; for privacy), who is helping out in running Courage Pilipinas, and particularly basing on his personal experience, “a lot of HIV-positive Filipinos seem to be using Twitter,” he said. “This may be because “it’s easier to express yourself there without exposing yourself.”
Ron’s HIV-related advocacy also started in Twitter. After testing HIV-positive, his alter account became – largely – anti-government, particularly “after I saw the government’s failure to deal with PLHIV issues.” This led to him meeting other PLHIVs’ at first “just eight of us, which grew to 12, and then to 35. Eventually, (we became an informal group) of 150 members.”
In his observation, it is in Twitter where a lot of PLHIVs get courage to reach out to others; “they find a voice there somehow,” Ron said. “It has become some sort of safe space.”
According to the people behind Courage Pilipinas, “a lot of HIV-positive Filipinos seem to be using Twitter… This may be because it’s easier to express yourself there without exposing yourself.”
Photo by Gilles Lambert from Unsplash.com
JUST A START
Both Rommel and Ron admit that tapping PLHIVs in Twitter (and other social networking sites) is just a start. “Napapanahon lang (It’s just timely, that’s all),” Ron said.
They recognize the numerous issues plaguing the HIV community in the Philippines – e.g. wrong priorities of the Department of Health (and the government, in general, when it comes to health); shortage of no supplies of antiretroviral medicines; profiteering of non-government organizations; et cetera.
“So we eventually want to (be relevant as a pro-active organization that’s not only available in the virtual world),” Rommel said.
All the same, particularly since PLHIV-led efforts particularly count in dealing with issues that PLHIVs themselves face, “every effort – no matter how small – counts,” Rommel said.
“More than just talk, we act,” Ron said. “And that’s always a good first step.”
To Join Courage Pilipinas or for more information, contact 0917 315 5863; or connect via Twitter account Courage.Pilipinas (@CouragePilipin1).
Like other LGBTQI organizations, Balangaw shares the same vision and mission to spread equality and be united. But, this time around, “we want for those in Palawan to do it for themselves,” said Evo Joel Contrivida.
In June 2018, local LGBTQI people from Puerto Princesa in Palawan saw the need to “formally organize to be able to speak with one voice on many issues affecting us, including discrimination that LGBTQI people experience locally,” said Evo Joel Contrivida.
And so – with the help of the city government of Puerto Princesa, Pilipinas Shell Foundation and NGO Project H4 – the Balangaw LGBTQ+ Association of Puerto Princesa was established.
Balangaw is a Cuyonon word for rainbow, the universal sign of the LGBTQI community in the world.
From the get-go, Contrivida said, they knew it was going to be challenging. Surprisingly, the initial challenge came from the LGBTQI community itself – i.e. “It was, at first, difficult getting the approval/support of the members of the LGBTQI community,” he said, adding that “particularly the local lesbians, which are not as open as their gay counterparts, had to be convinced to join the group, and be part of this history-making in Palawan.”
Contrivida is now a member of the Board Of Directors of the association, overseeing its corporate affairs.
Other officers include: Geofred Gabo (Nay Favz), president; Rodelo Coneles, VP for internal affairs; Rica Belleza, VP for external affairs; Roland Joseph Palanca, secretary; Marlon San Juan, treasurer; and Jester Roque, auditor.
As of the last general assembly, Balangaw has 207 registered members.
When he took the top post of the association, Gabo noted that there actually already exists an organization for senior LGBTQI people in Palawan, and that its members are known for being united. It is this that he wants for Balangaw to replicate; even while building on this by providing more opportunities to the LGBTQI people of the city.
Contrivida said that, like other LGBTQI organizations, “we share the same vision and mission to spread equality and be united.” But, he stressed, this time around, “we want for those in Palawan to do it for themselves.”
And this, in the end, is what Contrivida wants LGBTQI people in Palawan to recognize: That there’s a group composed of and for them to help them dictate their community’s future.
For those interested to know more about Balangaw, contact Evo Joel Contrivida at +63 917 554 6533 or evojoel46@gmail.com.
When Cavite Smart Guys Global was established as a “clan” in 2006, it only had 13 members. But even then, said Jhasper Pattinson Zaragosa, it always had lofty dreams to do “charitable efforts to promote goodwill.”
Growing strong.
When Cavite Smart Guys was established as a clan (an informal organization for men who have sex with men, whose members mainly communicated with the use of tech, from mobile phones to the Internet) in 2006, it only had 13 members. But even then, said Jhasper Pattinson Zaragosa, CSG head of marketing, ads and multimedia arts, it had lofty dreams. Specifically, it eyed to do “charitable efforts to promote goodwill.”
“In (CSG), we keep on giving emphasis to the core value of sharing through charity works and other socio-activities,” added one of the clan’s heads, Micollo Zaragosa. So that “every events, we would always (give a) portion to a certain charity.”
CSG later evolved into a “global community” – that is, the membership expanded to include those not just from Cavite. The name changed, though it still gave tribute to its origin: Cavite Smart Guys Global (CSGG).
A “trademark”, if you will, is the consistent use of the surname “Zaragosa” by its members, mainly because CSGG was – to start – founded by Marcus Zaragosa with his friends. In a way, this is akin to LGBTQIA “families” involved in the “ball culture” in the US. There, competitors compete – e.g. voguing – while carrying the banner of “houses”. In the case of clans, no competition per se happens; but the same concept of belonging is applied by carrying a common house/family name.
With the help of the likes of Facebook, CSGG was able to grow its (online) membership to over 37,000, easily making it Cavite’s largest MSM group.
And among clans, it has been recognized as – among others – the #1 provincial clan; one of the top five ‘bi’ groups in the Philippines; and more recently, as a “Bi-Rainbow Community Diamond Awardee (Mega Manila)”.
But according to Micollo Zaragosa, even with their successes, there remain challenges for the clan. For instance, “a challenge we are facing right now is how (to) retain our members, and for them to be engaged in (online and actual) activities.” This challenge, however, helped “make us to become innovative,” he added, so that “we keep on providing new and innovative activities and events that most members haven’t heard/seen before. We want to keep them curious and hyped about the events and activities we are offering, so that they always join.”
Looking forward, Jhasper Pattinson Zaragosa said that the group has numerous plans – e.g. be SEC registered, start including lesbians into the clan, and further strengthen the clan’s presence (on- and offline). But in the end, the intention is always to “be relevant to its members, even as we eye to be relevant to the community.”
For more information about Cavite Smart Guys Global, visit HERE.
On September 17, 2017, Transman United Iloilo (TUI) was established to allow trans and non-binary brothers in that area to be able to offer support to each other.
In the third quarter of 2017, two trans men from Iloilo – Lee Co and PJ – saw the need to “encourage the trans man community to come together within Panay, especially in Iloilo.” Because even then, “(our) trans and non-binary brothers (did not have means to) exchange their experiences as well offer support to others,” recalled Lee Co.
And so on September 17, 2017, they established Transman United Iloilo (TUI) to be – exactly – this channel to allow trans and non-binary brothers in that area to be able to offer support to each other.
Lee Co said that nowadays, particularly for those in non-metropolitan areas, major challenges continue to abound for trans and non-binary people.
In TUI’s experience, in particular, “we still have issues with getting adequate medical care despite multiple health issues, from depression to high rates of suicidal as well as searching for trans-friendly doctors.”
Currently, TUI is connected with one doctor “who agreed to help fellow trans brothers and non-binary people when it comes to hormone replacement therapy (HRT),” Lee Co said. This “helps us out (a lot).”
The group is still very new, but it aims to be the best in what it does – i.e. “To assist our fellow trans and non-binary brothers within Panay island and guide them properly.”
And here, Lee Co said, “everyone is welcome… if they want to learn what being trans and/or non-binary is.”
For more information, head to Transman United Iloilo’s Facebook page.
San Julian PRIDE: Aiming for equality in rural areas
In 2017, a group of LGBTQI community members noted that the one existing LGBTQI organization in San Julian in Eastern Samar was – to be blunt – “dead” because of its inactivity. And so San Julian PRIDE was established to give the LGBTQI community here a presence that can actually be seen and felt.
On December 23, 2017, a group of LGBTQI community members noted that the one existing LGBTQI organization in San Julian in Eastern Samar was – to be blunt – “dead” because of its inactivity. And so – because “the prolonged inactivity meant that the community was unserved” – Roel Andag founded San Julian PRIDE.
“We are still without legal protection,” Roel said to Outrage Magazine, so that “not surprisingly, LGBTQI people remain marginalized and prone to discrimination, which adversely impact (our) health, career, livelihood, education and life as a whole. It is also sad to note that Pride-related developments remain Metro Manila-centric, and this is even if rural LGBTQI people face more acute economic and sociocultural vulnerabilities.”
Aside from Roel, also involved in the organization’s establishment were: Wilmar Operario, Judy Operario, Francis Cabrales and Jill Jargue.
San Julian is a rural, fifth class (i.e. very poor) agriculture-based municipality with 16 barangays (villages) located in one of the chronically poorest provinces of the Philippines. Poverty incidence here – already at 64.7% in 2009 – deteriorated further when Typhoon Haiyan hit the area in 2013.
“Predominantly Roman Catholic… the rural attitudes towards LGBTQI people here remain fraught with stigma, thereby resulting in extremely limited opportunities,” Roel said. “Organizing and mobilizing for equality will mean significant empowerment.”
San Julian PRIDE, in its own way, eyes to remedy this situation by giving the LGBTQI community from here a presence that can actually be seen and felt.
An interesting tidbit of info: San Julian actually has an anti-discrimination ordinance (ADO), which was passed in 2015, making it the first municipality in the Philippines to pass such legislation.
But this does not mean that the local LGBTQI community’s issues are already dealt with.
“Our tagline, ‘Rural and Equal’, captures our unique essence. The multiplicity of our challenges (rural poverty, geographical predisposition to frequent natural disasters, our being a discriminated minority in a rural milieu, and low health-seeking behavior in the face of the HIV epidemic) define the intersectionality of the identity that makes us unique,” Roel said.
To date, San Julian PRIDE has 40 active members.
Considering that the organization is relatively very new, plans are lofty, including:
Lobbying for the formulation of the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of San Julian’s ADO, and popularizing its salient points;
Raising awareness regarding sexuality- and gender-based bullying in schools;
Building the capacity of LGBTQI people in universities and municipalities of Eastern Samar to organize themselves;
Partnering with the treatment hubs in the province to implement the Department of Health’s HIV program; and
Creating/supporting livelihood and skills enhancement opportunities for LGBTQI people in the province, and then involve the community in promoting LGBT rights and equality in our rural setting.
For Roel, “(let this serve as) our ad hoc platform for advocacy and serve as a safe space where members engage in discussions of topics of interest including human rights, HIV and SOGIE, among others.”
San Julian PRIDE is open for membership, though the focus is on gay men and transwomen from San Julian, Eastern Samar. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/SanJulianPride/.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1954
|
__label__wiki
| 0.631658
| 0.631658
|
Mass incarceration is a feature not a bug
By Lizzie O'Shea
20.Apr.18
Australia’s prison population is exploding. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicates that there were 41,270 people in prisons in Australia at the end of 2017. This figure represents a significant upward trend: a decade ago, the figure was 26,442. Within these numbers, there are some observable trends, particularly around Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and female offenders. One of the most significant is that there also has been an enormous increase in prisoners held on remand: around a third of the prison population, or 13,113 people, on any single day are detained while awaiting trial. That is a rise of 87 per cent since 2012, when the proportion of prisoners on remand was less than a quarter. Given that violent and property crimes have remained reasonably steady or gone down over a similar period, this trend reflects changes in policy more than a change in social experience of crime. How can we address this crisis of policy in our prisons?
Silicon Valley has long portrayed itself as the face of upbeat, self-actualising capitalism, where competition is a benign force for social change (let’s save the species by setting up a colony on Mars!). Ironically, or perhaps predictably, this has become more acute in an age of pessimism, when political alternatives to human catastrophes seem less viable than ever. While it is undeniable that much of the sheen of the digital revolution has dulled over the last two years (see Facebook), there remains an abiding feeling that many of the problems we encounter, socially, politically and environmentally, will involve some kind of technological solution.
A recent post in Hacker News about a start-up that aims to provide a ‘cost-effective, human alternative to jail’ is a prime example. Promise is a company that aims to reduce the population of people detained while awaiting trial because they cannot post bail (what Australians call being on remand). There are currently 450,000 people in the US in this category. Through a variety of technical tools, from tracking devices to intelligent calendars, Promise would allow the state to keep tabs on these people, but without the need to keep them in jail. Participants could return to work and their families while they await trial.
In response to their introductory pitch on Hacker News, one commenter provided some telling feedback that is worth quoting at length:
Coming from a European perspective I find it utterly perplexing that a society would not only accept high rates of incarceration but also support venture capital to optimize that status quo. Because that’s what is being offered – making it affordable for poor people to go into custody, as opposed to lobbying against private prisons and extreme sentences for trivial crimes, and disentangling this horrific ‘tough on crime’ narrative that has taken hold over the past decades. How on earth is it positive to see an opportunity for profit in all the people being locked up before trial and to what end will that investment be pursued?
It’s fascinating that many viewpoints from the US are so exceptional in their notion that they completely ignore how systems in other countries tackle the problem without generating a criminal underclass.
Hacker News is a deeply influential platform among technologists. It is run by Y Combinator, a start-up incubator with a highly competitive selection process. Projects that get accepted to Y Combinator are given funding and resources to help transform their idea into a successful business. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Y Combinator is an investor in Promise.
Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, is a successful and youthful venture capitalist. His credentials make him sounds like a classic member of the white guy tech elite: he has ambitions to transform politics, he is an advocate for a basic income, and he rejects political correctness in favour of brave contrarianism.
Promise is quintessentially a Silicon Valley venture in that it sounds simultaneously like a wonderful and terrible idea. A reduction in prison numbers is an important goal, but rather than achieving this through reform via democratic organs of power, the company aims to optimise the system of incarceration so that it achieves its outcome while causing minimal disruption to business as usual. It feels a little like the backstory to an episode of Black Mirror in which we all somehow find ourselves in a world where crime has disappeared, but we are fitted with tracking devices and intelligent calendars that monitor our every move in the name of public safety.
Promise demonstrates the fundamental ideological weakness of technological utopianism, which attempts to beguile the problem of politics with technology. By replacing human processes with technological ones, we are given the impression of progress while structural features that produce harm and inequality remain untouched. Human creativity is corralled into the service of patching up a dysfunctional social system, rather than imagining more radical futures.
It is not the only example. Cooperative Capital is a ‘cooperative private equity fund that empowers citizens to pool their money together to make promising investments within their community.’ So, in other words, a privatised version of a taxation and redistribution system. When all you have is faith in capitalism, everything starts to look like a problem of civil government inefficiency. This is Juicero for libertarians; it only seems innovative if you assume that people are fools.
There are ways in which technology can contribute to the welfare of prisoners and, by association, society. Education during incarceration has a well-established correlation with a reduction in recidivism in countries where it is permitted. The problem is that in Australia, prisoners are not permitted access to the internet and therefore struggle to benefit from these programs. The outcome is that we release prisoners at the end of their sentence ill-equipped to obtain employment and make social connections in an increasingly digital society.
The theorist Stafford Beer famously argued that ‘the purpose of a system is what it does.’ The failures that are represented by the bloated prison industrial complex are not symptomatic of a deficit in disruptive thinking that might be remedied by innovative start-ups, they are a function of politics. In her ground-breaking book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander argues that mass incarceration only seems like a failed policy if we assume it is designed to prevent crime. If we understand it as a system of social control it is a success story.
Until we confront these systemic failures, technological fixes for political problems will only serve to optimise oppression.
Image: New Edmonton Remand Centre – Construction
Lizzie O’Shea is a lawyer. Her book Future Histories (Verso 2019) is about the politics and history of technology.
More by Lizzie O'Shea
From Jackie on 2 May 2018 at 7.06 pm
Awesomely apt
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1955
|
__label__wiki
| 0.673978
| 0.673978
|
← Franklin Roosevelt’s SOTU of 1941: The Four Freedoms
Somebody Had to Make a Start: Sophie Scholl, the White Rose, and Modern Resistance →
February 8, 2020 · 01:49
Trump’s National Prayer Breakfast: Compromised Church and Echoes of the Third Reich
A few months back I began to write about the Nuremberg Trials and the opening statement of the American Chief Prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. The first section was comprised his general remarks. The second dealt with the Nazi war against free organized labor. The third section presented here was the shortest part of his opening statement. It deals with the Nazi battle against the Churches.
I am coming back to that today because of the way President Trump hyper-personalized, politicized, an already often polarizing event to attack his opponents, mock their faith, and let the nation know, that you are not a true believer unless you blindly follow him. It included thinly veiled attacks on the faith of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Mitt Romney, and his Press Secretary alluded that Trump would announce that people would “pay” for their disloyalty to Trump. The The President followed the prayer breakfast with a rambling speech in which he did that, and on Friday he fired men who had testified before the House Impeachment Committee. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and LTC Alexander Vindeman of the National Security Council. Vindman, an active duty Army Officer accused of no crimes or wrongdoing was escorted out of the White House like a criminal. It was a scene designed to humiliate him professionally, and threaten others, military members, or civil servants that anything that smacked of personal disloyalty would be punished. Trump’s Christian Conservative base was overjoyed. That is the price of betraying the leader.
The fascinating thing is that religious people and religious institutions are often the most unwavering in support of authoritarian regimes that often turn on them, because the Authoritarian can only allow one savior or God, and that would be him. Adolf Hitler was such a man; as were Saddam Hussein, Josef Stalin, the Salvadorian dictators, the Caesars, or any number of other men and women who wielded absolute power.
Though Trump has not completely crossed the line into a full blown authoritarian and dictator, he is acting more and more like one on a daily basis, and his strongest supporters are conservative Christians, especially evangelicals, regardless of what he does against the law, Constitution, and simple Christian beliefs. If he does retain power will turn on them the second any offer criticism of him. His acquittal by the Senate has only served to embolden him. Many Christian conservatives who supported Hitler found that they too would be on the receiving end of his revenge the second they stepped out of line. among them was Martin Niemoller who later wrote:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
At Nuremberg Justice Robert Jackson laid out his argument to show how Hitler’s initially favorable treatment of the churches was directed with the aim of suppressing or corrupting all competing institutions of power in the state that could potentially become centers of resistance. Likewise, Jackson built up his argument this to show how Hitler’s action were an attempt to remove any moderating influence that could stand against its plans for aggressive warfare and genocide.
The division of the German State Church into the Evangelical Church (Lutheran and Reformed) and Roman Catholicism was a Problem for the Nazis. They desired a coordination of religion under their rule. The Protestant and Catholic state churches of Germany were potential rivals for the soul of the citizenry of the Third Reich. They ran schools, universities, hospitals, benevolent organizations, published influential newspapers, and had their own political parties and labor organizations.
German Protestantism since the day of Martin Luther was linked to German nationalism and seen by the Nazis as the ideal vehicle to build upon. The Catholic Church which was predominant in Bavaria and was strong in the other states of southern and western Germany. It was not very strong in the north, especially Prussia where in the 1800s Otto Von Bismarck persecuted the Catholic Church through the Külturkampf. Like Bismarck, Hitler, though Catholic himself viewed the Church as less than fully committed to the Reich because of its allegiance to Rome, which Hitler and many other Nazis considered to be a foreign power.
Likewise, other Nazi leaders of Catholic background realized the power of the Church and its institutions, and even stood in awe of them. Heinrich Himmler would pattern his SS indoctrination upon the Jesuits. The former Catholics included Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Himmler’s number two man, Reinhard Heydrich. Richard Evans wrote in his book The Third Reich in Power:
Himmler’s deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, reacted against a strict Catholic upbringing with a hatred of the Church that can only be called fanatical. In 1936, Heydrich classified the Jews and the Catholic Church, acting above all through political institutions such the Centre Party, as the two principal enemies of Nazism. As an international body, he argued, the Catholic Church was necessarily subversive of the racial and spiritual integrity of the German people. Moreover, the Catholics, unlike the Protestants, had been largely represented by a single political party, the Centre, whose voters, again unlike those of most other parties, had mostly remained loyal and resisted the appeal of Nazism during the elections of the early 1930s. Much of the blame for this could be laid in the Nazis’ view at the feet of the clergy, who had preached vehemently against the Nazi Party, in many cases ruled that Catholics could not join it, and strongly urged their congregations to continue voting for the Centre or its Bavarian equivalent, the Bavarian People’s Party. For many if not most leading Nazis, therefore, it was vitally important to reduce the Catholic Church in Germany as quickly as possible to total subservience to the regime. (Third Reich In Power pp. 234-235)
The average church member was not the physical target of their attacks, instead the Nazis worked at, and quite often were very successful at weaning away many of the faithful from anything more that perfunctory and traditional displays of religion. Even there the Nazis did their best to supplant holidays such as Christmas and Easter with Nazi themes and ideology.
The battle for the Party was to deprive the Churches of their social and political power, and for the most part they were successful in their campaign. They suppressed church political parties and newspapers, labor unions, youth organizations. The latter were dissolved and replaced by the Reich Labor Front, and the Hitler Youth. Church schools were eventually closed by 1939 and religious education in public vocational schools was reduced to very small amounts of time with the teaching becoming more in line with Nazi racial ideology and anti-semitism.
The Protestant Church mostly fell in line with a minority in opposition known as the Confessing Church. Even so the Protestant opposition for the most part limited its opposition to the Nazis to the infringements against the church, not the nationalism or Nazi war aims. Richard Evans wrote:
The co-ordination of the Protestant Church was driven forward, among other factors, by the appointment of the lawyer August Jäger as State Commissioner for the Evangelical Churches in Prussia. Jäger declared that Hitler was completing what Luther had begun. They were ‘working together for the salvation of the German race’. Jesus represented ‘a flaring-up of the Nordic species in the midst of a world tortured by symptoms of degeneracy’. In conformity with the ‘leadership principle’, Jäger dissolved all elected bodies in the Prussian Church and replaced many existing officials with German Christians. Meanwhile, Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller had taken over the administrative headquarters of the Evangelical Church with the aid of a band of stormtroopers. By September, pressure was growing within the Reich Church to dismiss all Jews from Church employment. Much of the pressure came from ordinary pastors. Prominent here were young pastors from lower-middle-class backgrounds or non-academic families, men for whom war service had often been a life-defining experience, and racially conscious pastors from areas near Germany’s eastern borders for whom Protestantism represented German culture against the Catholicism of the Poles or the Orthodox faith of the Russians. Such men desired a Church militant based on the aggressive propagation of the Gospel, a crusading Church whose members were soldiers for Jesus and the Fatherland, tough, hard and uncompromising. Muscular Christianity of this kind appealed particularly to young men who despised the feminization of religion through its involvement in charity, welfare and acts of compassion. The traditional Pietist emphasis on sin and repentance, which dwelt on images of Christ’s suffering and transfiguration, was anathema to such men. They demanded instead an image of Christ that would set a heroic example for German men in the world of the here and now. For them, Hitler took on the mantle of a national redeemer who would bring about the rechristianization of society along with its national reawakening. (Third Reich in Power pp. 224-225)
The Nazified and nationalistic German Protestants, led by these clergy paint a striking image very similar to conservative American Evangelical Christians who echo many of the same theological themes, and who have in many cases elevated President Donald Trump into a redeemer and nearly messianic figure.
Jackson continued his opening statement at Nuremberg dealing with this toward the middle of the day on November 21st 1945. These are his words:
The Nazi Party was always predominantly anti-Christian by ideology. But we who believe in freedom of conscience and of religion base no charge of criminality on anybody’s ideology. It is not because the Nazis themselves were irreligious or pagan, but because they persecuted others of the Christian faith that they became guilty of crime, and it is because the persecution was a step in the preparation for aggressive warfare that the offence becomes one of international consequence. To remove every moderating influence among the German people and to put its population on a total war footing, the conspirators devised and carried out a systematic and relentless repression of all Christian sects and churches.
We will ask you to convict the Nazis on their own evidence, Martin Bormann in June 1941 issued a secret decree on the relation of Christianity and National Socialism. The decree provided:
“For the first time in German history the Fuehrer consciously and completely has the leadership of the people in his own hand. With the Party, its components, and attached units, the Fuehrer has created for himself, and thereby for the German Reich leadership, an instrument which makes him independent of the church. All influences which might impair or damage the leadership of the people exercised by the Fuehrer with the help of the N.S.D.A.P. must be eliminated. More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs, the pastors. Of course, the churches must and will, seen from their viewpoint, defend themselves against this loss of power. But never again must an influence on leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This influence must be broken completely and finally. Only the Reich government, and by its direction the Party, its components, and attached units, have a right to leadership of the people. Just as the deleterious influence of astrologers, seers, and other fakers are eliminated and suppressed by the State, so must the possibility of church influence also be totally removed. Not until this has happened does the State leadership have influence on the individual citizens. Not until then are the people and Reich secure in their existence for all the future” (D-75).
And how the Party had been securing the Reich from Christian influence will be proved by such items as this teletype from the Gestapo, Berlin, to the Gestapo Nuremburg, on 24th July, 1938. Let us hear from their own account of events in Rottenburg:
“The Party, on 23rd July, 1939, from 2100 carried out the third demonstration against Bishop Sproll. Participants, about 2,500-3,000, were brought in from outside by bus, etc. The Rottenburg populace again did not participate in the demonstration. This town took rather a hostile attitude to the demonstrations. The action got completely out of hand of the Party Member responsible for it. The demonstrators stormed the palace, beat in the gates and doors. About 150 to 200 people forced their way into the palace, searched the rooms, threw files out of the windows, and rummaged through the beds in the rooms of the palace. One bed was ignited. Before the fire got to the other objects or equipment in the rooms and the palace, the flaming bed was throw from the window and the fire extinguished. The Bishop was with Archbishop Groeber of Freiburg, and the ladies and gentlemen of his menage in the chapel at prayer. About 25 to 30 pressed into this chapel and molested those present. Bishop Groeber was taken for Bishop Sproll. He was grabbed by the robe and dragged back and forth, Finally the intruders realised that Bishop Groeber was not the one they were seeking. They could then be persuaded to leave the building. After the evacuation of the palace by the demonstrators I had an interview with Archbishop Groeber, who left Rottenburg in the night. Groeber wants to turn to the Fuehrer and Reich Minister of the Interior Dr. Frick anew. On the course of the action, the damage done, as well as the homage of the Rottenburg populace beginning today for the Bishop, I shall immediately hand in a full report, after I begin suppressing counter mass meetings. In case the Fuehrer has instructions to give in this matter, I request that these be transmitted most quickly.” (848-PS).
Alfred Rosenberg Nazi Ideologist and Reich Minister for Occupied Territories
Later, defendant Rosenberg wrote to Bormann reviewing the proposal of Herrl as Church minister to place the Protestant Church under State tutelage and proclaim Hitler its supreme head. Rosenberg was opposed, hinting that Naziism was to suppress the Christian Church completely after the war.
The persecution of all pacifist and dissenting sects, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Pentecostal Association, was peculiarly relentless and cruel. The policy toward the Evangelical Churches, however, was to use their influence for the Nazi’s own purposes. In September, 1933, Muller was appointed the Fuehrer’s representative with power to deal with the “affairs of the Evangelical Church” in its relations to the State. Eventually, steps were taken to create a Reich Bishop vested with power to control this Church. A long conflict followed, Pastor Niemoller was sent to a concentration camp, and extended interference with the internal discipline and administration of the Churches occurred.
A most intense drive was directed against the Roman Catholic Church. After a strategic Concordat with the Holy See, signed in July, 1933, in Rome, which never was observed by the Nazi Party, a long and persistent persecution of the Catholic Church, its priesthood and its members, was carried out. Church Schools and educational institutions were suppressed or subjected to requirements of Nazi teaching inconsistent with the Christian faith. The property of the Church was confiscated and inspired vandalism directed against the Church property was left unpunished. Religious instruction was impeded and the exercise of religion made difficult. Priests and bishops were laid upon, riots were stimulated to harass them, and many were sent to concentration camps.
After occupation of foreign soil, these persecutions went on with greater vigour than ever. We will present to you from the files of the Vatican the earnest protests made by the Vatican to Ribbentrop summarising the persecutions to which the priesthood and the Church had been subjected in this Twentieth Century under the Nazi regime. Ribbentrop never answered them. He could not deny. He dared not justify.
I now come to “Crimes against the Jews.”
THE PRESIDENT: We shall now take our noon recess. (A recess was taken until 1400 hours.)
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn for fifteen minutes at half past three and then continue until half past four.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I was about to take up the “Crimes Committed Against the Jews.”
This is a most dangerous time, after SOTU Vice President Pence said on Fox News that Speaker Pelosi: “ “I just have a strong feeling that she’s going to be the last Speaker of the House to sit in that chair for a long time.”
To me that sounds like the dissolution of the House, and maybe a lot more.
Filed under civil rights, ethics, faith, History, laws and legislation, leadership, Military, national security, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary, Religion
Tagged as adolf hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, ambassador Gordon sondland, Andy pelosi, catholic church, confessing church, german christians, justice robert jackson, LTC Alexander Sondland, martin bormann, nazi germany, nazi party, Nazi racial ideology, nuremberg trials, president donald trump, Richard Evans, Senator Mitt Romney, Third Reich in Power, vice President Mike Pence
16 responses to “Trump’s National Prayer Breakfast: Compromised Church and Echoes of the Third Reich”
Dreamer9177
Everything this POS does reminds me of the Nazis
Brian Skar
When Obama was President many of the Religious Right said he was the AntiChrist. I am no expert on the subject, but my understanding is that some of the primary characteristics of the AntiChrist are that he is a lawless liar who will deceive the elect body of the church. Hmmmm. I would never try to label anyone the AntiChrist because like so many Christians these days, I do not claim to know the mind of God beyond his will expressed in Scripture. But the hypocrisy of the Religious Right is truly astounding and frightening
padresteve
I know Brian, neither do I claim to know the mind of God, but like other “anti-Christs” in history, he sure seems to be a lot more “anti-Christy” than Obama ever did.
yes ajc
Sean Munger
I’m not a Christian but I feel sorry for those of you who are and will have to try to put your faith back together after the damage that evangelical nuts have done to it. First they tried (successfully) to redefine the central tenet of Christianity as hatred of LGBT people. Now they’re trying to define Christianity as worship of Trump. First of all, doesn’t that count as idolatry, and second, why is it that modern Christianity has nothing to do with Christ? I wish you luck in reclaiming your churches after Trump is gone, but as a non-Christian it seems pretty clear to me that Christianity in America is irretrievably and fatally broken.
Sadly Sean, I think it will be a disaster like was visited upon Germany to break these cultists of their faith in Trump.
Sean I trust in christ and that is why I do not go to church. Bad places. Confusing. Corrupt. ajc
Steve, please watch the documentary on Netflix (or read the book) called “The Family” about National Prayer Breakfast itself and the person and group that sponsor it. It is even more scary than what the President has done to it.
I’ve read about “The Family” for years, they’re a scary bunch.
Just a small remark from Bavaria: “Kulturkampf” is written without an Umlaut-Ü.
Actually you are correct. I do not know why I wrote it that way. I often switch between English and German spell check. Thank you.
I am glad I found this site. What are we supposed to do. No one to stand against this dictator. Do we pray for his removal? Such strange blindness.
It is a problem that really faithful Christians faced in Germany in the 1930s. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sophie Scholl, and Henning Von Tresckow have been helpful to me in my struggle with the subject. Feel free to put their names in my search section on the blog.
I’m glad to see that I am not alone in my comparisons, for I have been called an alarmist, been told I am seeing shadows where none exist. And yet, I have read enough, studied enough, to sense that we are on a precipice now. Sigh. Good post, Padre … thank you!
Thanks Jill. It is hard not to be an alarmist anymore.
Damn near impossible, my friend. Sigh. Sunday night, and I fine myself dreading to go to bed, dreading waking up and finding what this week will bring. And yet … we cannot give in to despair, because … the world needs us to keep fighting, keep trying, right?
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1965
|
__label__wiki
| 0.846637
| 0.846637
|
Tag Archives: washington naval treaty
May 21, 2020 · 00:58
The Late Treaty and Post Treaty Battleships, an Introduction
Line Drawing of the German H-39 Class Battleship
I am still on Trump and COVID19 overload so I am going back to the introductory article of a series I planned years ago.
This is the introductory article for a series of ten articles on the classes of battleships built or planned by the major powers following the expiration of the Second London Naval Treaty. A previous series of articles dealt with the battleships constructed in compliance or close compliance with the treaty. This series will cover the Japanese Yamato Class, and Super Yamato Class, the British Lion Class, the Vanguard, the German Bismarck and H39 Classes, the French Alsace Class, the Soviet Sovyetskiy Soyuz Class, and finally the American Iowa and Montana classes.
Model of the Montana Class
When I first wrote this article over a decade ago I classed all of these ships as post-Treaty designs while overlooking the fact that most were designed during the Treaty period, and that most were designed and built in violation of it, or by invoking the escalator clause. In truth only the Vanguard, the Montana’s and the never laid down German ships of the H-41 Class and beyond, as well as the Japanese Super Yamatos.
All of these ships were designed and built or designed in the late 1930s and early 1940s and with the exception of the Sovietetskiy Soyuz Class built on each navy’s past experience in battleship design and construction. The Japanese had constructed no treaty battleships in the 1930s, so the Yamato’s were the first battleships constructed by Japan since the Nagato Class which had been completed in the 1920s and the incomplete Tosa Class.
The Bismarck
The Second London Naval Treaty of 25 March 1936 was signed by France, Britain and the United States. Japan walked out on the conference and the Italians did not sign because of the outcry that their invasion of Abyssinia had evoked. The treaty called for ships to have a standard displacement of not more than 35,000 tons and main armament not to exceed 14” guns. This was a reduction in the size of armament from the previous London and Washington treaties. When the Japanese delayed and then refused to sign the agreement, as did the Italians, refused the United States invoked the escalator clause which permitted them to disregard the treaty limitations.
USS Iowa lead ship of the Iowa class
The Americans who invoked only the armament part of the clause on the North Carolina and South Dakota classes. However they took full advantage of it to construct the 45,000 ton Iowa class. The plans called for six of this class, but only four were completed. The Montana Class of 65,000 tons mounting twelve 16” guns and Provided protection against that type of shell. The Montana Class ships were never laid down but because of their features will be covered in this series of articles.
Line Drawing of the Lion Class
Following the King George V Class the Royal Navy planned the Lion Class which was in essence an enlargement of the King George V Class armed with nine 16” guns. Four of the Lion ships we’re planned, but none were to built. They cancelled early in the war and only one further battleship the 44.500 ton HMS Vanguard would be completed by the Royal Navy but not until 1946.
The Germans, who were not a signatory to the treaty but had an agreement with Britain to limit their total naval tonnage to 35% of Britain’s had build the Scharnhorst Class Battlecruisers in the mid 1930s and began the Bismarck Classthe largest capital ships completed in Europe. These were to be followed by the H39, H41, H42, H43 and H44 classes ranging in displacement from 56,444 tons to 131,000 tons with armament ranging from eight 16” to eight 20” guns. Since just two of the H39’s were laid down and then cancelled while in the early stages of construction, and the others never laid down, so I will only discuss the H39 class in this series. The others only existed in the world of a mad dictator’s fantasies.
Sovyetskiy Soyuz Class
The Soviet Union which was never a signatory to any of the naval treaties and had not built a battleship since the First World War planned the massive Sovyetskiy Soyuz Class. This would have been a Class of 15 ships would have displaced 58,220 tons and mounted nine 16” guns. Several designs were evaluated, including those of American and Italian shipbuilders and designers. The foreign designs were rejected in favor of a Soviet design. However, the timing coincided with Stalin’s purge of the Armed forces leadership, as well as men who ran military and naval production plants. This added a further delay in their design and construction. The four initial ships of the class were laid down but never completed due to the Nazi invasion in 1941. Construction was halted and all were scrapped after the war.
The Japanese Yamato Class, the largest battleships ever constructed of 69,998 tons standard displacement armed with nine 18” guns, the largest main battery ever installed on battleships were the largest capital ships built before the second generation of U.S. Navy super carriers.
The French Alsace Class was intended to counter the German H-39s. They would have been an enlarged and more heavily armed modification of the Richelieu Class. However, the German attack and and conquest of France led to their cancellation before they were ever laid down.
The first article I write will be about the Bismarck Class and that will appear later this week. This will be cutting it close because I plan on dealing with Operation Rheinübung, the deployment of Bismarck and Prinz Eugen which would turn out to be one of the most intense times of the war, especially for the British and the Royal Navy. So tomorrow on to the Bismarck and Tirpitz.
Filed under germany, History, imperial japan, Military, Navy Ships, nazi germany, World War II at Sea, world war two in europe, world war two in the pacific
Tagged as alsace Class battleship, anglo-german naval accord, bismarck class, h-39 class battleship, h-41 class battleship, iowa class, king george v class, lion Class battleships, london Naval treaties, montana class, nagato class, Operation rheinübung, post treaty battleships, prinz eugen, richelieu class, Sovyetskiy Soyuz Class, super yamato class battleship, tosa class, treaty battleships, Warship design and construction, washington naval treaty, world war two, yamato class
Line drawing of Alaska in 1945
The three ships of the Alaska Class were among the most confusing and curious designs of warships ever built for the US Navy. They had their genus in the early 1930s when the Germans deployed the Deutschland Class Pocket Battleships, which in reality were heavy cruisers with 11” guns designed for long range commerce raiders. Both the Americans and French began to design something larger and faster. The French produced the excellent Dunkerque Class which could be classed as as either a Battlecruiser, or Fast Battleship. The American designs languished on the drawing board due to bureaucratic conflicts between those who believed a specialized ship to track down commerce raiders was necessary, and those who thought such designs were a waste of money and resources.
