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Mid April Roundup.
Greg Ieronimo-Never Leaving California. Greg Ieronimo, who wowed us with his 7-track debut EP in 2014, doubles our fun here with his followup 14-track full-length release Leaving California. Ieronimo is Power Pop with two capital Ps, as his way with both a hook and crunchy guitars recalls many of the classic artists of the genre. Whether its the Matthew-Sweet-circa-100%-Fun blast of the title track or the bouncy staccato beat of "You Love Me" or the shoulda-been-a-theme-song-for-a-modern-day-Monkees-reboot "Best Day of Our Life", Ieronimo's knack for melody and eagerness to rock shine through. Elsewhere, "Outta Sight" is a better Weezer song than Weezer has put out in recent years, and "Beautiful Disaster" would slip in nicely on a Cheap Trick album. Another outstanding release in what's already shaping up to be a great year for power pop.
Never Leaving California by Greg Ieronimo
Gregg Stewart-Gregg Stewart. Speaking of Greg(g)s, Gregg Stewart, the former frontman of Americana band Stewboss, brings us his self-titled solo debut that he says is inspired by the year 1978, his favorite year in music. And with his blonde hair and beard, he's got the Andrew Gold/Jay Ferguson look down as well. Leadoff track "R is for Rockstar" is an amusing look at how to act like a hotel-trashing, groupie-loving 70s rocker, "Let's Go Find a Night" channels solo Mick Jagger, and the driving, catchy "You're the One" practically begs you to roll down the car windows and sing along. Also worth cranking up are rockers "Stone Cold Fox" (which Stewart says is a tribute to Joan Jett) and the soulful "Give it All You Got". So party like it's 1978, and be glad you don't have to wait in a gas line while listening to these tunes.
Bread & Butter-Bread & Butter. And speaking of 1978, Seattle's Bread & Butter comes out of the blocks with an album full of songs that you would have likely heard on your local AOR station had they existed back then. Even though you've pretty much heard it before, they make it fresh - "Worst of Times" kicks off the proceedings with a sound that's big enough and with enough swagger to make you feel like they've re-invented the rock wheel. "Desperation" and "Keys to the City" distill Kiss and Cheap Trick, and "Shoot My Mouth Off" shows their way with a mid-tempo rocker. These guys just have the sound of something bigger, and if revivalists like Oasis, The Strokes and Jet can hit it big, there's no reason this crew can't. (Other the general fragmentation of the music biz and declining market share of rock in the last 15-20 years, but who's counting?)
Bread & Butter by Bread & Butter
Labels: Bread and Butter, Greg Ieronimo, Gregg Stewart
Early April Roundup.
Corin Ashley-Broken Biscuits. Corin Ashley has been through a lot since we last heard from him in 2013 with the wonderful New Lion Terraces. In January 2016, he suffered a parietal lobe stroke which left him unable to move the fingers on his left hand and with a paralyzed vocal cord. After some hard work with a neurosurgeon who had experience with musicians recovering from brain injuries, Ashley re-learned how to sing and play the guitar and was back on stage by the end of the year, and he's also managed to release a new album which may actually be his best yet. While his previous releases were more chamber/baroque-pop oriented (one of his albums wasn't called Songs from the Brill Bedroom for nothing), this one has a more immediate appeal, as though Ashley is seizing his new lease on life. The fairly raucous opener "Little Crumbles" recalls McCartney in rock-and-roll mode, the delightful "Wind Up Boy" (with vocals from Tanya Donnelly) is another upbeat pop treat and "In Appropriate Fashion" is straight-up power pop. But fans of the old Ashley have no need to fret either - "Magpie over Citadel", "Junior Partner" and "Powder Your Face With Sunshine" are pristine chamber pop numbers. A triumphant return, and one of 2017's best to date.
Danny de la Matyr-Crybaby. You can be forgiven if Danny de la Matyr's name doesn't sound familiar, but if you're a long-time reader of this site you might recall his band called The Sheers, who put out the fine Goodbye World back in 2006/2007. We haven't heard much from him since, although he's worked with Rhett Miller, Jesse Malin and more recently Luther Russell, both solo and with Those Pretty Wrongs, Russell's project with Big Star's Jody Stephens. During all that time he was putting together his solo debut, and it was worth the time. After a couple of lovely, Elliott Smith-style tracks to open the album, things perk up with the slinky melody and staccato guitars of the title track, the power balladry of "How Can it Be?" and the chiming power pop of "Lines". Other standouts include the Beatlesque "Skeleton Key", the rocking "Misfire" and the anthemic piano pop of "Fade to Grey". A solid disc from start to finish.
Crybaby by Danny de la Matyr
Wiretree-Towards the Sky. Kevin Peroni has been releasing quality indie-rock/power pop albums as long as I've doing this blog, and on his fifth full-length the Austonian comes through again. From the understated opener "Let Me In" to the driving, ELO-like "J.F. Sebastian" (an homage to the Blade Runner character?) to the classic Wiretree sound of "Dive" to the trippy title track, Towards the Sky is a welcome addition to the Wiretree canon. And "Didn't Know Your Name" might be the album's best track, with its steady build toward a driving climax.
Towards the Sky by Wiretree
Labels: Corin Ashley, Danny de la Matyr, The Sheers, Wiretree
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Interview – Militia Vox – Tough and beautiful
Phil King February 9, 2015 Hear, Interviews, Read, See No Comments
The impossible has just happened. Someone, in this case Militia Vox, has covered a Polly Harvey song and actually captured the anger, the desperate, the pure violence of the PJ original. Vox has done created an original version of the classic and made it her own. To this reviewer, PJ Harvey is god and to cover her blasphemy, but Vox has done it. And the occupying video demonstrates the extreme emotions of the songs. ”Rid of Me” is a song of obsessive gone to the highest level, and Vox captures all that, disturbingly well. Vox deserves to be heard everywhere, and her version is perfect for all those people who need a new Halloween psychological thrill/chill. On another note, this is one serious musician with a serious agenda. Read her interview below. You’ll fall in love with her, just like I have. FUCKING AMAZING
1. How long have you been playing music? Where are you from originally?
I’ve been playing music since I was 8 years old. My first instrument was piano, I was classically trained and used to compete- and even win! Then I joined school choirs, did plays and musicals, and went to music conservatory for college. There I got in my first band and everything started to make sense. It was a goth/industrial band- Disciples of Astaroth (DOA.)
I’m from Columbia, Maryland, originally… back when it was horse farms and quiet neighborhoods.
2. It takes a lot of balls to cover PJ Harvey. You do a tremendous job. In fact, this is sacrilege, but your version is even better than PJ’s. What other bands have influenced you?
Thank you for that. I love PJ Harvey- she is such a fucking genius. I loved her since the moment I first heard her. I think what I love about her most is that she just lets her sound spill out of her. It’s so raw and in the moment. She’s not editing herself to sound prettier or mincing words. No one writes lyrics the way she does, she’s tremendously underrated as a songwriter. I would put her up there with Joan Baez, Carole King, Stevie Nicks, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush… If there’s anything to astrology (and I think there is) I think part of the reason I can honestly interpret and re-interpret PJ’s words and music is because we are both Libras- we have a dualistic nature to our energy, fierce yet feminine, emotional yet sturdy, wild yet laser focused.
Other bands/artists that have influenced me (in no particular order): Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Dio, Judas Priest, Tool, Alice in Chains, The Cure, Metallica, Celtic Frost, Tina Turner, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, King Crimson, Cream, L7, Babes in Toyland, Hole, Nirvana, Type O Negative, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Deftones, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Queen… the list goes on…
3. Do you like to play live or do you prefer studio work?
It used to be that I loved live performance the best and despised the studio. Reason being that the music never sounded as good recorded as it did in my head. After many ups and downs and a handful of horrendous studio experiences, I finally found the right crew to make my dreams and nightmares come true, in the best possible way. Working with Mike Wolpe (BAIT, producer) has been truly rewarding. He has been instrumental in helping me get my brain on wax. I still love playing live because that’s when the point of it all makes sense. Music is made to be shared, enjoyed and worshipped with others.
4. Do you write music true to you? Where do you get your material?
I’ve always written music that’s true to me. Which is arguably why I haven’t gotten as far as I could have by this point! But I don’t know how else to write other than how it naturally comes out of me. I’ve always made the statements I’ve wanted to make, musical and otherwise. I know I’ve been misunderstood by many and people have often looked at me and scratched their heads. It’s fine. I refuse to dumb myself down or write from a generic POV. I’m the one that’s gotta look myself in the mirror! And I have so many things I need to say before my last breath.
My material often comes out of automatic writing or what I call ‘seance writing.’ I will think of a subject or word that I find intriguing or provocative and just write pages and pages and pages about it continuously without stopping until I’m spent. Then I go back and pick out the most compelling parts. Or sometimes I’ll write the music first and then I’ll go back and think about the scene that the music sets or what the mood feels like and then build the song and story from there. Who knows where it truly comes from. All of my love, hate, anger, sadness, sex and life force simultaneously compounded into pen strokes. It’s an equation that you can’t rightfully explain… but you should all try it sometime.
5. Anything you want to say I didn’t ask. I really can’t wait to see you live. Please play Pittsburgh.
Thank you so much for taking the time to give a fuck and listen to me. I can’t wait to sing “Rid of Me” for you, in person!!
www.MILITIAISMYNAME.com
rock Eno alternative blues indie rock singer-songwriter post-punk LA indie singer/songwriter pop funk Folk hip-hop Music NYC brooklyn alternative rock dance. Americana electronic audiofuzz dance punk r&b indie pop dream pop pop music electronica soul
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el salvador hurricane 2020
As of Wednesday, Bilwi was still without electricity, but cell service was restored Tuesday. Curated pages dedicated to humanitarian themes and specific humanitarian crises. ... though it has a slight chance of padding the 2020 stats. From high-risk areas, 880 people were evacuated to 230 shelters distributed throughout El Salvador. The whole country of El Salvador is on Red Alert for the extreme weather and impact from Hurricane Eta. View of a flooded area due to the overflow of the Chamelecon river in La Lima municipality, Cortes department, northern Honduras, on November 18, 2020, following the passage of Hurricane Iota, now degraded to a tropical storm. Central American countries began to see an improvement in the weather on Wednesday after suffering the violent impact of cyclone Iota, which dissipated over El Salvador after leaving at least 14 dead, flooded towns and damage to road infrastructure. Weather forecasts indicate that the remnants of Hurricane Iota will pass through El Salvador over the next few days as a tropical storm or depression, generating dangerous winds and rainfall throughout the country. More than 30 people had to be rescued by boats from the flooding caused by intense rains from Tropical Storm Amanda on Sunday, May 31, 2020, in El Salvador. Find help on how to use the site, read terms and conditions, view the FAQs and API documentation. The main floods observed Wednesday were in the northern cities of La Lima, El Progreso and other communities of the productive Sula Valley, in the vicinity of San Pedro Sula — the second city in the country, already punished by Eta. The remnants of Hurricane Iota moved into El Salvador … Sun, Nov 29, 2020 LOGIN Subscription Offers After passing across northern Nicaragua and southern Honduras, IOTA caused widespread damage. 2020’s Worst Hurricane Slams Into Central America. Open job opportunities in the humanitarian field. The Copernicus EMS was activated in rapid mapping mode (. Portions of Nicaragua and El Salvador: 2 to 4 inches (50 to 100 mm), with isolated maximum totals of 6 inches (150 mm). 2020-11-12T09:20:45.779Z China News Service, November 12th. With a little more than 520,000 km2 and 50 million inhabitants, Central America is a target of hurricanes that form in the Caribbean, but it is also vulnerable to the eruption of some 30 active volcanoes and constant earthquakes as it is part of the Ring of Fire of the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador and Panama: 4 to 8 inches (100 to 200 mm), with isolated maximum totals of 12 inches (300 mm). OCHA coordinates the global emergency response to save lives and protect people in humanitarian crises. The remnants of Hurricane Iota moved into El Salvador Wednesday, as the storm continues to pound Nicaragua with strong winds and heavy rains even after weakening from a hurricane to a tropical storm. We advocate for effective and principled humanitarian action by all, for all. Southern Nicaragua and Costa Rica: … Part of the 2020 Pacific hurricane season: Tropical Storm Amanda was a short-lived but devastating tropical cyclone that is regarded as the worst natural disaster in El Salvador since Hurricane Mitch. After weakening to a tropical storm, its “associated moisture remnants” are located 35 km west-northwest of San Salvador, the Environment Ministry of that country reported. Central America - Hurricane IOTA update (GDACS, NOAA, media) (ECHO Daily Flash of 18 November 2020) Tropical Storm IOTA reached El Salvador on 18 November, its … Hurricane Iota, Weakening But Dangerous, Slams An Already Sodden Central America Iota diminished to a Category 1 hurricane within hours of its landfall … Hurricane Eta was a devastating Category 4 hurricane that wreaked havoc across parts of Central America in early November 2020. “The damage is really significant,” Zapata told official media. The heavy rains also impacted Guatemala with the overflowing of rivers and the fall of trees on roads, among other incidents, without causing victims, according to the authorities. Source: Xinhua | 2020-11-04 06:21:28 | Editor: huaxia. Aerial patrols are conducted over beach areas to prevent entry of swimmers, ahead of Hurricane Iota in Cartagena, Colombia in this still image taken from social media video dated November 15, 2020. The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season has seen the most named storms on record, with 30 named storms and 13 hurricanes. Disaster Alert: November 7, 2020. Weather forecasts indicate that the remnants of Hurricane Iota will pass through El Salvador over the next few days as a tropical storm or depression, generating dangerous winds and rainfall throughout the country. RW COVID-19 page: Find latest updates on global humanitarian responses. According to South American Overseas Chinese News, Guatemala received assistance from many countries after it was hit hard by Hurricane Eta. About 63,000 people have been evacuated to 600 evacuation shelters in Nicaragua. Slow-moving Eta, which has rapidly intensified into a Category 4 hurricane, is expected to bring life-threatening storm surge and strong winds to Nicaragua and Honduras early Tuesday. At least 80% of the country is experiencing strong winds, heavy rainfall, flooding, rivers overflowing, and the potential for landslides. A man rides his motorbike through a road damaged by heavy winds of Hurricane Iota at Barrio El Aeropuerto on November 17, 2020, in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua. List of alerts, ongoing and past disasters covered by ReliefWeb. “The lesson that Iota and Eta leave is that governments have to alleviate the poverty that makes millions of people vulnerable because, lacking resources, they build houses in vulnerable areas,” Sermeño summarized. In San Salvador, although the danger of rains remains, Presidential Commissioner Carolina Recinos stressed that “prevention work,” with timely evacuations, helped the country avoid more deaths. Hurricane Iota’s landfall was just 15 miles from Hurricane Eta’s Iota dissipates over El Salvador after leaving wave of deaths in Central America Carlos Mario MARQUEZ / AFP November 18, 2020 November 18, 2020 Media report at least 6 fatalities in Nicaragua and one in Honduras caused by river overflow and landslides. Total Views: 2083 . Its inhabitants began to clean up the rubble and try to restore the roofs of their houses with what they could, while the streets of the city are being cleared of debris. Honduras + 2 more. On 18-19 November, heavy rainfall is forecast over El Salvador, Panama, western Honduras, northern Nicaragua, southern Belize. El Salvador evacuates flood-prone areas as Hurricane Eta brings torrential rains. A woman and two children remain at an improvised shelter at the Perla del Ulua Institute in El Progreso, in Honduras, Nov. 18, 2020, after the Ulua River flooded during the passage of Hurricane … Whole year UV Index table for El Salvador ☀ Water Temperature in localities in El Salvador Weather phenomena recorded in previous years in El Salvador ☃ Long-term 30 day weather forecast for El Salvador ☔ El Salvador month-by-month travel guide to weather conditions and best times to visit. Guatemala was hit hard by the hurricane, El Salvador and other countries reached out to help it tide over the difficulties. Hurricane Iota strengthens as it heads towards Central America. Watch later. Video Player Close. Hurricane Eta has been downgraded to a tropical storm and is no longer affecting weather conditions in El Salvador. The ecologist warned that the impact of meteorological phenomena “cannot be mitigated with few resources,” so he called on the international community to help Central America. The 2020 hurricane season showed little mercy to Central America, with two Category 4 landfalls in less than two weeks. Honduras suffered floods, but the omens of death and further destruction were not fulfilled, with less-than-expected rainfall after the eye of the storm crossed swiftly through the south of the country. Tropical Storm IOTA reached El Salvador on 18 November, its center was located near Anamoros Municipality (La Union Department, south-eastern El Salvador), with maximum sustained wind of 65 km/h. Share. Tap to unmute. IOTA is forecast to weaken as it moves south-west over southern EL Salvador, dissipating in the afternoon of 18 November. “Iota and Eta are part of the climate change blow to Central America that in a few days have left mourning and destruction,” Mauricio Sermeño, coordinator of the Salvadoran Ecological Unit, told AFP. ReliefWeb Labs projects explore new and emerging opportunities to improve information delivery to humanitarians. Neighboring Guatemala, with vast areas still recovering from Eta, was also on high alert. Evacuations under way in Guatemala and Honduras as 30th named storm of Atlantic hurricane … This storm is likely to create dangerous floods and mudslides that can cause injuries, damage homes and businesses, and block roads. Ten of the deaths occurred in Nicaragua, two in the Colombian archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, one in Panama and one in El Salvador. This rainfall will lead to significant, life-threatening flash flooding and river flooding, along with mudslides in areas of higher terrain. The majority of the country is now under a Green Alert with only a narrow section in the center of the country under a Red Alert. Latest humanitarian reports, maps and infographics and full document archive. Access your account or create a new one for additional features or to post job or training opportunities. So many, that by October, with the arrival of tropical storm Wilfred in the eastern Atlantic, meteorologists had already used every name on the season’s list, causing them to move to the Greek alphabet for names, which had not been necessary since 2005. El Salvador: 12 Colombia: 7 ... El 13 de agosto de 2020, el Centro Nacional de Huracanes (NHC) comenzó a rastrear un área de baja presión ubicada sobre el este de Carolina del Norte. Iota flooded stretches of Honduras still underwater from Hurricane … Strong wind damaged communication routes, hindering rescue operations. The death toll continues to rise in Central America, following Amanda's landfall in Guatemala on Sunday as a tropical storm. Residents walk along a beach after the passing of Hurricane Iota, in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua November 17, 2020. Share this article. The storm hit Nicaragua as a category 4 hurricane on Monday and is expected to dissipate after moving through El Salvador today. Learn more about ReliefWeb, leading online source for reliable and timely humanitarian information on global crises and disasters since 1996. Thankfully, only 22 beneficiaries and their families were affected. El Salvador and Panama declared a "red alert" ahead of the hurricane's projected path through Central America. Tegucigalpa was spared more rains, but the growth of rivers caused alarm in the capital of one million inhabitants, where police and military evicted tens of thousands of people from the hills. - Articles from The Weather Channel | weather.com Amanda's remnants are predicted to produce heavy rains in El Salvador, southern Guatemala, western Honduras, Nicaragua, Belize and parts of Mexico, according to the hurricane center. A tropical storm warning is in effect for coastal areas from central Honduras to the Honduras/Guatemala border. Shopping. The current measures permit for most economic activity to operate with…, Costa Rica suffered 41 new coronavirus-related deaths between Friday and Tuesday for a total of 1,731, according to official data…, The Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), Antonio Guterres, warned Monday that Latin America could suffer in 2021 a…, Pfizer/BioNTech say results show Covid vaccine 95% effective, News briefs: Costa Rica news highlights to start your Thursday, Hurricane Iota tears through Central America after Nicaragua landfall, Tropical Storm Iota reaches Honduras; cyclone has killed at least eight, Hurricane Iota’s landfall was just 15 miles from Hurricane Eta’s. The impacted families have been supported, as needed. The official assured that there is abundant damage to homes, electricity and water services, while the Bilwi dock was totally destroyed. A man in Bilwi, Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, on November 16, 2020 as Hurricane Iota strikes El Salvador and Panama declared a "red alert" ahead of the hurricane… Reuters. Weather Alert – Tropical Storm Cristobal and Hurricane Season 2020: U.S. Embassy San Salvador, El Salvador (June 4, 2020) Location: El Salvador Event: Tropical Storm Cristobal, although currently north of the country, could generate heavy rains in El Salvador for the next several days. What’s left of Hurricane Iota is a swirl of clouds in the Pacific off the coast of El Salvador ... and El Salvador. Men wade through a street flooded after the passing of Hurricane Iota in La Lima, Honduras, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2020. The best time and weather to travel to El Salvador 2020. Iota flooded stretches of Honduras still underwater from Hurricane … The presidents of Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Costa Rica asked this week for resources from the financial community and international organizations. Nicaraguan authorities on Wednesday reported the death of four people, including three children, due to a landslide in the northern department of Matagalpa, bringing the number of deaths from the cyclone to 14. Emergency crews are working to rescue any survivors after heavy rains cause mudslides near the capital, San Salvador. 1 of 16 Men wade through a street flooded after the passing of Hurricane Iota in La Lima, Honduras, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2020. Find latest updates on global humanitarian responses, European Commission's Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, Latin America - Storms Fact Sheet #5, Fiscal Year (FY) 2021, Honduras: Huracán Eta - Iota - Casas destruidas y dañadas en cada municipio a nivel departamental (a 30 Nov 2020), Honduras: Huracán Eta / Iota - Personas evacuadas y número de centros de evacuación a nivel municipal (a 30 Noviembre 2020), Guatemala: Huracán Eta / Iota - Alta Verapaz - Municipios sureste: albergues y hospitales (al 28/11/2020). 9 Nov 2020 Originally published 8 Nov 2020. Travel weather and climate description. The double impact of the powerful storms prompted calls to address the effects of climate change and requests for international aid. On Wednesday, rains persisted in the northern region of Nicaragua, where its main city, Bilwi, began to assess the damage caused by Iota. The political secretary of the government of the North Caribbean of Nicaragua, Yamil Zapata, affirmed that the cyclone demolished much of the infrastructure in the city of more than 40,000 inhabitants. REUTERS/Oswaldo Rivas Reuters By Gustavo Palencia and Ismael Lopez A car damaged by a tree is seen after the passing of Hurricane Iota in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, Nov. 17, 2020. Costa Rica's coronavirus measures will continue unchanged in December. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele declared a state of emergency for 15 days to cope with the effects of the storm, which lost strength later in the day as it moved into Guatemala. Copy link. Info. Maynor Valenzuela / Getty What Eta had left standing, this hurricane came and delivered a final blow,” Zapata said. Tropical Storm Amanda Brings Severe Floods and Winds to El Salvador - May 31, 2020. 30 Oct 2020 At least seven people have been killed in a landslide sparked by heavy rains in El Salvador, the government said on Friday, and more than 30 … San Salvador, November 16 (RHC)-- The Government of El Salvador has decreed a Red Alert, the highest on its scale of danger, in view of the strengthening of Hurricane Iota to Category 5, the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Central America: Hurricane Eta - Emergency appeal n° MDR43007 Format Appeal Source. Central American countries began to see an improvement in the weather on Wednesday after suffering the violent impact of cyclone Iota, which dissipated over El Salvador after leaving at least 14 dead, flooded towns and damage to road infrastructure. El Salvador: At least 7 dead, more than 30 missing in landslide. This storm is likely to create dangerous floods and mudslides that can cause injuries, damage homes and businesses, and block roads. — National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) November 15, 2020 It was already a record-breaking system, being the 30th named storm of this year’s extraordinarily busy Atlantic hurricane … Weather Alert – Tropical Storm Cristobal and Hurricane Season 2020: U.S. Embassy San Salvador, El Salvador (June 4, 2020) Location: El Salvador Event: Tropical Storm Cristobal, although currently north of the country, could generate heavy rains in El Salvador for the next several days. The remnants of Tropical Storm Amanda formed into a tropical depression on Monday after killing at least 17 people in El Salvador and Guatemala, where heavy rains … El Salvador has declared a state of emergency, as the first tropical storm of the season in the Pacific Ocean made landfall. In Panama, at least one person died and 3 are missing, following the heavy rainfall brought by IOTA, according to media. ((Photo by Wendell ESCOTO / AFP)). “Leaving Eta to fall in Iota. Amanda caused deadly flooding and landslides across Central America and Mexico in late-May 2020 that killed 40 people. List of organizations that are actively providing ReliefWeb with content. The fatalities were all recorded in El Salvador, senior cabinet official Carolina Recinos said, … Since it made landfall on Monday in Nicaragua’s North Caribbean as a category 5 hurricane — the maximum on the Saffir-Simpson scale — Iota, the second cyclone of the month after Eta, flooded homes and large areas of crops, downed trees, left dozens of towns cut off and damaged roads. November 17, 2020 . Open training opportunities in the humanitarian field.
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el salvador hurricane 2020 2020
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getTV's March Programming Lineup Focuses on Comedies
Featuring entertainment icons Lucille Ball in The Fuller Brush Girl & Jerry Lewis in Three on a Couch, Thursdays in primetime all month long.
By Staff on February 27, 2016 12:08 AM |
Press release: getTV springs into March with a star-studded lineup featuring raucous comedies, heart-stopping thrillers, Old West favorites, and celebrated dramas, airing in primetime all month long. The roster features a themed Comedy Month block, airing every Thursday at 8 p.m. ET, starring Jack Lemmon, Dean Martin, and Lucille Ball, among others; as well as birthday blocks honoring Joan Crawford and Jerry Lewis; a pair of Westerns starring Randolph Scott; and a special Easter Sunday screening of the 1962 Bible epic BARABBAS, starring Anthony Quinn.
Highlights of getTV’s March programming lineup are as follows:
The Three Stooges—Thurs., Mar. 3 at 8 p.m. ET
getTV salutes the original kings of comedy, as The Three Stooges help a descendant of Phileas Fogg in THE THREE STOOGES GO AROUND THE WORLD IN A DAZE. Then, at 10:15 p.m. ET, the boys have an intergalactic showdown with alien enemies in THE THREE STOOGES IN ORBIT, and battle Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, and Wild Bill in the Old West romp THE OUTLAWS IS COMING, with Adam West, at 12:20 a.m. ET.
From Screwball To Musical: MY SISTER EILEEN—Thurs., Mar. 10 at 8 p.m. ET
Experience the same story told in two different ways, starring Rosalind Russell and Janet Blair as sisters who attract the attention of a handsome magazine editor in the 1942 screwball comedy MY SISTER EILEEN. Then, Betty Garrett pretends to be her spunky sister to capture the attention of playboy Jack Lemmon in the 1955 musical makeover MY SISTER EILEEN, with Janet Leigh and Dick York, at 10:20 p.m. ET.
Fred Astaire & Rita Hayworth—Fri., Mar. 11 at 8 p.m. ET
Fred Astaire falls for single lady Rita Hayworth, but her father doesn’t approve, in YOU WERE NEVER LOVELIER, with Adolphe Menjou. And Astaire and Hayworth get caught in a love triangle in YOU’LL NEVER GET RICH, at 10:20 p.m. ET.
Clowning Around with Red & Lucy—Thurs., Mar. 17 at 8 p.m. ET
Desperate to get his fiancé back, Red Skelton takes a job as a traveling salesman. His earnest attempt is foiled, however, when one of his customers is killed, turning him into a person of interest in THE FULLER BRUSH MAN, with Adele Jergens. Then, Lucille Ball stars as a klutzy cosmetics saleslady whose door-to-door operation is ruined when a customer is murdered, leaving her as the prime suspect in THE FULLER BRUSH GIRL, with Eddie Albert and featuring a cameo by Red Skelton, at 10:15 p.m. ET.
Randolph Scott—Sat., Mar. 19 at 7 p.m. ET
Saddle up with Western icon Randolph Scott in a pair of Old West classics, as Scott rides out for revenge in CORONER CREEK, with Marguerite Chapman. Then, Scott is a man on the lam in HANGMAN’S KNOT, with Donna Reed, at 9:15 p.m. ET.
Dean Martin—Thurs., Mar. 24 at 8 p.m. ET
Dean Martin stars in a pair of Matt Helm capers, tracking down the creator of the deadly heliobeam in MURDERER’S ROW, with Ann-Margret and Karl Malden. Then, Martin must recover a government flying saucer in THE AMBUSHERS, at 10:30 p.m. ET.
Joan Crawford—Fri., Mar. 25 at 8 p.m. ET
getTV celebrates Joan Crawford with a classic three-pack, in honor of her birthday on March 23, featuring Crawford as a troubled woman whose violent past comes back to haunt her in the William Castle thriller STRAIT-JACKET. Then, Crawford rules the big top as a ringmaster whose circus is plagued by brutal murders in BERSERK, at 10:15 p.m. ET. And Crawford cares for a deaf and blind teen in THE STORY OF ESTHER COSTELLO, at 12:35 a.m. ET.
BARABBAS (1962)—Sun., Mar. 27 at 8 p.m. ET
Celebrate Easter with Anthony Quinn as one of the Bible’s most infamous figures, in this epic tale of the titular criminal’s life following the events of the fateful day when he was spared while Jesus was crucified. Jack Palance and Ernest Borgnine also star.
Jerry Lewis—Sun., Thurs. 31 at 8 p.m. ET
getTV pays tribute to legendary comedian Jerry Lewis, in celebration of his 90th birthday on March 16, in a night of laughs starring Lewis as a desperate man posing as three different men to cure his psychiatrist fiance’s men-hating patients, thus allowing the lovebirds to start a new life in Paris in THREE ON A COUCH, with Janet Leigh. And Lewis is accused of double-crossing the mob in the mistaken identity hit THE BIG MOUTH, at 10:35 p.m. ET.
For a complete schedule of films and times, visit www.get.tv/schedule. In addition to airing these films on the dates noted above, some of the movies mentioned are scheduled for further broadcasts throughout the month. (See listings for further details.)
anthony quinn,
dean martin,
gettv,
jack lemmon,
jerry lewis,
joan crawford,
lucille ball,
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Márton Gulyás: Hungary belongs to Viktor Orbán
Food for thoughts>
Post published:11 April 2018
Post Category:Food for thoughts
(Budapest Beacon)
“We need to speak about how today Hungary once again has a one-party system. Parliamentary democracy has been completely hollowed out. There is no point to formal opposition politics… What can (opposition members of parliament) do against this? Hold up signs in Parliament?”
– Márton Gulyás, founder, Country for All Movement
Translation of interview with Country for All founder Márton Gulyás published by 444.hu under the title “This opposition palette no longer exists from this point on.’
Márton Gulyás and the Country for All Movement were active throughout the campaign: they collected money to measure the opposition candidates with the best prospects, and they organized debates in electoral districts.
The goal was to prevent Fidesz from obtaining a two-thirds parliamentary majority
They were not successful in this. Gulyás confronts his own role in this, what must not be continued, and what a political activist can do in such a situation.
What happened on Sunday? To what do you attribute Fidesz’s results?
The most important thing for us to understand is that society wanted to see a continuation of the Viktor Orbán government. It is not a question that 49 percent is worth two-thirds, for that they needed this electoral system. But let’s put this aside for a minute. Basically a significant part of Hungarian society wanted this type of governance to continue. This is not because these people are stupid, tunnel-visioned, or unprincipled.
It would be worthwhile to abandon the rhetoric about Fidesz voters.
We need to understand with greater self-criticism and humility how the Fidesz story can work so well. The propaganda machine, public media, and the terrible fake news, but taken together these do not explain what happened.
The minimum objective of the opposition and the coordination of candidates was to prevent Fidesz from obtaining a two-thirds parliamentary majority. This didn’t come together either.
Actually, the opposition never had this objective. Civilians were talking about this. Instead, opposition politicians talked about governance even before the elections when it was actually quite obvious this was completely unrealistic. The present situation is much more dramatic than in 2014 in that there is a much more serious societal mandate behind it. In 2014 the fraudulent system was far more obvious. Now it appears that a large part of society mobilized in order to keep the government in power.
We need to speak about how today Hungary once again has a one-party system. Parliamentary democracy has been completely hollowed out. There is no point to formal opposition politics.
Those who invested their energy in the campaign on the level of party politics would probably do best not to take up their parliamentary mandate. Let’s assume the government make rules on abortion more strict. Or starts to change the legal jurisdiction of courts, or the system of municipal government. What can they do against this? Hold up signs in Parliament? We have to understand that those aesthetic rhetorical victories, the presumed moral superiority on which many built their criticism of Fidesz over the past eight years, myself included, have completely failed.
We accomplished nothing. This opposition palette no longer exists from this point on.
Opposition politicians ran in the election. Why shouldn’t they play a role in the work of parliament on the basis of the election results
Precisely because they were competing for the right to represent their voters. Opposition voters, on the other had, wanted to prevent this autocratic system from hardening. They failed. So if they want to represent the voters, then they must not help stage the play that deceitfully passes for parliamentarianism that is to follow. This lie, sooner or later, needs to be wound up.
Are they seriously going to play that they go into parliament, pose questions to Orbán, who responds by wishing them a merry Christmas or a happy Easter depending on the season? Why would an opposition politician want to further humiliate himself? The country belongs to Viktor Orbán. He has the power. We’ll see whether his will be the glory as well. This is what the voters wanted. This is what he desired as well. So now he can do it, alone.
This can could also be interpreted as meaning that Country for All’s activity to date was pointless.
That is not very far from the truth. It was a rear-guard action. While continuously weighing all the constraints and realities, we tried at the same time not to do harm while we were being useful. We’ve been walking on eggshells the past half year. We had to exert pressure on parties to coordinate candidates, but at the same time not apply so much pressure that they could say that they cannot coordinate because of us.
But despite every effort and energy we poured into it, the end result was a two-thirds majority. So it is as though we would still be here even had we done nothing. We have to acknowledge this. The Sunday night results were terrible to witness. When everything was lost, and it was possible for us to be honest, the opposition politicians still clung to the masks they did not like to wear anyway.
What is the responsibility of the Country for All Movement in all of this?
Three things, for which I am personally responsible rather than the movement. Last spring I stood in the Szabadság square and announced a movement to bring about electoral reform. The system should have been changed. But we shouldn’t have started with that. We should have supported either the (MSZP Szeged mayor for prime minister László) Botka project or the Új Polus (New Pole), and organized a movement for this. Instead I thought at the time that one could bring about cooperation if there was a neutral theme like electoral reform to which everyone could relate, and that this would create a unity from which it would be possible to continue on. But this is not how things turned out last autumn.
The other mistake was the call for civil disobedience and the cancellation of what should have followed my big words. I announced something and then nothing came of it. The movement failed to obtain the necessary societal support, and in this way neglected the beautiful and important idea of civil disobedience, which we would have made ridiculous in society’s eyes.
At that time I thought it was better for me to look ridiculous, because civil disobedience is a much more serious thing, and could be useful later.
The third is that were should have been more confrontational in our advocacy of candidate coordination. Of course, this could have turned out badly, in which case we would be faulting ourselves for that. In 2014 the blame game went on for half a year after the defeat of the opposition. It would be good if this time all of us could go home and think about whether we cannot politicize in a more systematic, self-critical fashion. If we cannot, then we should allow others to do it.
For a while I would also like to remain silent, because we need to find radically different forms of struggle. Were we to immediately engage in resistance, it would have a comic, tragic, and shameful end.
The Country for All Movement organized debate forums for local candidates throughout the country. What can be learned from this?
I am upset over the two-thirds majority because if they only had a narrow majority then there would be political room to deal with the situation of the parties outside of the capital city and what their local representatives are like. From this point of view, we have astonishing experience. The rhetoric, political and intellectual accomplishments of 80-90 percent of those participating in the debates would not past an elementary level exam. Most of them have no knowledge of local matters and their political thinking is confused. The next generation of politicians is in very poor shape, and they are not building any kind of community either. Meanwhile we experienced that there would be a terrible need for that, for local organizations to hold events, even show films, things like that, where the community could come together and meet regularly with local politicians. However, given the government’s excessive power, this won’t be enough.
Fidesz performed extraordinarily well among the poorest.
Hungarian society has no experience of politics improving their living conditions. Wide social strata have no experience of this. Fidesz’s promise is not that things will be better, but that they could get a lot worse, but we can prevent them from getting worse. That this should have such a terrible impact on their voter base shows their vulnerability.
However, if we look at the other end of society, there is terrible anger and lethargy on the part of the urban middle-classes living in big cities.
When I announced on the platform of the agora Sunday night that Fidesz has its two-thirds majority, I said two things afterwards. (Hungarian film director Géza) Bereményi’s statement in “Time Stops.” Alright, then I will live here. Apart from that, that this is our homeland as well, and the worst thing we can do is give in to bitterness and anger and begin ourselves to hate, because that only affirms Fidesz’s politics. There is mourning related work to be done at this time. We have to go through this now. People are experiencing an empty feeling, and it is hard to believe that things can be worse than they were.
But let us not close ourselves off. It’s true that the past eight years issued a very serious judgement about us in that we were not able to reach people outside our own bubble. For the middle-class the results could be a sign that they need to withdraw and close themselves off to public life.
But that is not the good solution. We need to withdraw in order to rethink our positions.
Because we will resist. There is no question about this. We will continue. It’s just that we have to completely reconsider what we think about politics, Hungarian society, and Orbán. This work can be done, and will be done. It’s not a problem if everybody concentrates on this for the next six or twelve months and does not charge onto the battlefield unthinkingly as we have done in the past, myself included.
During that time we can offer direct assistance to many. We can give consolation and empathy to those for whom things are really very bad and are wallowing in the deepest doubt. If there is consolation, then there will be resistance too.
Tags: Hungary
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Civil society accountability in times of declining trust: CIVICUS’s journey
Defending Civic Space: Four unresolved questions
Balkan Civic Practices Special Edition on Promoting Civic Space
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irving, washington, 1783-1859. (1)
american literature -- 19th century finance, personal debt -- united states. (1)
irving, washington, 1783-1859 -- correspondence kemble, gouverneur, 1786-1875 -- correspondence. (1)
kemble, gouverneur, 1786-1875. (1)
united states. congress. house. (1)
All fields: Godfrey's
[Letter] 1840 February 5, New York [to] Kemble, Washington / Washington Irving.
Irving, Washington, 1783-1859--Correspondence; Kemble, Gouverneur, 1786-1875--Correspondence.
The letter is date stamped and bears the impression of a seal. See also additional letters in the collection from Irving. See also Kemble's biography and a guide to research collections of his papers...
Brown and White Vol. 102 no. 9
The New York Leader, 6(37)
Trials for adultery, or, The history of divorces [Volume 5]
Trials for adultery, or, The history of divorces [Volume 5] : Being select trials at Doctors Commons, for adultery, fornication, cruelty, impotence, &c. from the year 1760, to the present time, including the whole of the evidence on each cause :...
LehighWeek Volume 06, Issue 16
Lehigh University--Periodicals
Reports on the past week's news, and schedules of upcoming events, at Lehigh University. Thirty issues yearly, published weekly, except for vacations, during the school year, and once or twice a month during the summer.
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Happily ever after: Nemo and Stacey Niemiec secured more than degrees at WSU Applebaum
If you were to script a romantic comedy set within the Wayne State University Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, you might not choose a gross anatomy lab for your opening scene. But a roomful of cadavers is where it all began for Stacey Schepens Niemiec ’03, MOT ’05, PhD ’09 and Matthew “Nemo” Niemiec ’04, MPT ’06.
The year was 2003 and it was Nemo’s first week of his first semester in Wayne State’s Physical Therapy program, then a master’s degree. Stacey, meanwhile, was working toward her master’s in occupational therapy while serving as the lab instructor in Nemo’s anatomy class.
“Stacey doesn’t believe me but I still remember seeing her on the first day of class,” Nemo said. “I’m not saying it was love at first sight, but I remember the blue of her scrubs and the smell of formaldehyde in the air.”
Respectful of the student-teacher dynamic, Nemo waited until after the final exam to ask Stacey out, doing so by passing her a note “like I was a sixth grader instead of a master’s student.”
It wasn’t because of his technique but rather a technicality that Stacey turned him down: She already had a boyfriend.
And so, in true rom-com form, Nemo and Stacey became the best of friends. They bonded and were quickly inseparable, despite the fact that she had to crane her neck to chat with him — Nemo towered over her and almost everyone else at 6 foot, 7 inches. “I called her Smalls and she called me Talls,” he said. They made each other laugh. And eventually, when they were both single at the same time, they started dating.
Smalls became Mrs. Talls in 2013, and the pair is currently well on their way to living happily ever after just north of Hollywood. Nemo recently earned his doctorate in physical therapy and Stacey recently was promoted to Associate Professor of Research at the University of Southern California Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. But let’s not fast-forward through their “once upon a time.”
The Niemiecs each grew up in metro Detroit and attended Catholic high schools, but while Stacey knew early on that she was interested in occupational therapy and research, Nemo felt destined to be a writer like his journalist father.
Nemo was studying communication and English at the University of Michigan when his advisor pointed out that he was good at science and math as well, and suggested he consider other career paths. “I had been focused on the degree instead of the job,” Nemo said. When he reflected on all the occupations he’d seen in action, he recalled the physical therapy appointments he’d gone to throughout his childhood.
“As I got ridiculously tall and had growing pains and sports injuries, I gained a really strong appreciation for what PTs did to help me,” Nemo said. So he changed his major to movement science. “There are things you’re good at and things that drive you. If you only focus on one part of that equation, you’ll either have an uphill battle or will burn out. With physical therapy, I was fortunate to find something that came easily to me that I really enjoyed.”
At WSU, both Nemo and Stacey happened to be enrolled in programs that were in the process of transitioning. The extra time Stacey spent pursuing first a bachelor’s and then a master’s degree in the Occupational Therapy program was ideal for her: “During my master’s program, I was able to learn more about research and understand how I could contribute to the field in ways that I’m not sure I would have understood otherwise,” she said. She took her first research class with Professor Cathy Lysack, who now serves as WSU Applebaum’s interim dean. “When Dr. Lysack asked if any of us thought we might go into research instead of working in a clinic, nobody raised their hand,” Stacey said. “That got me thinking.”
Stacey with her Wayne State OT classmates.
Stacey went on to make the most of her 10 years at one of the nation’s preeminent public urban research institutions, embracing a number of WSU opportunities such as working in Dr. Allon Goldberg’s Physical Therapy Mobility Research Lab and completing a National Institutes of Health predoctoral fellowship in aging and urban health.
PT Program Director and Assistant Clinical Professor Kristina Reid recalls seeing Nemo hanging around Goldberg’s lab while Stacey worked. “Back then, it was unique to have an OT assisting in a PT lab,” Reid said. “Nemo was also in the building a lot because he was active on his class board and often led study groups. He was great at it, and helped his classmates manage the stress of graduate school with his fun and lighthearted approach.”
In fact, Nemo orchestrated a legendary graduation stunt during the first and only year that students were put in charge of the ceremony. He interviewed faculty members for a video but then edited it in an unexpected way. “When he filmed me, he asked what I enjoyed most about pediatric PT,” Reid said. “Then he edited out his original question and replaced it with something like, ‘Why do you spend so much time on playgrounds?’ And you can imagine how that made my answer sound! I thought it was hilarious but there were a few faculty members who were not amused.”
Nemo with his Wayne State PT classmates.
Regardless of those grumbles, Reid knew a sense of humor like that would make Nemo popular with patients: “I could tell he’d be a great PT because he clearly cared about people, and being patient-focused is so central to a therapist’s job.”
Meanwhile, OT Program Director and Assistant Professor Doreen Head remembers being incredibly impressed by Stacey’s drive. “She just hit the ground running,” Head said. “She was very smart and very driven by research focused on technology and interventions. Not many students are interested in the mental health side of OT the way she was. She took advantage of everything that was available to her, including resources through Wayne State’s Institute of Gerontology.”
Stacey’s NIH fellowship continued as she pursued her PhD in instructional technology, which she earned from Wayne State’s College of Education in 2009. It all was solid groundwork for the research she’s doing now in California, which focuses on the promotion of health and wellness in older adults.
Head notes that although the traditional route for OT researchers is to spend time in the clinic after graduation before heading into the lab, Stacey’s choice to jump right into research was right for her. And of course Stacey agrees, adding that she works closely with clinicians to keep her research grounded in the real world: “I recognize that without collaborators and co-investigators who work with clients, I wouldn’t be able to develop practical interventions.”
Hollywood bound
While completing an NIH postdoctoral fellowship in physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Michigan, Stacey met USC’s Dr. Florence Clark, renowned for co-founding the scholarly discipline of occupational science and for her Well Elderly work. That eventually led to Stacey heading west in 2012 for a postdoctoral fellowship in occupational science and occupational therapy at USC.
“It was a good fit but I was terrified to move across the country,” Stacey said. “I was a homebody and never thought I’d leave the state, let alone move so far from it.” But she had Nemo by her side, and the two born-and-bred Michiganders now consider themselves Californians, saying, “All it took was one winter away.”
Dean Lysack visited Southern California alumni – including Nemo and Stacey – in 2019.
LA traffic is terrible, of course, but that hasn’t affected the Niemiecs lately — both have been working from home since the novel coronavirus took hold of the U.S. in March. “I’ve been teaching remotely and doing remote-based research,” Stacey said. And when the PT clinic where Nemo had been working closed at the start of the pandemic, it freed him up to manage the transition of Stacey’s primary randomized controlled trial from in-person to virtual.
Their collaboration is nothing new — through the years, Nemo has worked with Stacey on grant writing, research development, consultation and co-investigation. “Nemo has been amazing in getting me through these really strange times of remote interactions,” Stacey said. “He’s helped train my incoming RAs, deliver intervention, record training videos for RCT participants and more. And once all the data come in, he’s going to be able to add his clinical perspective to the interpretation of findings.”
Her former program director loves to hear it. “Both occupational therapy and physical therapy operate on a human, personal level,” Head said. “We look at the whole person and really get to know each other. So it’s never a surprise when OT and PT students connect.”
Into the sunset
Stacey’s current study explores how integrating activity into the daily routine of underactive older adults affects their wellness and outlook. The project involves smartphones, an app and an activity tracker — all of which needed to be managed remotely once the pandemic separated her from participants.
“We used to have group sessions at senior living centers but now we’re doing Zoom calls with shared screens to help them download the app or walk them through taping the activity tracker to their legs,” Stacey said. “Where I’m more tightly wound, Nemo wins everyone over. Patients love him.”
Prior to March, she had 39 participants. Now she’s met her goal of 100 — in part because Nemo excels at convincing folks to join the study during cold calls.
Stacey says her hands-on experience at Wayne State was crucial to the work she’s doing today. “I’m proud of my WSU origins and promote the university every time I introduce myself,” she said, adding that Wayne State’s cultural diversity broadened her worldview. “People appreciate the unique perspective I bring from Detroit to USC and to research in general.”
The Niemiecs were married in Corktown in September 2013.
Nemo also has fond memories of his time at Wayne State — and not just because he met the love of his life there. “When I went back for my transitional doctorate from Western University of Health Sciences, it was really just a review. I realized I had already learned everything I needed at WSU.”
He credits WSU Applebaum instructors, saying, “They were by and large so good. I knew I was getting a quality education. And after three years, I felt as prepared as I possibly could be to jump into the world and make people’s lives better.”
That’s music to Lysack’s ears. “Stacey and Nemo are both wonderful representatives of our programs,” she said. “We are always so happy to catch up with alumni who are doing great things.”
And the fact that the Niemiecs are doing great things together? It’s icing on the wedding cake.
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Home Database The 2011 Copley Township Shooting
The 2011 Copley Township Shooting
Michael Hance
A mass murder was conducted by Michael E. Hance, 51, in Copley Township, Summit County, Ohio on August 7, 2011. Seven people were shot dead before the gunman was shot and killed by Copley police officer Ben Campbell.
Using two handguns, including a Hi-Point Model JHP .45-caliber pistol, which he bought from Sydmor’s Jewelry in neighboring Barberton, Ohio five days before, and a .357 Magnum six-shot revolver he bought from the same location in 2005, Hance opened fire at a house in the 2300 block of Goodenough Avenue. He first shot his 49-year-old girlfriend Rebecca K. Dieter, who was the only survivor in the shooting. Dieter managed to call 9-1-1 before escaping to the porch of her house and being shot again in the back, after which she pretended to be dead.