Alaska and Guam Together
However in the late 1930s a rumor of Japanese “super cruiser” put them back into the planning stage with President Franklin Roosevelt being a supporter of the concept. In truth the Japanese had no such ship on the drawing board, but still the process of trying to figure out what the ship and its mission would be perplexed designers. Add this to political pressure and the resulting confusion had nine different designs underway at the same time, everything from a 6,000 ton modification of the Atlanta Class anti-Aircraft cruiser, an enlarged heavy cruiser, to a 38,000 ton fast battleship. Eventually the Naval General Board Chose in essence what was a greatly enlarged, up-armored and up-gunned modification of the Baltimore Class heavy cruisers.
The confusion even manifested in what the Navy decided to call the class. Based on their size, speed and armament they looked like Battlecruisers, but if you compared them to other battlecruisers they had severe deficiencies in armor and anti-torpedo defenses when compared the the old but still effective British Hood, Repulse, and Renown, the French Dunkerque Class, the German Scharnhorst Class, and the Japanese Kongo Class, which were all battlecruisers or fast battleships.
The Navy classed them as Large Cruisers and deigned them as CB. The Navy designated Heavy Cruisers as CA, Light Cruisers as CL, and the US Navy’s one attempt to build large Battlecruisers, the Lexington Class were designated as CC before they were cancelled with two of the four ships , Lexington and Saratoga completed as Aircraft Carriers. Likewise the naming of the class straddled the line between States and Cities. Battleships were named after States, cruisers were named after cities, but the Alaska Class were named after territories. While Alaska and Hawaii became states later, they were not states at the time. The ambiguity of their names reflected the confusion of their design and mission.
They were designed to hunt and kill the German Pocket Battleships, the imagined large Japanese Cruisers, and as a counter the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau which in 1939 and 1940 had created havoc in the Atlantic raiding convoys and sinking the Royal Navy Aircraft Carrier HMS Courageous.
USS Missouri (Top) with USS Alaska (below) at Norfolk Naval Station 1944
As designed the ships were 809 feet long and 91 feet wide, displaced 27,000 tons, and mounted 9 12” guns in three turrets, and and were capable of 33 knots. They used the expanded hull design of the Baltimore Class, and used the same propulsion system as the Essex Class Aircraft Carriers. The ships mounted a large anti-aircraft battery of twelve 5” 38 caliber Dual Purpose guns, fifty-six 40mm cannons in quad and twin mounts, and thirty four 20mm light anti-aircraft guns. But even this was less than they could have mounted. That was because instead of placing the ship’s aviation facilities on the fantail as was done on the Brooklyn Class Light Cruisers, the Heavy Cruiser Wichita, the Cleveland Class Light Cruisers, the Baltimore Class, and all the modern battleships, to the earlier midships aviation facilities including port and starboard catapults. The Navy’s experience in combat during the Guadalcanal Campaign showed this arrangement to be a vulnerability in surface actions. Despite this the design was not changed.
Their armor protection was proof against 8” and 11” shells but could not withstand the heavier shells of battleships. In addition, to keep the ships at their designed displacement, no below the waterline torpedo protection was provided. The lack of that would have made them vulnerable That being said they had a good anti-aircraft battery, could keep pace with the fast carriers, and conduct shore bombardment operations against the Japanese mainland. None engaged any type of ship that they were designed to fight. The Alaska and Guam were the only two ships of the class completed and which saw service in the war. They were both decommissioned having served barely two and a half years active service each. Hawaii was launched but construction was suspended when she was 84% complete, and she was never commissioned.
The Scharnhorst: She and the Gneisenau were the threat that the Alaska’s were designed to counter
Alaska was laid down in December 1941 shortly after Pearl Harbor, launched 15 August 1943 and commissioned on 17 June 1944. Her sister ship, Guam was launched on 12 November 1943 and commissioned 17 September 1944. The final ship of the class to be built the Hawaii was launched after the war in November 1945 with her construction halted when she was 84% complete in 1947. Three planned ships, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Samoa were never laid down.
Aerial View of USS Alaska
While fast and large with more than adequate firepower the purpose that they created for no longer existed by the time that they were commissioned. Of the German Pocket Battleships, Graf Spee had been scuttled in 1939, while Lützow the former Deutschland, and Admiral Scheer were bottled up in the Baltic. The Scharnhorst had been sunk by a 12 ship British task force led by the HMS Duke of York on December 26th 1943 after mounting an attack on a Murmansk convoy at the Battle of North Cape. Her sister Gneisenau had been heavily damaged in the “channel dash” and bombing in Kiel. While being refitted to replace her nine 11” guns with six 15” guns the work was discontinued after the sinking of the Scharnhorst. Her main battery and secondary armament were removed and used to reinforce the Atlantic Wall, mostly in Norway.
The USS Guam in 1945
With their natural opponents no longer a factor in the war the Alaska and Guam were sent to the Pacific where they spent their time escorting fast carrier task forces, conducting naval gunfire support missions off Okinawa and conducting sweeps in Japanese waters as part of the initial blockade of Japan. Following the war Alaska and Guam were active in Operation Magic Carpet the return of US servicemen from the Far East to the United States. Alaska and Guam were decommissioned in February 1947 remaining in reserve until stricken from the Naval List. Alaska was scrapped in 1960 and Guam being in 1961. The fate of Hawaii was be debated for years. Suggestions included to complete here her as the first guided missile cruiser (CG) and later a Command Cruiser (CC) were rejected as too expensive and she was sold for scrap in 1959.
Incomplete and undervalued the Hawaii being towed to the breakers in 1959
The era of the Battle Cruiser which began with the launching of the HMS Invincible in 1907 culminated in with launching of the HMS Hood, or arguably the Dunkerque or Scharnhorst Classes, but not with the Alaska Class. They looked a lot like battlecruisers, but that is where the similarity ended. It was an ignominious ending for expensive and practically unused ships being broken up. But it had to be. Their lack of underwater protection, barely average armor protection, ill designed aviation facilities, and main battery which was unique, expensive, and had a tendency to break down ensured that they could not have another mission. Instead, for a much more affordable cost, Baltimore Class cruisers were converted into guided missile cruisers or retained as naval gunfire support ships. Likewise, Cleveland Class light cruisers were converted to guided missile cruisers. One of the Baltimore Class, the Norfolk was converted into a Command Cruiser, and two others converted into the light fleet carriers, and later command ships, Wright and Saipan.
In light of the need for a combination of substantial naval gunfire support, on a platform large enough to support the latest Aegis air defense radars and missiles to protect an Expeditionary Strike Group, capable of ballistic missile defense, and equipped with combat proven 6”, 8”, or 16” guns for naval gunfire support missions, Tomahawk Cruise missiles, and the latest anti-ship missiles and close in protective missiles and guns is needed. The existing Zumwalt Class, Arleigh Burke Class, and Ticonderoga Class, are incapable of fulfilling such a role. The ships would have to be cable of independent operations, and have the capacity to incorporate new technologies including laser weapons, newly developed combat drones capable of ship to shore, ship to ship, and ASW operations, are needed. The ships would have to be capable of extended independent operations, and have substantial protection against current anti-ship weapons, and torpedoes. It seems to me that a new class of Battle Cruisers, in effect a new, enlarged and much improved Alaska Class would be in order.
The Alaska Class was a failure in design and practice. By the time they were completed their primary mission no longer existed, and the compromises in their design ensured that they would be incapable of any real modernization that would make them effective components of a modern Navy. It was not the first or last time the US Navy, the Royal Navy, or any other Navy has design and built a lemon.
Filed under Foreign Policy, germany, History, imperial japan, Military, national security, Navy Ships, nazi germany, US Navy, World War II at Sea, world war two in the pacific
Tagged as alaska class, baltimore Class heavy cruiser, battlecruiser Scharnhorst, Battlecruisers Gneisenau, Battleship Dunkerque, Cleveland Class cruiser, dd-1000 zumwalt class, deutschland class, hms hood, hms renown, president franklin d Roosevelt, scharnhorst class, ticonderoga class cg, Type 8 12” guns, uss alaska cb-1, uss guam cg-2, Uss Hawaii cb3, uss missouri, uss Norfolk, uss Philippines, uss Puerto Rico, USS Saipan, Uss Wright, washington naval treaty
Short, Squat, Powerful and Well Protected: The South Dakota Class Battleships
I am still on my holiday from writing about the novel Coronavirus 19 and President Trump and his Administration’s incompetent response to it. It is a response that has already claimed 87,000 American lives, and every day more damning evidence shows the results for the President’s use of it for political purposes, almost all of which are backfiring as much as his malfeasance and willingness to see Americans die by the tens of thousands to maintain his cloud-cuckoo-land fantasy that this will go back to normal as if by magic. But, I won’t go any farther tonight on that tonight.
I was so inflamed about what was happening earlier today I decided that it was best to continue my series on the battleships designed and built by the British, French, Germans, Italians, and Americans from after the Battleship Holiday mandated by the Washington Naval Treaty, and the restrictions of the London Naval Treaty. The Germans were not signatories to these treaties as they were already under the much more severe provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, until the Hitler regime began to clandestinely violate it in 1934, and publicly in 1935. The British signed at bilateral naval accord with Germany in June of 1935, which the Germans renounced in 1938 in order to build a fleet of battleships that Hitler believed would allow him to achieve naval parity or superiority over the British, which he renounced in 1938 during the Czechoslovakia crisis.
This is the fifth and last in a series of articles about the battleships built under the provision of the Washington and London Naval Treaty limitations in the 1930s. I am not including the ships which were already in service or completed in the immediate aftermath of the Washington Treaty. That treaty required the British to scrap 23, the Americans 30, and Japanese 17 Battleships or Battlecruisers to comply with the treaty. Some were allowed to be converted to Aircraft Carriers, and some demilitarized to serve as training or target ships.
This series looks at the modern battleships built by the future World War II combatants between 1932 and 1939. This article covers the American South Dakota Class. Previous articles dealt with the British Royal Navy’s King George V Class, The German Kriegsmarine Scharnhorst Class, the Italian Reginia Marina’s Vittorio Veneto Class, the United States Navy’s North Carolina Class, and the French Dunkerque and Richelieu Classes.The German Bismarck, Japanese Yamato, British Vanguard and American Iowa classes will be covered in a subsequent series.
I think that I will also go back and deal with various classes of ships that were allowed to be kept after the Washington Naval Treaty. These included two of the three partially built American Colorado Class, the two ship British Nelson Class, and the second of the Japanese Nagato Class, the Mutsu; and the battleships and battlecruisers that were completed as Aircraft Carriers by the United States, Britain, Japan, and France. From there I could move on and write about and the new battleships and battlecruisers planned or under construction at the time the treaty came into effect, the ships that had they been built would have launched a major naval arms race in the 1920s, something that few nations could have afforded, especially Great Britain. I think I will even go back to the Dreadnoughts and Battlecruisers of the First World War. Of course there are a lot of them, so I will probably focus on the ships that continued serving through the Second World War. I might even delve into the German H type battleships which were more fanciful than realistic, only satisfying the need of Hitler for nothing but the biggest, the American Montana Class, the British HMS Vanguard, the French Alsace Class, and the Japanese A-150 or Super Yamato’s.
Since there is much disagreement about which of the ships that I have written about in this series, I may try to do a comparison to determine which was the best of these classes in the categories, of armament, speed and range, armor protection, reliably, and performance in combat. One has to remember that these were the first battleships built by their respective navies since the First World War, each was built under the constraints imposed by the naval treaties, and their influenced by the developments of potential opponents and the changing world situation. In some cases sacrifices were made on each design due to expediency and the need to get them to the fleet.
As the world edged closer to war in the late 1930s the U.S. Navy followed up its decision to build the two ship North Carolina class battleships with additional fast battleships. Initially the General Board wanted two additional North Carolina’s the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral William H. Standley wanted a different design, which may have created the toughest and best of the battleships in this series. Compared to the other battleships built in this era, the South Dakota Class was short, fat, a bit slower, but was superbly protected with a well designed armored citadel, excellent main, secondary, and anti-aircraft batteries, and superior radars, fire direction systems and combat operation centers. They demonstrated a knack for survival as well as an ability to inflict damage, as was shown by the South Dakota and Massachusetts.
USS South Dakota BB-57 in 1943
Design work started in 1937 and several designs were proposed in order to correct known deficiencies in the preceding North Carolina class to include protection and the latest type of steam turbines. As in the North Carolina’s the Navy struggled to find the optimal balance between armament, protection and speed. In the end the Navy decided on a shorter hull form with greater beam which necessitated greater power to maintain a high speed. The armor protection was maximized by using an interior sloped belt of 12.2 inch armor with 7/8” STS plates behind the main belt which made the protection the equivalent to 17.3 inches of vertical armor. The Belt continued to the bottom of the ship though it was tapered with the belt narrowing to 1 inch to provide addition protection against plunging fire which struck deeper than the main belt. As an added feature to protect against torpedo hits a multi-layered four anti-torpedo bulkhead system was included, designed to absorb the impact of a hit from a 700 pounds of TNT.
In order to accommodate the machinery necessary to provide the desired speed of 27 knots on the shorter hull the machinery spaces were rearranged. The new design placed the boilers directly alongside the turbines with the ship’s auxiliaries and evaporators also placed in the machinery rooms. Additional design changes made to save space included making the crew berthing areas smaller. This included that of officers as well as the senior officers and shrinking the size of the galley’s and the wardroom from those on the North Carolina’s. The resultant changes allowed the ships to achieve the 27 knot speed, improved protection and carry the same armament of the North Carolina’s within the 35,000 treaty limit.
Two ships of the design were approved and with the escalator clause invoked by the Navy two more ships were ordered all with the nine 16” gun armament of the North Carolina’s. The leading ship of the class the South Dakota was designed as a fleet flagship and in order to accommodate this role two of the 5” 38 twin mounts were not installed leaving the ship with 16 of these guns as opposed to the 20 carried by the rest of the ships of the class. The final design was a class of ships capable of 27.5 knots with a range of 17,000 miles at 15 knots mounting nine 16” guns with excellent protection on the 35,000 tons and full load displacement of 44,519 tons.
The lead ship of the class the USS South Dakota BB-57 was laid down 5 July 1939 at New York Shipbuilding in Camden New Jersey, launched on 7 June 1941 and commissioned on 20 March 1942. Following her commissioning and her shakedown cruise South Dakota was dispatched to the South Pacific. Soon after her arrival she struck a coral reef at Tonga which necessitated a return to Pearl Harbor for repairs.
When repairs were complete she was attached to TF 16 escorting the USS Enterprise CV-6 during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on 26 October 1942. During the battle she was credited with shooting down 26 Japanese aircraft but was struck by a 500 lb bomb on her number one turret which caused no damage.
The Dent in South Dakota’s Number Three Turret from a hit from a 14” Shell from Kirishima
She joined TF-64 paired with the battleship USS Washington during the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on14-15 November 1942. During the action South Dakota suffered a power outage and was hit by over by a minimum of 26 enemy shells, and possibly up to 40. At least one of a 14” shell from Kirishima, 18 8” shells from the Heavy Cruisers, 6 6” shells from from Japanese light cruisers, and at least one 5” shell from a destroyer. The damage was superficial, once her power was restored much of the damage was repaired ship’s crew. The shellfire knocked out three of her fire control radars, her radio and main radar set which were also repaired.
Three of the escorting destroyers, USS Preston, USS Walke, and USS Benham were sunk or mortally wounded, and USS Gwin was damaged.destroyers were also lost but the Washington mortally wounded the fast battleship Kirishima and destroyer Ayanami which were scuttled the next day and damaged the heavy cruisers Atago and Takao.
South Dakota returned to New York for repairs which completed in February 1943. She joined the carrier USS Ranger CV-4 for operations in the Atlantic until April when she was attached to the British Home Fleet. She sailed for the Pacific in August 1943 and rejoined the Pacific Fleet in September. The battleship joined Battleship Divisions 8 and 9 and supported the invasion of Tarawa providing naval gunfire support to the Marines.
South Dakota spent the rest of the war was spent escorting carriers as well as conducting bombardment against Japanese shore installations. She participated in almost every action of the U.S. drive across the Central Pacific. She was struck by a 500 pound bomb during the Battle of the Philippine Sea that destroyed several anti-aircraft mounts and killed 26 of her crew.
A Photo taken from South Dakota while anchored in Tokyo Bay with Mount Fuji in the Background
South Dakota was present at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay and returned to the United States in 1945. She was decommissioned and placed in reserve on 31 January 1947. She was stricken from the Naval Register on 1 June 1962 and sold for scrap in October of that year. Various artifacts of this gallant ship to include a propeller, a 16” gun and the mainmast are part of the USS South Dakota Memorial Park in Sioux Falls South Dakota. 6,000 tons of armored plate were returned to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission for use in civilian nuclear programs and a second screw is displaced outside the U.S. Naval Museum in Washington D.C. She received 13 battle stars for World War II service.
South Dakota also had the dubious distinction of having the youngest sailor of the war 12 year old Calvin Graham who confessed lying about his age to the Gunnery Officer, LT Sergeant Schriver. Graham was court-martialed and given a dishonorable discharge spending 3 months in the ship’s brig before he was able to be returned to the United States where just after his 13th birthday he entered 7th grade. Shriver was wounded at Guadalcanal and was awarded the Purple Heart. He left the Navy in in 1945 as a Lieutenant Commander. He later became the Brother in law of John F. Kennedy, and the first Director of the Peace Corps, and became the the running mate of Senator George McGovern in the 1972 Presidential Election, to Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.
USS Indiana BB-58 Bombarding Japan in 1945
The second ship of the class the USS Indiana BB-58 was laid down at Newport News Naval Shipyard on 20 November 1939 launched on 21 November 1941 and commissioned on 30 April 1942. She served throughout the Pacific War by serving with the fast battleships of Vice Admiral Willis Lee’s TF-34, escorting carriers during major battles such that the Battle of the Philippine Sea or as it is better known the Marianas Turkey Shoot. She returned to the United States for overhaul and missed the Battle of Leyte Gulf but served at Iwo Jima, Okinawa and operations against the Japanese home islands. During the beginning of the Marshall Islands campaign Indiana received her heaviest damage. During night operations with a carrier task group she turned in front of USS Washington. A collision ensued which caused heavy damage to Indiana, including the loss of nearly 200 feet of her armored belt. The collision took off about 20 feet of Washington’s bow which remained imbedded in the Indiana until she was repaired. Washington also required a return to the United States for repairs.
Following the war she was decommissioned in 1947 and sold for scrap in September 1963. A number of her relics are preserved at various locations in Indiana and her prow and mainmast are centerpieces of a display at the University of Indiana’s football stadium. Much of her armor was provided to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission for use in civilian programs.
USS Massachusetts BB-59 in January 1946 in the Puget Sound
The third ship of the class the USS Massachusetts BB-59 was laid down on 20 July 1939 at Bethlehem Steel Corporation Fore River Yard in Salem Massachusetts and launched on 23 September 1941 and commissioned on 12 May 1942. After her shakedown cruise she was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet where she took part in Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa. During the operation she engaged French shore batteries, damaged the battleship Jean Bart and sank 2 cargo ships and along with the heavy cruiser Tuscaloosa sank the destroyers Fougueux and Boulonnais and the light cruiser Primauguet.
Following her assignment in the Atlantic she sailed for the Pacific where she began operations in January 1944. She took part in almost every major operation conducted by the Pacific Fleet escorting the Fast Carrier Task Forces and operating as a unit of TF-34 the Fast Battleship Task force including the Battle of Leyte Gulf. She ended the war conducting operations against the Japanese home islands. She was decommissioned in 1947 and stricken from the Naval Register on 1 June 1962.
USS Massachusetts BB-59 at Battleship Cove, Fall River Massachusetts
She was saved from the fate of Indiana and South Dakota as the people of Massachusetts with the assistance of schoolchildren who donated $50,000 for her renovation and preservation as a memorial. She became that in 1965 at Battleship Cove in Fall River Massachusetts and she remains there designated as a National Historic Landmark. During the naval build up of the 1980s much equipment common to all modern battleships was removed for use in the recommissioned battleships of the Iowa class.
The final ship of the class the USS Alabama BB-60 was laid down on 1 February 1940 at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. She was launched on 21 February 1942 and commissioned 16 August 1942. Following her shakedown cruise and initial training off the Atlantic coast she joined the repaired South Dakota and operated as part of TF 22 attached to the British Home Fleet.
She conducted convoy escort operations, participated in the reinforcement of Spitsbergen and in an operation which attempted to coax the German battleship Tirpitz out of her haven in Norway. Tirpitz did not take the bait and Alabama and South Dakota returned to the United States in August 1943.
Following a brief refit she and South Dakota transited to the Pacific were the trained with the fast carriers. She took part in the invasion of the Gilberts taking part in Operation Galvanic against Tarawa and the Army landings on Makin Island.
As 1944 began Alabama continued her operations with the fast carriers of TF-38 and the fast battleships of TF-34. She took part in operations against the Marshalls and took part in the invasion of the Marianas Islands and the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. From there she supported the invasion of Palau and other islands in the Caroline Islands followed by operations against New Guinea and the invasion of the Philippine and the Battle of Leyte Gulf before returning to the United States for overhaul.
Chief Petty Officer Bob Feller
Alabama returned to action during the invasion of Okinawa and in shore bombardment operations against the Japanese Mainland. When the war ended the Alabama had suffered no combat deaths and only 5 wounded following the misfire of one of her own 5” guns earning her the nickname of “Lucky A.” Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller served as a Chief Petty Officer and gun mount captain on Alabama during the war.
She was decommissioned on 9 January 1947 and stricken from the Naval Register on 1 June 1962. The people of the State of Alabama formed the “Alabama Battleship Commission” and raised $1,000,000 including over $100,000 collected by schoolchildren to bring her to Alabama as a memorial. She was turned over to the state in 1964 and opened as a museum on 9 January 1965. She was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986. She has been used as a set in several movies and continues to serve as a museum preserving the legacy of the men that served aboard her and all of the battleship sailors of World War II.
another thing about the South Donata Class was that their design was evident in the rebuilding of the USS California, USS Tennessee, and USS West Virginia when they were completely modernized after Pear Harbor.
USS West Virginia after her complete modernization after being sunk at Pearl Harbor
In the 1950s a number of proposals were considered to modernize the ships of the class to increase their speed to 31 knots using improved steam turbines or gas turbines. The Navy determined that to do this would require changes to the hull form of the ships making the cost too prohibitive. The ships were certainly the best of the treaty type battleships produced by any nation in the Second World War. The damage sustained by South Dakota at the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal would have not only put most battleships of her era out of action but might have caused enough damage to sink them. Their armament was equal or superior to all that except the Japanese Yamato Class and their protection was superior to most ships of their era, and it was was exceptional, as was evident by the damage sustained by South Dakota.
Alabama as a Museum Ship
It is good that both the Massachusetts and the Alabama have been preserved as memorials to the ships of the class, their sailors and the United States Navy in the Second World War. Because of the efforts of the people of Massachusetts and Alabama millions of people have been able to see these magnificent ships and remember their fine crews. Both have hosted reunions of their ships companies since becoming museum ships and with the World War Two generation passing away in greater numbers every day soon these ships as well as the USS Texas, USS North Carolina, USS Missouri, USS New Jersey, USS Wisconsin aUSS Iowa which stricken from the Naval Register awaits an uncertain fate as a resident of the “Ghost Fleet” in Suisun Bay California. No other nation preserved any other dreadnought or treaty battleship thus only these ships remain from the era of the Dreadnought. I so much wish that the British had preserved one of the King George V ships, or maybe the mostend celebrated Royal Navy Battleships of both World Wars, the HMS Warspite had been preserved. I also regret that none of the survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor were preserved, nor any of the standard battleships of the Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, California, or Colorado Classes.
I am fortunate. I have been able to go aboard the North Carolina, Alabama, Texas, and Wisconsin, as well as a number of the surviving aircraft carriers, destroyers, and submarines preserved in the United States. However, too few, especially the ships which bore the brunt of the war like the carrier USS Enterprise were never saved, despite the pleas of men like Admiral William “Bull” Halsey.
I habe also been able to visit ships like the USS Constitution, USS Constellation, Clipper ship Star of India, the Japanese Battleship Mikasa, the USS Nautilus, the German Tall Ship Gorch Fock II, and so many more, but I still have a bucket list of ships I want to visit in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Sweden, Russia, France, Australia, Italy, Turkey, Japan, and Finland.
With those pipe dreams in mind, I wish you all the best. Until tomorrow when I decide to weigh in again on novel Coronavirus 19 and the crisis being fostered by the Trump Administration in this country; please be safe. Don’t do dumb things like going into crowded places with few people wearing masks and the vast majorly of people not adhering to social distancing. Even if other people decide to be stupid and put others and well as their own lives at risk, don’t be like them. I speak this from the heart and I don’t care if someone disagrees with my politics, faith, or social commentary, I would prefer that they not die or through their stupidity and arrogance get other people sick or die. Darwin is not Kind when it comes to the stupidity and arrogance of people regardless of the race, ethnicity, faith, ideology, political leanings, social standing, economic position, or nationality.
I don’t care if people agree with me or not, but don’t do dumb things. This may sound harsh but I tend to speak from my heart when lives and civilization itself are at stake. But please remember the words of Robert Henlein:
“Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”
Filed under Foreign Policy, historic preservation, History, imperial japan, Military, Navy Ships, nazi germany, Political Commentary, US Navy, World War II at Sea, world war one, world war two in europe, world war two in the pacific
Tagged as battle of the philippine sea, battle of the Santa Cruz islands, battleship cove fall river massachusetts, bismarck class, bismark, bob feller, colorado Class, dunkerque class, george mcgovern, hms nelson, HMS Rodney, hms vanguard, HMS Warspite, ijn kirishima, ijn mutsu, ijn nagato, iowa class, king george v class, london Naval treaties, nagato class, nelson class battleship, north carolina class, richelieu class, robert henlien, scharnhorst class, seargent shriver, second naval battle of guadalcanal, south dakota class, treaty of versailles, uss california, uss enterprise cv-6, uss indiana bb-57, uss iowa, uss massachusetts, Uss South Dakota bb 57, uss tennessee, USS Texas, uss washington bb-56, uss west virginia, Vittorio Veneto class, washington naval treaty, yamato class
The King George V Class Battleships: The Imperfect yet Important British Bulwarks of WII
HMS King George V
I am still on my holiday from writing about the novel Coronavirus 19 and President Trump and his Administration’s incompetent response to it. It is a response that has already claimed 85,000 American lives. But, I won’t go any farther tonight on that. Instead I am going back to my series on the battleships designed and built by the British, French, Germans, Italians, and Americans from after the Battleship Holiday mandated by the Washington Naval Treaty, and the restrictions of the London Naval Treaty. The Germans were not signatories to these treaties as they were already under the much more severe provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, until the Hitler regime began to clandestinely violate it in 1934, and publicly in 1935. The British signed at bilateral naval accord with Germany in June of 1935, which the Germans renounced in 1938 in order to build a fleet of battleships that Hitler believed would allow him to achieve naval parity or superiority over the British.
This is the fourth in a series of five articles on the battleships built under the provision of the Washington and London Naval Treaty limitations in the 1930s. I am not including the ships which were already in service or completed in the immediate aftermath of the Washington Treaty which required the British to scrap 23, the Americans 30, and Japanese 17 Battleships or Battlecruisers to comply with the treaty. Some were allowed to be converted to Aircraft Carriers, and some demilitarized to serve as training or target ships.
This series looks at the modern battleships built by the future World War II combatants between 1932 and 1939. This article covers the British Royal Navy King George V Class. The previous articles dealt with the German Scharnhorst Class, the Italian Vittorio Veneto Class, the American North Carolina Class, and the Frech Dunkerque and Richelieu Classes. The final article will be about the American South Dakota Class. The German Bismarck, Japanese Yamato, British Vanguard and American Iowa classes will be covered in a subsequent series.
Since there is much disagreement about which of the ships that I have written about I may try to do a comparison to determine which was the best of these classes in the categories, of armament, speed and range, armor protection, reliably, and performance in combat. One has to remember that these were the first battleships built by their respective navies since the First World War, each was built under the constraints imposed by the naval treaties, and their influenced by the developments of potential opponents and the changing world situation. In some cases sacrifices were made on each design due to expediency and the need to get them to the fleet.
HMS King George V in 1941
The last class of Royal Navy Battleships was the Nelson Class of two ships, HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney. They were a compromise design based on N3 Class of battleships which had to be cancelled due to the Washington Treaty. The Nelson’s have been described as a “chopped off” N3 which used the 16” guns of the also cancelled G3 Battlecruisers. The design sacrificed speed for protection and firepower. Their protection was good, as was their armament, but their propulsion plants were a constant source of trouble. By the late 1920s the Royal Navy’s battle force was comprised of the two Nelson’s, the fast Battlecruisers Hood, Renown and Repulse and the 10 ships of the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge Classes all designed before the First World War.
King George V Class Quad Turret being built
The Royal Navy began planning for a new class of battleships in 1928. But these plans were shelved with the signing of the London Naval Treaty which continued the “building holiday” on capital ship construction as well as the size and armament of capital ships until 1937. Because of the pacifist movement of the 1920, the Great Depression, and the desire of the British government to abide by international treaties in spite of the violations of those treaties, nothing was done until 1937.
With the realization that its battle force was dated, and the knowledge that other nations had laid down new classes of battleships the Royal Navy recommenced planning in 1935. The Navy planned to build to the maximum of the 35,000 displacement limitation and placed a great measure of emphasis on armor and protection. Early designs emphasized ships with heavy firepower and protection at the expense of speed, like the American Colorado Class, the cancelled South Dakota Class, and early designs for new battleships of similar design by the U.S. Navy in the early 1930s.
Numerous Designs were proposed. Eventually the new class of battleships were designed to achieve a 28 knot speed which made them faster than all existing British battleships, although slower than the Battlecruisers. The planners had alternative designs to use 14”, 15” or 16” guns with the Navy favoring the 15” models which had equipped all of their other ships with the exception of the Nelson’s. However the Admiralty to use 14” as the government was endeavoring to negotiate with other powers to impose a 14” limitation on armament for new battleships, and the Admiralty estimated that a move to arm the ships with 15” or 16” guns could delay the completion of the ships by a year or more.
during the second London Treaty of 1935, the Americans and French agreed to the limit their size and armament of their ships, however neither the Japanese nor Italians followed suite, and as a result all new battleships of other powers had larger guns than the King George V Class. The Italians opting for 15” Guns on the Vittorio Veneto Class, the French and Americans invoking the escalator clause of the treaty. The French opted to arm the Richelieu Class with 15” guns, while the Americans chose to arm the North Carolina, South Dakota and the Iowa Classes with 16” guns. The Japanese Opted for 18” guns for their Yamato Class, which also displaced nearly twice as much as the treaty allowed. The Germans who were not a signatory built their Scharnhorst Class with 11” Guns although, those were an expedient as they were planned to be armed with 15” guns. The Germans also equipped the Bismarck Class with 15” guns.
The Royal Navy attempted to rectify this by placing more guns on the ships than those of other navies. They wanted to mount twelve 14” guns mounted in Three quadruple turrets, but this was impossible on the 35,000 platform without compromising protection, speed, or stability. Thus the Admiralty compromised on 10 guns mounted in 2 quadruple and 1 twin turret.
ONI Drawing of King George Class
The ships displaced a full load displacement of 42,237 tons in 1942. This increased to 44,460 tons by 1944. The were 745 feet long had a beam of 103 feet, a top speed of 28 knots with a cruising range of 5,400 nautical miles at 18 knots. Their relatively poor endurance limited their operations in the Pacific and even nearly caused King George V to have to abandon the chase of the Bismarck in May 1941. The compromise in displacement also limited the amount of fuel they could carry.
The main batteries of the ships proved problematic in combat. The quadruple turret design caused most of the ships problems. This was demonstrated in the engagement of the Prince of Wales against the Bismarck as well as the King George V in its duel with the same German behemoth when A turret became disabled and completely out of action for 30 minutes and half of the main battery being out of action for most of the engagement for mechanical reasons. The Duke of York achieved excellent results against the Scharnhorst at the Battle of North Cape, but even in that engagement the main battery of Duke of York was only able to be in action 70% of the time due to the guns jamming, or being inoperablere for various periods of time. One of the other drawbacks of the design was that in order to replace a gun due to wear and tear, that the turret itself had to be dismantled in order to remove and replace the guns. Most other navies had planned for the replacement of guns without such such massive work.
The main secondary armament of 5.25” dual purpose guns in twin mounts suffered from poor rate of fire and slow traverse, both of which were well below their designed standards, and definitely inferior to the American 5” 38 dual purpose twin mounts and their Mark 38 fire direction radar.
The mounting of the armament was designed to provide protection against turret explosions which could potentially detonate the ship’s magazines. The main side and underwater protection scheme was sound and protected the ships well in combat, and might have been the best of the ships built in there era. The vertical protection was also sound as was the protection afforded to the turret barbets and placement of the magazines to shield them from plunging fire.
Only the Prince of Wales was lost due to enemy action. Initially it was thought that she was hit by 6 aerial torpedoes and two 500 pound bombs. Her main armor and underwater anti-Torpedo defenses around her fully armored casemate would have protected her from major damage, but only one of the torpedoes hit that belt. However three torpedoes hit her in areas without such protection, forward and aft of the casemate. Later examination of her wreck revealed that the culprit was a torpedo which detonated in a propeller shaft outside of the armored belt which caused uncontrolled flooding when she was attacked by Japanese aircraft on 8 December 1941. No matter how well protected, no ship is completely proof against the damage of bombs, torpedoes, or now missiles.
HMS Anson conducting gunnery exercises
The propulsion systems of the class developed problems after 1942 when fuel oil quality was decreased because of the need for aviation gas. The new mixtures which were of higher viscosity and contained more water than the boilers could effectively bur. This increased maintenance costs and decreased efficiency. To compensate the Admiralty designed new higher pressure fuel sprayers and burners which returned the boilers to full efficiency, and which should be used on the later HMS Vanguard.
The lead ship of the class the King George V was laid down on 1 January 1937, and launched on 21 February 1939. She was commissioned on 11 December 1940. As the flagship of the Home Fleet she took part in the unsuccessful search for the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during their early 1941 convoy raiding operation. Later during the hunt for the Battleship Bismarck in May 1941 during which she earned lasting fame in helping to sink that ship, despite failures in her main battery which silenced half or her main guns.
She took part in the Murmansk convoy protection as well as Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily before sailing to the Far East for operations against the Japanese. She finished the war with the British Pacific Fleet and was present at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. She returned as flagship of Home Fleet until she was decommissioned in 1949. She was subsequently sold for scrap in 1957.
Prince of Wales pulling into Singapore
The second ship of the class the Prince of Wales laid down on 1 January 1937, launched on 3 May 1939 and commissioned 19 January 1941 although she was not officially completed until March 1941. Her initial operation came in May 1941 when she sailed with the HMS Hood to intercept the Bismarck. When she sailed she still had shipyard technicians aboard. Damaged in the action she did score an important hit on Bismarck which cut a fuel line making her forward tanks inaccessible and causing her to make her run for Brest which she did not complete. Another hit damaged Bismarck’ aircraft catapult and a third disabled an electric dynamo. During the engagement she took heavy damage, and suffered malfunctions to her main battery, and withdrew from the action. The question still remains to this day why Admiral Lütjens aboard Bismarck did not decided to finish Prince of Wales off and sailed back the way she came after destroying two of the Royal Navy’s most powerful ships. Repaired and returned to service she could have sailed with her sister ship Tirpitz, maybe in a coordinated operation with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau that could have cost the Royal Navy much more in power and prestige.
Church Service on Prince of Wales at Argentia Bay with Churchill and Roosevelt in attendance
Following her badly needed repairs. Prince of Wales carried Winston Churchill to the Argentia Bay, Newfoundland, where in secret he met with Franklin D. Roosevelt and together drafted the Atlantic Charter. In late 1941 she accompanied the HMS Repulse to Singapore to bolster the British presence in the Far East. Under the command of Admiral Tom Phillips the ships sailed to attack Japanese invasion convoys, but without air cover was sunk by Japanese aircraft which struck her with 4 torpedoes and a bomb, the key hit being a lucky hit on her propeller shaft which caused flooding that caused a loss of power to pumps and anti-aircraft defenses. Repulse was also sunk in the engagement. Their sortie was doomed by an admiral who did not understand the importance of air power, and who had left the carrier sent to assist them, HMS Hermès behind. Poor communication between the land based fighters, Royal Austrian Air Force Brewster Buffaloes which would have been outnumbered and outclassed by Japanese aircraft and the task force destroyed nonetheless.