He then ran into an adjacent house, where he shot and killed Dieter’s brother Craig; Autumn Johnson, 16; her grandparents, Russell Johnson, 67, and Gudrun Johnson, 64; and Amelia Shambaugh, 16, who was visiting a friend at the time and was seated in her parked car when she was shot. Hance then chased Autumn Johnson’s father, 44-year-old Bryan Johnson, northward, and shot him to death in a nearby driveway on Schocalog Road.
He next followed Craig’s son, 11-year-old Scott, into a house on the same street. There, Hance found Scott hiding behind a furnace in the basement with the home’s current residents, Melonie Bagley and her three children (nine-year-old Dae’Shawn, three-year-old Destany, and a one-year-old daughter). Bagley tried to deny that Scott was with her before fleeing with her daughters. Hance found Scott and Dae’Shawn, shooting and killing the former while leaving the Bagley family alive.
As Hance was leaving the house, Officer Ben Campbell spotted him along with former Copley Township policeman Keith Lavery. Together, they issued commands, which Hance ignored, raising his gun instead and firing shots at them. In response, Campbell and Lavery shot at Hance with rounds from Campbell’s rifle, ultimately killing Hance.
Perpetrator
Michael E. Hance, a 51-year-old male, was identified as the gunman in the shooting. He was described as extremely helpful but also quiet, strange, eccentric, and “not well-liked” by residents of Copley Township. Acquaintances stated that he had “compulsions” that seemed to hint at a previously un-diagnosed mental illness. He graduated from Norton High School in 1978 and was voted the “most courteous” student in the class.
In 1997, Hance contacted police about a man threatening him with a gun when he went out to confront him for vandalizing his truck. He had recently been forced to care for Dieter’s father, who was suffering from dementia, and lost his job at a copy store after it was closed down. He was also having tense relations with Russell and Gudrun Johnson, who were his next-door neighbors. On one occasion, he was told by Gudrun to clean up his property, only for her to be forced away by him. He is currently survived by a sister who lives in Mogadore, Ohio.
Prior to the shooting, Hance became involved in a dispute with Craig Dieter over him and Rebecca Dieter moving into a house he planned to sell. At the time of the shooting, Craig and his family had traveled to Copley Township from their home in Walton, Kentucky, to discuss the property dispute and were staying with Russell and Gudrun Johnson at the time.
Rebecca K. Dieter 49 Hance’s girlfriend Shot at her and Hance’s home, the only survivor of the shooting
Craig Brian Eric Dieter 51 Rebecca’s brother Shot at Russell and Gudrun Johnson’s home
Autumn Marie Johnson 16 Russell and Gudrun’s granddaughter Shot at her grandparents’ home
Russell Lee Johnson 67 Autumn’s grandfather Shot at his and Gudrun’s home
Gudrun Marie Scheiner Johnson 64 Autumn’s grandmother Shot at her and Russell’s home
Amelia Lynn Shambaugh 16 Unknown Shot at Russell and Gudrun Johnson’s home
Bryan Richard Johnson 44 Autumn’s father Shot on Schocalog Road
Scott Calvin Dieter 11 Craig’s son Shot inside a home on Schocalog Road
The Jewish Museum of Belgium Shooting
Fredrik - CSDB - 23rd July 2016
The 2014 Borno Massacre
Fredrik - CSDB - 13th August 2016
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Q&A with Jackie Glenn: Helping Women and Others Reach Their Workplace Potential
Jackie Glenn worked as an HR employee and executive for 30 years, helping companies understand diversity in hiring and the many other components that go along with a more diverse workforce. She left her executive position last year and now coaches women on how to navigate workplace challenges, as well as speaking and writing on diversity and related topics.
How did your journey as an immigrant to the U.S. and your climb to the executive ranks lead you to value diversity and inclusion in the workplace?
My experience with diversity really began when I came to this country. In Jamaica, all of my role models and mentors looked like me and sounded like me, so I did not really experience any type of bias until I came to the United States.
I didn’t start out intending to get into diversity; I ended up falling into it as I moved from working as a nanny to fulfill my green card obligation to working in a hospital as a unit clerk and beginning to experience unconscious bias. The bias was unintended but still impacted my view of the working world. I was the first face that patients saw when they got onto my floor and I had a lot of direct patient care, answering call buttons and directing families to the rooms for visitation. Later, I was promoted to HR, and these experiences led me to focus on diversity and educating people about how differences of all kinds can make work experiences better for everyone.
There’s a saying in the technology sector that diversity drives innovation, and it’s true. When you have a diverse group of people around the table, studies have shown that you get more innovation, and who wouldn’t want innovation?
How do you define diversity and inclusion?
I like to say that diversity is who we are as human beings. When they hear diversity, many people think of race and gender. But there’s so much intersectionality in the word “diversity”: gender, racial, ethnic, disability, LGBTQ, religion, and so forth. So diversity is just whatever makes us different from each other, what differentiates us. Some differences are visible, and some are invisible.
In my teaching, I always use a concept called the Iceberg Slide, because there’s what you see, and then there’s the invisible diversity that you can’t see. For example, I have a bionic knee, a knee replacement, and you can’t really see that from just looking at me. I have a particular faith, I’m a mom and a grandma, and you can’t tell those things from just looking at me either.
So diversity is being invited to the dance, and then inclusion is being asked to dance. In other words, companies may hire diverse employees, but do they include them in discussions, in decisions, and in the formation of policies and company culture? Do the diverse hires get invited to lunch? Do co-workers reach out to them to form friendships? Those things are what inclusion is all about.
Then I’ll go a step further and add equity to the equation. Companies can have diversity and inclusion, but if employees are not treated equitably, there’s something missing. Equity means you get to participate in making the playlist, so to speak. You don’t just get to listen. If there isn’t equity, if diverse employees don’t get to participate in the process, then they will not stay, which eventually leads to a retention issue.
What does a Global Chief Diversity Officer do?
A Global Chief Diversity Officer is someone who sets the strategy for the organization and works with leaders to plan and implement that strategy with regard to diversity, inclusion, and equity worldwide. There is also an educational component that works to educate partners and clients about initiatives in these areas so that all of our employees understand the business imperatives of diversity, inclusion, and equity.
Tell us what inspired you to write your book, Lift as I Climb: An Immigrant Girl’s Journey Through Corporate America.
Everywhere I travel, which has been to 90+ countries so far, the first thing people want to know is how I came to this role. I found myself telling people the same story and also talking about what I call Jackie’s Gems, which are 10 core values I have learned and live by in my life and work. Someone along the way suggested that I write my story down and publish it as a book, and I also included stories from 10 immigrants from different countries that embody or describe the 10 gems as well.
“Lift as I climb” is a phrase that comes from my efforts to always look back as I journey and lift up other women to come along with me. I think it’s something all women should do as they climb up the corporate ladder. I want people to understand that it doesn’t cost you anything to lift other people up, and it’s not going to take away from you to help others.
How did you come up with the 10 gems that you included in the book?
The 10 gems describe how I personally and professionally navigate life in corporate America. They help me remain authentic, help me be resilient, exhibit self-awareness, and inform how I take responsibility for my work and life. I grew up with these values; my mom taught a lot of them to me, and they are a big part of how I got to be where I am today.
How do diversity and inclusion lead to growth and profitability for companies?
Demographic studies indicate that by the year 2030, Caucasians will no longer be the majority in the United States. Companies that want to hire the best and brightest will have to have a diverse workforce because the best and brightest won’t work in a workplace that is not diverse. Companies’ growth and profitability are increasingly tied to their ability and willingness to hire diverse workers, include them in the workplace in real ways, and treat them equitably with their existing employees.
How does one-on-one coaching with women fit into your overall vision of diversity and inclusion?
Coaching is something that I’ve always done as an executive, but as time goes on, more and more women have approached me with the need for help in their own journeys. I turned it into a business when I left my executive role last July because I really feel the need to build the next generation of women to navigate their professional lives in corporate America. I’ve always had a coach myself, and it has always served me well, so I want to help women in any way that I can. You know, I work with mostly women, but if a man came to me and said he needed some coaching, I would not turn him away either.
Do talent assessments fit into HR best practices for diversity and inclusion? If so, how?
I think everyone should get a talent assessment. As someone who spent many years in HR, I believe talent assessments are huge as a way to identify leadership potential and skills, as well as help people figure out where they will function best in their workplace. It’s a foundation we can use to get the conversation started and try to figure out what we can focus on as an employee begins to work in a particular job.
When I come into an organization, I also do an organizational assessment because I don’t really know what an organization needs without looking closely at it and analyzing it to see what the strengths and weaknesses are. I see talent assessments in kind of the same way. People have their perspectives on other people, which can sometimes be biased in some ways, but talent assessments are objective and give a clear picture of the employee to see what they need and where they might need help.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Want to use assessments to enhance your workforce? Build higher-performing teams with Narish.
Importance of fostering employee creativity! 4 views
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Phil Brett
Phil Brett is a primary school teacher, who has written two novels (Comrades Come Rally and Gone Underground) set in a revolutionary Britain of the near future. In between planning lessons and marking, he is writing the third.
Art as unalienated labour: The Dialectics of Art, by John Molyneux
Published in Visual Arts
Phil Brett reviews The Dialectics of Art, by John Molyneux
John Molyneux is the editor of the Irish Marxist Review and a member of People Before Profit. I have been lucky enough to hear speak many times and have enjoyed much of his previous writing. So when I heard about this book, it was something which went straight onto my list to Santa, hoping I'd get it for Christmas.
Now, it is extremely doubtful that historically, revolutionaries have held much belief in the man with the sack, popping down chimneys. But as Molyneux points out early on, revolutionaries have often had a deep interest in art. Whilst truly historic events competed for their time and attention, the likes of Marx, Lenin, Luxembourg and Trotsky remained passionate in their commitment to the importance to art. But it isn't just great revolutionaries for whom art matters.
That the Tate Modern is annually one of the most visited attractions in the UK suggests that either there are millions of people ready at a moment's notice to tear down the capitalist state, or that art appeals to a vast number of people. It would be nice to think that it is the former, but alas, I do not think we are in that period just yet. Certainly, something which I have noticed in lockdown (admittedly, in the scheme of things, it is trivial) is how I miss visiting art galleries. Previously, whenever things felt as if they were getting on top of me, there was nothing better for my mental health than having a trip to one.
My Dad the art critic
It would have been nice to have John Molyneux along on one of my last pre-lockdown visits. I went with my Dad, who spent most of the time laughing at the art, taking the familiar position of 'a ten year old could have done that'. His view of what constitutes art is different from mine. But that question has been a major theme running throughout the development of humanity’s creativity. In this fantastic book, using a Marxist analysis, John Molyneux attempts to offer a definition of what is art.
For many people, art has been what they have grown accustomed to being told is art. So throughout history when a movement such as the Impressionists or the Fauvists come along, they are often ridiculed. Initially, many considered that the Impressionists were producing unfinished work. Now, they are the most popular genre for exhibitions. My Dad, for example, considers them to "be what art is all about". At times, individual works, even from established artists, have caused outrage. Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) for example, caused shock and bafflement, before becoming regarded as one of modern art's greatest masterpieces. In contemporary Britain, we can see how Brit Art has divided opinion and how every year, the Turner Prize gets the mainstream press in a tizzy.
Art as unalienated labour
Molyneux focuses mainly on western visual art, and says that human labour is the key to defining what art is. Central to the Marxist analysis of history is human labour, and art is no different. What is different is that it is unalienated labour. Unlike the worker in the office or factory, an artist has control over the production, in the sense that they decide what will be in the piece of art - where the sky will be, the direction of the statue's face etc. In this, art is similar to other activities, for example, gardening or organising a picket line, but what separates art from gardening or political activity is the fusion of form and content.
Molyneux is not saying that the artists are not alienated, such a thing would be impossible for a Marxist to believe. Nor is he saying that there is no capitalist production involved. Clearly, with pieces of art being sold for millions, there is – and it is big business. Also, there will be alienated labour involved in the process outside of the creation. There is the production of the canvas, or with Tracey Emin's My Bed (1999) the production of the bed itself, or with Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII (1966), the bricks.
Then there is transportation of the art, the people who display the work, the gallery security guards etc. But the production of the art itself lies within the field of human creative labour which works alongside – and sometimes in opposition to – the alienation created by capitalism.
How do we evaluate art?
Once John Molyneux has established the foundation of his argument, he discusses the different criteria one might use to judge the value of a piece of art, such as its realism, or innovation, or emotional power and expression, or its politics. He draws on these, and using the Marxist method, frames it as tool to be used to help make an aesthetic judgement.
Other chapters follow, examining how art develops and the dialectics of modernism. There are also several which have previously been published elsewhere in other journals, focussing on individual artists, such as Michelangelo, Jackson Pollock, Tracey Emin and Andy Warhol. There is also a substantial extract from his earlier book, Rembrandt and Revolution (London: Redwords, 2002).
An engrossing feature of Molyneux's writing is that he offers possible criticisms of his own analysis. He presents his argument not as someone banging a podium, shouting, "What you must understand comrades, is...", but patiently explains it, drawing on his broad and deep knowledge of both art and the Marxist tradition. He admits areas where his viewpoint or analysis may have weaknesses. He intellectually caresses the reader, rather than bludgeons them. As he puts it: 'all definitions, even the most precise, have a tendency to fray at the edges'.
This is a highly readable and thought-provoking book. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in art.
The Dialectics of Art, by John Molyneux. Haymarket Books, ISBN: 978-1-164259-131-6
Gone Underground: imagining revolution in Britain
Published in Fiction
Phil Brett has just published Gone Underground, the second of his Pete Kalder novels. It’s a crime novel, set in a future revolutionary Britain, and here he explains how he got the idea.
It was reading a number of the Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald which inspired me to write my own crime novel. The trouble was that whilst Archer or Chandler's Philip Marlowe or Hammett's Sam Spade are believable in the whisky bars of hard-boiled America, I didn't think I could envisage the same in Britain.
My imagination of such a novel set here merely extended to some seedy bloke investigating divorce cases. Not my cup of tea – let alone a bourbon on the rocks. So should I write a police procedural? Here was another problem though – for someone who considers himself a socialist, could I write a novel with a good guy from the Metropolitan Police? Hmmmm…….. The experience and memories of policing for many people has been one of kettling, Orgreave, or miscarriages of justice in such cases as the Tottenham Three. Making them good guys takes a very good writer, a whole lot of empathy and a cargo ship full of suspension of disbelief.
There was the option of writing a novel where the cop is the bad guy, maybe like Irvine Welsh's Filth – but then I'm a romantic, I like a hero.
So why not make sure that the reader sees the cop as being very different from the police force? P.D. James made her Inspector Dalgliesh a poet, and Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse is someone who as the great writer, journalist and activist Paul Foot said, was the type of liberal, cultured and fair police officer that everyone wants – but never encounters in the real world. Now I love both – yes, I know James was a Tory peer, but such are the contradictions of capitalism – but again, I couldn't see myself being able to write like that.
One final possibility was that in many novels (and indeed TV series) nowadays, the murders are brutal, serial and usually involve torture (often of women). (For more on the sub-genres of the crime novels see my Murder, Mavericks and Marxism). This allows the reader to support the cop breaking any law whatsoever 'to get the job done' because that is the lesser of two evils. Again though, this wasn't something I wanted to write.
So I returned to the problem of writing a novel in Britain – but if it was serious crime, where were the cops? The answer was obvious and was staring me in the face. I believe that a revolution is possible in Britain. Here, as in so many other countries, people have shown that the existing order can be overthrown. Why, we even chopped old Charlie Stuart's head off, and at the Putney debates that followed in 1647 there were days of revolutionary discussion of what a new Britain would look like. Just look around: Russia 1917, Hungary 1956, Paris 1968, the eastern bloc in the late eighties: when there is upheaval, the repressive state apparatus crumbles. So there was my answer: set the crime novel in a future Britain, which is undergoing a revolutionary change.
I wrote Comrades Come Rally (the first Pete Kalder novel - see Ian Birchall's book review ), taking place on the eve of a revolution. This would solve the 'where are the cops?' question and also allow me to ponder what such a situation might look like. What might dual power of a still functioning, but increasingly desperate parliament, alongside nation-wide workers’ councils look like? It is a crime novel, but the central characters include Pete Kalder, an ex-cop, Victoria Cole, and the revolution itself.
It isn't science fiction, purely for the reason that I am a techno-idiot – my greatest discovery of recent years is learning how to use the Microsoft Snipping Tool! Writing it, I did notice that so many of the novels set in the future do not share my optimism. The norm is dystopian. Brave New World, the Handmaid's Tale, the Hunger Games, 1984 et al – all oppressive and reactionary futures.
Now, these are great works of fiction. Indeed, it was Orwell's 1984, alongside the Clash’s first album, which helped form my politics, but I see the future as having the possibility of liberation. Rosa Luxembourg wrote that we face the choice of either socialism or barbarism; many liberals will see our world of global warming with the likes of Trump and Johnson, with their reactionary politics and bad hair, as advance guards of the latter.
Many of these types of novels act as warnings. Which is all well and good, but what of the working class? If they are mentioned at all, they are victims of this society – not agents of change, able to challenge and defeat it. Dystopian novels, let me repeat, represent some brilliant writing, and I rank them as some of my favourite reads, but they are obviouslypessimistic in their world view. I am not.
So the future in the Pete Kalder novels is a positive one. In my latest, Gone Underground, the revolution has happened. It is not utopia. There is still the muck of ages, as Marx called it – people are not perfect. It is a transitional workers’ state, based on freedom and democracy. It’s one which the former ruling class of the UK, and those in other countries, want to topple. With the police force collapsed, who will tackle the crimes of MI5 and their ilk?
Here was my crime, and here was the reason for the police not being around. Kalder himself is not a cop, he is a type of outsider, being a Party member – but cynical, and a vain, rather self-obsessed one. Clothes are rather important to him, he's as likely to take against someone for wearing a naff pair of jeans, as he is for their reactionary politics. Yes, he is aided by ex-cops which have switched sides – and which as Ian Birchall has pointed out, did in some cases happen in Paris 1968 – but it is categorically not the police force we know today.
My books are not intended to be political discussions, they are crime novels with a political dimension, with a few jokes thrown in. But while hopefully engaging the reader to guess the murderer, they do ask a few questions. What might this future look like? How would law and order be organised? What environmental action would be taken? Would people be organised in Leninist parties or in looser movements?
In C.J. Sansom’s wonderful Shardlake novels set in the Tudor era, and S.G. MacLean's Seeker series set in Cromwell's Protectorate, the events and politics of the time are used as motors to help drive the plot. I attempt a similar thing, only in the future. They perhaps contain, to quote a lyric from the punk band Buzzcocks, a "Nostalgia for an age yet to come". Of course, you don't have to share my politics to like them. Indeed, you might actually share my politics and hate them, but there is a political basis to them – one of hope, even in a murder enquiry.
You can purchase either Comrades Come Rally or Gone Underground here.
Can we buy the marbles sir? A school trip to the British Museum
Phil Brett takes his primary school class for a dialectical trip round the British Museum
I visit the British Museum fairly regularly. Of course, I'm not unique in that. Recent figures show that whilst it has lost its position as the UK's most popular attraction (to the Tate Modern, which was helped by its extension and massive exhibitions such as the Picasso), the British Museum, with 5.8 million visitors and in second place, can hardly be called a ghost town.
However, unlike a lot of those folk who visit, I tend to be accompanied by thirty children under twelve, all wanting the toilet and to know when they can (a) go to the shop and (b) eat their lunch. Even then, I am not special: in the BM Annual Report, it states that approximately 888,000 children attended, and of those 323,000 were on school trips.
Concern around ferrying young children across London and the hassle of filling in risk assessment forms of the equivalent length and complexity of NASA's launches to Jupiter is clearly not too off-putting for teachers. Reasons for a visit are many. The BM has very helpful attendants, there are great educational facilities – and yes, somewhere for the kids to eat, and go to the loo.
The fabulous ground floor of the British Museum
The other attraction is of course the exhibits. These are undeniably wow-inducing. Moving from outside the Greek Revival museum building itself, designed by Sir Robert Smirke RA, into the main courtyard, with its tessellated glass roof (designed by Buro Happold) and then into the ground floor with its huge Greek, Assyrian and Roman artefacts, monuments and sculptures – primary school children like things BIG – it is surely one of the most impressive ground floors of any building, anywhere in the world. Like all museums, it also allows you to roam. Within reason – and within view of the accompanying adult for that group — the children can explore for themselves.
They can also start to ask questions – questions which include ones which have occupied adults for centuries, and some which are still very much in the present. Of course, they are framed in their age-related language and world view, but nonetheless touch upon issues which others, older in their years, still debate.
The mummies – like a magnet for kids
One such issue arises with the trip upstairs to the mummies. No matter what the reason for the visit, a trip there is a must. It is always the noisiest, with children exclaiming wonderment (and sometimes horror). Because of the Horrible Histories books, many will already be acquainted with the Ancient Egyptians, and will talk at length of what they know. It is perhaps their first meeting of history outside of British history — including for such children as those I work with, in inner-London and multi-cultural schools.
The questions that they often ask are why are these people's graves allowed to be opened up and put on show? Is that allowed for anyone else? Is there a time limit for when it is not seen as disrespectful? What is the difference between a myth and an organised religion? Are there ghosts here and will they come alive?. The children from countries outside of Europe, even if not from northern Africa, always enjoy the sense that civilisations existed far in advance of Britain at that time. But then they often ask questions like how did they get in the museum, and should they still be here?
Decolonisation, Nelson, and keeping out the riff-raff
They don't use the term decolonisation, but that is what they are addressing. How much are European institutions – be they universities or museums – part of an imperialist history, which consciously or otherwise, they still uphold? Debate usually ensues within the class – I am referring to thirty upper KS2 children and not in the Marxist sense! Many will simply think it is great that they are here so they can see and learn from them. Others want to hear how these were found, and want to talk about whether people have the right to take things from tombs, and if they do, who is allowed? Should artefacts be sold or worse, simply just taken abroad?
Many of the artefacts in the Egyptian collection, as well as in others, owe their location due to one Horatio Nelson, for having beaten Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile. Because in doing so, he helped hasten France's involvement in that area. With French imperial interests thwarted, the British took over. The famous Rosetta Stone was found in 1799 by Napoleon's envoy – Pierre Francois Bouchard – but after the defeat, France was obliged to hand over all its archaeological discoveries to Britain. Local Egyptians were not consulted. This was soft imperial power, accompanying the harder variety, of the powerful Royal Navy.
This story is very typical of Western European museums. The British Museum – and British Library and Natural History Museum – are founded on collections made by Sir Hans Sloane. As well as having an 80s fashion movement named after him and allegedly creating hot chocolate, he was a keen naturalist and collector. Whilst visiting the Caribbean in 1687, in part to see his wife's extensive slave holdings, he found time to detail the horrific brutality meted out to slaves and to collect plant specimens.
I do not know what action, if any, he took about the former, but he bequeathed the latter to a grateful nation. Here, one might consider what Sumaya Kassim of the Birmingham Museum and Art Galleries, has said – that museums are not politically neutral, because for many white audiences they reflect a romanticised view of the European past, whereas for black and minority ethnic audiences, they represent a continuation of theft and trauma. And I would add – racism. Few museums have seriously embraced putting up explanations of how the context of some of their collections has changed from a colonial trophy, to a thing of curiosity, to a work of world art.
The British Museum, the world's first public national museum, opened in 1753 at its present location but what was then Montagu House. Interestingly, Buckingham House (later Palace) had previously been considered for the location of Sloane's collection. This heralded the growth of museum building, flourishing in the age of Enlightenment, where reason was king.
Of course, enlightenment had its limits. For starters, entry to the building was by ticket only, which you had to apply for. One had to be 'properly dressed' to visit – to keep out the riff-raff from this enlightenment). Eventually, as Britain's Empire grew, so did the nation's' collections of items of scientific, cultural and historical interest. Montagu House was demolished and the museum rebuilt, re-opening in 1852.
The Empire and the Marbles
Within the Empire, the explorer was followed by the merchant and banker accompanying the soldier and the administrator and alongside the scientist and archaeologist. This could be done in the name of Reason, of expanding humanity’s knowledge – all for the greater good! Well, obviously not all – obviously not for those in the colonies, especially the slaves. Or even those in Britain. Yes, a few bits and bobs could be put on show so people could see how 'exotic' the world was, and in doing so, show how far the Empire stretched, but whilst they might be allowed admission, heaven help them if they wanted the vote or to join a trade union. But they could be proud to be British.
But if a visitor nowadays wants some aids to explain how the British Museum came to have such artefacts, they will have to look pretty hard. Most museums are rather reluctant to explain the circumstances of how they came to get them. Words such as 'sourced', 'acquired', 'donated' or 'purchased' are usually used. What they precisely mean, is often left hanging. So Captain James Cook's journeys led to him adding many 'discoveries' to the 'nation', which he 'acquired'. One wonders how. Rooted in such a past, Western European museums, especially the British Museum, have been embroiled in many controversies.
The Parthenon Marbles still draw in the crowds
The best known example of is that of the Elgin Marbles. On a school visit, we usually do visit the Parthenon Marbles, as they are more properly known. The first reaction is one of disappointment, that they are not the type of marbles which the children are familiar with. Nor can they buy them from the shop.
They weren't actually purchased in the first place, but were removed by people working for the 7th Earl of Elgin from the Parthenon between 1801 and 1812. Even at the time there was controversy about this action, with debates in parliament and Lord Byron denouncing it as looting. It should be also stated, for those who may think that at least the theft was for the common good, that Elgin originally took them to decorate his mansion. He only sold them to parliament because of a costly divorce he needed to pay for.
He claimed that he had written permission from the ruling Ottoman Empire. However, despite the Ottoman's being rather keen on paperwork, no copies of this 'permission' have ever been found. But even if this is true, doesn't this smack of a similar situation with the dividing up of treasures between France and England during the Napoleonic Wars? Another example of imperialist powers carving up the world – its people, its resources, history, its culture and – literally in this case – its art.
The case for the defence
Maybe that is why the argument has slightly shifted, and now the case of the Remainers – in the British Museum, the term takes on a whole new meaning! – it is one of conservation. There is a small display which explains that they are here because of the need to conserve them for the world. For me, this is museum colonisation in its most blatant form. From the Victorians claiming the Empire was there to help govern, educate and protect the 'natives' because they couldn't do it themselves, to the British Museum protecting the Marbles because Athens cannot.
I confess that I am no expert on such matters, but I am guessing that Greek archaeologists, historians and renovators have some knowledge of looking after Ancient Greek artefacts. And the British Museum has made some rather large blunders even in the renovation arena, including the 1930 renovation of the Marbles, which not only broke some of them but also gave them an unnatural, white appearance.
Some aspects of decolonising museums, of stripping away at least some of the Imperial legacy which still resonates today, are complex. But some are straightforward. Let's turn the Elgin Marbles into Peter's Marbles, the glass spherical type, which he keeps at school. Edward, a school bully, takes them from him, intending to keep them at his home, claiming that another school bully wrote a note saying he could. But he has left that note at home. In any event, he decides to give them to the school so they can look after them. Are they Edward’s Marbles? The school’s? Of course not, they're Peter's. Give them back to him.
The real reason for inaction is that to return them would fuel a whole host of claims for the return of items presently in the Museum. Amongst many, there would be other Ottoman items to be handed back; the Lewis Chessman back to Scotland, Neanderthal remains back to Gibraltar, the Moai back to the Easter Island and the Lander Stool back to Nigeria. The latter item, like the Elgin Marbles, adds insult to injury, by coupling a European name to an artefact just because he 'found' a piece of Yoruba art. Lagos wants it back. The British Museum has it in storage. For those who fret that returning the controversial items would leave a huge empty space in central London, they might consider that like art galleries (see Art for, and by, the Many by Phil Brett) museums only show a fraction of their collection. In the British Museum's case, only about 1% is on show.
Soft power, revenue and the Sackler Trust
With the post World War 2 boom in tourism, museums and art galleries are important sources of profit-making for British hotel and restaurant owners. They also enhance national status, and help promote – or at least soften – the often cruel and violent reality of colonialism into an image of a powerful but fundamentally benevolent empire. The concept of soft power has changed since the nineteenth century, but not disappeared.
Get your Rosetta Stone souvenirs here! Models of Nelson’s fleet should really be sold alongside them
The children on our school trips love the souvenir shops, but they can only bring in a fraction of the required revenue for museums, no matter how expensive those toy mummies are.
Purchased items in the collections don't come cheap. In 1999 the British Museum bought an exquisite Roman silver cup for £1.8 million, known today as the Warren Cup. In its day, it was the Museum's most expensive purchase. Not only is it an aesthetically lovely item from 1AD, but its depiction of two male lovers has had an important role in the battle for LGBTQ rights, with its first modern day owner – Edward Perry Warren – using it in his 1928 book 'A defence of Uranian Love'. So its value is multi-faceted – but has a massive price tag. Thus like the Elgin Marbles and so many of the other items in the British Museum, it has both progressive and reactionary meanings.
The small but very pricey Warren Cup
More souvenirs can be flogged for the regular 'blockbuster' exhibitions, which can also raise revenues by charging entrance fees. Such exhibitions usually come with sponsorship, often from big corporations and trusts linked to the profits made by billionaire capitalists. Indeed, giving to the arts is a big thing for the multinationals. Not just the temporary exhibitions, but many of the galleries have corporate names – something I become aware of as I arrange to meet my Blue Table Group of children by the entrance to the Raymond and Beverley Sackler Wing.
The Sackler Trust has very recently halted all its 'philanthropic' giving because they say that they don't want to be a distraction from the worthy causes they support. Hmm, maybe! Or maybe they have decided that the controversy over the opioid drug crisis, and their link to the OxyContin scandal in the United States, is damaging their corporate image, like the demonstrations in American galleries which they are sponsoring.
So why have they been giving money in the first place? Care for the common folk? Again, hmm, maybe! Perhaps it’s more like the B list celeb that employs an accountant to stash his money away but always appears for Comic Relief?
It is, as Rob Reich, Professor of Ethics at Stanford University, says – a case of 'reputation laundering'. The British museum itself boasts online of the investment opportunities for a "Great stand-out campaign by aligning your brand with one of the world's most prestigious cultural institutions". People are now questioning this 'philanthropy' more and more. Recently, there was a demonstration against a BP-sponsored exhibition of Assyrian artefacts. The complaint was that whilst BP was posing as the great respecter of other countries' treasures, in modern day Iraq (formerly known as Assyria) it had been very keen to help itself to its oil reserves after the Gulf War. Helen Glynn, a spokesperson for the 'BP or not BP’, who organised the protest, argued that BP wants to be seen "as a good corporate citizen, when it is one of the most destructive companies in the world".
Colonisation does not always come at the end of gun, a jet fighter, or a drone. The spirit of the East India Company lives on in these huge multinationals, helping themselves to as much as they can, from around the world.
Decolonisation has to be serious, not tokenistic, and thus it must include looking at who gives money and what they get in return, and what influence they have (see also The corruption of art and culture by corporate capital by Mike Quille). For in the quite brilliant words of Kassim:
I do not want to see decolonisation become part of Britain's national narrative as a pretty curiosity with no substance - or worse for decoloniality to be claimed as yet another 'great' British accomplishment: the railways, two world wars, the world cup, and decolonisation.
The stunning courtyard, with banners proclaiming the latest exhibition - sponsored by Mitsubishi
This comes at a cost though. Governments see museums, galleries and culture generally as an easy target for cost-cutting. Museums have thus sought alternative streams of revenue for a reason. I doubt very much that the BM's link up with BP is because they fancy a freebie trip to an oil rig. It is the cold cash they bring. So many cultural critics, including the journalist Mark Lawson, have been critical of such protests, saying that in the name of some misplaced virtue, they simply reduce funding. He dismisses such proponents as being the 'New Puritans'. Resisting the response that Puritans helped get Charles I's head cut off, so they can’t have been all bad, there is a more concrete, and less flippant argument.
For socialists it is simple – give more in state funding. Then the counter-argument appears – from where will that money come from? If I look at the pretty pie chart on my annual tax summary, which tells me how my tax and NICs have been spent, what would be cut to pay for this increase? More to culture, but less to welfare or health or education? Interestingly, defence is never offered as an alternative. But the children in my class could answer that – you can always increase the whole which a pie chart represents. In this case, by increasing taxes. One is reminded of the quote of Clement Atlee from 1922:
Charity is a cold grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim.
It does not have to be the way it is now. Society changes, has often changed, and can change again. This includes how museums are run and how the world’s history and culture is cared for. Who says important artefacts must be bought and sold? Why should some billionaire own something that rightly belongs to all of us?
Public ownership and democratic control
The answer surely lies in extending public ownership and democratic control of all our important historical artefacts. Remove the expensive market for our shared history. To a limited extent, museums already share and cooperate on an international basis, so why not extend that? Return what is not theirs to where it belongs, and that will foster a greater relationship between sister museums.
Some of this can be done in the here and now – to think otherwise is pessimism of curatorship. But to truly take culture back into public ownership, a whole new world needs to be created. In a Radio 4 Point of View recently, there was an interesting and thoughtful piece by Sarah Dunant on the issue. However, she concluded by saying that whilst art such as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was brilliant in its unsullied purity, we would just have to accept that we mortals below live in a mucky, corrupt world, and always would. Personally, I disagree – we socialists aim higher, want to transform our world, and cleanse it of the filth of ages.
And so back to my school trip. I want them to enjoy visiting museums – to wonder at the truly multicultural, diverse world we live in, and to develop respect and empathy with people from the past and the present. That cannot be done on one visit, even with a lunch and a few pencils purchased. But neither can it be done by visiting museums soaked in attitudes of control, dominance and superiority.
Elgin Marbles decolonisation sackler trust
Wearing Civil Rights militancy on record sleeves
To mark the anniversary of the birthday of Rosa Parks, Phil Brett examines the impact of Civil Rights militancy on the sleeves of soul and funk albums.
In Wearing Their Politics on Their Sleeves we looked at how the growing Civil Rights Movement in the USA had influenced the design of jazz album sleeves, here we shall do likewise for their nephews and nieces - soul and funk albums.
Perhaps surprisingly, soul music took a while to reflect the social upheavals occurring in America. Berry Gordy's Motown Records strictly avoided politics, focusing on the traditional staple of love and romance. Their record sleeves, like their rock 'n' roll siblings, would be in the main, brightly covered affairs with the artist central to the design, usually smiling, with arms outstretched. But their wider impact should not be underestimated. The Civil Rights Movement had opened up a space for black music to gain a larger audience, but the musicians themselves, even with such successful labels as Motown or Stax, still faced a segregated world, just like the black members of their audiences. They might share desks at the Stax Records HQ in Memphis, but they couldn't share lunch counters outside. One should remember that it was not until 1967 that the Supreme Court stopped laws prohibiting interracial marriage in the USA.
Groups such as Diana Ross and the Supremes were not political in the implicit sense, but often the context of culture is important. Where Did Our Love Go reached number 1 in 1964 (following Motown's first top spot - Mary Wells' My Guy). This, in a country where in some states you would go to prison for 12 months, if your love led to marriage, and you were black and he was white. Motown was young black America asserting itself. Reaching number one, crossing racial lines, it was - whatever Gordy might want - a cultural act of assertion and subversion, to a bloody great tune.
On the album sleeve, the three women have the style, sophistication and class Motown strived for. To America, in 1964, rife with racism, with a good percentage of white Americans seeing black people as little more than savages, this sent a powerful message.
The struggle impacted across numerous different cultural lines. In less than a decade, politics were implicitly finding themselves into the music. The seminal albums of What's Going On (1971) by Marvin Gaye and Innervisions (1973) by Stevie Wonder set the standard. The American dream was becoming recognised as a nightmare for many.
There's a Riot Goin' On (1971) by Sly and Family Stone and Back to the World (1973) by Curtis Mayfield
Both the albums pictured above use the Stars and Stripes to question what exactly there is to be patriotic about. Indeed, is it possible to be highly critical of one's country and still be patriotic? The Sly album is only the flag, but the blue is now black and the stars are suns. There was no mention of either the title or the band (although the label insisted on a sticker). If John Berg's sleeve design is rather opaque, then Mayfield's is a little more obvious, with images of children and hustlers, jet bombers and the White House. Jerry Wollkowitz, who made the montage, is asking us what kind of world is the Vietnam veteran in the title track returning to?
Montage has often been used to make social comment. The Bar-Keys Do You See What I See? (1972) used images from United States culture, making it look like a grotesque circus. And in doing so, like the Curtis Mayfield album, matched the lyrics of its title track. From the early days of merely plonking the singer on the cover, artists were now seeking to reflect an image or a message. The sleeve had become more than something to keep the record safe and clean - it could also convey ideas.
Some weren't that subtle. Gene McDaniels had been a crooner in the early sixties, but after the assassination of Martin Luther King exiled himself to Denmark for a year. Mass action can change millions of people's ideas and McDaniels is but one example. He came back, wanting to be known as Eugene McDaniels. A change of name brought a whole change of lyrics, including writing Compared to What (the live recording of which, by Les McCann and Eddie Harris is possibly one of the greatest ever songs recorded). His first album on his return was Outlaw (1970) with the cover screaming urban guerrilla, a counter-culture at war with the establishment.
The sleeve of Serve 'em (1972) by Madhouse also pulls no punches, with its satirical cartoon clearly showing the huge and mutual mistrust between President Nixon and the black community.
The wind of change even reached the more polished Philly sound, shown by these two 1973 albums show graphically. Both were made under the art direction of Ed Lee. The O'Jays album has a painting of a slave ship, illustrating the title track. To quote the Greatest Covers of All Time: "It was enough to make even the most myopic of white music fans take note that something was changing". This was released six years before the publication of Alex Haley's Roots. Not that the artist, James Barkley, was famed as a militant, he was better known as a children's book illustrator.
Bart Forbes, the artist for the MFSB album, was also not known for being a leading light in the counter-culture. His art was usually not so much strident graphics as a popular illustrator for Sports Illustrated, and was more used to drawing baseball stars than this kind of nightmarish drawing, including demonstrators, swastikas, skeletal soldiers, an atomic bomb cloud and the Klu Klux Klan. Interestingly, both artists had also designed U.S postage stamps! If militancy was affecting such previously soul pop groups such as the O'Jays and MFSB, not to mention illustrators such as Forbes and Barkley, then the mainstream had certainly shifted leftwards.
The heavyweight cardboard sleeve of this James Brown spin-off band also depicts the negative history of the African American experience, tracing the relatively recent barbarity of slavery and its continuing impact on black lives. Both the title, Damn Right I am Somebody (1973) and the music demanded change. On the back it says, "Think that you are somebody, and you'll be somebody. Positive Thinking. Positive Thinking. Positive Thinking".
Positivity jumps out of you from Funkadelic's Uncle Jam Wants You (1979). Here the message remains serious but has a humorous twist, with George Clinton adopting a pose made famous by Black Panther Huey Newton in his iconic 1967 photograph. Referencing Black Power, still something feared by the white establishment in 1979, but doing so in platform white boots! Clinton's various projects (Funkadelic and Parliament for example) were full of glitter and showmanship, but with glorious funk, and very often with serious themes. Rather like Sun Ra in the jazz world, it seemed convenient to escape the world in order to comment on it. Diem M. Jones, who took this photograph, was also the designer who worked with Clinton and was integral to the music, putting Clinton's ideas into visual reality.
Here's another example of the singer adopting a powerful leader pose. Moses had always been an important figure in the Black American struggle, with his connotations of leading a people from captivity into freedom. The Isaac Hayes album Black Moses (1971) had a gatefold sleeve featuring the singer, full length, arms spread.
The photographer used for Black Moses was Joel Brodsky, someone with an impressive pedigree of covers including Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and the Doors' debut album. He was also responsible for the Impressions' Finally Got Myself Together (1973) album showing the band out on the streets. Racism in the USA went far beyond segregation in the South. The brutal fact was that in the richest country in the world, there were urban ghettos of severe poverty throughout the country. Soul and funk musicians began to use ghetto imagery to make the point that even with the removal of segregation laws, black people still suffered chronic discrimination - something we see today with hip-hop and rap music.
On the cover of Keep on Steppin' (1973) by the Fatback Band there is a young girl dancing in front of a wall which has the band name and album title written in graffiti. It is simple but effective, and in the music writer Lloyd Bradley's view is "Probably the greatest album cover ever..... this typifies a trend in 1970s funk, whereby the sleeve represents the music rather than the band."
Sadly, women on many soul and funk albums, as with rock albums, have often featured on album covers merely as semi-pornography. The 1978 self-titled Taste of Honey debut is rather different. On the cover are bassist Janice Marie Johnson and guitarist Carlita Dorhan, with their instruments. This was at the time when punk and post-punk female musicians were trying to kick down the doors of male dominated rock (see No-one's Little Girl). Johnson and Dorhan, may be wearing elegant dresses rather than leather jackets and torn jeans, but there is no doubt from their look and camera angle that they are no mere adornments. These are two black female musicians asserting their confidence in both their musical ability and who they are. By the late seventies militant funk was being replaced by disco, but the struggle had had a widespread affect. The emphasis might be on dance, but this album cover also radiates pride.
Waves of political struggle are like tsunamis against the ruling class and their prevailing ideas, and they also send ripples also across the world of popular culture. Anti-Vietnam protests, the Civil Rights movement and the women's movements shook the American establishment. It also helped create not only great music, but alongside it, marvellously evocative album art.
Rosa Parks, with Martin Luther King in the background
Supremes Marvin Gaye Curtis Mayfield Stevie Wonder Fatback Band Rosa Parks
'The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter': Dashiell Hammett vs. Joe McCarthy
Phil Brett tells the story of when Dashiell Hammett faced Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Sixty five years ago, on March 26th 1953, Dashiell Hammett, the famous novelist who was responsible for popularising the hard-boiled private eye novel, faced Senator Joseph McCarthy. For a brief moment in the confrontation, there took place an exchange concerning the possibility of communism in the United States. What led to that frankly surreal moment shows both what the American state will do to protect its rule, and the power which it fears.
By 1953, Hammett was internationally known for his novels such as The Maltese Falcon, which had set the template of the cynical hard-drinking detective (See Murder, Mavericks and Marxism for my socialist look at the growth of crime fiction). His writing inspired legions of others, including such luminaries as Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. Many of his stories had been made into Hollywood movies. The 1941 film of the Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, usually appears in best movie lists, and the book figures in literary equivalents. But it wasn't because McCarthy disliked film noir that Hammett was having to defend himself. To find the reason, we perhaps should travel back to the start of the twentieth century.
By then, the United States had grown to a position where it could rival Britain and Germany. Huge corporations were now creating huge wealth, but only for those at the top. With the ever greater demands of profit, came ever greater exploitation. Workers fought back and unionisation grew, but the American federation of trade unions, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was ill-equipped to lead it, being virtually all male, all white and all skilled. Howard Zinn in A People's History of the United States writes that "Racism was practical for the AFL. The exclusion of women and foreigners was also practical." Theirs was a business unionism, set up to help big business whilst earning fantastic salaries for the officials; divide and rule worked for them. But not for the movement. Mass strikes, such as the 1907 general strike of over ten thousand black and white workers on the New Orleans levees, terrified the bosses. Socialists and anarchists found their ideas gaining an audience. A new union, The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also known as the Wobblies) was created to cross racial, gender and sectional lines. It grew massively. The ruling class responded as they always had, and would continue to do, by unleashing terrible violence. Strikers were regularly fired on, such as in 1916 Everett, Washington, when two hundred armed thugs opened fire, leaving five Wobblies dead. It was far from being a one off.
A year later, IWW organiser Frank Little, was kidnapped by vigilantes, tortured and hanged. Strong evidence suggests that the vigilantes were in fact members of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. A member of the Pinkertons at the time was one Samuel Dashiell Hammett. Lillian Hellman, playwright and writer, comrade and partner of his for thirty years, later claimed that Hammett himself had been personally approached to be part of the gang. Her claim has been questioned, but whatever the truth of it, there is no doubt that Little's murder appalled him, and as a Pinkerton he would have witnessed the strike-breaking, infiltration, blackmail and murder which, despite their name, was pretty much the main work of the agency. Seeing at first hand how the state would subcontract out terror made Hammett begin to question the values which he had been brought up with.
By the twenties, the IWW had been destroyed, with many activists dead or in prison, and the Socialist Party was falling apart. In 1924, the Ku Klux Klan had grown to 4.5 million. It looked as if the American ruling class had won, and reaction was on the march. Racism and terror had long been popular mechanisms of oppression, but now there was something new in their tool box of terror - anti-communism. The first Red Scare was launched as a reaction of to the 1917 Russian Revolution, with the state mobilising against the threat. The press joined in, howling against anyone who even vaguely threatened the 'American way of life'. President Woodrow Wilson forced Congress to pass the 1918 Sedition Act, primarily aimed against anarchists. Similar to what we see today, with Donald Trump calling anyone he perceives to be an opponent a snow flake, back then, there was little concern to differentiate between communists, socialists, anarchists, liberals or merely decent human beings. They all were 'reds'.
However, the struggle continued, with mass strikes. Marcus Garvey's message of black pride reached large audiences and the NAACP bravely battled for justice. In 1919, the American Communist Party (CP) was formed. The 1930s depression saw times get even harder, with more workers growing disillusioned with capitalism. The CP had grown to 55,000 by the end of the decade.
Hammett might have left the Pinkertons, but he was using the experience of detection in his writing. His first story was published in the magazine The Smart Set in 1929. The first of his five novels was Red Harvest (1929), which was followed by The Dain Curse (1929), the Maltese Falcon (1930), The Glass Key (1931) and the Thin Man (1934). They brought fame and wealth. However, the effect wasn't to draw him towards capitalism, but quite the opposite.
The 1930s saw him involved in civil rights and anti-fascist activity, joining the American Labor Party and in 1937, the Communist Party. In the main, his support was financial, and lending his name to campaigns. Not that his politics can especially be seen in his writing - there is a constant theme of a corrupt society in them, with many of the cops on the take, but little more than that.
But neither the lack of overt literary socialism, nor the fact that he had served in both world wars, was going to save him from the watchful eye of the red scaremongers. Over time, legislation had been steadily passed against the left. In March 1947 president Truman signed Executive Order 9835 to check the "Americanism" of public employees. It was the legislation which the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) would use. Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, says, ""The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter." And the crook was certainly cheap here, with Senator McCarthy achieving his moment in history, by conducting several HUAC investigations.
Again, as with today's resident of the White House and purveyor of gaudy Twitter patter, stars in the movie industry were useful targets (see also Peter Frost's article I am Spartacus on blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo). This was partly because there was anxiety that any liberalism in the arts might help raise awkward questions about society (see my If We Stop Fighting The World Will Die for an example of how political messages appear in the most mainstream of films). But it was also because the stars' fame could be used to spread the fear - if the state was willing and able to go for the great and good, then the local activist was an easy target. In wielding such power, the ruling class showed their fear, by trying to instil it in others.
Some fought back, including in 1947, a high profile, (and in the history of lobbying, possibly the best-dressed ever) delegation, led by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. In the same year, Hammett was elected the president of the Civil Rights Congress (CVC) whose role was to fund defences for those arrested for political offences.
Four years later, he was brought before the United Sates attorney for the southern district of New York to disclose who had been aided. Hammett refused. As a result, he was sentenced to six months in jail for contempt. The magazine Hollywood Life caught the OTT hysteria, calling Hammett, "one of the most dangerous (if not THE) influential communists in America".
Then in 1953, he was dragged in front of the HUAC. This time it was to face the charge that 'pro-communist' books had made their way into overseas libraries run by the State Department. Three hundred copies of his books had been found on the shelves of seventy three of its libraries. Fearing that American capital would collapse from Sam Spade's sardonic wit, Dashiell Hammett faced Senator Joe McCarthy.
For most of the hearing, Hammett, like so many others who appeared before the HUAC, pleaded the Fifth Amendment, refusing to answer questions in case they might incriminate him. There is a tradition of socialists using political trials as a platform to argue their cause. Why Hammett and others didn't do this is not clear. Perhaps, the reason is hinted at when one of the Committee questions him as to why he is appearing "before the bar of public opinion". He replies that it was not the 'bar of public opinion' which had sent him to prison for six months - the implication being that it was the state, doing so for political reasons. By the fifties, the left had suffered a series of defeats and confidence was low: taking the Fifth was seen as the only viable tactic. Certainly, Hammett didn't lack moral courage. He'd shown that in the 1947 trial and the fact that he had publicly supported campaigns associated with the CP throughout the Red Scare.