Prince of Wales sinking and being abandoned
The third ship the Duke of York was laid down 5 May 1937, and launched on 28 February 1940. She was commissioned 4 November 1941. She provided convoy escort for the Lend Lease convoys to the Soviet Union. On December 25th 1943 she and her accompanying cruisers and destroyers sank the Scharnhorst on 26 December 1943 during the Battle of North Cape. Like King George V and Prince of Wales she also suffered from mechanical failures oof the guns of her main battery. She was transferred to the Pacific in 1944 and served at Okinawa. She was present at the Japanese surrender at Singapore. She was decommissioned in 1949 and scrapped in 1957.
The fourth ship of the class the HMS Howe was laid down on 1 June 1937, and launched on 9 April 1940. She was commissioned on 29 August 1942. She served with the Home Fleet and in the Mediterranean until she was transferred to the Pacific in August 1944. She was stuck and damaged by a Kamikaze in May 1945. Howe was sent for refit at Durban South Africa. She was still in refit when the war ended. She returned home and was placed in reserve in 1950 and scrapped in 1958.
HMS Howe
The last of the class the Anson was laid down 20 July 1937, and launched 24 February 1940. She was commissioned on 22 June 1942. She operated in the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic and was sent to the Pacific in 1945 where she accepted the surrender of the Japanese Forces at Hong Kong. She returned to Britain and was decommissioned in 1951 and scrapped in 1957.
For the most part the ships of the King George V Class had rather unremarkable careers for The most part with the exception of the Prince of Wales and King George V in the hunt for the Bismarck and the Duke of York sinking the Scharnhorst. They had a number of technical problems which limited their operations in the war, However, they and their brave crews deserve to be remembered as helping to hold the line against the Axis in the early years of the war and sank two of the four German Battleships lost during the war. This alone was as remarkable achievement as of their contemporaries, for only the USS Washington, and the heavily modernized battleships sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor, the USS West Virginia, USS California, and USS Tennessee sank enemy battleships in combat.
The King George V Class suffered serious design flaws, but in the case of their armored casemate and protection from enemy shellfire the were superior to most. Unfortunately, the true measure of their their success and design were never proven. Duke of York sank an overmatched and outnumbered Scharnhorst after her Admiral took too long to remove his ship from danger. Likewise, Prince of Wales was lucky to survive her encounter with Bismarck, and King George V, greatly assisted by HMS Rodney, and a host of cruisers and destroyers backed up by Force H sank Bismarck, which due to a torpedo hit from a Swordfish torpedo bomber from HMS Ark Royal was limited in speed and out of control.
It would have been interesting to see how they would have performed against the Vittorio Veneto Class, the Japanese Nagato, Kongo, or Yamato Class ships, or even the Scharnhorst or Bismarck in an undamaged state. I think they could have easily defeated the Kongo class, but Nagato, and Yamato would have been a different matter.
HMS Duke of York Being Scrapped
Regardless, I think the King George V Class was a solid design, sadly limited by treaty limitations and the hopes of their government that potential enemies would do the same. Sadly, the Royal Navy even attempted to combine their heavy main battery armament and protection with guided missile and radar developments being made at the same time could have served as command ships of NATO task forces until the 1970s or 1980s. None were over 20 years old when they were sent to the breakers.
Their limitations notwithstanding, they performed excellently in the Second World War. It is sad that none survive today.
Filed under History, Military, Navy Ships, nazi germany, World War II at Sea, world war two in europe, world war two in the pacific
Tagged as admiral Tom Phillips, anglo-german naval accord, argentia bay, as battle of the atlantic, atlantic charter, battle of denmark strait, battle of north cape, battleship bismarck, dunkerque class, F2A Brewster Buffalo, franklin delano roosevelt, hmas howe, hms anson, hms duke of york, hms hermes, hms hood, hms king george v, hms prince of wales, hms repulse, HMS Rodney, king george v class, london Naval treaties, north carolina class, richelieu class, scharnhorst class, singapre, south dakota class, uss washington bb-56, vitorio, vittorio veneto, washington naval treaty, winston churchill blood sweat and tears speech
Beautiful, Deadly, and Mostly Forgotten: the French Dunkerque and Richelieu Class Battleships
Richelieu in the 1950s © Photo Marius BAR – Toulon (France) site internet : http://www.mariusbarnumerique.fr
I decided to take another night off from the insanity of President Trump, his response to the novel Coronavirus 19 Pandemic and the rest of the craziness. Tonight I continue writing about the battleship classes developed by the Americans, British, Italians, French and Germans in the 1930s.
The series deals with battleships built under the provision of the Washington and London Naval Treaty limitations in the 1930s. Thus these articles are about the first modern battleships that the combatants built since the end of World War One and its immediate aftermath. The Washington Treaty established limits on tonnage of battleships for the signatories, and instituted a ten year “holiday” on the production of new battleships but set no similar limits on cruisers. The London Treaties limited the size and armament of new battleships, 35,000 tons in displacement and a main armament of 14” guns. The treaty had an “escalation” clause that allowed 16” guns if a signatory was shown to be breaking the treaty.
The first three articles were about the German Scharnhorst Class, the Italian Vittorio Veneto Class, and the U.S. North Carolina Class. This article covers the French Dunkerque class and Richelieu class Battleships. The next articles will deal with the British King George V Class and American South Dakota Class. The German Bismarck, Japanese Yamato, British Vanguard and American Iowa Classes will be covered in a subsequent series.
In the 1920s the French Navy concentrated on cruiser construction. By the late 1920s it realized the need to develop a class of Fast Battleships to the large Italian Trento Class heavy cruisers and German Deutschland class Pocket Battleships. but was limited by the Washington Treaty to just 70,000 tons which meant that in order to have a number of battleships that they would have to be smaller but still mount a significant armament.
The new Dunkerque class which the French termed Fast Battleships was more like a battle cruiser. They were less heavily armed and armored than existing battleships, as well as the new classes of Battleships being developed by other navies in the mid-1930s. The Dunkerque class had a designed displacement of 26,500 tons and displaced 35,000 tons at full load. They top speed of 31 knots. Their main battery consisted of eight 13” guns in two quadruple turrets both mounted forward. This allowed all guns to fire forward during engagements to present the smallest possible silhouette to the enemy. They employed all or nothing armor protection ensuring the strongest protection over vital spaces with their armor designed to protect the ships against German 11” gunfire from the Pocket Battleships or the Scharnhorst Class Battlecruisers. They also mounted a powerful dual purpose armament as the French recognizing the need for effective defense against aircraft as well as surface ships.
Dunkerque Class:
Dunkerque was laid down on 24 December 1932, launched on 2 October 1935 and commissioned on 1 May 1937. Her sister Strasbourg followed and was laid down in 1934 and launched on 12 December 1936 and commissioned in 1939. When war was declared the two ships spent their time operating with the Royal Navy searching for German raiders and to escort convoys.
When the Germans overran France in June 1940 the ships took refuge at Mers-el-Kibir where with other French Fleet units they were the target of the Royal Navy to keep them from being taken over by the Germans on 3 July 1940. Dunkerque was heavily damaged in the attack and sank with the loss of 210 sailors after being hit by four 15” shells from the Battlecruiser HMS Hood, as well as the Battleships HMS Resolution and HMS Valiant, as well as underwater damage from depth charges from a patrol ship moored next to her which was sunk by a torpedo.
Strasbourg Escaping from Mers-el-Kibir
However, Strasbourg escaped to Toulon with 5 destroyers where she joined the bulk of the French Fleet in the so called “Free Zone” of Vichy France. She was joined by Dunkerque following the completion of temporary repairs in February 1942.
Dunkerque entered drydock for permanent repairs at Toulon and was there when the Germans occupied Vichy. Under threat of capture the Fleet was scuttled. Dunkerque was destroyed in drydock and declared a total loss. Both the Germans and Italians attempted scrapping operations and the wreck was further damaged by Allied bomber attacks.
The Hulk of the Dunkerque in1944
What was left of the hulk was refloated and finally scrapped in 1958. Strasbourg was scuttled by her crew, but refloated by the Italian Navy in July 1943. After the Italian surrender she taken over by the Germans, but was sunk again during an American air attack in August 1944. After the war she was refloated and used as a test bed for underwater explosions until she was condemned. She was sold for scrapping in 1955.
Richelieu Class
The Richelieu class was derived from the Dunkerque class in response to the Italian Vittorio Veneto Class. With a standard displacement of 35,000 tons and a full load displacement of 48,950 tons the ships were the largest built by the French Navy until the commissioning of the Nuclear Aircraft Carrier Charles DeGaulle.
The ships shared the layout of the Dunkerque Class with their main battery of eight 15” guns mounted in quadruple turrets forward which like the Dunkerque’s allowed them to present the smallest silhouette possible to an opposing ship while being able to employ their entire main battery. Their speed, protection and design were state of the art and comparable to their contemporaries in other navies. They were capable of 32 knots at full speed and had a cruising range of 7671 miles at 20 knots.
The main battery was spaced far enough apart to ensure that a single hit could not put both turrets out of action and each turret was internally subdivided to prevent a single hit from knocking out all four guns. The mounted 9 6” dual purpose guns in three triple turrets aft and 24 4” AA guns in 12 twin-mounts located amidships. During the war Richelieu was repaired and refitted in the US receiving 56 40mm Bofors AA guns in quadruple mounts and 48 20mm Oerlikon AA guns in place of her original 37mm cannons and 13.2 inch machine guns.
Richelieu arrives in New York in 1943
Richelieu was laid down in October 1935, launched in January 1939 and began sea trials in January 1940. When the Germans broke through the French defenses and threatened Brest Richelieu put to sea to French North Africa and was commissioned in June at Dakar. She was damaged by an aerial torpedo launched by a Swordfish Torpedo bomber from the HMS Hermes and received emergency repairs in Dakar. On 24 September she fought an engagement against the Royal Navy at the Battle of Dakar and was damaged by two 15” shells fired by the HMS Barham and was further damaged by a misfire in one of her turrets.
Richelieu Following Repairs and Modernizing in the United States
Following the French return to the Allied camp she was sailed to New York for major repairs and modernization from January to November of 1943. Following this she operated with the British Home Fleet until March of 1944 when she was sent to the India Ocean to serve with the British Far East Fleet in operations against the Japanese until the end of the war. Following the war she took part in the initial stages of the campaign in French Indochina. She was placed in reserve in 1956 and struck from the Navy list and scrapped in 1968.
The Damaged Jean Bart at Casablanca
Her sister Jean Bart was laid down in December 1936 and launched on 6 March 1940. With the German Wehrmacht approaching Saint-Nazaire she was just 75% complete. Her engines were untested engines and only one of her main battery turrets installed. Likewise, no secondary hard been installed and a few 37mm AA guns and machine guns were mounted to allow Jean Bart put to sea to escape the German advance and sailed to Casablanca. The navy attempted to ship her second main battery turret on a freighter but that ship was sunk by a U-boat enroute to Casablanca. She was at Casablanca when the Allies invaded North Africa and was attacked by the U.S. Navy when the Vichy government refused to surrender on 8 November 1942.
During Operation Torch Jean Bart was engaged by the Battleship USS Massachusetts and aircraft from the carrier USS Ranger. She was damaged by several bombs and shells from the 16” guns of Massachusetts. She engaged Massachusetts with her one working turret but scored no hits. On the 10th she opened fire on the USS Augusta and was attacked again by aircraft from the Ranger which damaged her so badly that she had to be run aground to prevent her from sinking.
After temporary repairs, she remained in Dakar for the duration of the war. Despite the requests of the French Navy to have her sent to the United States for repairs and completion, the Americans and British did not feel that they needed another fast battleship. So she remained in Dakar for the duration of the war serving as a training ship. Following the war it was suggested that she be converted to an aircraft carrier but that was rejected and she was completed as a battleship and commissioned in 1949, although not completed and placed in active service until 1955. She took part in the Suez crisis of 1956, was decommissioned in 1957 and finally struck from the Navy list in 1969 and sold for scrap in 1970.
Jean Bart in the 1950s
Both the Dunkerque and Richelieu class were ships of unrealized potential due to the French surrender and the deep divisions between the Vichy and Free French governments. Had circumstances been different they might have played an important role in the Battle of the Atlantic or in the Mediterranean during the war. I wonder how the Dunkerque’s against the Scharnhorst Class would of have came out, or even an engagement of them against the older Andria Doria, and Conte di Cavour Class battleships of the Regina Marina.
Likewise, I wonder how the Richelieu Class might have done in open combat with their Italian Vittorio Veneto Class or even the German Bismarck and Tirpitz. Instead they and their brave crews had to battle the Axis powers as well as former allies in circumstances in which all the cards were against them. One of Richelieu’s 15” guns is mounted on the waterfront at Brest as a memorial to these brave ships and the men that sailed them.
These ships were very advanced for their time, but unfortunately they did not get to do what they were designed to do. They were well designed, and compared favorably with almost every class of World War II battleship. The were beautiful tragic reminders that even the best designed warships are products of their times and circumstances. Those that survive war or become obsolescent almost always are determined to be of no use, and are discarded. Some get reprieves as museum ships, but most end up scrapped or sunk as targets.
Such is the life and death of every warship.
Filed under History, Military, Navy Ships, World War II at Sea, world war two in europe
Tagged as andria doria class, battle of mers-el-kebir, Battleship Dunkerque, Battleship Strasbourg, conte di cavour Class, deutschland class, hms barham, hms hermes, hms hood, hms resolution, hms valiant, king george v class, london Naval treaties, north carolina class, operation torch, richelieu class, scharnhorst class, scuttling of french fleet at toulon, second world war, trento Class cruiser, uss augusta, uss massachusetts, uss ranger cv-4, Vittorio Veneto class, washington naval treaty
The North Carolina Class Battleships: The First of the Modern U.S. Navy Battleships
After spending the time to take two days each to write two detailed articles on issues related to the novel Coronavirus 19 I needed a break. I could have started another COVID 19 article tonight but I needed a break, especially after I listened to today’s COVID 19 Task Force Press conference, which was more of a cheerleading fan rally than anything seriously informative. But I have to leave that here for now, I don’t have the emotional energy to write about it right now, after all there will be plenty of other chances to chronicle this and more.
So tonight I am going back to different classes of naval warships. This is another in a series of six articles on the battleships built under the provision of the Washington and London Naval Treaty limitations in the 1930s. I am not including the ships which were completed in the immediate aftermath of the Washington Treaty limitations. This series looks at the modern battleships that the World War II combatants would produce in the 1930s which saw service in the war. The first deal that the German Scharnhorst class and another covered the Italian Vittorio Veneto class. In between my commentary on current events, as well as the Holocaust, I plan to go back to the French Dunkerque and Richelieu classes, the British King George V class, and the United States South Dakota class. The German Bismarck, Japanese Yamato, British Vanguard and American Iowa classes will be covered in a subsequent series.I will probably write about the battleships that each of these nations planned but either did not complete or never left the drawing board, including the fantastical German ships of the various H classes.
So until tomorrow, I hope that you enjoy this.
Turret base of USS Washington being lowered into barbet
The United States finished the First World War as the rising economic and potential military power in the world. The British Empire was economically reeling beset by massive debts, heavy loss of life and an empire which was beginning to smell the fresh breezes of independence. The United States retreated into isolationism and a naïve and unfounded optimism that war could be outlawed while turning its back on the one organization that might have helped bring nations together, the League of Nations. In this environment the United States sponsored the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 which produced the Washington Naval Treaty. The treaty stipulated limitations on total battleship tonnage, main armament and the maximum tonnage allowed per ship. Ships already in existence could not be replaced until they reached the age of 20 years. A battleship “building holiday” of 10 years was mandated with the major signatories allowed to complete a few ships that were already under construction. Whole classes of new construction were cancelled and many ships under construction were scrapped on the ways or completed only to be scrapped or sunk as targets. The Royal Navy completed two ships of the Nelson Class, the United States completed the 3 ship Maryland Class using a 4th vessel the incomplete USS Washington as a target and the Japanese were allowed to complete two ships of the Nagato Class. The Royal Navy completed the Battleship Eagle and Battle Cruisers Furious, Glorious and Courageous as Aircraft Carriers, the U.S. Navy the incomplete Battle Cruisers Lexington and Saratoga and the Japanese the Battle Cruiser Akagi and Battleship Kaga as carriers. The treaty limits of the Washington Conference were renewed in the London Treaty which also sought to limit the main batteries of new battleships to 14 inch guns.
North Carolina Class 16″ Gun Turret
The U.S. Navy began a study of new designs for a fast battleship class to comply with the treaty restrictions in May to July of 1935. A minimum of 35 different designs were submitted and reviewed by the Navy and also reviewed by the faculty of the Naval War College. These designed included everything from an improved version of the Standard Type which had culminated in the Maryland Class and the never built South Dakota Class.
The Type VII Design, a Return to the Standard Battleship
After a considerable amount of debate a design called the Type XVI was selected. The design originally called for twelve 14” guns mounted in three quadruple turrets. Other designs considered called for twelve 14″ guns in triple turrets. When the Japanese opted out of the treaty and the Italians began building the Vittorio Veneto Class with 15” guns the U.S. Navy officially adopted the “escalation clause” and the design was modified to mount nine 16” guns in triple turrets primarily due to the expectation that the Japanese Imperial Navy would mount larger guns in its new ships.
Initial Type XVI design with 14″ guns
The Navy worked to achieve the maximum speed, armament and protection that it could within the 35,000 ton limitations of the Washington and London Naval Treaties. There was debate among Admirals and designers as to how to solve the problem with some factions leaning toward greater speed and lighter armor and armament and others weighing in on a slightly slower ship with greater firepower and protection.
The Type XVI (modified) design original called for a main battery of twelve 14” guns in quadruple turrets, but this was changed to nine 16” guns in triple turrets. The main armor belt was 12” inclined 15 degrees with 16” armor on the turret faceplates and barbets having 16” side armor. Their conning tower was also protected by 14” armor. This gave them heavier armor than the Italian Vittorio Veneto Class. They had a lighter belt than the British King George V Class but were afforded more protection to their turrets, barbets and conning tower. Likewise, they had slightly less armor than the French Richelieu class due to the Design of the class which placed all main battery guns forward, using all or nothing armor protection. However, the design was a compromise and the armor could not have protected the ships from 16” shellfire, and there were weaknesses in the anti-torpedo defenses which were shown when North Carolina was torpedoed during the Guadalcanal campaign along with the USS Wasp.
View of USS Washington Conning Tower showing Mk 38 5″ gun directors and SG Surface Search Radar
Their top speed of 27 knots was slower than their European counterparts but their range was far superior to all being able to steam over 20,000 miles at 15 knots and 6,610 miles at 25 knots. Their top speed and ranged decreased slightly during the war with the addition of more anti-aircraft guns and sensors.
Other designs were considered in the selection process, but most of the designs considered had speeds from 27-30 knots depending on whether the designers sacrificed speed for armament and protection, or protection and firepower for speed. One design, the Type VII resembled earlier classes of battleships with a speed of only 23 knots in favor of much heavier protection on a shorter hull.
USS North Carolina BB-55
The North Carolina Class was comparable in many ways with the Japanese Nagato Class in speed, protection and armament, but they had a far greater cruising range which made them excellent for operations in the Pacific either parts of Fast Carrier task forces, the Battle Line of the Third or Fifth Fleet, or centerpieces of surface action groups.
The North Carolina’s also were superior to their contemporaries in their anti-aircraft armament as well as their electronics, radar and fire direction suites which were all continuously upgraded throughout the war.
The construction of the ships was slow due to material shortages in the late 1930s. Likewise, the design change to 16” guns from the original 14” guns, as well as labor issues which not only lengthened the time of their construction and raised their cost from $50 million to $60 million dollars each.
North Carolina during underway replenishment in the Pacific
USS North Carolina was laid down on 27 October 1937, launched on 13 June 1940 and commissioned 9 April 1941. However, it was months before she was operational due to severe longitudinal vibration of her propeller shafts which was corrected by a modified propeller design. Despite the efforts to keep to the treaty limitations the ships displaced 36,600 long tons and had a full load displacement of 44,800 long tons. By 1945 the ships full load displacement had increased to 46,700 long tons for North Carolina and 45,370 long tons for Washington.
Torpedo Damage to North Carolina
When North Carolina completed her shakedown cruise she was sent to the Pacific where she joined Task Force 16 and the USS Enterprise on 6 August 1942. She defended Enterprise during the Battle of the Easter Solomons on 24 August and during an 8 minute period she shot down between 7 and 14 Japanese aircraft. On 15 September she was badly damaged by a torpedo from the Japanese submarine I-15 which necessitated her withdraw to Pearl Harbor for repairs.
The gravity of the damage from the hit sparked great debate in the Navy regarding her protection with some wondering if too much had been sacrificed in her design, despite this no modifications were made to the ships of the Iowa class.
Upon her return to service she operated with TF 38 and TF 58 protecting the carrier task forces in their operations against the Japanese as well as with TF 34 the Fast Battleship Task Force under the command of Vice Admiral Willis Lee. Serving throughout the Pacific campaign she took part in every major operation in the Central Pacific except Leyte Gulf and against the Japanese mainland. Her Marines and Sailors took part in the initial occupation of Japan. She was decommissioned and placed in reserve on 1 June 1960 and survived scrapping to be bought by the State of North Carolina for $250,000 and turned into a memorial at Wilmington North Carolina. She remains a National Historic Landmark and is maintained by the USS North Carolina Battleship Commission. She is exceptionally well maintained and much of the ship is open for tours.
USS Washington BB-56 on high speed run in 1945
The USS Washington was laid down 14 June 1938 launched on 1 June 1940 and commissioned 15 May 1941 though like North Carolina had propeller shaft vibrations which delayed her operational availability. She became the first U.S. Navy Battleship to take an active part in the war when she joined the British Home Fleet in March 1942 operating with the Royal Navy escorting Arctic convoys bound for the Soviet Union against possible forays of the Battleship Tirpitz and other heavy German surface units until 14 July when she returned to the United States for a brief overhaul.
Following her overhaul, Washington was deployed to the South Pacific to join U.S. Forces operating against the Japanese at Guadalcanal and became the Flagship of Rear Admiral Willis Lee. During the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on the night of 14-15 November she and the USS South Dakota sailed with 4 destroyers to intercept a Japanese task force. The Japanese force led by the Battleship Kirishima included 2 heavy and 2 light cruisers as well as 9 destroyers. The Japanese hit the Americans hard early in the battle sinking 3 of the 4 American destroyers and inflicting significant topside damage to South Dakota which caused a power outage and knocked her out of the action. Washington sailed on undetected by the Japanese and opened a devastating barrage against Kirishima. Washington scored hits on Kirishima with at least 9 of her 16” shells and over 40 5” shells. Kirishima was mortally wounded. despite the best attempts of her crew to save her, she was scuttled the following day. After mauling Kirishima, Washington then drove off the other Japanese ships sparing Henderson Field from certain heavy damage.
Washington blasting Kirishima at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal 14-15 November 1942
Washington’s victim the IJN Battleship Kirishima
Washington continued operations in the South and Central Pacific until she was damaged in a collision with USS Indiana which resulted in her losing nearly 60 feet from her bow on 1 February 1944. She received temporary repairs before returning to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard to receive a new bow and other modernizations returning to action in May 1944. She remained in operation against the Japanese the rest of the war. She was decommissioned in 1947 and struck from the Naval Register on 1 June 1960 and sold for scrap.
North Carolina and Washington in Reserve
Various improvements and ideas were suggested while the ships remained in reserve as some in the Navy wished to reactivate them to include lightening them to increase their speed, and conversion into Helicopter Carriers all of which were rejected. The rejection of these attempts to modernize and recommission the ships ensured their fates.
Fireworks over the North Carolina in Wilmington (US Navy Photo)
Though the North Carolina class was a compromise design they performed admirably throughout the war. They and their brave crews are remembered in Naval History and the preservation of North Carolina has ensured that they will never be forgotten.
Filed under historic preservation, History, Military, Navy Ships, US Navy, World War II at Sea, world war two in the pacific
Tagged as battle of eastern solomons, battleship tirpitz, dunkerque class, IJN I-15, ijns Kirishima, king george v class, london naval treaty, nagato class, north carolina class, richelieu class, scharnhorst class, second naval battle of guadalcanal, south dakota class, Us type vii battleship, us type xvi battleship, uss enterprise cv-6, uss indiana bb-57, uss north carolina bb-55, uss south dakota bb-58, uss washington bb-56, uss wasp, vice admiral willis lee, Vittorio Veneto class, washington naval treaty
May 5, 2020 · 01:47
The Vittorio Veneto Class Battleships: The Pride of Italy and Victims of Changing Technology
Vittorio Veneto and Littorio
Once again I have decided to destress and not write about COVID 19, politics, or the Holocaust and instead write about an interesting, and even fascinating class of warships which have been often forgotten.
This is the first in a series of six articles on the battleships built under the provision of the Washington and London Naval Treaty limitations in the 1930s. I am not including the ships which were completed in the immediate aftermath of the Washington Treaty limitations. This series looks at the modern battleships that the World War II combatants would produce in the 1930s which saw service in the war.
Part one covers the Italian Vittorio Veneto class, Part Two the French Dunkerque and Richelieu Classes, Part Three the British King George V Class and Part Four the American North Carolina and South Dakota Classes. The thing that I find interesting about all of these ships is who inventive each Navy building them was considering treaty restraints and their own adherence to, disregarding of, or the technical issues that they faced as none had designed or built a new battleship since the end of the First World War. In the case of Italy they did not even complete their most modern design after the war, thus the building of large and fast battleships was something new to each party. Had the economic effects of the First World War been so difficult, and the following Great Influenza of 1918-1919 so devastating, all of the navies involved might have completed ships that would have influenced the next generation.
I have already published the final part which covers the German Scharnhorst Class entitled Power and Beauty the Battle Cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau The German Bismarck, Japanese Yamato, British Vanguard and American Iowa Classes will be covered in a subsequent series.
Most of these ships were constructed after the expiration of the treaties, but since most of the navies at least attempted to maintain a façade of compliance with the treaty limitations, most were officially listed as complying with the treaty restrictions. The fact that nations frequently lie about their adherence to treaty limitations, is nothing new, or surprising.
The Washington Naval Treaty placed a limit on the displacement and armament of battleships. It also stipulated the tonnage of capital ships allowed for each Navy, as well as limits on the displacement of cruisers, and destroyers. The only country not effected by the treaty was Germany, which until 1935 was required to observe much stricter limitations than Great Britain, the United States, France, Italy, or Japan.
The Washington Naval Treaty led to the scrapping or cancellation of nearly all the super Dreadnoughts, and fast battleships, sometimes known as Battlecruisers of the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy. However, its restrictions opened up the development of large aircraft carriers by the United States and Japan which each were allowed to complete two of their new battleships or Battlecruisers into aircraft carriers, specifically the IJN Akagi and Kaga, and the American USS Lexington and Saratoga.
The London Treaty continued the restrictions of the Washington Treaty which limited the displacement of new ships to 35,000 tons with the main battery being limited to 16” guns. Each of the treaty signatories as well as the Germans, who were bound by the much more stringent Treaty of Versailles restriction, endeavored to build to the limit of the treaty and if possible skirt the limitations in terms of displacement which allowed them to increase protection as well as more powerful engineering plants. The Germans, now Hitler’s Third Reich, were aided in this by a bi-lateral Naval Agreement with Britain in 1935. The treaty not only allowed them a legal way to avoid the Versailles restrictions and gain international respect.
The Royal Italian Navy, or the Regia Marina had not completed a battleship design since the Andria Doria Class which were constructed between 1912 and 1915. These ships were provided an extensive modernization between 1937 and 1940. The modernization allowed them to serve as first line ships throughout the war. A subsequent class the Francesco Caracciolo class was started during the First World War but no ships of the class were completed. Italy’s war debts, overall financial condition, as well as the similar situation of the French, Italy’s main rival in the Mediterranean Sea, ensured that the Regina Marina had little money for new ships or modernizing old ships during the 1920s and 1930s. Even the accession of Mussolini did little to help the Navy until the 1930s. Even then competing ideas of how to build a new Navy were present in the Italian Naval High Command. Some placed their emphasis on large numbers of battleships, others a mix of aircraft carriers, fast battleships, cruisers and destroyers, while other sought a middle ground.
However, the Italians were forced to act as in the 1930s a new naval arms race was underway in the Mediterranean. The French Navy had begun a new class of Fast Battleships, the Dunkerque class which were designed to defeat the German Deutschland class “pocket battleships” and the follow on Richelieu Class of fast battleships. Mussolini saw the new French ships as a threat to the his control of the Mediterranean, or as the Italians and their Roman ancestors called it Mare Nostrum (our Sea), and ordered the construction of a new class of battleships to help Italy achieve naval dominance in the Mediterranean.
The new ships were of a breathtaking design. They were large, fast and heavily armed. While they were officially listed as meeting the prescribed treaty limit of 35,000 tons they actually would displace 41,177 tons standard displacement, and 45,963 tons full load. They were armed with a main battery of 9 15” L/50 guns in triple turrets. They had a secondary armament of 12 6” and 12 3.5” dual purpose guns, and a powerful light anti-aircraft battery of 20 37mm and 30 20mm anti-aircraft guns. They were capable of a top speed of 30 knots. Although they had a relatively short range of 3900 miles at 20 knots, they were formidable ships for operations in the constrained waters of the Mediterranean where they would not be required to operate at long ranges from Italian bases in Italy, Sicily, or Libya. They were well protected from shellfire, although their Pugliese torpedo defense system proved inferior to traditional designs, because it did not hold up well to direct hits, or close aboard explosions which resulted in massive flooding when hit by a torpedo or by a near miss from a heavy bomb or shell.
Their main armament though formidable was not without its flaws. The 15” guns had a very long range of 42 km or 26.6 miles and high muzzle velocity of 2900 fps. This meant that they had a long reach, however, their high muzzle velocity led to a barrel life of only about half that of their counterparts, and led to inconsistent shell fall patterns, which lessened to probability of hitting targets at long range. The guns also suffered from a slow rate of fire of only 1.3 rounds per gun a minute.
Vittorio Veneto in 1943
The Vittorio Veneto was laid down 1934 along with her sister the Littorio, and was launched on 25 July 1937. She was commissioned on 28 April 1940, barely a month before Italy declared war on France and Britain. She would see action numerous times and give a good account of herself against the British taking part in 56 war missions. She fought at the Battle of Cape Spartivento (Teulada) where she fired 19 salvos to drive off a 7 ship British cruiser squadron in a pitched battle that also included the battleship HMS Ramillies and battle cruiser HMS Renown. In 1941 she took part in the Battle of Cape Matapan where she was damaged by an aerial torpedo after driving off a British cruiser squadron. After repairs she was back in action and on 15 June 1942 participated in the Battle of Mid-June, where she and her sister ship Littorio successfully fenced off a large British convoy from Alexandria by their mere presence at sea. She was also the first Italian battleship equipped with radar. She surrendered with the Italian fleet to the Allies on 8 September 1943 surviving furious German air attacks. She was interred at the Great Bitter Lakes in the Suez Canal. After the war she taken as war compensation and was returned to Italy and scrapped beginning in 1948.
Littorio
Littorio (later Italia): Littorio was laid down in 1934 and launched on 22 August 1937 and commissioned on 6 May 1940. She participated in 43 operations including the Battle of Sirte and several actions against British convoys. Following the Battle of Mid-June she was struck by an aerial torpedo dropped by a Wellington bomber. She was repaired and upon the removal of Mussolini from power was renamed Italia and surrendered with the Italian Fleet on 8 September 1943 being damaged by a Fritz-X radio controlled bomb. With her sister the ex Vittorio Veneto, now Italia, she was interred in the Great Bitter Lake and was returned to Italy where she was decommissioned and scrapped beginning in 1948.
Roma was laid down 18 September 1938, launched on 9 June 1940 and commissioned 14 June 1942. Despite her addition to the fleet she was not deployed due to a fuel shortage. She sailed with the Italian Fleet to surrender on 8 June under the guise of the fleet sailing to attack the Allied invasion fleet off Salerno. The Germans discovered the ruse and the Luftwaffe launched air attacks against the Italian Fleet. Luftwaffe Dornier Do-217s armed with Fritz-X radio controlled bombs attacked the fleet as it transited the Strait of Bonafacio.
Roma exploding after being hit by Fritz-X radio guided bomb
Roma was hit by two of the missiles the first which flooded two boiler rooms and the aft engine room. She was hit again by a second Fritz-X which hit in the forward engine room causing catastrophicdamage. The explosions ignited the number two turret magazine blowing the turret off the ship and causing the ship to capsize and break in two. She sank, carrying 1255 of her crew including Admiral Carlo Bergamini to their death. Roma was the first ship sunk by a radio controlled bomb, the forerunner of our current air launched anti-ship missiles. In the years since, lightly constructed surface ships have not faired well against air or sea fired anti-ship missiles.
The Fritz-X Radio Guided Bomb
The fourth and final ship of the Class, Impero, was was laid down and launched, but never completed. When Italy surrendered the Germans used her incomplete hull as a target sinkinrn her. She was raised and scrapped after the war.
Impero Being Launched in 1939
The Vittorio Veneto class was a sound design and operationally successful against the Royal Navy. Her design was explored by the Soviet, Dutch, and Spanish navies in their attempts to build moderner battleships or battlecruisers, although none came to fruition. The fact that the two surviving ships, as well as the newest most modern were scrapped was a travesty as the Cold War began. Their loss left Italy with the remaining two Andrea Doria class battleships, completed in 1915 and 1916 as the battle force of the Italian Navy, until they were scrapped in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The brave sailors of the Regina Marina who manned these fine ships should not be forgotten.
Filed under History, Military, national security, Navy Ships, nazi germany, World War II at Sea, world war two in europe
Tagged as air to surface anti ship missiles, Andrea Doria Class Battleships, battle of cape matapan, battle of sirte, deutschland class, Dornier 217, dunkerque class, Fritz X guided bomb, HMS Ramillies, hms renown, ijn akagi, ijn kaga, king george v class, littorio, london naval treaty, mare nostrum, mussolini, north carolina class, regina marina, richelieu class, roma, scharnhorst class, south dakota class, surface to surface anti ship missiles, uss lexington, uss saratoga, vittorio veneto, Vittorio Veneto class, washington naval treaty
The Pinnacle of Naval Superiority or Obsolescence: The Battle Cruisers of 1920 and the Aircraft Carriers of 2020
Artists Depiction of G3 Battlecruiser
The next few days I will be reflecting on the old year and the coming new year, but tonight I decided to tweak and republish an article from about four years ago dealing with the battle cruisers being built by Great Britain, Japan, and the United States after the First World War. They represented the pinnacle of naval design for their era and would have been far superior to their adversaries had technology and war remained static. As Admiral Ernest King noted:
“Nothing remains static in war or military weapons, and it is consequently often dangerous to rely on courses suggested by apparent similarities in the past.”
As the First World War ended a new Naval Race was heating up. The United States had announced its intention during the war to build a navy second to none while Imperial Japan was making plans for a fleet that would give it superiority in the Western Pacific. The British, though still be far the largest naval power in the world were burdened by the massive costs of war and empire, but also seeking to maintain their naval dominance and to that end they were in the process of building a class of massive super-Dreadnought battleships, and Battle Cruisers.
Much of each powers actions in the coming years would be based on internal politics, foreign policy, and the simple economics of how much each power could afford to spend on their militaries after such a costly war. The result was the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 which limited the signatories to specific numbers, tonnage, and armaments each Navy would be allowed. Do to those reasons the massive Battle Cruisers planned by Britain, the United States and Japan were canceled. The Japanese and Americans would choose to convert two of their incomplete ships to aircraft carriers, while the British would convert the already completed ships of the Courageous Class battlecruisers (Courageous, Glorious, and Furious) into aircraft carriers as though none of the G3 ships had been laid down.
The ships known as the G3 battle cruisers were first designed by the British Royal Navy as a compliment to the all big gun Dreadnought battleships. The Battle Cruiser concept was for a ship of roughly the same size and firepower as a Battleship, but sacrificed armor protection for greater speed, endurance and range. The United States and Japan joined in the Battle Cruiser race before and during the war. However, Britain the United States had concentrated on building battleships during the war but following the war began to design and build its own classes of massive battle cruisers.
HMS Invincible Blowing Up at Jutland
During the war the weaknesses of the battlecruisers as a type were exposed during the Battle of Jutland where three British Battle Cruisers, the HMS Invincible, HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary blew up with the loss of most of their crews; of the 3311 officers and sailors on the ships only 26 survived. The HMS Lion was almost lost in a similar manner but the heroic actions of her crew saved her from her sisters fate. The British ships had glaring deficiencies in armor protection and the arrangement of their ammunition magazines and hoists which certainly contributed to their loss. Their German counterparts on the other hand proved much tougher and though all sustained heavy damage while engaging British Battleships and Battle Cruisers, only one the Lützow was lost. She absorbed over 30 hits from large caliber shells and only lost 128 crew members. However, though a battle cruiser Lützow, and other German battle cruisers wer designed for relatively short range operations which meant they neither sacrificed armor protection, speed, or firepower as did the British ships which were designed for missions far and wide, needing more displacement for fuel and crew supplies, often sacrificing armor protection in order to maintain their high speed capabilities.