But then McCarthy asked, "Do you believe that the communist system is better than the system in use in this country?" Hammett didn't this time take the Fifth but instead answered, "Well, regardless of what I thought of communism in Russia today, it is doubtful if, you know, any one sort of thing - one is better for one country, and one is better for the other country."
McCarthy, then asked, "You seem to distinguish between Russian communism and American communism. While I cannot see any distinction, I will assume there is for the purpose of the questioning. Would you think that American communism would be a good system to adopt in this country?" Hammett took the Fifth, but then to perhaps McCarthy's surprise, he added that it was a question which could not be answered by a yes or no. McCarthy asked why. "You see," Hammett answered, "I don't understand. Theoretical communism is no form of government. You know, there is no government. And I actually don't know, and I couldn't without - even in the end, I doubt it if I can give a definite answer."
Sensing a chance to trap him, the senator asked if he favoured the adoption of communism in the United States. Hammett didn't take the Fifth but answered no. It wasn't the answer that McCarthy had expected. Hammett explained, "For one thing, it would seem to me impractical, if most people didn't want it."
Maybe McCarthy should have read some of the books he was so intent on banning. If he had, then he might have understood that to achieve communism, Marxists believe that a transitional socialist state is required, you did not jump straight to a communist state. So Hammett was, strictly speaking, not denying his politics. McCarthy just simply did not understand them. In any case, the agent of change was the mass of the working class. The masses in 1953 USA were not in a pre-revolutionary state, so Hammett was being practical. Hammett's testimony couldn't be said to have been a stirring defence of socialism, but he hadn't implicated anybody else, nor fundamentally denied his politics.
The session ended with McCarthy returning to the ostensible reason for his appearance, the stocking of 'communist literature' in state libraries. He asked the author, "If you were in charge of that programme to fight communism, would you purchase the works of some 75 communist authors?" Hammett, replied with a putdown which Sam Spade would have been proud of, "If I were fighting communism, I don't think I would do it by giving people any books at all."
Despite his careful replies, he had done enough to provoke further action against him. He was blacklisted and the FBI spent a lot of time and effort in trying to charge him for tax fraud. Perhaps nothing more was done because Hammett was a sick man, who would not publish anything major again. He become a virtual recluse, living with Hellman until his death in 1961. Even then, he had beaten McCarthy, outliving the senator by four years.
There is no doubt that the American ruling class faced a serious threat to its power in the first half of the twentieth century. It defended itself with brutal violence, intimidation and blacklisting - nothing less than state-sponsored terrorism. The left was smashed. Sixty five years later, with Trump as president, it could be easy to think that McCarthy had won. However, within a decade, the sixties would see a re-emergence of radicalism, with women's, black, gay and anti-Vietnam movements changing American society forever. Even today, with the Uncut, Black Lives Matter and Me Too campaigns, not to mention campaigns against Trump, people still fight for radical ideas in the States. McCarthy would have been apoplectic at the sight of hundreds of thousands of Americans flocking to support Bernie Sanders, a politician proud to call himself a socialist.
The root of Senator Joe McCarthy's fear is still here. And let us also remember that McCarthy's name is now despised, synonymous with witch hunts, whilst Hammett is famous for the creation of a literary genre. Perhaps the words of Sam Spade, his most famous creation, also spoke for him: "I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble."
Hollywood Ten
Maltese Falcom Humphrey Bogart Lauren Bacall IWW Trump
Beyond the boundaries: A review of the Diaspora Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale
Phil Brett takes us on a tour of an exhibition at the Venice Biennale which explores the challenges which emigrants and immigrants face.
Away from the main sites of this year's Venice Biennale Arte (See Dennis Broe for a review of the festival) is the Diaspora Pavilion. It’s housed in a former palace, built on the proceeds of mercantile trade and theft – often two words for the same activity, of course. Cornered by two canals, and dripping faded grandeur, the building is an appropriate setting for the exhibition by 19 artists exploring elements of the diasphoric experience. Independent of the concept of national pavilions in the main festival, these are experiences of people far from their original homelands, of narratives transcending national boundaries.
This is the first time there has been a Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The main driving idea behind it is the gross under-representation of black and minority artists (BME) – even the lack of referencing the lives of BME people, in the world of art. (For a brief look at the conservatism of this art world, see my Art for, and by the Many, not the Few).
In the wider world, the whole question of how people fit in, where they can live and where they're from, has become a toxic political issue. Electoral successes by right wing (and shamefully, many social democratic) parties have been built on the back of scapegoating immigrants for the effect of austerity. With sick irony, it has transcended the national boundaries, with anti-immigration policies crossing the national boundaries which the racists want to strengthen.
Tragically, another reason for the pavilion's topicality is the death of Khadija Saye, the British Gambian artist who was killed in the Grenfell fire, whose work features in the exhibition. Her wet tin-plate pictures reference the rituals we use to cope with trauma.
Her pictures are as much about the process of production, as the final piece of art. Titled, "Dwelling: in this space we breathe", they have taken on a further powerful message, that the space, that she and other working class (and mainly BME) people lived, lacked even the basic human right of safety - of adequate fire safety procedures. In 2017, the poor, the black and minority ethnic, indeed, anyone seen by the ruling class definition as being of 'us' are shunted out of sight.
Being written out of history is also the theme of Barbara Walker's large in situ drawings of black soldiers in World War I. Appearing to be not finished, their bodies seem to fade into the white plaster. Like the role of BME troops in both world wars, they have been whitewashed out of existence.
Forming the bedrock of the exhibition, arguably of the very concept of Diaspora, is transportation, sometimes voluntarily, but often forced, either by economic necessity or to escape war and famine. Or as millions suffered, by forced transportation - slavery (it has been estimated that 1.5 million slaves died in the passage). The legacy of which still affects the world with its sickness. Karl Marx, in Capital, and later Eric Williams, in his classic, Capitalism and Slavery, argued that the barbaric trade was not only responsible for the dominance of the British Empire but the birth of racism to justify it.
On the ground floor of the pavilion hang ships by Hew Locke. On and surrounding the ships are cut-outs of Portuguese mercenaries made by 16th century Benin sculptors. Hanging by them are figures of contemporary soldiers, and I was reminded that just as Venice gained its power by control of the Mediterranean, so today the EU patrol the same sea, blocking immigrants who are risking their lives for relative safety. The ships may face a gold curtain but they are flanked by armed force.
Above this, on the first floor, stand large figures by Sokari Douglas Camp CBE, showing the stages of slavery in Sierra Leone, from indigenous, to slave, to post-liberation era figures. They stand proud, dominating the floor, indeed, almost the whole exhibition. Nigerian born, but living and working in the Elephant & Castle, Camp is one of the better known artists being shown, with her large metal sculptures appearing in such diverse places as St Paul’s and the American Museum of Natural History. I will happily say that I am a fan.
This exhibition though, is not solely about the crimes committed against people of colour but also of their resistance. Sometimes it is by arms, as shown by Kimathi Donkor's painting of Toussaint L'Ouverture leading the slave rebellion for Haiti's independence. Its structure echoes Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps, which heralded the demise of the Venetian republic. Donkor, known for his dramatic figurative art of key moments of black history, whether the subject is the murder of Stephen Lawrence or Nanny of the Maroons leading slave rebellions in Jamaica, has a direct style, which never tries to over-complicate.
There is also the theme of immigrants’ struggles to get their ideas, knowledge and skills accepted into western society, whilst retaining their identity. Yinka Shonibare MBE's wonderful installation of a library, looking so traditionally English, with its wooden bookshelves, has books by first and second generation immigrants, while others are by people who have opposed immigration. All are covered in traditional African designs. Whether the authors in the library acknowledge it or not, no society is pure, comprising a mix of cultures - complementing, intertwining and sometimes conflicting.
Looking at it, perhaps the Chinua Achebe quote is apt, "People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories". Shonibare's work explores the concept of identity and the interrelationship of the histories of Africa and Europe. His most public work in doing this was the large Nelson's Ship in a Bottle on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. This installation, I think is just as successful, and like the whole pavilion makes me hope that the exhibition will travel to the UK so people who don't have the funds to visit Venice can enjoy it.
It has never been easy for immigrants to survive. The major struggle has been that of survival. Whether from the Diaspora in renaissance Venice, the eighteenth century Britain or today's Europe. Many were, and are, pushed to the margins of society, as seen in the photographs of street sellers of African descent, selling handbags to tourists on the Venetian sea front, by Dave Lewis.
People might be economically marginalised, but that doesn't mean that their beliefs and traditions are. Directly or indirectly, they're alive in their hearts and minds. A part of the cultural mix which creates us. Such is an element of Michael Forbes' installations where African iconography mix with western figures. Cultural and national references sit by each other, crossing national boundaries, as does the Diaspora. Sometimes they combine to create new beliefs or narratives, at other times they exist in parallel. The tension of different cultural heritages runs through this pavilion. As Salman Rushdie said, "Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools".
But it would be wrong to think of the exhibition as worthy and heavy. Yes, it is thought provoking, powerful at times, with far more than has been mentioned here including some great video and audio art, but it is also vibrant and playful. Nicola Green's Bate Bola prints mix Rio's Carnival, Venice's mask ball and English Tudor clowns do have something to say about the cross pollination of cultures, but it also brought a broad smile to my face.
Leaving the pavilion, heading back into the labyrinth of Venice's alleyways, hoping not to get too lost (again), I felt that the exhibition had educated, intrigued, moved – and yes, entertained me.
Art for and by the many, not the few
Published in Cultural Commentary
Phil Brett shows how art has often been about power and prestige, argues that art should be not only for but by the many.
The history of Western art has been dominated by artworks created for and by the few. Paintings and sculpture have been associated with power and privilege. In the twenty first century, liberal capitalist democracies may have tinkered around with that fact, but essentially it is still true.
Leon Trotsky wrote, "Every ruling class creates its own culture, and consequently, its own art." This can be seen throughout history, from ancient times to the present leaders have liked to have statues, friezes and buildings to show their own glory. Rulers have always loved having their images captured for eternity. There are many examples, like Titian painting the Hapsburgs, oor Henry VIII appointing Hans Holbein the Younger, as the English King's Painter, whose iconic 1536 portrait depicts a powerful and athletic king. Even today, the paintings of Prime Ministers line the staircase of 10 Downing Street, and if the reigning monarch's portrait is being painted, it always makes the 10 o'clock news. Though, with no disrespect for the artists involved, we're not talking Holbeins or Titians here.
Battles have often been a popular subject for the rulers to use art as propaganda. They meant pain and agony for the poor folk actually involved in the fighting, but victory in them gave the rulers added authority and legitimacy. Two examples will suffice: Maria de'Medici commissioning Pieter Paul Rubens to paint a series of paintings depicting her dead husband's (French king Henry IV) victorious battles. In World War I, the Government wanted painters such as Paul Nash and Percy Wyndham Lewis to promote the cause of Britain. Whether their stunning depictions on the horror of trench warfare do so, is open for debate, because good art often exposes the truth and questions dominant ideologies - something the ruling class find troubling.
Even with religious painting, power and prestige are there. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel may be a stunning tribute to the glory of God, but it was also for the glory of Pope Julius II. Sometimes, the link is far from subtle. The Medici family were an example of a new class of people, powerful financiers, who used art to help the status of Florence (and themselves). In many paintings they had themselves painted in. In Sandro Botticelli's 1475 painting, Adoration of the Magi, the Medici family are actually the Magi. Keen takers of selfies should take note, that's quite a high bar to beat.
Sandro Botticelli, Adoration of the Magi.
It hasn't always been monarchs and God. Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Thomas Gainsborough painted the landed gentry, keen to show off their fine clothes, homes and grounds, demonstrating their position and class power for all to see.
Governments of the twentieth century were aware of the power of art. The 1917 Russian Revolution, led to many artists, such as Chagall and Malevich flocking to its support. Many in the early Soviet regime embraced the avant-garde (October 1917 - the spark for great art). However, it did not see its role as to pitch one school against another. Both Lenin and Trotsky argued for the relative autonomy of art and artists, although in practice there was significant state sponsorship, support and influence over art and culture. A fundamental change occurred in the late Twenties and Thirties, with the art of ‘socialist realism’, designed to promote the Soviet model of socialism. In an ironic twist, in the late 1940s, the CIA promoted and funded Abstract Expressionist exhibitions - unknown to the artists themselves - to show just how free and exciting the USA was compared to Soviet Russia.
Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm
In the private sector, profit joined prestige and power in the mix, leading to the rise of the collector/dealer. The names of Frick, Guggenheim and Sainsbury are familiar names of galleries. There are others such as Benjamin Altman, with his collection in the New York Metropolitan and Joseph Duveen, who made a fortune from art. Controversies about tax avoidance or the authenticity of paintings he sold did not stop him becoming a Lord and having a gallery named after him in Tate Britain.
This group of people may not have their names on the credits on the paintings we see, but they were very influential in modern art. With eyes and wallets focussed on the market, they helped the growth of isms, serving as brand names to help the sales. One such dealer was Ernest Gambert, the influential art dealer for the Pre-Raphaelites. Rossetti nicknamed him 'Gamble-art' for his interference and keenness for the artists to paint in the Pre-Raphaelite style. He once argued with John Everett Millais that the horse’s head was too large in his 1857 painting A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford.
Picasso's paintings from his Blue Period stayed in his studio for years because influential art dealer Ambrose Vollard dismissed them as being unsuitable for the wealthy buyers, with their depictions of beggars and street urchins. The few may have got slightly larger than in Holbein's time, but it was still only a tiny minority who could see, let alone own, such art. Ownership conferred status and privilege - and of course profit to the dealer.
The art world started to balloon in size, after the war. In 1955, Fortune magazine advised its readers to look to art as an investment, suggesting De Kooning, Pollack and Rothko as good to start with, being between $500 and $3500 each (they're worth a whole lot more now). Today, the art market (not including the illegal sector, which Interpol have in their top five financial crimes) has been estimated as worth a cool $63.8 billion. In 2015, the UK accounted for 21% of this (behind the USA with 43% and ahead of China with 19%). A growth which has given people like Charles Saatchi enormous influence (and a few bob too).
Alongside the private collections, and following the Enlightenment, public museums began to emerge. The rich would have a monopoly of owning art but the common folk could be allowed limited access to gaze gratefully at masterpieces. As the art critic John Berger said: "Anyone who is not an expert entering the average museum today is made to feel like a cultural pauper receiving charity".
Museums may have grown very popular but there is still a separation of art and the majority. How many times have we heard people say, "I don't know anything about art but I know what I like"? Is that not an obvious defensive comment of a (usually) working class person, isolated from art and made to feel inferior to it?
But one might say, are not art galleries more popular than ever? In the 2017 list of Britain's most popular twenty attractions for the previous year, the National Gallery was at number 2; the Tate Modern at number 3; the National Portrait Gallery at number 11, with the Scottish National Gallery ay number 18. That's a total of 15.59 million visitors, without even considering adding the Royal Academy or Tate Britain or the hundreds of other private and public galleries. That's a lot of people straining to see the pictures.
However, all is not as egalitarian as it seems. There has been much criticism that the artworks on show are from a small (often white and male) clique. For black artists it was for a long time impossible to be shown. Emory Douglas, the Black Panther Party Minister of Culture said, "The ghetto is the gallery for the revolutionary artist". Graffiti artists continue that tradition.
The Guerrilla Girls, a group of feminist artists who confronted the sexism of the art world, estimated in 1989 that 5% of the Metropolitan Museum were by women whilst 85% of the nudes were women.
Curators might argue that there have been some attempts to address this, but the fact is that the people running them are still from a narrow social base. Look at the patrons of the Royal Academy and you'll see lord and ladies, with the common person occasionally represented by the likes of Stephen Fry.
The influence of the private art world ,with such figures as Saatchi in public galleries should not be underestimated. With the costs of art rocketing, most of the public galleries cannot compete, they feel that they have do deals with the private world. The Tate receives 70% of funding from non-Governmental sources. Public galleries have found one way to compensate this by getting sponsorship from big business. The Victoria and Albert exhibition of You Say You Want a Revolution included sponsors such as Levis, and the Royal Academy show Abstract Expressionism boasted the sponsor: 'BNP Paribas: The bank for a changing world'.
If that isn't ironic enough, then consider that one of the major sponsors of the Royal Academy's Revolution: Russian Art 1917 - 1932 was the Blavatnik Foundation. Its founder, Sir Leonard Blavatnik, may not be that well know, but he perhaps should be. In 2015 he was named as Britain's richest man, worth an estimated £17.1 billion. It is perhaps a brief look at his history: 1978, he emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States. He built an international conglomerate, which entered the commercial stratosphere, when it made billions after the collapse of the Soviet Union from the petrochemicals and oil industries. Considering that many people were unhappy at the political impartiality of the exhibition - see Great Art, Shame about the Curating - one can legitimately ask how much influence, direct or otherwise, did the foundation have on the exhibition. See also Corruption of Art and Culture.
Poster advertising V. and A. exhibition - and its sponsors
So why do these multinationals get involved? The answer is from our old friends, power and prestige. Those attendance figures of galleries means that they are now goldmines for tourism. Bilbao used the Guggenheim Gallery, opening in 1997, to regenerate the area. It worked. One survey found 80% of the visitors at the airport had arrived to visit it. Big money then, which cannot but affect the direction of the museum - not only the acquisition policy but its display. In 2011, a BBC Freedom of Information request found that the Tate only shows 20% of its permanent collection. To be fair, that contrasts well with the international average of 5%. The removal of art has been termed, "deaccessioning". It is estimated that MoMA has thirty Picasso paintings 'deaccessioned'. Galleries are as much like banks, storing valuable assets, as museums to entertain, educate and interest people.
Curators wield considerable influence on cultural and art policy. So John Berger's view that, "as a professional group, their character is patronising, snobbish and lazy" should cause us to worry. Certainly, Royal Academy show on the art of Russian Revolution with its lack of historical and indeed artistic understanding, would give some credence to such an accusation. The concern being that, even in the twenty first century, curators, gallery directors and critics all seem to come from a very narrow social base.
In recent months, articles in the Guardian, the Morning Star, and various other professional periodicals as well as in the social media, have discussed the whole issue of the running and funding of arts. The Government body with overall responsibility for the arts is the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), who in turn fund and oversee Arts Council England (ACE). ACE gets its funding partly directly from the Government and partly from the National Lottery. This is public money and there has been a concern that essentially it is still art for a few, by a few – but with the many paying for it.
Laura Barton, feature writer of the Guardian, raised concerns that 85% of ACE funding for music goes to classical and opera. A growing number of people have attacked the National Portfolio (basically the list of organisations which ACE funds) as being London-centric, biased against the working class, being too focussed on middle class taste and not diverse enough, e.g. in terms of gender and ethnic background. The balance between community and premier league art establishments leans towards the latter. ACE is institutionally biased towards the middle classes who see arts management as a good career path. Worries have been expressed just how transparent the decision process is, with the issue of a £2 million grant being given to as yet unformed theatre company, whose director appears to have links to senior figures of ACE.
With the Government policy of austerity, money (for some areas) is tight. So such uses of public money are legitimate ones to raise and socialists should do so. However, the Tories use this as cover to attack the very status of art. In the 2017 Conservative Party manifesto did have a few words about the importance of art but set beside the fact that in the last five years money spent on the arts has been cut by £165million, they don't really amount to much.
Simon Wren-Lewis: Neoliberalism and Austerity
Tom Watson rightly states that, "Lottery money is plugging holes where Government funding has been cut". Tories will argue that hospitals and schools matter more than galleries (whilst cutting these in any case). Of course, money can be found when they want to: £7 billion for the Parliament refurbishment or £370 million for Buckingham Palace, for example. What they really mean is that art is for them, not us – for the few, not the many.
Here’s John Berger again: "the fundamental division between the initiated and the uninitiated, the loving and the indifferent, the minority and the majority has remained as rigid as ever." This is especially true in education. In primary schools, especially in working class areas, a major concern are the SATs results, which in turn lead to league tables. Failure to meet the school's targets set could lead to failing OFSTED and thus academisation. Fundamentally, even with some tokenistic nods towards child happiness and creativity, Government policy is all about reading, writing and maths (and mechanical versions of them at that). The squeeze is being put on the arts.
The same is true in secondary schools, with the focus on the EBacc, when students achieve Grade C or above in English, maths, history or geography, a science and a language. If budgets are tight because of education cuts, the curriculum is narrowed, with subjects dropped, and the arts get squeezed out of the curriculum. Ditto in further education and university. And of course, with tuition fees, the chances for working class students to attend university or art college are narrowing. Whatever the Tory manifesto might say, the policy is that we proles just don't understand, or need to understand, the arts.
As a result the social base of the artists is narrowing. To an extent the artist, certainly the successful one, has always come from a particular stratum of society. One of Britain's greatest artists, Turner, faced snobbery from his fellow Royal Academians because of his lowly birth. Damien Hirst is from a working class background but he is now in a very different world. His latest exhibition, in Venice, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable is impressive. I was lucky enough to visit it and thoroughly enjoyed it. But I note that it cost Hirst personally £50 million to create it; not many artists could do that!
All gloomy then? Well, not quite. It is heartening that Jeremy Corbyn has launched a comprehensive arts policy, with a number of excellent initiatives which includes introducing an £160 million arts pupil premium, which would "support cultural activities in schools". Scholarships would be introduced. They would also "consider demands of those working to maintain our public museums to challenge corporate influence". The policy also promises to 'consider' including an art element in EBacc.
Labour Policy for Art: http://www.jeremyforlabour.com/arts
The policy is a good starting point art moving away from the few to the many. I think that any Corbyn Government should be bold. There does not have to be a choice between galleries or schools, museums or hospitals. Whatever indicator you use, Britain is always in the top ten wealthiest countries in the world. Britain can afford galleries and schools, museums and hospitals.
The choice in reality is tax cuts for the rich, or galleries, hospitals, and schools for the many. A Corbyn government can challenge the notion of art as a luxury just a for a few. He has committed to scrapping tuition fees - good. But there should also be a commitment to scrapping SATS, EBacc and league tables, to create a freedom to learn. Pump funding into education so the widest possible curriculum is offered, from the nursery to university and evening classes. Be totally upfront that art is important, it can enrich and change lives.
Labour could involve the public in decision making more. Not just in making ACE more transparent but also why not make regeneration projects, really that, regeneration and not just social cleansing? In areas such as the North East, housing could be built, with input from local residents, deciding on what they need and want. There are plenty of vacant industrial buildings - why not renovate them alongside the new homes and use the stored art collections of the Tate, RA, National and Imperial War Museum (which has over 200,000 paintings, most, yep, hidden away!) to create new wonderful galleries? Let's 'accession' them! After all, they are ours. Ask people what sort of gallery they would like. New schools and hospitals? Get local artists and community groups to decorate them. That is what an art policy for a Government should be: to fund, facilitate and support. It does not need to be prescriptive, we don't need instructions.
That would be a great start, it would be an arts policy which could help transform this country, creating a place for people to live in. I am a revolutionary socialist, and believe that people's creativity will only be allowed to fully blossom in a class-less society. Whilst we live in a capitalist society we shall still have the haves and have nots – those with power and those without. It is difficult to be creative when you are working long hours, paying the bills and looking after the kids. In a socialist society, in the words of Trotsky, "The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise."
In other words - art for, and by, the many.
Trotsky Socialist Realism Abstract Expressionism jeremy corbyn
The world was theirs to win: revolutionary Russian art at the Royal Academy
Phil Brett enjoys the art at the RA exhibition, but not the simplistic and misleading commentary.
Remember the fuss over the art of Hans Holbein the Younger because he painted during the time of an autocratic ruler who had a fondness for decapitating his wives? No, of course not, there wasn’t any. But there have been such murmurings about the Royal Academy’s exhibition on the art of the 1917 Russian Revolution, in The Guardian amongst other places. With liberals tut-tutting, I was intrigued as to what the Royal Academy itself would make of it.
Tyshler: Formal Construction of Red
The Russian Revolution was a moment in history when working people seized power in attempt to end oppression and exploitation. In doing so, a wealth of artistic creativity - visual, ceramic, musical and cinematic - was unleashed. The RA has included a lot of it here: there are masterpieces from amongst others, Kandinsky, Malevich and Chagall, as well as films from Eisenstein and designs for workers’ homes in the exhibition. It shows the breadth of the art produced, whether it is the abstractions of Alexander Tyshel or the more figurative paintings of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin or art designed for everyday use.
Pedrov-Vodkin: Self-portrait
At the heart of the exhibition are two rooms, ‘Brave New World’ being the first, which vibrate with energy, with artists such as Lyubov Popova, whose Space-Force Construction (1921), swirls like a cyclone around the centre and almost appears to escape the canvas and whirl you around. It is a piece which you can stand in front of and lose yourself. It is stunning. Similarly, Wassily Kandinsky’s Blue Crest (detail) (1917) takes your breath away. Energy combines with freedom to involve you emotionally. For me, I look at it and my brain tries to identify literal images, are there buildings, figures or faces? But as I look, I’m drawn in and simply enjoy the spectacle.
Malevich: Woman with a Rake
This and the next room, devoted to Kazimir Malevich, are a reflection of the revolution at its high point. The air is one of optimism and euphoria. The world was theirs to win. Previous to the revolution Malevich had been experimenting with geometric shapes, the revolution gave him fresh impetus. Even later his shift to figurative based painting, such as Woman with a Rake (1932) has shape at its heart. She looks like a jigsaw, an essential part of the world which she lives in. Likewise, Torso (Prototype of a New Image) (1929-32) isn’t in the tradition of figural representation, it is an attempt to create a new one. A direction he took further with his peasants’ series of paintings.
Marc Chagall was for a time Commissar for the arts in Vitebsk and has two fantastic paintings here. The largest is Prominade (1917-1918) which is a huge canvas with the artist holding hands with his wife Bella, who is floating in the air. Ostensibly about their love but it also captures the freedom that the revolution promised.
There is no doubt that the art exhibited is absolutely fantastic, you can’t help but wonder at the amazing imagination on show. The problem lies in the commentary which accompanies it.
Popova: Space-Force Construction
In the first room you are not introduced to the autocratic horror or Tsarism, or the hopes of the revolutionary masses but to the theme of ‘Salute the Leader’ where we are told, the “icons of Lenin replaced those of Christ”.
Rooms follow called ‘Man and Machine’ and the aforementioned, ‘Brave New World’, repeating the clichéd narrative arc of the dictator Lenin leading inevitably to the dictator Stalin, with his gulags. The historical context given is not much deeper than that. There is only passing mention of the massive, devastating, Civil War, let alone the invading western armies, which are never mentioned!
The exhibition blames the famine and poverty of those years on the Bolsheviks, not the attempts of the ruling classes of France and Britain to destabilise the fledgling workers’ state. We are told in ‘The Fate of the Peasants’ room that the peasants were “robbed of individuality” by the Bolsheviks. Presumably, the curators believe that the life of the peasant in Tsarist Russia was one of idyllic charm: writing poetry, whilst painting the fine countryside which they were of course not forced to work on, ploughing the fields just for the utter joy of it.
This narrative does have a problem though of trying to explain why so many artists, many of whom are now seen as giants of the arts, were drawn to the revolution, producing works of brilliance. Especially as we are repeatedly told that Lenin was not that interested in art and that at best, art was “tolerated” by the Bolsheviks.
This is nonsense, as Christine Lindey in Art and the Bolshevik Revolution writes on this site. Anatoliy Lunacharsky for example, was a poet and an art critic and became the first Soviet People’s Commissar of Education, responsible for education and culture. Leon Trotsky, leader of the Red Army, was so interested in art that not only did he write about it extensively but included artists on the civil war trains. (Which is perhaps why he barely gets a mention, except for appearing on a rather fine cup by Mikhail Adamovich).
Trotsky’s view that “art must make its own way and by its own means” is ignored because it does not fit the view that the Bolsheviks considered art as being purely for propaganda – so Martin Sixsmith tells us on the audio tape. Yes, the very Martin Sixsmith who was Tony Blair’s Director of Communication and who suggested ‘burying bad news’ on September 11th. I wasn’t sure whether the RA was enjoying some ironic humour here. I’m guessing not. The whole tone of the commentary throughout the exhibition programme is simplistic, misleading or simply wrong, viewing the artists as being at best skilled but naive dreamers who eventually see the error of their ways.
The exhibition ends with images of some of the many who died in the purges. The only explanation offered here for their deaths is that it was destined to be like that. Revealingly, there was no equivalent in the first room concerning the slaughter of the First World War, or of the Tsarist pogroms. As a socialist from the Trotskyist tradition, I believe that the Russian Revolution was attacked, isolated, subverted and besieged by Western capitalist powers, with the finest cadre killed in the Civil War, which led to a counter-revolution.
Now, I did not particularly expect that view to be expressed here, but I think it is fair enough to have expected some well-informed commentary and debate, as to what drew so many artists to the cause and what made many grow disillusioned. There should be a more fair-minded presentation of the different accounts of what happened to alter the trajectory of the revolution – and if the RA want to raise the gulags, then the reasons for their appearance should be presented. I was prepared to cut the Royal Academy some slack and not expect a detailed discussion of the workers’ revolution from a socialist perspective – it is after all, the Royal Academy, a bastion of the art establishment - but I did expect a somewhat more sophisticated take on what inspired so many great artists, than the banal line promoted here.
The sheer exuberance and optimism of people fighting for a new world can be clearly be seen in the art on display, but is ignored by the gallery. Also ignored is the interesting questions of the place of art in a society in crisis, its duty – or otherwise – to play a role in it and how the avant-garde can connect with the masses. Questions which could have easily fallen into the remit of the RA, without the need for the curators to be card-carrying Marxists.
So with all those reservations, is it worth a trip? Yes, the art is magnificent – rich in ideas, vibrancy and beauty. I would give the audio commentary a miss and ignore the curatorship of the exhibition. The art stands out as a beacon of hope, with rooms alive with young artists, giddy with the freedom that October 1917 created. That it was created in a cauldron of revolution is a fact that the RA cannot understand. Like many liberal critics, it can see the greatness of the art but not the politics behind it. In the final room, we are told that Stalin took great interest in literature and art, because it was an area where he could not suppress the ideas contained within. Whatever the Royal Academy might think or attempt, they cannot either.
Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 is on the at the Royal Academy until 17th April
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/revolution-russian-art
You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels at the V and A
Phil Brett finds an intoxicatingly high level of class struggle in the latest V and A exhibition.
Rock music is ageing and whilst not dead, does appear to be becoming a museum piece with a growing a number of major exhibitions of rock musicians and bands. Elvis, The Stones and Pink Floyd have all recently got the treatment. The Victoria and Albert Museum effectively kicked off the trend with their David Bowie Is exhibition back in 2013. Rock has clearly moved on from ‘hope I die before I get old’ to ‘do I get a discount on museum entry?’ And so in another glorious incongruity, the latest theme is on the relationship of rebellion and music, in the grand setting of the V & A.
Curated by many of the same team who did the Bowie exhibition, it is similar in set-up. Given head-phones, you move through the rooms with appropriate music providing the aural soundscape. So I walked up the corridor and into the first room with The Who’s Magic Bus in my ears. The exhibition sets out to show how society fundamentally changed in the years 1966 to 1970. It is ambitious in scope, with rooms covering music, politics, fashion, technology, culture and travel. This ambition means that there is much to enjoy. The displays are, as you would expect at the V&A, lovingly set out. You can, amongst other things, marvel at the Sgt. Pepper’s costumes, gaze up at the huge screens showing Hendrix at Woodstock and wonder at how Jagger managed to squeeze into that jumpsuit.
At the heart of the exhibition is a great room featuring the struggles of the time: Paris, May 1968, the Black Panthers, the LGBT struggle, women’s rights and the anti-Vietnam demos. This genuinely feels powerful and links well with the music of rebellion. Being someone who has lived his adult years experiencing retreats, defeats, and only partial victories, this high level of class struggle is intoxicating in its inspiration.
The exhibition’s ambition though is also a weakness, with some rooms, such as the travel, I felt only awkwardly fitted the theme. Personally, I would have narrowed the focus, so allowing more space for the link of music and rebellion. Because the scope is so wide, things get lost; I did feel that soul and funk were under-represented here, and, surprisingly, Bob Dylan.
The strengths outweigh the weaknesses though. I especially liked how it ends. It easy to feel nostalgia and sentimentalism for rebellion gone by, and then when it comes to the present these same people can lose their enthusiasm. Look at how The Guardian loved this exhibition, whilst regularly attempting to undermine Jeremy Corbyn. To its credit, this exhibition closes with a look at how much the rebellion achieved and the effect it had on our world. But it also has a montage of footage of contemporary campaigns, such as Black Lives Matter. And a question hangs in the air, have we replaced the ‘we’ with the ‘me’?
Of course it is up to us, when we leave this exhibition, to help build the ‘we’ into fighting back; to music and rebellion is alive, they ain’t no mere museum pieces. You say you wanna a revolution – yeah, we do.
You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-1970 is on at the Victoria and Albert Museum till 26 February 2017.
'If we stop fighting, the world will die': a review of Casablanca
Published in Films
Phil Brett draws some lessons for today's refugee crisis from Casablanca.
Casablanca often features in lists of favourite films, and often receives highbrow scoffing. The novelist and critic Umberto Eco, for example, says of the movie, 'To make a good story, a single archetype is usually good enough. But Casablanca is not satisfied with that. It uses them all.' I want to make the case that Casablanca is not only a good film but one with a strong political element to it which socialists can relate to.
Most people will be aware of the plot. It is December 1941, American Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) runs a nightclub/gambling den in Casablanca, a city controlled by Vichy France, with the head of police being the corrupt Louis Renault (Claude Rains). The clientele is a mixture of Vichy French, locals, Nazis and people desperate to flee war-torn Europe and get to then still-neutral America. Three people arrive to disrupt Blaine’s apparent apathetic life: Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a Czech resistance leader, his wife, Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) and a man who intends to stop these two fleeing - a German major Heinrich Strasser (Conrad Veidt). Whether Lazlo will be able to escape is a central part of the narrative arc, along with the complication that Lund had previously (in pre-invasion Paris) a relationship with Blaine - which man will she choose?
So why is Casablanca so good? Well, the cast is sublime, aprt from the above-named there are actors such as Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet. Many of the performances are excellent: Bogart’s nonchalance, Lorre’s slimy petty criminality and Claude Rains amoralism (which steals virtually every scene). The film also drips with classic lines which are among the most quoted (and misquoted) in cinema history.
But I think it resonates with people on other levels too. It's an anti-Nazi film, and one which has the question of refugees at its heart. The opening credits feature a map of the world and a narrator talking about 'imprisoned Europe'. Images of lines of refugees appear the narrator describing the 'tortured roundabout refugee trail', with people anxiously crossing the Mediterranean to safety. The images then would have touched a chord. They do now, the direction it is the opposite, but the desperation of refugees to flee war is the same.
Later, Greenstreet’s character, when discussing Sam, the café’s piano player, echoes the major theme, telling Rick that people are the key commodity in Casablanca.
This was no accident. The script was adapted from the play Everybody comes to Rick’s by Murray Burnett, who had written it after a visit in 1938 to Vienna, where he had been appalled by what he had seen of the treatment of Jews. The twins Julius and Philip Epstein, and Howard Koch, politicised it further. The Epsteins were Jewish liberals and Howard Koch was a radical who became a victim of the McCarthy 1950s witch-hunts. One example of their alterations, which is symptomatic of the layering of the theme, is the change of the customer who Rick bars from the gambling room. In the play it was an English cad, in the film, a representative of the Deutsche Bank.
Yes, it was made by Hollywood through the studio system, but as Mike Quille writes about The Third Man and Peter Frost about the more overtly political Spartacus, it has always been possible to create interesting movies within the mainstream. Casablanca is a melodrama, and there is much which can be ridiculed: the fact that Laszlo is a refugee on the run, but still sports a wardrobe of sharply pressed linen suits, and after his time in a concentration camp has only a dashing scar on his forehead. However, there is a certain realism to it. The famous scene where the bar stands up and drowns out Germans singing by a rendition of an emotional La Marseillaise, shows the extras crying with the passion of the fight against the Nazis. Many were not acting, because virtually the entire cast were real refugees, including the actor playing the German major, Conrad Veidt, who had fled Berlin because of his anti-Nazi activities. Another German officer in the bar is played by Hans Twardowski, who had fled the Nazis because he was gay. Director Curtiz lost family, murdered in Auschwitz. Many had leftist leaning - Lorre for example was a friend and colleague of Bertolt Brecht. And the list goes on.
If the realism of a film is defined as characters behaving logically within their world, then for the most part, they do. Eco believed the film was a “hotch-potch” of scenes, a result of the well-known story that the three writers were unsure of the ending. It is true, Ingrid Bergman found her role difficult because the uncertainty of who her character would end up with, right up to the filming of it. But I think that adds to the realism of her performance. I think it has a strong unified theme: for example, there is a young couple attempting to flee, and their story runs in parallel to the main story, often pre-empting it. Viewers thus see that this is a story not just of one couple fleeing for their lives, but of many.
As expected in such a film, (it is after all, Hollywood) it does focus on individuals but there is a strong supporting cast of characters with their own stories. The opening scene shows a street (with, for the time, a large number for black actors) bristling with people. The message is clear – the threat of Nazism is world-wide, it is a danger to the collective whole. When Major Strasser says that the Germans will have to acclimatise to varied types of climates – from the arctic to the desert, modern audiences will see it as the Nazis being dastardly. Audiences in 1943 would see it as still quite a distinct possibility.
Written in a period of defeats, (it officially entered the studio system the day after Pearl Harbour), it was early enough to avoid the Bureau of Motion Pictures, America’s heavy hand of censorship and propaganda. The Bureau was too new to enforce its dislike of the use of the La Marseillaise and the criticism of Vichy (who, at the time, the States were cosying up to) within the film. Rick represents the USA, stirring out of its isolation. The audience though is told early on that whilst he is a cynic, he has historically been on the right side - fighting on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War and supplying guns to the anti-fascist side in Ethiopia (acts which in real life a few years later would have got him into trouble with Senator McCarthy). But it isn’t just Rick who is the United States, but the café itself. Curtiz makes the café America in microcosm. The music playing, not only the iconic As Time Goes By, is American, playing as a backdrop to a multinational clientele. This is classic American self-mythologizing. But whether intentionally or not, it isn’t all heroic. The roulette wheel represents the dependence on chance which the refugees rely on, but it can also equally act unwittingly as a metaphor for the capitalist system. Supposedly with luck and skill, people can ‘get on’ and ‘win’, but ultimately, the game is rigged.
And whatever the impression which Ricks likes to give, and read that as of America, not everybody is equal. Pianist Sam (played by actor and singer Dooley Wilson) may be portrayed fairly sympathetically for a black character in a nineteen forties movie, but he is still made to be subservient to Rick. At one point Ilsa refers to him as a ‘boy’. Sexual conservatism is also present, with Hollywood rules only allowing the backstory of Rick and Ilsa because she thought Laszlo was dead.
This is not a Marxist film then, but I believe that one of the most important lines is not one of the most celebrated, it is not witty or amusing but it is at the heart of the film. It is spoken by Laszlo, an earnest, sincere and brave character (if somewhat boring): 'If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die'. The enemies here are Nazis, espousing a murderous racial superiority which not only threatens the world but forces it to look to its conscience to decide what its reaction will be.
Umberto Eco says audiences feel a sense of déjà vu when viewing Casablanca. These days, with the far right growing in popularity on the back of anti-immigrant racism and Islamophobia, maybe there will be a sense of déjà vu. Watching a time when Europeans were seeking sanctuary in a Muslim country should make people think. Today, there are millions of refugees desperate for safety. They are not fleeing Nazism, but they are fleeing a war, and being met with states closing borders and denying transit. In Casablanca, countries and people have to decide on what action to take: the same is true now. In the film, the choice made is solidarity - that is the 'beautiful friendship. Ilsa and Lazlo get the transit they need; so should today’s refugees.
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Written by Deirdre ONeill
Deirdre O'Neill, in the latest in the series of Culture Matters/Morning Star articles on the effects of Covid-19 on culture, sketches out the argument for developing a new, dissident approach to film-making ‘For us, film is the most important of the arts’ - Lenin in 1919 The Covid-19 pandemic has…
An Enemy of the People
Written by Anthony Squiers
Anthony Squiers reviews an astonishingly relevant production of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, performed on Zoom by the J.T. and Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts School of Theatre & Dance, Texas Tech University An Enemy of the People is one of Ibsen’s most famous works…
Uplifting, stunning and powerful: The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff
Written by John Giddins
John Giddens reviews The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff at The Northern Stage, Newcastle upon Tyne The North East based contemporary folk trio, The Young'uns, tell the tale of how they were approached by a man, after a gig, in a pub in the south of England. He handed them a…
Callout: the Bread and Roses Songwriting and Spoken Word Award 2021
Written by Mollie Brown
Bread & Roses Songwriting and Spoken Word Award 2021 The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) and Culture Matters are pleased to announce the fourth edition of their successful Bread & Roses Songwriting and Spoken Word Award. The Musicians’ Union is also supporting and sponsoring this award. The Award is now open…
A proclamation of universal human community: Beethoven's Ode to Joy
Jenny Farrell discusses Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, on the eve of the 250th anniversary of his birth Like few other composers, Beethoven expresses the will for freedom, the democratic longing of the people. His music is the continuation of the French Revolution through the means of art; his Ninth Symphony is…
Blooding
Written by Rebecca Lowe
Blooding by Rebecca Lowe 'After the first, it becomes easier,'The cold, wild-eyed stare of the deer,A crazy fish-eye lens looking backwardsthrough terror - you shiver,You are only twelve years oldand know what's coming, You've seen it before,A fistful of blood on your face,Still warm, from the dead beast,The violence of…
Cheap flights, cheap hands, cheap lives
Written by Antoniy T. Georgiev
Cheap flights, cheap hands, cheap lives by Antoniy T. Georgiev They pour into the WestCheap flights, cheap hands, cheap livesThey wear the paint of the oppressorsYet share the faith of the oppressedTheir fathers and mothers were once told They were building socialismNow they are toldTo pick asparagus and berriesSort parcels…
Written by Phil Brett
Phil Brett reviews The Dialectics of Art, by John Molyneux John Molyneux is the editor of the Irish Marxist Review and a member of People Before Profit. I have been lucky enough to hear speak many times and have enjoyed much of his previous writing. So when I heard about…
International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women
Written by Friedrich Farshaad Razmjouie
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Home » Government and Politics » State Agencies » Alabama Small Business Commission
Atlas Alabama
Alabama Small Business Commission
Olivia J. Cook, Auburn University
The Alabama Small Business Commission (ASBC) serves as an advisory body formulating policies, encouraging innovation, and discussing critical issues relevant to the economic growth of small and independent businesses in Alabama. The ASBC's aim is to help businesses of 50 employees or fewer grow and operate more efficiently and effectively by providing informational resources specifically for small businesses. It is the first known entity of its kind in the United States. The ASBC is headquartered in Montgomery, Montgomery County.
Small Business Commission Ceremony
The commission was created in September 2014 by Gov. Robert Bentley as part of the executive branch. When Bentley assumed office in 2011, the state was still recovering from the Great Recession. He established the ASBC to counter high unemployment and underemployment and frequent business closings around the state.
The commission consists of an advisory committee and commission members. The governor sits on the commission and appoints the advisory committee chairman, who also chairs the commission. The chairman also serves as the state director for the Alabama branch of the National Federation of Independent Business, a largely Republican-leaning organization that lobbies lawmakers on behalf of businesses.
The advisory committee consists of an executive agency head, economic development leader, or other corporate and association representatives as well as the commissioners of the Department of Revenue and the Department of Labor; the secretary of the Department of Commerce; representatives of the Alabama Association of Chambers of Commerce, the Economic Development Association of Alabama, the Association of County Commissions of Alabama, the Alabama League of Municipalities, the utility industry, and the Alabama Community College System. The governor may also make additional appointments. Collectively, the members provide technical support and informational resources to the commission.
The commission is made up of a minimum of 22 representatives who serve as liaisons between small businesses and the state. They each either own or manage a small or independent business in a variety of industries, including agriculture, automotive, banking, construction, forestry, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and trucking and represent each state congressional district. Of these, the governor appoints 15 people, and the lieutenant governor, the speaker of the House of Representatives, and the president pro tempore of the Senate each make two appointments. Members serve at least a two-year term with the option of a two-year reappointment. Representatives of the commission serve on a voluntary basis and do not receive any operational funding. All of the services are provided at no cost to the business or taxpayer.
The ASBC aims to serve small business owners and prospective owners, as they advocate and advise the governor on policies for business development in the state. The ASBC works to speed up economic development for small businesses, provide organizational advice, and act as an advisory body for small and independent entrepreneurs.
Since its inception, the ASBC has spearheaded the passage of several laws to benefit small businesses. The agency has also pursued initiatives with the aid of the Gov. Bentley and several divisions within the executive branch. The "Small Business Saturday Proclamation" deems the Saturday after Thanksgiving "Small Business Saturday" to encourage consumers to shop at local or independent businesses.
ASBC also created the "Atlas Alabama" website that aims to offer small businesses information on state licenses, taxes, loans, healthcare, funding, insurance, and other information in each of the state's 67 counties. In addition, it aims to provide a comprehensive list of other national and state resources to assist small business owners. With more than 400,000 small businesses in Alabama that collectively account for 75 percent of jobs in the state, this website serves as a centralized information hub for small business owners and a public forum for the community to submit recommendations to the commission. This website archives small business forum web conferences, press releases, legislation, and executive orders that are relevant to small business owners. Furthermore, the ASBC is working to build an informational web presence for every city and county in Alabama so businesses can access data regarding their respective population size, economic development initiatives, local government, and areas for growth. Since December 2015, the commission has published an annual report for the governor that details achievements and impact of the ASBC's efforts.
Published: February 23, 2017 |  Last updated: February 23, 2017
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Egypt: Budgetary equations on hold amid coronavirus outbreak
The coronavirus crisis has led parliament to postpone discussion of the country’s new budget
Gamal Essam El-Din , Thursday 16 Apr 2020
Budgetary equations on hold
Factbox: Egypt's facts and figures about coronavirus outbreak
Egypt records 155 new coronavirus cases, bringing total to 2,505
Egypt’s parliament reviews recommendations of its committees to boost efforts against coronavirus
Egypt's PM warns ‘utmost force’ against violations of coronavirus measures during holiday
Head of parliament’s Budgetary and Planning Committee Hussein Eissa said on Saturday that Egypt’s new budget for the fiscal year 2020-21 had been referred to parliament for debate on 30 March.
“But the committee members will not be able to discuss the new budget immediately for two reasons,” Eissa said. In line with Ministry of Health precautionary measures to limit the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus, MPs will not be able to gather in one place to discuss the budget. Moreover, “we are not in a hurry as the constitution gives us 90 days [three months beginning on 1 April and ending on 30 June] to discuss the budget,” he said.
Eissa indicated that due to coronavirus fears, the ministers of finance and planning would not be required to come to parliament in person to deliver statements on the budget and the five-year plan this year.
“It is enough for them to send their statements so that the committee can discuss them at the most appropriate time,” Eissa said, adding that MPs could examine the budget and new development plan at home and then send in their comments by email for discussion when work resumes.
Parliament Speaker Ali Abdel-Aal, indicated in a statement on Sunday that the House of Representatives will meet on 29 April as scheduled. “We have a busy legislative agenda that should be discussed soon and can’t be postponed any longer,” said Abdel-Aal, adding that the House will discuss proposed real estate tax exemptions and state employees’ bonuses, both aiming to mitigate the economic impact of the coronavirus on low and limited-income classes and support businesses hit by the pandemic.”
Abdel-Aal indicated that when MPs meet on 29 April, they will not sit close to each other, and they will be required to wear face masks and follow strict sanitisation and disinfection measures.
Secretary-General Mahmoud Fawzi also indicated on Monday that parliamentary committees with a large number of members, such as the Budget and Planning Committee, will be allowed to use the Shura Council hall to hold their meetings. This means that the budget committee led by Eissa might opt to meet in the Shura Council hall to discuss the budget on 29 April.
Eissa said that the new budget increased allocations to the healthcare sector. “For several years, we have asked different governments to raise allocations to the healthcare and education sectors, but to no avail,” he said, indicating that “the economic reform programme between 2016 and 2019 came at the expense of vital sectors such as health, whose budget has not quite been enough over the last few years.”
The coronavirus crisis had led the government to earmark greater allocations to the two sectors of healthcare and education. Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait said on Tuesday that the healthcare allocations in the new budget will increase by LE78.9 billion, or from LE166.6 billion in the 2019/2020 financial year to LE245.5 billion in the 2020/21 financial year. The budget of the education sector will increase by LE46.6 billion to reach a total of LE336.6 billion, and that for scientific research will reach a total of LE60.4 billion, an increase of LE7.8 billion.
He indicated that the LE100 billion that President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi had ordered on 14 March be allocated to help fight the coronavirus and its economic costs would be part of the present and the new budget.
The new budget aimed at improving the living conditions of the Egyptian people, he said. “To achieve this objective, the budget allocates LE326.3 billon to subsidies, or 5.3 per cent of GDP,” Eissa said, indicating that LE19 billion would go to pension payments, LE5.7 billion to social housing, LE170 billion to pension funds, LE7 billion to boosting exports, and LE280.7 billion to government investments.
Following the approval of the new budget in a cabinet meeting on 26 March, Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait said the 2020-21 budget reflected the directions of the political leadership to raise the standard of living of Egyptians through initiatives that should contribute to improving the quality of public services and strengthening the pillars of social protection to ensure that all groups in society benefit from development returns.
Eissa said the social aspects were quite clear in the new budget. “Allocations to salaries will be increased by LE34 billion [11.3 per cent] to reach LE335 billion in total, and this is another expression of President Al-Sisi’s instruction that employees’ salaries and wages be increased this year in a bid to mitigate the negative impact of the coronavirus,” he said.
“The new budget also takes into account President Al-Sisi’s orders that the bonuses granted to the medical professions be increased by 75 per cent in appreciation of their role in fighting the coronavirus,” he added. “A total of LE2.25 billion will be disbursed to medical teams who stand on the front lines of fighting the coronavirus.”
The 2020-21 budget includes expenditures of LE1.7 trillion and revenues of LE1.3 trillion. “Despite the harmful economic costs of the coronavirus, the budget aims to reduce the budget deficit to 6.3 per cent of GDP and even achieve a primary surplus of two per cent,” Eissa said.
“It also increases government investments to LE280.7 billion, or 64.3 per cent over the current fiscal year, thus contributing to economic activity and continuing to improve infrastructure and create an investment-friendly environment.”
Maait said it had been the bold economic reform programme that had been implemented between 2016 and 2019 that had helped Egypt fight the coronavirus. “Due to this unexpected crisis, the budget forecasts that GDP growth will not exceed three per cent, or down from an earlier expectation of six per cent,” Maait said.
“But growth of three per cent will still be one of the highest rates in the Middle East.”
*A version of this article appears in print in the 16 April, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under headline: Budgetary equations on hold
Fiscal year 2020-21
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Ayen
Rise of the Tomb Raider Review
Square-Enix,
[IMG]http://www.gamecrate.com/sites/default/files/field/image/Rise_of_the_Tomb_Raider_Twitch_Integration%5B1%5D.jpg[/IMG]
Lara Croft returns in Rise of the Tomb Raider! With more structures that fall apart as soon as she arrives, more gruesome deaths, more gunshot wounds, more pissed off animals who want to tear her apart, and hand grenade after hand grenade. Made complete with a story so predictable even those of us who led most of our lives in bomb shelters can guess what's going to happen next! ...
Chrono Trigger (...LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN! I couldn't resist)
Reviews,
Crono (insert name here) must travel through time with his friends Marle, Lucca, and Robo the Robot to stop the EVIL Lavos from destroying the world leading to a post-apocalyptic future where there is no ice cream! Why? Because he dared to go to the Fair!
Final Fantasy V Review (Spoilers)
Final Fantasy Series,
[IMG]http://i57.tinypic.com/21mc0vt.jpg[/IMG]
Hello and welcome to ToriJ's Video Game Reviews. As many of you know there have been a lot of Final Fantasy releases over the years. A lot. Originally, this was because there were a lot of FF games that hadn't yet been release outside of Japan. Among them was Final Fantasy V which was packaged with VI in Final Fantasy Anthology for the Sony Playstation. ...
Xenogears Review
[IMG]http://i57.tinypic.com/6fblnp.jpg[/IMG]
Hello and welcome to ToriJ's Video Game Reviews. We're into the second week of May and this time I'll be playing another well known title of Squaresoft back when they knew how to make video games. I'm not bitter. ...
Final Fantasy Review
[IMG]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yWuFHfv2mwo/VS7MNibqHLI/AAAAAAAABXQ/AoBuGwmvYAc/s1600/Final%2BFantasy%2BCover.jpg[/IMG]
Hello and welcome to ToriJ's Video Game Reviews. Today we take a look at a game that started both a popular long-running series, and shaped the RPG genre for generations: Final Fantasy! I reviewed some of the other number entries but never took a look at the original. So, I thought it was time to change that. I don't think anyone here is going to question the influence this game had over the years. Only one question remains: does it hold up? ...
Secret of Evermore Review
[IMG]http://i60.tinypic.com/icntig.jpg[/IMG]
Secret of Evermore is an action RPG released in North America on the first of October in 1995, and to PAL regions in February the following year. It stars a teenaged boy and his pet dog (both named by the player) who end up stuck in the world of Evermore and must work together if they wish to ever get home.
Tomb Raider Review
[IMG]http://i58.tinypic.com/ouqdyc.jpg[/IMG]
Tomb Raider is an action-adventure game developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix. It is a reboot of the popular Tomb Raider franchise that was released on March 5th, 2013 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the PC. This marked the first Tomb Raider game to appear under the Square Enix banner after the company bought Eidos back in 2009 taking Crystal Dynamics with it. If you're interested, you can find a review of the original game here.
ToriJ reviews: Super Mario RPG
[IMG]http://i60.tinypic.com/2s0ik9h.jpg[/IMG]
Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars is an RPG developed by Square Soft and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo in 1996. It is the only Mario game to be developed by Square as well as the first RPG to be made under the Mario banner. Mario must team up with friends and foes alike to take out a new threat: the Smithy Gang. The gang's leader has stolen the seven star pieces of Star Road and with it the world's wishes. It's up to Mario and co. to get them back so all your wishes can come true.
[IMG]http://i57.tinypic.com/2qbu0xi.jpg[/IMG]
The game starts off with Princess Peach being kidnapped by Bowser. Of course, she couldn't even go five seconds without being kidnapped! Then we get a montage of game footage spliced together that's so long it could give the opening to Sailor Moon Another Story a run for its money. When all is said and done we get our title screen and can start a new game.
[IMG]http://i60.tinypic.com/29da6f9.jpg[/IMG]
No, you don't get to name Mario in this. They really do want your name.
While Super Mario RPG kick things off with the usual formula of the princess being captured, this time you don't have to travel eight freaking worlds to
Final Fantasy VII Review
[IMG]http://i58.tinypic.com/23mke4m.jpg[/IMG]
In 1997 gamers saw the first major Final Fantasy title to be put on the PlayStation. It was the end of an era as we said goodbye to the 16-bit graphics of the Super Nintendo and hello to full 3D models that, while considered dated by today's standards, were revolutionary for their time. It was a critical part of a lot of people's childhoods, introducing them not only to the franchise, but to the genre as a whole.
Thief - Fan and Critical Reception
In a month that has given us Final Fantasy VI Remastered, Lightning Returns and Bravely Default, Square decided to cap off February with another Eidos reboot, the cult-classic, Thief.
[IMG]http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/brotherhoodnod/thief.png[/IMG]
This hand of mine glows with an awesome power!
Thief is now available in stores for the PlayStation, Xbox and PC in North America, Europe and Australia. Before even coming out the game has already made headlines for the controversial decision to replace longtime voice actor Stephen Russell with newcomer Romano Orzari because he couldn't do stunts. Thief fans may want to stock up on some vodka.
Final Fantasy VI Remaster
[IMG]http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/brotherhoodnod/Ff6-logo.jpg[/IMG]
Chances are if you find yourself in a discussion about the best Final Fantasy game, VI won't be far behind. Rivaling both VII and IX in quality for many fans and coming up as number one on a lot of people lists. So naturally when we heard there was a re-release coming out for the Android and iOS there was excitement and mass panic. ...
Final Fantasy VIII Review
Final Fantasy VIII is a role-playing game developed and published by Square, better known back in those days as 'Square Soft' in 1999, it is the eigth installment in the Final Fantasy franchise back when it was a brand name and didn't have all the worlds connected to each other, available on the Sony PlayStation and Windows PC and is now available for purchase on Steam. It stars gunblade specialist, Squall Leonhart. A student at Balamb Garden Military Academy who is just about to take his SeeD (special forces that work for Garden) exam to become an honorably member of SeeD. ...
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Tom ‘Froe’ Barnes, Ben Kohn and Peter ‘Merf’ Kelleher had a great 2010 (albums cuts for Tinchy and Devlin followed a cut on Lily Allen's Alright Still album), and a very impressive 2011 (No.1’s with Professor Green (Read All About It) and Dappy (No Regrets). We can only imagine what 2012 has in store for the talented trio! Well, actually, we know what 2012 has in store for these three friends, cos we popped to their west London studio for a chat. Get ready for singles with Devlin, Clement Marfo and Dappy's Brian May featuring next track, Rockstar. We had a chat with Froe, to try and discover how on earth they do the darned thing.
You’ve been in the game a while; initially making dance music and travelling the world.
How have you managed to make such major moves in the world of urban/ pop?
When we started we were making hip hop, then we moved on the dance stuff, then for a few years in-between we weren’t really sure what we were doing, we were just copying Amy Winehouse tunes, doing what we deemed as pop. Then the urban thing came into the forefront at the same time as us, so we decided to start making the music that we enjoy. If you’re trying to do stuff that you don’t enjoy, it’s never going to come out that well. You’ve just got to go with what you believe in. We did Spaceship for Tinchy and Dappy, that was our first single, and from then on we’ve just been really going for it and running with all the ideas that we think are really great.
There are three of you, who does what?
Well I’m the drummer, Merf went to uni and did a sound design course, he can play a few different instruments, he’s a bit of an all-rounder. Ben is a people person, if we do a session he gets the most out of artists and leads the way. That’s how it rolls!
Are there artists that you work particularly well with?
We work well with Dappy – he’s like a driving force. If you’re doing a tune with him and it ain’t right, he’ll tell you it ain’t right, and he’ll tell you to fix it. He’s a perfectionist. Dot [Rotten] is someone we work well with, he’ll come into the studio and just search through our hardrive and find beats that we’ve done on like a Sunday afternoon in fifteen minutes and turn them into something. It’s easiest to work with the people you’re most comfortable with too.
Who’s on the wanted list?
We’re doing stuff with Syco for Little Mix, which is cool. We’ve got Professor Green, we’re doing stuff with Wretch and Dot, we’re really excited about that. We’ve got a single with Devlin coming out soon. It’s just good to work with exciting, new talent, which is hard to find.
Anyone you’re working with at the moment who you think might come through in the next few months?
We’ve got Dappy’s next single, he’s got Brian May playing the guitar! We’ve got Tulisa in next week, she should do some good things. There’s a kid that we’re working with in the next few weeks called MNEK– he’s one to watch definitely. He could be the next Labrinth. We’ve got a single coming out with Devlin and Jagga, who’s an artist signed to Sony, it’s a TMS featuring record called Keep On The Light. That’s one to watch out for, it’s us exploring our non-pop side. We’re not trying to make a massive impact - we’re just doing it for sh*ts and giggles, as they say!
What’s the goal for TMS?
We want to cement ourselves as being consistently at the top of the UK music scene really. We want to make sure this year is better than last. We’ve got some more hits on the way, and then I guess we’ll try and crack other countries as well. But right now we’re just trying to crack the UK.
Like TMS
Posted by hattie collins at 2:12 PM
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两根一起进3p
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Under George Soros’s leadership, the Open Society Foundations support individuals and organizations across the globe fighting for freedom of expression, accountable government, and societies that promote justice and equality.
George Soros experienced ethnic and political intolerance firsthand. Born in Hungary in 1930, he lived through the Nazi occupation of 1944–1945, which resulted in the murder of over 500,000 Hungarian Jews. His own Jewish family survived by securing false identity papers, concealing their backgrounds, and helping others do the same. Soros later recalled that “not only did we survive, but we managed to help others.”
“1944, the year of the German occupation, was my formative experience. Instead of submitting to our fate we resisted an evil force that was much stronger than we were—yet we prevailed.” —George Soros
As the Communists consolidated power in Hungary after the war, Soros left Budapest in 1947 for London, working part-time as a railway porter and as a night-club waiter to support his studies at the London School of Economics. In 1956, he emigrated to the United States, entering the world of finance and investments, where he made his fortune. In 1973, he launched his own hedge fund and went on to become one of the most successful investors in the history of the United States.
George Soros stands in Pariser Platz in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in 2004. Photo credit: © Daniel Biskup/laif/Redux
Launching the Open Society Foundations
George Soros used his fortune to create the Open Society Foundations—a network of foundations, partners, and projects in more than 120 countries. Our name and work reflect the influence on Soros’s thinking of the philosophy of Karl Popper, which Soros first encountered at the London School of Economics. In his book Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper argues that no philosophy or ideology is the final arbiter of truth, and that societies can only flourish when they allow for democratic governance, freedom of expression, and respect for individual rights—an approach at the core of the Open Society Foundations’ work.
An Expanding Mission
George Soros began his philanthropy in 1979, giving scholarships to Black South Africans under apartheid. In the 1980s, he helped promote the open exchange of ideas in Communist Hungary by funding academic visits to the West and supporting fledgling independent cultural groups, as well as other initiatives. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he created Central European University as a space to foster critical thinking—which at that time was an alien concept for most universities in the former Communist bloc.
With the Cold War over, he gradually expanded his philanthropy to Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States, supporting a vast array of new efforts to create more accountable, transparent, and democratic societies. He was one of the early prominent voices to criticize the war on drugs as “arguably more harmful than the drug problem itself,” and helped kick-start America’s medical marijuana movement. In the early 2000s, he became a vocal backer of same-sex marriage efforts. Though his causes have evolved over time, they continue to hew closely to his ideals of an open society.
Highlights of George Soros and the Open Society Foundations
Starting to Build a More Open World
Central European University Opens Its Doors
Explore our history and timeline
His giving has reached beyond his own Foundations, supporting independent organizations such as Global Witness, the International Crisis Group, the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
Now 90, Soros continues to take an active personal interest in the Open Society Foundations, traveling widely to support our work and advocating for positive policy changes with world leaders, both publicly and privately.
In 2017, the Open Society Foundations announced that Soros had transferred $18 billion of his fortune towards funding the future work of the Foundations, bringing his total giving to the Foundations since 1984 to over $32 billion.
“I believe that in philanthropy one should do the right thing, whether or not it succeeds.” —George Soros
Throughout Soros’s philanthropic career, one thing has remained constant: a commitment to fighting the world’s most intractable problems. He has been known to emphasize the importance of tackling losing causes. Indeed, many of the issues Soros has taken on—and he would be the first to admit this—are the types of issues for which a complete solution might never emerge.
“My success in the financial markets has given me a greater degree of independence than most other people,” Soros once wrote. That independence has allowed him to forge his own path toward a world that’s more open, more just, and more equitable for all.
For more information about George Soros’s activities that are separate from the Open Society Foundations, visit georgesoros.com.
Read the latest from our staff, grantees, and partners about how we’re working around the world to build vibrant and inclusive democracies whose governments are accountable and open to the participation of all people.
Every year the Open Society Foundations give thousands of grants to groups and individuals that work on the issues we focus on—promoting tolerance, transparency, and open debate.
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How Much Do You Know About Autoimmune Diseases?
Autoimmune diseases can affect anyone, but women are at greater risk. These diseases also share common symptoms: fatigue, dizziness, and low-grade fever, according to the National Women’s Health Information Center. Test your knowledge of this serious—and mysterious—class of diseases.
1. Which of these is an autoimmune disease?
AIDS stands for "acquired immunodeficiency syndrome," but this disease is not an autoimmune illness. It is caused by a virus (HIV) that damages the person's immune system. Autoimmune diseases include systematic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, type 1 diabetes, Crohn's disease, and multiple sclerosis.
A. Type 1 diabetes B. Rheumatoid arthritis C. Psoriasis D. AIDS E. A, B, and C
2. If you have an autoimmune disease, what happens with the immune system?
Antibodies attack the body's tissues, organs, or cells.
A. Your immune cells die B. Antibodies from your immune system mistakenly attack tissues in the body C. Your immune system makes too many immune cells D. None of the above
3. Autoimmune diseases strike which group more often?
Researchers don't know why this is so, but one theory suggests that the hormone estrogen may play a role.
A. Children younger than 12 B. Men older than 40 C. Women of childbearing age D. Women older than 50
4. What tissues, organs, or body systems can be affected by autoimmune diseases?
Autoimmune disease can affect any organ in the body, although certain diseases attack specific organs. In Crohn's disease, for instance, the area affected is the gut. In multiple sclerosis, the areas affected are the brain and spinal cord.
A. Skin B. Joints C. Thyroid D. All of the above
5. Lupus is more common among women in which ethnic group?
Lupus is more common among African-American women. Hispanic women also are more likely to develop lupus.
A. Caucasians B. African Americans C. Hispanics D. B and C
6. How does a person develop an autoimmune disease?
Autoimmune diseases have a variety of causes, although doctors don't yet know them all. Some, such as rheumatic fever, develop after a streptococcal infection. People taking methyldopa for high blood pressure can develop lupus. Stopping the medicine usually stops lupus. Some autoimmune diseases run in families, which suggests that genes play a role.
A. It may be triggered by a virus, such as mumps B. It may be a complication of an existing infection, such as strep throat C. It may be caused by exposure to an environmental agent D. Most do not have an obvious cause E. All of the above
7. Why are some autoimmune diseases difficult to diagnose?
For many autoimmune diseases, the vague early symptoms and lack of specific diagnostic tests make them difficult to diagnose.
A. Symptoms may be vague B. No specific lab tests exist to confirm a diagnosis C. Symptoms may come and go, making it hard to pinpoint the problem D. All of the above
8. Which of these autoimmune diseases can be cured?
There are currently no cures for these diseases, but some such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis can go into remission, even without treatment. For the most part, though, autoimmune illnesses are chronic, needing lifelong monitoring and care. Medicine can help reduce or stop the damage caused by some of the diseases. Medicine can also help suppress the immune system's response, helping to ease symptoms caused by the disease.
A. Lupus B. Multiple sclerosis C. Scleroderma D. None of the above
Online Medical Reviewer: Pederson, Deborah, MD
Autoimmune Diseases and Pregnancy
Cardiolipin Antibody
Complement C3 (Blood)
Autoimmune Diseases Quiz
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Patrick Henry And The US Constitution
JB Campbell
As we witness the developing struggle of AIPAC's many candidates arrayed against Ron Paul, it might be well to discuss the document on which he depends for his decision-making, since that is the main difference between him and the other dozen or so presidents-in-waiting. And there is the long-awaited "decision" by the Supreme Court on whether or not we can carry guns, based on the deceptively-worded 2nd Article of Amendment. The US Constitution consists of seven original Articles and now twenty-seven Articles of Amendment. One of those latter ones rendered the whole instrument null and void, but we'll get to that later.
It should be remembered that everything Abraham Lincoln did, everything Woodrow Wilson did, almost everything Franklin D. Roosevelt did and right up to everything George W. Bush has done were found "constitutional" by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court even found its RICO-style appointment of Bush to the presidency "constitutional." Everything the government does is "constitutional," with very few exceptions. The Civil War, the Spanish American War, the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, plus slavery, denying women the vote and prohibiting drinking were/are all "constitutional" according to the Supreme Court, which was created by the Constitution. The Supreme Court is one of the three "checks and balances" of the Constitution. But what is the check and balance on the Supreme Court?
Don't get me wrong - I like Ron Paul. Who doesn't, other than the owners of our Zionist State Factories, the military-industry complex? If he became president, their trillion dollar death machine would collapse like WTC-7. Those who planned the 9/11 massacre don't want him. The owners of the Federal Reserve Corporation don't like him, of course. But I repeat myself.
Ron Paul thinks the Constitution is some sort of safeguard of our rights, some sort of limitation on what government can do. Of the thousands of congressmen who have been his colleagues over thirty years, he is the only one who still believes that, which is part of his charm. Larry McDonald had a similar though less stringent philosophy and we saw what happened to him. George Hansen, too, believed the Constitution did not allow terroristic tax collection but he was wrong and we saw what happened to him. Ask George Hansen if he still believes in the Constitution. Jim Trafficant believed the Constitution protected the rights of his constituent, John Demjanjuk, and for that he, too, rots in prison. I don't recommend asking Trafficant what he thinks of the Constitution.
Now several million Americans have the idea that the Constitution, if it were our guide for good government, would have prevented say, our terroristic war against Islam. But I disagree. The Constitution is not our friend. That is, when it still was in effect it was not our friend. It has not even been in effect for about 147 years. For all that time since we have been under the Law of the Gun, or of Deuteronomy, which is the same thing. We've been pretending that there has been some legal framework for the police state we call America. But there really never was, from the very beginning.
I call as my first witness the most significant man in our history, the man whose combined powers of thinking and speech and action persuaded Virginians and others to rebel against the cruel and despotic forces of King George III. He urged rebellion at a time when four regiments of British troops were camped up in Boston, more were on the way to New York and nearby Chesapeake Bay, where squadrons of British vessels from the world's mightiest navy were ready for action. On March 20, 1775 in Richmond, with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason and others in the audience, he said,
"I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years that justifies those hopes which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the house? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss.
Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation - the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies?
No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: They can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable, but it has been all in vain.
Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find that have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned - we have remonstrated - we have supplicated - we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne.
In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free - if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending - if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained - we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!
"They tell us, sir, that we are weak - unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the illusive phantom of hope, until our enemies have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.
Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us, The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.
Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged, their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable - and let it come!! I repeat it, sir, let it come!!!
"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace - but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Many Americans used to be familiar with this call to arms, though not anymore. And it sounds familiar, since we are now faced with just as terrible a threat from the owners of the American empire as our forebears faced from the owners of the British empire. Same owners, of course.
Patrick Henry was not just a rebel in words. Thomas Jefferson became his jealous enemy and slanderer after 1781 but as he neared his own death he wrote, "Our leader was far above all in the Revolution. It is not now easy to say what we should have done without Patrick Henry."
This was demonstrated in The Powder Affair. Within days of his speech in Richmond, the royal governor of Virginia, John M. Dunmore, prohibited any Virginians from attending the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The British government suspended all supplies of gunpowder to the colonists. Dunmore actually ordered part of the Williamsburg powder supply (20 barrels) seized and taken to his warship, the Magdalen, in the James River. If the colonists objected and did anything foolish, he threatened to arm the slaves and burn down Williamsburg, a typically British gesture.
On April 18th, Governor-General Gage attempted to seize the gunpowder supply at the Concord arsenal near Boston, which resulted in the Battle of Lexington and the opening of the rebellion. The following month, Patrick Henry took command of the Hanover Volunteers militia group - 120 men - and marched to Williamsburg to secure the remaining powder supply and obtain repayment for that which Dunmore stole.
By the time they got there, he was leading a force of 5,000 volunteers. Dunmore panicked and got Thomas Nelson to pay Henry twice the value of the powder, which had been bought by the Virginia colonists from England for their own protection. The matter was concluded without violence, although it did lead to much violence by Dunmore, who proclaimed in his arrest warrant for Henry:
"Whereas I have been informed that a certain Patrick Henry and his deluded followers have taken up arms, excited the people and committed acts of violence, I have thought proper, with the advice of His Majesty's council and in His Majesty's name, to issue this proclamation charging all persons not to aid, abet or give countenance to the said Patrick Henry, else the whole county must be involved in the most direful calamity. God save the King."
Dunmore had fled to his warship and soon became a renegade. He would use the powder he stole from Williamsburg to burn down Virginia's biggest city, Norfolk, the following year.
This was the revolutionary background of America's first rebel and freedom fighter, mentioned to impress upon the reader that if Patrick Henry, who coined the idea of American liberty, hated the Constitution, the reasons for his hatred should be known.
The plan behind the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union Between the States was to prevent a powerful consolidated government and the inevitable tyranny that always occurs, as we see today.
The Articles of Confederation did not provide for a lucrative way to pay for the Union government because the ones who wrote it liked it that way, vesting all real authority in the thirteen State governments. The last thing they wanted was another tyrannical imperial government such as that they had just got shed of.
Patrick Henry thought the Articles of Confederation and the Union of States that it defined were just right. He was a Virginian, a man of the South, and wanted no part of being merged with Northerners.
To Henry and those like him, the States were republics that required independence from each other. Others, however, demanded that the Articles be modified in a federal convention in Philadelphia in 1787 to provide for taxation to pay off war debt and to give the federal government some authority to represent the whole Union in foreign affairs.
The Articles of Confederation were the supreme law of the land from March, 1781 through March, 1789. At first, Henry was enthusiastic in his support of an American federal government, perhaps because his good Virginian friend, George Washington, was in favor of it. Something happened in 1786 to cause him to become the implacable enemy of federalism.
He learned that John Jay, the foreign secretary, had negotiated a secret agreement with the Spanish government to turn over to Spain exclusive rights to the Mississippi River for thirty years! The six Southern States would have been prohibited from using the river, which they all knew would be indispensable for future commerce and progress.
The Northerners couldn't have cared less and were willing to give it away for trade advantages with Spain. Then he read the proposed new Constitution and refused to take part in the convention, much to the shock of all - especially George Washington. Rhode Island refused to send any delegates at all. The proposed Constitution had no provision for guaranteeing or even acknowledging our natural rights!
Henry thought this outrageous and ominous. What he found most astonishing was the expression, "We, the People," in the Preamble.
Today, this phrase seems somehow sacred and fundamental to American rights but to Patrick Henry it signified a monstrous deception. The Confederation between the States was just that - an agreement or contract between the thirteen new and independent States. The people were represented by their legislatures in the States but the States were the only entities that could participate in the Perpetual Union Between the States. Henry saw in the "We, the People" phrase something akin to Lenin's use of "people" one hundred thirty years later - a power-grab "in the name of the People." In Lenin's case, "the People" would mean the Communist Party.
On June 5, 1788 Henry spoke again in the Virginia Convention on this subject: "I rose yesterday to ask a question, which arose in my mind. When I asked that question, I thought the meaning of my interrogation was obvious: the fate of this question and of America may depend on this. Have they said, We, the states? Have they made a proposal of a compact between states? If they had, this would be a confederation: it is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government.
The question turns, sir, on the expression, We, the People, instead of, the States of America. I need not take much pains to show that the principles of this system are extremely pernicious, impolitic and dangerous. Is this a monarchy, like England - a compact between prince and people: with checks on the former to secure the liberty of the latter? Is this a confederacy, like Holland - an association of a number of independent States, each of which retains its individual sovereignty?
Had these principles been adhered to, we should not have been brought to this alarming transition, from a confederacy to a consolidated government. We have no detail of those great considerations which, in my opinion, ought to have abounded before we should recur to a government of this kind. Here is a revolution as radical as that which separated us from Great Britain. It is as radical, if, in this transition, our rights and privileges are endangered, and the sovereignty of the States relinquished. And cannot we plainly see? The rights of conscience, trial by jury, liberty of the press, all your immunities and franchises, all pretentions to human rights and privileges, are rendered insecure, if not lost, by this change.
"To encourage us to adopt it, they tell us, that there is a plain, easy way of getting amendments. When I come to contemplate this part, I suppose that I am mad, or that my countrymen are so. The way to amendments is, in my conception, shut.
"Will the great rights of the people be secured? Is this an easy mode of securing the public liberty? It is, sir, a most fearful situation, when the most contemptible minority can prevent the alteration of the most oppressive government, for it may, in many respects, prove to be such. Is this the spirit of republicanism?
"SI have just proved that one-tenth, or less, of the people of America - a most despicable minority, may prevent this reform, or alteration. Suppose the people of Virginia should wish to alter their government, can a majority of them do it? No, because they are connected with other men; or, in other words, consolidated with other States.
"The honorable gentleman who presides, told us, that to prevent abuses in our government, we will assemble in Convention, recall our delegated powers, and punish our servants for abusing the trust reposed in them. Oh, sir, we should have fine times indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people. Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourself, are gone.
Let me here call your attention to that part which gives the Congress power 'To provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia, and for governing such parts of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia, according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.'
By this, sir, you see that their control over our last and best defense is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the States can do neither, this power being exclusively given to Congress. The power of appointing officers over men not disciplined or armed, is ridiculous: so that this pretended little remnant of power, left to the States, may, at the pleasure of Congress, be rendered nugatory. Our situation will be deplorable indeed: nor can we ever expect to get this government amended; since I have already shown, that a very small minority may prevent it.
Will the oppressor let go the oppressed? Was there ever an instance? Can the annals of mankind exhibit one single example, where rulers, overcharged with power, willingly let go the oppressed, though solicited and requested most earnestly? The application for amendments will therefore be fruitless. We drew the spirit of liberty from our British ancestors: by that spirit we have triumphed over every difficulty. But now, sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this country into a powerful and mighty empire. If you make the citizens of this country agree to become the subjects of one great consolidated empire of America, your government will not have sufficient energy to keep them together: such a government is incompatible with the genius of republicanism.
"Where are the checks in this Constitution? There will be no checks, no real balances, in this government. What can avail your specious, imaginary balances, your rope-dancing, chain-rattling, ridiculous ideal checks and contrivances?
"The Senate, by making treaties, may destroy your liberty and laws, for want of responsibility. Two-thirds of those that shall happen to be present, can, with the President, make treaties that shall be the supreme law of the land: they may make the most ruinous treaties, and yet there is no punishment for them."
On another day he said, "Congress may introduce the practice of the civil law, in preference to that of the common law. They may introduce the practice of France, Spain and Germany - of torturing, to extort the confession of the crime. They will tell you that there is such a necessity of strengthening the arm of government, that they must have a criminal equity, and extort confession by torture, in order to punish with still more relentless severity." In other words, Patrick Henry saw exactly where the United States government would go in the future. Despite the Constitution and the Bill of Rights which he demanded to protect us against torture, the US government openly tortures prisoners today, both foreign and domestic.
Henry's struggle against the coming US empire failed and the Constitution was passed, although with some watered-down amendments. He made some grim observations and some dire predictions.
Henry's great-grandson, Edward Fontaine, wrote the following in 1870:
"While living in retirement with his family, as planter, and practicing lawyer, the pamphlet containing the Constitution and the additional 12 amendments adopted by the majority of States requisite to make them part of the instrument, was brought to him and examined by him most carefully in the presence of my father and Mr. Dandridge.
He seemed to have been suspicious of the character of some of the framers of the Constitution, and of the crafty politicians through whose hands it had passed since its adoption by Virginia, that he feared they had not only altered the amendments adopted by the Virginia convention, but had tampered with the body of the instrument itself.
After reading it carefully, satisfying himself that they had not changed the original paper, he read carefully the amendments to the tenth. When he read this he threw down the pamphlet upon the table, and remarked with great solemnity:
'I find that these shrewd Northern Statesmen have outwitted our Southern men again in the wording of these amendments. They determined when this Constitution was framed to make this a great consolidated National Government of all the people of the States. To secure this object they inserted in its preamble the words 'We, the People of the United States,' instead of We, the States.
Their object was to make it a government of a majority of the whole people, that is a Government of the Northern People; for they have this majority; and under such a government holding this power they can and will exercise it oppressively to the South for their own advantage. To prevent this, and to hinder this majority from doing whatever they may think proper for 'the general welfare,' which they will construe to mean their own sectional welfare, I wrote the first 20 amendments adopted, and recommended by the Convention of Virginia in these words: 'Each State in the Union shall respectively retain every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this Constitution delegated to the Congress of the United States, or to the departments of the Federal Government.'
This was intended to secure the rights of the States, and to prevent the exercise of doubtful powers by the Federal Government, but they have omitted it, and substituted for it this equivocal thing to which they have tacked the objectionable and dangerous words of 'the people.' 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.' Why did they add, 'or to the people?' They determined to make it a consolidated government. They added these words to neutralize the amendment of Virginia, and they have done it effectually. This government cannot last. It will not last a century. We can only get rid of its oppression by a most violent and bloody struggle."
"He at once discerned the craft displayed by this ingenious amendment, worded to deceive the conventions of the different States. They were intended to persuade them that they embraced the strong safeguard to their rights furnished by the clear and explicit amendment of Patrick Henry. The amendment does this [up] to the word respectively. If the amendment had ended there, its meaning could not have been perverted. But the trickery is veiled in the words added "or to the people." They are superfluous verbiage, if they were added to curb federal power, and guard state sovereignty, which the amendment was adopted to effect.
But the cunning politicians who inserted them did so with a design of using them to suit their purpose when occasion should arise in the future. We are not "states respectively" with any reserved and sovereign rights. "We are a nation" ruled first by a northern majority, and then by a "contemptible minority" of oligarchs. The violent and bloody struggle has ensued, and it is not yet ended. The Constitution is destroyed. The Government has been over-turned, and the century has not yet rolled away. Our present Government is not that framed in Philadelphia; that did not last a century. The new dominion, which has arisen out of it, is changing continually. What it is now is difficult to define. It requires another Henry to predict."
This brings up a sore subject: the War of Northern Aggression, the War to Prevent Southern Independence, Lincoln's War, the Second American Revolution - the Civil War - predicted by Patrick Henry in 1789 because of the Northern greed and lust for dominance he recognized in the US Constitution. Whatever one thinks about the Constitution, it ceased to exist as seven articles and twelve articles of amendments when eleven states announced in 1861 that they were no longer under its authority. The seven articles and their three branches of government remained in force in the Northern states, but the so-called Bill of Rights evaporated under Lincoln's dictatorial rule. Thousands of Northern protesters were arrested and denied Habeas Corpus. Hundreds of Northern newspapers were shut down and their editors and publishers thrown in prison to rot for years. 620,000 died from 1861 to 1865 and for what? So that all Americans could live under the protection of the US Constitution? I'll leave it to the reader to ponder the effect of the Civil War on the American Experiment.
In the aftermath of the war, Southerners were forced back in the Union. The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were rammed into the Constitution at gunpoint. The Southern States were under Federal military rule for twelve years. No Southern Congressman was allowed back in the Congress until his state ratified the 14th Amendment. We all know that. And we all know that the 16th Amendment, making the IRS the collection agency for the Federal Reserve Corporation, was never ratified although it became law in February, 1913. What many of us do not realize is that the 17th Amendment, which became law two months later, obliterated what was left of the US Constitution (the first seven articles, since the first ten amendments, "the Bill of Rights," were just fond memories).
The 17th Amendment provided for the direct election of Senators. The US Constitution was in effect a contract between the states and the people. The people were represented in the federal government in the House of Representatives, the members of which were elected by popular vote. The states were represented in the Senate, and Senators were appointed by the State legislatures. When the 17th Amendment forced the popular vote for Senators, the Constitution, the contract, ceased to exist. It was rendered technically null and void. Lincoln had rendered it meaningless, but the 17th made it official.
The fraudulent legal trickery of 1913 also included the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in December. All of this was accomplished in the first year of Woodrow Wilson's administration, which was run by a mysterious little character from Texas named Edward Mandell House. Much can be learned about the 20th Century by studying this Rothschild agent and his shockingly bad novel, Philip Dru: Administrator. House was the kingmaker and fixer who gave us both Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Anyway, the reader may be saying, okay, the Constitution is certainly flawed and maybe not even in effect today. But if Ron Paul uses it as his guide for voting on legislation, isn't that better than what the other politicians do?
It seems to me that everything depends on the philosophy of the politician rather than on seven articles and twenty-seven amendments of a dead document. Ron Paul's value is in his personal morality and philosophy, which he may disguise as an adherence to the US Constitution. The first seven articles are the framework of the three branches of our government, which thanks to the two-party system, have merged into a gigantic and deadly dictatorship which has just recently killed about two million Iraqis. The twenty-seven amendments are a mishmash of force and fraud, a playground for lawyers and judges and as Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush have demonstrated, of no value whatsoever for our personal protection.
This writer was responsible for the armed mass movement known as "the militia," which lasted for a few years. I naturally took a special interest in the 2nd Amendment, which reads, "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
You must admit that this is a strangely-crafted sentence. Whether you like guns or hate them, the sentence is a mess. Patrick Henry and George Mason both demanded that our right to keep and bear arms be at or near the top of their Bill of Rights. We've already read what Henry thought about the militia clause (#16) in Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution. He thought it was a joke. In glancing through the revised Bill of Rights that day he got the pamphlet, when he fixed upon the deception of the 10th Amendment, he might have missed the deception of the 2nd.
In the book I wrote to kick off the resistance movement I called "the militia," I discussed fifty-four federal court decisions having to do with guns and the militia. The great scam that the writers of the 2nd Amendment started was that the keeping and bearing of arms would all depend on some connection to "the militia." And what do you know? Virtually all 54 cases in the US Code Annotated from 1858 to 1980 were decided so that there is no individual right to keep and bear arms; there's only a "collective right" and only if you're in the militia, which has not been officially recognized since 1916, when something very deceptive called the "National Guard" was invented. Even before that, even before the colonies became a country, the militia was feared and hated by those who sought power over their fellow man. The reason for changing its name to the French term, "National Guard," was to be able to draft all the militiamen for the coming Great War and obviously you can't do that if it's still called The Militia. The only actual Supreme Court decision in the bunch (Miller - 1939) produced the idea that a sawed-off shotgun is not a militia-style weapon and is therefore illegal as hell. "Collective right" is legalese for "no right." This is what the Supreme Court is going to think about next year, whether the 2nd Amendment means the right shall or shall not be infringed.
So that's why I called my resistance movement "the militia."
Patrick Henry showed in the Powder Affair what the militia can do. One thing it cannot do is be "well-regulated." A careful reading of the US Constitution reveals that no one in the government is authorized to regulate the militia, because "regulate" means regular and regulations and that means the army. You can't regulate the armed male civilian population of this country and you shouldn't even try. This is what the Supreme Court knows and is why it really doesn't want to touch this thing.
Punctuation back in 1789 was overdone. The 2nd Amendment has way too many commas in it and too many words. That amendment has two clauses in it: the independent clause and the dependent clause. The first half of the sentence is the dependent clause. The independent clause reads, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Why there's a comma after Arms, I have no idea. Why the dependent clause ties our guns to a "well-regulated Militia," I know very well. It was written to try to keep unruly American men under control somehow. Some have told me, oh, well-regulated simply means disciplined and ship-shape, supplied and so forth. No, it doesn't. Regulate means "to adjust or control by rule." There is no such authority for regulating the militia in the US Constitution. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 14 says the Congress shall have the power to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces. The land force is the army, which is the antithesis of the militia. The 5th Amendment reads "except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger."
The writers of the 2nd Amendment really messed things up with that militia clause. Every court in our history has used it against us, until the DC court decided recently that the independent clause is what counts. Think of how life could have been if the guys had just written, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." But they had to mess it up.
The US Constitution is full of this contradictory and confusing language, but that really doesn't concern us anymore, because it's been dead since 1861. Since we are under the Law of the Gun, we all need to become good lawyers.
www.rense.com/general79/patri.htm
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Tim Moore makes his case - and falls flat on his face
Many politicians lie, but few have raised deception to an art form. Speaker Tim Moore is one who has. Today's Capitol Broadcasting Corporation editorial lays the rhetoric bare:
Speaker Moore's boasting about education doesn't add up
In House Speaker Tim Moore’s recent overly rosy assessment of North Carolina public education, we can’t help but ponder if some key words could have been dropped in the editing.
He starts: “The North Carolina General Assembly is implementing meaningful public school reforms that are (missing words: not very) popular with parents and students because they (missing words: failed to) focus on families’ shared priority of improving student achievement.”
Of greater concern is the failure of Moore and his fellow leaders in the legislature to admit that in the last six years, North Carolina public education has in fact lost ground.
Moore’s rhetoric is aspirational. Facts are not.
Let’s start with four contentions in the second sentence of his column:
“Four consecutive teacher pay raises.” FACT: Teacher pay has increased for those with the least experience while it has stagnated or been cut for those with more experience. Additionally, pay cuts for longevity and advanced degrees coupled with increased costs of benefits drive out the best and most experienced in our classrooms. North Carolina average teacher pay remains $9,000 behind the national average.
“Improved approach to state education funding.” FACT: Education funding in North Carolina is in an unresolved crisis of the legislature’s making. An unfunded demand to cut class size continues to leave local school systems in budget-planning chaos that threatens art, music, language arts and physical-ed instruction in our schools.
“Successful ‘Read to Achieve’ literacy program.” FACT: Surveys of North Carolina teachers indicate barely a quarter say the program has had a positive impact and 40 percent say it’s been negative.
“Expanded school choice for low-income families.” FACT: The lack of demonstrable educational achievement, accountability and transparency in the “opportunity scholarship” private school voucher program is an irresistible invitation to fraud, waste, abuse and corruption. There are already signals of that a plenty. Look at what’s happening at the Fayetteville private school that is the single-greatest recipient of voucher funds. Its basketball coach pleaded guilty to embezzling hundreds of thousands of state tax withholding dollars.
Now, that’s just Speaker Moore’s second sentence.
Moore shouldn’t claim advances in education when, in too many cases, the reality is that it’s been two steps backward followed by a single step forward. That means we’re still behind.
That’s the case with the state’s very successful Teaching Fellows program. After abolishing the program on a partisan whim in 2011, the program’s received a half-hearted revival this year. Funding will allow for up to 160 fellows a year, compared to the 500 per year in the original program.
Budgets for classroom instructional supplies and textbooks are $100 million less today than in the 2008-09 school year of the Great Recession. These days, donation drives are required to provide teachers with school supplies. On top of that, the latest tax reform plans before Congress are looking to end the tax deductions teachers have been able to take for spending on classroom supplies out of their own pockets.
North Carolina schools today have more students than ever, but fewer assistant principals, nurses, social workers and guidance counselors. Money for teacher assistants has been sliced $62 million. There are 3,150 fewer teachers in our schools today than there would be if formulas in place during the 2011-12 school year were still followed.
North Carolina is on target this year to drop from 42nd – not much of a position to start with – to 43rd nationally in per-pupil spending. That’s more than $3,000 per student below the national average.
The reality is that Moore and his ideological soulmates in the General Assembly are more intent on cutting taxes for big corporations and the wealthy than providing the needed funding for properly paid teachers and quality public schools.
When it comes to doing more for education in North Carolina, Moore’s boasting is no more than school-yard trash talk. All platitudes, with little to back it up.
James's blog
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February 28, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment
Fort Kekuanohu
Russians arrived in Hawaii in 1804 on ships associated with the Russian-American Fur Trading Company stationed at what is now Sitka, Alaska, to obtain fruit, vegetables and meat.
During this timeframe, Hawai‘i served as an important provisioning site for traders, whalers and others crossing the Pacific.
On O‘ahu, in 1815, Kamehameha I granted Russian representatives permission to build a storehouse near Honolulu Harbor.
But, instead, directed by the German adventurer Georg Schaffer (1779-1836,) they began building a fort and raised the Russian flag.
They built their blockhouse near the harbor, against the ancient heiau of Pākākā and close to the King’s complex. There are reports that the Russians used stones from Pākākā in building their facility.
As a side note, Pākākā was the site of Kauai’s King Kaumuali‘i’s negotiations relinquishing power to Kamehameha I, instead of going to war, and pledged allegiance to Kamehameha, a few years earlier in 1810.
When Kamehameha discovered the Russians were building a fort (rather than storehouses) and had raised the Russian flag, he sent several chiefs, along with John Young (his advisor,) to remove the Russians from Oʻahu by force, if necessary.
The Russian personnel judiciously chose to sail for Kauai instead of risking bloodshed. On Kauai, there they were given land by Kauai’s King Kaumuali‘i; the Russian Fort Elizabeth was built soon after on Kaua‘i.
The partially built blockhouse at Honolulu was finished by Hawaiians under the direction of John Young and mounted guns protected the fort.
Its original purpose was to protect Honolulu by keeping enemy or otherwise undesirable ships out. But, it was also used to keep things in (it also served as a prison.)
By 1830, the fort had 40 guns mounted on the parapets all of various calibers (6, 8, 12 and probably a few 32 pounders.) Fort Kekuanohu literally means ‘the back of the scorpion fish,’ as in ‘thorny back,’ because of the rising guns on the walls. In 1838 there were 52 guns reported.
The fort protected Honolulu Harbor and also housed a number of administrative functions, including many years of service as Honolulu’s police headquarters. The first courts of the islands were held here until a new courthouse was built in 1853, adjacent to the fort.
Barracks, Officers’ quarters, the Governor’s House, prison cells, a guardhouse and several powder magazines were inside the 340-by-300-foot long, 12-foot high and 20-foot thick walls. The main entrance faced mauka, up Fort Street.
The fort’s massive 12-foot walls were torn apart and the fort dismantled in 1857 and used to fill the harbor to accommodate an expanding downtown.
Fort Street is one of the oldest streets in Honolulu and is named after this fort. Today, the site of the old fort is the open space called Walker Park, a small park at the corner of Queen and Fort streets (also fronting Ala Moana/Nimitz.)
No._1._View_of_Honolulu._From_the_harbor._Burgess-(c._1854)
Honolulu_Fort_by_George_Henry_Burgess,_c._1857
Fort of Honolulu-John_Colburn-visited Honolulu twice during the voyage-July 8-23, 1837 and May 31-June 10, 1839
Interior_of_the_Fort,_Honolulu_Harbor-1830s-1840s
Honolulu_Fort_(PP-36-5-001)-1837
Honolulu Waterfront-Fort-Prison-Judiciary
Dr. Thomas T. Waterman inspecting old cannon from the old Fort, Honolulu.-PP-37-4-008
Canon from Honolulu Fort (Kekuanohu) (1816) which was demolished 1857.
Fort_Elizabeth-visualization-Molodin-portion-400
Filed Under: Ali'i / Chiefs / Governance, Buildings Tagged With: Fort Kekuanohu, Hawaii, Honolulu Harbor, Kamehameha, Kaumualii, Russian American Company, Russians in Hawaii
August 5, 2018 by Peter T Young 1 Comment
Wreck of the Bering
“Russians – or explorers hired by Russians – were curious about northeastern Asia and the American continent, wanting to know if the two were connected.”
“As early as 1648 Simeyon Dezhnev had passed through what would become known as Bering Strait ad into the Bering Sea. Dezhnev had discovered there was no land connection between Asia and America”.
“In 1728 Vitus Bering, a Dane in the service of Russia, sailed the same area, but at no time coming or going did he sight the American continent through the fogs and mists.”
“In June 1741 Vitius Bering tried again in the ship St Peter. On this terribly trying trip he did see the American mainland, but did not go ashore. On his way south Bering was shipwrecked a d died of scurvy.”
“Those who survived constructed a small boat from the wreckage of the St Peter. James Cook later used some of Bering’s charts in searching for the Northwest Passage.”
“The greatest commotion involving Bering’s second voyage did not result from the American continent, but rather from a book published by a German, George Steller, who was a naturalist aboard the St Peter.”
“In his book Steller gave the first descriptions of four previously unknown marine mammals – the fur seal, the sea otter, the sea lion and the sea cow.”
“The revelation of the existence of these creatures in large numbers brought Russian trappers, hunters and adventurers to the Aleutian Islands, to Alaska and down the Northwest Coast of America. Because of the profitable trade involved, the Russian American Company was founded.”
“In 1790 Alexander Baranov was named manager of the Russian American Company and was appointed governor of Russian America. … “
“The Russians would have preferred to keep the fur trade to themselves, but that was impossible … they could not guard the extensive coast … (and) the Russians received supplies on an irregular basis from ports far away. … The first Russian ships to visit Hawaii came in 1804.” (Joesting)
“From American and British traders who visited both the Russian settlements and Hawaii, the governor of the Russian company, Alexander Baranov, learned something about the resources and convenient location of the islands, and Kamehameha learned something about the needs of the Russians.”