HMS Hood
As the war progressed other Battle Cruisers were built, the British launched the HMS Repulse and HMS Renown and completed the HMS Hood shortly after the war was over. The Japanese built the four ship Kongo class from a British design, the first of which, the Kongo was completed in a British yard, the others Haruna, Hiei, and Kirishima were built in Japanese yards. The Kongo Class would prove to be the workhorses of the Battle Force of the Imperial Japanese Navy, all seeing significant combat action.
As the powers embarked on the next Naval Race planners and naval architects designed ships of massive firepower, better protection and higher range and speed. All would have been better classed as Fast Battleships, a better description of the Kongo Class or the Hood than previous ships.
The British designed and funded the G3 class in 1921, while the Japanese began work on the Amagi Class, and the United States the Lexington Class. However the construction and completion of these ships as Battle Cruisers was prevented by the Washington Naval Treaty.
The treaty, which was ratified in 1922 limited the United States and Great Britain to a maximum of 525,000 tons in their battle ship fleets and 125,000 tons in aircraft carriers. The Japanese agreed to a limit of 315,000 tons and the French and Italians 175,000 tons each. Tonnage for battleships was limited to a maximum of 35,000 tons with a limitation on guns size to 16 inches. Since the bulk of the ships planned or being built by the US and Japan exceeded those limits they would be effected more than the British whose post war shipbuilding program had not begun in earnest, in fact the G3 Class had just been approved for construction and there is no proof that construction had begun on any of the ships.
The G3 class would have comprised four ships and been similar to the N3 Class Battleships. They were very well balanced ships and would have mounted nine 16” guns in three turrets on a displacement of 49,200 tons and deep load of 54,774 tons. They had an all or nothing protection plan meaning that the armored belt was concentrated in vital areas around the armored citadel, conning tower, turrets and magazines and engineering spaces. Their armor belt would have ranged from 12-14 inches, deck armor from 3-8 inches, conning tower 8 inches, barbettes 11-14 inches, turrets 13-17 inches and bulkheads 10-12 inches. Their propulsion system of 20 small tube boilers powering 4 geared steam turbines connected to 4 propeller shafts would have produced 160,000 shp with a designed speed of 32 knots.
The four ships, none of which were named were ordered between October and November of 1921. Their construction was suspended on November 18th 1921 and they and the N3 Battleships were cancelled in February 1922 due to the limitations of the Washington Naval Treaty. Many concepts of their design were incorporated in the Nelson Class battleships which were a compromise design built to stay within the limits of the treaty.
Amagi Class as Designed, Akagi as Completed (below)
The four planned Japanese Amagi Class ships would have mounted ten 16” guns on a displacement of 47,000 tons at full load. Their propulsion system 19 Kampon boilers powering four Gihon turbines would have given them a maximum speed of 30 knots, They would have had less protection than the G3 ships being more of a traditional Battle Cruiser design. As a result of the Washington Naval Treaty the Japanese elected to convert two of the ships, the Amagi and Akagi to aircraft carriers. Amagi was destroyed on the ways during the great Tokyo earthquake and Akagi was completed as a carrier. The other two vessels were scrapped on the ways. To replace Amagi the Imperial Navy selected the incomplete Tosa Class battleship Kaga.
The United States Navy planned the six ship Lexington Class. These ships would have mounted eight 16” guns on a ship measuring 874 feet long and 105 feet in beam, displacing 43,254 tons at full load, or nearly the size of the Iowa Class battleships. They would have had a maximum speed of 33 knots being powered by 16 boilers which drove 4 GE electric turbines producing 180,000 shaft horse power. Theirs was a massive engineering plant and while the class did not have as heavy armor protection as either the G3 or Amagi classes, they were superior to them in speed as well as endurance. Upon ratification of the Washington Naval Treaty four of the six ships were cancelled and the remaining two, the Lexington and Saratoga competed as aircraft carriers. Had any of the ships been completed as Battle Cruisers it is likely due to their speed that they would have operated primarily with the the carriers that the US Navy built during the 1930s.
One can only speculate what the navies of World War II would have looked like had the Washington and the subsequent London Naval Treaties not been ratified. One can also only imagine how the war at sea would have been different had the ships completed as carriers been completed as Battle Cruisers. It is certain had the Royal Navy, the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the United States Navy Not Converter These ships, that Naval Aviation would have take years, or maybe more than decades to reach its potential.
However that was not to be, of the planned 14 ships of these three classes only three were completed, all as aircraft carriers, ships that helped to forge the future of naval operations and warfare for nearly a century. Thus the uncompleted ships are an interesting footnote in naval history yet have their own mystique.
Yet nothing remains static. The carriers have ruled the waves since December 7th 1941. But the massive aircraft carriers which have ruled the seas since the Second World War are not necessarily invincible and depending on how technology progresses could be heading into obsolescence, and may end up serving in support roles or being paid off. Yet that being said the United States is continuing to construct carriers of the Ford Class, the British the Queen Elizabeth Class, while the Chinese and Indian Navies pursue the development of new super carriers, while the French Navy operates the CVN Charles De Gaulle.
But with the development of more and more relatively cheap, long range, and maneuverable land based anti-ship missile systems, and the capabilities of modern submarines we have to ask the legitimate question, is the aircraft carrier’s reign of the seas in jeopardy? This is a good question, but not the only one because since World War II there have been no carrier versus carrier engagements on the high seas. There are some places that are outside the range of land based anti-ship weapons, although submarines may prove a problem for surface forces to deal with, and for carriers their survival.
But since there have been no carrier versus carrier actions since the Second World War it would be interesting to see how the current carriers now operational or being developed would fare against each other if such an encounter occurred. It would be a test of air wings, ship design, and the protective capabilities of their escorts, as well as the cyber realm, on, above, and below the surface. Until such an engagement occurred all opinions, even those done in computer simulations are at best guesses as most of the weapons systems have never been tried in actual combat against peer competitors. Thus, like the carriers and their escorts designed before the Second World War, they will have to be tested in combat to see if they are still relevant in their designed role, or if they will be relegated to support roles which could be done by less costly alternatives such as the LHA/LHD type ships of the United States, France, Japan, and South Korea, or the the Sea Control Ship derivations in other smaller Navies in Europe and Asia.
Perhaps to meet some missions smaller and cheaper carriers will be developed, or existing platforms modified to carry more capable aircraft as the Japanese are doing with their Izumo and Hyuga Class “Helicopter Destroyers,” and the South Koreans are doing with their two Dokto Class LPH (Landing Platform Helicoptor) both of which may soon begin to operate the F35B fighter aircraft purchased from the United States, the same aircraft with will operate from United States Navy LHAs and LHDs as well as the British Queen Elizabeth Class.
JMSDF “Helicopter Destroyer” Kaga
Thus, one might wonder if the large new aircraft carriers currently being built by the United States, Britain, China, India, and other nations will also be displaced by advancing technology as were the battlecrusiers of the 1920s. It is a question that must be asked. There are certainly arguments for them, but what would the effect be on the United States Navy if one of the Nimitz or Ford Class carriers was sunk by the Chinese, or evening the Iranians? My guess is that it would be the same kind of shock that hit the Royal Navy after Jutland, and the U.S. Navy after Pearl Harbor.
I still believe in the aircraft carrier, as a weapon of deterrence, support of operations ashore, and against enemy ships on the high seas. But eight decades is a long run for any weapons system, and it is possible that despite the major power’s investment in carriers, that their reign may be coming to an end, at the same time it may be too early to count out the Super Carriers. Perhaps their mission will be modified to support smaller ships in sea control missions and reserved for potential combat with countries which have no answer to them, or against similar platforms in open ocean battles.
USS Gerald R. Ford
I believe that the future has not been decided in relation to the aircraft carrier and much of that will have to do with how the operators of such vessels adapt to a changing world with many more threats, in order to maximize their capabilities while minimizing the dangers to such expensive national security assets. This is the aspect of war and national security that is within the control of human beings. I think of Admiral Arleigh Burke’s words at times like this:
“For in this modern world, the instruments of warfare are not solely for waging war. Far more importantly, they are the means for controlling peace. Naval officers must therefore understand not only how to fight a war, but how to use the tremendous power which they operate to sustain a world of liberty and justice, without unleashing the powerful instruments of destruction and chaos that they have at their command.”
he other possibility is that the navies that operate them decide that they are too expensive, and that their vulnerabilities outweigh their capabilities. This was the case in the 1920s with the battlecruisers then under construction.
Filed under History, Military, national security, Navy Ships, News and current events, US Navy, World War II at Sea
Tagged as amagi class battle cruiser, battle of jutland, Courageous class battlecruisers, ernest king, g3 class battle cruisers, hms courageous, hms furious, hms glorious, hms hood, hms indefatgable, hms invincible, hms lion, hms queen mary, hms renown, hms repulse, ijn akagi, ijn haruna, ijn hiei, ijn kaga, ijn kirishima, ijn kongo, kongo class, lexington class battle cruisers, LHA, LHD, LPH, n3 battleships, nelson class battleship, sms lutzow, tosa class, uss lexington, uss saratoga, washington naval treaty
December 3, 2018 · 21:02
American Dreadnoughts: The Remarkable Battleships of Pearl Harbor
We are coming up on the 77th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It is hard to believe that the attack occurred so long ago. The survivors are aging, and even the youngest are close to ninety years old, the oldest survivor of the USS Arizona, Joe Langdell died in February of 2015. At the time of the attack he was a nearly commissioned Ensign. He and many like him served as the officers and men aboard the eight great battleships moored at Pearl Harbor on that terrible Sunday morning.
The next day President Franklin Roosevelt spoke these immortal words, “Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan….
One of the young men who responded to the call to arms after the attack was a future President, 18 year old George H. W. Bush. He was advised to go to college instead of enlisting but he would hear nothing of it. He enlisted as soon as he graduated from high school on his 18th Birthday. He went to flight school and was commissioned just days before his 19th birthday, becoming the youngest Naval aviator. I guess that it is fitting that Bush, who passed away Saturday will be buried on December 6th, the day before the anniversary of the attack.
I remember reading Walter Lord’s classic and very readable book about Pearl Harbor “Day of Infamy” when I was a 7th grade student at Stockton Junior High School back in 1972. At the time my dad was on his first deployment to Vietnam on the USS Hancock CVA-19. As a Navy brat I was totally enthralled with all things Navy and there was little that could pull me out of the library. In fact in my sophomore year of high school I cut over one half of the class meetings of the 4th quarter my geometry class to sit in the library and read history, especially naval and military history.
Over the years I have always found the pre-World War Two battleships to be among the most interesting ships in US Navy history. No they are not the sleek behemoths like the USS Wisconsin which graces the Norfolk waterfront. They were not long and sleek, but rather squat yet exuded power. They were the backbone of the Navy from the First World War until Pearl Harbor. They were the US Navy answer to the great Dreadnaught race engaged in by the major navies of the world in the years prior to, during and after World War One.
Built over a period of 10 years each class incorporated the rapid advances in technology between the launching of the Dreadnaught and the end of the Great War. While the United States Navy did not engage in battleship to battleship combat the ships built by the US Navy were equal to or superior to many of the British and German ships of the era.
Through the 1920s and 1930s they were the ambassadors of the nation, training and showing the flag. During those years the older ships underwent significant overhaul and modernization.
The Battle Force of the Pacific Fleet in 1941 included 9 battleships of which 8 were at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7th. In the event of war the US War Plan, “Orange” called for the Pacific Fleet led by the Battle Force to cross the Pacific, fight a climactic Mahanian battle against the battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy and after vanquishing the Japanese foe to relieve American Forces in the Philippines. However this was not to be as by the end of December 7th all eight were out of action, with two, the Arizona and Oklahoma permanently lost to the Navy.
The ships at Pearl Harbor comprised four of the seven classes of battleships in the US inventory at the outbreak of hostilities. Each class was an improvement on the preceding class in speed, protection and firepower. The last class of ships, the Maryland class comprised of the Maryland, Colorado and West Virginia, was the pinnacle of US Battleship design until the North Carolina class was commissioned in 1941. Since the Washington Naval Treaty limited navies to specific tonnage limits as well as the displacement of new classes of ships the United States like Britain and Japan was limited to the ships in the current inventory at the time of the treaty’s ratification.
USS Oklahoma (above) and USS Nevada
Those present at Pearl Harbor included the two ships of the Nevada class, the Nevada and Oklahoma they were the oldest battleships at Pearl Harbor and the first of what were referred to as the “standard design” battleships. The two ships of the Pennsylvania class, the Pennsylvania and her sister the Arizona served as the flagships of the Pacific Fleet and First Battleship Division respectively and were improved Nevada’s. The California class ships, California and Tennessee and two of the three Maryland’s the Maryland and West Virginia made up the rest of the Battle Force.
The Colorado was undergoing a yard period at Bremerton and the three ships of the New Mexico class, New Mexico, Mississippi and Idaho had been transferred to the Atlantic before Pearl Harbor due to the German threat. The three oldest battleships in the fleet, those of the New York and Wyoming Classes, the New York, Arkansas and Texas also were in the Atlantic. Two former battleships, the Utah and Wyoming had been stripped of their main armaments and armor belts and served as gunnery training ships for the fleet. The Utah was at Pearl Harbor moored on the far side of Ford Island. The newest battleships in the Navy, the modern USS North Carolina and USS Washington were also serving in the Atlantic as a deterrent to the German battleships and battlecruisers which occasionally sortied into the Atlantic to attack convoys bound for Britain.
The great ships that lay at anchor at 0755 that peaceful Sunday morning on Battleship Row and in the dry dock represented the naval power of a bygone era, something that most did not realize until two hours later. The age of the battleship was passing away, but even the Japanese did not realize that the era had passed building the massive super-battleships Yamato and Musashi mounting nine 18” guns and displacing 72,000 tons, near twice that of the largest battleships in the U.S. inventory.
The Oklahoma and Nevada were the oldest ships in the Battle Force. Launched in 1914 and commissioned in 1916 the Nevada and Oklahoma mounted ten 14” guns and displaced 27,500 tons and were capable of 20.5 knots. They served in World War One alongside the British Home Fleet and were modernized in the late 1920s. They were part of the US presence in both the Atlantic and Pacific in the inter-war years. Oklahoma took part in the evacuation of American citizens from Spain in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War.
During the Pearl Harbor attack Oklahoma was struck by 5 aerial torpedoes capsized and sank at her mooring with the loss of 415 officers and crew. Recent analysis indicates that she may have been hit by at least on torpedo from a Japanese midget submarine. Her hulk would be raised but she would never again see service and sank on the way to the breakers in 1946.
Nevada was the only battleship to get underway during the attack. Moored alone at the north end of Battleship Row her Officer of the Deck had lit off a second boiler an hour before the attack. She was hit by an aerial torpedo in the first minutes of the attack but was not seriously damaged. She got underway between the attack waves and as she attempted to escape the harbor she was heavily damaged. To prevent her from sinking in the main channel she was beached off Hospital Point.
Nevada was raised and received a significant modernization before returning to service for the May 1943 assault on Attu. Nevada returned to the Atlantic where she took part in the Normandy landings off Utah Beach and the invasion of southern France. She returned to the Pacific and took part in the operations against Iwo Jima and Okinawa where she again provided naval gunfire support.
Following the war the great ship was assigned as a target at the Bikini atoll atomic bomb tests. The tough ship survived these tests and was sunk as a target on 31July 1948.
Two views of USS Arizona
USS Pennsylvania sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge
The two ships of the Pennsylvania Class were improved Oklahoma’s. The Arizona and Pennsylvania mounted twelve 14” guns and displacing 31,400 tons and capable of 21 knots they were both commissioned in 1916. They participated in operations in the Atlantic in the First World War with the British Home Fleet. Both ships were rebuilt and modernized between 1929 and 1931. Though damaged in the attack, Pennsylvania was back in action by early 1942. She underwent minor refits and took part in many amphibious landings in the Pacific and was present at the Battle of Surigao Strait. She was heavily damaged by an aerial torpedo at Okinawa Pennsylvania and was repaired. Following the war the elderly warrior was used as a target for the atomic bomb tests. She was sunk as a gunnery target in 1948.
Arizona was destroyed during the attack. As the flagship of Battleship Division One, she was moored next to the repair ship USS Vestal. She was hit by 8 armor piercing bombs one of which penetrated her forward black powder magazine. The ship was consumed by a cataclysmic explosion which killed 1103 of her 1400 member crew including her Captain and Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd, commander of Battleship Division One. She was never officially decommissioned and the colors are raised and lowered every day over the Memorial which sits astride her broken hull.
USS Tennessee & USS California
California sailing under the Brooklyn Bridge
The Tennessee class ships the Tennessee and California were the class following the New Mexico class ships which were not present at Pearl Harbor. These ships were laid down in 1917 and commissioned in 1920. Their design incorporated lessons learned at the Battle Jutland. They mounted twelve 14” guns, displaced 32,300 tons and were capable of 21 knots. At Pearl Harbor Tennessee was moored inboard of West Virginia and protected from the aerial torpedoes which did so much damage to other battleships. She was damaged by two bombs.
California was the Flagship of Battleship Division Two. She was moored at the southern end of Battleship Row. She was hit by two torpedoes in the initial attack, but she had the bad luck to have all of her major watertight hatches unhinged in preparation for an inspection. Despite the valiant efforts of her damage control teams she sank at her moorings. She was raised and rebuilt along with Tennessee were completely modernized with the latest in radar, fire control equipment and anti-aircraft armaments. They were widened with the addition of massive anti-torpedo bulges and their superstructure was razed and rebuilt along the lines of the South Dakota class. When the repairs and modernization work was completed the ships looked nothing like they did on December 7th. Both ships were active in the Pacific campaign and be engaged at Surigao Strait where they inflicted heavy damage on the attacking Japanese squadron. Both survived the war and were placed in reserve until 1959 when they were stricken from the Navy list and sold for scrap.
USS Maryland & USS West Virgina
The Maryland and West Virginia were near sisters of the Tennessee class. They were the last battleships built by the United States before the Washington Naval Treaty. and the first to mount 16” guns. With eight 16” guns they had the largest main battery of any US battleships until the North Carolina class. They displaced 32,600 tons and could steam at 21 knots. Laid down in 1917 and commissioned in 1921 they were modernized in the late 1920s. They were the most modern of the Super-Dreadnoughts built by the United States and included advances in protection and watertight integrity learned from both the British and German experience at Jutland.
At Pearl Harbor Maryland was moored inboard of Oklahoma and was hit by 2 bombs and her crew helped rescue survivors of that unfortunate ship. She was quickly repaired and returned to action. She received minimal modernization during the war. She participated in operations throughout the entirety of the Pacific Campaign mainly conducting Naval Gunfire Support to numerous amphibious operations. She was present at Surigao Strait where despite not having the most modern fire control radars she unleashed six salvos at the Japanese Southern Force.
Tennessee & West Virginia after the attack (above) Arizona (below)
Pennsylvania in Drydock Number One, Nevada beached at Hospital Point
Oklahoma Capsized and after being righted
West Virginia suffered some of the worst damage in the attack. She was hit by at least 5 torpedoes and two bombs. One of the torpedoes may have come from one of the Japanese midget submarines that penetrated the harbor. She took a serious list and was threatening to capsize. However she was saved from Oklahoma’s fate by the quick action of her damage control officer who quickly ordered counter-flooding so she would sink on an even keel. She was raised from the mud of Pearl Harbor and after temporary repairs and sailed to the West Coast for an extensive modernization on the order of the Tennessee and California.
West Virginia was the last Pearl Harbor to re-enter service. However when she returned she made up for lost time. She led the battle line at Surigao Strait and fired 16 full salvos at the Japanese squadron. Her highly accurate gunfire was instrumental in sinking the Japanese Battleship Yamashiro in the last battleship versus battleship action in history. West Virginia, Maryland and their sister Colorado survived the war and were placed in reserve until they were stricken from the Naval List and sold for scrap in 1959.
The battleships of Pearl Harbor are gone, save for the wreck of the Arizona and various relics such as masts, and ships bells located at various state capitals and Naval Stations. Unfortunately no one had the forethought to preserve one of the surviving ships to serve as a living memorial at Pearl Harbor with the Arizona. As I noted at the beginning of this article, the brave Sailors and Marines who manned these fine ships are also passing away.
Thus as we approach the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack it is fitting to remember these men and the great ships that they manned.
Padre Steve
Filed under History, Loose thoughts and musings, Military, Navy Ships, US Navy, world war two in the pacific
Tagged as Dreadnaught Battleships, franklin delano roosevelt, pearl harbor, Standard Battleships, uss arizona, uss california, uss cassin, uss downes, uss maryland, uss neosho, USS Nevada, uss oklahoma, uss pennsylvania, uss tennessee, uss vestal, uss west virginia, washington naval treaty, world war ii
Nothing Remains Static: The Never Built G3, Amagi, and Lexington Class Battle Cruisers
This weekend I will be reflecting on the old year and the coming new year, but tonight I decided to tweak and republish an article from about four years ago dealing with the battle cruisers being built by Great Britain, Japan, and the United States after the First World War. They represented the pinnacle of naval design for their era and would have been far superior to their adversaries had technology and war remained static. As Admiral Ernest King noted:
The ships known as battle cruisers were first built by the British Royal Navy as a compliment to the all big gun Dreadnought battleships. The Battle Cruiser concept was for a ship of roughly the same size and firepower as a Battleship but sacrificing protection for greater speed, endurance and range. and Japan joined in the Battle Cruiser race before and during the war. Unlike Britain the United States had concentrated on building battleships but following the war began to design and build its own class of massive battle cruisers.
During the war the weaknesses of the type were exposed during the Battle of Jutland where three British Battle Cruisers, the HMS Invincible, HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary blew up with the loss of most of their crews; of the 3311 officers and sailors on the ships only 26 survived. The HMS Lion was almost lost in a similar manner but the heroic actions of her crew saved her from her sisters fate. The British ships had glaring deficiencies in armor protection and the arrangement of their ammunition magazines and hoists which certainly contributed to their loss. Their German counterparts on the other hand proved much tougher and though all sustained heavy damage while engaging British Battleships and Battle Cruisers, only one the Lützow was lost. She absorbed over 30 hits from large caliber shells and only lost 128 crew members.
As the war progressed other Battle Cruisers were built, the British launched the HMS Repulse and HMS Renown and completed the HMS Hood shortly after the war was over. The Japanese built the four ship Kongo class from a British design, the first of which, the Kongo was completed in a British yard. As the powers embarked on the next Naval Race planners and naval architects designed ships of massive firepower, better protection and higher range and speed. All would have been better classed as Fast Battleships.
The British designed and began construction on the G3 class in 1921, while the Japanese began work on the Amagi Class, and the United States the Lexington Class. However the construction and completion of these ships as Battle Cruisers was prevented by the Washington Naval Treaty.
The treaty, which was ratified in 1922 limited the United States and Great Britain to a maximum of 525,000 tons in their battle ship fleets and 125,000 tons in aircraft carriers. The Japanese agreed to a limit of 315,000 tons and the French and Italians 175,000 tons each. Tonnage for battleships was limited to a maximum of 35,000 tons with a limitation on guns size to 16 inches. Since the bulk of the ships planned or being built by the US and Japan exceeded those limits they would be effected more than the British whose post war shipbuilding program had not begun in earnest, in fact the G3 Class had just been approved for construction.
The four planned Japanese Amagi Class ships would have mounted ten 16” guns on a displacement of 47,000 tons at full load. Their propulsion system 19 Kampon boilers powering four Gihon turbines would have given them a maximum speed of 30 knots, They would have had less protection than the G3 ships being more of a traditional Battle Cruiser design. As a result of the Washington Naval Treaty the Japanese elected to convert two of the ships, the Amagi and Akagi to aircraft carriers. Amagi was destroyed on the ways during the great Tokyo earthquake and Akagi was completed as a carrier. The other two vessels were scrapped on the ways.
One can only speculate what the navies of World War II would have looked like had the Washington and the subsequent London Naval Treaties not been ratified. One can also only imagine how the war at sea would have been different had the ships completed as carriers been completed as Battle Cruisers.
However that was not to be, of the planned 14 ships of these three classes only three were completed, all as aircraft carriers, ships that helped to forge the future of naval operations and warfare for nearly a century. Thus the uncompleted ships are an interesting footnote in naval history yet have their own mystique. and one might wonder if the new aircraft carriers currently being built by the United States, Britain, China, India and other nations will also be displaced by advancing technology as were these ships.
Filed under History, Military, Navy Ships, US Navy
Tagged as aircraft carriers, amagi class battle cruiser, battle cruisers, battle of jutland, ernest king, g3 class battle cruisers, hms hood, hms indefatgable, hms invincible, hms lion, hms queen mary, hms renown, hms repulse, ijn akagi, kongo class, lexington class battle cruisers, n3 battleships, nelson class battleship, sms lutzow, uss lexington, uss saratoga, washington naval treaty
♫ You Are The Sunshine Of My Life ♫
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1966
|
__label__wiki
| 0.727502
| 0.727502
|
Home/News & Analysis/5 Best Alternatives of OnePlus 5
5 Best Alternatives of OnePlus 5
Shubham Mishra Follow on Twitter June 22, 2017 2:20 pmLast Updated: June 22, 2017 2:58 pm
The OnePlus 5 is gracing the Indian markets today, and the device has certainly got everyone’s eyebrows raising in anticipation. However, if you’re not a fan of the OnePlus brand or simply don’t want to spend that much money on OnePlus 5 and are looking to buy a new smartphone, you have other options and a lot of good ones at that.
Because at the price of Rs. 32,999 (6 GB RAM Variant) and Rs. 37,999 (8GB RAM Varaint), the OnePlus 5 falls just a little bit on the other side of the upper mid-range smartphone label. The cheap-but-good alternatives cost fairly less, all while keeping compromises in check. If you are looking for a OnePlus 5 substitute, here are five competent phones that do the basics well – and often far more.
The LG G6 steals a march over its other contenders specs-wise. The LG G6 adds that extra bit of display with an 18:9 aspect ratio while keeping similar dimensions to other conventional devices.
The smartphone is internally powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 SoC and runs on Android 7.0 Nougat with LG’s UX 6.0 on top. The G6 comes with 64GB of internal storage and 4GB RAM, with up to 2TB of expandable storage through a microSD card. The smartphone is available in Astro Black, Ice Platinum and Mystic White variants.
Priced at Rs. 38,990, the LG G6 is slightly more expensive than the pricing of the OnePlus 5. However, with its 5.7-inch Full Vision Display and dual-camera setup, this phone is a true delight.
If not the best, then you might as well go with better. The OnePlus 3T is a less expensive but nonetheless a powerful Android device, competing with the likes of Apple and Samsung. It’s the 2016’s best smartphone, except the camera performance.
It is equipped with a Snapdragon 821 chipset and comes in both 64GB and 128GB models, with 6GB of RAM. Compared to the OnePlus 5, it lacks the dual-camera setup, instead sporting a 16-megapixel rear camera. With a 5.5-inch full-HD AMOLED display, the 3T is an all metal device boasting a 13% big battery than its successor.
At Rs. 29,999 (64GB variant), the OnePlus 3T screams premium from every nook and corner. Even though the OnePlus 5 is the new standout in its category, the 3T is far from obsolete.
The Moto Z is an incredibly thin device running on Android Nougat, yet it still flaunts the specs of its rival with an added advantage of modular accessories. It is the first smartphone to pioneer modular connectivity in a much more robust way than its competitors- LG G6.
The Moto Z has a sleek design and is just 5.19mm thick and feels very light to hold. The smartphone’s aluminium frame not only adds to its durability but also adds a dash of premium look and feel to it. The device has a 13MP camera mounted on the back with a sorely obvious bump. The only thing that may throw you off about the Moto Z is the lack of a headphone jack, in favour of audio through the USB Type-C port. At the heart of the smartphone runs Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor paired with 4GB of RAM. The device comes with 64GB onboard storage.
With a price of Rs. 29,999 (discounted, typically Rs. 39,999), it is a great alternative to the OnePlus 5 what with the snap-on Mods that personalise the phone for you.
The LG V20 is currently selling for around Rs. 33,000 and comes with a swappable battery which is a marquee feature in 2017. This smartphone takes the cake with its ability to record high-quality audio better than any other device. The V20 also lets you expand the storage with the help of a microSD card. Like its predecessor LG V10, the V20 has a secondary screen that sits on top of the regular display. This iteration is great of all the multi-taskers out there.
With its Snapdragon 820 processor, the handset has absolutely no problem keeping up with its rivals. The LG V20 is yet another dual-camera smartphone including a 16MP and an 8MP wide-angle lens.
With the price dropping to Rs. 32,999 after almost 18 months from its launch, the iPhone 6s seems a whole lot more tempting and would be the best pick for iOS lovers, who can’t be able to invest a Rs. 10,000 more for the iPhone 7.
Inside the handset is an A9 processor integrated with an M9 motion co-processor and packs a modest 2GB of RAM. However, the iPhone 6s truly flexes its muscles in the graphics department, which is a gift to gamers.
The iPhone 6s has a slightly smaller 4.7-inch screen with a 3D Touch technology beneath encased in a rounded aluminium frame. It is now available in Rose Gold, Slate Grey and Silver options.
Apple iPhone 6S LG G6 LG V20 Moto Z OnePlus OnePlus 3T OnePlus 5
OnePlus Band Debuts In India: Price, Specifications And Features
How To Solve Yellow Tint Display Issue On Your OnePlus 8 Pro
OnePlus 9E To Launch Alongside OnePlus 9 And 9 Pro: Report
OnePlus Nord N10 5G, Nord N100 Launched: Price, Specifications And Features
WWDC 2020: iOS 14 With App Library, Redesigned Widgets, App Clips Announced
LG X6 With Waterdrop Notch, Triple Camera Setup Launched
Poco F2 Pro With Snapdragon 865 SoC, Pop-Up Camera Launched: Price, Specifications and Features
Samsung Galaxy M30s With Exynos 9611 Processor Launched
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1967
|
__label__wiki
| 0.506355
| 0.506355
|
Shikha Monga Kapoor Young marketing guru
At the age of 28, Shikha Monga Kapoor has cut a niche for herself in the marketing field, a career she joined at a very young age. She tells WANGARI MWANGI how she navigates this demanding career.
Shikha Monga’s life has been somewhat calculated with each step meticulously planned and closely connected to her achievement. As we settle down for this interview at the Samsung Head offices in Westlands, Nairobi, it dawns on me just how focused this young woman is.
Born in Kitale, Shikha is the last born of three siblings. Her parents valued education and were keen on their children getting quality schooling. My parents decided to send me to India because they felt the standards of education of India are rated highly and I would be more culturally ‘connected’. In addition my sister was also pursuing her higher education in India and this would help me settle down well,” she explains as we settle down for this interview.
At home in the marketing field…
Up until the very end of her high school education in India, Shikha was inclined to join the legal profession; her peers often told her that she would make a good lawyer. However, the constraints of practice being bound to the law of the country of study discouraged her. I was edging closer to making a choice on a profession when I realised that the business field was very exciting and had scope for growth worldwide,” she explains how she ended up eliminating law as her professional choice.
She found her footing in the business field and settled for a Business Administration degree at the JIMS in New Delhi, India. “I found marketing, which was one of the subjects in my course, to be very interesting especially the service and international marketing sector. I would read books on marketing psychology, which was not part of the course, just to delve deeper and enlighten myself with consumer beliefs and trends and how they react towards products and services. This affirmed my liking for the marketing discipline,” she says.
So fascinated and engrossed was she in marketing that she attained a gold medal for scoring 99 per cent in one of her quantitative analysis modules. She decided to pursue it to the greatest extent possible. Besides she is also inclined towards the creative field and wanted a career that could blend well with the two.
Upon completing her studies in 2006, Shikha returned to Kenya where she worked with East African Growers Limited as the Key Account Manager, initially handling the Middle East market and later promoted to handle the European market which is more mature and demanding. Her position gave her good experience, which prepared her for the next step as she embarked upon the journey of her Masters education in 2008.
Marketing strategically…
Towards the end of 2008 and having worked for the dynamic horticulture industry, Shikha felt the need to advance her knowledge in the Marketing field. She says that her expertise could be further developed to cope with the surging number of competitors, the changing markets and she wanted a new challenge. She applied for a Masters degree in Marketing and Strategy. She was granted the admission and later qualified for a partial scholarship to pursue the course.
“The learning opportunity created a perfect avenue for me harness the experiences from all my course mates who besides having vast experience in the marketing field, also came from different parts of the world,” says Shikha of her postgraduate studies at the Warwick Business School, UK.
By the time she had completed her Master’s degree, Shikha had honed her skill and was ready to put it to practical use. “After travelling across Western Europe, I was fully recharged with energy, enthusiasm and to kick start world journey of working life,” adds Shikha.
Shikha secured a job at LG Electronics. At LG her scope of work became bigger. She was part of the Corporate Marketing and Communications team, which required her to come up with apt communication techniques between the consumers and her company. “We were a very small team with high levels of responsibility and multiple tasks. This made work a bit more challenging yet dynamic and we were all motivated to think broadly. Whenever my ideas were approved for implementation, I felt great and was motivated to do even better.
At 25, she received the first prize for the best marketing idea during the LG MEA Marketing forum in Dubai in 2011. Her expertise was recognised again in 2012 for good PR Crisis Management. During the Regional Marketing Conference held in Bali, Indonesia she was presented with award for her outstanding performance.
At the end of 2 years with LG electronics, she decided to take a break for a year as she was getting married. LG offered her an opportunity to continue working with them this time in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania, but she wanted to concentrate on her family. “I was newly-wed and settling down with my husband, Karan Kapoor. I relocated to his hometown, Mwanza, Tanzania and I wanted to channel my energy on my new family,” she says adding she felt it was important to focus her attention towards their young relationship.
In November 2013, Shikha got a job offer at Samsung Electronics East Africa where she now works as a Marketing Manager in charge of the consumer electronics portfolio based in Nairobi. She oversees the East and Central Africa region, which has widened her scope of operation. Her responsibilities cut across public relations, advertising, marketing communication, product launches and sponsorship evaluation among others. She says,“it was only possible to take up this challenging and high responsibility role because of the support and encouragement from my husband and family.”
Under her thrilling and short stint at leadership, the Samsung brand has become a force to reckon with. “I am in charge of several dockets but at the end of it all, we must come up with ways of making consumers understand Samsung products and derive value and satisfaction through every sale,” she says adding that she attributes part of her success to teamwork and collaborative efforts.
For Shikha everyday is a learning experience. She purposes to start each day with a blank slate and is ready to jot down the new ideas that she comes across. “I don’t come to work with the mentality that I know this or I know that. I come looking forward to learn from the good and the bad experiences that I go through and the encouragement from the people around me,” says Shikha adding that in all these, humility has been an important value that has brought her this far.
Shikha believes that no matter how good an offer is, if it lacks the right communication it won’t have the perceived value. Through a calculated marketing strategy, you can reap the desired output. It is a belief that she has picked up from working as a marketing communicator. “Marketing is all about thinking of your customer’s needs and addressing them. I often prefer to think like a consumer and walk in their shoes. Your marketing strategies must therefore be geared towards offering the most accurate information about the product; customers must get justified value for their spend,” says Shikha.
Shikha acknowledges that the marketing field is diverse with many areas yet to be tapped. From her analysis of the local consumer, she says there is still a need for direct communication. “I often tell my creative team that the consumer expects us to clearly state the offering. An emerging trend is preference towards brands that give back to society not just being in business to make money, it is the next generation of Marketing,” she says.
As for her future prospects Shikha hopes to rise up the corporate ladder in the field of marketing. Her list of personal growth initiatives also includes studying for a PhD in Psychology which will help her understand how customers reason and the triggers that influence a purchase decision.
Shikha’s personal ambition is to give back to society by helping autistic children through their daily life challenges by understanding child psychology. She feels that autistic children are often misunderstood and left out because society fails to understand their expressions. “I have worked with autistic kids from my school days, I want to continue helping these autistic children, in a more meaningful way” says Shikha alluding to the fact that she is passionate about work, family and giving back to the community. wangari@parents.co.ke
Published in September 2014
Mastering the skill of decision-making
Your life is the sum total of all the decisions you have made so far. This statement is terrifying enough to make you pause and reflect on your daily decisions.
Editorial 4 Sep 2014 • 1 min read
When curiosity ALMOST killed the cat
Charles Mwangi’s curiosity led him closer to a police security operation, oblivious of the danger that lurked behind. Like the proverbial cat, he was almost killed. He became the
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1968
|
__label__cc
| 0.547569
| 0.452431
|
New Porsche 928 (Porsche 929) on its way
Car News, Porsche
Porsche is planning on releasing a new Porsche 928/Porsche 929 in 2014/2015. The car will be based on the next-generation Porsche Panamera platform, featuring a traditional front-engine, rear-drive large coupe layout.
‘Highly placed sources’ have told Autocar in the UK that the new Porsche 928 will be apart of the second-generation Porsche Panamera development. The 928, which is speculated to be called the Porsche 929, will not be developed on the current Panamera platform. The source said,
“At the moment, derivatives of the Panamera are not planned for the first generation. We hope to add them to the second generation, provided we can find necessary capacity.”
Resurrecting the old 1970s Porsche 928 will be a cool task for Porsche, and it will allow the brand to compete in the increasingly popular large GT coupe market segment. The 929 will rival the likes of the Aston Martin DB9, Bentley Continental GT and the Ferrari 612 to some degree.
As for the looks, the new 928/929 will rekindle some of the original 928 styling. Here we see an artistic impression of what the car may look like. It’s a Porsche 929 design study that was created by Julliana Cho. Cho is sponsored by Porsche and has just graduated from the Royal College of Art. Porsche design boss Michael Mauer may take some inspiration in the design.
Reports say the new Porsche 928/929 will initially come in coupe form, but a soft-top convertible is also being planned on the same platform. It’s uncertain at this stage what sort of powerplants will propel the new models, but it is likely a twin-turbo V8 of some kind will make its way into the flagship variant – an engine possibly similar to the current Porsche Panamera Turbo S 4.5-litre 410kW/750Nm V8.
The platform of the new car may also underpin future Bentley vehicles under the Volkswagen/Porsche umbrella as the company strives towards saving development costs.
The new Porsche 928, or Porsche 929, whatever it ends up being badged, has apparently been scheduled for debut in 2014/2015. We can’t wait to see the first concept.
For more images of the Julliana Cho Porsche 929 design study, simply click on over to Autocar.
Porsche 928, Porsche 929
2021 Porsche Panamera hybrid range announced for Australia October 21, 2020
2021 Porsche Panamera revealed, Turbo S does 0-100km/h in 3.1s August 28, 2020
Porsche sets Nurburgring record in 2021 Panamera (video) August 13, 2020
Porsche Cayenne Coupe GTS spied, looking for Nurburgring record? (video) May 13, 2020
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1972
|
__label__wiki
| 0.89503
| 0.89503
|
Where Kamala Harris Stacks Up on LGBTQ Rights
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris (Source:AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Kamala Harris has just made history in a few ways, becoming the first woman to be elected Vice President. Harris is also the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to be elected into the White House.
Entering the White House with President-elect Joe Biden, the LGBTQ community will have two strong allies not present in the current administration. Current VP Mike Pence's strident and notorious anti-LGBTQ positions only contrast with the odd pro-gay rhetoric of Donald Trump, as the current administration has continued to roll back equal rights and protections acquired under the Obama administration.
After Biden won the Presidency on Saturday, both the President and Vice President-elect offered rousing and emotional speeches at a rally that evening. Earlier that morning on Twitter, Harris proclaimed that "we have a lot of work ahead of us. Let's get started." One can't help but wonder how a Biden/Harris administration will impact legal rights and protections for the LGBTQ community — which is an especially pertinent issue, given the GOP's quickly pushed-through confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett despite objections of Democrats, as well as signaling from Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito about their willingness to reverse pro-LGBTQ rights and protections.
While President-elect Biden's pro-LGBTQ stances are well-known, perhaps VP-elect Harris' are in need of closer examination.
In short, Harris refused to support a 2008 constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, officiating the first same-sex marriage in the state of California in 2013. Harris and her Democratic colleagues in the Senate, Joe Kennedy (D-MA) and Bobby Scott (D-VA), introduced the Do No Harm Act in 2018, preventing discrimination against LGBTQ people on the basis of religious beliefs. Harris has also been critical of the Trump administration's removal of LGBTQ-related health information from Federal websites, and of the administration's negligence toward the LGBTQ community in general.
However, in 2015, as Attorney General for the state of California, Harris argued against gender reassignment surgery for two transgender inmates serving time. Harris has since said that, as Attorney General, she only acting on behalf of the California Department of Corrections.
While this appears to be somewhat of a blemish on her record, Harris has been rated as an "exceptional choice" for Vice President by the Human Rights Campaign, with a "deep understanding of and empathy for the issues our community faces." Furthermore, as HRC states, "it's clear the Biden-Harris ticket marks our nation's most pro-equality ticket in history."
'I'll Be Darned.' Joe Biden's Shaky History on LGBTQ Legislation
THE SECRET GARDEN on Blu-ray, DVD, & Digital!
Trump Administration Takes Another Swipe at LGBTQ Health Protections on Way Out
Watch: 3x3 Basketball Player from Switzerland Comes Out as Gay
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1975
|
__label__wiki
| 0.60996
| 0.60996
|
Home Money, Politics and Power Fixing Obama’s Second Term
Fixing Obama’s Second Term
The president was stymied in his efforts to enact progressive change the first go-around. Here's how he succeeeds this time.
by Prospect Staff
(AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
In the president's first term, a gauntlet of procedural hurdles stood in the way of progressive change. As Majority Leader Harry Reid promises to reform the filibuster-on the magical day when the new Senate convenes and can make new rules-most progressives are wondering whether it's an end to many of President Barack Obama's problems. After all, without the constant threat of a filibuster, Senate Democrats wouldn't have had to scramble for votes from the centrists who watered down health-care legislation and stalled action on climate change in Obama's first two years, when he had an outright majority in the Senate.
But the filibuster was only the most obvious procedural challenge to a more progressive Obama first term. There are other things the president did in his first four years that caused important legislation to sputter and fail and that led to a less-than-progressive agenda. Here are some of the other problems Obama helped cause in his first term, and how he could fix them.
A Permanent Campaign
Obama built a behemoth grassroots organization in 2008, an infrastructure that delivered a decisive victory. He was the first presidential candidate whose campaign understood the Internet and harnessed online organizing to the fullest extent. But once he was elected, Obama retreated to legislative deal-making out of the public eye. He allowed the public enthusiasm for politics he inspired to go fallow. Organizing for America-the name of his leftover campaign operation-was folded into the Democratic National Committee and largely disappeared. As the Affordable Care Act crept through Congress, it was the reactionary Tea Partiers-not the progressives who elected Obama-who were at town halls agitating over the bill and capturing the media spotlight.
Luckily for the president, that energy didn't fully dissipate after 2008. Organizing for America reverted to Obama for America, and his loyal volunteers returned in 2012, allowing the president to coast to re-election. Now, Obama appears to have learned from the mistakes of his first term. The president has already hit the road to sell his vision on the fiscal cliff and his staff is still firing off e-mail blasts. His administration has vowed to maintain its public outreach, both for the fiscal cliff and other future policy pushes, in the hope that the public will put pressure on Congress to pass the agenda that Obama campaigned on. But public pressure won't be enough; Obama also needs it to work on behalf of the Democratic party as a whole. While the infrastructure was built around Obama himself, his fellow Democrats need the help. Republicans derailed Obama's first-term agenda when they ran the table in the 2010 primaries. Obama needs his congressional allies if he hopes to put judges on the bench, pull the country out of economic doldrums, tackle climate change, and reform our broken immigration system. Obama for America's resources can't go to waste lest Democrats suffer another midterm shellacking.
-Patrick Caldwell
Appoint the Right Economic Team
In his first term, President Obama appointed Larry Summers as his chief economic adviser and Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary. Summers and Geithner were not willing to fundamentally alter the banking system that caused the financial collapse of 2007-2008. As a result, too-big-to-fail banks are still putting the economy at risk and refusing debt relief to underwater homeowners. Summers and Geithner did not support a bigger stimulus, so the Recovery Act of February 2009 produced only a partial recovery. Summers and Geithner reinforced Obama's own caution.
In his second term, Obama needs a Treasury secretary willing to be tougher with the banks, more imaginative when it comes to homeowner relief, and one who is not in the budget austerity camp. Obama has lately sounded tougher on what kind of budget deal he'll accept. He would be smart to use the menace of Superstorm Sandy, and future storms like Sandy, to reopen the issue of greater public infrastructure spending rather than increased belt-tightening. A new economic team could help, but ultimately the president's most important economic compass is himself. If his election win is a tonic to his imagination and nerve, we all benefit.
-Robert Kuttner
Address Immigration
While Obama was unable to make good on his promise of passing comprehensive immigration reform in his first two years in office thanks to Republican stonewalling after passage of the Affordable Care Act, the president was able to offer some administrative relief to those left in legal limbo by our dysfunctional immigration system. In June of this year, the administration announced it would stop deporting undocumented immigrants who had been brought to the country "through no fault of their own" before age 16; had graduated from high school, earned a GED, or served in the military; and had no criminal record. The move was widely seen as an effort to provide relief for undocumented youth after the DREAM Act, which would have given undocumented youth brought to the country by their parents a path to citizenship, failed to pass the Senate in 2010. The Department of Homeland Security also suspended its 287(g) program, which authorized local law-enforcement officials-like Arizona's notorious Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio-to enforce federal immigration laws.
But none of these administrative measures scratches the surface of the problems with the immigration system, which include overburdened courts, deplorable conditions in immigrant-detention centers, draconian family-unification policies, insufficient work Visas and arbitrary Visa caps, years-long administrative delays, and per-country caps that do not reflect current economic and humanitarian demands. The dysfunction in our immigration system is largely the reason there are 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S.
Buoyed by his re-election and with key Republicans eager to soften their image with Latino voters, Obama has a prime opportunity to modernize our outdated and dysfunctional immigration system. Doing so is both savvy politically and necessary from an economic and humanitarian standpoint: It will redound to the president and his party's advantage; serve to meet the needs of the agriculture and technology sectors, which rely heavily on immigrant labor; and provide humanitarian relief for those fleeing poverty in their home countries. While the president is sure to face stalwart opposition from hard-line anti-immigrant legislators, he only needs to rally his party behind him and win over the support of a critical mass of Republicans. Immigrant-rights groups are rightly pushing for the president to undertake comprehensive immigration reform in 2013, before his political capital begins to wane and he slips into the lame-duck twilight of his presidency.
-Gabriel Arana
Deal with Climate Change
First, let's acknowledge the things Obama has done on climate change. In 2011, he raised the Environmental Protection Agency-regulated mileage standards for trucks and cars-they will have to get 35.5 miles per gallon, on average, by 2016. He tried to jump-start a renewable-energy sector here, however tepidly, by providing for $90 billion in funding for green-energy research, development, and jobs. He's done other, less flashy but no less sensible things, like holding up the development of the Keystone pipeline meant to ship oil from Canada, though he didn't end the project.
Despite all this, Obama's first term will be remembered, rightly, for what he didn't do: sign a comprehensive climate change bill. A bill that would have set up a permit system limiting the overall amount of greenhouse gas emissions-called cap-and-trade-passed the House and stalled in the Senate; Obama used most of his political capital to push health-care legislation through instead. After the election, Obama's political capital is renewed, and he mentioned climate change in his victory speech November 6. He should use his post-election popularity to help leaders in Congress muscle through a comprehensive climate-change bill. It won't be perfect, and it likely won't do enough to halt some of the most immediate effects from climate change, but it'll be a start.
-Monica Potts
Nominate More Judges
After Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, there was hope that he would begin to staff the federal judiciary with liberals in order to reverse the rightward drift of the federal judiciary. Instead-to the potential detriment of his policies and priorities-he's done little to make a mark. A report released earlier this year showed that, when staffing the nation's most powerful courts, Obama leaned toward established moderates-not the younger liberals who would have a lasting influence on the direction of American jurisprudence. When you combine this with unprecedented Republican obstruction of the people he actually nominated, you're left with a court system that is still favorable to Republicans.
In his second term, Obama should put real energy into staffing the federal judiciary with judges amenable to progressive ideas. Throughout his two terms, President George W. Bush made an aggressive push to put conservatives on the bench, and Obama should do the same with progressives. That includes appointees for the lowest federal courts all the way up to the Supreme Court: It's likely that, over the course of his next term, Obama will have a chance to replace two justices, possibly three. Choosing liberals is a way to ensure that the key successes of his presidency-the Affordable Care Act, for instance-survive into the long-term.
-Jamelle Bouie
Blog: Vox Pop Politics Election 2012 The Obama Administration
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1977
|
__label__wiki
| 0.595019
| 0.595019
|
Tag Archives: film noir
by Alice | March 23, 2019 · 4:09 pm
“She was young,” narrates the driver. “Not more than 24. Man, she looked like she’d just been thrown off the crummiest freight train in the world.” That’s a line from the pulp classic Detour, released by the Poverty Row outfit PRC in 1945. Sad sack Al Roberts is describing the hitchhiker he just picked up, a woman with drastic brows and windblown hair. During her half-hour of screen time, she’s going to pose as his wife and die by his hand. Her name is Vera.
I loved Detour when I was 17. I mused about it as a fledgling critic: “Roberts certainly isn’t a hero—the closest he comes to performing a virtuous action is seeking a normal married life with [his girlfriend] Sue—but he isn’t much of an anti-hero either. He’s almost a neutral force in the film and in his own life.” By that time I’d read Roger Ebert’s essay on it, from his first Great Movies collection. He dubs the film’s stars, Tom Neal and Ann Savage, “a man who can only pout and a woman who can only sneer.” Vera, he writes, is “a venomous castrator,” and Al and Vera between them embody “two pure types: the submissive man and the female hellion.” At 17, I saw myself in Al’s cosmic impotence. I lived in a body clenched with dysphoria.
Back then, the fact that Vera (like Savage) was 24 meant nothing to me. She was an older woman. Now I find it startling that this iconic femme fatale is only a few years out of her teens. As an ostensibly male viewer, I only saw her beauty and her spite; now I see that she’s bruised, worn out, and despondent. Riding cross-country with strange men, why wouldn’t she be prickly? She never lays out a back story, but drops hints here and there. “The cops are no friends of mine,” remarks this hard-bitten nihilist whose fantasies evoke years of hunger and hustle. “No more worrying about the rent!” she cries. “No sweating, scheming, wondering where your next meal’s coming from!” She’s an alcoholic with a terminal cough. Hardly a pure type.
Edgar G. Ulmer, a Jewish émigré from Austria, directed Detour during the last days of World War II. As with many genre films set on the home front, the war itself goes unmentioned, its horrors transmuted into a pall of Death. (Vera herself is like the fatal women in the films Val Lewton was producing at RKO.) In the decades since, the film’s become a cult object. Its spartan aesthetic invites the viewer to linger, like I did as a teen, like I’m doing now, and Savage’s Vera—with her glower and her bitter quips—has always been the key. She is the detour. Her counterfeit marriage to Al diverts him away from Sue. But he’s her detour, too. Without him, she wouldn’t be dead at 24. A femme is only fatale relative to the men around her. Alone, she’s a tragedy.
Filed under Cinema
Tagged as detour, edgar g. ulmer, femme fatale, film noir
by Alice | October 12, 2015 · 9:00 am
What is one to do?
“I did write for a while in spite of them,” says the narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” “but it does exhaust me a good deal — having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.” Writing as a woman is a dangerous act. Gilman knew it, and I suspect Lucy Beatrice Malleson knew it, too. Malleson’s breakthrough as a writer came in her late twenties, when she began publishing mysteries under the pen name “Anthony Gilbert.” Ostensibly this was done to maintain her privacy and avoid the appearance of capitalizing on her uncle Miles’ recent fame. But it’s hard to imagine that the financial and professional advantages of a man’s name didn’t factor into this decision.
1941 saw the release of the “Anthony Gilbert” novel The Woman in Red. A few years later, under the auspices of Columbia Pictures, screenwriter Muriel Roy Bolton adapted it into what director Joseph H. Lewis would later call “a damn near perfect script.” My Name Is Julia Ross premiered in November of 1945. The film opens in rain-soaked London, Malleson’s lifelong home. Nina Foch plays Julia Ross, an unmarried woman behind on her rent and desperate for a job. Tipped off by a newspaper ad, she nabs a plum secretarial position with a rich widow and her grown son. But overnight, this dream job becomes a nightmare: the family and their servants drug her, kidnap her, and install her in a locked bedroom at the rear of a country mansion overlooking the sea.
Tagged as film noir, horror, joseph h. lewis, my name is julia ross, The Yellow Wallpaper, women
by Alice | May 8, 2013 · 12:30 am
John Larch in The Phenix City Story | Brian Keith in 5 Against the House
Modern Gothic vehemence… a chilling documentary exactness and an exciting shot-scattering belligerence.
That’s Manny Farber in his essay “Underground Movies,” describing some tendencies found within Phil Karlson’s filmography. I think I’ll add abrasiveness and angularity to his pool of nouns as well. Each one of them is immediately apparent in The Phenix City Story (1955), which may be Karlson’s magnum opus and which is also the subject of my most recent column over at Movie Mezzanine. I’m especially fond of that “modern Gothic vehemence”: Karlson’s movies are forceful, like a boxer’s glove coming toward your face in 3D, the full power of a heavyweight artist behind them. (They’re kin to the films of Samuel Fuller, whose own novel The Dark Page was actually filmed by Karlson as the 1952 newspaper noir Scandal Sheet.)
Alleyways in Phenix City and 5 Against the House’s Reno
In addition to The Phenix City Story, I recently watched Karlson’s 5 Against the House (also 1955) which is thankfully much milder. No child murders or bloody mass beatings here; just four college buddies goofing around, two of whom served together in the Korean War, and one of whom was psychologically damaged by the experience. As a prank, the friends plot a brilliant heist on a Reno casino, intending to return the money later—but Brick (Brian Keith) is slipping into psychosis due to his post-traumatic stress, and he has other plans. 5 Against the House starts out as a lightweight comedy of Eisenhower-era male bonding, which makes its descent into mental illness and very real noir danger that much more gripping. Brick’s a reluctant villain, and his friends are reluctant heroes; no one thinks they’re in a crime thriller. The normal turns into the abnormal so quickly that you hardly notice at first.
Richard Kiley in The Phenix City Story | 5 Against the House’s parking garage climax
This, I think, speaks to one of Karlson’s greatest directorial strengths: he seems to coax brutality out of the everyday. His are blue-collar movies; sloppy, smudged, fashioning a world you can imagine living in before he blows it all to hell. John Payne’s ex-prizefighter in 99 River Street (1953), for example, has real relationships that he needs to balance with the bitterness seething inside him. The residents of Phenix City have homes and families they don’t want to endanger. Maybe this is the “chilling documentary exactness” Farber spoke of. His movies reek of tabloid sensationalism, but that never keeps them from being uncomfortably plausible. They’re like a full-page spread of crime scene photos snapped right in your own backyard.
Tagged as 1950s, 5 against the house, film noir, movie mezzanine, phil karlson, the phenix city story, violence
by Alice | May 2, 2013 · 1:30 am
Straight Down the Line
Inviting me to select my favorite image from Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944), as The Film Experience’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” series has done this week, is a little like asking that I single out my favorite limb. I’ll make the choice eventually, sure, but it’ll be a reluctant one and involve lots of nervous glances from hand to foot and back again. What I’m trying to say is that Double Indemnity is an unusually beautiful film noir, shot by cinematographer John Seitz as a tapestry of shadows and key lights—a lustrous labyrinth of insurance offices and Venetian blinds leading “straight down the line,” as Barbara Stanwyck’s femme fatale repeatedly puts it.
But, well, the challenge is to pick one shot, so I picked one, and it’s at least pretty emblematic of Wilder and Seitz’s technique throughout the whole of the film. See, for example, the inventive patterns in which they’ve scattered light across the frame, drawing our eyes straight to the space between Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. The lighting supplements the actors’ already white-hot chemistry, suggesting a downward sloping line from his face to hers and a region of the screen that’s buzzing with sexual magnetism. Mere seconds before this, MacMurray was pacing the room, going on and on in voiceover about how “the hook” (read: his own cock) was pulling him toward her,
so at 8 o’ clock the bell would ring and I’d know who it was without even having to think, as if it was the most natural thing in the world…
And there she is, lit up like a vision from heaven (or elsewhere). The curls of her blond wig are shimmering and her body assumes an irresistible pose beneath that heavy trench coat. This is her about to cross the threshold into his dark bachelor pad, about to make the relationship between them more than just one of flirtatious salesman and client. It’s the seed of her anklet blossoming into adultery, and murder.
I suppose that’s why this shot—which, incidentally, lasts a full minute and fifteen seconds, this image emerging roughly in the middle—calls out to me: it’s so tentative, so teeming with potential. Double Indemnity is like the tale of the scorpion and the frog if it were about two scorpions trying to ferry one another across a river, and this is a shot of those deadly predators, each sizing the other up, separated only by a doorway. A couple other details I enjoy here: the shadow of the rain outside, barely visible on the seat of MacMurray’s pants; and that picture of a bare-knuckle boxer just to the right of the door.
Three more similarly framed prints grace the wall above his couch, and while I’ve never been able to fully integrate them into my reading of the film, they suggest to me an antiquated notion of brawny masculinity. Perhaps they hint at a kind of visceral thrill that MacMurray’s Walter Neff, this bundle of machismo and libido stuffed into a white-collar job, is pursuing whether through his relationship with a married woman or his attempt to “crook the house.” Those boxers, always lurking in the background, could signify the primal man lurking inside the skin of a mild-mannered insurance salesman.
Tagged as billy wilder, double indemnity, film noir, masculinity, the film experience
by Alice | February 18, 2013 · 1:30 pm
Edward Dmytryk was fresh from the Hollywood Ten when he made The Sniper (1952), which I wrote about over at Movie Mezzanine. It’s an especially intense little noir, lingering as it does over the pained face of its title character, who’s played by Arthur Franz in what I swear is one of the 1950s’ most underrated performances. Rarely have I seen an actor capture psychosis so vividly, yet with surprising subtlety. The closest thing Franz has to a co-star is Adolphe Menjou—a leader of the Hollywood witchhunts, as a matter of fact—as police detective “Frank Kafka.” Yeah, it’s a surprisingly literate thriller!
Incidentally, in that piece I mention Dmytryk’s “bisected compositions,” and I’d like to briefly expand on that. I’m consistently impressed by the mise-en-scène in this movie, as Franz is pressed to one side of the frame and something about the world he loathes (stranger, coworker, dunk tank woman, smokestack painter, landlady) occupies the other. It’s such an economical use of screen space, such a visceral way of visualizing misanthropy, and thanks to Dmytryk’s bold use of lines and angles, it also results in some beautiful compositions. The Sniper is top-shelf noir in an pulpy, unassuming package.
Tagged as arthur franz, edward dmytryk, film noir, movie mezzanine, the sniper
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1978
|
__label__cc
| 0.716554
| 0.283446
|
Lavinia Plonka
Body language expert Lavinia Plonka has helped people improve their movement, behavior, relationships, and careers for over 35 years. Her unique expertise connects the dots between posture, movement, emotions, and the mind. Lavinia’s training and professional career have included theater, dance, yoga, and the martial arts. She has taught The Feldenkrais Method® for over 25 years, and is also a trainer of other practitioners. Lavinia is also a level CL4 teacher of the Alba Method and an Emotional Body instructor.
Her professional artistic endeavors include an artist-in-residence for the Guggenheim Museum, and being a movement consultant for theater and television companies around the world — from the Irish National Folk Theater to Nickelodeon. From Esalen to the Council on Aging, from Beijing to Mexico, Lavinia’s popular workshops explore the intersection between movement, emotions, and the mind. She is the director of Asheville Movement Center in Asheville, North Carolina, offering a complete movement curriculum, including workshops and private lessons. Lavinia’s writing includes several books and audio programs.
2021 - POWERED BY PORTL
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1979
|
__label__cc
| 0.638021
| 0.361979
|
Guide to retiring in Porto
Written by Mariana Martins
According to International Living’s Annual Global Retirement Index, Portugal was elected the best country to retire. The choice was based on factors such as low cost of living (compared to other Western European countries), security, geography / climate and the national health service, which together provide an excellent quality of life.
Porto, therefore, is a destination of choice for all who wish to experience retirement in Portugal. Despite being the second largest city in the country, it offers a peaceful pace of life, with all the amenities to enjoy life after retirement. In addition, the bureaucratic process is not very complex, which makes everything simpler.
I will now present you a guide on how to retiring in Porto:
1 I organize private tours in Porto
2 Resident status
2.1 Social Security in Portugal and taxes
3 Portuguese Citizenship
4 Non-habitual resident status
5 Retiring in Porto: Getting a house
6 Retiring in Porto: Cost of Living
6.1 Food
6.2 Cultural Activities in Porto
6.4 Health
6.5 Extra: Go on a private tour in Porto
Resident status
The first thing to consider when deciding to retiring in Porto (or in Portugal) is to obtain resident status, which allows foreign citizens to enjoy the same rights and conditions as national citizens.
Citizens of the European Union simply need to apply for a residence permit at the nearest SEF delegation (Foreigners and Borders Services). They must present a valid identification document and proof that they have financial means of subsistence (for themselves and their families).
Until 1 January 2021, citizens from the UK can apply for a residence permit in accordance with the legislation established for EU citizens. It is expected, however, that after that date they will be under the legislation defined for third countries. However, as negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement have not been concluded, this information will be updated as soon as possible.
Citizens from third countries must apply for a type D residence visa at the Portuguese consular services in their country of origin before moving to Portugal. This visa is valid for four months and allows two entries into the country during that period. During this period, and already in Portugal, they must apply for a residence permit, renewable every two years. After five years, they can get a permanent residence permit.
© Jornal e Agora
For example, a USA citizen who wants to retiring in Porto can start the process of obtaining a D visa using the VFS Global portal. This will be granted, globally, upon presentation of a form, accompanied by a valid passport, travel insurance, return ticket, criminal record (by the FBI) and proof of means of subsistence (ie a document certifying the value of the pension) ).
Social Security in Portugal and taxes
In Portugal, any citizen who has deducted from their social security salary for at least 15 years is entitled to a pension. Likewise, a foreigner who has paid their taxes in Portugal for an equivalent period is equally entitled to claim his pension from the Portuguese Social Security.
In accordance with European legislation, EU citizens (plus Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland) can transfer their contributions from the country of origin (or any other) to the country designated for reciprocal retirement (in this case, Portugal). If you are coming from a third country, check the agreements in force.
© Doutor Finanças
Remember that after acquiring resident status, you are subject to Portuguese tax law. Although most countries have entered into double taxation agreements, in order to prevent citizens from having to pay taxes in two countries, this can happen. It is therefore essential that you inform yourself about your particular case.
Portuguese Citizenship
The process of acquiring Portuguese citizenship is not very complicated. If you have lived in Porto for at least six years, you can acquire Portuguese nationality if:
Know the Portuguese language sufficiently and;
Has not been convicted of a crime punishable in Portugal with a prison sentence of 3 years or more, or has been involved in terrorism-related matters.
For this purpose, you must make an application addressed to the Minister of Justice and present your birth certificate, criminal record and a certificate that proves your knowledge of the Portuguese language.
© SAPO 24
Non-habitual resident status
In 2009, Portugal created the tax regime for non-habitual residents (RNH) with the aim of attracting non-resident professionals qualified in high value-added activities or intellectual and industrial know-how, in exchange for a reduced rate of 20% from the IRS for 10 consecutive years.
At the same time, it exempted foreign pensioners from the payment of IRS (tax on the income of individuals) in Portugal on pensions they receive from their country, which, under tax conventions (double taxation), also did not pay tax in their country of origin, for 10 years. Since then, this measure has attracted many retired people to our country.
However, due to a new law introduced in the State Budget in January 2020, pensioners abroad who, in the future, become non-habitual residents will be subject to a 10% IRS tax.
© Jornal Público
This new tax excludes:
All those who are already registered as non-habitual residents.
Those whose application for registration has already been submitted and is pending for analysis.
Anyone who, at the date of entry into force of the law, is considered a resident for tax purposes and applies for registration as a non-habitual resident until March 31, 2020 or 2021, for meeting the respective conditions in 2019 and 2020, respectively.
This tax benefit remains very advantageous: a fixed tax (ie the same amount regardless of whether it is a high, medium or low pension) of 10% on pensions, for 10 years, is still much lower than that charged in other countries. It is also relatively lower than the tax on pensions in Portugal, which varies between 14.5% and 48%.
The status of non-habitual resident must be requested from a finance service or citizen’s store until March 31 of the year following the year in which you became a resident in Portugal.
Retiring in Porto: Getting a house
The last few years have been characterised by a real estate boom in Porto, so the purchase or rental prices for housing are above the national average (excluding Lisbon). However, if you are a foreigner retiring in Porto you will probably still find it relatively cheap compared to your country.
You can start your search online, using sites such as Custo Justo, Imovirtual or Idealista. However, if you prefer a more personalized process, look for real estate companies like ERA, REMAX and Frontal.
As for prices, the values below are not exact, but here’s an idea:
Average Price (Oct. 2020)
T1 Rent (apartment with 1 bedroom) in the city centre * 693€
T1 Rent (apartment with 1 bedroom) in the suburbs* 520€
T3 Rent (apartment with 3 bedrooms) in the city centre * 1263€
T3 Rent (apartment with 3 bedrooms) in the suburbs* 899€
* Numbers provided by Numbeo
The average house purchase prices in Porto are as follows:
Average price per m² to buy a house in the city of Porto ** 2879€
Average price per m² to buy a house in district of Porto ** 2064€
** Numbers provided by Idealista
Retiring in Porto: Cost of Living
The cost of living plays an important role in choosing the best place to live during retirement. Compared to Lisbon and other major European cities, Porto has the advantage as it is cheaper to retiring in Porto. In average, the cost of living for a person is around 1010€.
Value (Oct. 2020)
Rent of a 1 bedroom apartment in the city centre 700€
Fixed expenses (water, electricity, heating, etc) 130€
Alimentação 150€
Transport (monthly pass for public transports) 30€
In our article on living in Porto we have already detailed some of the aspects in the table below. However, let me stress some essential details for the cost of living when retiring in Porto.
The cost of food in Porto is lower than that of large European cities, which is excellent news for anyone who wants to retiring in Porto. Here, it is possible to find supermarket chains, such as Continente and Pingo Doce, whose prices are set at national level, but also small markets and grocery stores at every corner.
© Leon Kholkine
Grocery stores and markets are interesting due to the proximity. It is easy to stock up on everything – from fresh fruit and vegetables to cleaning products – closer to home, without the need to take the car.
The products are a little more expensive, but their quality and the proximity makes up for that. Also, you can count on a much more familiar atmosphere, which will make you feel much more comfortable!
Public Transports
The Metropolitan Area of Porto is served by a comprehensive public transport network, which includes buses, subway and trains. You can even buy a monthly subscription, the passe mensal, to move inside the district as many times as you want.
In our article about living in Porto, we listed the different types of subscription and respective prices, but keep the following: a retired person in Porto has a 25% discount on any subscription.
Cultural Activities in Porto
My city has many interesting monuments and a diverse cultural offer, which you can fully enjoy when retiring in Porto. In many monuments, retired people can enjoy of very interesting discounts.
For example, a retired person in Porto can discover the Serralves Foundation, which houses the largest contemporary art museum in the country, for half the price. In a play at São João National Theatre, which always has an interesting agenda, you will have a 30% discount.
In addition, Porto has many gardens and parks, where you can stroll peacefully as if you were outside the city.
Security is another factor why people decide to retiring in Porto.
According to the Global Peace Index de 2020, Portugal occupies the first position in the ranking of the safest countries in the EU. Overall it comes in 3rd, only after Iceland and New Zealand.
A retired person in Porto can count on a safe city. Most of the crimes committed are petty theft, fraud and some crime related to drug trafficking. In addition, the possession of weapons is subject to obtaining a license, so violence with firearms, not being non-existent, is extremely rare.
In Portugal, there are public health services – the National Health Service (SNS) – and private ones. However, it is our National Health Service that is at the top of the list of reasons why many people choose to retiring in Porto. According to the ranking annual ranking Euro Health Consumer Index, the SNS occupied, in 2018, the 13th position among European national health services.
Access to the NHS is based on the principle of universality, that is, the Portuguese state guarantees the right to health protection for all its citizens. Therefore, the SNS is not free but the prices are very low, which makes it accessible to everyone. This is particularly appealing to those who come from countries with health systems that are based on insurance or health plans, such as Brazil and the United States.
According to European legislation, EU citizens are granted an equal status with national citizens for the fields of social security and health, in any member country. Citizens of third countries, on the other hand, must first ensure that bilateral agreements exist that guarantee these conditions of reciprocity and equality. Currently, agreements are in place with Andorra, Brazil, Cape Verde, Quebec, Morocco and Tunisia.
If you intend to live as a retired person here, see our article about living in Porto for more detailed information on the structure and functioning of the NHS.
The best way to get to know Porto is to go on a private tour with me!Check this page to learn more about my tours in Porto, or simply send an email to sara@portoalities.com. I will shortly get back to you with a tailor made tour designed specifically for you.It will be a pleasure to welcome you in Porto!
admin2020-10-30T15:50:58+00:00October 30th, 2020|Basics|0 Comments
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1980
|
__label__wiki
| 0.838594
| 0.838594
|
Search (postcode or suburb)
Suburbs/Areas
Urban Centres
Postcode Lists
3249, VIC
2397, NSW
5014, SA
4226, QLD
Wollongong, New South Wales
Population: 227,522 *
Latitude: -34.426
Longitude: 150.900
Dialing Code: 02 (+61 2 from overseas)
Time Zone: AEST - Australian Eastern Standard Time (UTC+10), AEDT - Australian Eastern Daylight Time (UTC+11)
Current Time: 21/01/2021 11:26:26 am
* Source for population data: 2001 census figures
Wollongong is situated on the east coast of New South Wales, 82km south of Sydney in an area known as the Illawarra. It is the third largest city in NSW. Wollongong is an aboriginal name, meaning "the sound of the sea".
Main industries here are coal mining, steel production and fishing. The University of Wollongong attracts a great deal of international students.
• Hotels in Wollongong
• Other Urban Centres in New South Wales
• List of Urban Centres throughout Australia
Copyright © 2006-2021 postcodes-australia.com | Some data courtesy of GeoNames, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license | Privacy Policy
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1981
|
__label__wiki
| 0.542726
| 0.542726
|
Dinoflagellate symbioses: strategies and adaptations for the acquisition and fixation of inorganic carbon
Leggat, William, Marendy, Elessa M., Baillie, Brett, Whitney, Spencer M., Ludwig, Martha, Badger, Murray R., and Yellowlees, David (2002) Dinoflagellate symbioses: strategies and adaptations for the acquisition and fixation of inorganic carbon. Functional Plant Biology, 29 (3). pp. 309-322.
DOI: 10.1071/PP01202
View at Publisher Website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/PP01202
Dinoflagellates exist in symbiosis with a number of marine invertebrates including giant clams, which are the largest of these symbiotic organisms. The dinoflagellates (Symbiodinium sp.) live intercellularly within tubules in the mantle of the host clam. The transport of inorganic carbon (Ci) from seawater to Symbiodinium (=zooxanthellae) is an essential function of hosts that derive the majority of their respiratory energy from the photosynthate exported by the zooxanthellae. Immunolocalisation studies show that the host has adapted its physiology to acquire, rather than remove CO2, from the haemolymph and clam tissues. Two carbonic anhydrase (CA) isoforms (32 and 70 kDa) play an essential part in this process. These have been localised to the mantle and gill tissues where they catalyse the interconversion of HCO3- to CO2, which then diffuses into the host tissues. The zooxanthellae exhibit a number of strategies to maximise Ci acquisition and utilisation. This is necessary as they express a form II Rubisco that has poor discrimination between CO2 and O2. Evidence is presented for a carbon concentrating mechanism (CCM) to overcome this disadvantage. The CCM incorporates the presence of a light-activated CA activity, a capacity to take up both HCO3-and CO2, an ability to accumulate an elevated concentration of Ci within the algal cell, and localisation of Rubisco to the pyrenoid. These algae also express both external and intracellular CAs, with the intracellular isoforms being localised to the thylakoid lumen and pyrenoid. These results have been incorporated into a model that explains the transport of Ci from seawater through the clam to the zooxanthellae.
Article (Research - C1)
carbonic anhydrase, CCM, clam, cnidarian, dinoflagellate, Symbiodinium, symbiosis, Rubisco, zooxanthellae
06 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 0601 Biochemistry and Cell Biology > 060104 Cell Metabolism @ 100%
97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970106 Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences @ 100%
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1990
|
__label__cc
| 0.590258
| 0.409742
|
Wilder nature
Wildlife comeback
Nature-based economies
Awareness and pride
Danube Delta and areas
We identify and work in iconic areas of the Danube Delta to make our rewilding vision a reality.
Kateryna Kurakina / Rewilding Europe
Ermakov island
Ermakov Island is one of the largest islands in the Ukrainian Danube delta, 9.6 km long and 3.6 km wide, with an area of about 2300 ha. It is located in the lower delta near Vilkovo. Ermakov was restored to a natural state in 2009 as part of a WWF project. Nowadays it is stated to be one of the biodiversity richest parts of the Danube Biosphere Reserve, sheltering flocks of white pelicans, greylag geese, mallards, great white egrets and other wetland birds. We plan to further restore some parts of the island, reintroducing big grazers on the island, particularly water buffalo and Konik horse, build relevant eco-infrastructure, and promote this territory as a great wild location for tourists.
Maxim Yakovlev
Zhebriyansky Ridge
Zhebriyansky Ridge is a sand ridge on the north of the Danube delta near Vilkovo. This territory is the part of the Danube Biosphere Reserve. It is composed of seaside sands covered with artificial pine plantations. The ridge has a rich entomofauna – more than 20 species of insects found here are included in the Red Book of Ukraine. We plan to restore the Zhebriyansky Ridge dune system by replacing pines with indigenous forest species and opening up the dunes so they are closer to their natural condition, as well as by reintroducing big grazers such as kulan and red deer.
Kateryna Kurakina
Tataru Island
Tataru Island is located in the upper part of the Danube Delta near Izmail. In 2006, after some decades of agricultural use of the island in Soviet times, water exchange with the Danube was restored under WWF project by demolishing part of dams, surrounding the island. In 2008 a herd of Ukrainian grey cattle was introduced here to renew grazing on the island.