“The general situation was obviously favorable to a useful commerce between the two places. Russian ships first visited the islands in 1804. but were not seen by Kamehameha.”
“A year or two afterwards. the latter made known to Baranov that he would “gladly send a ship every year with swine, salt. batatas [sweet potatoes], and other articles of food, if [the Russians] would in exchange let him have sea-otter skins at a fair price.” (Kuykendall)
“Shortly after, Baranov sent out (two) expeditions, American and British traders became embroiled in the War of 1812. With American and British ships pitted against one another, Baranov saw an opportunity for profit. Several American traders chose to sell their ships to Baranov at reduced prices rather than face the possibility that their ships would be captured or sunk.”
“Baranov had few available navigators, however, so American captains often continued to sail the vessels under contact to the RAC.”
“Baranov bought the Atahualpa and another ship, the Lydia, in exchange for twenty thousand sealskins in December 1813. The Atahualpa was renamed the Bering, after the leader of the first Russian expedition to reach Alaska. Its American captain, James Bennett, remained in command and sailed to Okhotsk to pick up the furs that were being used to buy the ship.” (Mills)
“The Bering sailed to Hawaii in late 1814 for a load of provisions destined for the North American colonies. After making stops at Kauai, Maui and Oahu, the ill-fated vessel made one land stop at Waimea, Kauai, on January 30, 1815.”
“At 3 am the next morning, the ship ran aground in Waimea Bay during a gale. The shipwrecked men were stranded on Kauai for more than two months, eventually receiving passage off the island on April 11, 1815 … Kauai islanders, under the rule of paramount chief Kaumuali‘i, retained the ship’s goods, including its cargo of furs”.
“It appears that Captain Bennett was livid about the whole affair. He proceeded to Sitka and advised Baranov to use force to retrieve the cargo. Baranov, however, chose diplomacy over force, sending Georg Anton Schäffer to Hawai’i on the American ship Isabella to resolve the situation.” (Mills)
Later that year, Schäffer arrived in Honolulu. Schäffer began building a fort and raised the Russian flag. When Kamehameha discovered this, he sent several of his men to remove the Russians from O‘ahu, by force, if necessary. The Russians judiciously chose to sail for Kaua‘i, instead of risking bloodshed.
Once on Kauai, Schäffer gained the confidence of King Kaumuali‘i, when he promised the king that the Russian Tsar would help him to break free of Kamehameha’s rule.
In 1817, however, it was discovered that Schäffer did not have the support of the Russian Tsar. He was forced to leave Hawai‘i, and Captain Alexander Adams, a Scotsman who served in the navy of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i, raised the Kingdom of Hawai‘i flag over the fort in October 1817.
Eventually, over-hunting greatly diminished the number of sea otters and fur seals in the North Pacific. By the 1850s, New Archangel, which once owed its existence to the fur trade depended instead on a shipyard, a fish saltery, sawmills and an ice-exporting business.
The RAC and the Russian government no longer profited from the colony, instead focusing their main commercial activities on tea importing. The Crimean War highlighted Russian America’s vulnerability to attack by other European nations.
The Tsar decided to sell in 1867 rather than lose the territory in another war. The US States bought Alaska for $7.2 million, or approximately 2 cents per acre, and Russia ended its 126-year-old North American enterprise. (NPS)
atahualpa-bering
Filed Under: Economy, General, Prominent People, Sailing, Shipping & Shipwrecks Tagged With: Alexander Baranov, Bering, Hawaii, Kauai, Russian American Company, Russians in Hawaii, Schaffer, Waimea
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Strange money: privately-issued $6 and $7 notes
In you were living in Canada between 1870 and 1880 there's a good change that you might have held in your wallet the odd beast that was the private $7 note pictured above. Below is a $6 note issued by Banque Nationale in 1870, a bank that continues to operate in Canada today.
The first striking aspect of the $7 note is that the issuer is Molsons, the very same Molsons that brews one of Canada's best selling beers. Molsons Bank would eventually merge itself with the Bank of Montreal in the 1920s.
Going back a bit in history, the brand name on these notes isn't so unusual. Most Canadians are probably not aware that the entrance of the Bank of Canada into the business of issuing paper money is relatively new. Established in 1935, the BoC has only been a money printer for 78 or so years. Private Canadian chartered banks, on the other hand, began to issue paper banknotes as early as 1819. Until they gave up their right to issue notes in 1935, these banks had been continuously issuing notes for some 125 years. So Molsons notes aren't an anomaly—if anything, they've been the norm up here in Canada, it's the BoC that's a bit weird.
So why would anyone want a $7 note? Why not just carry one $5 and two $1s?
First, we should note that issuing banknotes is a cost-effective way for an institution to fund itself. Why? Notes don't pay out interest. In comparison, bond or deposit funding are pricier funding alternatives since interest must be paid on outstanding obligations. Fierce competition emerged among early Canadian banks to see who could keep their notes in circulation and "enjoy the float". The float refers to seigniorage, or the difference between the cost of maintaining banknotes in circulation and the interest that can be earned by investing note proceeds.
While the Canadian government no doubt wanted to share in this interest-free financing, a proposal by Lord Sydenham in 1841 to end the private issue of notes and monopolize issuance at a central bank never got off the ground. The next effort to move into the business of note issuance did get traction. But rather than establish a monopoly central bank, the Provincial Notes Act of 1866 only allowed for the issuance of $8 million in Province of Canada Notes. These instruments would later come to be known as Dominion notes. Much like US greenbacks, Dominion notes were direct obligations of the government, not of a central bank, and they circulated in competition with the notes of private banks.
Having gained for itself a toe-hold in the banknote issuance business, the Canadian government proceeded to shoehorn its way into a more dominant position. In 1870, the Feds required banks to surrender the issuance of small notes, or any denomination below $4.
Without the ability to issue $1s and $2s, chartered banks could not legally provide the public with hand-to-hand payment media to facilitate transactions that totaled $6, $7, or $11, and made it inconvenient to reach amounts like $26, $32, etc. The response of the Canadian banks was rather cheeky—they decided to print out $6s and $7s ($4 notes already being widely used in Canada). These new denominations allowed a bank to provide its clients with convenient payment media sufficient to total any transaction that clients might incur. An outstanding debt of $26, for instance, could be settled with one $20 note and a $6 note rather than one $10 and four $4s.
In 1880 legislation was passed that raised minimum private denominations to $5 and only permitted multiples of five. Thus ended ten years of oddly-denominated Canadian private notes. From that point on, only $1 and $2 denominated Dominion notes could provide Canadians with the flexibility to meet odd payment amounts.
Canadian $6 and $7 are an early example of regulatory-inspired financial innovation. No doubt the clamping down on private $1s and $2s was justified at the time by an appeal to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. While Smith usually advocated the free-banking position, he favored banning notes in denominations below £5. Small denominations were typically used by poorer classes whose ability to monitor notes for credit quality might be less than adequate. Without proper due diligence, wrote Smith, issuers of these notes would be able to overissue and cause credit booms and busts, hurting those least able to afford it.
I don't know what portion of the Canadian government's motivation for pushing into the banknote business emerged from the regulator-as-wise-outsider view and what portion from regulator-as-profit-seeking-monopolist view. But it makes me wonder how much of modern banking regulation is motivated by well-reasoned economic thinking and a genuine Smithian concern for the poor, and how much is motivated by interest groups co-opting the state to provide them with monopoly rents. Perhaps a bit of both. In any case, we shouldn't naively assume that bank regulation will solve all our financial woes.
PS: Many of these facts come from Roeliff Morton Breckenridge's The Canadian Banking System 1817-1890
Labels: Adam Smith, Bank of Canada, cash, free banking, seigniorage
Mike Sproul March 11, 2013 at 8:42 PM
I can't remember where, but I remember reading that private note-issuance was generally unprofitable, as the interest was used up by printing and handling costs, chasing counterfeiters, etc. Notes were issued mostly for advertising.
Another thing frequently mentioned in the old days was the question of why any private banker should be trusted for fifty times more than he is worth.
Both of these factors support the "government as wise outsider" view.
JP Koning March 12, 2013 at 9:37 AM
I've read that advertising bit somewhere too. Maybe Larry White?
In any case, when note issuance isn't being done on a competitive basis it's incredibly profitable... cue many years of Federal Reserve profits.
In hindsight, anyone who trusted Molsons Bank or Banque Nationale, both private bankers, with x times more than the bank was worth did ok. Both banks are still in existence. Canada had double liability for long time too, so notes were protected not only by the bank's capital but the personal capital of the shareholders.
That's a clever response from the banks. Thanks for posting.
The denominations we have now are puzzling to me. The $5 bill in particular has pretty poor utility. Having a $3 bill reduces the average number of bills to make change below $10 from 2.78 bills to 2.33 bills. This is assuming that all dollar amounts from 1 to 9 are equally likely; if we assume that small transactions are more common, then $3 bills become even more efficient.
I've read papers analyzing the most efficient denominations of coins, but never bills, and never taking into account the distribution of cash transaction amounts. It's an interesting topic I'd like to hear more about.
I meant to say "having a $3 bill INSTEAD of a $5 bill".
Interesting. How did you do those calculations?
Maybe we have an inherent bias to the number five because it looks & feels right? Five fingers. Half of ten. etc. There's a certain symmetry to it that overrides logic.
John S March 12, 2013 at 9:41 AM
Kind of an unrelated topic, but the Dominion notes part was interesting and got me thinking.
(Apologies if I'm butchering theory here...) One criticism of Free Banking seems to be that people are skeptical that a FB system could stave off deflationary spirals (e.g. the Great Depression) or perform the lender of last resort function (i.e. emergency liquidity).
But isn't that at best an argument for a night-watchman monetary policy? If the Free Banking system were working fine, then the govt could be completely hands off. In the face of an incipient financial crisis, couldn't the govt use something like the Aldrich-Vreeland emergency clearinghouse currency to provide liquidity as necessary?
JP Koning March 12, 2013 at 9:13 PM
In a free banking system, the many roles that a central bank serves would be devolved to the market. The provision of liquidity insurance (the lender of last resort role) to banks and the rest of the financial system could be passed to the options market, or the insurance market. The job of clearing payments would be left to private competing clearing houses. Monetary policy, the provision of notes + deposits when demand increases, would be left to competing profit-seeking banks.
"The provision of liquidity insurance could be passed to the options market, or the insurance market."
Interesting! I hope you can do a post in the future on the details of how this system might work in practice.
James March 12, 2013 at 2:48 PM
"Much like US greenbacks, Dominion notes were direct obligations of the government, not of a central bank"
Federal Reserve notes are also obligations of the government. Isn't the current Canadian currency an obligation of the Canadian government?
Canadian bank notes are "a first charge on the assets of the Bank," which means the bank ring-fences all of its assets so as to make note holders whole. I haven't found any wording that says the Federal government also stands behind the notes. The Feds are a shareholder of the bank... but that seems to be it.
What bit of wording tells you that US Federal Reserve notes are obligations of the government?
James March 13, 2013 at 7:24 AM
It's in the US Code:
"Federal reserve notes, to be issued at the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for the purpose of making advances to Federal reserve banks through the Federal reserve agents as hereinafter set forth and for no other purpose, are authorized. The said notes shall be obligations of the United States and shall be receivable by all national and member banks and Federal reserve banks and for all taxes, customs, and other public dues."
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/12/411
"18 USC § 8 - Obligation or other security of the United States defined:
"The term “obligation or other security of the United States” includes all bonds, certificates of indebtedness, national bank currency, Federal Reserve notes, Federal Reserve bank notes, coupons, United States notes, Treasury notes, gold certificates, silver certificates, fractional notes, certificates of deposit, bills, checks, or drafts for money, drawn by or upon authorized officers of the United States, stamps and other representatives of value, of whatever denomination, issued under any Act of Congress, and canceled United States stamps."
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/8
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PERSPECTIVE: What Trump Gets Wrong About Online Free Speech
TOPICS:Donald Trump Executive Orderla prensa san diegoTwitter
Posted By: La Prensa San Diego May 29, 2020
Arturo Castañares
It’s funny that those who decry government intervention the most seem to be the first to demand it to protect themselves when they feel aggrieved by someone they can’t control. Such is the case with Donald Trump that lives by the credo of smaller government and free markets but is quick to demand protection from outside forces he thinks are infringing on his God-given right of “free speech”.
This week, Twitter added a fact-check link to a post from Trump where he claimed, without evidence, that mail-in voting ballots would be “substantially fraudulent” and claimed that “mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged and even illegally printed and fraudulently signed”.
The fact-check link leads to a page that explains that Trump’s claims were unsubstantiated by media research, and that election experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.
Then came the avalanche of criticism that Twitter was “censoring” Trump and the inevitable calls for “freedom of speech” began.
By Thursday, President Trump signed an Executive Order against social media companies that he says “totally silence conservative voices”, vowing that “we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand-pick the speech that Americans may access and convey online”.
Here, now, is the President of the United States, calling for the federal government to punish an online outlet for providing a link to facts about his unsubstantiated claims. Twitter didn’t censor him and delete his message to over 80 million followers; it simply called attention to the fact that there is no evidence to support his claim.
It’s like the Bizzaro World of Htrae (Earth spelled backward) where everything is opposite of the real world.
The Executive Order that Trump signed Thursday would open the doors for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to review existing protections under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which limits the legal liability of social media companies for contents others post on their online platforms, distinguishing the sites from publishers of the material.
The irony is that Trump is threatening to increase legal liability to punish Twitter (the platform) for giving readers more information on messages posted by Trump (the publisher) of the content, not for censoring or deleting his posts.
The long-term effect of Trump’s punitive reaction to Twitter would be to force online platforms to further police online content if they become legally liable for messages random users post, quite the opposite of what Trump is complaining about now.
And his cries of “freedom of speech” are actually opposite of the protections offered by the First Amendment of the Constitution.
The First Amendment limits acts by government, not policies set by private companies. The government “shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech” prohibits censorship by the government, but nothing grants us freedom from companies that provide social media platforms and then limit, control, or censor how we use them.
No one forces Donald Trump to use Twitter. In fact, he doesn’t even pay anything for them to deliver the countless 280 character messages he sends out.
Well, actually, they aren’t countless. Since launching his Twitter account in 2009, Donald Trump has sent out over 42,500 tweets. That amounts to over 2.1 TRILLION delivered messages. For free.
And those messages from Trump have generated 221 million re-tweets and 933 million likes. Also for free.
Trump doesn’t see the irony in the President of the government demanding the government protect him from a private company whose free service he voluntarily uses to deliver messages.
This isn’t a case of the heavy hand of government crushing the powerless. This isn’t private citizens criticizing their leaders over abuses or misdeeds. This isn’t what the founding fathers intended when they sought to protect we the people from the tyranny of government.
This is Donald Trump using social media to manipulate, derail, and interfere with our free and fair elections, much like Russia did in past elections, and using his power as President to accomplish it.
Trump isn’t using Twitter to inform people. He isn’t trying to inspire us to greatness. He isn’t even trying to criticize the government for abuses or wrongs (which would be ironic since he is the leader of the government). And worst of all he’s violating his own wife’s social media program called Be Best. Clearly he’s not being his best.
Trump is trying to scare people (with unsubstantiated claims AKA lies) into thinking that our institutions of government are corrupt, broken, and malicious in an attempt to win re-election.
Our elections have worked fine for years before Donald Trump tried to tell us they don’t. Mail-in ballots have been used for years without any reports of wide-spread fraud or manipulation. In fact, none of the 3,007 counties in the US have reported systematic fraud in mail-in ballots, not even counties controlled by Republicans voting officials.
Mail-in absentee ballots are nothing new and the process is well established. When someone votes absentee, they must sign the ballot envelope and that signature is verified by the Registrar of Voters before the vote is counted. If the signatures don’t match, the vote is not allowed. Further, records are checked to make sure that no one can vote by absentee and also at the polls, and that no one submits more than one ballot.
In fact, Trump and his family, and even his staff, have used mail-in ballots for years. Donald Trump himself voted by mail in Florida’s March primary election this year and, this week, after White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended Trump’s claims of fraud, she was forced to admit she has voted by mail 11 times.
Then why did this whole controversy start this week in the first place?
Because several states, including California, announced that they would be sending absentee ballot applications to all registered voters to encourage people to vote from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The effort was intended to ease concerns of getting sick while standing in line or voting at polling locations during the November election.
Trump and Republicans immediately objected to those plans and began spreading unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and election “stealing” in an effort to suppress voter turnout which Republicans have always thought improves their election chances when people of color and disenfranchised voters don’t show up to vote.
By spreading these false claims now, Trump also hopes to lay the foundation to undercut the results of the election in case he loses.
Those claims might have been more credible if Trump didn’t make those very same claims every election, even in the one where he won.
Trump has claimed several times that 3 million “illegal votes” were cast in the 2016 election where Hillary Clinton received 2.8 million votes more than he did. Again there are no reports from any state that wide-spread voter fraud occurred in 2016, but it gives Trump an excuse for his popular vote defeat even though he won the Electoral College.
So this all comes down to Donald Trump not liking that Twitter, and maybe other social media sites to follow, provides users with a link where they can find more information on the topic of his questionable message. They didn’t deny him the platform, just gave the public more information. And it surely did not “totally silence conservative voices” as his new order claims.
Trump has the largest megaphone and platform on Earth; he’s the leader of the free world. He can get media coverage of anything he says at any time. All he has to do is open his mouth.
He likes to play the victim and feign as the downtrodden, but it’s hard to feel sorry for him when he’s the most powerful person in the world.
Twitter and other social media outlets should be free to run their platforms as they wish. We don’t have to like it and we surely don’t have to use them.
And that goes for Donald Trump, too.
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BANG Jun-seok
BANG Jun-seok, born in 1970, is a singer, songwriter and music producer. Having spent most of his childhood in Chile and the USA, he teamed up in 1994 with a fellow expatriate Korean he met at New York State University, YI Sung Yol, to form the modern rock duo U&Me Blue. Despite two albums released in Korea, the group failed to find its audience and was ultimately disbanded in 1997. However, by that time, two of their songs had found their way into movies, namely the crit...More
BANG Jun-seok, born in 1970, is a singer, songwriter and music producer. Having spent most of his childhood in Chile and the USA, he teamed up in 1994 with a fellow expatriate Korean he met at New York State University, YI Sung Yol, to form the modern rock duo U&Me Blue. Despite two albums released in Korea, the group failed to find its audience and was ultimately disbanded in 1997. However, by that time, two of their songs had found their way into movies, namely the critically-acclaimed social drama film <A Single Spark> (1995) and the melodrama <Man with Flowers> (1997). Fascinated by the synergy created between his music and these movies, BANG decided to pursue a career in the film industry and completed his first scoring assignment in 1999, for the horror thriller <Tell Me Something> (1999). At a time when the industry would generally simply use preexisting songs, BANG won wide acclaim for his effective and enjoyable compositions. Among the most famous original soundtracks he composed in his early career are those for <Joint Security Area / JSA> (2000), from PARK Chan-wook, and <You Are My Sunshine> (2005). In 2006, as he was tasked with writing the songs of a fictional rock star from the 80s for LEE Joon-ik’s <Radio Star>, he came up with the power ballad “The Rain and You”. The song, performed in the film by PARK Joong-hoon and punk band No Brain, took the country by storm following the success of the movie and has inspired many cover versions up to this day. BANG would work with LEE again for the two other instalments in his trilogy about music, <The Happy Life> (2007) and <Sunny> (2008). As more films were being produced with music as subject, he started gaining wider recognition as well as more important roles. For the musical drama film <Go Go 70s> (2008), not only did he compose all of the songs, which are considered among the best in Korean film music, he also co-wrote the screenplay. Among his works in recent years, his score for <The Throne> (2014) won Best Music at the Blue Dragon Film Awards and the Korean Association of Film Critics Awards, and <The Battleship Island> (2017) was recognized for Best Music Award by the Korean Film Producers Association. He was reunited again with LEE Jun-ik in 2017 for <Sunset in My Hometown>, which is set in part in the hip-hop scene.Less
KCCNY Celebrates 40 Years with Special Film Events Feb 28, 2019
To celebrate its 40th anniversary, the Korean Cultural Center New York (KCCNY) is putting on a series of cultural events throughout 2019, which include a pair of events related to Korean cinema. This month, Along with the Gods producer WON Dong-yeon visited New York for a special talk, while Director KIM Tae-yong will stage a film and music event during the summer. On February 25, WON Dong-yeon, p...
ALONG WITH THE GODS to Be Remade as A VR Ride Film May 17, 2018
Web comic Along With The God will have its VR version, following its film and TV series adaptations. Based on the second-most-viewed movie in Korea, with a total of 14.41 million admissions in the local box office, Along With The Gods VR will be a film made specifically for VR rides. The production team of Along With The Gods VR will recreate the Seven Hells and other locales of the afterlife and ...
THE FORTRESS Tops Korean Film Producers Association Awards Dec 26, 2017
The Korean Film Producers Association (KFPA) handed their top prize this year to the period siege drama The Fortress, from director HWANG Dong-hyuk. HWANG’s film also took the prizes for Best Editing (NAM Na-young) and Best Sound for CHOI Tae-young, who previously won for period drama The Throne (2015). The 4th KFPA Awards, which were hosted by actor KWON Hae-hyo (The Day After), took place on the...
Awards and Invitation
<The Battleship Island> Korean Film Producers Association Awards (2017) - Best Music
<The Throne> The Korean Association of Film Critics Awards (2015) - Best Music
<The Throne> The Blue Dragon Awards (2015) - Best Music
<Sunny> The Blue Dragon Awards (2008)
<Sunny> Buil Film Awards (2008)
<The Happy Life> The Blue Dragon Awards (2007)
<Radio Star> The Korean Association of Film Critics Awards (2006) - Best Music
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Jewish World Review Nov. 14, 2007 / 4 Kislev 5768
Crusades Versus Caution, Part II
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The recently launched crusade to have every child tested for autism before the age of two has as its reason an opportunity for "early intervention" to treat the condition.
Dr. Scott Myers, a pediatrician, has been quoted by Reuters news service as saying that autistic children who get earlier treatment "do better in the long run."
That may be true if the children are genuinely autistic. But the dangers of false diagnoses of toddlers and preschoolers have been pointed out by Professor Stephen Camarata of Vanderbilt University, who has tested and treated children with autism for more than 20 years and has encountered many cases of inaccurate diagnoses.
A prudent trade-off, as distinguished from a crusade, would weigh the dangers of false diagnoses against the benefits of "early intervention."
There is already considerable evidence of false diagnoses of preschool children as autistic, and the treatments inflicted on them can be abusive, with incalculable negative effects on their development.
What about the positive effects of "early intervention"?
According to Professor Camarata, those children "with true autism" are "very difficult to treat and may never say 'mommy' or learn to take care of themselves without Herculean efforts by their parents and teachers."
The limitations of what can be achieved with even early intervention mean that there can be real heartbreak, whether a toddler or preschooler is either falsely or correctly diagnosed as being autistic.
Much has been made of statistics showing a sharp increase in diagnoses of autism in recent years.
What has gotten much less attention is the changing definition of autism, which raises the question whether there has been an actual change in the real world or simply a change in the way words are used when collecting statistics.
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People today are often spoken of as being "on the autistic spectrum," rather than as having autism.
While there are some conditions which are much like autism, there are other conditions, such as having a very high IQ or simply being late in talking, which often include characteristics listed on checklists for autism. These are open invitations to false diagnoses.
We would see the dangers immediately if people who wear glasses were included on "the blindness spectrum" or people with harmless moles were included on "the cancer spectrum."
Blindness, cancer and autism are all too serious — indeed, catastrophic — to use loose definitions that fudge the difference between accurate and inaccurate diagnoses.
Loose definitions of autism produce bigger and more newsworthy statistics, which in turn can attract more children into existing programs and attract more money from the government, foundations and other sources to support those programs.
Many parents have told me that they have been urged to let their children be labeled autistic, or on the autistic spectrum, in order to get money for speech therapy or other conditions from grants that are available to deal with autism.
Professor Camarata points out that the "less precise 'autism spectrum'" label "has had the unintended consequence of diluting resources, research and services to those children and families who most need the support" — that is, families whose children suffer from genuine autism.
Loose definitions also promote the illusion of "cures" for autism, since most late-talking children who were never autistic in the first place "will be miraculously 'cured' because most late talkers who are otherwise unimpaired learn to talk with little or no treatment," according to Professor Camarata.
Parents whose children are late in talking or have other troubling problems would do well to seek diagnoses from the most highly qualified professionals they can find — but not rely on the facile checklists being promoted in the current crusade for universal diagnosis of infants and toddlers for autism, without facing the question whether or not there are enough people qualified to make such diagnoses.
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Build Back Better with forestry creation
By Fraser Rummens Assistant Editor
SILVICULTURE company Tomorrow’s Forests has launched a new forest-creation project, giving the public the chance to work together to create UK forests, fight climate change and ‘Build Back Better’ after COVID-19.
Its first site is close to its headquarters in Dorset, on the Somerset Levels, which before being used for agriculture was wet woodland, home to a rare mix of tree, plant, and wildlife species. It’s their mission to restore the land to its former glory, planting native trees, building homes for birds, and creating wildflower meadows.
The COVID-19 pandemic this year meant that more than half the world’s population had some form of lockdown imposed upon them, with a dramatic impact on air pollution. Despite C02 levels rebounding quickly, the UK public has been putting pressure on the government to ‘Build Back Better’.
Dr Simone Webber, senior ecology editor at Tomorrow’s Forests, said: “It’s important that we look after the land around us. There are so many forest-creation projects overseas, but the global lockdowns have alerted us to the importance of looking after our immediate environment.”
Nick Hollingworth, managing director, said: “We have made it possible for individuals and businesses to plant their own trees in the UK every month. After this crazy year, the public are demanding more ways to do their bit for the planet, so this is a great option for them to get involved.”
Tomorrow’s Forests has planted eight million trees over the past six years. With many habitats already established around the UK, and another already in the pipeline, they have great plans to plant millions more.
To find out more or become a member, visit www.creatingtomorrowsforests.co.uk.
Please support us by subscribing to our print edition, delivered direct to your door, from as little at £69 for 1 year – or consider a digital subscription from just £1 for 3 months.
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You are here: Home Online Books About Historical Background Old Testament History Old Testament History - 3.18 - Abimelech, Ammonites, Jephthah
Successors of Abimelech - Chronology of the Period - Israel's renewed Apostasy, and their Humiliation before Jehovah - Oppression by the Ammonites - Jephthah - His History and Vow - The Successors of Jephthah
(JUDGES 10-12)
THE sudden and tragic end of Abimelech seems to have awakened repentance among the people. It is thus that we explain the mention of his name (10:1) in connection with three judges, who successively ruled over the northern tribes. The first of these was Tola ("scarlet-worm"),* the son of Puah (probably "red dye") and grandson of Dodo, a man of Issachar. His reign lasted twenty-three years, and was followed by that of Jair ("Enlightener"), who judged twenty-two years. The family notice of the latter indicates great influence, each of his thirty sons appearing as a "chief" (riding on "ass-colts"), and their property extending over thirty out of the sixty cities (1 Kings 4:13; 2 Chronicles 2:23) which formed the ancient Havoth-Jair, or circuits of Jairs** (Numbers 32:41; Deuteronomy 3:14).
* Some have translated this by the son of "his uncle," viz., the uncle of Abimelech. But this seems unlikely, as Gideon was of Manasseh, and Tola of Issachar. The names of Tola and Puah, or Phuvah (Genesis 46:13; Numbers 26:23), as well as that of Jair, were tribal names.
** Certain critics have imagined a discrepancy between the earlier notice in Numbers 32:4l, etc., and that in the text. But the text does not say that the Havoth-Jair obtained its name in the period of the Judges - rather the opposite, as will appear from the following rendering of Judges 10:4: "and they had thirty cities (of) those which are called the circuit of Jair even unto this day."
These forty-five years of comparative rest conclude the second period in the history of the Judges. The third, which commences with fresh apostasy on the part of Israel, includes the contemporaneous rule of Jephthah and his successors - Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon (12:8-15) - in the north and east, and of Samson in the south and west. While in the north and east Jephthah encountered the Ammonites, Samson warred against the Philistines in the south-west. The oppression of Ammon over the eastern and northern tribes lasted eighteen years (10:8, 9); the rule of Jephthah six years (12:7); that of his three successors twenty-five years - covering in all a period of forty-nine years. On the other hand, the oppression of the Philistines lasted in all forty years (13:1), during twenty years of which (15:20) Samson "began to deliver Israel" (13:5), the deliverance being completed only twenty years later under Samuel, when the battle of Ebenezer was gained (1 Samuel 7). Thus Abdon, Jephthah's last successor in the north, must have died nine years after the battle of Ebenezer. These dates are of great importance, not only on their own account, but because they show us the two parallel streams of Israel's history in the north and the south. Again, the coincidence of events in the south with those in the north casts fresh light upon both. Thus, as Eli's high-priestly administration, which in a general sense is designated as "judging Israel," lasted forty years (1 Samuel 4:18), and his death took place about twenty years and seven months before the victory of Samuel over the Philistines (1 Samuel 6:1; 7:2), it is evident that the first twenty years of Eli's administration were contemporary with that of Jair in the east, while the last twenty were marked by the Philistine oppression, which continued forty years. In that case Samson must have been born, and have grown up during the high priesthood of Eli, and most of his exploits, as judging Israel for twenty years, taken place under Samuel, who gained the battle of Ebenezer, and so put an end to Philistine oppression, a short time after the death of Samson. In connection with this we may note, that Samuel's period of judging is only mentioned after the battle of Ebenezer (1 Samuel 7:15).
There is another and very important fact to be considered. The terrible fate which overtook the house of Gideon, culminating in the death of Abimelech, seems for ever to have put an end to the spurious ephod-worship of Jehovah, or to that in any other place than that He had chosen, or through any other than the Levitical priesthood. Accordingly, the sanctuary of Shiloh and its ministers now come again, and permanently, into prominent notice. This not only in the case of Eli and Samuel, but long before that. This appears from the sacred text. For when, previous to the calling of Jephthah, the children of Israel repented, we are told that they "cried unto the Lord," and that the Lord spake unto them, to which they in turn made suitable reply (Judges 10:10, 11, 15). But the peculiar expressions used leave no doubt on our mind, that the gathering of Israel before the Lord had taken place in His sanctuary at Shiloh, and the answer of Jehovah been made by means of the Urim and Thummim (comp. Judges 1:1).
For clearness' sake, it may be well to explain, that Judges 10:6-18 forms a general introduction, alike to the history of Jephthah and his successors, and to that of Samson. In ver. 6 seven national deities are mentioned whom Israel had served, besides the Baalim and Ashtaroth of Canaan. This in opposition to the sevenfold deliverance (vers. 11, 12) which Israel had experienced at the hands of Jehovah.* Then follows, in ver. 7, a general reference to the twofold contemporaneous oppression by the Ammonites in the east and north, and by the Philistines in the south and west. In ver. 8 the account of the Ammonites' oppression** commences with the statement, that "they ground down and bruised the children of Israel that year," and in a similar manner for eighteen years. In fact, the Ammonites, in their successful raids across the Jordan, occupied districts of the territory of Judah, Benjamin, and Ephraim, which bordered either on the Dead Sea or on the fords of Jordan.***
* Israel's unfaithfulness is represented as keeping measure, so to speak, with God's mercy and deliverance. The significance of the number seven should not be overlooked. Instead of "the Maonites" in ver, 12 the LXX read "Midianites," which seems the more correct reading. Otherwise it must refer to the tribe mentioned 2 Chronicles 26:7; comp.1 Chronicles 4:41.
** That of the Philistines commences 13:1.
*** I do not suppose that the Ammonites traversed the land, but that they made raids across the fords of Jordan, and laid waste the contiguous districts.
Next, we have in verses 10-15 an account of Israel's humiliation and entreaty at Shiloh, and of the Lord's answer by the Urim and Thummim. Finally, ver. 16 informs us, how the genuineness of their repentance appeared not in professions and promises, but in the putting away of all "strange gods," and that when there was no immediate prospect of Divine help. After this, to reproduce the wonderful imagery of Scripture: "His soul became short on account of the misery of Israel." That misery had lasted too long; He could not, as it were, be any longer angry with them, nor bear to see their suffering. For, as a German writer beautifully observes: "The love of God is not like the hard and fast logical sequences of man; it is ever free.... The parable of the prodigal affords a glimpse of the marvelous 'inconsistency' of the Father, who receives the wanderer when he suffered the consequences of his sin.... Put away the strange gods, and the withered rod will burst anew into life and verdure." And such is ever God's love - full and free. For, in the words of the author just quoted: "Sin and forgiveness are the pivots of all history, specially of that of Israel, including in that term the spiritual Israel."
Now, indeed, was deliverance at hand. For the first time these eighteen years that Ammon had camped in Gilead, the children of Israel also camped against them in Mizpeh, or, as it is otherwise called (Joshua 13:26; 20:8), in Ramath-Mizpeh or Ramoth-Gilead (the modern Salt), a city east of the Jordan, in an almost direct line from Shiloh. The camp of Israel could not have been better chosen. Defended on three sides by high hills, Mizpeh lay "on two sides of a narrow ravine, half way up, crowned by a (now) ruined citadel,"* which probably at all times defended the city.
* The description is taken from Canon Tristram's Land of Israel, pp. 557, 560.
"Ramoth-Gilead must always have been the key of Gilead, at the head of the only easy road from the Jordan, opening immediately on to the rich plateau of the interior, and with this isolated cone rising close above it, fortified from very early times, by art as well as by nature." All was thus prepared, and now the people of Gilead, through their "princes," resolved to offer the supreme command to any one who had already begun to fight against the children of Ammon - that is, who on his own account had waged warfare, and proved successful against them. This notice is of great importance for the early history of Jephthah.
Few finer or nobler characters are sketched even in Holy Scripture than Jephthah, or rather Jiphthach ("the breaker through"). He is introduced to us as "a mighty man of valor" - the same terms in which the angel had first addressed Gideon (6:12). But this "hero of might" must first learn to conquer his own spirit. His history is almost a parallel to that of Abimelech - only in the way of contrast. For, whereas Abimelech had of his own accord left his father's house to plan treason, Jephthah was wrongfully driven out by his brothers from his father's inheritance. Abimelech had appealed to the citizens of Shechem to help him in his abominable ambition; Jephthah to the "elders of Gilead" for redress in his wrong, but apparently in vain (11:7). Abimelech had committed unprovoked and cruel murder with his hired band; Jephthah withdrew to the land of Tob, which, from 2 Samuel 10:6, 8, we know to have been on the northern boundary of Peraea between Syria and the land of Ammon. There he gathered around him a number of freebooters, as David afterwards in similar circumstances (1 Samuel 22:2); not, like Abimelech, to destroy his father's house, but, like David, to war against the common foe. This we infer from Judges 10:18, which shows that, before the war between Gilead and Ammon, Jephthah had acquired fame as contending against Ammon. This life of adventure would suit the brave Gileadite and his followers; for he was a wild mountaineer, only imbued with the true spirit of Israel. And now, when war had actually broken out, "the elders of Gilead" were not in doubt whom to choose as their chief. They had seen and repented their sin against Jehovah, and now they saw and confessed their wrong towards Jephthah, and appealed to his generosity. In ordinary circumstances he would not have consented; but he came back to them, as the elders of Gilead had put it, because they were in distress. Nor did he come in his own strength. The agreement made with the elders of Israel was solemnly ratified before Jehovah.
He that has a righteous cause will not shrink from having it thoroughly sifted. It was not because Jephthah feared the battle, but because he wished to avoid bloodshed, that he twice sent an embassy of remonstrance to the king of Ammon. The claims of the latter upon the land between the Arnon and the Jabbok were certainly of the most shadowy kind. That country had, at the time of the Israelitish conquest, belonged to Sihon, king of the Amorites. True, the Amorites were not its original owners, having wrested the land from Moab (Numbers 21:26). Balak might therefore have raised a claim; but, although he hired Balaam to protect what still remained of his kingdom against a possible attack by Israel, which he dreaded, he never attempted to recover what Israel had taken from the Amorites, although it had originally been his. Moreover, even in dealing with the Amorites, as before with Edom and Moab, whose territory Israel had actually avoided by a long circuit, the utmost forbearance had been shown. If the Amorites had been dispossessed, theirs had been the unprovoked attack, when Israel had in the first place only asked a passage through their country. Lastly, if 300 years'* undisputed possession of the land did not give a prescriptive right, it would be difficult to imagine by what title land could be held. Nor did Jephthah shrink from putting the matter on its ultimate and best ground. Addressing the Ammonites, as from their religious point of view they could understand it, he said: "And now Jehovah God of Israel hath dispossessed the Amorites from before His people, and shouldest thou possess it? Is it not so, that which Chemosh** thy god giveth thee to possess, that wilt thou possess; and all that which Jehovah our God shall dispossess before us, that shall we possess?" We do not wonder that of a war commenced in such a spirit we should be told: "And the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah." Presently Jephthah passed all through the land east of the Jordan, and its people obeyed his summons.
* Of course these are round numbers, and not to be regarded as strictly arithmetical.
** Chemosh - the destroyer or desolater - the Moabite god of war. He is represented on coins with a sword in his right hand, a spear and lance in his left; the figure being flanked by burning torches.
We are now approaching what to many will appear the most difficult part in the history of Jephthah - perhaps among the most difficult narratives in the Bible. It appears that, before actually going to war, Jephthah solemnly registered this vow: "If thou indeed givest the children of Ammon into mine hand - and it shall be, the outcoming (one), that shall come out from the door of my house to meet me on my returning in peace from the children of Ammon, shall be to Jehovah, and I will offer that a burnt offering." We know that the vow was paid. The defeat of the Ammonites was thorough and crushing. But on Jephthah's return to his house the first to welcome him was his only daughter - his only child - who at the head of the maidens came to greet the victor. There is a terrible irony about those "timbrels and dances," with which Jephthah's daughter went, as it were, to celebrate her own funeral obsequies, while the fond father's heart was well-nigh breaking. But the noble maiden was the first to urge his observance of the vow unto Jehovah. Only two months did she ask to bewail her maidenhood with her companions upon the mountains. But ever after was it a custom for the maidens in Israel to go out every year for four days, "to praise* the daughter of Jephthah."
* This is the correct rendering, and not "lament," as in our Authorized Version. There was a curious custom in Israel in the days of our Lord. Twice in the year, "on the 15th of Ab, when the collection of wood for the sanctuary was completed, and on the Day of Atonement, the maidens of Jerusalem went in white garments, specially lent them for the purpose, so that rich and poor might be on an equality, into the vineyards close to the city, where they danced and sung" (see my Temple: its Services and Ministry at the time of Jesus Christ, p. 286). Could this strange practice have been a remnant of the maidens' praise of the daughter of Jephthah?
Such is the story; but what is its meaning? What did Jephthah really intend by the language of his vow; and did he feel himself bound by it in the literal sense to offer up his daughter as a burnt sacrifice? Assuredly, we shall make no attempt either to explain away the facts of the case, or to disguise the importance of the questions at issue. At the outset we are here met by these two facts: that up to that period Jephthah had both acted and spoken as a true worshipper of Jehovah, and that his name stands emblazoned in that roll of the heroes of the faith which is handed down to us in the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:32). But it is well-nigh impossible to believe that a true worshipper of Jehovah could have either vowed or actually offered a human sacrificed - not to speak of the sacrifice being that of his own and only child. Such sacrifices were the most abhorrent and opposed to the whole spirit and letter of the Law of God (Leviticus 18:21; 20:2-5; Deuteronomy 12:31; 18:10), nor do we find any mention of them till the reigns of the wicked Ahaz and Manasseh. Not even Jezebel had ventured to introduce them; and we know what thrill of horror ran through the onlookers, when the heathen king of Moab offered his son an expiatory sacrifice on the walls of his capital (2 Kings 3:26, etc.). But the difficulty becomes well-nigh insuperable, when we find the name of Jephthah recorded in the New Testament among the heroes of the faith. Surely, no one guilty of such a crime could have found a place there! Still, these are considerations which, though most important, are outside the narrative itself, and in any truthful investigation the latter should, in the first place, be studied by itself.
In so doing we must dismiss, as irrelevant and untruthful, such pleas as the roughness of those times, the imperfectness of religious development, or that of religious ignorance on the part of the outlaw Jephthah, who had spent most of his life far from Israel. The Scripture sketch of Jephthah leaves, indeed, on the mind the impression of a genuine, wild, and daring Gilead mountaineer - a sort of warrior-Elijah. But, on the other hand, he acts and speaks throughout as a true worshipper of Jehovah. And his vow, which in the Old Testament always expresses the highest religious feeling (Genesis 28:20; 1 Samuel 1:11; Psalm 116:14; Isaiah 19:21), is so sacred because it is made to Jehovah. Again, in his embassy to the king of Ammon, Jephthah displays the most intimate acquaintance with the Pentateuch, his language being repeatedly almost a literal quotation from Numbers 20. He who knew so well the details of Scripture history could not have been ignorant of its fundamental principles. Having thus cleared the way, we observe:
1. That the language of Jephthah's vow implied, from the first, at least the possibility of some human being coming out from the door of his house, to meet him on his return. The original conveys this, and the evident probabilities of the case were strongly in favor of such an eventuality. Indeed, Jephthah's language seems to have been designedly chosen in such general terms as to cover all cases. But it is impossible to suppose that Jephthah would have deliberately made a vow in which he contemplated human sacrifice; still more so, that Jehovah would have connected victory and deliverance with such a horrible crime.
2. In another particular, also, the language of Jephthah's vow is remarkable. It is, that "the outcoming (whether man or beast) shall be to Jehovah, and I will offer that a burnt-offering." The great Jewish commentators of the Middle Ages have, in opposition to the Talmud, pointed out that these two last clauses are not identical. It is never said of an animal burnt-offering, that it "shall be to Jehovah" - for the simple reason that, as a burnt-offering, it is such. But where human beings are offered to Jehovah, there the expression is used, as in the case of the first-born among Israel and of Levi (Numbers 3:12, 13). But in these cases it has never been suggested that there was actual human sacrifice.
3. It was a principle of the Mosaic law, that burnt sacrifices were to be exclusively males (Leviticus 1:3).
4. If the loving daughter had devoted herself to death, it is next to incredible that she should have wished to spend the two months of life conceded to her, not with her broken-hearted father, but in the mountains with her companions.
5. She bewails not her "maiden age," but her "maidenhood" - not that she dies so young, but that she is to die unmarried. The Hebrew expression for the former would have been quite different from that used in Scripture, which only signifies the latter.* But for an only child to die unmarried, and so to leave a light and name extinguished in Israel, was indeed a bitter and heavy judgment, viewed in the light of pre-Messianic times. Compare in this respect especially such passages as Leviticus 20:20 and Psalm 78:63. The trial appears all the more withering when we realize, how it must have come upon Jephthah and his only child in the hour of their highest glory, when all earthly prosperity seemed at their command. The greatest and happiest man in Israel becomes in a moment the poorest and the most stricken. Surely, in this vow and sacrifice was the lesson of vows and sacrifices taught to victorious Israel in a manner the most solemn.
* The Hebrew expression is bethulim. If it meant maiden age it would probably, as Keil remarks, have been neurim (comp. Leviticus 21:13).
6. It is very significant that in 11:39 it is only said, that Jephthah "did with her according to his vow" - not that he actually offered her in sacrifice, while in the latter case the added clause, "and she knew no man," would be utterly needless and unmeaning. Lastly, we may ask, Who would have been the priest by whom, and where the altar on which, such a sacrifice could have been offered unto Jehovah?
On all these grounds - its utter contrariety to the whole Old Testament, the known piety of Jephthah, the blessing following upon his vow, his mention in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but especially the language of the narrative itself - we feel bound to reject the idea of any human sacrifice. In what special manner, besides remaining unmarried,* the vow of her dedication to God was carried out, we do not feel bound to suggest. Here the principle, long ago expressed by Clericus, holds true: "We are not to imagine that, in so small a volume as the Old Testament, all the customs of the Hebrews are recorded, or the full history of all that had taken place among them. Hence there are necessarily allusions to many things which cannot be fully followed out, because there is no mention of them elsewhere."
* In general, the Mishnah condemns in unmeasured terms female asceticism (Sotah iii. 4). But in the Talmud (Sotah 22a) one instance at least is recorded with special praise, in which a virgin wholly devoted herself to prayer. See Cassel in Herzog's Encylco. 6 p. 475, note.12 Shibboleth means stream, which the Ephraimites pronounced Sibboleth.
Yet another trial awaited Jephthah. The tribal jealousy of Ephraim, which treated the Gileadites (more especially the half tribe of Manasseh) as mere runaways from Ephraim, who had no right to independent tribal action, scarcely to independent existence - least of all to having one of their number a "Judge," now burst into a fierce war. Defeated in battle, the Ephraimites tried to escape to the eastern bank of the Jordan; but Gilead had occupied the fords. Their peculiar pronunciation betrayed Ephraim, and a horrible massacre ensued.
Six years of rest - "then died Jephthah the Gileadite, and was buried in one of the cities of Gilead." We know not the locality, nor yet the precise place where he had lived, nor the city in which his body was laid. No father's home had welcomed him; no child was left to cheer his old age. He lived alone, and he died alone. Truly, as has been remarked, his sorrow and his victory are a type of Him Who said: "Not my will, but Thine be done." It almost seems as if Jephthah's three successors in the judgeship of the eastern and northern tribes were chiefly mentioned to mark the contrast in their history. Of Ibzan of Bethlehem,* of Elon the Zebulonite, and of Abdon the Pirathonite, we know alike the dwelling and the burying-place. They lived honored, and died blessed - surrounded, as the text emphatically tells us, by a large and prosperous number of descendants. But their names are not found in the catalogue of worthies whom the Holy Ghost has selected for our special example and encouragement.
* The Bethlehem here spoken of is, of course, not that in Judah, but that in Zebulon (Joshua 19:15). The situation of Ajalon, the modern Salem, quite in the north of Zebulon, and of Pirathon in Ephraim, the modern Ferata, six miles west of Nablus, has been ascertained.
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Landmarks of Sarajevo
Home / Posts tagged 'WWI sarajevo'
Manu | 6 December 2016 | no comments
Sarajevo at sunset
Despite being one of the most unknown and undiscovered capitals of Europe, Sarajevo is definitely one of the most charismatic and fascinating.
This is not a capital like any other in in the world; there is a high energy level here that makes you get attached to this place after the first stroll in town.This is a capital city that has a soul, a heart beating at every corner, a story to tell, scars to show, dreams to fulfill.
During its centuries of history, Sarajevo has been called “The door’, the connecting link between West and East, between two worlds, two cultures, two religions that, for centuries, have been peacefully living together among its stunning mountains.
In the ’90s the Balkan war destroyed not only the town but this dream of peace that had been the highlight of its history. But, as well as what happened to Sarajevo under the Siege, when the town managed to resist to more than 1425 days of bombings by the Serbians, the same happened to this dream.
The war ended and Sarajevo was rebuilt, and together with it its spirit of peace and tolerance.
Today, Sarajevo is slowly coming back to the splendour of the past. Scars have been left at every corner and in the heart of its people, in order not to forget and trying not to repeat it again, but the town itself is alive, in blooming again according to the same old spirit that has lead its history since ever.
A visit to Sarajevo is a must and it will be a pleasant discover of one of the most alternative and lively capitals of Europe.
Whether you love history, urban sites or nature, you will find everything in Sarajevo.
Here it is a list of the top sites not to be missed when you are in town:
The bridge that started the 20th century
The famous bridge where the First World War started!
Do you remember when at school they told you about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, occurred on 28 June 1914 on a bridge in Sarajevo by a Serbian student and considered the beginning of WWI?Today, you can stand on the exact corner that changed the course of history and the world as we know it. For a small fee, head into the little museum on the same corner to watch a short reenactment video of the incident and view some historical artifacts.