We plan to bring a few grey cattle bulls to the island to genetically enrich the existing herd of animals. Hutsul horses will also be reintroduced to Tataru to diversify natural grazing. Ecotourism infrastructure on the island will be updated and further developed.
Mykhailo Nesterenko / Rewilding Europe
Kartal Lake
Kartal Lake is located in the upper part of the Ukrainian Danube Delta near Orlovka community. The polder near the lake was restored three years ago by Danube basin water management department and NGO “Center of regional studies”. An ecological park “Kartal” was created in this wetland area, hosting a rich water flora. Water buffalo brought here from Transcarpathia perform a grazing function and also attract tourists to the eco-park. We plan to build additional infrastructure and support the development and promotion of this picturesque region.
Tarutino Steppe
Tarutino steppe is one of the very few steppe areas of the region remaining practically untouched. It is located in the northern part of the Danube region near Veselaya Dolyna community. In Soviet times, there was a military training ground on this territory, which allowed the unique steppe biodiversity to be preserved to our days. In 2016, part of Tarutino steppe was plowed. We plan to restore ploughed steppe areas and reintroduce the red deer, kulan and demoiselle cranes here. The development of ecotourism will allow the local community to make a profit from nature.
Maxim Yakovlev / Rewilding Europe
Kogilnik, Kagach and Sarata
The picturesque Kogilnik and Sarata rivers start in Moldova before entering the Sasyk Lagoon in the Ukrainian part of the Danube Delta. A series of 10 small and obsolete dams, erected during the Soviet era times by local farmers, still restricts flow close to the river mouth, negatively impacting the river bed and local biodiversity. We plan to remove these artificial barriers, restoring river flow and leading to the creation of about 20 kilometres of new habitat along the river, including flooded meadows. This will benefit a host of wildlife species, including wild carp, frogs, otters and a wide range of breeding and migratory birds.
Staffan Widstrand / Rewilding Europe
Cernovka Island
Cernovka is a big island in the Romanian part of the Danube delta with the area of 1580 ha. There was an attempt to restore the island to natural state in 1993 under WWF project by opening the dykes, built on the islands to drain the areas for agriculture, and re-connecting the island’s channels to the Danube. But morphological processes, such as sediment management, were not fully taken into account, that led to excessive siltation and overgrown areas of reed on the island. We plan to check the previous weak points and further restore Cernovka to a more dynamic natural state. This will hopefully will lead to biodiversity comeback to the island.
Sfântu Gheorghe is a village area located at the end of the southern arm of the Danube near the Black Sea. An ambitious project of natural grazing using Tauros reintroduction is now under implementation here with the support of the local community. 18 Tauros were translocated here during 2015-2017. We have also investigated the possibility of reintroducing beaver to the Sfantu Gheorghe village area. Last but not least, we support ecological tourism and other nature-based businesses in this location.
Roman Friptuleac
Beleu Lake
Beleu is a floodplain lake at the lower Prut River. Beleu is the largest natural water body in Moldova. It is part of the biosphere reserve Rezervatia Prutul de Jos. This is a breeding and feeding ground for many different waterbirds: spoonbill, herons, glossy ibis and others. You can also spot otter and European mink here. As part of the project, a local partner – the NGO Verde e Moldova – will restore the natural connection of the lake to the Prut River, and support ecotourism in the area.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1993
|
__label__wiki
| 0.522412
| 0.522412
|
Manic Motorists: States with the Most Reckless Drivers
Operating a motor vehicle is a responsibility that some do not take seriously.
We’ve all seen that driver who weaves dangerously in and out of traffic on the freeway, or who tailgates mercilessly…perhaps some of us have even been those drivers (though we’d rather not admit it).
In the United States, reckless driving is a serious traffic violation. Specific definitions of reckless driving vary by state, but in general, reckless driving, also called “driving to endanger” or “reckless operation,” is defined as driving with wanton disregard to the rules and regulations of the road. Reckless driving can be tacked onto or used in place of other offenses, such as speeding, driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or running a red light.
Associated with impulsive personality traits by psychologists, reckless driving can result in accidents, wrecks, injury, and in some cases, death. Penalties include heavy fines, possible license suspension, and even incarceration for up to a year. Reckless driving also affects insurance rates and can cause them to increase significantly for up to five years. That is why it’s so important to compare car insurance every six months. You never know which insurance company will look the most favorably on your driving history and offer the best quote for you.
Curious to see if some states are home to higher concentrations of reckless drivers than others, researchers at Insurify analyzed data from over 1.9 million drivers in their database.
National average: On average, 18 out of 10,000 drivers in the United States were convicted for driving recklessly within the past nine years.
Geography: The states with the most reckless drivers are distributed evenly across the country, with two states in the Northeast, two in the South, three in the Midwest, and three in the West. Interestingly, though, the Western and Midwestern states form a cluster. Perhaps there is a regional component influencing the rates of reckless driving in these north-central states.
More police officers, more reckless driving convictions? Because the ratio of police officers to drivers varies by state, it might be logical to assume that reckless driving convictions are tied to the number of police officers (perhaps drivers get away with bad behavior in states with fewer police officers). Insurify’s data scientists tested this hypothesis, using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and from the FBI’s latest police employee data. They found that there was no correlation between the concentration of police officers in a state, either based on area or population, and the number of reckless drivers in that state. Simply put, more police officers does not mean more reckless driving convictions.
To determine which states have the most reckless drivers per capita, data scientists at Insurify, an auto insurance quotes comparison website, pulled the numbers from their database of over 1.9 million car insurance applications. Drivers applying for car insurance quotes at Insurify input personal and vehicle information, as well as their driving history, which includes any prior convictions of reckless driving on their record. Insurify’s data scientists also calculated the concentration of police officers against registered drivers in each state using the latest demographic information from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Penalty and incarceration information was gathered from drivinglaws.org.
10. Nebraska
24.3 reckless drivers per 10k drivers
34% more reckless drivers than the national average
Concentration of police officers: 20% lower than the national average
Maximum punishment by law for the first offense: Up to three months in jail and/or up to $500 in fines
Nebraska may not be the worst state when it comes to reckless driving, but it’s certainly not the best. At number 10 on our list, Nebraska has 34 percent more reckless drivers than the national average, even with significantly fewer police officers per capita than most states.
9. New Jersey
Concentration of police officers: 51% higher than the national average
Maximum punishment by law for the first offense: Up to 60 days in jail and/or $50 – $200 in fines
New Jersey is one of the most lenient states on our list, at least in terms of maximum punishment for reckless driving. Keep in mind, though, that a reckless driving conviction will seriously jack up insurance premiums. And of course, reckless driving is still a serious traffic violation in New Jersey and is classified as a criminal offense.
26 reckless drivers per 10k drivers
Maximum punishment by law for the first offense: 60-day license suspension and a minimum of $500 in fines
New Hampshire is known for having some of the lowest taxes in the nation, but it certainly won’t be recognized for having the lowest rates of reckless drivers. A rate of almost 1.5 times as many reckless drivers as the national average lands New Hampshire solidly within the top 10 on our list.
Concentration of police officers: 44% lower than the national average; lowest in the nation
Maximum punishment by law for the first offense: Up to 364 days in jail and up to $5,250 in fines
Washington’s penalties for reckless driving are the most severe on our list, with up to one year in jail and/or up to $5,250 in fines. Despite the threat of such heavy sentencing, drivers in this state continue to flout the rules of the road. Seattle’s traffic congestion is ranked the worst in the country (according to a Texas A&M University study), which probably doesn’t help.
6. South Carolina
100% more reckless drivers than the national average
Maximum punishment by law for the first offense: Up to 30 days in jail or $25 – $200 in fines
South Carolina comes in sixth place on our list, with twice as many reckless drivers as the national average calling this state their home. Even though South Carolina metes out the lightest punishment of all the states on our list, the consequences of unsafe driving are ever-present: this state has the most driver deaths per miles traveled, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
Beautiful and wild, Montana has arguably some of the most breathtaking scenery in the country. Matters on Montana’s roads, however, are not so pretty. Not only does Montana have more than twice as many reckless drivers as the national average, but also, this state is notorious for DUIs. According to the IIHS’ latest data, over 35 percent of fatal motor vehicle crashes involved drivers operating under the influence.
Concentration of police officers: 1% higher than the national average
Maximum punishment by law for the first offense: Up to 6 months in jail and/or up to $750 in fines, plus a “surcharge” or $150 – $350
Wyoming may be the least densely populated of the continental United States with only six people per square mile, but this mountainous state is home to its fair share of reckless drivers. Wyoming is the only state on our list that includes a surcharge on top of any fines given for reckless driving. This additional cost can be prohibitive: depending on the amount a reckless driver is fined, he or she may end up paying significantly more than that amount due to surcharges.
3. South Dakota
Maximum punishment by law for the first offense: Up to 1 year in jail and/or up to $2,000 in fines
Home to Mount Rushmore and to nearly 50 reckless drivers per 10k drivers, South Dakota brings us to the top three. This state also comes in third place on another measure: with a possibility of one year in jail and/or up to $2,000 in fines, South Dakota has the third toughest maximum sentence on our list.
2. North Dakota
Maximum punishment by law for the first offense: Up to 30 days in jail and/or up to $1,500 in fines
At Insurify, we weren’t surprised to find North Dakota near the top of this list. Our data scientists ran a study earlier this year analyzing states with the worst drivers overall and found that North Dakota ranked number one, with almost 30 percent of drivers reporting a past driving incident.
Concentration of police officers: 3% lower than the national average
Those who live in Virginia or who have driven through it before may not be surprised to see this state at the top of our list. Virginia is notorious for its speed traps—and also for drivers who love zipping down the left lane. The state’s law enforcement takes reckless driving very seriously: maximum punishment for reckless driving is one of the most severe on our list.
Honorable Mention: Texas
2.5 reckless drivers per 10k drivers
86% fewer reckless drivers than the national average
Maximum punishment by law for the first offense: Up to 30 days in jail and/or up to $200 in fines
Insurify would like to recognize Texas as the state with the fewest reckless drivers. Rates of reckless drivers in The Lone Star State are at only a fraction of the national average. This might come as a surprise, given that sentencing for this offense is minimal. It goes to show that Texan drivers behave themselves for more reasons than just fear of punishment.
If you have questions or comments about this article, please contact insights@insurify.com
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1995
|
__label__wiki
| 0.66289
| 0.66289
|
Opioid-Related Deaths Up Threefold in Children
Click Here to Access our Database of Recovery Speakers
Purchase with purpose. Amazon donates to Recovery Radio Network Inc when you shop using this link smile.amazon.com.
The mortality rate from opioid poisoning among children and adolescents in the United States increased almost threefold between 1999 and 2016, a new study shows.
The increase was most profound among those aged 15 to 19 years, a group that sustained a substantial rise in deaths from heroin and synthetic opioids.
The study found that opioids were responsible for almost 9000 deaths among children and adolescents during the period studied and that almost 40% of them died at home.
The opioid crisis should be viewed as a “family problem,” where “everyone is affected and likely exposed” when these drugs are brought into the home, lead author Julie R. Gaither, PhD, an epidemiologist and instructor, Department of Pediatrics, Yale School of Medicine.
“I would love it if physicians who treat adults with opioids would consider who else is in the household, whether it’s an elderly family member or children.”
Gaither stressed that although the opioid epidemic is complex, some of the answers to it “are just common sense,” and these include “basic safety measures” such as telling patients that an opioid can kill a child.
The study was published online December 28 in JAMA Network Open.
The authors report that almost 5000 children under age 6 years are evaluated every year for opioid exposure in emergency departments across the United States. Hospitalizations for opioid poisonings increased almost twofold among children and adolescents between 1997 and 2012.
However, it’s unclear how many children die each year from opioid poisonings and how mortality rates have changed over time since the opioid epidemic began in the late 1990s.
For this new study, researchers used the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER). This database includes US county-level death certificate data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Investigators identified poisonings from prescription and illicit opioids between January 1, 1999, and December 31, 2016. They used International Statistical Classification of Diseases, 10th revision (ICD-10) codes to categorize deaths from any opioid.
Under the label “prescription opioids,” Gaither and colleagues grouped all but synthetic opioids. The exception was methadone, a synthetic opioid that was included in the prescription category.
The other synthetic opioids (including pharmaceutically and illicitly manufactured fentanyl) and heroin were assessed separately and only in adolescents aged 15 to 19 years.
Researchers classified deaths as unintentional, suicide, homicide, or undetermined.
They categorized children and adolescents by age group: 0 to 4 years, 5 to 9 years, 10 to 14 years, and 15 to 19 years.
In the oldest age group, researchers also examined deaths involving one or more other drugs.
Researchers used a generalized smoothing spline Poisson regression model to estimate mortality rates and assess temporal changes in rates over time (time effect).
They found that 8986 children and adolescents died from prescription and illicit opioid poisonings between 1999 and 2016. Of these, 88.1%, were aged 15 to 19 years, and 6.7% were under 5 years. Most deaths were among non-Hispanic whites (79.9%) and males (73.1%).
During the study period, the annual estimated mortality rate for all children and adolescents rose from 0.22 (95% CI, 0.19 – 0.25) to 0.81 (95% CI, 0.76 – 0.88) per 100,000, an increase of 268.2% (P for time effect < .001).
Broken down by age group, the increases in mortality rates (all P for time effect < .001) were:
Ages 0 to 4 years: From 0.08 (95% CI, 0.06 – 0.10) to 0.26 (95% CI, 0.22 – 0.31) per 100,000, an increase of 225.0%.
Ages 10 to 14 years: From 0.04 (95% CI, 0.03 – 0.06) to 0.10 (95% CI, 0.07 – 0.13) per 100,000, an increase of 150.0%.
The authors noted that children under 5 years, who they called “a highly vulnerable group for which the consequence of the opioid crisis has been somewhat overshadowed by opioid-related morbidity among neonates and older teens,” had the second highest mortality rate.
Systemic Problem
The overall mortality rate for males increased by 241.9%, compared with 323.1% for females (all P for time effect < .001).
“Most poisonings are still in males, and in white males in particular, but rates are rising at a faster rate among girls as well as among Hispanics and blacks,” commented Gaither. Black children had almost a fourfold increase in rates.
“This is indicative of the fact that this is a systemic problem and it’s continuing to spread to all segments of society,” she said.
Among non-Hispanic white children and adolescents, mortality rates increased by 289.3%.
About 80.8% of deaths were unintentional, 5.0% were because of suicide, and 2.4% were attributed to homicide.
But the manner of death varied significantly by age group. Among those 15 to 19 years, 85.3% of deaths were unintentional and 4.8% were attributed to suicide, while among children under 5 years, 38.0% of deaths were unintentional, 24.5% were because of homicide, and the manner of death could not be determined in 37.5% of cases.
The percentage of deaths because of homicide was highest in those younger than 1 year (34.5%).
Anecdotal evidence suggests parents may be giving their child an opioid to sedate them or help get them to sleep, commented Gaither.
Prescription opioids were implicated in 73.0% of deaths. Methadone alone caused 35.9% of prescription opioid deaths; however, the mortality rate for methadone peaked in 2007 and by 2016 had decreased by 76.7%.
Heroin was responsible for 23.6% of deaths among adolescents aged 15 to 19 years. Rates for fatal heroin poisonings in this group increased by 404.8%, whereas rates for prescription opioids increased by 94.7% (all P for time effect < .001).
“Huge Surge“
In this age group, mortality rates for synthetic opioids increased by 2925.0% (P for time effect < .001).
“For synthetic opioids, the rates were essentially flat until about 2014, and then there was a huge surge,” said Gaither. “Over time, there was this almost 3000% increase in deaths from synthetic opioids, and since 2014, a third of all poisoning deaths — so prescription, everything — were due to synthetic opioids.”
Among older adolescents, 38.5% of deaths involved another prescription or illicit substances in addition to an opioid. These included benzodiazepines (19.6%), cocaine (11.6%), alcohol (6.6%), antidepressants (4.1%), psychostimulants (4.0%), cannabis (1.6%), antipsychotics/neuroleptics (1.2%), or barbiturates (0.3%).
Almost two thirds of deaths (61.6%) occurred outside of a medical facility, with 38.0% occurring at home or other residential se
Gaither said she was surprised at the high number of opioid poisonings every year in kids. “There has been a perception that few kids actually die from opioid poisoning.”
Contributing to the surge in opioid-related deaths in kids is the sheer number of these drugs now available, which increases the chances that children will be somehow exposed.
Teens, for example, may find the drugs in the medicine cabinet or in their mother’s purse, while younger children may come across part of a drug strip on the floor or counter and put it in their mouth.
“We don’t have child-proof packaging on all opioids, including the fentanylpatch [Duragesic] and Suboxone,” the combination form of buprenorphine and naloxone used to treat opioid addiction, said Gaither.
Duragesic comes in foil wrappers that can be easily opened by a child, and Suboxone, now sold in brightly colored film strips, also poses a danger to children, she said.
The rate of opioid poisoning among young people could increase further with initiatives aimed at increasing the availability of naloxone in homes and communities, especially given that most pediatric deaths occur outside a medical setting.
“I personally am not sure how that affects very young kids,” said Gaither. “I think we need further research to be able to say what parents of young child should be doing.”
She urged clinicians to consider the individual patient in the context of the family “and to think about how everyone in the home is affected and likely exposed to opioids.”
The study relied on data from death certificates, so it’s possible that misclassification of cause and manner of death occurred, the researchers noted.
Tip of the Iceberg
Asked to comment for, Lloyd Werk, MD, MPH, chief, Division of General Pediatrics, Department of Pediatrics, Nemours Children’s Health System, Orlando, Florida, said the new study “reveals the extent of opioid deaths that had not been known in pediatrics.”
But the surge in opioid deaths is just “the tip of the iceberg,” said Werk.
“With this study showing so many youth experiencing opioid deaths, that tells us there are even more youth experiencing mental and physical consequences from opioids, including depression, anxiety, school failure, risk for illnesses like hepatitis, and pregnancy.”
Such consequences can even include heart infections because of intravenous drug use and stroke, he added.
Because of the increased consequences of opioid use, it’s even more important to screen young people for drug use.
Several screening tools are available. Some of the more well-known are SBIRT (Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment) and HEADSS (Home, Education/Employment, Peer Group Activities, Drugs, Sexuality, and Suicide/Depression).
Results of screening can give youth positive reinforcement if they’re staying away from drugs, and if they’re struggling, support and referrals can be provided, said Werk.
Are kids likely to be honest about their drug use? “If it becomes a routine part of regular office visits and is done confidentially without the parents in the room, there is evidence that there is a decent response,” said Werk.
But the first step is to just ask youth about drug use. “If you ask the question early enough, you can potentially save a life.”
Primary care physicians generally start such screening at about age 11 or 12 years, said Werk.
Some research has linked drug use in youth, along with mental health problems and poor health, to earlier exposure to events such as divorce, abuse, and a parent being incarcerated.
“If we can identify folks at risk, maybe we help them build resilience, build their ability to cope,” he said.
The fact that some prescribed opioids are still not in childproof packages is “crazy,” Werk added. “Here you have a substance that can cause you to stop breathing, especially if you’re a toddler, and that’s potentially fatal. We could do a better job of child-proofing containers that hold opioids.”
Author stationmanagerPosted on March 3, 2019 Categories Recovery Network
Previous Previous post: Endorsing Cannabis as an Opioid Substitute ‘Irresponsible’
Next Next post: CDC: Rural-Urban Gap Persists in PCP Opioid Prescribing
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1997
|
__label__wiki
| 0.549826
| 0.549826
|
Archive for fundamentalism
Pakistan Aiding the Taliban
Posted in International Affairs, Pakistan with tags Afghanistan, fundamentalism, Military, religious extremism, Taliban on July 5, 2008 by Umer
Veteran Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid explains how the US ally Pakistan has armed and financed the Taliban after the US invasion of Afghanistan; how the CIA pays Pakistan to arrest al-Qaeda operatives, but Pakistan uses the money to fund the Taliban resurgence in northwest Pakistan; and how the US and NATO’s failure to deal with Afghan civil society has led directly to the huge rise of the opium trade that funds the Taliban.
Please visit Democracy Now! for Audio, Video, and rush transcript.
CMKP Condemns Bhutto’s Assassination
Posted in Communist Movement, Pakistan with tags Benazir Bhutto, CMKP, Democracy, Extremism, fundamentalism, Islamisation, Military, Musharraf, PPP, terrorism, Zia on December 30, 2007 by Umer
Karachi, Dec 29: Heinous horrified assassination of PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto, a most popular leader and former prime minister, has once against testified the magnitude of the tyrant savage system controlled by military establishment. What she fell prey to the suicide bombing and so-called Islamic militancy were the culmination of the politics of Islamisation and Jihad that where put into motion by the military Zia regime and still being done by a section of establishment and supported by a group of fanatics. The objective has been just to brutalise the society and thwart the democratic aspirations of the people, to prolong the undemocratic rule. This has also showed the fault of the existing socio-economic and political system that needs its elimination through sincere and protected struggle. Moreover, nobody is safe under military-dominated rule.
In a press statement, Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party (CMKP) Pakistan Chairman Sufi Khalik Baloch condemned the brutal murder of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, while urging to expose and punish all those involved in such crime against humanity and decency. He added that at such a sad moment, he shared the shock and grief equally with the leaders and workers of PPP as well as her family. He paid tributes that she died bravely as she was conscious of the threat under the cover of religious extremism, although the fact is that she became the target for the dislikeness of domestic cliques that are counted in the politics of Pakistan. He hoped her blood could not go in vain but help strengthen democracy and socio-economic rights of the people.
So will our fist strike again!
Posted in Pakistan, Poetry, Literature, Art with tags Appercelle, Benazir Bhutto, Democracy, Extremism, fundamentalism, Justice, Military, Musharraf, Politics, Struggle, terrorism, Victor Jara on December 29, 2007 by Umer
What horror the face of fascism creates!
They carry out their plans with knife-like precision.
Nothing matters to them.
To them, blood equals medals,
Slaughter is an act of heroism…
How hard it is to sing when I must sing of horror.
Horror which I am living,
Horror which I am dying.
So wrote Victor Jara in his immortal poem Estadio Chile, moments before his death by the hands of one of the most brutal dictatorship that the world has ever seen – the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile; a tyranny sponsored, as ever, by the U.S.A. While repeating Jara’s words again, I remain convinced that the social-realist literature makes immensely more sense to people who have gone through the experience that the particular literary piece is talking about. I have read the quoted verses of the Jara’s last song countless times, but never before it generated so much strength and meaning for me as it does when I read it today.
The unforeseen and sudden death of Benazir Bhutto led to some of the most agonizing moments of my life. My first reaction when I heard the news of Bhutto’s death over the phone from a friend was utter disbelief – it has to be a rumor. But the news was soon confirmed as I switched on my TV set and messages started pouring in on my cell phone. What happened was horrific. For the first time in my life, I felt shocked to the extent that I was wordless.
To my young mind concerned with the good of my people, the assassination of Bhutto brought immense confusion and horror. As I stayed glued to the TV screen, there were a number of questions that cropped up, but I could not find an answer to any of them. It was like my thinking half died with Benazir. What will happen next? How will the powers that rule Pakistan use this event to their favor? What will happen to our struggle for democracy and social justice? How will people respond to the sense of insecurity that the assassination of Benazir has created? How will this event contribute towards the prevailing threat of religious extremism? Somewhere between all these questions was also a deep sense of sympathy for all those who once witnessed and mourned the death of great leaders like Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and President Salvador Allende. I was living through the ordeal that they once went through. I could comprehend what it is to deal with political uncertainty and insecurity and what it is to live under the shade of fascist terror.
Confusion, however, is temporary, particularly if your mind is equipped with the tools of Marxist theory and revolutionary practice defines the motto of your life. So, I started explaining to myself what might be there behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in order to reach a conclusion about what needs to be done.
In my view, as I have written elsewhere, the murder to Bhutto resulted in collusion between the Islamic Extremism and the pro-Taliban lobby in the ruling establishment of Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was not as much a threat for the former for the lack of effective power as she was for the latter. The pro-Taliban lobby in the armed forces knew very well that their defacement would be construed as the disgrace of their institution internationally and, therefore, enjoyed a strong cover through this blackmail. They also knew well that Benazir Bhutto, with a history of opposing the military rule of General Zia-ul-Haq that killed her father and with the patronage of Washington, will not miss a chance to publicize the activities of the remnants of Zia era in the international arena. Had that happened, the armed forces would have lost the much needed international image with which they justified its continuous rule over the people and resources of Pakistan. Benazir became, as Aitzaz Ahsan correctly pointed out, a threat for the establishment of Pakistan.
The retributive struggle against the death of Benazir, therefore, has two main forces to blame: Islamic Extremism and Armed forces. Without ending the power of Army, the pro-Taliban elements within the Army responsible for the assassination of Bhutto can not be brought to justice. The struggle for democracy is now not just a struggle against Pervez Musharraf, but a struggle to bring the clandestine activities of intelligence wings of armed forces under public scrutiny. Army must no longer benefit from the privilege that it has been enjoying since the colonial era. People should not merely throw the Army out of power, but must conduct its post-mortem to see where the problem lies. Our struggle is no more about the separation between Army and politics, but about the subjugation of the former to the latter.
At this point in the history of my country, I humbly will call upon all my people to heighten their effort for democracy and resistance against military dictatorship and religious extremism. It’s time to refurnish long lost popular unity built on the foundations of democracy and social justice. It’s time to refresh our resolve for a better world. It’s time to renew our commitment for people’s rule. It’s time to live, for slavery is no better than death.
The water is transparent
White between our fingers
it flows
“El Fascismo-el Fascismo”
-Take your guitar
and play play
until our arteries brust
don’t let the dust
swallow your brain
Strike!
will give birth to grenades.
– Andrée Appercelle, To Chile, To Allende
The task that the history sets out for us is difficult but it’s crucial. Without struggle and unity, we will perish, and history will never forgive us. Hope, we can not loose. Struggle, we can not put down. And when we move forward, let the verses of Victor Jara, ready to embrace death for his cause, give us strength and courage:
To see myself among so much
And so many moments of infinity
in which silence and screams
are the end of my song.
What I see, I have never seen
What I have felt and what I feel
Will give birth to the moment…
Benazir Assassinated
Posted in Pakistan with tags Benzir Bhutto, Extremism, fundamentalism, terrorism on December 28, 2007 by Umer
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has gripped the nation with immense sorrow and grief. Benazir was the leader of one of the largest political parties of Pakistan, the Peoples Party of Pakistan (PPP), and has twice been the Prime Minister of the country. She died when targeted by a spray of bullets while returning from a PPP rally at Laiqat Bagh, Rawalpindi, giving her a fatal wound in her neck. The assassin later blew himself up killing twenty people in the blast.
A strong sense of uncertainty was all pervasive as the news came out. As my internet at home was not working, I remained glued to the TV set only to listen to the repetitive broadcast by newsmen with little information. News was seeping in only at a snail pace , but there was no other media outlets available. There was news about riots erupting all around Pakistan that were targeting, as expected, the banners with the election symbols of PML-Q, the pro-Musharraf Party, installed at every lamppost in lieu of the approaching elections. Buses and cars were being burnt and the some PML-Q offices were also stormed.
Such a reaction was all the more expected. After all, a leader of one of the largest political parties of Pakistan was killed in cold blood. As one of my friends, Taimur Rahman puts it:
In the PPP the people of Pakistan saw a mainstream political party that spoke about the rights of poor people. The slogan of roti, kapra, makan (bread, clothes, housing) galvanized millions against the military dictatorship of Ayub Khan in the late 1960s. The democratic reforms undertaken by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto challenged the interests of the traditional ruling class of Pakistan.
The death of Benazir Bhutto resulted from the strong stance she took against Islamic fundamentalism while being soft on rule of Pervez Musharraf. PPP had also decided to run in the upcoming elections on January 8th and many were expecting Benazir to be the next Prime Minister of Pakistan, irrespective of their opinion with regards to her ascendancy. The strong possibility of the rise of a secularist Benazir into power made her a mortal threat for those in the State who harbored sympathy for Islamic Fundamentalists, with whom the notorious intelligence agencies, such as the ISI, were closely knitted since the Cold War and the Afghan War. Benazir Bhutto become a symbol of resistance against Islamic Extremists – both residing inside and outside the State. She stood secularism and modernity against militant retrogressive and conservative trends.
The ruling dictatorial regime of Pakistan has proved its utter incapability in controlling the threat of Islamic Fundamentalism, which is linked with elements within the State due to historical reasons. Benazir had made it amply clear to everyone that she might be in danger of suicide attacks before coming to Pakistan. However, her return at Karachi was greeted by two suicide bombings that killed more than 150 people. After that incidence, Benazir reiterated that certain elements in the ISI want her to be eliminated. Yet, no concrete steps were taken by the government to curb the threats to her life. PPP was blamed instead for organizing mass rallies in the face of threats of suicide-bombing attacks in order to cover up the serious breach of security.
I have often pointed out elsewhere and on my blog that dictatorship incapable of remedying the menace of Islamic Fundamentalism. Islamic Fundamentalism can only be defeated by democracy. To this point, the message sent by the team of Pragoti.org seems to hit the bulls eye:
No less than a democratic authority with punitive powers to act on extremism and with the capability of asserting the sovereign will of the people is required in Pakistan. Bhutto’s assassination must force democratic and progressive forces in Pakistan to get their act together in eliminating fundamentalism and extremism in the country.
Revisiting Religious Fundamentalism
Posted in Communist Movement, Marxism with tags Capitalism, Extremism, fundamentalism, Imperialism, Islam, Left on December 3, 2007 by Umer
As long as they have no real competitor for the embodiment of the aspirations of the downtrodden masses, and as long as the social effects of globalization are with us, the fundamentalists will also be part of the picture, with ups and downs naturally. (Gilbert Achcar, Eastern Couldron: Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq in a Marxist Mirror, 2006, p. 227)
Imperialism succeeded in pushing back the Left through an expensive smear campaign against the Leftist forces trough out the world – a campaign that was not limited to mere words, but involved systematic suppression of Communist Parties. However, it could not eliminate the roots of the Left, which lie in the misery and poverty that Imperialism inflicts due to its inherent nature. Thus, in the absence of Left, it was all the more expected from the people to be attracted to any force that gives voice to their grievances, even if they do not provide a coherent program as an alternative to capitalism and Imperialism. This phenonmenon may not be the reason behind the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, for no one denies the working of Imperialism behind their birth, but it surely constitutes as a major cause in their continued existence (even without the enormous U.S. and Saudi funding that they received during the Cold War).
Hence, Imperialism is thoroughly incapable of defeating fundamentalism – fundamentalism breeds on the grounds of the New World Order. This is a job for the Left – a job that will fall naturally on their shoulders as they sincerely challenge the modern system of exploitation.
Gilbert Achcar is a very interesting author to read on the history and politics of Islamic fundamentalism. I will recommend all those who are interested in the subject to have a look at his works (Google him, there are a number of articles available online).
Here is an interested article about Achcar: Eleven Theses on the Resurgence of Islamic Fundamentalism
Why the Emergency?
Posted in Pakistan with tags Aitzaz Ahsan, Emergency, fundamentalism, Imperialism, Justice Iftikhar Mohammad, Martial Law, Musharraf, war on terror on November 3, 2007 by Umer
The straightforward answer to the above question is: to set the score straight with the Judiciary. The declaration of Emergency, as has been made clear by the text of the proclamation, which also shows that General Musharraf is first and foremost the Chief of Army Staff, and his speech, is in reality a declaration of war against the Judiciary and the Constitution of Pakistan. This time around, the General has decided to play the game in a clear-cut way rather than engaging in any complex legal deliberations.
The proclamation of Emergency-cum-Marshall Law leaves no doubt about its key target: “some members of the judiciary” who are working at the “cross purpose with the executive and legislature in the fight against terrorism and extremism”!!! Although the General has completely flushed the constitutional theory down the drain, he has also expressed his misconceived perception that he is only hope left of the people of Pakistan against rampant terrorism and extremism. What rubbish! He is the one who should be carrying the burden of blame for the mounting religious militancy; for he towed the Imperialist line in the ‘war in terror’, not the members of Judiciary. If the members of the Judiciary were offsetting the role of the notorious intelligence agencies and calling for transparency in the system in the favor of fundamental constitutional rights, what was so preposterous about that – except for the fact that the higher-ups in these agencies find any interference from the ‘non-intelligent’ civilians extremely distasteful?
The upsurge of religious extremism is a threat for the people of Pakistan – conceded. However, that being said, the Military dictatorship of General Musharraf can never provide a solution to problem of raging religious militancy. One of the main reasons for the escalating terrorism in the name of religion is the “war on terror” which has victimized the innocent civilians of North Western Frontier Province at countless occasions. For the people of that devastated region, who see the army of their own country fighting against them, General Musharraf is nothing but a stooge of U.S. Imperialism.
But the thrust behind that declaration of Emergency is not the threat from religious extremism. Despite the recent events in Swat, the religious militants could have been fought well without any Emergency in place, or the Emergency could have been limited to those areas where the armed clashes were taking place. The real thorn in the way of General Musharraf’s authority was not religious militants, though it’s a good pretext to show to the International community. The real problem was the judiciary of Pakistan.
The Judiciary of Pakistan, which proudly terms itself as the ‘watch dog of the constitution’, has emerged as an anti-authoritarian institution over the last eight years due to its internal drive to find coherence in law. It has revealed almost all the hypocritical facades that the present Military regime built around itself. They shattered the myth of economic prosperity and efficient governance while exposing the corrupt privatization policies and tried to do justice with the victims of the infamous intelligence agencies. Finding it hard to tolerate the Judiciary, General Musharraf decided to mend it so that it can get back to old track of serving the Military Might.
General Musharraf tried to re-structure the institution of judiciary on March 9th this year by suspending the Chief Justice of Pakistan, but was met with a surprise. His attempts were frustrated by the massive popular protests led by the legal fraternities all across Pakistan. With the help of popular forces, the Judiciary emerged as a more independent institution even though it posed no major immediate threats to the existing Military dictatorship. Nevertheless, General Musharraf must have realized that the upcoming elections will present a number of constitutional questions – all to be decided before a court no longer in his pocket. And when the constitution could not provide any adequate way out for the General – the constitution was to give some democracy after all – he simply decided to do away with it. No constitution, no judiciary.
Moreover, the timing of the emergency is that crucial moment when a critical decision from the Supreme Court deciding over fate of General Musharraf’s election to the President’s office was due. “The Supreme Court was going to rule against him,” told Aitzaz Ahsan, the arrested president of the Supreme Court Bar Association Aitzaz Ahsan, and now there is no good reason to doubt his judgment. The Constitution of Pakistan could no longer provide a room to accommodate Musharraf as the President of Pakistan. As Aitzaz Ahsan puts it, “Constitutionally he [Musharraf] had no right to run as president while staying a general. This is the end of the road for him.”
It is also to be noted that Judges of Supreme Court immediately denounced the emergency orders, which suspended the constitution of Pakistan. Seven of the 17 Supreme Court judges signed a declaration calling the state of emergency illegal. As expected, they were all kidnapped by the Police and taken away.
With a constitution – which despite all its inadequacies proved to be an anti-authoritarian instrument when in right hands – out of the picture, the politics of Pakistan is plainly about power. It is the People versus the Military. Who will win, only time can tell? But, there is no reason to be a cynic. Let’s hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.
Emergency declared in Pakistan
Posted in Pakistan with tags Aitzaz Ahsan, Emergency, fundamentalism, Justice Iftikhar Mohammad, Musharraf on November 3, 2007 by Umer
General Pervez Musharraf declared a state of Emergency in Pakistan today (Saturday) ahead of the critical Supreme Court decision over his election to the President’s office in uniform. Along with the declaration of Emergency, the General has also instituted a Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO), suspending Pakistan’s Constitution, and ordered the Army to storm into the Supreme Court building to detain the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, as the Supreme Court of Pakistan had declared the state of Emergency illegal. Aitzaz Ahsan, President of the Supreme Court Bar Association and the valiant leader of the Lawyers’ Movement, has also been arrested. According to news, more “high profile arrests” are expected to take place. Earlier today, all independent news channels were blocked across Pakistan.
The blatantly off-handed, treasonous, and unconstitutional attacks by General Pervez Musharraf on the judiciary, media, and people of Pakistan have brought the true dictatorial character of the present regime into the lime-light. It has now been proved beyond doubt that Pakistan can never progress into any form of democracy without getting rid of the military from politics. All attempts to enter into any ‘compromise’ or ‘deal’ with the military can only hinder the struggle for democracy.
Strengthening the military rule is not a solution to the mounting religious militancy in the Pakistan, though the General is expected to cite the recent security threats offered by the religious extremists in the North Western Frontier Province as the primary excuse for the declaration of Emergency. Such an excuse is simply bogus. The military rule is only capable of inciting more terror and more militancy in Pakistan, if anything. The General wants to portray an image of Pakistan as a State severely threatened by religious fundamentalism in order to justify his action before the International community.
It is up to the people of Pakistan to show that General Musharraf can only aggravate the recent crisis that Pakistan is facing. Military dictatorship is not a solution, and never was.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line1998
|
__label__wiki
| 0.512026
| 0.512026
|
RealAstrologers
The astrology of world affairs, human evolution, the future, and the state of the universe.
RealAstrologers Blog
Pat’s Parlor
Ruth’s Tea Room
Diane’s Pantry
Pat Paquette, Co-Founder of RealAstrologers
Diane Lang
Associate Astrologers
Weekly Forecast October 13: Venus Sextile Jupiter, Sun Conjunct Mercury
Before the Storm. © Pat Paquette, 2014.
There was a discussion recently in an astrology forum on Facebook, initiated by an old-time astrologer who ridiculed his colleagues for giving any credence to events related to Mercury retrograde.
I was all the more surprised when several others chimed in to agree with him. It’s not the first time I’ve read other astrologers pooh-poohing Mercury retrograde.
Granted, it’s tricky assigning a particular event to an astrological signature, especially since there’s often more than one working together. It’s also true that mix-ups we normally associate with Mercury retrograde happen when he’s moving forward. In some of those cases, though – at least in my personal experience – Mercury was part of a difficult planetary configuration.
Right on cue, I started having computer issues and Internet connection problems about a week ago. The latter began during Mercury’s previous retrograde and then subsided. Everything was going great until last week. I had planned on writing the forecast last night, as I want to get back to posting on Saturday. But I had a scare when my computer shut itself off for no reason and figured I’d better back up all of my files without delay. I should have done it two weeks ago. Like doctors, astrologers don’t always follow their own advice.
I can say without qualification that the worst computer issues I’ve ever had were during Mercury retrograde periods. A few years ago, I wrote about a lemon of a computer that was purchased for me over my strong objections during Mercury retrograde. I had nothing but trouble with that machine, which lasted barely two years before going belly up in December 2009. Mercury wasn’t yet retrograde and was still a couple of days shy of his pre-retrograde shadow period. However, on the day of the meltdown, he conjoined Pluto in Capricorn in a tight square to Saturn, Capricorn’s planetary ruler. It’s reasonable to expect that a challenging aspect such as this involving Mercury would behave like a retrograde, especially when the actual retrograde period is just a few weeks away.
Depending on where Mercury is transiting your natal chart, you could be having an easier-than-usual or tougher time during this retrograde, which ends on October 25. When my computer melted down in 2009, Mercury was in a retrograde phase conjunct natal Mercury, while Pluto and Saturn both were aspecting critical chart points.
I’ve noticed, as many of you have, that some retrograde periods are more intense than others, and the timing can be different. Some are more troublesome in the pre-retrograde shadow phase, while others don’t seem to “kick in” until halfway through. As of early this week, we are at the halfway point, and we’ve experienced enough disruption so far that I don’t think this one is going to be a late-bloomer, not collectively anyway.
An interesting pattern that has emerged over the past few days is the revisiting of government secrecy and covert operations. On October 4, Mercury turned retrograde in Scorpio, the sign of deep secrets and the criminal underworld, among other things. This past Friday, as the Messenger sat at 0 degrees Scorpio before returning to Libra, Focus Features released Kill the Messenger, a film based on the true story of journalist Gary Webb, who in 1996 wrote a damning series for The San Jose Mercury News on how CIA-backed rebels in Nicaragua in the 1980s created a cocaine epidemic in the United States in order to fund their effort to topple the socialist government. The three largest U.S. newspapers, rather than digging deeper into the story, ganged up on Webb and discredited his reporting. His editors, under government pressure, threw him under the bus. Eventually, he was vindicated, but in the meantime, his life fell apart and he committed suicide.
I often refer readers to Consortiumnews.com, an alternative news site founded by Bob Parry, a former reporter for The Associated Press who was among the first to break the Contra-drug connection in the 1980s. Parry, one of the few journalists who openly supported Webb, notes that reviews of Kill the Messenger in the mainstream media have been lukewarm at best, no doubt in part because they were the biggest villains in the film. More importantly, they can’t admit they were wrong and that journalistic standards have sunk even lower in the past 20 years.
The evening before Kill the Messenger was released, a documentary based on Webb’s reporting premiered in Atlanta. Freeway: A Crack in the System, focuses on how the influx of crack cocaine in the 1980s destroyed primarily black inner-city neighborhoods. The film will be released this Friday.
Neither film has generated the headlines of the new documentary about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, which premiered Friday at the New York Film Festival. Citizenfour was produced by investigative reporter Laura Poitras, who with Glenn Greenwald broke the story in The Guardian in June 2013 about classified documents leaked by Snowden that revealed the extent of U.S. government surveillance. By the time the film was shown on Friday evening, Mercury had backed up into Libra, but barely. The documentary opens in U.S. theatres on October 24 – the day before Mercury returns direct and the day after a solar eclipse at 0 degrees Scorpio. You have to love the synchronicities in astrology.
It remains to be seen whether there will be any backlash from of any of these films, or whether they will elicit a fleeting meh. It’s not as though most of the content isn’t already public; however, pictures and live interviews can be more powerful than words on a computer screen.
Mercury teams up with the Sun and Venus in Libra and Mars in Sagittarius for a series of supportive aspects this week. The Sun sextiles Mars on Wednesday. On Thursday, Mercury conjoins the Sun and later in the day sextiles Mars. Mercury and Venus conjoin on Friday. Libra is a sign of equality and justice, while Sagittarius is the truth-seeker. New facts may come to light that make justice and vindication possible. The truth doesn’t always compel people to act, but with Mars in the equation, there’s no lack of courage and will. In mundane astrology, Mars in Sagittarius can represent military incursions into foreign territory. It’s hard to imagine any government telling the truth about its foreign policy, but that doesn’t mean the truth can’t emerge from other sources.
Mercury and Venus combine for balance in communications in partnerships, especially if words have been misunderstood or deliberately hurtful in the past. And although the conventional advice is that contracts shouldn’t be signed while Mercury is retrograde, this week could be a good time to re-negotiate contracts, particularly in cases where previous deals have fallen apart because they’re simply not working for one or more of the parties involved. I just read that the EU, Russia, and Ukraine have resumed talks on natural gas delivery after months of getting nowhere. There’s a good chance that negotiations will be more productive this week
My vote for the best day this week is Tuesday, when Venus sextiles Jupiter. Venus and Jupiter are the luckiest couple in astrology, and the sextile is an easy, favorable aspect. If you’re the kind of person who keeps score and ends up being resentful that you gave more than you got, try treating someone you love to open-hearted generosity without limits, for no reason other than that it feels good.
We are still in between eclipses, a time that can feel surreal and dreamy. Rather than fighting it, just go with it and see what comes up. I was listening to more Kate Bush and liked this image:
We dive deeper and deeper
Could be we are here
Could be we are in a dream
~ Kate Bush, “Nocturn” (Aerial, 2005)
Wishing you all much love and courage,
© Pat Paquette, RealAstrologers.com, 2014.
This entry was posted in Forecasts and tagged eclipses, Mars in Sagittarius, Mercury in Scorpio, Mercury retrograde, mundane astrology, Venus in Libra on October 12, 2014 by Pat.
← Weekly Forecast October 6: Full Moon Eclipse in Aries, Mars Trine Jupiter Weekly Forecast October 20: Solar Eclipse in Scorpio, Mercury Direct →
4 thoughts on “Weekly Forecast October 13: Venus Sextile Jupiter, Sun Conjunct Mercury”
Geneva Abiko October 13, 2014 at 9:35 am
Last week was one of the most stressful and chaotic in my department. Not sure what was going on but it was intense several days in a row, with several crises affecting several different people, from the patients we work with to people trying to get to work after a shooting scare in the north (that ended up being people target practicing at 3am that led to a SWAT standoff due to miscommunication) and a horrible truck accident in the south in which the truck exploded but the driver was able to get out unharmed. Mayhem!
Pat Post author October 13, 2014 at 11:37 pm
Geneva, so sorry to hear that. The lunar eclipse conjunct Uranus had major mayhem potential, and with Mercury retrograde and a solar eclipse coming up, this is just a crazy time. I’ve especially noticed a lot of aggression when out driving. People seem to need a pressure valve.
akhileshyadav123 October 16, 2014 at 1:30 am
A good time to renegotiate contracts and present attractive sight..
Telugu Astrology October 17, 2014 at 1:16 am
Very usefull Information. Thank you.
RA BLog
Categories Select Category About astrology (335) Ask Our Readers (19) Ask Real Astrologers (135) Astrology & Tarot (2) Astrology Cat (7) Birth chart (65) Celebrity News (25) Forecasts (453) Full Moon (46) General Musing (153) Guest Posts (74) Love & Relationships (84) New Moon (39) Saturday Archives (24) Saturday Extra! (85) Uncategorized (4) Weekly Astrology Poll (45)
Archive Select Month October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008
Read Pat's comprehensive article about OPHIUCHUS, originally published in The Mountain Astrologer.
The New Astrologers film
The Merriman Market Analyst
The Mountain Astrologer
Soul Astrology with Ruth
Astrology Symbols and Glyphs (great resource from Ruth)
Michael Lutin
Dan Furst, Universal Festival Calendar
Aquarian Airlines
Astrology: Questions and Answers
Alice Bailey
cardinal grand cross
cardinal T-square
Mars retrograde
Neptune in Pisces
Pluto in Capricorn
Pluto transits
Saturn-Uranus opposition
Saturn and Pluto in mutual reception
soul astrology
Uranus-Pluto square
Uranus in Aries
Venus in Scorpio
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line2001
|
__label__wiki
| 0.560715
| 0.560715
|
Meyer W. Nathans Service Award Recipients
Welcome from Rabbi Levine
Our Czech Memorial Torah Scroll
CRS’s 2020 Roundup
175th Anniversary Celebration
Union Field Cemetery
High Holy Days 5781/2020
Past High Holy Day Sermons & Liturgy
The Jewish Perspective
Birth, Bris, and Baby Naming
B’nai Mitzvah and Confirmation
Conversion to Judaism
Marriage Officiation
What Matters: End of Life Planning
Sholom Sprouts (0–5 Years)
Sholom Adventures (Pre-K–Grade 2)
Religious School (Grades K–7)
Youth Groups (Grades 2–7)
Rodeph Sholom School (Nursery–Grade 8)
Teens (Grade 8–12)
B’nai Mitzvah @ CRS
Learning with Clergy
Hebrew Basics
Jewish Basics (Intro to Judaism)
SPROUTS (Parenting Young Children)
CRS Minyan
Shireinu (Special Needs Initiative)
Tribe (20s & 30s)
CRS Book Group
Music & Choirs
Mitzvah Day
CRS Food Drive
Issues & Resources
Caring Community Committee
LGBTQIA+ Youth Directory
Shireinu (Special Needs)
Support Migrants at Our Border
Membership Commitment
A Community for Everyone
Give to Rodeph Sholom
What Matters: Caring Conversations About End of Life
Marriage and Lifepartnering
Genesis tells us that God recognized “it is not good for man to be alone” and created the first human couple, Adam and Eve. Their “marriage” ensured the propagation and survival of humanity, and the joy of this archetypal couple is reflected in one of the Jewish wedding blessings: “Make these beloved companions as happy as were the first human couple in the Garden of Eden.”
Jewish marriage is not merely a secular legal partnership, but a union sanctified by God. Marital obligations, therefore, are not merely personal, but have implications for universal harmony. The existence of God as a “silent partner” in Jewish marriage endows a relationship with sanctity and solemn commitment.
Auf Ruf
It is traditional for the groom to receive an aliyah to the Torah on the Shabbat prior to his wedding. In Reform, Reconstructionist, and some Conservative synagogues, both bride and groom are usually called to the Torah. This ceremony is called auf ruf, which, in Yiddish, means “calling up.” After reciting the blessings, the Rabbi usually offers a special blessing for the couple. Another popular practice of auf ruf involves the bride and groom hosting an Oneg Shabbat on Friday night for the whole congregation.
In general, the practice of auf ruf is a means of involving the entire community in pre-wedding festivities, and helping ritualize the union in the context of Shabbat services.
As summarized by Anita Diamant, “The ketubah is one of the oldest and one of the least romantic elements of Jewish weddings. It is a legal contract, pure and simple. In its traditional form the ketubah does not mention love or trust or the establishment of a Jewish home or even God.” The ketubah, or marriage contract, was created in the 1st century CE to protect the woman in marriage. The document spelled out the husband’s obligations in marriage (the wife’s were assumed) and provided for a financial settlement for her in the event of divorce. It is not a contract between equals, but a statement, signed by witnesses, that the groom “acquired” the bride “with two hundred silver zuzim , which is due you according to the Torah law…” on such and such a date and agrees to support her. For its time, it was an incredibly progressive document – a man could no longer discard his wife on a whim, leaving her financially bereft.
Although it was a great advance for its time, the traditional ketubah does not address the realities of marriage in our day. The elaborate economic arrangements for the dissolution of a marriage as spelled out in a traditional ketubah have become meaningless, and the changed aspirations, roles and responsibilities of women and men find no expression in a contract that demands specific duties and responsibilities of the groom but asks the bride for nothing in return. New ketubot impose many choices on couples, starting with the content of the document. Some brides and grooms use the traditional Aramaic text but select or write an entirely different text in English. Others opt for alternate text in both Hebrew and English.
It has become customary for the ketubah to be more than a traditional legal document, and now many couples select ketubot that are aesthetically beautiful and can be displayed as art in the home. Calligraphy, paper cutting, and painting are common artistic additions to the modern ketubah, and offer a wide range of options for any couple to customize the ketubah to suit their tastes.
Ceremony: Huppah
The wedding ceremony takes place beneath the huppah. This wedding canopy symbolizes the couple’s new home – fragile, yet purposefully open on all sides to all possible futures and directions. The embrace of the huppah reflects the divine presence in the couple’s lives as they embark on the journey of partnership together.
The sages find a reference to the huppah in the talmudic passage in Avot, referring to the house which is open on four sides. The Jerusalemite R. Yosi ben Yohanan urges, “Let your house be wide open,” and compares the huppah to the tent of the patriarch Abraham that, according to Jewish tradition, had entrances on all four sides to welcome wayfarers, so that no traveler, no matter from which direction he came, need be burdened searching for an entrance door. The huppah, with four open sides, is thus a symbol of the Jewish home filled with hesed (acts of love), an important component of which is hakhnasat orhim (hospitality to strangers), a mode of conduct that the newly married couple is expected to establish in their home in emulation of their patriarchal forebear, whose hospitality to strangers was legendary.
In some circles, it is customary for two people to lead the groom to the huppah to the accompaniment of appropriate music. In other circles, however, the groom is accompanied by a larger retinue, since the groom is likened to a king. There are varying customs regarding who accompanies the principals to the huppah. Sometimes the groom is accompanied by his parents and the bride by hers. Indeed, this custom is cited by the Zohar, which says, “The father and mother of the bride bring her to the domain of the groom.” However, there is no Jewish tradition of a father “giving away the bride.”
Among many Jews, it is customary for the bride to be escorted around the groom under the huppah three times or seven times. Many consider the customs to relate to an eschatological passage in Jeremiah in which the prophet speaks of a time in the future when relationships between men and women will be reversed and “the woman will court the man.” The Hebrew term employed in the passage for “will court” is t’sovev, literally, “will encircle.”
Others see in the custom of the bride circling her groom a symbol of the wife creating a metaphoric wall around her husband to guard against him from outside desires and influences. This is in keeping with a passage in the Song of Songs referring to a woman as a wall, and a talmudic teaching that “whoever lives without a wife lives without a [protective] wall.” The sages comment that a man’s wife is like a wall, protecting him from external temptations. After her circling, the bride, by stepping into the symbolic circle she has created, marks the couple’s new status in society as a married couple; she has created a community of two, around which there is an intimate wall of privacy, independent and shielded from the rest of society.
Some couples opt to have the bride and groom circle each other, as a symbol of each showing dedication and commitment to the other. Other couples will choose to have the bride circle the groom, and then the groom circle the bride, as a means of embracing both traditional custom and modern egalitarianism.
Ceremony: Erusin
The Jewish wedding ceremony comprises two major sections: erusin (betrothal) and nissuin (marriage). When the bride and groom have reached the huppah (marriage canopy), the erusin ceremony begins. It is a simple ceremony, marked by two blessings recited by the presiding Rabbi, who holds a cup of wine. The first blessing, over wine, is one said at almost all joyous occasions. The second blessing is unique to this occasion and reads as follows:
“Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, Who has sanctified us with Your commandments, and commanded us regarding forbidden unions, and Who forbad betrothed women to us, and permitted to us those married to us by huppah and kiddushin. Praised are You, Adonai, Who sanctifies the people Israel with huppah and kiddushin.”
After the completion of the second blessing, the Rabbi gives the cup of wine to the groom, who drinks of it; the cup is then presented to the bride, who drinks from the same cup, symbolizing their commitment to sharing their lives from that moment on.
Several crucial themes of the Jewish wedding are expressed in the seemingly simple language of these few lines of this second blessing. First, the liturgical language points to older customs, for in earlier times the Jewish wedding took place in stages over the course of an entire year. At the first ceremony, erusin, the couple was reserved for each other and was forbidden to have relationships with anyone else. But it was not until approximately a year later, at the nissuin ceremony, that they were permitted to consummate their relationship sexually and that the bride moved into the groom’s home.
The language of the second blessing, “who forbad betrothed women to us, and permitted to us those married to us by huppah and kiddushin,” reflects this earlier practice, and apparently served in ancient times as a warning to the couple not to cohabit until the completion of the second ceremony. Many Rabbis now offer a different interpretation of this blessing during the wedding ceremony to focus more on the idea of consecration and commitment.
Formalizing the Marriage With a Ring
At this point in the traditional ceremony, the couple performs the specific act that formalizes the marriage. Today it is customary for the couple to place a ring on each other’s right index finger and recite in Hebrew a phrase that means, “Behold, by this ring you are consecrated to me as my husband/wife/partner according to the laws of Moses and Israel.” Once again, the words “according to the laws of Moses and Israel” suggest the themes of covenant and community, central throughout the ceremony.
In earlier times, too, various items, including fruits and a prayerbook, could be used to symbolize the betrothal, though today a ring is the most common token. Even so, the nature of that ring is still regulated by Jewish law. Tradition requires that the ring not have gems on it, which would make its value difficult for the bride to assess. Similarly, while the ring may be decorated, the decorations should not be cut out of the ring, for the circularity and solidity of the metal suggest the permanence of the relationship now being created.
Reading the Ketubah
After the ring ceremony, the ketubah is read aloud, marking the division between the formerly separated elements of the marriage ritual.
Ceremony: Nissuin
Immediately following the reading of the ketubah (the marriage contract), the second ceremony begins. This ceremony involves the recitation of seven blessings and hence is commonly referred to as the Sheva Berakhot (“Seven Blessings”). During the recitation of these blessings, as was the case in the first ceremony, the Rabbi holds a cup of wine aloft. And once again, upon completion of the blessings, groom and bride drink from the cup.
The most striking characteristic of the blessings is that, with the exception of the last one, they focus not on love, but on the theme of creation. In addition to referring to God as “Creator of the fruit of the vine” in the omnipresent blessing over wine, the liturgy refers to God as creator of all things, creator of man, creator of man and woman, and creator of the peace of the Garden of Eden. The theme of creation plays several significant roles in the ceremony. First, it relates to the Jewish conception of marriage as a natural state and suggests that, by marrying, the couple now enters this appropriate condition. Second, it suggests that the marriage furthers God’s process of creation, furthering a project the tradition sees as yet unfulfilled.
Addressing the Couple
If the Rabbi speaks at the ceremony, he or she usually does so just before or after the seven blessings. But it is not unusual for more than one person to address the couple under the huppah, at any of several points during the ceremony. Some Rabbis also elect to offer a separate blessing for the couple, often the tripartite “Priestly Blessing” (Numbers 6:24-26).
Breaking the Glass
The next, and final, ritual element of the ceremony is the shattering of a glass. Traditionally, it is the groom who shatters the glass with his foot, though in some more modern communities groom and bride both do so. Most traditional commentators explain this custom as having originated with incidents recorded in the Talmud in which Mar, the son of Ravina, and Rav Ashi deliberately smashed costly glass at their sons’ weddings to put a stop to the raucous dancing and celebrating.
Modern explanations have focused on a more solemn theme, claiming that the broken glass reminds Jews assembled at a joyous occasion of the Temples and recalling those individuals, Jew and non-Jew alike, who do not have the freedom to celebrate either religiously or publicly. A more mystical explanation of the ceremony is that the glass represents the couple and that just as the glass, when it is broken, enters a state from which it will never emerge, it is the hope of the community that this couple will never emerge from their married state. Still others interpret this ritual as a shattered reminder of a world not yet whole. Through this partnership and future life together, the couple will strive to continue the process of repairing and rebuilding the world.
Judaism views marriage as a sacred partnership. As such, partners who can no longer live in a sacred way with one another may divorce. Judaism has always recognized this reality, although, according to the Talmud, “When a man divorces the wife of his youth, even the altar of God sheds tears” (Gittin 90b).
Jewish divorce first appears in the Torah. Deuteronomy 24:1 says that if a wife “fails to please because he finds something obnoxious about her… he writes her a bill of divorcement, hands it to her, and sends her away from his house.” Even today the basic ritual act of a traditional Jewish divorce is for the husband to hand the wife a get, or bill of divorce.
For a divorce to take place, the couple must arrange to appear before a beit din, or rabbinic court, which has expertise in the laws of Jewish divorce. A traditional divorce also requires two observant male witnesses as well as a sofer, or scribe, to actually write the get on a piece of parchment.
One of the Rabbis then questions the participants. The Rabbi ascertains that the scribe has written the get at the instruction of the husband; that the witnesses heard the husband ask the sofer to write the get; and that of their own free will the husband gave the get and the wife accepted it. The Rabbi also gives anyone else present an opportunity to protest the divorce. The wife holds her hands together, palms up, and the husband drops the get into her hands, making an oral declaration that she is divorced and “free to become the wife of any man.” She walks a few paces holding the get and hands it back to the Rabbi.
To ensure that the get is correct, the Rabbi reads it again with the witnesses, who must identify both the get and the signatures. Then the Rabbi tears the get’s four corners so it cannot be re-used, files it, and gives the husband and wife a shetar piturin, a document of release, freeing them to remarry.
Reform Understandings
In 1869, the Reform movement voted to accept civil divorce alone as dissolving a marriage. The decision grew out of a concern over the power imbalance in a Jewish divorce (which must be granted by the husband) and the devastating consequences for traditional women who could not obtain a get, or Jewish bill of divorce. In recent years, contemporary Reform Jews have begun to recognize that a religious divorce can provide spiritual and psychological closure, and some Rabbis are offering modified Jewish divorce ceremonies.
These new ceremonies reframe the traditional, legalistic tone of the male-centered get into a religious ritual of annulment and mourning. These new understandings of Jewish divorce can be applied to many types of relational separation, and the religious context can help give voice to painful emotions and help initiate the process of healing. Some families have found that such a ritual can also help their children find a structure in which the marriage or partnership can be mourned.
Congregation Rodeph Sholom, 7 West 83rd Street, New York, NY 10024
Phone: (212) 362-8800, Fax: (212) 877-6526, Email: info@crsnyc.org
Emergency Call Number: (917) 902-6103 V2
All content ©2009-2021 Congregation Rodeph Sholom
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line2002
|
__label__wiki
| 0.643631
| 0.643631
|
Quick Everybody, Blame The Media!
Herman Cain dropped out of the presidential race and blamed the media for hurting his wife and family. You would think the four or more women accusing him of sexual misconduct would have had something to do with it. Or maybe it was his extreme lack of policy knowledge about Libya, his 9-9-9 plan hurting the poor or possibly his comment about “Uz beki beki beki beki stan stan?”
But no, it’s the media’s fault. Darn news media, reporting what he says and sharing it with the people. The media should know better than that.
On Cain’s website there is a terribly written, typo-laden diatribe calling one of his accusers a “loser.” I would link to it, but it’s so poorly done, I just can’t bring myself to send anybody there. Ol’ Herman is blaming everybody but himself.
I’m not sure when people in this country started blaming the media for everything, but it probably began back about 1690, when the first newspaper, Publick Occurrences, was published. It’s not much of a stretch imagining Cotton Mather telling Foxe Newes, “a wytch made me commit adultery in my heart.”
No, the media shouldn’t be held blameless. But neither should the candidates. Both are fallible, extremely so. Apparently you can have an affair with someone more than a generation younger than you and still be a presidential front-runner, as is the case with Newt Gingrich. As long as you say you did it for the good of the country — as Gingrich claimed with a straight face — everything is forgiven. At the time of that particular dalliance, Newt was busy chasing after President Clinton, who was also having one himself. Ah, the affairs of state.
The news media itself has had some impressive gaffes, ranging from the Dewey Defeats Truman headline, to the more benign MSU Gives Head Job To Williams. Incidentally, I was sitting right next to the older, bespeckled gentleman who typed out that little nugget back in 2000. Boy, do I wish I could’ve clued him in, but I was busy racing against a photo deadline and never saw his page before it went to press.
And that, believe it or don’t, is the biggest problem with the media today. It’s not “gotcha” journalism as Sarah Palin called it, but the lack of resources — both human and otherwise — as newsrooms pop out of existence on a daily basis and the CEOs who “oversee” them, take the money and run. You can’t blame the news media when, in many cases, there is no media to blame.
What about social media? Take the case of our ridiculous mayor here in Troy, Michigan. It was a blog that broke the story of her extremely homophobic comment on facebook. Certainly you can’t blame the media for something our anti-gay mayor actually wrote herself.
In the broadest sense of the word, “media” includes television shows and movies too. Jersey Shore would be considered “the media” as would Harold and Kumar. I am making a choice, right here, right now, to believe that when folks like Herman Cain or Sarah Palin blame the media, they are referring to Snooki and The Situation. Because that’s about as ridiculous as blaming stressed-out, under-paid journalists who are as worried about their jobs disappearing before the holidays as they are about right-wing nut jobs trying to smear their reputations.
If the Republican presidential candidates want to blame the Kardashians for all of America’s woes, that’s fine by me too.
(Rodney Curtis is a licensed blogger, recovering journalist, author, educator, photographer and crackpot. His views are barely his own, let alone anybody else’s.)
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line2003
|
__label__cc
| 0.632951
| 0.367049
|
Home » Team » Kristina Paster
Kristina Paster
Kristina is an avid knitter and cross-stitcher. As a project manager, there isn’t any knot she can’t untangle.
Kristina Paster admits that although she can improvise when necessary, she is not the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type. But that’s just as well – as a Senior Consultant who manages complex projects, her step-by-step approach is both thorough and proven.
“I’m a methodical, process-oriented person,” Kristina said. “I put people at ease, they open up to me, and together we transform challenges into practical solutions that help them do their jobs better.”
Kristina, who joined ROI Communication in 2016, offers clients a rare balance of communication experience and technical knowledge. Over the past decade, she has developed deep expertise in helping organizations run more efficiently. Whether she’s implementing new software systems, training teams, managing customer service or improving internal processes, Kristina helps people break down silos, communicate better, and solve problems together.
Prior to joining ROI, Kristina served as an Operations and Program Manager for Scena Media, a communications and PR agency that develops CSR, education, and corporate philanthropy programs. She spent several years serving Scena’s largest client, the Pearson Foundation, where she implemented and managed various operational and SaaS systems that included training, inventory management and marketing support. She also managed a college scholarship program for students committed to public service, several of whom have gone on to do dynamic work in the non-profit sector.
Earlier in her career, Kristina worked as an Operations Manager for Sustainable Media, a business magazine and events company dedicated to sustainability and the triple bottom line. There, she directed operations and accounting and led significant initiatives on employee engagement and customer satisfaction. She also helped organize a series of economic forums and supported the company’s sales team. Prior to her tenure at Sustainable Media, Kristina served as Chief Administrative Officer for JL Franklin Wealth Planning.
“I like to help organizations run more efficiently,” she said. “And sometimes I geek out learning new things.”
A graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a BS in Social Sciences, Kristina also earned an MBA in Sustainable Management from the Presidio Graduate School, a leading graduate program in social impact and sustainability. When she’s not advising ROI clients, she volunteers in leadership roles at the German Language School of Marin and the Novato Mother’s Club. She lives with her husband and two children among the redwoods of Marin County.
ROI is an internal communications agency based in the San Francisco Bay Area, serving clients across the US and beyond.
© 2021 ROI Communication, Inc. | Contact | Careers
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line2006
|
__label__wiki
| 0.826009
| 0.826009
|
Richmond For The Win: From Making Ads To Making Change
Rachel Scott Everett | December 23, 2020
Topics: (the other) tim barry, Abu Ngauja, ADWEEK, ARCHITECTUREFIRM, Arts & Letters Creative Co, Ashley Sommardahl, Billboard House, Caley Cantrell, Charles Hodges, Creative Mornings, Danny Robinson, EVERGIB, Familiar Creatures, Girls for A Change, Hamilton Glass, history is illuminating, Kristen Cavallo, KT Schaeffer, Lauren Barry, Mad Box Made, Marcus-David Peters Circle, Mending Walls RVA, noah scalin, Old Navy, OnHoldAtHome, Overcoast Music, Quirk Gallery, Rainmaker Studios, Spang TV, Studio Two Three, Super Bowl commercials, The Martin Agency, Think, Tom Scharpf, Vann Graves, vcu, VCU brandcenter, VCU Institute of Contemporary Art, WORK Labs
In the midst of an extremely difficult year, increasing recognition for Richmond creative organizations like The Martin Agency, Arts & Letters Creative Co, and VCU Brandcenter have shown the rest of the world what locals have long known — that Richmond is one of the top creative cities the US has to offer.
In a dark year, Richmond’s creative scene is shining bright.
A triple threat success from The Martin Agency, Arts & Letters, and the VCU Brandcenter has strengthened Richmond’s status as an epicenter for creativity.
It’s no exaggeration. For the first time in over a decade, The Martin Agency has been awarded Adweek’s U.S. Agency of the Year, one of the highest accolades in the advertising industry. Newcomer Arts & Letters ranked #5 of Fastest Growing Agencies in the World, along with being named one of the Top 50 Best Places to Work in the U.S. And the VCU Brandcenter reported a record 26 alumni who contributed to 18 different Super Bowl commercials this year, solidifying the school’s reputation as the preeminent graduate program for creative problem solving.
The achievements are remarkable given the backdrop of a global pandemic, a politically divided nation, and a resurgence for social justice. While many have been simply trying to survive, Richmond’s top creative entities have found a way to thrive.
According to Adweek, Martin was the only agency finalist to report double-digit growth this year. The agency won nine new accounts and created work for over 90 percent of their clients, involving 400+ productions. Kristen Cavallo, Martin’s CEO, attributes the success to a conscious decision to invest.
“We played offense. The choice was intentional and required nerve,” states Cavallo. “In 2020, lots of things were in flux – this was true regardless of your industry or business model. If you didn’t harness the wind, you missed the lesson.”
Their core investment: People. Specifically, people who spanned a wide range of perspectives, backgrounds, beliefs – and yes, genders and races. In total, Martin welcomed 70 new hires, including 50 percent BIPOC talent.
“In nearly every study, diversity in leadership results in higher profits and engagement,” adds Cavallo. “It doesn’t matter whether you are a feminist, equalist, or capitalist, it’s to your benefit to change the way you run your company… Moreover, it’s riskier not to.”
The Martin Agency has been awarded Adweek’s U.S. Agency of the Year, one of the highest accolades in the advertising industry. Above, the agency’s leadership team. Photo courtesy of The Martin Agency.
Martin didn’t waste any time in their efforts to “Fight Invisibility.” Beginning at the top, they comprised their leadership team of 63 percent females and 38 percent people of color. They overhauled their candidate interview and talent onboarding experience to center the individual, rooting out exclusive aspects like language, bias, and hiring manager expectations. And in agency-wide conversations, they consistently spoke up around racial reconciliation, white supremacy, and injustice against Black and Brown Americans.
“We force ourselves to be honest with ourselves, no matter how much bravery it requires,” states Abu Ngauja, Martin’s Associate Director of Talent & Culture. “Honest in our capabilities, in our weaknesses, in our ambition. We cannot be a place that lies. Our bar is too high.”
In short, Martin has become a living, breathing case study for a commitment to overdue structural change in advertising and beyond.
“We were not awarded Agency of the Year because we were lucky,” states Cavallo. “We built ourselves for growth. Diversity, by race, gender, and thought is a not-so-secret ingredient. We made it a priority three years ago.”
Indeed, when Cavallo assumed leadership, alongside Karen Costello, the first female Chief Creative Officer in Martin’s 53-year history, the agency’s evolution began. In an industry notoriously known for being a boys’ club, having two women at the helm of Martin’s new chapter was a powerful, visible change. One of the first actions taken was conducting an internal audit of salaries to correct the wage gap and enforce equal pay.
For me, the transition was personal and poignant – not only because it was taking place in Richmond, but because Costello, a highly accomplished, well-respected industry leader, was my former creative director and mentor at Deutsch LA when I first started out in advertising. Having a big ad star, not to mention one of few female CCOs, in little RVA was proof our humble city was making headway.
In August, Martin celebrated another milestone with the appointment of Danny Robinson, the agency’s first Black Chief Creative Officer, following Costello’s return to Los Angeles. Having been with the agency for 16 years, Robinson attests to the progress they’ve made.
“I am so proud of the work we’ve done this year,” states Robinson. “But I am even more proud of the way we did it – with impatience and perseverance, and with support and belief in each other.”
Arts & Letters ranked #5 of Fastest Growing Agencies in the World and was named one of the Top 50 Best Places to Work in the U.S. Above, the growing portrait wall of current employees. Photo by Mel Calabro.
Like Martin, Arts & Letters credits much of their success to people – employees, as well as client and production partners.
In 2017, Arts & Letters opened as a small agency in Scott’s Addition. Founder & Executive Creative Director Charles Hodges, once a former Creative Lead at Google, retained the tech titan as a client, and later acquired ESPN and NBC News. With the increased work, the agency grew. This year, it doubled in size, expanding to a second office in Shockoe Bottom, with the majority of people starting remotely.
“For the most part, we’re really a group of strangers who recently met and have had to come together in a very real way to navigate extremely challenging circumstances and find a way to still move forward,” states Hodges. “Our motto has always been ‘We’ll figure it out,’ from when we were eight people to now 145. As people, as companies, as communities, we’re all a work in progress. We’re excited that we have the chance to build something.”
Hodges believes Richmond plays an integral role in bringing that vision to life. He intentionally chose The River City as the agency’s headquarters for a variety of reasons – among them, the vibrant creative community and incomparable quality of life.
“People can do major market work with global impact, but not live in a major market,” explains Hodges. “This allows people to really build their career around their life, instead of their life around their career. It’s an important distinction that we think would have been hard to find anywhere else in this part of the country.”
No doubt about it, Richmond is on the radar of top agencies, brands, and tech companies looking to recruit the best graduates coming out of the VCU Brandcenter. In 2018, Richmond native Vann Graves returned to his hometown to serve as the Brandcenter’s fourth Executive Director.
“Richmond isn’t the same city that it was 20 years ago. The community has really rallied behind its arts district, food scene and the vast array of outdoor activities. It’s a cultural hub and a desirable place to live,” states Graves. “Plus, with the growth of employment opportunities – yes, at top-tier advertising agencies, but also at smaller creative shops, or major companies like Capital One, CarMax, Dominion, and SunTrust — Brandcenter alumni can build a challenging and rewarding career right here.”
Richmond is garnering attention as a small, affordable city with a high quality of life. Above, locals enjoy the popular happy hour on the lawn at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in pre-pandemic times. Photo by EVERGIB.
Caley Cantrell, Professor of Strategy and Creative Brand Management, agrees. “I believe RVA is absolutely right up there with what would have once been considered the only places to work: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and LA. Richmond has a stellar advertising reputation wrapped up in an affordable and enjoyable city.”
“More and more people are seeing the wisdom of living in a smaller market,” states Tom Scharpf, Professor of Creative and Brandcenter alum. “You don’t need to live in a big city to do big things. Martin has been proving that for decades, but back then, they were the exception. A lot has changed.”
The VCU Brandcenter (formerly the VCU Adcenter) opened its doors in 1996 and quickly gained recognition as one of the leading advertising and design programs in the country. Today, it continues to successfully prepare its students to work for some of the world’s biggest, most influential brands, all while adapting to a constantly evolving industry – even amid a global pandemic.
This year, the school launched three new endowed scholarships in support of a more diverse industry and maintained diversity and out-of-state numbers in its enrollment. Over the past two years, there’s been a 73 percent increase in diverse students, specifically more BIPOC and females.
“I think the Brandcenter has done a great job recruiting strong, diverse candidates,” states Ashley Sommardahl, Director of Student Affairs and Industry Outreach. “We need to work on raising more scholarship funds to help support them because we know that the biggest barrier to attending is the financial commitment.”
In addition to a focus on diversity, VCU Brandcenter Professor and Creative Director KT Schaeffer (also an alum) believes the school’s ongoing success can be attributed to the program’s multi-faceted approach to learning.
“We hold this polymathic view and know, based on experience from our faculty, staff, and alumni, that you don’t wear just one hat in your future job(s),” explains Schaeffer. “There are Strategists who shoot and edit films. Copywriters doing cinema 4D. Creative Brand Managers learning Adobe Illustrator. That crossover learning makes our students better creative problem solvers.”