The “Tunnel of Life”, the place that ended the 20th century
The Tunnel of Sarajevo
At the peak of the Balkan War, Serbian troops put their eyes on Sarajevo, surrounded it and tried to conquer it in few days due to their higher number of men and weapons to fight with, compared to the Bosnian army. But Serbians highly underestimated the heart of Sarajevo. The Bosnian capital managed to resist to all the attack and so it was for the next 1425 days, when the town remained under siege without falling; more than 3 years of isolation in which more than 11000 people died struggling to resist to the fatal war attack. Sarajevo would have fallen if it hadn’t been for the secret 800 meter long “Tunnel of Life” that was dug under the UN-controlled airport that separated the besieged part of the city and the free zone, allowing the passage of essential goods. The Tunnel was dug in the backyard of a local family outside Sarajevo, by hands, by volunteers and it literally kept the people in town and the town itself alive. It has been estimated that more than a million people have passed through it during the Siege. Today, when you speak with people in Sarajevo, literally everyone has a story linked to that place. A must not to be missed.
Sarajevo roses
Sarajevo’s roses and scars
In Sarajevo, just after the war, a number of craters left by fatal mortar strikes were filled with red resin to remember those lost during the Siege of Sarajevo. Those open wounds left in the streets are still visible today as blood-like stains and known as “Sarajevo Roses”, they are literally everywhere in town, you just need to open your eyes and your heart and they will be become visible along the streets you will cross everyday.
Bašcaršija,The Old town
Sarajevo Old town and its charming daily beauty
In Sarajevo, you will find yourself crossing the tiny narrow streets of the Old Town hundreds times every day and, despite this, you will always find a new corner to discover. The old town is full of cafes and narghile bars where you can drink the traditional Bosnian coffee and eat baklavas and traditional pastries, and traditional copper shops selling old copper objects coming from the traditions.
City view from The Adecco Hotel
Sarajevo’s view front he Adecco tower
Located right in the city center, with the entrance next to the eternal Flame, the Adecco Hotel and its stunning view from the cafe’ ont he 9th floor are a must when in sarajevo. Head up there at sunrise and you can see how the beautiful hilled landscape change colors from all corners of the town.
TheTown Hall
Destroyed under the Siege, the Town Hallwas rebuilt after the war and painted brick by brick by hand
Sarajevo’s Town Hall is one of the most impressive displays of Austro-Hungarian architecture you’ll find. The building was bombed and destroyed by the Serbian army during the siege of Sarajevo. At that time, the building hosted one of the biggest libraries of the Balkans. All the books went destroyed under the bombing. At the end of the war, the Bosnians decided to rebuild the building according to how it was before. Today the Town Hall is a museum, its shiny colors are back to life again and it has been beautifully and completely handmade redecorated as it was before the past. A celebration to coming back to life of this town and its stubborn people.
The Lunar clock
The Lunar clock tower may let you confused but when you start to understand how it works it makes complete sense
Right next to the Gazi Husrev Bey’s Mosque, the clock tower may look weird at a first sight as the time doesn’t match the one you can see on your clock. This is not because of an error or because it is out of order, but rit is rather due to the fact that the tower clock signs the Lunar time. The “midnight” or beginning of a new day is at sunset. In the past, the Lunar clocks were very common in the Muslim world and were always placed next to the mosques as they were used to let Muslim residents know when it was time to pray and the time of sunset during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
As the length of the day is never the same, the clock time is adjusted weekly by the muvekit (the official timekeeper) to take into account the position of the sun.
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Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Maximilian C. Forte, Dimitri Lascaris, Janine Bandcroft Jan. 23rd, 2020
Lies and propaganda abound. We live in a mediated world, where what we believe is based on a reality few of us actually know from experience.
In the age of war and rumours of war, the emergence of "fake news" and now its technologically advanced progeny, "deep fake" audio and video transmissions, our understanding of the world we inhabit, and even the possibility we can understand, is challenged in ways the fathers of modern propaganda may not have been able to equal, but they certainly envisioned.
Society is today in exactly the place the totalitarians of old wanted us; distrustful of media and unable to discern fact from fiction; in short, left without a clue as to what in the world we can believe.
Dr. Maximilian C. Forte is a scholar, educator, author, and creator of the Zero Anthropology Project, a “Canadian anthropological approach to the study of empire and the human condition”.
Max teaches Anthropology and Sociology at Concordia University in Montréal, and publishes The New Imperialism series, which features research by students in his advanced seminar in the field. He publishes cultural reviews and articles at the project's website, ZeroAnthropology.net, where his recent article, 'From Hollywood to Hitler: Rethinking the Cultural Politics of Propaganda' appears.
Forte teaches Anthropology and Sociology at Concordia University in Montréal, and publishes The New Imperialism series, which features research by students in his advanced seminar in the field. Forte authored the books: 'Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs: (Post)Colonial Representations of Aboriginality in Trinidad and Tobago', and 'Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa', (a finalist selection for the Quebec Writers Federation Mavis Gallant Prize for Nonfiction).
Max also served as editor for the books, 'Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean: Amerindian Survival And Revival' and 'Indigenous Cosmopolitans: Transnational and Transcultural Indigeneity in the Twenty-First Century'.
Maximilian C. Forte in the first half.
And; in December, NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh was invited to speak with select members of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, ostensibly to address political "issues of interest to the Jewish community." Some of what Singh said during that meeting was released in a podcast, and apparently runs contrary to the NDP's official position on Palestine.
Dimitri Lascaris is a Canadian lawyer, human rights activist, and reporter for the Real News Network. Dimitri left the corporate world at the height of his profession to "devote himself to journalism, activism and pro bono legal work." In Canada’s 2015 federal election, he ran for the Green Party of Canada in London West, and subsequently served as Justice Critic in the party's Shadow Cabinet. He currently holds that position in the Shadow Cabinet of the Green Party of Quebec.
Dimitri Lascaris in the second half asking, "Just how deep does the NDP's support for Palestine go?"
And; Victoria-based activist and long-time Gorilla Radio contributor, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things to be gotten up to in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Dr. Maximilian C. Forte and 'From Hollywood to Hitler: Rethinking the Cultural Politics of Propaganda'.
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1993: Los Angeles’ Metro Red Line subway opens to the public between Union Station and 7th/Metro Station in the city’s financial district, carrying nearly 53,000 riders.
Another 91,000 passengers are carried the following day, a Sunday.
Celebrations reflecting the city’s rich multicultural heritage keep crowds entertained at every station.
Jugglers, clowns, musicians and popular television characters mix with folkloric dancers, mariachi musicians and popular radio personalities, with the Civic Center area draped in red, white and blue for its “Spirit of L.A.”-themed celebration hosted by the County of Los Angeles.
Initial ridership is 25,000 boardings per day, with 5 million riders in the first year of operation. The day before the public opening, numerous dignitaries dedicated and rode the subway at a press event.
At that time, California Governor Pete Wilson proclaims that “This is a great day. In 30 years, this will be the most magnificent transportation system in the world.”
Two days after the opening, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority begins its first day of business.
In January, 2013, the Civic Center Station would be renamed in honor of Mayor Bradley.
More information on the Metro Red Line opening can be found in the February, 1993 issue of Headway, the Southern California Rapid Transit District employee news magazine.
An extensive 20th anniversary story of the Metro Red Line subway opening can be found in the January 29, 2013 post on Metro’s The Source celebrating the agency’s 20th anniversary, while a lengthy look back at the first 10 years of Metro and the subway from 2003 can be found in the Winter, 2003 issue of Metro Quarterly.
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Since 1996, Michael Collins Pipes & Drums has been
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Copyright © 2011-2021 Michael Collins Pipes & Drums, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Michael Collins Pipes & Drums, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
Band Member Login
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The Quiet Road
Blog meme
The curious death of a master signifier
by Jim Bliss
A crowd gathered at the site of the World Trade Center in New York. Many carried American flags or wore t-shirts with patriotic slogans. They pumped their fists in the air. They shouted “U.S.A” and “We’re Number One!” while others sang The Star Spangled Banner. They were in celebratory mood. And they were celebrating death.
Specifically they were celebrating the shooting of an unarmed man in his fifties half a planet away. A group of well-trained killers entered a sovereign nation without permission, swooped down on a house and shot Osama bin Laden in front of his family. They then took photos, scraped some DNA samples and threw the body in the sea. Far away, insulated from all harm, the US president watched the killing unfold on a monitor. And crowds cheered. And of course, this being America, a few of them wondered how they could profit from the death celebration.
As Glenn Greenwald wrote, “It’s been a long time since Americans felt this good and strong about themselves — nothing like putting bullets in someone’s skull and dumping their corpse into an ocean to rejuvenate that can-do American sense of optimism.”
And then the lies began. The dead man had resisted capture. He’d opened fire on his assailants. In the last resort he’d grabbed his own wife and caused her death when he used her as a human shield. A day later, mystifyingly, we were told that none of that had happened. The dead man had been unarmed. He hadn’t used his wife as a human shield. She wasn’t even present when he was shot dead.
I found myself wondering how a man in his fifties, whose health – we’d been told for some time – wasn’t all that great, could have resisted capture so forcefully while unarmed, that a team of elite soldiers was unable to subdue him without shooting him numerous times in the face and chest. Don’t get me wrong, I shed no tears for Osama bin Laden. But nor do I find much to celebrate in the gunning-down of an unarmed man, followed by a series of official lies.
I also found myself wondering why we were being told this at all. Where had the first set of lies come from? And why bother correcting them given that there was no evidence one way or the other beyond the official version? It reminded me of the brutal slaying of Jean Charles de Menezes by police in London. Immediately after the killing a series of lies emerged from the authorities that were so far from the truth that they had to have been deliberately manufactured. They simply couldn’t have been mistakes or someone misinterpreting something. Jean Charles de Menezes had vaulted the ticket barrier in the tube station, we were told. He’d been wearing a bulky coat, we were told. He’d sprinted away from police who had clearly called upon him to stop, we were told.
Except he hadn’t. He’d used his season ticket to walk through the ticket barriers just like a hundred thousand other commuters that day. His clothes had been perfectly appropriate for the weather, and yes while he had sped up — like a hundred thousand other commuters that day — to catch the train that had just pulled into the station, he’d not been sprinting. We were just told lies. And the apparently casual manner in which the authorities appear willing to feed bullshit to the public suggests this is a routine occurrence.
The bizarre testimony of the police officer at the centre of the Ian Tomlinson “unlawful killing” case serves to reinforce this. Everyone had already seen the clear footage of the incident that killed Tomlinson. It was as unambiguous as something like this can possibly be. Yet at the inquest, the police officer whose action had resulted in the death of Tomlinson insisted upon a version of events that completely contradicted the video evidence. It was just weird. And what’s weirder is the fact that he clearly expected the jury, and the wider world, to accept his version above the evidence of their own eyes.
Over the years I’ve found it instructive, whenever I encounter a statement issued by an authority, to imagine that the exact opposite is true. It’s unsettling how often the news makes more sense when you do that. Admittedly it’s a little strange to have the strategy validated so quickly as we did when bin Laden was killed. Within 48 hours an armed man became an unarmed man, and the wife we were told was used as a human shield wasn’t even there.
Well, it means those in power have no respect for those they claim to protect, serve and represent. This isn’t an earth-shattering piece of news. I’m not claiming to be telling you something you’ve not heard before. I’m merely pointing out that despite incontrovertible evidence that this is going on all the time, we appear happy to allow it. Our police and our politicians are constantly lying to us, and we choose to accept it. The psychoanalyst in me can’t help but find the words of Wilhelm Reich springing to mind and wonder whether this is inevitably going to end with the sound of a hundred thousand jackboots marching in unison beneath a fascist flag. The willingness of a population to accept obvious lies eventually gets exploited by someone even less sane than Blair or Cameron or Bush or Obama. And the phrase “it couldn’t happen here” is rarely any protection.
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One response to "The curious death of a master signifier"
I was part of a radio show near Trinity Church, after which the interviewee told me the news about Osama bin Laden. Since I’ve lived 10 blocks away from WTC for 20+ years, I wandered down there to see what was going on with the crowd. It reminded me of a football rally or the kind of energy you get in a moshpit, a testosterone-fueled hoopla with lots of drinking and flag-waving by young males. However there were a few people there who had lost family members, a much more somber lot, observing but not necessarily celebrating death. Many of us in New York have doubts about the “official” version of 9/11 and the killing of Osama. I don’t think we’ll ever really know.
August 11th, 2011 | 5:02pm
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Which Animal Mates The Longest
The donkey carried the bread and the cakes that the baker made. Approximately 9 billion chickens are killed for their meat every year, while another 300 million chickens are used in egg production. What takes the longest time in Life Bits quests? A. The animals would only cluster together when there is a common need for something or when they are threatened or attacked. Meet the bar-tailed godwit: Breeding primarily on The animals, following a deeply embedded evolutionary instinct, will search for seasonal habitats in. Humans evolved into walkers not runners. However, there are things you should understand about the process in order to keep your pets safe and healthy. Pairs of male box crabs occasionally indulge in days-long marathon sex sessions. 1% of the total elements in the Earth. Humans of course are one species that copulates for pleasure. Swans are a perfect example of an animal that makes long term relationships a priority. Amphibians typically have four limbs and they lay their eggs in water. Finding a mate is a big deal in the animal world, and it accounts for a lot of animal behavior. The mother carries the young one around its neck to come out from the den, similar to a cat carrying a kitten. energy: the power from something such as electricity or oil, which can do work, such as providing light and heat. ) Females are often observed trying to fly away from an eager mate, leading experts to believe that the long penis could. The act itself is repeated many times, each time it takes only a matter of seconds, but the pairs stays locked together (sometimes breaking for a nuzzle or bite on the neck/back or just walking about) until the next bout. The picture was. Newest results. Humans mating with animals pictures. More: Body part found in over 12-foot-long gator at pond where woman was. That lets him navigate it into a female's vagina, or masturbate by repeatedly. Here is a selection of common animal procedures. Until she mates or is spayed, estrus (the time of receptivity to mating) will occur every 2 to 3 weeks, causing distress to both the queen and her human companions. Most mating rituals are driven purely by instinct, and those within the animal kingdom are no exception. 19 a big wild animal with long horns is called… A dear. As best we can tell, life originated without sex. Clownfish live in a "symbiotic" relationship with certain anemones. Bees make honey and they can sting. We found seven creatures who get to spend a long time on Earth, some for hundreds of years. goat mating with human goat mating with female animals. In this article, discover the 11 longest-lived members of various animal. They live in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it's very hot and predators, such as leopards, are always lurking. Measuring from 3 to 4. Ants live underground in large groups called colonies. Nature riches will not last forever. Animals that mate for life Love is in the air and these animals symbolize and inspire true everlasting love, soulmates and being "all in" for the long haul. Gibbons are our closest animal relatives that mate with their partners for life. Bonobo Mating Like Humans - Funny Animals Mating Compilation - Funny Bonobo Ape Mating. And if you love African Hot snakes, this is THE Book for you: 'Dangerous Snakes of Africa' by Spawls, S. Some domestic animals are kept for farming purposes while pets are kept as companions. Write complete sentences. Tonic immobility is a natural state of paralysis that animals enter, often called animal hypnosis. Apr 25, 2015 · Animals Mating Hard And Fast With Humans - Animals Mating animals mating hard and long up close animals Animals Mating. When thinking of a tank mate you can take aesthetics into account but you must also realize what the tank mate's requirements are and if they could be hazardous. Alabama's relatively mild winters and great variety of habitats attract and support winter visitors and summer-breeding birds alike. Animals that look like this are not as valuable as those with the same proportions as a full-sized horse. You can help stop this. When thinking of tank mates many think of other animals that they would like to put with them because they think they have similar habitats in the wild or they will look cool together. Bull and cow Grey seal mating on the coast of Norfolk UK. The water personality of the dolphin has much in common with the aquatic sea lion and the pastoral nature of the sheep makes for a compatible mate with the grazing deer. Outbreeding is the recommended breeding practice for most purebred sheep breeders. In animals without paternal care, the number of offspring sired by a male increases as the number of females he mates with increases. When we think of mating in the animal kingdom, we probably tend to think that most animals do not form long-lasting relationships. In April, the air temperature rarely rises above -22 F. Being brightly colored, or having extremely long tails (ahem, peacocks) is not a good way to blend in and hide from predators. Manakins are short-billed birds that range in size from 8. (Visited 477,538 times, 220 visits today). Males will form lines up to ten individuals long, the youngest echidna trailing last, that follow the female and attempt to mate. How many times in a row can you dodge at full endurance? Realm of the dead. The animal which mates the longest is the Anglerfish! Now the fact that the Anglerfish gets to mate at all might surprise us, since there are few more hideous creatures on the planet. When one partner in a monogamous pair dies, most surviving partners go. It is 11 pm and he's looking to unwind in front of the television after a long day's work. ) Females are often observed trying to fly away from an eager mate, leading experts to believe that the long penis could. Most females begin reproducing around the age of one. But just when breeding occurs differs between species, said. Each zodiac animal's year comes around every 12 years, and each year is associated with a zodiac animal. “For the longest time, the idea of returning animals such as large mammals to the wild was just off the table, but now we’re seeing people in the field questioning the long-held belief that it’s impossible to return captive animals to their natural habitat,” says Katie Moore, deputy vice president of conservation and animal welfare for. Two color patterns are commonly found: a light phase, which has black or. Their natural habitats are destroyed by human activity. Mating occurs primarily in relatively low-salinity waters in the upper areas of estuaries and lower portions of rivers. Females, however, are monogamous, and will mate with only one male and will not tolerate other males after mating has occurred. Most mating rituals are driven purely by instinct, and those within the animal kingdom are no exception. Many zoos are struggling financially and can no longer care for their animals properly. Female domestic turkeys are a lot smaller than male domestic. Where do animals live? Animals are found in every part of the world. Domestic turkeys are much heavier and larger than wild turkeys. The amount of years that 2 swans spend together is only 8, but there life expectancy as a whole is only 12. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. The title of world's longest sperm actually belongs to a tiny fruit fly called Drosophila bifurca. Mating Moments. They can sprint as fast as 70 km/h (43 mph) and hold steady speeds of 50 km/h (31 mph). When we talk of animal extinction, we talk of a species in particular becoming extinct. I will never tire of debunking this seriously outlandish human evolution theory from Dr. As long as you can fit their essentials, such as litter boxes (you need one Because dogs have a tendency to destroy their toys, they have to be made from much tougher (and While cats certainly do make some noise—especially at night, when many cats are most. In an experiment where an Oldfield mouse male was given two females, his preference of the two was recorded. A cat who meows a lot should be checked thoroughly by a veterinarian to ensure a medical condition is not the cause of the cat’s distress. " This is largely a sterile debate because behavior is not necessarily moral even if "natural. The females have a long vulva with two nipples on each side to nourish newborns. The largest known animal cell is the ostrich egg. Grizzly bear cubs are born in the late winter and spring like most bears of the world. Mate selection is up to the female, and it is the females that compete for the males. Like many animals, Cooper's hawks are most vulnerable when they are young. Long-tailed weasels have a long slender body and head. When looking for a mate, the male anglerfish will be guided by pheromones which are specific to the species and also by the bioluminescent emitted by the female. Many animals don't have a specific time of year in which they mate - lions, for example, can come into season, and thus mate and have cubs, at any time of year. Others, like the giant seaweeds may be more than 100 feet long. The Bank vole is a mouse-like animal with a thick body. But one of the things we can't help but continue to be the most fascinated by is the mating rituals of certain creatures and critters. This cute animal has a baby-like face, unusually large ears, plump belly and an extremely long tail, which occasionally drag on the ground while the animal walks. Indigo BuntingFew states can match Alabama's rich diversity of birds. Animals world 47,913 Followers · Just For Fun Pages Media TV & Movies TV Channel Nine Animals TV Videos kawin tapir paling lama, paling panjang - mating tapir the longest. What do baby animals represent on Easter? A. Also the male domestic fowl and junglefowl have long shiny feathers above his tail and also long neck feathers that may be a different colour to his wings and body. Animal … are in danger all over the world. Hence, the conditions of the zoos should be upgraded to such an extent that. However, if you aren't following a specific style guide for work, school, or publishing purposes, you can still. Length of Mating Bonds. These animals have a sort of white color fur with some spots and sometimes has stripes. But one of the things we can't help but continue to be the most fascinated by is the mating rituals of certain creatures and critters. Animals and animal guessing gives a context in which using these verb phrases can be meaningful. This makes sense in evolutionary terms -- the largest tail would indicate a healthy. While it's difficult to ask them if they enjoy doing the deed, a quick look at their behavior shows that, at the very least, most. In the case of humpback whales, we may have found the answer: they may be navigating by the stars, much as early human sailors did. Smaller animals tend to have a shorter lifespan than larger animals, mainly because most small animals also have a fast metabolic rate and are Just take a look at this list of longest living animals below and you'll notice that most of them are huge. Lieberman and his followers. In order to do you must narrow down the possible choices by asking questions which, hopefully, provides context and meaning for the. Farm animals include: rabbits, sheep, cows, pigs, horses, chicken, goats. To be technically correct, the top 10 animals of this list should be all whales, as there are a lot of different whale species which would all be heavier than the African Elephant. The most obviously beneficial adaptation for such a species is, therefore, pleasurable sex. This animal is very long and can be very dangerous. This is known as the "train" system. Funny Dogs mating Hard and Getting Stuck [ Animals Mating ] The subject of dogs mating may seem like something best left to the dogs to handle for themselves. The giant walking stick, Megaphasma denticrus, which ranges from New Mexico eastward, is perhaps the longest in the United States, measuring six or seven inches in length. In the mating season, the scent of a female giant Owing to feeding on bamboos, the giant pandas need to spend long time in eating to get enough energy each day, and they will leave. It is tricky to pin down the animal that makes the longest journey, for two reasons. Here is a selection of common animal procedures. Hughley Radio Show’s “Think Like a Human, Act Like an Animal. Details of the animal's life through much of the year are virtually unknown. Watch Zebra Mating and Giving Birth lean its Wild Animal Mating. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. One of those on the list of animals that mate for life actually lives in Brooklyn, New York — and it’s a special breed of parrot, commonly referred to as Quaker Parrots. However, there are things you should understand about the process in order to keep your pets safe and healthy. Terrapins mate in early spring and nest through mid-summer. Conversely, animal personalities that live in markedly different environments tend to avoid each other. Spring and new life. Cubs typically nurse for six months but start eating meat at three months. Quolls have a lifespan of only 12 months. Their teeth can be up to three times longer than those of a normal salamander. Believe it or not, the animal with the longest tail also has a pretty long neck. They typically give birth to a litter every two years. I will never tire of debunking this seriously outlandish human evolution theory from Dr. Seychelles giant tortoises moan when they mate. Domestic Animals. The Horrors of Anglerfish Mating but they lacked the fearsome maw and lure typical of ceratioids and were much smaller—sometimes only as long as 6 or 7 millimeters—and got placed. Long before their domestication, horses were hunted by primitive tribes for their meat which is still consumed by people in some parts of Europe and in Iceland. The mating process actually begins when the male snake travels long distances during the mating season to search for a female. As best we can tell, life originated without sex. The world's smallest winged insect. 9,250 views. In contrast, wild dogs parent puppies as a team with all members of the group contributing to the caring of a single dominant male and female. There's a reason most animals can outrun huma. If you really think you deserve a promotion, you'll have to take the bull by the horns. Animal hotel 8. Zebras are goo. The only light in all this vast darkness is made by animals them-selves. Their song sounds like humming. To be technically correct, the top 10 animals of this list should be all whales, as there are a lot of different whale species which would all be heavier than the African Elephant. Manakin, (subfamily Piprinae), common name given to about 60 species of small, stubby, generally short-tailed birds abundant in American tropical forests. I couldn't care less (but one must keep up appearances, right?). Everything from small to big animals mating. It is a cross between the domestic dog and the coyote. Seal Foreplay. Browse 8,582 animals mating stock videos and clips available to use in your projects, or search for female animal or two animals to find more stock footage and b-roll video clips. If the female accepts the nose rubbing and, after the initial nose rubbing test, the female is still keen on the male, the male will then stand on its hind legs and the female allows him to urinate all over her body. I hope he deos find a mate and nest and has a family in my yard…How long before I know if he will mate or is he just finding it nice to sleep in my cactus. A howling session by a pack lasts an average of 85 seconds. Can we make experiments on animals? Do you think it is acceptable to test cosmetics on animals?). Like many animals, Cooper's hawks are most vulnerable when they are young. It may be related to mating in certain animals like sharks. The tallest living land animal, a giraffe stands between 4. Professor Flitwick is suspicious of what happened. catched caught catching. And if you love African Hot snakes, this is THE Book for you: 'Dangerous Snakes of Africa' by Spawls, S. Giraffes are polygamous in nature. Different bird species remain in bonded pairs for different lengths of time. A male Asian elephant has a long, hefty penis that he can move around with a set of enlarged muscles at its base. It's eerily accurate, and best of all… it's free!. read and understand main facts about animals. China has made eating wild animals illegal after the coronavirus outbreak. 5 and 5 metres tall – and almost half that height is neck. The Yogibo Roll Mate is an animal-shaped body pillow that provides excellent support, with no pressure points, and is ultra-comfortable. Animals world 47,913 Followers · Just For Fun Pages Media TV & Movies TV Channel Nine Animals TV Videos kawin tapir paling lama, paling panjang - mating tapir the longest. The number of animals we eat is increasing rapidly. By continuing to use this site you consent to the use of cookies on your device as described in our cookie policy unless you have disabled them. Currently only Pigs and Sheep ever domesticate, the rest are always the wild version. The Amazon Rainforest is home to 427 mammal species, 1,300 bird species, 378 species of reptiles, and more than 400 species of amphibians. This tired old “Endurance Running” theory. {{filterDisplayName(filter)}} Duration. The coat is red-brown, the ears are prominent and the tail is long. War-Torn Zoo's Last Surviving Animals Rescued in Mosul. Adults average 10-14 lbs. Lifespan/Longevity: Raccoons have been known to live a maximum of 16 years in the wild. Range: Grizzly bears can migrate long distances. Watch all different kinds of animal mating and breeding videos here. The Animal Hospital! Ветеринарная лечебница Упражнение 1, с. They are fast, really intelligent, and always alert! It is fun to watch them and The mothers take complete care of them for a couple of months. The fall is a natural dispersal time for most wild animals. View %{phrase} videos. A caterpillar isn't exactly an insect, but it will be one when it's an adult. Here are 6 animals that are more intense about romance than any of us could ever be:. Homeless animals. Ducks and geese can feel pain and emotions just like our dogs and cats, and just like humans. How long do you think litter lasts? We mustn't make fires in the forests. The animal which mates the longest is the Anglerfish! Now the fact that the Anglerfish gets to mate at all might surprise us, since there are few more hideous creatures on the planet. Animals are born by live birth or by hatching from a fertilized egg. best images about animals mating wolves. This image has a resolution 1255x942, and has a size of 0 Bytes. If several males approach, a bloody battle is likely to ensue. All days are short to Industry and long to Idleness. Natural mating is a stressful process that has a much higher tendency to result in injuries or accidents of both the animals and producer. Gordon Neufeld, provides insight into the environmental factors necessary for healthy child development, how these conditions are increasingly under threat in today’s society, and how parents and teachers can. Thousands of new, high-quality pictures added every day. Unfortunately, many cats and dogs suffer abandonment, cruelty and neglect nowadays. Breeding season begins in late June and extends through September. ADW doesn't cover all species in the world, nor does it include all the latest scientific information about organisms we describe. If an animal must mate to reproduce, the entire future of its species depends on having sex. The most privileged are allowed into the halls and stairs, others live in the basement and in the yard. Some of these calls, like the ones that follow, are so loud they can travel through water or bounce off trees for miles to get to their recipient. People like these animals because they give them a lot of milk. During mating, the male and female become almost inseparable, mating repeatedly in the ensuing days. 52%) of the 19 animals presented scratches on the trunk and one of them maintained an intact vaginal membrane throughout its stay with the male. By between 12 to 16 weeks, depending on water and food supply, the frog has completed the full growth cycle. The coat is red-brown, the ears are prominent and the tail is long. Identify the type of cell division that produces eggs and sperm in animals such as sharks. Animal communication. [?] sea, travelled extensively and eventually made 23). Long droughts also have an effect on the Koala population DISEASE. The male tortoise appears to enjoy himself, judging by his moans. Even when raised in a home from a young age, these animals tend to maintain their wild instincts, making them. Animals die prematurely in zoos. This usually coincides with the time the kittens are weaned. The second element follows the actual manuscript, called "Nocturnal Animals," which revolves around a man whose family vacation turns violent and deadly. An animal that has hooves. 2% of the Earth's crust and 15. Snails are able to reproduce when they are 1-year-old (they live to be about 5-7 years old but some as long as 25 years!) at which time they must find a snail partner to mate with. The long stout tail is used to distribute body weight – works like a snowshoe – so lizards can skim across the tops of thin tufts of grass. So she's worked on many different kinds of animals. Will he find a mate and will they build a nest…I see him during the day some times. Established in 1981, this well-respected Society continues to promote public. Ying Ying had been playing in the water more. Also the male domestic fowl and junglefowl have long shiny feathers above his tail and also long neck feathers that may be a different colour to his wings and body. Wild animals like tigers and elephants, generally known for their toughness, have evolved with features like thick fur, strong teeth, and bones for their survival. The animal kingdom, as we have seen, includes many thousands of different animals. 1% of the total elements in the Earth. B) vary their routine. The longest river in Scotland is the Tay with a total length of 193 km (120 miles) from its point of Which Insect Has The Longest Life. Dogs Mating Animals Mate Compilation. Nope, the longest-living animal in the world is a sponge. After sensing that no other monkeys saw him tumble, he marched off, back high, head and tail up, as if nothing had happened. " After it is done grieving, the swan will either remain where it is alone, find a new stretch of water to live on (and possibly find a new mate), or re-join a flock. Animals Mating Up Close And Hard for a Long Time - Horse Mating Close Up Part 13 This is a educational animal channel. Males and females are roughly the same size, making grooming and relaxing together a comfortable fit. best images about animals mating wolves. Will he find a mate and will they build a nest…I see him during the day some times. Animal Trivia Games. After mating, each snail will lay eggs either in the dirt (land snails) or behind a rock (marine snails). Strays are animals without owners or homes. From its beginning up through the 1970s or so, the Zoological Society committed to paying for and acquiring animals for the Zoo. Horse mating up close for a long time animals mating. Because every virus has evolved to target a particular species, it's rare for a virus to be able to jump to another species. Where does Rosa's aunt live? 2. SEE ALSO People Mate with Dogs. How long has Sarah worked as a weather forecaster? 22. Eager males smell and hear the female, and seek her out in hopes of mating. Despite all doubt, yes it is possible some animals do mate for life! the promise of soulmates and being "all in" for the long haul. New research on what people find 'desirable' and 'essential' in a long-term partner is based on two of the largest national studies of mate preferences ever conducted. Extra Fun-facts. They reproduce usually twice a year. Find and read more books you'll love, and keep track of the books you want to read. A caterpillar isn't exactly an insect, but it will be one when it's an adult. Puberty hits hard for the males of these tiny. It's eerily accurate, and best of all… it's free!. Which of these birds has the longest wings? a. After mating comes the diestrus stage, which is where the litter will mature in the womb. Mules try their best to imitate the donkey's bray, but most have a unique sound that is a combination of the horse's whinny and the grunting of the wind-down of a bray. Play educational animal games in a safe & fun online playground. You cannot pick one animal that mates the longest, since there are several that mate for life. However, there are various types of clownfish that range in colours from blue to yellow. Funny animals videos Funny Animal Mating to Humans funny baby videos funny videos epic funny fails. A cat who meows a lot should be checked thoroughly by a veterinarian to ensure a medical condition is not the cause of the cat’s distress. live alone most of the year but find their same partner every mating season. Animal rescues: Feeling compassion for those in need. Some are so small that you cannot see them with the human eye. They range anywhere from 15-50 pounds; with a lifespan of nearly 15 years very similar to that of the house dog. Once the buck has found his doe, they will play chase games for several days before they will mate (Desert USA). Unspayed female cats that do not mate have a high risk of developing pyometra, a dangerous infection of the uterus. Farm animals include: rabbits, sheep, cows, pigs, horses, chicken, goats. Find and read more books you'll love, and keep track of the books you want to read. The illustrator and character designer from Scroll down to check out the animal flirting examples and tell us in the comments which one of these approaches you're going to use next time. Apr 25, 2015 · Animals Mating Hard And Fast With Humans - Animals Mating animals mating hard and long up close animals Animals Mating. If an animal must mate to reproduce, the entire future of its species depends on having sex. Among the five species, white rhinos have the longest gestation period – can last for more than 16 months or more. Everything from small to big animals mating. Animals (Mammals) The Saharan Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus hecki) is an endangered species. Cubs typically nurse for six months but start eating meat at three months. Females are receptive to mates for a few days several times a year, unless they are pregnant or nursing, and mating spurs ovulation. "The trade might lay low for a The line between which animals are used for meat and which are used for medicine is also. The giant walking stick, Megaphasma denticrus, which ranges from New Mexico eastward, is perhaps the longest in the United States, measuring six or seven inches in length. If the female accepts the nose rubbing and, after the initial nose rubbing test, the female is still keen on the male, the male will then stand on its hind legs and the female allows him to urinate all over her body (kinky). The pack will now have to migrate with their prey, for the predator must stay close to the prey species. When sea hares mate, they form a mating chain of several animals! The sea hare in front acts as the female to the one directly behind it. Long before their domestication, horses were hunted by primitive tribes for their meat which is still consumed by people in some parts of Europe and in Iceland. She said she doubted the ban would be effective in the long run. Oldfield mice are one of the few rodents known to mate for life, as a paper written by Auburn University zoology professor Michael C. There is a company that makes custom stuffed animals that look just like your pet. Triggering Ovulation to End a Heat Cycle. Learn animals vocabulary in English online with Games Pictures Sounds Quizzes Flashcards Tests Puzzles and other funny activities. Walrus - a large sea animal with two long tusks coming down from the sides of its mouth. At high densities such monopolies become difficult to maintain and the mating system becomes more polygynandrous-- multiple males mate with multiple females, through group mating and rushing. The songs all have a definite sequence of parts. This type of animal spends from one up to three weeks just to mate; and die after that obviously. When the mating bar is full, the female dinosaur will drop a fertilized egg (which can be recognized by the alpha-like mist / glow coming from it). A caterpillar isn't exactly an insect, but it will be one when it's an adult. Pigeons mate through a courtship ritual that can take place at any time of the year. One of your house mates has cheated in a Hogwarts exam by using a Self-Spelling Quill. There are over 1,000 bats species on Earth, with a wide variety of mating and reproduction habits. These are known as beasts of burden. As part of the Zoological Society of Milwaukee’s (ZSM’s) centennial celebration, we took a look through some previous ZSM publications to g. The Laysan albatross is a downy seabird with a seven-foot wingspan and a notched, pale yellow beak. A harvest mouse that grows to be 15 mm long may have an 8 mm penis, more than half its body length. Which of the following marine species has existed the longest? Nautilus. funny monkey and gorilla mating like humans at the. This is the currently selected item. Dogs mating with cats and get stuck – Animal matings with other animal new Dogs and cats have a range of interactions. My neighbor's dog is very fluffy. Also the male domestic fowl and junglefowl have long shiny feathers above his tail and also long neck feathers that may be a different colour to his wings and body. Pets: dogs, cats, horses, ducks, canaries, chickens and other friends E. Despite their size, cryptic coloration allows them to be easily concealed. After mating, each snail will lay eggs either in the dirt (land snails) or behind a rock (marine snails). Their songs, colors and habits enrich our lives like no other animal group, and they offer tremendous recreational, economic, psychological, and scientific benefit. Long-tailed weasels have a long slender body and head. , animals no longer made the front pages. This type of animal spends from one up to three weeks just to mate; and die after that obviously. That / the dog / always barks at night. Silicon, which makes computer chips, makes up 60. Because every virus has evolved to target a particular species, it's rare for a virus to be able to jump to another species. Some of the animals that live in the Amazon Rainforest include jaguars, sloths, river dolphins, macaws, anacondas, glass frogs, and poison dart frogs. Despite their size, cryptic coloration allows them to be easily concealed. That lets him navigate it into a female's vagina, or masturbate by repeatedly. Blue crabs mate in the Chesapeake Bay from May through October. One of your house mates has cheated in a Hogwarts exam by using a Self-Spelling Quill. First-order partnerships will single out a female, rush at her, and then herd her away to have sex, which is coercive (this. Today I found out how porcupines have sex…. 5 to 16 cm (3. They have a large head and eyes, short forelimbs and long hind limbs, and a body that ranges in length from 10 to 16 cm (4 to 6. She also leaves scent marking for males to follow. Arctic wolves inhabit some of the most inhospitable terrain in the world. Seal Foreplay. ), birds, amphibians, fish and insects. Watch Zebra Mating and Giving Birth lean its Wild Animal Mating. Some frogs that live in higher altitudes or in colder places might take a whole winter to go through the tadpole stageothers may have unique development stages that vary from your "traditional" tadpole-in-the-water type life cycle: some of these are described later in this tour. Learn animals vocabulary in English online with Games Pictures Sounds Quizzes Flashcards Tests Puzzles and other funny activities. In that time, they travel long distances to find female mates. 20 Tortoises, snakes and crocodiles are… reptiles. Blue crabs mate in the Chesapeake Bay from May through October. Those antelope-like animals had evolved into a species that looked very similar to present-day giraffes. They have a two-month long. The mating rituals of some animals are wonderfully bizarre. The humble harvest mouse is not generally regarded as a terribly well-endowed animal, which is unfortunate, because they have the largest proportional penis length of any rodent. Every relationship is totally different, as we all know. African elephants in the wild live more than three Even Asian elephants working in timber camps live longer than those born in zoos[5]. However, there are things you should understand about the process in order to keep your pets safe and healthy. Find professional Animals Mating videos and stock footage available for license in film, television, advertising and corporate uses. The longest river in Scotland is the Tay with a total length of 193 km (120 miles) from its point of Which Insect Has The Longest Life. 7/16 " what makes the king of hearts look different from the Answer: "Rabbit" (2nd). Females lay two to three clutches of eggs annually, with clutch sizes ranging from 4 to 23 eggs. Insects are the largest group of animals on earth by far: about 926,400 different species have been described. Animal penises sex novels are the future. A wild turkey can have a wingspan up to 5 feet wide. They mate during spring or early summer. 6 mph), making it both the. The best a human can do to live with a wild animal is to adapt their home and lifestyle to that of the animal, which implies owning a ranch or a lot of acreage and having the resources to devote all your time to raising wild animals. Tibetan antelope special mating. The fall is a natural dispersal time for most wild animals. Long droughts also have an effect on the Koala population DISEASE. Fast forward another 10 million years from that point. When cannibalism doesn't occur, the mating ritual is actually a bit romantic, including a long mating dance and soft antennae stroking. New research on what people find 'desirable' and 'essential' in a long-term partner is based on two of the largest national studies of mate preferences ever conducted. Bald Eagle. Animals Mating Up Close And Hard for a Long Time - Horse Mating Close Up Part 13 This is a educational animal channel. A male Asian elephant has a long, hefty penis that he can move around with a set of enlarged muscles at its base. Animals that look like this are not as valuable as those with the same proportions as a full-sized horse. Helena way back in 1882. The studies examined how. This animal is quite big and lives on the farm. A puppy is a long term joy and a long term commitment on your part. While it's difficult to ask them if they enjoy doing the deed, a quick look at their behavior shows that, at the very least, most. Most animals people come into contact with on a daily In order to find the 50 longest living animals in the world, 24/7 Wall St. Humans of course are one species that copulates for pleasure. Some have no head, no mouth, no legs. But man-made problems are threatening these species and their journeys. These weasels have long, bushy tails that make up about 50% of their total body length. Love is alive and thriving in the animal kingdom, and some of our most beloved animals are devoted to just one partner. This image has a resolution 1255x942, and has a size of 0 Bytes. goat mating with human goat mating with female animals. Describe what normally happens during fertilization in animals such as sharks. 5 feet or more in length, the timber rattlesnake is the largest venomous snake in New York. What do baby animals represent on Easter? A. This tired old "Endurance Running" theory. Which animals do they resemble? What animal do you think makes the best pet?. learn at least 3 new words from animal related vocabulary. This tired old “Endurance Running” theory. The most privileged are allowed into the halls and stairs, others live in the basement and in the yard. I hope he deos find a mate and nest and has a family in my yard…How long before I know if he will mate or is he just finding it nice to sleep in my cactus. Butterflies don't usually fly at night. Question: "What made some animals clean and others unclean (Genesis 7)?" Answer: Noah took two of every kind of animal into the ark, right? Not exactly. Sex In The Wild: Animals Mating - Buffalo Style! Buffalo breed all year round, but more so in the summer months. After mating comes the diestrus stage, which is where the litter will mature in the womb. While it's difficult to ask them if they enjoy doing the deed, a quick look at their behavior shows that, at the very least, most. In that time, they travel long distances to find female mates. Wild animals like tigers and elephants, generally known for their toughness, have evolved with features like thick fur, strong teeth, and bones for their survival. In The Year of the Greylag Goose (in my opinion, the best book about geese and animal behavior ever written), Dr. Coyotes have sharp pointed ears which never drop, a sharp pointed nose, and long bushy tails. Domestic turkeys are much heavier and larger than wild turkeys. Being brightly colored, or having extremely long tails (ahem, peacocks) is not a good way to blend in and hide from predators. Gestation lasts about 90 days and females bear 2-6 kittens. Sexual selection acts on an organism's ability to obtain (often by any means necessary!) or successfully copulate with a mate. A wild turkey can have a wingspan up to 5 feet wide. Some animal lovers may be disheartened by the fact that the style guides mentioned above show a strong preference to reserve who for humans. I hope he deos find a mate and nest and has a family in my yard…How long before I know if he will mate or is he just finding it nice to sleep in my cactus. Silicon, which makes computer chips, makes up 60. Mating pairs seldom stay together for more than a few days. Gibbons are our closest animal relatives that mate with their partners for life. The following are some of the animals that mate for life, the coyote, gibbons, black vultures, and swans. Animals are born by live birth or by hatching from a fertilized egg. Examples: Tourism is damaging the fragile ecosystem of the reef. But man-made problems are threatening these species and their journeys. energy: the power from something such as electricity or oil, which can do work, such as providing light and heat. They don't deserve to be prisoned as. In The Year of the Greylag Goose (in my opinion, the best book about geese and animal behavior ever written), Dr. Read the weird and wonderful news reports about zoo animals, pets, wildlife, farm animals, and rare. An animal like a large rabbit that can run very fast and has long ears. Given that many shark species need to keep swimming to breathe, you wouldn’t think them lazy, but the nurse shark is a different matter. Farm animals include: rabbits, sheep, cows, pigs, horses, chicken, goats. Sign PETA’s pledge to be cruelty-free , request alternatives to dissection , and support only charities and companies that do not torture animals in. Animals (Mammals) The Saharan Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus hecki) is an endangered species. live alone most of the year but find their same partner every mating season. According to The Swan Sanctuary, these animals generally mate for life, and "if a mate is lost, then the surviving mate will go through a grieving process like humans do. However, animals weren’t always brought to our Zoo under such carefully orchestrated means. Domestic turkeys are much heavier and larger than wild turkeys. Amphibians are cold blooded animals that morph from water breathing animals into air breathing animals, although some continue to breath water into adulthood. Everything from small to big animals mating. List of common idioms based on animals, with meanings, shown in context with example sentences, plus quiz. It may have come from similar phrases used in English writings from a long time ago. Question: Which Animals Mate The Longest? Contents. But the biggest penis of all belongs to the largest animal that has ever lived, the blue whale. Monkeys, Elephants, Apes, Deers, Cats, Dogs, Wildlife, Zoo Animals, and More!!. This tired old “Endurance Running” theory. Feral animals are another threat koalas have had to face since European settlement. 13 Safe and Compatible Betta Fish Tank Mates The Siamese fighting fish, or betta, is a beautiful, solitary creature that gets quite nippy with other fish. Although they were still used in tests dealing with long-range health effects in space, tissue development, and mating in a zero-g environment, etc. Indeed, there are far more siberian tigers in zoos than now exist in the wild! (There is a long ways to go with lions, though, in terms of building population reserves of known bloodlines. Blue whale penis. This is known as the "train" system. So how do dogs mate?. The mating signs disappeared within 3 hours of the female’s separation from the male. Both sexes cooperate to build the nest: the male collects most of the material and the female does most of the building. This makes sense in evolutionary terms -- the largest tail would indicate a healthy. From these facts, it's clear why certain elements are valuable. Lorenz mentioned that in his many years of observing geese, he only witnessed three instances. Wild animals are also spotted more frequently. The adult camel weighs 450-750 kgs. You can help stop this. No animals are safe from experimentation—primates, dogs, rats, mice, rabbits, pigs, fish, and cats are just a few of the animals who are routinely used in these tests. It is amazing how different people around the world hear the sounds of the same animals. The Animal in You fuses ancient traditions with modern psychological and biological concepts and its nine question personality quiz has almost fifty possible animal results. Manakin, (subfamily Piprinae), common name given to about 60 species of small, stubby, generally short-tailed birds abundant in American tropical forests. 1600 Ken Thompson Parkway Sarasota, FL 34236 Ph: (941) 388-4441 Open Every Day: 9:30am - 5pm Visitor Information. Wild animals are also spotted more frequently. Getty Images offers exclusive rights-ready and premium royalty-free analog, HD, and 4K video of the highest quality. This can be a sensitive subject, but it can lead to positive changes in the long run. Diet: What Do Rothschild’s Giraffes Eat. The criteria for her to desire sexually a man can include strength or health or fighting ability, like the lion or the wolf. Grizzly bear cubs are born in the late winter and spring like most bears of the world. Hughley Radio Show’s “Think Like a Human, Act Like an Animal. Insects, are a class in the phylum Arthropoda. Peahens choose among the most attractive peacocks, female elephant seals pick males who have already attracted large harems, and even promiscuous chimpanzees exercise choice about the other chimps with which they will be promiscuous. That / the dog / always barks at night. Over time, sometimes only one or two generations, those characteristics will become homozygous (genetically uniform) and all offspring of the inbred animal will inherit the genes for those. 6 mph), making it both the. So how do dogs mate?. To produce cats which closely meet the breed standard, breeders commonly mate together animals which are related and which share desirable characteristics. An animal's gestation period specifies how long a female's pregnancy will last. It weighs about 31 lb. You cannot pick one animal that mates the longest, since there are several that mate for life. Browse 8,582 animals mating stock videos and clips available to use in your projects, or search for female animal or two animals to find more stock footage and b-roll video clips. Module 11: Match two words to make a common collocation. Animals that look like this are not as valuable as those with the same proportions as a full-sized horse. Caring and working for the health of animals. Some bonds, such as between ruby-throated hummingbirds, last only long enough for copulation, then the male bird leaves and has no further role in building a nest, incubating eggs, or raising hatchlings. Mating season is December through February. Elephants were being hunted for their ivory. By continuing to use this site you consent to the use of cookies on your device as described in our cookie policy unless you have disabled them. Insect, any member of the class Insecta (Hexapoda), the largest class of phylum Arthropoda, about 1 million species or three-fourths of all animals. Group of carnivores adapted to marine life. We use cookies to give you the best possible experience on our website. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that at some early stage of animal evolution mating was more. Mules try their best to imitate the donkey's bray, but most have a unique sound that is a combination of the horse's whinny and the grunting of the wind-down of a bray. In the animal kingdom, there are many, many penises. "The trade might lay low for a The line between which animals are used for meat and which are used for medicine is also. No two lives are the same and, looking around the animal kingdom, we see massive variation in lifespans. Mating and Reproduction. The mating bar will fill as long as the two dinosaurs are in close proximity of each other (hence the pen) and the only thing you have to do at this point is wait for it to fill (sounds easy right?). Something has damaged inside it. We have a variety of ornamental fish we feed in the aquarium. Most people assume that giraffes’ long necks evolved to help them feed. Animal breeding is the selective mating of animals to increase the possibility of obtaining desired traits in the offspring. Animal Trivia Games. Learn animals vocabulary in English online with Games Pictures Sounds Quizzes Flashcards Tests Puzzles and other funny activities. Despite their size, cryptic coloration allows them to be easily concealed. Many zoos try to keep their animals on tracts of land that resemble their natural habitat. Males and females are roughly the same size, making grooming and relaxing together a comfortable fit. These eggs are small, pearl-like figures that fall out of the animal's coat as it walks around. The Amazon Rainforest is home to 427 mammal species, 1,300 bird species, 378 species of reptiles, and more than 400 species of amphibians. ) A very funny animal which runs very Early at dawn he's the first to awake, And a terrible sound he's ready to make. Although much of the research on this topic has focused on the consequences of mate choice and mate change on annual reproductive success, studies of a potential positive link between mate fidelity and adult demographic rates have been comparatively rare. Many zoos are struggling financially and can no longer care for their animals properly. " I first used "who" then I thought than maybe it was inapproriate for animals so I switched to "which" but not. Konrad Lorenz, Father of the Greylag geese, devoted his lifetime to the study of geese. What does Rosa think of Montreal? 4. The Zoo’s commitment to conservation, research, and education also extends to the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, located in nearby Front Royal. The best a human can do to live with a wild animal is to adapt their home and lifestyle to that of the animal, which implies owning a ranch or a lot of acreage and having the resources to devote all your time to raising wild animals. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. The best a human can do to live with a wild animal is to adapt their home and lifestyle to that of the animal, which implies owning a ranch or a lot of acreage and having the resources to devote all your time to raising wild animals. Their natural habitats are destroyed by human activity. Because every virus has evolved to target a particular species, it's rare for a virus to be able to jump to another species. In fact, testicle size is considered an excellent predictor of a species' mating system. 7/16 " what makes the king of hearts look different from the Answer: "Rabbit" (2nd). The bonobo is distinguished by relatively long legs, pink lips, dark face and tail-tuft through adulthood, and parted long hair on its head. 1600 Ken Thompson Parkway Sarasota, FL 34236 Ph: (941) 388-4441 Open Every Day: 9:30am - 5pm Visitor Information. These slow creatures are solitary animals, only convening during mating season. That fee will be reduced by $50 for dogs and $40 for cats if the dog or cat was already sterilized before arriving at our animal care center. Voles may be either monogamous or polygamous, which leads to differing patterns of mate choice and parental care. Furthermore, the animals which are used are not usually wild but are bred especially for. They reproduce usually twice a year. Silicon, which makes computer chips, makes up 60. In the non-mating season, the giant pandas would walk away as soon as they smell scents of newcomers. Farm animals include: rabbits, sheep, cows, pigs, horses, chicken, goats. Bandicoots are solitary animals except when mating. Artist Ben Hed already did. In this disease an animal can not survive for more than a weak. The best solution is to rid your lawn of the grubs, rather than the skunks, because the grubs will continue to be an attractive food source to many wild animals. They are in fact North America's only marsupial (like kangaroos, they raise their young in a pouch). As long as you can fit their essentials, such as litter boxes (you need one Because dogs have a tendency to destroy their toys, they have to be made from much tougher (and While cats certainly do make some noise—especially at night, when many cats are most. What does Rosa think of Montreal? 4. Animals that mate for life: seahorse. Mating habits in the animal kingdom are as various and interesting as the different types and species of animals on the planet. Who said "As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom?" Answer: "The equator" (1st). This is what you receive from Euro Puppy, guaranteed. Presently, we do not know the precise casue of uterine infections; however, the causative agent(s) likely enter the uterus during estrus, either passively or they are introduced by the boar during mating. live alone most of the year but find their same partner every mating season. However, animals weren’t always brought to our Zoo under such carefully orchestrated means. Long-tailed grass lizards are active, quick runners that live where grasses can grow quite high. Clownfish can grow to be from 2 to 5 inches long. ✹ Squirrels mate after they are one year old. level courses in animal breeding. It is a cross between the domestic dog and the coyote. He stood up and quickly looked around. In the desert, the Saharan Cheetah normally eats animals like the camel and goats. Animals utter a wide variety of cries, squawks, barks, and growls? Is there something behind the noises, or are they just meaningless sounds? A little digging on how animals communicate will tell you that uttering sounds, which is the dominant means of communication for humans, is only one of. A dark red horse with a long mane and a foal lying on the grass Wild in the desert little rann of kutch. Animals that mate for life Love is in the air and these animals symbolize and inspire true everlasting love, soulmates and being "all in" for the long haul. During mating, the male and female become almost inseparable, mating repeatedly in the ensuing days. The mosquito life cycle takes place in four distinct stages, from egg through to adulthood. You may find that where you teach the animals make different noises to English ones! This is generally true of farm and domestic. Hence, the conditions of the zoos should be upgraded to such an extent that. When sea hares mate, they form a mating chain of several animals! The sea hare in front acts as the female to the one directly behind it. The aardvark looks like an amazing combination of several animals. Do animals moan when they mate? Have you actually ever wondered what animals perceive during sex: pleasure, or pain, or just instinctual reaction. How long will you live? " The astrologer was afraid of the King but answered with great presence of mind; "I know my fate. Mating system. Now poultry makes up a third of all the meat eaten worldwide. If convicted, those committing these crimes can receive up to six years in prison, fines of up to $25,000 or more and a life-long criminal record noting their deviant history. learn at least 3 new words from animal related vocabulary. The only light in all this vast darkness is made by animals them-selves. 6 mph), making it both the. Echidnas are very timid animals. Domestic turkeys are much heavier and larger than wild turkeys. Donations are tax deductible to the extent permitted by the law. Click to see which animal resembles most your face! | You bored? Let's Vonvon!. They / the children / live next door to me 5. Group of carnivores adapted to marine life. They travel as far as 10 square kilometers, which is a long range away from home. Bees make honey and they can sting. This usually coincides with the time the kittens are weaned. Given that many shark species need to keep swimming to breathe, you wouldn’t think them lazy, but the nurse shark is a different matter. Females are receptive to mates for a few days several times a year, unless they are pregnant or nursing, and mating spurs ovulation. However, animals weren’t always brought to our Zoo under such carefully orchestrated means. My neighbor's dog is very fluffy. Yellowstone bison are exceptional because they comprise the nation’s largest bison population on public land and are among the few bison herds that have not been hybridized through interbreeding with cattle. Males are receptive to mating at anytime and do not have a mating cycle per se. The animal which mates the longest is the Anglerfish! Now the fact that the Anglerfish gets to mate at all might surprise us, since there are few more hideous creatures on the planet. At high densities such monopolies become difficult to maintain and the mating system becomes more polygynandrous-- multiple males mate with multiple females, through group mating and rushing. For example, a female dog might refuse a male dog because he is her housemate.
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Home Europe and Central Asia Western Europe Switzerland
European court's ruling in Stoll case will be crucial for press freedom, says RSF
Martin Stoll, Sandro Brotz, Beat Jost, Cristoph Grenacher
(RSF/IFEX) - The following is a 14 February 2007 RSF press release:
EUROPEAN COURT'S RULING IN STOLL CASE WILL BE CRUCIAL FOR PRESS FREEDOM IN SWITZERLAND
The verdict which the European Court of Human Rights issues in the case of Martin Stoll v. the Swiss government could result in a reform of the criminal code and significant changes in the way journalists work in Switzerland.
The verdict which the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issues in the case of "SonntagsZeitung" journalist Martin Stoll v. the Swiss federal government could lead to a reform of the Swiss criminal code and could have a major impact on the practice of journalism in Switzerland, said Reporters Without Borders.
The 17-member Grand Chamber began considering the case on 7 February 2007 as a result of a request made by the Swiss government after a seven-member ECHR panel of judges ruled by four votes to three on 25 April 2006 that the Swiss authorities violated Stoll's right to freedom of expression under article 10 of the European Human Rights Convention.
The case concerns two stories by Stoll in January 1997 that contained leaks from a "confidential" report by the then Swiss ambassador in Washington, Carlo Jagmetti, on negotiations with the World Jewish Congress about unclaimed Jewish assets in Swiss banks. Stoll was fined 800 Swiss francs (approx. US$648) in 1999 under article 293 of the criminal code for publishing "official confidential deliberations." He appealed to the ECHR in 2001.
"This decision will be crucial," Reporters Without Borders said. "If the ECHR upholds its ruling, Switzerland will probably have to amend its criminal code, especially article 293, to allow more press freedom. Whether article 293 is modified or repealed altogether, it is above all essential that it should no longer affect journalists. Such a reform would also have a direct impact on ongoing cases such as that of 'SonntagsBlick'."
A Swiss military court announced on 6 February that it had indicted three journalists working for the weekly "SonntagsBlick" for publishing a leaked document last year "dealing with supposed places of detention and interrogation methods used by the US foreign intelligence service (CIA)."
The three journalists - Christoph Grenacher, Sandro Brotz and Beat Jost - face up to five years in prison for "violating defence secrecy." According to the indictment, publication of the leaked document caused considerable damage to Switzerland's strategic intelligence service.
The ECHR's reexamination of the Stoll case has reopened the debate about the constraints on the practice of journalism as well as the responsibilities that journalists should accept. The definitive ruling which the Grand Chamber eventually hands down could lead to significant changes in the way investigative journalists work in Switzerland.
Three journalists face trial by military court for publishing secret service document 12 April 2007 European court's ruling in Stoll case will be crucial for press freedom, says RSF 15 February 2007
More from Switzerland
Freedom of the Press 2016: Switzerland
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Freedom in the World 2014: Switzerland
Media consolidation forces closure of small regional newspapers
World Press Freedom Index 2014: Switzerland
Ranked 15th in annual press freedom index
Reporters Without Borders 1 February 2014
Ranked 6th in annual global media freedom report
"Consolidation of newspaper ownership in large media conglomerates has forced the closure of some small and local newspapers"
Freedom House 16 January 2013
Press Freedom Index 2011-2012: Switzerland
Ranked 8th in annual press freedom index
Reporters Without Borders 26 January 2012
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Bermuda Ex Police Association
Cocktail Reception Jan 2012
Who When Where
Expo Lists
Former PC's Royal Daughter meets Royalty
Ex-Bermuda Policeman’s “Royal” daughter meets Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip
Anyone who worked out of St. George’s Police Station in the early 1970’s will no doubt remember P.C. John Headey who was stationed in Eastern Division from 1971 and 1977. John hails from Yorkshire and while in Bermuda he met and married his wife Susan (nee Brown) who was then working at the Bank of Bermuda. (CLICK HERE for article on John in our Latest News 2012 column - scroll down to the entry dated 31st March)
Their daughter, Lena was born here and surely no-one could ever have imagined then that after the family left Bermuda and returned to the UK young Lena would go on to become an internationally famed and beautiful actress who currently stars as Queen Cersei Lannister in the very popular HBO series, Game of Thrones.
When we last heard from John a couple of weeks ago Lena was visiting her parents in Yorkshire, along with her son Wylie, after spending the previous two days in Belfast. Although she was in Belfast for final preparations for the filming of the 6th - and possibly final - series of Game of Thrones, Queen Cersei was thrilled when The Queen and Prince Philip visited the main set in Belfast. The Royal visit was covered by the Daily Mail (CLICK HERE for the article) and the article includes several shots of Lena and other cast members with the Royal visitors. Lena admitted to being nervous but said that Her Majesty was simply charming, commenting that the (Iron) Throne 'looked very uncomfortable'.
John informs us that filming starts at the end of July and his family is planning a holiday before then, although he is not at liberty to divulge the destination because Lena now tends to get recognised wherever she goes, so a little diplomacy is necessary to avoid fans and the press. John actually wondered whether it was him who was attracting the crowds - but we think not!
John adds, “Susan and I remain in reasonable health, although a few weeks with our 4 year old grandson may have some effect on that!
Our regards to all old colleagues and friends, and our best wishes particularly, to Peter Stubbs.
A footnote to regular contributor Terry Cabral.....do you remember our win on the Football Pools?. I still have the Rolex I bought with the proceeds.
Editors note - Bernews also published an excellent article (CLICK HERE to view it) about Lena and her connection with Bermuda on 29th March 2012.
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The Grammy Winners From 1985 - 2020
1985 Black Uhuru was the first winner of a Reggae Grammy: Album titled "Anthem"
1986 The second Artist to win a Grammy is the Legendary the Rt Hon. Dr. Jimmy Cliff Album Titled "Cliff Hanger"
1987 Steel Pulse took home the 3rd Grammy for their album Titled "Bobylon the bandit"
1988 Peter Tosh won with his Album Titled No Nuclear War makes him the first to do so solo as a Ex member of the group Bob Marley led Wailers Band
1989 Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers at a tender age of (20) makes him Ziggy Marley the youngest to win Album titled "Conscious...
2021 Grammy's Best Reggae Album Nominees
The Grammys have announced the nominees for Best Reggae Album. The highly anticipated list of Grammy nominees for Best Reggae Album has finally been released, and while dancehall takes another snub this year, a newcomer Marley got a Grammy nod. This year there are five nominations that somehow are less surprising after you see them.
BEST REGGAE ALBUM – Grammy Nominees
Higher Place – Skip Marley
Higher Place was released in August by the Marley-owned Tuff Gong...
North Carolina Courage Sign Jamaican Midfielder
The North Carolina Courage announced today the signing of Havan Solaun to a short-term contract through the 2020 season. Solaun will be available to play in the Courage’s next match on Sunday, October 4 against the Houston Dash at 7 p.m. ET.
Solaun was drafted 15th overall in the 2015 NWSL Draft by the Seattle Reign. She suffered an injury her rookie season but played in four matches and scored one goal in 2016 before being traded to the Washington Spirit. The midfielder made 37 appearances with the Spirit during the 2017 and 2018 seasons.
In 2019...
Koffee named Mastercard brand ambassador
Reggae star Koffee is Mastercard’s official brand ambassador in Jamaica, the first such appointment in the region.
The exclusive partnership was announced on Wednesday September 23, 2020 and will see the artiste working with Mastercard to build awareness about digital payments and educate customers and merchants about the convenience, safety and wide acceptance of its electronic payment options.
Reggae Artiste Pad Anthony Is Dead
Reggae artiste Hartley Anthony Wallace also know as Pad Anthony died in Jamaica on Saturday August 29, 2020. He had been suffering from various health issues after he suffered from a heart attack several years ago. A close friend of Paddy revealed that an unfortunate turn of events led to his death as it’s suspected that after suffering a stroke he reportedly fell and hit his head.
Rygin King Shot, Girlfriend Killed
Matthew "Rygin King" Smith was shot and seriously injured during a gun attack in Struie district, Westmoreland, on Sunday while a woman, identified as his girlfriend, was also shot and killed. Another male individual was also shot and injured. The deceased female has been identified as 28-year-old Sashalee Blackwood.
The incident took place while the entertainer, his girlfriend, two children, and a group of other people were travelling through Westmoreland to a function that was being held in a neighboring parish.
On reaching a section of the Struie...
Jamaica now has 364 COVID- 19 cases
Minister of Health & Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton stated that 16 samples tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 24 hours. This has brought the total number of confirmed cases in the island to 364. The 16 new cases are comprised of seven males and nine females, who range in age from three years to 75 years.
Minister of Health & Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton has advised that 16 samples tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 24 hours.
This has brought the total number of confirmed cases in the island to 364. The 16 new cases are...
Koffee Wins 2020 Grammy For Best Reggae Album
Koffee made history on Sunday January 26, 2020 when she became the first woman and youngest artist ever to take home a victory in the best reggae category and the Grammy Awards.
Miley Cyrus settles $300 million lawsuit with Flourgon
Miley Cyrus has settled a $300 million copyright infringement lawsuit by Flourgon who accused the pop star of stealing her 2013 smash "We Can't Stop" from a similar song he recorded a quarter century earlier. Flourgon sued Cyrus in March 2018, claiming that "We Can't Stop" closely resembled his 1988 song "We Run Things," which he called a reggae favorite since reaching No. 1 in Jamaica.
Flourgon accused Cyrus and her label RCA Records, owned by Sony Corp, of misappropriating material including the phrase...
Sikka Rymes Shot Multiple Times in Jamaica
Javian "Sikka Rymse" Chambers a known protege and family member of jailed dance hall artiste Vybz kartel is now undergoing surgery after being shot multiple times. The deejay was trailed after performing at an event in Sandy Park in the early morning of Sunday, December 1st.
The shooting took place at 3:45 am at a stoplight in the vicinity of the Sovereign Shopping Center, the entertainer’s vehicle was shot up by unknown assailants. Sikka Rymes is now undergoing surgery at the Kingston Public Hospital.
Jamaica’s First Gold in Long Jump at World Championships
Jamaican Tajay Gayle made history when became the first-ever Jamaican to score a gold medal in the long jump event at the World Championships.
The 23-year-old set a new personal best with a jump of 8.69 metres. It is also a new national record, erasing the 8.62 metres which was held by James Beckford. Gayle, who entered the championship with a personal best of 8.24 metres, struggled during the qualifying round and made the final with the 12th best jump of 7.89 metres.
He now joins Beckford, who won a silver medal at the 2003 World Championships in...
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce wins 100 meters
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce became the world champion in the 100 meters for the fourth time since 2009 on Sunday. With a time of 10.71 seconds, she beat European champion Dina Asher-Smith in the women's final of the World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar. The British athlete crossed the finish line in 10.83 seconds.
Marie-Josee Ta Lou from the Ivory Coast took third place with 10.93 seconds.
Fraser-Pryce won the title in 2009, 2013 and 2015. The 32-year-old is also a two-time Olympic champion.
Riu Officially Reopens Jamaica All-Inclusive Hotel
Riu Hotels and Resorts has officially relaunched its Riu Ocho Rios all-inclusive resort, the company announced this week. The property, which first opened in 2005, has undergone a dramatic refurbishing project, one that included what Riu called a “complete overhaul of its facilities.”
Riu has added what has become a staple of many of its resorts in the Caribbean, a new Splash Water World aquatic park. The reimagined poolscape means Riu Ocho Rios now boasts five pools at the property, including two pools with swim-up...
Louie Rankin dies in car crash in Canada
Grammy-award winning artist Louie Rankin -- famous for his role as Ox in the movie "Belly" and teddy brukshut in the movie "Shotta" died in a car crash in Canada.
Louie died Monday in a fatal wreck in Ontario, Canada, the crash reportedly involved a transport truck and another vehicle.
Ghana Artist Stonebwoy wins Reggae Dancehall artist of the year
Dance hall artist Stonebwoy has been crowned the Reggae Dance hall artist of the year at the ongoing Vodafone Ghana music awards 2019.
Stonebwoy was in the competition with Samini, Shatta Wale, Epixode and Ak Songtress. Looking at how well Stonebwoy has performed
The Reggae Dancehall artist of the year is Stonebwoy’s first award so far at the awards night. His rival, Shatta Wale has already won two awards; Highlife song of the year and Reggae Dance hall song of the year.
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Monster Cross 2019
Lap 10
1 58 Chris Bailey Chris Bailey
#58 Male Solo Men 03:09:02 03:09:02
11 laps
Solo Men 1 Male 1 Velo Runner RT 11 00:16:10 00:16:38 00:16:43 00:17:02 00:17:20 00:17:38 00:17:23 00:17:41 00:17:35 00:17:35 00:17:12
2 64 Kieren Brown Kieren Brown
Solo Men 2 Male 2 8point8 Racing Team 11 00:16:09 00:16:34 00:16:46 00:16:00 00:16:32 00:16:57 00:17:21 00:17:02 00:27:04 00:15:55 00:17:22
3 6 Jc Van Der Veken Jc Van Der Veken
#6 Male Solo Men 03:22:21 03:22:21
Solo Men 3 Male 3 Woo Har Rammit 11 00:17:33 00:17:37 00:17:34 00:18:11 00:18:18 00:18:29 00:18:37 00:18:58 00:18:46 00:18:58 00:19:16
4 140 Ben Horrobin Ben Horrobin
#140 Male Solo Men 03:10:37 03:10:37
Solo Men 4 Male 4 Horwich CC 10 00:17:21 00:17:40 00:18:00 00:18:08 00:18:42 00:19:12 00:19:26 00:20:23 00:20:59 00:20:42
5 123 TEAM Element Cycling Team TEAM Element Cycling Team
#123 Male Pairs Men 03:11:09 03:11:09
Pairs Men 1 Male 5 10 00:16:08 00:19:18 00:18:23 00:19:36 00:18:57 00:19:35 00:19:50 00:19:26 00:19:45 00:20:05
6 12 Sam Marshall Sam Marshall
Solo Men 5 Male 6 Frodsham Wheelers/ Twelve50 Bikes 10 00:17:24 00:18:14 00:19:00 00:18:51 00:19:02 00:20:00 00:19:53 00:20:09 00:20:41 00:21:02
7 25 Ross Litherland Ross Litherland
Solo Men 6 Male 7 Rapha Cycling Club 10 00:19:24 00:18:33 00:19:08 00:19:22 00:19:43 00:19:33 00:19:17 00:19:15 00:19:58 00:20:20
8 136 Matt Pritchard Matt Pritchard
Solo Men 7 Male 8 10 00:19:00 00:19:34 00:19:29 00:19:26 00:19:31 00:19:36 00:19:25 00:19:35 00:20:12 00:19:51
9 127 TEAM New Palers TEAM New Palers
10 115 TEAM Weaver valley cc (2) TEAM Weaver valley cc (2)
Pairs Men 3 Male 10 10 00:20:32 00:19:30 00:19:31 00:19:53 00:19:49 00:19:37 00:20:04 00:20:12 00:20:15 00:20:29
11 53 Marco Ruggeri Marco Ruggeri
Solo Men 8 Male 11 Team Bikestyle /Privateer Syndicate 10 00:19:04 00:18:10 00:18:00 00:18:14 00:19:26 00:19:34 00:21:19 00:22:31 00:21:03 00:22:39
12 68 Nick Shaughnessy Nick Shaughnessy
Solo Men 9 Male 12 Bott CT 10 00:17:24 00:18:53 00:18:52 00:19:34 00:19:59 00:20:25 00:21:15 00:21:19 00:21:42 00:21:47
13 133 TEAM oneplanetadventure TEAM oneplanetadventure
#133 Mixed Pairs Mixed 03:21:26 03:21:26
Pairs Mixed 1 Mixed 1 10 00:19:39 00:19:08 00:20:03 00:20:40 00:19:25 00:19:46 00:20:59 00:21:18 00:20:27 00:19:56
14 80 Bradley Murphy Bradley Murphy
Solo Men 10 Male 13 SKCC 10 00:20:34 00:20:08 00:19:51 00:20:15 00:19:47 00:20:16 00:19:49 00:20:06 00:20:07 00:20:58
15 139 Craig Preece Craig Preece
Solo Men 11 Male 14 10 00:18:17 00:18:58 00:18:59 00:19:44 00:20:10 00:20:47 00:21:01 00:21:15 00:21:08 00:23:19
16 76 Mike Leaney Mike Leaney
Solo Men 12 Male 15 Bolsover & District Cycling Club 10 00:18:49 00:19:20 00:20:14 00:19:57 00:20:34 00:21:05 00:21:04 00:21:12 00:20:38 00:21:52
17 56 Michael Williams Michael Williams
Solo Men 13 Male 16 White Nancy Boys 10 00:17:42 00:18:58 00:19:46 00:19:59 00:20:12 00:21:44 00:22:10 00:21:04 00:21:56 00:21:25
18 1 Robin Powell Robin Powell
Solo Men 14 Male 17 Here come the Belgians 10 00:18:45 00:19:46 00:20:19 00:19:46 00:19:22 00:20:20 00:20:49 00:21:33 00:22:04 00:22:54
19 7 Michael Greaney Michael Greaney
Solo Men 15 Male 18 Stockport Clarion (1) 10 00:18:52 00:18:52 00:19:27 00:20:07 00:20:29 00:21:12 00:21:49 00:21:19 00:20:55 00:22:55
20 33 Jonathan Robinson Jonathan Robinson
Solo Men 16 Male 19 Army Cycling Union 10 00:17:17 00:18:33 00:18:49 00:19:34 00:20:49 00:20:06 00:19:58 00:20:54 00:23:19 00:27:31
21 107 TEAM Audlem Cycling Club (1) TEAM Audlem Cycling Club (1)
22 86 Dave Mckenndry Dave Mckenndry
23 38 Steven Freear Steven Freear
Solo Men 18 Male 22 Manchester Wheelers 10 00:19:47 00:19:55 00:20:48 00:20:21 00:20:39 00:21:07 00:21:41 00:21:30 00:21:30 00:23:22
24 65 Steve Bowman Steve Bowman
Solo Men 19 Male 23 KTM UK Factory MTB Team 10 00:18:47 00:19:46 00:19:53 00:19:47 00:20:22 00:21:08 00:22:11 00:22:45 00:23:31 00:23:55
25 55 Laurence Tendler Laurence Tendler
Solo Men 20 Male 24 White Nancy Boys (1) 9 00:17:22 00:18:46 00:19:17 00:20:23 00:20:14 00:20:45 00:22:04 00:24:11 00:24:21
26 105 Simon Hale Simon Hale
Solo Men 21 Male 25 Army Cyclocross Team 9 00:17:01 00:17:17 00:17:42 00:18:16 00:20:38 00:21:45 00:22:15 00:24:24 00:29:47
27 54 Neil Upton Neil Upton
Solo Men 22 Male 26 9 00:18:33 00:19:30 00:20:05 00:20:03 00:19:59 00:21:55 00:21:46 00:22:49 00:24:26
28 101 Stephen Stuart Stephen Stuart
Solo Men 23 Male 27 Picton Cycles 9 00:18:45 00:20:54 00:20:20 00:20:34 00:21:18 00:21:03 00:21:39 00:22:01 00:23:07
29 82 Antony De Heveningham Antony De Heveningham
30 28 Ian Harcourt Ian Harcourt
31 125 TEAM Norman/Vallance TEAM Norman/Vallance
Pairs Mixed 2 Mixed 2 9 00:19:00 00:18:49 00:23:36 00:19:56 00:20:06 00:23:57 00:20:11 00:24:37 00:20:35
32 57 Kevan Underhill Kevan Underhill
Solo Men 26 Male 30 Weaver Valley CC 9 00:20:52 00:20:23 00:20:43 00:21:16 00:20:54 00:20:44 00:21:06 00:22:26 00:22:49
33 117 TEAM Team Empella Cyclo-Cross.com TEAM Team Empella Cyclo-Cross.com
34 131 TEAM Senior/Crooked Helmet TEAM Senior/Crooked Helmet
Pairs Men 5 Male 31 9 00:19:43 00:21:47 00:19:59 00:23:57 00:20:17 00:23:29 00:20:44 00:22:33 00:21:18
35 39 David Whittaker David Whittaker
36 70 Dan Wood Dan Wood
Solo Men 28 Male 33 Harry Middleton CC (2) 9 00:20:11 00:20:00 00:20:37 00:19:59 00:21:14 00:21:44 00:23:38 00:23:57 00:23:44
37 59 Matthew Hornby Matthew Hornby
Solo Men 29 Male 34 Weaver Valley CC (1) 9 00:20:39 00:20:02 00:20:17 00:20:46 00:22:07 00:20:48 00:21:36 00:24:46 00:24:19
38 43 Andy Stewart Andy Stewart
39 61 Peter Davies Peter Davies
Solo Men 31 Male 36 Birkenhead North End Cycling Club 9 00:20:29 00:21:10 00:22:30 00:23:10 00:22:51 00:24:16 00:22:52 00:23:22 00:22:03
40 83 Charles Gray Charles Gray
Solo Men 32 Male 37 Manchester Wheelers (2) 9 00:19:48 00:20:51 00:20:59 00:22:04 00:22:33 00:23:23 00:23:40 00:25:07 00:24:29
41 9 Michael Lyon Michael Lyon
Solo Men 33 Male 38 H Middleton CC 9 00:21:14 00:24:07 00:21:08 00:22:06 00:22:17 00:23:55 00:22:50 00:23:51 00:23:26
42 96 Emma Knight Emma Knight
#96 Female Solo Women 03:26:15 03:26:15
Solo Women 1 Female 1 Twelve50 Bikes/Frodsham Wheelers 9 00:18:58 00:21:47 00:21:41 00:22:40 00:23:35 00:23:57 00:25:40 00:24:04 00:23:48
43 79 Rob Wilkins Rob Wilkins
Solo Men 34 Male 39 Moonglu CC (1) 9 00:22:57 00:22:34 00:22:16 00:22:50 00:22:51 00:23:48 00:23:54 00:24:27 00:24:21
44 13 Tony Hood Tony Hood
Solo Men 35 Male 40 Here come the Belgians (2) 9 00:20:19 00:21:50 00:22:57 00:23:18 00:23:54 00:24:33 00:25:29 00:24:34 00:26:04
45 122 Alexandra Farquhar Alexandra Farquhar
#122 Female Solo Women 03:33:39 03:33:39
Solo Women 2 Female 2 Army Cyclocross Team 9 00:18:56 00:19:40 00:19:41 00:20:31 00:20:32 00:21:26 00:25:14 00:29:27 00:38:07
46 4 Paul Edisbury Paul Edisbury
47 129 TEAM Team Broken Jaw TEAM Team Broken Jaw
48 63 David Brown David Brown
Solo Men 37 Male 43 8 00:18:48 00:19:26 00:20:11 00:20:09 00:21:34 00:22:16 00:23:33 00:24:11
49 67 Gavin Rogers Gavin Rogers
50 119 TEAM Mottershead/Jones TEAM Mottershead/Jones
Pairs Mixed 4 Mixed 4 8 00:23:53 00:23:14 00:23:25 00:23:12 00:24:01 00:24:44 00:23:44 00:25:15
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Quaker Heritage Press
Quaker Heritage Press aims to make available various historical Quaker writings that have been allowed to go out of print.
Print editions (books we have printed, ordering information, etc.)
Online editions (texts you can read at this website)
Catalog of historic Quaker texts in print or online, regardless of source
Who we are (a little about us)
Site repaired in June-July 2014:
Yes, we have all four volumes of James Nayler's Works and our expanded edition of Job Scott's Essays, both in print and online. This information disappeared during a web hosting disaster in March 2013 and we discovered the error only recently.
New in February 2010:
Job Scott's Essays on Salvation by Christ has been reprinted in an expanded edition, which is also available online.
New in May 2009:
The fourth and last volume of the Works of James Nayler (1618-1660) is now in print, and also available online.
New in June 2007:
The third volume of the Works of James Nayler (1618-1660) is now in print. The online edition is now also available (August 2007).
New in January 2004:
Our edition of Isaac Penington's Works accidentally omitted 24 of his letters from volume 4. We have now added these to the online edition. A 40-page supplement is available for owners of the print edition. Thanks to Rosemary Moore for discovering the error.
New in April 2003:
Rosemary Moore's very thorough bibliographies of Quaker and anti-Quaker publications from 1652-1666, used in her book The Light in Their Consciences. This is a different form than appears on the Woodbrooke College website: the tables here can be either read online or downloaded for import into a database program for more efficient searching. Some of the information has been updated by Rosemary Moore since the Woodbrooke version.
Two essays by QHP editor Licia Kuenning: "Publishing Old Quaker Texts" and "Understanding the Quaker Past"
We also host Peter Sippel's independently managed QuakerPages, including the Quaker Writings Home Page and the Quaker Homiletics Online Anthology (spoken messages).
This page last modified 7/2/2014.
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Chapter 80 Towns and Villages ^ !
ORGANIZATION — BOARD OF TRUSTEES
80.010 Town construed. (8/28/1949)
80.020 Towns and villages — how incorporated. (8/28/1939)
80.040 Board of trustees — corporate powers vested in — terms of office. (8/28/1978)
80.050 Trustees — qualifications. (8/28/1978)
80.060 Trustees — oath — organization — meetings. (8/28/1957)
80.070 Trustees — quorum. (8/28/1939)
80.080 Trustees — powers and duties as to members and meetings. (8/28/1949)
80.090 Trustees — power to pass certain ordinances. (8/28/1939)
80.100 Trustees — style of ordinances. (8/28/1939)
80.110 Trustees — passage of ordinances. (8/28/1996)
80.120 Trustees — publication of ordinances — chairman. (8/28/1939)
80.130 Trustees — sprinkling and oiling of streets. (8/28/1939)
80.140 Sprinkling or oiling of streets — estimate of cost — notice of hearing. (8/28/1939)
80.150 Sprinkling or oiling of streets — special ordinance. (8/28/1939)
80.160 Sprinkling or oiling of streets — tax bill — limitation on cost. (8/28/1939)
80.170 Trustees — restraint of domestic animals. (8/28/1939)
80.180 Trustees — powers as to sidewalks. (8/28/1939)
80.190 Trustees — repair of sidewalks, procedure. (8/28/1939)
80.200 Repair of sidewalks — publication of notice. (8/28/1939)
80.210 Trustees — semiannual reports. (8/28/2002)
80.220 Semiannual report, failure to make — penalty. (8/28/1939)
80.230 Trustees — vacancy, how filled. (8/28/1939)
80.240 Trustees — power of appointment. (8/28/1953)
80.250 Appointed officers — bond. (8/28/1939)
POLICE ORGANIZATION
80.410 Marshal — police powers. (8/28/1939)
80.420 Marshal and policemen — removal. (8/28/2013)
80.430 Taxes a lien on property. (8/28/1939)
80.440 Redemption of property. (8/28/1939)
80.450 Compensation of county clerk. (8/28/1939)
80.460 County clerk to furnish abstract from assessment books — tax levy not to ... (8/28/1978)
80.470 Additional levies — maximum rates. (8/28/1957)
80.480 Assessment and collection of revenues. (8/28/1939)
80.490 Trustees — taxing powers. (8/28/1978)
80.560 Failure to elect officers — procedure. (1/2/1979)
DISINCORPORATION
80.570 Disincorporation procedure. (8/28/2016)
80.575 Election not required, when. (8/28/1987)
80.580 Disincorporation through failure of trustees to qualify. (8/28/1978)
80.600 No rights affected by disincorporation. (8/28/1939)
80.610 Trustee in disincorporation — appointment. (8/28/1939)
80.620 Trustee in disincorporation — bond. (8/28/1987)
80.630 Trustee in disincorporation — powers. (8/28/1939)
80.640 Trustee in disincorporation — report. (8/28/1939)
80.650 Trustee in disincorporation — duties on conclusion of trust. (8/28/1939)
80.660 Trustee in disincorporation — compensation. (8/28/1939)
80.670 Disincorporated town or village — disposition of revenue. (8/28/1987)
Census, how taken — force and effect of, 81.030
Donated goods, no zoning law, ordinance or code shall prohibit a nonprofit organization from reselling in same area as other retailers, 407.489
Public utilities, town may own and operate, board of public works, 91.450
Villages may vote to become fourth classification cities, 72.050
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“The Clean Doctor”
Anthroposophical Medicine
The Gorter Model
Experience with cancer
Robert Gorter, MD, PhD
Worldwide (surging) Trends in Honor Killings of Women: a Warning to Protectors of Human Rights
Posted on January 18, 2018 by admin 01
Gurwant Brar, Robert Gorter, et al.
Robert Gorter, MD, PhD, is emeritus professor of the University of California San Francisco Medical School (UC SF)
An honor killing, or a shame killing[1] is the homicide of a member of a family, due to the perpetrators’ belief that the victim has brought shame or dishonor upon the family, or has violated the principles of a community or a religion, usually for reasons such as refusing to enter an arranged marriage, being in a relationship that is disapproved by their family, having sex outside marriage, becoming the victim of rape, dressing in ways which are deemed inappropriate, engaging in non-heterosexual relations or renouncing a faith. A vast majority of (female) honor killings are done by Muslims-to-Muslims. In Europe, 94% of all honor killings are done by Muslims.
Human Rights Watch defines “honor killings” as follows:
“Honor killings are acts of vengeance, usually death, committed by male family members against female family members, who are held to have brought dishonor upon the family. A woman can be targeted by (individuals within) her family for a variety of reasons, including: refusing to enter into an arranged marriage, being the victim of a sexual assault, seeking a divorce—even from an abusive husband—or (allegedly) committing adultery. The mere perception that a woman has behaved in a way that “dishonors” her family is sufficient to trigger an attack on her life.“
Although rare, men can also be the victims of honor killings by members of the family of a woman with whom they are perceived to have an inappropriate relationship. The loose term “honor killing” applies to killing of both men and women in cultures that practice it.
Some women who bridge social divides, publicly engage other communities, or adopt some of the customs or the religion of an outside group may be attacked. In countries that receive immigrants, some otherwise low-status and generally Islamic immigrant men and boys have asserted their dominant patriarchal status by inflicting honor killings on female family members who have participated in public life, for example, in feminist and integration politics.
Also domestic violence and rape towards women are very common Muslim societies; and sanctioned by the Quran and tradition.
To combat the epidemic of honor killings requires understanding what makes these murders unique. They differ from plain and psychopathic homicides, serial killings, crimes of passion, revenge killings, and domestic violence. Their motivation is different and based on codes of morality and behavior that typify some cultures, often reinforced by fundamentalist religious dictates. In 2000, the United Nations estimated that there are 5,000 honor killings every year.[1] That number might be reasonable for Pakistan alone, but worldwide the numbers are much greater. In 2002 and again in 2004, the U.N. brought a resolution to end honor killings and other honor-related crimes. In 2004, at a meeting in The Hague about the rising tide of honor killings in Europe, law enforcement officers from the U.K. announced plans to begin reopening old cases to see if certain murders were, indeed, honor murders.[2] The number of honor killings is routinely underestimated, and most estimates are little more than guesses that vary widely. Definitive or reliable worldwide estimates of honor killing incidence do not exist.
Morsal O, a 16-year-old German-Afghan girl, was killed in May 2008 by her 24-year-old brother Ahmad Sobair O. He stabbed her twenty-three times in a parking lot in Hamburg, Germany, because of her alleged impure moral conduct. Murder of teenage or young adult women by their fathers or other close male relatives is characteristic of classic honor killings and is not a pattern in non-immigrant Western populations.
Most honor killings are not classified as such, are rarely prosecuted, or when prosecuted in the Muslim world, result in relatively light sentences.[3] When an honor killing occurs in the West, many people, including the police, still shy away from calling it an honor killing. In the West, both Islamist and feminist groups, including domestic violence activists, continue to insist that honor killings are a form of Western-style domestic violence or femicide (killing of women).[4] They are not.[5] This study documents that there are at least two types of honor killings and two victim populations. Both types differ significantly from each other, just as they differ from Western domestic femicide. One group has an average age of seventeen; the other group’s average age is thirty-six. The age difference is a statistically significant one
Families Killing Their Young Women
The study’s findings indicate that honor killings accelerated significantly in a 20-year period between 1989 and 2009.[6] This may mean that honor killings are genuinely escalating, perhaps as a function of jihadist extremism and Islamic fundamentalism, or that honor killings are being more accurately reported and prosecuted, especially in the West, but also in the East. The expansion of the Internet may account for wider reporting of these incidents.
The worldwide average age of victims for the entire population is twenty-three (Table 1). This is true for all geographical regions. Thus, wherever an honor killing is committed, it is primarily a crime against young people. Just over half of these victims were daughters and sisters; about a quarter were wives and girlfriends of the perpetrators. The remainder included mothers, aunts, nieces, cousins, uncles, or non-relatives.
Honor killings are a family collaboration. Worldwide, two-thirds of the victims were killed by their families of origin. (See Table 1). Murder by the family of origin was at its highest (72 percent) in the Muslim world and at its lowest in North America (49 percent); European families of origin were involved almost as often as those in the Muslim world, possibly because so many are first- or second-generation immigrants and, therefore, still tightly bound to their native cultures. Alternatively, this might be due to the Islamist radicalization of third or even fourth generations. Internationally, fathers played an active role in over one-third of the honor murders. Fathers were most involved in North America (52 percent) and least involved in the Muslim world; in Europe, fathers were involved in more than one-third of the murders.
Worldwide, 42 percent of these murders were carried out by multiple perpetrators, a characteristic which distinguishes them considerably from Western domestic femicide. A small number of the murders worldwide involved more than one victim. Multiple murders were at their highest in North America and at their lowest in Europe. In the Muslim world, just under a quarter of the murders involved more than one victim. Additional victims included the dead woman’s children, boyfriend, fiancé, husband, sister, brother, or parents.
Worldwide, more than half the victims were tortured; i.e., they did not die instantly but in agony. In North America, over one-third of the victims were tortured; in Europe, two-thirds were tortured; in the Muslim world, half were tortured. Torturous deaths include: being raped or gang-raped before being killed; being strangled or bludgeoned to death; being stabbed many times (10 to 40 times); being stoned or burned to death; being beheaded, or having one’s throat slashed.
Finally, worldwide, 58 percent of the victims were murdered for being “too Western” and/or for resisting or disobeying cultural and religious expectations (see Table 1). The accusation of being “too Western” was the exact language used by the perpetrator or perpetrators. Being “too Western” meant being seen as too independent, not subservient enough, refusing to wear varieties of Islamic clothing (including forms of the veil), wanting an advanced education and a career, having non-Muslim (or non-Sikh or non-Hindu) friends or boyfriends, refusing to marry one’s first cousin, wanting to choose one’s own husband, choosing a socially “inferior” or non-Muslim (or non-Sikh or non-Hindu) husband; or leaving an abusive husband. There were statistically significant regional differences for this motive. For example, in North America, 91 percent of victims were murdered for being “too Western” as compared to a smaller but still substantial number (71 percent) in Europe. In comparison, only 43 percent of victims were killed for this reason in the Muslim world.
Less than half (42 percent) of the victims worldwide were murdered for committing an alleged “sexual impropriety”; this refers to victims who had been raped, were allegedly having extra-marital affairs, or who were viewed as “promiscuous” (even where this might not refer to actual sexual promiscuity or even sexual activity). However, in the Muslim world, 57 percent of victims were murdered for this motive as compared to 29 percent in Europe and a small number (9 percent) in North America.
What the Age Differences Mean
This study documents that there are at least two different kinds of honor killings and/or two different victim populations: one made up of female children and young women whose average age is seventeen (Table 3), the other composed of women whose average age is thirty-six (Table 5). Both kinds of honor murders differ from Western domestic femicide.
In the non-immigrant West, serious domestic violence exists which includes incest, child abuse, marital rape, marital battering, marital stalking, and marital post-battering femicide. However, there is no cultural pattern of fathers specifically targeting or murdering their teenage or young adult daughters, nor do families of origin participate in planning, perpetrating, justifying, and valorizing such murders. Clearly, these characteristics define the classic honor killing of younger women and girls.
Stoning to death is a beloved method for punishing (perceived) improper behavior of women: men are very rarely punished (if at all).
The honor murders of older women might seem to resemble Western-style domestic femicide. The victim is an older married woman, usually a mother, who is often killed by her husband but also by multiple perpetrators (30 percent of the time). Worldwide, almost half (44 percent) of those who kill older-age victims include members of either the victim’s family of origin or members of her husband’s family of origin. (See Table 5.) This is extremely rare in a Western domestic femicide; the husband who kills his wife in the West is rarely assisted by members of his family of origin or by his in-laws.
However, in the Muslim world, older-age honor killing victims are murdered by their own families of origin nearly two-thirds of the time. This suggests that the old-world custom has changed somewhat in Europe where the victim’s family of origin participates in her murder only one-third (31 percent) of the time. Thus far, in North America, no members of the family of origin have participated in the honor killing of an older-age victim. Whether North America will eventually come to resemble Europe or even the Muslim world remains to be seen, as this will be influenced by immigration and other demographic factors. Finally, nearly half the older-age victims are subjected to a torturous death. However, the torture rate was at its highest (68 percent) in Europe for female victims of all ages. The torture rate was 35 percent and 51 percent in North America and in the Muslim world, respectively.
Worldwide, younger-age victims were killed by their families of origin 81 percent of the time. In North America, 94 percent were killed by their family of origin; this figure was 77 percent in Europe and 82 percent in the Muslim world. (See Table 3.) In North America, fathers had a hands-on role in 100 percent of the cases when the daughter was eighteen-years-old or younger (See Table 4). Worldwide, younger-age women and girls were tortured 53 percent of the time; however, in Europe, they were tortured between 72 and 83 percent of the time—significantly more than older-age women worldwide.
Western Responses to Honor Killing
Many Western feminists and advocates for victims of domestic violence have confused Western domestic violence or domestic femicide (the two are different) with the honor killings of older-age victims. Representatives of Islamist pressure groups including Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Canadian Islamic Congress, various academics (e.g., Ajay Nair, Tom Keil), activists (e.g., Rana Husseini), and religious leaders (e.g., Abdulhai Patel of the Canadian Council of Imams) have insisted that honor killings either do not exist or have nothing to do with Islam; that they are cultural, tribal, pre-Islamic customs, and that, in any event, domestic violence exists everywhere.[7] Feminists who work with the victims of domestic violence have seen so much violence against women that they are uncomfortable singling out one group of perpetrators, especially an immigrant or Muslim group. However, Western domestic femicide differs significantly from honor killing.[8]
Former National Organization for Women (NOW) president Kim Gandy compared the battered and beheaded Aasiya Hassan[9] to the battered (but still living) pop star Rihanna and further questioned whether Hassan’s murder was an honor killing:
Is a Muslim man in Buffalo more likely to kill his wife than a Catholic man in Buffalo? A Jewish man in Buffalo? I don’t know the answer to that, but I know that there is plenty of violence to go around—and that the long and sordid history of oppressing women in the name of religion surely includes Islam, but is not limited to Islam.[10]
At the time of the Hassan beheading, a coalition of domestic violence workers sent an (unpublished) letter to the Erie County district attorney’s office and to some media stating that this was not an honor killing, that honor killings had nothing to do with Islam, and that sensationalizing Muslim domestic violence was not only racist but also served to render invisible the much larger incidence of both domestic violence and domestic femicide. They have a point, but they also miss the point, namely, that apples are not oranges and that honor killings are not the same as Western domestic femicides.
One might argue that the stated murder motive of being “too Westernized” may, in a sense, overlap substantively with the stated and unstated motives involved in Western domestic femicide. In both instances, the woman is expected to live with male violence and to remain silent about it. She is not supposed to leave—or to leave with the children or any other male “property.” However, the need to keep a woman isolated, subordinate, fearful, and dependent through the use of violence does not reflect a Western cultural or religious value; rather, it reflects the individual, psychological pathology of the Western batterer-murderer. On the other hand, an honor killing reflects the culture’s values aimed at regulating female behavior—values that the family, including the victim’s family, is expected to enforce and uphold.
Further, such cultural, ethnic, or tribal values are not often condemned by the major religious and political leaders in developing Muslim countries or in immigrant communities in the West. On the contrary, such communities maintain an enforced silence on all matters of religious, cultural, or communal “sensitivity.” Today, such leaders (and their many followers) often tempt, shame, or force Muslim girls and women into wearing a variety of body coverings including the hijab (head covering), burqa, or chadari (full-body covering) as an expression of religiosity and cultural pride or as an expression of symbolic resistance to the non-Muslim West.[11] Muslim men are allowed to dress like Westerners, and no one challenges the ubiquitous use of Western technology, including airplanes, cell phones, the Internet, or satellite television as un-Islamic. But Muslim women are expected to bear the burden of upholding these ancient and allegedly religious customs of gender apartheid.
It is clear that Muslim girls and women are murdered for honor in both the West and the East when they refuse to wear the hijab or choose to wear it improperly. In addition, they are killed for behaving in accepted Western or modern ways when they express a desire to attend college, have careers, live independent lives, have non-Muslim friends (including boyfriends with whom they may or may not be sexually involved), choose their own husbands, refuse to marry their first cousins, or want to leave an abusive husband. This “Westernization” trend also exists in Muslim countries but to a lesser extent. Allegations of unacceptable “Westernization” accounted for 44 percent of honor murders in the Muslim world as compared to 71 percent in Europe and 91 percent in North America.
Tempted by Western ideas, desiring to assimilate, and hoping to escape lives of subordination, those girls and women who exercise their option to be Western are killed—at early ages and in particularly gruesome ways. Frightening honor murders may constitute an object lesson to other Muslim girls and women about what may happen to them if they act on the temptation to do more than serve their fathers and brothers as domestic servants, marry their first cousin, and breed as many children as possible. The deaths of females already living in the West may also be intended as lessons for other female immigrants who are expected to lead subordinate and segregated lives amid the temptations and privileges of freedom. This is especially true in Europe where large Muslim ghettos have formed in the past few decades. It is particularly alarming to note that in Europe 96 percent of the honor killing perpetrators are Muslims.