The Brandcenter is one of 20 colleges, schools, and centers that make up the greater Virginia Commonwealth University, one of the nation’s premier urban, public research universities. Among a host of impressive rankings, VCU, Richmond’s largest employer, reports that 40 percent of its alumni opt to live and work in the city.
The VCU Brandcenter offers a two-year master’s program across five concentrations including art direction, copywriting, strategy, brand management and experience design. Photo by Rocket Pop Media.
Clearly, Richmond is doing something right.
And yet, we always have been. For years, everyday Richmonders have been working to help this city come into its own. You can see their efforts in our incredible street murals, artisan stores, craft breweries, top-notch restaurants, and buzzing entrepreneurial scene. Creativity abounds.
Like many, I believe Richmond has always been creative, but its potential has yet to be fully realized by the rest of the country – in some cases, not even by the people living here.
Finally, there is an awakening. Richmond is becoming known, not merely as a backdrop for creativity, but the inspiration for it. Our history less of a burden, and more an impetus for change. Just look to the events this summer.
Amid BLM protests rising up and Confederate statues coming down, Richmonders got creative.
One of the highlights was the transformation of the Robert E. Lee Memorial into Marcus-David Peters (MDP) Circle, an extraordinary graffiti-laden sanctuary dedicated to victims of racial violence and police brutality, created by the people of RVA. The reclaimed space received nationwide press and the iconic projections by artists Dustin Klein and Alex Criqui landed on the cover of National Geographic, putting Richmond front and center – no longer the Capital of the Confederacy, but of creativity.
For Richmond transplant R. Anthony Harris, it’s been a long time coming. He believes we’re seeing the final stages of the city’s 15-year rebrand. He should know. Back in 2005, he instigated Richmond becoming RVA when he founded this publication.
“RVA Magazine has always been a platform for creative and progressive thought in Richmond,” states Harris. “I am proud of what we have accomplished, with limited resources, for so long by encouraging everyone to be proud of who they are, the way they live, and how they work.”
Like countless others, Harris has played a significant role in the city’s evolution through tireless work and an aspiration to be part of something greater than himself. That collective desire to shape, influence, and move our city forward, particularly in the face of a complex, fractured past, is exactly why Richmond and its people are so special.
“There is an opportunity for Richmond to become a model for what a truly great city looks like,” states artist Noah Scalin. “That comes in part by supporting the creative community that already exists within its borders. We have no lack of talented, driven people who are great problem solvers here. They just need to be given the space, trust, and resources to do their thing.”
An image of George Floyd is projected on the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee at Marcus-David Peters Circle, a community gathering spot created earlier this summer. Photo by EVERGIB.
This year alone conveys the ambition of Richmonders. Along with the creation of MDP Circle, locals took action in other ways. Nonprofit arts center Studio Two Three led the charge on a variety of programming aimed at uplifting the voices and visions of RVA artists. Among the initiatives, History is Illuminating, a series of recontextualized signs on Black history in Richmond, and For as Long as Such Images are Needed, an exhibition in partnership with the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) at VCU.
Artist Hamilton Glass developed Mending Walls, a public art project bringing together RVA artists from different cultures and backgrounds to create murals around racial and social justice. VCU Alum and digital strategist Altimese Nichole, partnered with nonprofit Girls For A Change to launch a scholarship opportunity for local African American youth. Photographer Tania del Carmen created #OnHoldAtHome, a photo series raising awareness on community challenges during the pandemic. And Tim and Lauren Barry turned their home into the Billboard House, featuring dynamic projections that reminded Richmonders, even those in suburbia, to get into good trouble.
“Richmond is a creative hub,” says Lauren Barry, who works as an art director with event management firm, Markham. “The city has always been buzzing with creative energy – it’s one of the reasons we decided to put down roots here. You can’t escape art and creativity in Richmond.”
It’s true. And when Richmond’s creative worlds collide, amazing things happen. Such is the case when Martin tapped Scalin earlier this year to collaborate on an initiative to promote their client Old Navy. The national retailer planned to donate $30 million worth of clothing to families affected by COVID-19. The end result was a time-lapse video featuring Scalin in action, applying one of his signature techniques to create a large-scale portrait of an American family made entirely out of Old Navy clothing.
“It drew a ton of national attention not only to Scalin’s work, but to The Martin Agency and [innovation studio] SuperJoy,” states Amanda Russell, Co-Founder and Creative Director of motion graphics studio, Cream. “I love that they are choosing to highlight our city and the talent within, rather than hide from it.”
Director Adam Dorland of Quirk Gallery believes that Richmond is gaining attention by companies embracing and encouraging local artists. “Having organizations like The Martin Agency, Arts & Letters, and VCU’s Brandcenter based in Richmond promotes the idea that artists and creatives can make a life for themselves here.”
“Richmond is exploding,” says Jason St. Peter, Founder & Creative Director of Think branding and creative agency. “And much of the credit is due to the creative minds here who influence positive change every day.” Cabell Harris, Founder & Creative Director of WORK Labs, agrees. “I always say create work you love, with people you like, in a place you want to be.”
“The Journey Forward” is part of Mending Walls, a community project created by local artist Hamilton Glass that aims to facilitate dialogue and foster empathy through public art. Photo by Katrina Boone.
Richmond is definitely a place people want to be – and return to.
“I spent six years with Martin and fell in love with the city,” states Executive Producer Scott Friske of animation studio Hue & Cry, who recently moved back, having spent over 20 years of his career in Los Angeles. “The success of these three organizations puts Richmond in the conversation with towns like Portland, Oregon and Austin, Texas, where you see a concentration of creative output.” Additionally, Richmond has retained its unique identity – an asset that has helped, rather than hinder, its growth.
“Richmond truly seems to be experiencing a turning point in creativity,” says Macy West, Partner & Executive Producer at Mad Box Made. “There is a grit that has always run through RVA’s veins, but it is coming to the forefront, rather than only being the ‘underground’ movement.”
Executive Producer Melanie Cox says her company, Spang, was purposely built around working with agencies like Martin and Arts & Letters, as well as the innumerable other creative shops in town. “We designed our studio and edit suites to be an extension of creative agencies, a place where they can work, enjoy creature comforts and continue to churn out strong ideas,” she states. “The fact that Martin was founded in RVA and has chosen to stay in RVA has spawned work for an entire production community to flourish.”
J.L. Hodges, Partner & Creative Director of Overcoast Music + Sound says that people know they don’t need to leave Richmond to get extremely high quality work. His company applies a “locals first” approach as well. “Although we work with a global network of writers and composers, a large part of our talent pool is based right here in Richmond,” states Hodges. “We love that we are in a position to provide opportunities for the ‘home team,’ so to speak. We have always been proud ambassadors for Richmond.”
Danny MacNelly, partner at ARCHITECTUREFIRM, the local team behind the design of Arts & Letters’ new office space, states, “As a small business trying to do work in Richmond, we are amazed at what these groups are doing. Not amazed that the talent is here, but just in awe of their ability to create and communicate and attract some of the biggest clients anywhere to our town and keep them coming back. They are driving this city forward.”
After all we’ve endured in 2020, the concept of moving ahead – making progress, as well as an impact – feels strangely promising. Because let’s be honest, not everyone can look back on this year and feel successful. For many Richmonders, especially artists, entrepreneurs and small, minority- and women-owned businesses, this year has been a serious challenge.
Virginia Repertory Theatre is just one of countless creative organizations, along with local artists, entrepreneurs and small businesses, that will be relying on community support in the coming year. Photo by EVERGIB.
“My hope is that Richmond continues to work and thrive from within,” states Jolinda Smithson, Owner of Shapes & Colors and host of CreativeMornings Richmond. “That people decide to work, live and play here… found businesses, rent or buy their houses here, send their kids to local schools, and participate in local organizations.” She admits that Richmond is not always the easiest place to live, but feels optimistic seeing it grow and shift in positive ways.
Unlike major cities, Richmond’s relatively low cost of living also allows people freedom and opportunity to take more risks. But for the success to continue, “Richmond needs governance and economic development that preempts, promotes, and supports this growth with smart planning strategies,” states Kristin O’Connor, Owner & Executive Producer of RainMaker Studios. She wants to see responsible development and the right support from local government to further advance the community in its many diverse districts, small businesses, and large corporations.
Justin Bajan, Co-Founder & Creative Director of ad agency Familiar Creatures, believes Richmond has become a viable and respectable spot to continue or start a career. “My hope for the future is that the growth and success of Martin and Arts & Letters is just the beginning of what’s to come here. That the great talent within those walls don’t use this town as a stepping stone, but instead stays in town and builds more agencies with individual flavors and capabilities. Agencies that reflect the independence and boldness you see all throughout Richmond.”
Having grown up in Richmond myself, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much it had changed after being away for 12 years. When my husband and I moved back in 2014 to start our creative studio, EVERGIB, what stood out most to us were the people – other local entrepreneurs and organizations who took time to offer us guidance and advice; who became allies, colleagues, and friends. After living in big cities like New York and LA, it reminded us about the importance of community. Looking out for your neighbors, as well as lifting them up.
The recent achievements of The Martin Agency, Arts & Letters, and the VCU Brandcenter are undoubtedly a collective win for our city, as are their efforts behind increased diversity, equity, and inclusion. But critical to the city’s ongoing evolution is a commitment to continued investment in Richmond and its people.
As we enter a new year of possibilities, let’s remember that we’re all working to build something special here.
Together, we can make it happen.
Top Photo: The Martin Agency leadership team. Photo courtesy of The Martin Agency.
Projecting A Clear Message
Anya Sczerzenie | October 16, 2020
Topics: (the other) tim barry, black lives matter, Election 2020, George Floyd, Ghazala Hashmi, Lauren Barry, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, tim barry, Virginia Elections
In Chesterfield County, one couple with strong feelings about the current political climate have begun to express themselves through signs and projections on the front of their house.
A Chesterfield man named Tim Barry — no, not that one — has turned his home into a giant political projector screen.
From a tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg after her death to a declaration that “Breonna Taylor Deserved Better” to a projection of Biden’s infamous retort to Trump — “Will you shut up, man?” — Barry’s unashamed political messaging has drawn both support and disdain from his neighbors.
Tim and Lauren Barry have been involved in politics for a long time, having both worked for political campaigns in the past. Tim now works in public relations for a professional organization. They live in their Chesterfield home with their two young daughters.
Barry says that the first night they projected an image, Ruth Bader Ginsburg had just passed away.
“That was sort of the impetus to start the projections. We were talking about how upset we were about the justice passing, and the plans the Republicans were making to replace her, and we were upset,” Barry said. “We were angry about the way things were going. We knew we had to do something, and this was something we could do using our combined skills.”
Barry says that his wife, Lauren, is the person who creates the graphics that they project on the house.
“My wife is a really talented graphics artist,” Barry said. “I do the messages, and she makes them look amazing.”
The projections are not the Barrys’ first political display, however. Earlier in the year, the couple became caught in a battle with the county over a sign in their yard.
Tim and Lauren erected three large yellow letters in their yard after the killing of George Floyd in May. The letters — which spelled out “BLM” — have been a source of conflict between the Barrys and Chesterfield county officials. A zoning ordinance in the county prohibits residential signs from occupying over 14 square feet of space.
Most of their neighbors, however, have been supportive. The Barrys received a note from one local resident that read, “Goodness… Can I tell you how much this BLM sign means to me?” The note described the lettering as a “huge sign of hope.”
“Our feedback has been 95 percent positive,” said Barry.
Another neighbor, speaking to Channel 8 News in Chesterfield, said she was surprised that the sign was so “in-your-face,” and said she wished that it said ALM — all lives matter.
The letters are still securely fastened to Barry’s trees, and he has no intention of taking them down. The process to appeal the county’s decision may take several months, Barry said.
Unlike the BLM letters in the yard, there are no county ordinances against the projector images. The Barrys start the projector at sundown, and take the image down before they go to bed around 10:30 P.M. Unless it’s raining, they project images every night.
Tim Barry said that he is afraid of drawing too much attention to the house, in fear that someone who doesn’t like their message will retaliate.
“I don’t want to go in and make it contentious,” Barry said. “We are genuinely afraid that someone might do something to us.”
However, the house is already gaining popularity. According to Barry, at one point the house had its own instagram page with around 2,500 followers.
Local and state politicians have supported Barry’s messaging behind the scenes as well. When the county first sent a letter to the Barrys, warning them to take down their BLM sign, Tim Barry reached out to state Senator Ghazala Hashimi to ask for support.
“She put us in touch with a senior person from the county,” said Barry. “I’ve kept her office updated on what we’re doing.”
When Barry wanted to put up a projection image in support of congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, he informed her office beforehand so they could give permission. Barry says that other politicians have commented on photos of the house on Facebook.
“People are definitely noticing it,” Barry said. “But no one has asked us to put them up there.”
There was one more thing we had to ask Barry about. Readers of RVA Mag may notice that he shares a name with local musician Tim Barry. Barry says that he’s familiar with the musician, and that he’s encountered people who were disappointed that he wasn’t the other one.
“One time I went and got my hair cut at the barbershop, and people thought it was going to be him,” Barry said. “When I walked in, they were disappointed.”
Photos courtesy Ed Holten and Tim Barry
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line2010
|
__label__wiki
| 0.830687
| 0.830687
|
European Parliament resolution would seek sanctions on Chinese officials in Xinjiang
Stuart Lau
The European Parliament will urge European Union leaders to use new sanction powers to punish Xinjiang officials but stop short of invoking any claim of “genocide”, according to a draft resolution seen by the South China Morning Post.
The motion’s preparation comes shortly after the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, dodged questions whether he planned to introduce sanctions against those found to have suppressed the Uygur Muslim communities in China’s northwest.
Borrell said last week that none of the EU’s 27 member states had yet tabled any sanction plans on the issue of Uygurs – without mentioning that he was also empowered by the new EU sanctions rules to introduce such punitive measures himself.
Josep Borrell, the European Commission’s foreign policy head, introduced a sanctions programme last week but avoided saying whether it would be applied to Xinjiang. Photo: EPA-EFE
Attention to China’s treatment of the Uygurs and other ethnic Muslims in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has grown over the past three years, with human rights advocates contending their detention in re-education camps and allegations of forced labour make the situation a global calamity.
While campaigning in August, Joe Biden, now the US president-elect, said through a spokesman that “the unspeakable oppression that Uygurs and other ethnic minorities have suffered at the hands of China’s authoritarian government is genocide”.
While avoiding such language, the European Parliament draft resolution “calls on the member states and [Borrell] to swiftly evaluate the adoption of sanctions against the Chinese officials and state lead entities, like Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, responsible for devising and implementing the policy of mass detention of Uygurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, for the use of forced labour”.
ICC rejects Uygur calls to investigate China for genocide
Those “orchestrating the severe repression of religious freedom, freedom of movement and other basic rights in the region and in other places, such as Tibet” should also be sanctioned, it added.
The EU launched a programme last week to allow the 27-member bloc to impose sanctions on human rights offenders globally.
The draft resolution, which is nonbinding and expected to be passed by a large majority in the parliament, also sheds light on the continuing EU-China negotiations over an investment agreement to expand market access for EU businesses in China. The self-imposed deadline for those talks is the end of this year.
Any comprehensive agreement with China “must include adequate commitments to respect international conventions against forced labour”, the resolution says.
It also criticises the parliament’s and European Commission’s procurement of thermal cameras from Hikvision, a Chinese company whose equipment is used to monitor Uygurs in Xinjiang.
The European lawmakers will also ask EU officials for “greater coordination among democracies” in instituting sanctions and other measures to address human rights violations in China and Hong Kong.
China invites EU leaders to ‘see real situation in Xinjiang’
The United Nations has estimated that up to a million Uygurs were detained in internment camps that Chinese officials first referred to as re-education camps, then vocational training centres.
Beijing has since said all the “students” in the training facilities had “graduated”, implying that no more Uygurs are detained.
However, a series of leaks of internal government documents dispute that narrative, sketching a picture of a network of tightly guarded facilities and top-down directives from Communist Party leaders, according to the leaked documents, to “round up everyone who should be rounded up”.
Biden’s language reflects the bipartisan nature of opposition in Washington to the activities in Xinjiang. In June, US President Donald Trump signed into law a bill authorising sanctions against Chinese officials over the mass internment there.
The Uygur Human Rights Policy Act requires greater US scrutiny of potential human rights abuses in the region and demands that Chinese officials deemed responsible for violations be subject to economic sanctions and barred from entering the US.
Beyond sanctions, the new law requires a report by the FBI into efforts by Chinese government actors to harass Uygurs living in the US and a report from the US State Department into the human rights situation in Xinjiang, including fresh estimates of how many people have been detained in the camps.
More from South China Morning Post:
EU and Britain decline, for now, to sanction Chinese officials involved in Hong Kong and Xinjiang actions
Beijing’s EU envoy criticises unfriendly business environment for Chinese companies
Hong Kong national security law: EU plans ‘comprehensive and coordinated’ response over legislation, foreign affairs chief says
This article European Parliament resolution would seek sanctions on Chinese officials in Xinjiang first appeared on South China Morning Post
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line2014
|
__label__wiki
| 0.996716
| 0.996716
|
Singapore begins coronavirus vaccination campaign
The city-state, which has suffered a mild outbreak, became the first country in Asia to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine
Singapore began a coronavirus vaccination campaign Wednesday with a nurse receiving the first jab, making it among the first Asian nations to roll out inoculations.
The city-state, which has suffered a mild outbreak, became the first country in Asia to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine earlier this month, and its programme kicked off with healthcare workers.
Nurse Sarah Lim, 46, whose work includes screening suspected Covid-19 patients, was the first to be immunised, the health ministry said.
"I feel grateful and thankful for being the first to be vaccinated," the nurse from the national centre for infectious diseases was cited as saying by the Straits Times newspaper.
More than 30 staff from the centre are receiving the first dose of the two-shot vaccine Wednesday, and will get the second next month.
After healthcare workers, the city-state will vaccinate the elderly, and then the rest of the population.
The government expects to have enough vaccines for all 5.7 million people in the city by the third quarter of 2021, with the voluntary vaccine free for all Singaporeans and long-term residents.
Other countries that have started immunisations include Britain, EU nations, and the United States, although most Asian nations are yet to begin.
In China, where the virus emerged, at least one million people have already received jabs after vaccine candidates were approved for emergency use, although they have so far been limited to priority groups such as state employees.
The inoculations are yet to receive official approval.
Vaccinations have been given in limited numbers in other parts of the region, including to members of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's security team, and to US troops stationed in South Korea.
Singapore has recorded about 58,000 infections, mostly among low-paid migrant workers living in crowded dormitories, and just 29 deaths.
sr/jfx
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line2015
|
__label__wiki
| 0.847341
| 0.847341
|
pro basketball league salaries
That’s the plan here.”. “I’ll tell you this. UCAM Murcia, the team he represented as a small forward last season (despite standing at six foot seven), competes in the Liga ACB, the Spanish top flight, which like its football counterpart is dominated by Real Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. You never know, you may end up with a long career playing the game you love for good money. Ha! He signed a three-year contract worth $83.5 million overall and $24.8 million for the first year, according to Forbes.com. Average salaries in the Liga ACB are thought to be around or upwards of the £100,000 mark, so, despite basketball not enjoying a particularly high status as a sport in Britain, a player of the Love Island star’s ability could expect to earn a very comfortable wage. Women's Basketball Online: WNBA Salary Scale, BallinEurope.com: Budgets of Basketball Clubs in Europe, MLB Fanhouse: Average MLB Salary Tops $3M in 2010. With all of this considered, the NBA may just be the best league for a player to be in. This also puts the spotlight on the players who get these minimum deals. “Then, when you find a really good one, and he’s deciding between Bulgaria and Canada or Chile and Canada, I’ve got to sell him on why he should come with me.”. Foreign Professional League Salaries. And an assist in that sort of boost-up is part of what head coach Jeff Dunlap was offering as he recruited players for the Edge. The math is pretty simple, if only because the numbers aren’t that big. Game Day! Who has the most Buzzer Beaters in NBA History? 1 being least likely, and 10 being most likely. From the outside, people will ask: ‘Why are you single?’ That’s probably 75-80 per cent the reason why I’m single.”. Steph Curry, the highest-paid player in the NBA makes a cool $40 million per year by way of being one of the few max-level players still on the team that drafted him. Copyright 2020 StepienRules, all rights reserved. He is a professional writer, editor and translator. The highest-paid European players make between $2.8 million to $5.3 million. But whatever happens, you will be better because we’re going to coach you … we’re really going to coach you.’”. If things work out as Dunlap hopes they will, he figures it should facilitate future recruitment to the Edge. The 28-year-old’s hitherto unruffled outlook was shaken somewhat as the show entered its final week, when the notorious headline challenge revealed tabloid reports which suggested his partner India Reynolds was being motivated by money. They can then move back to North America with money in their pocket and start a life in coaching, or outside of basketball. David Thyberg began his writing career in 2007. One thing I’ve found out is that there are way more pro athletes out there than there are jobs,” said Dunlap. Gregory Shamus/Getty Images Sport/GettyImages. It works out to an average salary of just over $700 a week for those who end up making the St. John’s Edge, the National Basketball League of Canada expansion team that begins its inaugural season in two week’s time. ASVEL has won the most French basketball championships with 18. “He was six months on campus, and then he’s the ninth overall pick of the Dallas Mavericks,” said Dunlap. National Basketball Association. “They can see what you do and how you’ve done it. That means needing to have another job in the offseason to have a proper living. The minimum salary in 2009 in the NFL was $295,000, with the top players earning just shy of $27 million per year. James, a four-time MVP, now represents the Los Angeles Lakers, has a contract worth a staggering $112 million (about £90 million) across four seasons. The minimum salary for a rookie in the 2010-11 season is $473,604, jumping up to $885,120 after three years in the league and $1,352,181 for a 10-year veteran. The answer is that a North American who travels over can expect to get paid anywhere between $65,000 and $100,000, depending on the league and the market. You just need the right lure. A player in his 10th season making the minimum is making three-times that of a rookie on the minimum scale. The pool is vast. The calm before the ⛈. Pension. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. The average team salary for a team in Europe is about $17 million, with teams in Greece, Russia, Spain and Italy often having bigger budgets. As for the rookies of the NBA, the top draft picks also make huge sums of money. Copyright 2020 Leaf Group Ltd. / Leaf Group Media, All Rights Reserved. There are professional basketball leagues all over the world. So, it’s been my job to swim in the pool and find the good ones. The fact is, these players are missing out on a lot of money by choosing to stay. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The NBA makes headlines due to the rate that it signs players deals worth up to $40 million a season. It’s time to present the Top 10 EuroLeague salaries of the upcoming season and set the record straight on many reports about European salaries By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net With China taking a hit due to the new CBA rules and the NBA Supermax deals not leaving a lot of money on the table for mid-level players, EuroLeague is having a phenomenal offseason. “So I have been telling these guys, ‘You come here and let us work with you for five months. You should do the research, draw up a list of pros and cons, and decide. There is another option for great basketball players that probably will not play in the NBA. Some players in the NBLC have played in the NBA — league MVP Royce White of the league champion London Lightning being the most obvious present example — although no one has yet gone from NBL Canada to the NBA. There may be many reasons for a basketball player to stay in North America instead of going overseas. Players in the Edge’s training camp, which began this week in St. John’s, have found themselves in circuits in Luxembourg, Albania and Mexico. This does not mean that the rookies on minimum deals are making peanuts, however. Most players get there by attending a US college on a scholarship and playing on their team. © 2020 Associated Newspapers Limited. For many, of course, it’s the dream of playing in the National Basketball Association. Soko, though, doesn’t play in the NBA – he went through the US college basketball system, but went undrafted in 2014 following his senior year, and instead moved to France and then Greece to fulfil his dreams of becoming a pro. Salaries in the top development league in the US averaged between $12,000 and $24,000 per season, according to an article published in 2007 by Tom Goldman of NPR. Let’s imagine a 20-year-old young man who travels overseas to play. At an average of $100,000 a year, they will make a million dollars over the life of their career, with little in the way of living expenses, plus more endorsement opportunities. A 2010 article in Sports Illustrated reports that NBA Commissioner David Stern has plans to reduce player salary costs by about one-third in an effort to cut back on the projected league-wide losses of about $340 million to $350 million for the 2010 season. The huge salaries of NBA basketball players dominate headlines across the US, with protracted contract sagas … Some players who are more high profile, such as former NBA players, might get paid more. Earning a spot on one of these teams means being a step closer to the NBA, but it is still difficult. Most of those drafted players end up on NBA teams, while others might end up on the D-League teams for their parent clubs. Moving to Europe isn’t everything, and money isn’t everything either. In most European basketball leagues, average starting salaries typically range from $65,000 to $100,000, depending on the league. This is professional basketball. That’s about the equivalent of the price of a pair of Lonzo Ball Big Baller basketball shoes, plus taxes, with a little left over for fast-food meal for two. The second they see any potential they use you – and then they throw you away. Forward-centre Rudolph Joly isn’t yet at camp in St. John’s because he’s clewing up his second season in a league in Vietnam. “If I develop into a Euro League player, and I go from a $5,000 player in this league to a $100,000 player over there, well, I’m going to wave your flag, saying ‘Look what they did for me,’ and here’s hoping that attracts others,” he said. There are scouts attending EuroLeague games all the time, and young players are regularly drafted to the NBA. For example, J.R. Bremer earned over $1 million in net salary from Triumph Lyubersty in Russia in 2008 after being waived by the Charlotte Bobcats in 2005, according to the New York Times. The salary range for players in the NBA is based around a system that measures years of service, offering the highest rates to veterans of 10 years or more. That’s the forte of Doug Plumb, my assistant coach, as well. While the National Basketball Association in the United States may be the most prestigious league in the world, it is not the only league in which basketball players, both men and women, can make a healthy living. Chris Callaway started writing professionally in 2007 and has worked as sports editor, managing editor and senior editor of "The Racquet" as well as written for the "La Crosse Tribune" and other newspapers in western Wisconsin. Sorry you must be at least 19 years of age to consume this content. The current collective bargaining agreement expires in June 2011, and it is unlikely the the players association will accept such reductions without some form of expanded revenue sharing. Major League Baseball players earn an average of $3,014,572 a year, with top players making $20 million to $25 million a season. The NHL plays minimum-contract players a little bit over half-a-million dollars, although there is no increase with time. “One of the things I’m going to push is that as an assistant coach for a large part of my life, individual workouts and training are something that’s in me,” said Dunlap. If you are a serious young basketball player, especially in North America, then your goal is a career in the NBA.
Everything Is Never Quite Enough Lyrics Translation, Avi Nash Goldman Sachs, Gigi Foster Husband, Rubidium And Oxygen Formula, Lac Viceroy Ripon, Polyamory Boundaries Examples, Hyperbola Foci Calculator,
https://sailbainbridge.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Sail-Bainbridge-logo.jpg 0 0 https://sailbainbridge.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Sail-Bainbridge-logo.jpg 2020-11-05 22:35:352020-11-05 22:35:35pro basketball league salaries
pro basketball league salaries November 5, 2020
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line2021
|
__label__wiki
| 0.925534
| 0.925534
|
SciFi Diner Podcast Ep. 133 – Our Interview with Craig Sheeler of Star Trek: Secret Voyage
http://media.blubrry.com/scifidinerpodcast/p/traffic.libsyn.com/scifidiner/SciFi_Diner_Podcast_Ep._133_-_Our_Interview_with_Craig_Wheeler_of_Star_Trek__Secret_Voyage.mp3
Our Interview with Craig Sheeler of Star Trek: Secret Voyage
Download the iFriendly Episode here.
Music at the end of this week’s episode is the song The Final Rewind by Tyrad.
Interview: Craig Sheeler of Star Trek: Secret Voyage
Trivia: Winner of the Kristen Bauer AND Emelie Ullerup signed prints
TV News: Green Arrow on CW, Revolution Trailer, BSG Blood & Chrome Trailer
Movie News: Ryan Reynolds new Batman
TWIST: Nimoy might have played Sybok in Star Trek 5
SciFi Five in Five: Great Star Trek Worf Quotes
Trivia Question: What does Species 8472 and the Cylons have in common?
Answer: Kate Vernon
Prize: Kristen Bauer AND Emelie Ullerup signed prints
Winner: Richie Selfridge
Fringecasting
Green Light! The CW Picks Up ‘Arrow’
The streak is broken! After Wonder Woman, Locke & Key, and Powers we were starting to think that new superhero television shows were doomed, but that Oliver Queen–he’s a wily one!
This week, all the American television networks have been announcing which shows will return next season and which pilots have been picked up to series. The CW has announced that Arrow, the new live action Green Arrow series that has nothing to do with the live action Green Arrow from Smallville, will be slinging its way to television screens come fall.
I’ve heard mixed things about the pilot but I guess we’ll all find out for sure after the summer.
Arrow is written and produced by Andrew Kreisberg, Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim, all of whom have strong ties to comics and comic book media properties (like, well, Green Lantern).
Watch the first trailer for Revolution
With today’s media upfront presentation of its fall schedule, NBC has released the first trailer for Revolution — the new post-apocalypse drama set in a world where all power has ceased.
Tim Guinee (Stargate SG-1‘s Tomin) co-stars and features heavily in the trailer — but beware of significant spoilers in the trailer and the show description below!
Revolution is produced by J.J. Abrams (LOST) and Eric Kripke (Supernatural).
The series launches this fall and will air Mondays at 10/9c, enjoying the benefits of powerhouse The Voice as its lead-in.
Here is the network’s full description of the series from today’s press release:
Our entire way of life depends on electricity. So what would happen if it just stopped working? Well, one day, like a switch turned off, the world is suddenly thrust back into the dark ages. Planes fall from the sky, hospitals shut down, and communication is impossible. And without any modern technology, who can tell us why? Now, 15 years later, life is back to what it once was long before the industrial revolution: families living in quiet cul-de-sacs, and when the sun goes down lanterns and candles are lit. Life is slower and sweeter. Or is it? On the fringes of small farming communities, danger lurks. And a young woman’s life is dramatically changed when a local militia arrives and kills her father, who mysteriously — and unbeknownst to her — had something to do with the blackout. This brutal encounter sets her and two unlikely companions off on a daring coming-of-age journey to find answers about the past in the hopes of reclaiming the future.
From director Jon Favreau (“Iron Man,” “Iron Man 2”) and the fertile imaginations of J.J. Abrams (“Lost,” “Person Of Interest”) and Eric Kripke (“Supernatural”), comes a surprising “what if” action-adventure series, where an unlikely hero will lead the world out of the dark. Literally. The series stars Billy Burke (“The Twilight Saga”), Tracy Spiridakos (“Being Human”), Anna Lise Phillips (“Terra Nova”), Zak Orth (“Romeo + Juliet“), Graham Rogers (“Memphis Beat”), J.D. Pardo (“A Cinderella Story”), Giancarlo Esposito (“Breaking Bad”), David Lyons (“The Cape”), Maria Howell (“The Blind Side”), Tim Guinee (“Iron Man”) and Andrea Roth (“Rescue Me”). Kripke, Abrams, Favreau and Bryan Burk (“Lost,” “Star Trek”) serve as executive producers. “Revolution” is produced by Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Bad Robot Productions, Kripke Enterprises and Warner Bros. Television. The pilot was directed by Favreau.
NBC also released three additional clips from the series’ pilot episode:
What do you think? Is this going to be a “revolution” for the struggling peacock network? Will you be tuning in?
BSG Blood & Chrome Trailer
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/tvnews.php?id=88245
Ryan Reynolds To Take Over As Batman After The Dark Knight Rises
Christopher Nolan has always said that The Dark Knight Rises would be the last film in his Batman trilogy, but that doesn’t mean that Warner Bros. wants to stop producing adventures for the caped crusader. The franchise is a surefire box office hit and it wouldn’t make sense for the studio to just drop it after The Dark Knight Rises. They already lost Harry Potter and I’m sure that they’re not eager to lose another huge franchise.
Today, the studio announced that they plan on giving Batman a reboot once Christopher Nolan steps away from the franchise. Being a reboot, none of the original cast will be returning which means that the studio needs to find a new actor to play the caped crusader. Following in the footsteps of Christian Bale is a daunting task for just about anyone but Warner Bros. seems to think that Ryan Reynolds is the man for the job.
Yes, you read that right. Once Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale depart from the Batman universe, Warner Bros. will reboot it with Ryan Reynolds in the lead role. The studio recently worked with him on Green Lantern and though the film flopped, it wasn’t Reynolds’ fault. He showed us that he could craft an effective superhero and Warner Bros. obviously enjoyed his performance. Much of the film’s faults stemmed from the writing and directing, not from Reynolds’ performance.
“We’ve begged Chris [Nolan] to stay on board but he refuses. He feels that he can’t do anything more with the series after this third film. We don’t want to let Batman die though, we know there are tons of fans out there that will want more and that’s why we’re looking into a reboot,” says Barry Meyer, CEO of Warner Bros.
“We loved the work that Ryan did for us on Green Lantern and we feel that he’s the right man to lead the Batman franchise. He’s an extremely talented individual and we hope that fans will embrace him as the new Batman,” continued Meyer.
As for directors, nothing has been announced as of yet but apparently, the studio wants Duncan Jones. Jones, the director of Source Code, was rumored for both The Wolverine and Man Of Steel at one point so it’s clear that studios feel that he can handle big franchises. This is by no means confirmed though but it is what our source close to the studio has told us.
“Duncan impressed a lot of people with his work on Source Code and Moon, he’s very in demand right now and Warner Bros. is hoping to have him take over the Batman franchise,” says a source close to the studio.
So there you have it, Duncan Jones and Ryan Reynolds taking on Batman, what do you think?
I honestly enjoyed Reynolds’ work in Green Lantern and while I am surprised that Warner Bros. has chosen him to lead the franchise, I’m not upset with the choice. I think he has a lot of potential but he hasn’t reached it yet. He still hasn’t had that one huge role that will skyrocket him onto the A-list. With his recent casting in the Batman reboot, this could be his moment. I feel like he’s been on the cusp of greatness for a long time now and with this role, he’ll be able to solidify his place on the A-list.
That being said, the studio had high hopes for Green Lantern and the film ended up flopping hard. Does that mean there’s a risk of the Batman reboot flopping too if Reynolds is leading it? I don’t think so, like I said above, Green Lantern‘s problems were with its script and direction, I don’t think you can fault Reynolds at all for the movie’s poor reception and box office take.
As for Duncan Jones, I’m sold. I love both Source Code and Moon and I think he’ll bring a very interesting vision to the Batman series. He’ll give us something very different than Nolan did but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think both him and Reynolds will infuse a new energy into the series and give us an exciting final product.
This is a lot to take in and fanboys will surely be split right down the middle on this decision but as you can tell, I’m on board. I love what Nolan and Bale did with Batman but I’m ready for a fresh new take on the iconic superhero.
What about you? Are you on board with Reynolds and Jones leading the Batman reboot.
Nimoy was NOT happy he was passed over for Star Trek V’s villain
The 1989 release Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is generally regarded by Trek fans as one of the worst in the canon. With a rogue Vulcan trying to find God at the center of the universe, and the Enterprise crew in hot pursuit, it was definitely a weird premise. But it could have been a whole lot weirder.
After Sean Connery turned down the role of central baddie Sybok, stage actor Laurence Luckinbill took up the character and did an admirable job. But, according to Luckinbill, there was one more actor in the running: Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy, apparently wanted to play both characters in a dual role.
“He did not say one word to me for quite a long time, other than ‘Hello.’ I found out later he had really, really pushed hard to have this be a double role, a dual role for him,” Luckinbill told StarTrek.com. “I don’t know if this is absolutely true. That was the scuttlebutt, and I got that from very high up in the food chain of information, that Leonard wanted to play Sybok and play Spock. That would have been a tremendous thing to do that, but since they weren’t twins, they cast me.”
Though he may not have been on the best terms with Nimoy at the time, Luckinbill said Spock eventually warmed to him a bit by the time filming started to wrap.
“The best compliment I got was, in the last scenes, 20 or 25 weeks later, Leonard looked at me and said, ‘You know, you’re terrific in this.’ I thought that was a great send-off,” he said.
Sound off: Do you think double the Nimoy would have made Trek V better, or worse?
SciFi 5@5: Classic Worf quotes.
5. Classic Worf Quote
Kira: What do Klingons dream about?
Worf: Things that would send cold chills down your spine, and wake you up in the middle of the night. No, it is better you do not know.
4. Another great one from DS9 – Children of Time:
Kid: Are you the Son of Mogh?
Worf: Yes, I am.
Kid: Is it true you can kill someone just by looking at them?
Worf: Only when I am angry.
3.Picard: “Return that moon to its orbit.”
Q: “I have no powers! Q, the ordinary!”
Picard: “Q, the liar! Q, the misanthrope!”
Q: “Q, the miserable, Q, the desperate! What must I do to convince you people?”
Worf: “Die.”
Q: “Oh, very clever, Worf. Eat any good books lately?”
2. Worf: Congratulations. You are now fully dilated to ten centimeters. You may now give birth.
Keiko: That’s what I’ve been doing!!
1.”Sir, I must protest, I am not a merry man.” (Worf, “Qpid”)
Arrow Batman Battlestar Galactica Blood & Chrome Craig Sheeler CW Emelie Ullerup Kristen Bauer Nimoy Revolution Ryan Reynolds Secret Voyage Star Trek Sybok Worf
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0033.json.gz/line2032
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.