The level of primal, sadistic, or barbaric savagery shown in honor killings towards a female family intimate more closely approximates some of the murders in the West perpetrated by serial killers against prostitutes or randomly selected women. It also suggests that gender separatism, the devaluation of girls and women, normalized child abuse, including arranged child marriages of both boys and girls, sexual repression, misogyny (sometimes inspired by misogynist interpretations of the Qur’an), and the demands made by an increase in the violent ideology of jihad all lead to murderous levels of aggression towards girls and women. One only has to kill a few girls and women to keep the others in line. Honor killings are, in a sense, a form of domestic terrorism, meant to ensure that Muslim women wear the Islamic veil, have Muslim babies, and mingle only with other Muslims.
Since Muslim immigration and, therefore, family networks are more restricted in North America than in Europe, honor-killing fathers may feel that the entire burden for upholding standards for female behavior falls heavily upon them and them alone. This may account for the fact that fathers are responsible 100 percent of the time for the honor murders of the youngest-age victims. In Europe and in the Muslim world, that burden may more easily be shared by sons and brothers, grandfathers, uncles, and male cousins
What Must Be Done
How can this problem be addressed? Immigration, law enforcement, and religious authorities must all be included in education, prevention, and prosecution efforts in the matter of honor killings.
In addition, shelters for battered Muslim girls and women should be established and multilingual staff appropriately trained in the facts about honor killings. For example, young Muslim girls are frequently lured back home by their mothers. When a shelter resident receives such a phone call, the staff must immediately go on high alert. The equivalent of a federal witness protection program for the intended targets of honor killings should be created; England has already established such a program.[12] Extended safe surrogate family networks must be created to replace existing family networks; the intended victims themselves, with enormous assistance, may become each other’s “sisters.”
‘ `Don’t kill me,’ screamed the rape victim. Then they stoned her to death anyway
The stoning of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was a public execution carried out by the Al-Shabaab militant group on October 27, 2008 in the southern port town of Kismayo, Somalia. Initial reports stated that the victim, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, was a 23-year-old woman found guilty of adultery. However, Duhulow’s father and aunt stated that she was 13 years old, under the age of marriage eligibility, and that she was arrested and stoned to death after trying to report that she had been raped. The execution took place in a public stadium attended by about 1,000 bystanders, several of whom attempted to intervene but were shot by the militants.
Duhulow and her family moved to the southern city of Kismayo, Somalia from the Hagardeer refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya in July 2008. According to one of her teachers, Muno Mohamed Osman, who had taught Duhulow for a few months and did not remember her well, she struggled during class and “didn’t look mentally fit. She was always in trouble with students, teachers. She was just a child.” Three months after her arrival in Kismayo, Duhulow was reportedly raped by three armed men while travelling on foot to visit her grandmother in Mogadishu in October 2008. Her aunt took her to a police station to report the incident to the Al-Shabaab Islamist militia in Kismayo, which at the time controlled the city’s court system. They were asked to return to the station a few days later, having been told that two suspects had been apprehended. Duhulow was subsequently arrested by the insurgents under charges that she had “chatted up” the men and committed adultery. She was then sentenced to death by stoning. The militant tribunal asserted that Duhulow had come to it with an admission of guilt, and that she was repeatedly asked to reconsider her confession but that she instead insisted that she wanted Sharia law and the attendant punishment to be applied. One militant, Sheik Hayakalah, stated that “the evidence came from her side and she officially confirmed her guilt(…) She told us that she was happy with the punishment under Islamic law.”No attempts were made by the insurgent group to apprehend Duhulow’s purported attackers…..
In December 2008, Nada Ali of Human Rights Watch (HWR) cited Duhulow as an example of many females in the parts of south-central Somalia that were at the time under insurgent control who had little recourse to fair trials and health services. She stated, “Aisha’s horrific death is likely to discourage rape victims from reporting rape or seeking justice from the Islamist insurgents.” Ali also urged the United Nations Security Council to form an international investigative commission to inquire into the worst crimes reportedly committed against civilians during the conflict. But anno 2017, these murders on women continue (with a trend of increasing) in most Islamic nations.
CBC journalist Debi Goodwin wrote, “To the world, Aisha became a symbol of the dangers of Sharia Law.” On October 27, 2010, a “2nd Annual Memorial Lecture” was held by the Newcastle Amnesty Group to commemorate the second anniversary of Duhulow’s death. That same year, Associate Professor Susanne Scholtz dedicated her book, Sacred Witness: Rape in the Hebrew Bible (2010), to her great-aunt, the rape victims in the Congo, and Duhulow, saying, “I honor Aisha and what she had to endure in her young life.”
The stoning was condemned by several human rights groups and was cited as being among the first incidents in the civil war in Somalia to be widely reported in the Western media. According to Amnesty International, Al-Shabaab had formally charged Duhulow with adultery.
As the world marked International Human Rights Day, Iran is continuing its execution spree with the announcement that a woman has been sentenced for dishonoring her family to death by stoning.
In addition, clear government warnings must be issued to Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu immigrants and citizens: Honor killings must be prosecuted in the West, and perpetrators, accomplices, and enablers must all be prosecuted. Participating families should be publicly shamed. Criminals must be deported after they have served their sentences.
Western judicial systems and governments have recently begun to address this problem. In 2006, a Danish court convicted nine members of a clan for the honor murder of Ghazala Khan.[13] In 2009, a German court sentenced a father to life in prison for having ordered his son to murder his sister for the family honor while the 20-year-old son was sentenced to nine and a half years.[14] In another case, a British court, with the help of testimony from the victim’s mother and fiancé, convicted a father of a 10-year-old honor murder after the crime was reclassified;[15] and, for the first time, the Canadian government informed new immigrants:
Canada’s openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, “honor killings,” female genital mutilation or other gender-based violence. Those guilty of these crimes are severely punished under Canada’s criminal laws.[16]
Islamic gender apartheid is a human rights violation and cannot be justified in the name of cultural relativism, tolerance, anti-racism, diversity, or political correctness. As long as Islamist groups continue to deny, minimize, or obfuscate the problem, and government and police officials accept their inaccurate versions of reality, women will continue to be killed for honor in the West.
The battle for women’s rights is central to the battle for Europe and for Western values. It is a necessary part of true democracy, along with freedom of religion, tolerance for homosexuals, and freedom of dissent. Here, then, is exactly where the greatest battle of the twenty-first century is joined.
Phyllis Chesler is emerita professor of psychology and women’s studies at the Richmond College of the City University of New York and co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women’s Health Network. The author wishes to thank Jonathan Francis Carmona, graduate student at Hunter College, CUNY, for the statistical tests for this study, and Prof. Howard Lune, director of the Graduate Social Research Program at Hunter College.
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Endocrinology/
Types of Endocrine Disorders/
Types of Adrenal Disorders
Adrenal disorders are serious health issues that adversely affect the human body’s two adrenal glands. Located on the top of each kidney, these glands produce the hormones adrenaline and norepinephrine, the steroid hormones aldosterone and cortisol, and sex hormones, which are all necessary for regulating the human body’s metabolism, immune system, blood pressure, and other essential functions.
Adrenal disorders usually cause the adrenal glands to produce too much or too little of these key hormones, which can lead to a host of metabolic, immunological, and blood-pressure related complications. The adrenal disorders that can affect the adrenal glands’ normal hormone production include the following:
Addison’s disease (adrenal insufficiency) – This a rare condition in which the adrenal glands produce too little cortisol and sometimes not enough aldosterone.
Cushing’s syndrome – This condition occurs when the adrenal glands produce too much cortisol for an extended period of time.?
Adrenocortical carcinoma – This is a rare condition in which malignant cancer cells form in the adrenal cortex, the outer layer of the adrenal glands.
Pheochromocytoma – This condition occurs when the tumors form in the adrenal medulla, the inner portion of the adrenal glands.
Hyperaldosteronism – This condition occurs when the adrenal glands produce too much aldosterone.
Hypoaldosteronism – This condition occurs when the adrenal glands do not produce enough aldosterone.?
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia – This is a genetic condition that hinders the adrenal glands’ ability to produce cortisol and sometimes aldosterone; a lack of these two steroid hormones can disrupt normal childhood development, including the development of genitals.
To treat these adrenal disorders, doctors may administer hormone replacement therapy, prescribe medications that lower hormone levels, or excise a tumor, depending on the specific condition.
Tampa General Hospital utilizes cutting edge technology to treat adrenal and other types of endocrine?disorders?and has received recognition from U.S. News & World Report as one of America's Best Hospitals?for Diabetes & Endocrinology?for 2020-2021.
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Secret Science Club (North) presents Linguist John McWhorter & Evolutionary Biologist Richard Dawkins, Fall 2016 at Symphony Space!
Secret Science Club will be back at the Bell House in Brooklyn with our regular monthly talks starting September 20. Stay tuned for details! Meanwhile, heading into Manhattan...
Secret Science Club (North) is teaming up with Symphony Space for two special, ticketed events this fall!
***Secret Science Club (North) presents Words on the Move with Linguist John McWhorter, Monday, October 10, 8PM @ Symphony Space, $25. (Use code SECRET15 to get $15 tickets.)
Think the friction between red states and blue states is rough? Try checking out the culture wars over "proper English." Linguist and master observer of American culture, John McWhorter parses our shape-shifting language in this talk coinciding with the release of his new book Words on the Move---and explores why some of the tensions over Lingua Americana may be central to our identities and views about culture and race in America.
Before & After: Try our cocktails of the night, the "Old-fashioned Grammarian" and the "YAAASSSSS!"; take our language quiz for a chance to win pithy prizes; sway to wordplay-inspired tunes; stick around for the Q&A; and snag a signed copy of John McWhorter's latest book.
John McWhorter is a linguist and professor at Columbia University. He writes for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Root, Politico, The New Republic, and The Atlantic, and he is a frequent guest on NPR, CNN, and MSNBC. His popular and critically acclaimed books include The Power of Babel, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, What Language Is, and most recently, Words on the Move: Why English Won't---and Can't---Sit Still (Like, Literally).
Get $15 tickets for John McWhorter here with code SECRET15 and enter the code at checkout. You can also use the code at the Symphony Space box office (call 212.864.5400 or visit in person).
***Secret Science Club (North) presents The Selfish Gene with Richard Dawkins, Tuesday, November 15, 8pm @ Symphony Space, $25. ($15 with code SECRET15)
Join evolutionary biologist and best-selling author Richard Dawkins to commemorate the 40th anniversary of The Selfish Gene. In this classic work, Richard Dawkins gives a gene's-eye view of evolution that is imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant.
Are our bodies merely vehicles for ensuring the immortality of our genes? How can selfish genes support kindness and altruism? Why does our understanding of the evolution of life matter? As our knowledge of the genome grows by leaps and bounds in the 21st century, Richard Dawkins continues to change and challenge our view of Earth's life-forms and our own human experience.
Before & After: Visit our Mixology Lab, and sample a "Gene Fizz"; sway to natural selections and (r)evolutionary sounds; snag a signed copy of the special anniversary edition of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene; and don't miss the Q&A!
Richard Dawkins is emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's inaugural Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science (1995-2008). He is a fellow of the Royal Society and best-selling author of such acclaimed works as The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker, The God Delusion, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Ancestor's Tale, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, The Magic of Reality, An Appetite for Wonder, and Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science.
Get $15 tickets for Richard Dawkins here with code SECRET15 and enter the code at checkout. You can also use the code at the Symphony Space box office (call 212.864.5400 or visit in person).
Secret Science Club North meets @ Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway @ 95th St in Manhattan. Subway: 1, 2, or 3 to 96th Street. Doors for both events open at 7:30pm.
For more information about the Secret Science Club, contact secretscienceclub@gmail.com
Or visit us on the Web at http://secretscienceclub.blogspot.com
Photo Credit: Eileen Barrosa--Columbia University (John McWhorter)
Secret Science Club (North) presents Linguist John...
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← Europe looking for natural gas What to buy? Gamble on biotech stocks →
Into Africa
May 25th, 2009 · 1 Comment
The insecurity of natural gas supplies to Europe leads European companies into far away locations and unsavoury regimes. Here is one competitor of PNG…
By Matthew Green
Published: May 24 2009 19:35 | Last updated: May 24 2009 19:35
Equatorial Guinea, under President Obiang (below), has been among the world’s fastest growing countries but many still live in poverty (above)
Before the oil came, Equatorial Guinea’s phone book boasted only a few pages. Subscribers were listed by their first names. Cars were a novelty and the tallest buildings in Malabo, the island capital, were gracefully ageing villas dating back to Spanish colonial rule. The airport consisted of a tin shack.
Today, a new city is rising on the doorstep of the old. Immaculate tower blocks march past a six-lane highway stretching into the jungle. Smart blue lamp-posts line the pavements. The facade of a bank glows gold in the tropical sun. There are no people yet, but soon “Malabo Two” will be open for business.
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the president who seized power 30 years ago, is spending billions of petrodollars on a construction bonanza aimed at turning his tiny country into a Dubai-style economic hub for the Gulf of Guinea, one of the world’s fastest-growing oil and gas frontiers.
Such a feat would be a big turnround for a government that has a reputation as one of Africa’s most flagrant kleptocracies, dominated by a ruling clan that has used arbitrary arrests, beatings and torture to stifle dissent.
The outcome will have implications not just for Equatorial Guinea’s 700,000 people, many of whom live in pastel-painted slums without power or running water, but also for a vanguard of European energy companies banking on the country to supply a commodity they desperately need: natural gas.
Russia’s invasion of Georgia and its willingness to turn off gas supplies to Ukraine have struck fear into European Union governments dependent on Moscow for a quarter of the bloc’s consumption. As their own gas fields begin to decline, European companies are venturing into increasingly risky territory to diversify their supplies.
Equatorial Guinea is a perfect example. In the past few months, Eon, the giant German utility, and Union Fenosa of Spain have signed agreements to back the government’s plan to convert Bioko, the main island and home of the capital, into a significant gas export hub. Equatorial Guinea wants to exploit its own modest deposits and tap vast resources in neighbouring Nigeria, whose 182,000bn cu ft of proven gas reserves are the seventh largest in the world.
The experience of US companies that led the development of the oil industry suggests the Europeans will have to tread warily. A Senate investigation into Equatorial Guinea’s dealings with a Washington bank shone a spotlight on payments by oil companies to government officials. Global Witness, the anti-corruption watchdog, has highlighted damaging evidence of high-rolling lifestyles enjoyed by certain members of Mr Obiang’s family. In November, a UN investigator accused the police of systematic use of torture.
Such reports alone might be enough to rattle European executives, even without coup plots reminiscent of The Dogs of War, a thriller that Frederick Forsyth, the British writer, set in a fictional version of Equatorial Guinea. Security fears have imbued the government with a sense of paranoia as thick as the mist shrouding the volcano brooding over Malabo.
Simon Mann, the former UK special forces officer and an old Etonian, is serving a 34-year sentence in the city for his part in a failed attempt to seize power in 2004. The escapade involved a shadowy cast of financiers, mercenaries and members of the British upper class who believed using force to grab the energy reserves of such a minute country was a viable proposition.
As European companies embrace Mr Obiang and his powerful family, they can only hope the rise of Malabo Two is the harbinger of a more benign form of rule that will make it easier to keep their consciences – and reputations – clean. Not everyone is convinced.
“These companies are taking a huge reputational risk by coming to Equatorial Guinea,” said Tutu Alicante, executive-director of Equatorial Guinea Justice, a US-based group campaigning for better governance. “The newcomers must make their engagement conditional on greater transparency.”
The only former Spanish colony in Sub-Saharan Africa, Equatorial Guinea once counted its wealth in cocoa pods. Following huge offshore finds in the early 1990s, it rapidly evolved into the region’s largest oil exporter after Nigeria and Angola. The economy – on paper at least – recorded some of the fastest growth in the world.
Equatorial Guinea already exports up to 3.7m tonnes of liquefied natural gas (gas supercooled for shipping) from a facility opened by Houston-based Marathon Oil in 2007. The government wants to at least double or triple the amount by raising domestic production and striking agreements to export gas from fields in Nigeria and Cameroon.
Construction bonanza: President Obiang
After years of favouring US companies, Mr Obiang (right) has turned to the Europeans to realise this vision, confident they will guarantee a market.
Eon has taken a 25 per cent stake in a new “3-G” consortium set up by Sonagas, the state gas company, to build the necessary infrastructure. Galp Energia of Portugal and Gasol, listed on London’s Alternative Investment Market, are also involved. Gas Natural of Spain, which recently upped its stake in Union Fenosa to 95 per cent, is another participant.
Uncertainties abound. Nigeria and Cameroon have proved reluctant to augment Equatorial Guinea’s modest gas reserves, estimated to be at least 4,400bn cu ft by the Oil and Gas Journal. Speedboat-riding gunmen operating out of Nigeria’s delta region attacked the presidential palace in Malabo in February, proving that the country’s energy facilities are well within reach of militants who have visited havoc on Nigeria’s oil industry. At Equatorial Guinea’s first gas conference in March, an armoured car – its turret pointed out to sea – guarded the Sofitel where delegates slept. Dietrich Gerstein, Eon’s chief executive officer of LNG, nevertheless told the gathering that Equatorial Guinea was a “cornerstone” of the company’s plans to secure long-term supply.
Seated next to him, Gabriel Obiang Lima, the vice-minister of mines, industry and energy – one of the president’s sons – played down allegations of human rights abuses. “I think many times the information that is published about Equatorial Guinea is not founded,” he said. “I don’t want to point out the individuals who are in charge of doing this.”
However, a glance at recent history shows how deep the roots of the authoritarian system run. After colonial rule under General Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator, ended in 1968, the country plunged into one of the most miserable – if little known – episodes of modern African history.
Life under Francisco Macías Nguema, who took over as president, was as terrifying as it was bizarre. Calling himself the “The Great Sorcerer”, on several documented occasions he ordered the executions of all his mistresses’ former lovers. Catholic priests were forced to recite: “There is no God other than Macías.” Being a journalist was a capital offence. As his administration collapsed, Macías built up a huge collection of human skulls and declaimed lengthy monologues to colleagues he had murdered. Before Mr Obiang staged a coup in 1979 and had him killed, a third of the population is estimated to have died or fled.
“As a colony, and under Macías, we had some of the worst dictators in the world,” says Alfredo Okenve of the CEID network, one of the country’s few civil society organisations. “Whatever changes is progress, but the progress has been very slow.”
Allegations of graft have proliferated during the oil era. The US Senate investigation into the handling of Equatorial Guinea’s deposits in Riggs Bank in Washington said in 2004 that oil companies may have contributed to corruption by making payments to officials with minimal disclosure. The sums included more than $4m for training students abroad, most of them children or relatives of government figures. The companies argued they had little choice but to do business with the government of the day.
Not all investors concurred. In 2005, the Swedish national pension fund said it would not invest in ExxonMobil, Amerada Hess or Marathon because of reported cases of corruption in Equatorial Guinea. Reports abounded of mansions in Malibu and Maryland purchased by Mr Obiang or his circle. The president has always denied any impropriety, saying he personally supervised state accounts to prevent theft.
The government points to its vision for transforming Bioko into a gas and maritime centre as evidence it is putting its income to good use. In spite of the drop in oil prices, Chinese labourers dressed in blue overalls and hard hats packed in the back of trucks rumble daily towards construction sites in Malabo Two. The port echoes with the clanking of cranes working on a $4.5bn (€3.2bn, £2.8bn) deepwater project designed to serve the whole Gulf of Guinea. Strolling on the new quay as a freighter unloads cement, Alberto Ndong Obiang Lima, director of ports and another of the president’s sons, says the planned transport hub will generate income even when the oil runs out. “Many people, especially foreigners, say Equatorial Guinea is becoming the Dubai of Central Africa,” he says. “I think it’s true – look at the investments and construction.”
Mr Obiang’s familial style of rule certainly gives Equatorial Guinea the feel of an African emirate. Effective opposition is virtually non-existent: in the last elections in 2002 the president won more than 97 per cent of the vote. Little wealth has trickled down. In spite of an average gross domestic product of more than $31,000 a head, almost 80 per cent of people live in poverty. The International Monetary Fund warned in March that spending plans would not meet social needs, a reminder that prestige projects have not always helped Africa’s poor.
Perhaps the most critical test will be whether Mr Obiang will tolerate more openness. He has in the past described oil revenues as a “state secret” but has since authorised the government to apply to join the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a global programme that would subject public accounts to much greater scrutiny.
Francisca Tatchouop Belobe, a vice-minister who is co-ordinating the bid for EITI membership, says Equatorial Guinea’s slow progress is a result of a shortage of capacity rather than a lack of political will. “When talking about the country that apparently has so many secrets, you realise we have nothing to hide,” she says.
Equatorial Guinea has less than a year before its March deadline to qualify. Success would allow European newcomers to breathe more easily. Should Mr Obiang’s government fail, then they could start facing the kinds of awkward questions that have dogged their American rivals.
———[End of article]———
We have to say, we had to suppress a smile when reading this: “The president has always denied any impropriety, saying he personally supervised state accounts to prevent theft.” And needless to say we know less unsavoury places with a lot of gas..
Tags: Natural Gas
1 Jim Tate // May 25, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Phil’s timing to sell NG seems to be blessed with perfect timing.
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ЗНАЧЕНИЕ: This is a very unusual surname. It appears to be locational and English, but may well be a nickname and French! Our research suggests that probably the name is a variant form of the French surname 'Noquet', meaning 'clenched teeth', and as such introduced possibly into England in the late medieval period and probably as a result of the persecution of the Huguenot refugees in France. The precise reason when anybody should be called 'clenched teeth' is open to conjecture. If not French then the name could just as easily be English and probably locational. What is certain is that no such place as Norquay (The north quay?) exists as a place name, although this is not to say that it may not have done in the past. At least five thousand British surnames are known to originate from now 'lost' medieval places of which the only reminder in the 20th century, is the surname, often in myriad spellings. We are not helped by the appearance of the earliest known recordings in England. They could be French but equally could be English. Taken from the earliest known surviving church registers of the diocese of Greater London, they include such examples as Nicholas Norphey at the famous church of St Botolophs without Aldgate, on September 23rd 1582, Thomas Norquit, a witness at St Olave's church, Southwark, on December 11th 1771, and Henry Norquay, who married Elizabeth Fairbrother at St Botolphs Bishopgate, on August 1st 1808.
Только Ольга
Захотела, -
Выздоровела
Не болела.
Ольга, знаешь, в этом мире
Без тебя - темно и сыро.
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6. Documents obtained from the Internet
All references begin with the same information that would be provided for a printed source (or as much of that information as possible). The WWW information is then placed at the end of the reference - as the "where" element - in the same way as publishing information is given for books. The publisher is also given if there is one. It is not necessary to give the date of retrieval unless the document on the Web may change in content - e.g. a wiki - move, or be removed from a site altogether.
The object of this is the same as all referencing - to supply the information needed to allow a user to find a source. If you do not know the author or the date and it does not have a clear title, think carefully before using it. See Evaluating Sources
a. A journal article - with nondatabase URL:
Jacobson, J. W., Mulick, J. A. Schwartz, A. A. (1995). A history of facilitated communication: Science, pseudoscience, and antiscience: Science working group on facilitated communication. American Psychologist, 50, 750-765. http://www.apa.org/journals/jacobson.html
b. A journal article, with DOI:
Gillett, A. J. & Hammond, A. C. (2009). Mapping the maze of assessment: An investigation into practice. Active Learning in Higher Education, 10, 120-137. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787409104786
c. A newspaper article:
Sleek, S. (1996, January). Psychologists build a culture of peace. The New York Times, pp. 1, 33 http://www.nytimes.com
d. WWW Document:
Li, X. & Crane, N. (1996, May 20). Bibliographic formats for citing electronic information. http://www.uvm.edu/~xli/reference/estyles.html
e. WWW Document - corporate author:
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). (1995, May 15). About the World Wide Web. http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/
f. WWW Document - corporate author:
American Psychological Association (1996). How to cite information from the world wide web. http://www.apa.org/journals/webref.html
g. WWW Document - no author:
A field guide to sources on, about and on the Internet: Citation formats. (1995, Dec 18). http://www.cc.emory.edu/WHSCL/citation.formats.html
h. WWW Document - no author, no date:
WWW user survey. (n.d.). http://www.wast.ac.uk/usersurveys/survey2000-10/
i. An abstract:
Rosenthal, R. (1995). State of New Jersey v. Margaret Kelly Michaels: An overview [Abstract]. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 1, 247–271. http://www.apa.org/journals/ab1.html
j. Wikipedia Document - no author, no date, source material may change over time:
Psychology. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 14, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology
k. Entry in online reference work, no author, editor or date:
Heuristic (n.d.) In Merriam-Webster's online dictionary (11th ed.). http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/heuristic
l. Page from a website:
Gillett, A.J. (2017). Academic writing: Writing a list of references. UEfAP. http://www.uefap.net/writing/writing-references/writing-references-introduction
m. Blog post:
Gillett, A. J. (2017, February 23). EAP and student motivation. UEfAP. http://www.uefap.net/blog/?p=176
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NewsHome » News » news » UnitedCorp to Host Investor Conference Call on…
UnitedCorp to Host Investor Conference Call on April 10th to Provide Year-end Review and Plans for 2019
Wednesday April 10, 2019 at 12:00 PM (noon) Eastern Time: R.S.V.P. http://unitedamericancorp.com/conference/ at least 24 hours in advance – by noon April 9th
MIAMI, FL, April 5, 2019 – Miami-based United American Corp (“UnitedCorp”), (OTC: UAMA) is pleased to announce that its President and CEO, Mr. Benoit Laliberte, will lead a conference call on Wednesday April 10, 2019 at 12:00 PM (noon) Eastern time to provide investors with a year-end review of developments and operations in 2018 and plans for 2019 and beyond.
Mr. Laliberte will discuss, amongst other things, the implementation and growth of Company’s various divisions. This will include BlockchainDome Heat Stations, as well how this technology will be used in hyperscale data centers operations as well as the Company’s other projects including it Last Mile wireless connectivity pilot, TNW Wireless, applications for use in blockchain and plans for the Company’s intellectual property portfolio.
A Question & Answer session will follow Mr. Laliberte’s presentation where participants will be given the opportunity to ask Mr. Laliberte questions on the company and its business plan.
“We have worked very hard in the last year and a half to operationalize our innovative technology and achieve sustainable revenues,” stated Mr. Laliberte. “It has been both challenging and rewarding and I look forward to updating our shareholders and providing them with our plans for the future.”
Investors who would like to participate are required to register for the call. This should be done as soon as possible but no later than 24 hours in advance – by noon Eastern Time April 9th at www.unitedcorp.com/conference/ in order to get an access code and dial in instructions for the conference call.
Established in 1992, United American Corp is a Florida-based development and management company focusing on telecommunications and information technologies. The company currently owns telecommunications assets and holds the rights to manage a portfolio of patents and proprietary technology in telecommunications, social media and Blockchain technology, and owns and operates the BlockchainDomes which are designed to provide heat for agricultural operations using computer equipment in naturally cooled data centers where efficiency and low-cost operations are a priority.
About TNW Wireless Inc.
TNW Wireless is a licensed wireless operator for wholesale and retail services in Canada and a wholly-owned subsidiary of United American Corp pending the acquisition by UnitedCorp. The company currently holds 25MHz bandwidth tier-2 850 MHz licences and is a registered wireless carrier. It is licensed to provide communication services to the Northwest region of Canada and can provide global communication services through its proprietary iPCS Smartphone-over-IP technology.
About the BlockchainDome
The UnitedCorp BlockchainDome Heat Station was designed to provide heat for agricultural operations using ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit chip) mining operations where efficiency and low-cost operations are a priority. The BlockchainDomes, which utilize a proprietary passive cooling ground-coupled heat-exchanger technology, are particularly suited for situations where rapid cluster deployment is required as they can be erected and commissioned in a matter of weeks rather than up to a year using the traditional “Bricks and Mortar” approach. BlockchainDomes can be configured in a wide range of sizes to service any type of greenhouse operation.
How BlockchainDomes work can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDmhhaJKHLg
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AUA Summit - James Buchanan "Diamond Jim" Brady (1856 – 1917)
James Buchanan Diamond Jim Brady
James Buchanan "Diamond Jim" Brady (1856 – 1917)
Born in New York City, James Buchanan Brady made his fortune by selling railroad equipment, though he started his career as a messenger boy in Grand Central Station. "Diamond Jim" Brady loved and had numerous sets of jewelry made for himself, one for each month of the year. These included several diamond sets, the largest included a scarf pin of 33 carats, a ring of 25.5 carats and near the end of his life, a 3 carat diamond inlaid on the head of his cane.
In addition to being obese, hypertensive and diabetic, Mr. Brady also had gallstones, an obstructing prostate and infected urine. The only physician willing to operate on him was Hugh Hampton Young, MD who used his prostate punch on Mr. Brady in 1912. The next day, Dr. Young left for a prearranged speaking engagement in Europe. Mr. Brady's recovery was stormy, but after several months in the hospital, he fully recovered and was able to leave. He returned to New York where Dr. Oswald Swinney Lowsley, recommended to Brady by Dr. Young, looked after him.
Brady made a large donation following his successful prostate surgery that enabled the building of the Brady Urological Institute at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1915. Mr. Brady was enthusiastic about his contribution and sent intimate friends and poor townspeople to receive treatment free of cost. Although his passion would always be diamonds and food, Mr. Brady did enjoy seeing the benefits of his donation in the years prior to his death.
James Brady died in Atlantic City on April 13, 1917 after gradually succumbing to diabetes, renal failure and angina.
www.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/dining/31diam.html
Hugh Hampton Young Chapter on James Brady [pdf]
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Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels/FOX
Network: Fox
Subject Matter: Science Fiction
Click a button to buy a DVD at Amazon
Completes Sereis + Event Series [Blu-ray]
Season 1 [Blu-ray]
Season 10 (Event Series)
Season 10 (Event Series) [Blu-ray]
The Collector's Set [Blu-ray]
Click icon to watch or own full episodes
THE X-FILES chronicles the nine-year-long journey of two FBI agents -- the eternal skeptic Dana Scully and true believer Fox Mulder -- as they seek to explain unsolved cases involving the paranormal. From alien abductions and ghostly apparitions to genetic misfits and supernatural freaks, Mulder and Scully find themselves pitted at odds with both the government and each other as they seek to unveil the truth: that these unusual cases are a part of a much bigger conspiracy which threatens all of mankind, boiling down to one man with a fond inclination towards cigarettes and a secret pact made years ago with a species not of this world. Will Mulder and Scully be able to stop a future alien invasion in time? Thirteen years after the original series run ended, the next chapter of THE X-FILES opens with a special two-night event on Sunday, January 24, 2016 at 10pm ET/7pm PT on FOX, immediately following the NFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME (so the actual time start time may be later, depending on the duration of the football game and postgame), and continuing on Monday, January 25 at 8pm ET/PT on FOX. The new chapter will continue to air on Mondays at 8pm, with creator/executive producer Chris Carter back at the helm and with stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson re-inhabiting their roles as iconic FBI Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. "I think of it as a 13-year commercial break," said Carter. "The good news is the world has only gotten that much stranger, a perfect time to tell these six stories." Also returning is Mitch Pileggi as FBI Asst. Dir. Walter Skinner. Plus, Tom Braidwood, Dean Haglund and Bruce Harwood, known to fans as the Lone Gunmen, are are set to appear.
A new chapter -- called an event series, a miniseries or Season 10, depending on the source -- opened with Mulder and Scully being approached by a popular conspiracy theorist web-TV show host, Tad O'Malley (guest star Joel McHale), who believes he has uncovered a significant government conspiracy. With the assistance of Skinner, O'Malley seeks to enlist the help of former X-Files agents Mulder and Scully, who have since severed ties with the FBI. Through O'Malley, they are introduced to Sveta (guest star Annett Mahendru), a possible alien abductee who shares shocking information with them that will challenge everything that Mulder has ever believed about the existence of aliens and the government's role in covering them up. Additional guest stars this season include: Doug Savant as Augustus Goldman; Rebecca Wisocky as Jackie Goldman; Vik Sahay as Gupta; Kumail Nanjiani as Pasha; Rhys Darby as Guy Man; Tyler Labine as Stoner #1; Nicole Parker-Smith as Stoner #2; and many more celebrities.
Season 11 of THE X-FILES premiered on Wednesday January 3, 2018 at 8pm ET/PT on FOX. The all-new, 10-episode installment once again is executive-produced by creator Chris Carter, with stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson returning in their roles as iconic FBI Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Mitch Pileggi also returns as FBI Asst. Director Walter Skinner. Additionally, the all-new episodes will feature guest-star appearances by Annabeth Gish, Robbie Amell, Lauren Ambrose, Karin Konoval, Barbara Hershey, Haley Joel Osment and William B. Davis, who reprises his role as "Cigarette Smoking Man." The season opener, "My Struggle III," picks up after the last season's cliffhanger, as Mulder and Scully learn that they aren't the only ones desperately searching for their long-lost son, William. The very fate of the world may depend on it.
On Wednesday, March 21, 2018 at 8pm ET/PT, FOX premiered "My Struggle IV," the Season 11 finale of THE X-FILES. Scully and Mulder race to locate William while he's on the run; the Cigarette Smoking Man makes the final preparations for his ultimate plan.
Gillian Anderson - Special Agent Dana Scully
David Duchovny - Special Agent Fox Mulder (Seasons 1-8 & 10-11)
Mitch Pileggi - Asst. Dir. Walter Skinner (Seasons 2-11)
Annabeth Gish - Agent Monica Reyes (Seasons 8-11)
Robert Patrick - Agent John Doggett (Seasons 8 & 9)
William B. Davis - Cigarette-Smoking Man
Dean Haglund - Ringo Langly
Chris Owens - Agent Jeffery Spender (Seasons 5, 6 & 11)
Lauren Ambrose - Agent Einstein (Seasons 10 & 11)
Robbie Amell - Agent Miller (Seasons 10 & 11)
Joel McHale - Tad O'Malley (Seasons 10 & 11)
Karin Konoval - Little Judy Poundstone; Little Chucky Poundstone (Seasons 10 & 11)
Barbara Hershey - Erika Price (Season 11)
Tom Braidwood - Melvin Frohike
Bruce Harwood - John Byers
Jerry Hardin - Deep Throat (Season 1)
Nicholas Lea - Alex Krycek (Seasons 2-8)
Steven Williams - Mr. X (Seasons 2-4)
John Neville - Well-Manicured Man (Seasons 3-9)
Brian Thompson - Alien Bounty Hunter (Seasons 3-7)
Laurie Holden - Marita Covarrubias (Seasons 4-7)
Mimi Rogers - Agent Diana Fowley (Seasons 6 & 7)
Produced by Ten Thirteen Productions
Produced by 20th Century Fox Television
Fox Mulder - Alexandria, Virginia USA
Dana Scully - Annapolis, Maryland USA
The Shadowy Syndicate - Manhattan, New York USA - Map It!
C.G.B. Spender - Washington DC USA
Births, Deaths & Weddings
May 20, 2001: Alex Krycek dies
Click icon to watch or own this full episode
May 20, 2001: William Scully is born
April 21, 2002: The Lone Gunmen (Byers, Frohike, Langly) die
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Go to the Marcel Theroux home page | skip to content
A Blow to the Heart
The Paperchase
A Stranger in the Earth
Translator’s afterword
Far North — an introduction
Thoughts on Short Fiction
The book that…
Scything in Suburbia
The seed of Far North was planted during a trip I made to Ukraine in December 2000. At that time, I was writing and presenting a number of programmes about the former Soviet Union for British television. During that period, I visited northern Siberia four times, travelling deep into the Russian arctic by plane and reindeer sleigh, reported from the bombed out ruins of the Chechen capital Grozny, interviewed the then President of Azerbaijan, and talked to victims of state repression in Uzbekistan.
It never occurred to me then that the things I had seen might be material for a novel. Apart from anything, it was hard to imagine what united the refugees and the reindeer herders, the oil-rich strongmen of the Caspian, and the cowed and bereaved people I met in the Fergana Valley — apart from the geographical accident of sharing what had once been the territory of the Russian Empire.
Then in December 2000, I met a woman living with her elderly mother in one of the abandoned settlements inside the 30 kilometer exclusion zone around Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. She was one of the so-called “self-settlers” — people who have ignored the ban on residing within the zone to return to their former homes and live, as they did before the accident, by farming a small-holding.
Her name was Galina Petrovna. She was in her late fifties, had buried her husband — an alcoholic — kept a cow, chickens, and raised cabbages on the tainted land of the exclusion zone. She earned a little money labouring at the experimental farm inside the zone where the effects of radiation on animals and crops were being studied.
She was very friendly, teased me with salted mushrooms that she knew I would be too faint-hearted to eat, and gave me some of her powerful home-brewed spirit. Despite my imploring her to speak Russian to me, she kept slipping into a regional dialect which I couldn’t follow.
Apart from the bizarre location of her small wooden house and its fields, there was little in her life to set it apart from that lived by many people in rural areas of developing countries. I suppose I saw her existence as an image of how my great-grandmother might have lived had she stayed in rural Italy rather than emigrating to the United States. Galina seemed to me to embody an aspect of my cultural past. There was a lot to admire in her doughtiness, her practicality, her resourcefulness, self reliance, and her total lack of self-pity. And of course, there was a dose of condescension in my thinking these things about her: the driver in his new car tooting his horn and waving as he passes a horse-drawn cart.
In 2004 I made a feature-length documentary for British television about climate change. In the course of filming it, I travelled to Alaska, Calcutta, glaciers in the Swiss Alps, and returned to Chernobyl and its exclusion zone to consider whether nuclear power might be one solution to the problem of our dependence on carbon-emitting fuels. I was also lucky enough to interview James Lovelock, a British scientist who has done much to shape our thinking about the Earth, its environment, and humanity’s relationship to it. He is the originator of the so-called Gaia hypothesis, which posits that the Earth functions as a single, self-regulating organism. He has warned repeatedly that humanity’s appetite for oil and coal has brought us to the brink of catastrophic and irreversible climate change.
He said much the same thing when I interviewed him, but his gloomy prophecies were lightened by a mischievous manner and the obvious pleasure he took in the beautiful countryside around his North Devon home. What he said then also made me think that the science of climate change — the ice cores and the graphs of carbon concentration, mystifying talk of clathrates, and thermohaline conveyors — obscured simpler insights about our utter dependency on the planet for our wellbeing, and the truth that underlying the whole course of human evolution is a basic struggle for food and shelter.
I was struck in particular by Lovelock’s observation that the very sophistication of the life we have grown used to renders it susceptible to upheaval. Very few of us have any grasp of the technology that makes our lives easier and more productive than the lives of our ancestors.
It’s clear that as civilization advances, certain kinds of knowledge become obsolete. The farrier’s son puts on a tie and gets a job in a bank, or at a call centre, or as a tour guide. At the same time, the wide knowledge and physical competence that was characteristic of his forebears is replaced by specialization. This is the price of progress.
It’s hard not to feel that many of us have lost a once instinctive relationship with fundamental natural processes. We have come to accept the extraordinary unhesitatingly, and to give ourselves too much credit for the pure accident of our birth at this historical moment, when centuries of technological expansion, of investment, and sacrifice — and the profligate use of the planet’s wealth — have allowed us to live blindly, without feeling the cold, or the heat, or understanding the engines in our cars, the microprocessors in our phones, or the food in our refrigerators.
Returning to Chernobyl in 2004 I began to wonder if I had got things the wrong way round. Galina might be ignorant of the benefits of the world-wide web, mobile telephony, and sushi restaurants, but in a reduced world, a world of hardship brought on by famine, or disease, or war, or the kind of industrial accident that had happened in Chernobyl, or the upheaval envisaged in the direst of Lovelock’s predictions, my specialized kinds of knowledge would be of very limited value, while the ability to recognize edible mushrooms, grow cabbages, or preserve food, would be precisely what was needed to survive. And since women are naturally more long-lived than men, it struck me that the endgame of human existence on this planet might resemble life in the Exclusion Zone — wildlife reinvigorated by human absence, a woman with no heirs, past childbearing age, growing food on poisoned land.
The speculative books and films I grew up with tended to assume that the passing of time would only enhance our scientific expertise. I suspect this is an assumption peculiar to our epoch. For a thousand years after the fall of Rome, the cultural and technological highwater mark of human achievement was considered to be behind us. I wondered if our descendants might look back on us with the same combination of awe and mystification that a mediaeval goatherd would have felt among Roman ruins, or that the self-settlers might feel in Pripyat, the post-nuclear Pompeii, among the ghostly relics of Soviet power.
I thought too about Westerns, where stories about lawmen and outlaws, cowboys and Indians, are also allegories about the coming of civilization to a wild and lawless land. And I wondered if it was possible to conceive of a Western that took place where civilization was unravelling.
And I began travelling into a world where Galina’s life was a glimpse not of my ancestor’s past, but my children’s future. And that is how this book began.
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DP World Sokhna
A gateway to the world
A key part of DP World’s international network, DP World Sokhna is strategically located on the coast of the Egyptian Red Sea to facilitate the import, export and transport of goods to Cairo, the hinterland and beyond
Situated just below the southern entrance to the Suez Canal and at the heart of the vitally important East-West trade route, Sokhna Port is positioned to handle cargo that is transiting through one of the world’s busiest commercial waterways. Little more than 120 kilometres from Cairo, the port is easily reached by a modern, six-lane highway, while well-established road and rail links make it perfectly placed to reach the city’s 18 million consumers.
Operations at the port actually commenced in 2002, but it was in 2008 that Sokhna Port joined the DP World family, with it taking over the operation, development and management of the port. DP World is the leading provider of worldwide end-to-end supply chain solutions, enabling the flow of trade around the globe. It does so by delivering its services through an interconnected network of 128 business units in 60 countries, across six continents.
In 2010, DP World signed an agreement with the Egyptian Government to commence work on a second basin – Basin 2 – within the port area, with the aim of doubling its capacity. A year later, there were expansion and development plans to increase Basin 1’s capacity to one million TEU’s per year, while in 2017, DP World announced plans to invest $552 million into Basin 2 for its own expansion. As we look at Sokhna Port today – in December 2020 – it comprises of three basins, with a total holding capacity of 1.75 million TEU, and has the unique capability to handle all manner of solid and liquid shipments. A fully-fledged operation, consisting of container, bulk and general cargo functions, along with RO-RO, passenger and liquid operations, the port also utilizes the latest in IT and other means of communication to direct shipments in the most efficient way possible.
“Our dedicated, diverse and professional team of more than 1000 employees at DP World Sokhna have proven their collective commitment in delivering unrivalled value to our customers and partners, thus helping the port become one of the largest and most efficient on the Red Sea, and a main gateway for trade in Egypt,” states Chief Executive Officer, Ajayy Kumar Singh. “Our focus on meeting the needs of our customers has been a driving force behind our success, and we are constantly striving to improve our levels of service. It is our team’s combined experience and commitment to quality which means we are able to always deliver value to our customers.”
The port’s quay consists of two diaphragm walls connected by underground tie-rods and covered with a 35-meter-wide concrete apron. The waterside wall extends to a depth of 29 meters, and the land-side wall to 19 meters. On the quay, a crane rail track has been constructed with a gauge of 100 feet (30.4 meters). The crane rails on the quay are supported by the diaphragm walls and are designed for loads up to 55 tons per meter length. The concrete apron deck, meanwhile, is designed for loads of ten tons per square meter. The width of the access channel is 350 meters, which is sufficient for double-lane navigation, while the harbor basin has a depth of 17 meters, sufficient for container vessels exceeding 16,000 TEU and bulk carries of up to 175,000 DWT.
“DP World Sokhna, is the only deep sea port on the Egyptian Red Sea coast,” Ajayy continues. “This makes it ideally located for handling growing trade with the Far East, Red Sea, Middle East and Africa. With no Suez Canal fee charged on cargo moving to/from east of Suez, Sokhna is the closest and most cost-efficient port to Cairo. DP World Sokhna is also a free zone, for which no tax is applicable.”
Looking at the port’s more recent history, 2019 in particular was an important year. It was during this time, for instance, that the aforementioned $552 million investment in Basin 2 really came into focus. “This project includes a 1.3-kilometre-long quay and a 350,000-square meter container yard,” Ajayy details. “The project will complement the existing Basin 1 with 945,000 TEUs of capacity, and Basin 3, which is a liquid bulk station spanning 400-square meters. Once Basin 2 is commissioned, DP World Sokhna will become the only port in Egypt capable of handling the largest container ships in the world. Our expansion into Basin 2 will enable us to facilitate even greater volumes, which supports our commitment to boost Egypt’s economic growth further, and cement DP World Sokhna’s position as a major gateway for the country’s trade.”
In December 2019, DP World Sokhna also entered into a trilateral partnership with the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), and the China Ocean Shipping Company Ltd (COSCO), to serve as the hub for all construction material imports needed to build the central business and financial district of Egypt’s New Administrative Capital. CSCEC will benefit from Sokhna Port’s proximity to the new capital and its advanced road and rail links. Moreover, DP World Sokhna is the closest container port to Cairo and is located within the 90-square kilometer North West Suez Economic Zone.
This year (2020), DP World Sokhna has implemented several innovative changes to its infrastructure. These have included the installation of Smart Gates and a new terminal operating system to enhance operational efficiency. Other highlights have included the launch of a new direct shipping route connecting the Jebel Ali Port in Dubai with Sokhna and the Jeddah Islamic Port in Saudi Arabia. This trade lane has grown to become quite successful and is especially well-positioned to leverage regional trade between these three countries. A new service by CMA-CGM, which has also recently been launched, now connects Sokhna to East Africa, and is a potential market and game-changer.
Developments in and around the port have been taking place whilst in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite this, the port has maintained its operations to keep trade flowing, while taking all the necessary measures and steps to ensure the health and safety of staff and customers. “We activated our Business Continuity Plan and immediately ensured that we were following all of the processes and procedures that are in line with the recommendations and instructions of the Egyptian Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization,” Ajayy explains. “These include the regular testing of staff, temperature checks, sharing information and creating awareness of preventive measures and hygiene, and implementing social distancing. The terminal and all equipment is regularly cleaned and sanitized, and all staff provided with masks, sanitizers and gloves as mandatory personal protective equipment (PPE). We also encouraged our white-collar staff to work from home, including staff with underlying conditions, those above the age of 55, and women with children below 12 years of age. We also went ahead and outsourced additional operators to handle any eventuality. By doing all of the above, we have been successful in managing our business without any interruption.”
As part of DP World Sokhna’s response to Covid-19, it has also been engaging with, and supporting, the wider community, while also providing essential facilities and equipment. Beneficiaries of its support have included the Al Sabah Hospital, local ambulance services, the Al Salam Library, the Usama Bin Zaid school in Suez, and the Khaled Ibn Al-Waleed School for Disabled Children.
As it looks towards 2021, DP World Sokhna’s plans involving continuing to place a strong focus on providing its customers with the right solutions to meet their respective needs, while also delivering increased operational efficiency and further embracing the use of digital technology. It is also turning its attention to growing in-land, and in the next three-to-five years, it intends to achieve its aim of being internationally recognized as a complete supply chain solution company.
Making a final comment, Ajayy feels it is important to make one further comment on the success of DP World Sokhna. “We would not have been able to accomplish what we have done without the support and cooperation of our employees, customers, partners, suppliers, and the Egyptian Government. For that, we extend our heartfelt thanks to them all!”
www.dpworldsokhna.com
Services: One of Egypt’s leading ports, strategically located on East-West trade route
Tags: transportation, DP World Sokhna
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© Mrs Logic
The City of Sunderland is a local government district of Tyne and Wear, in North East England, with the status of a City status in the United Kingdom and metropolitan borough. It is named after its largest settlement, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, but covers a far larger area which includes the towns of Hetton-le-Hole, Houghton-le-Spring, Washington, Tyne and Wear, and a range of suburban villages
The district was formed in 1974 as the Metropolitan Borough of Sunderland as part of the provisions of the Local Government Act 1972 and is an Amalgamation (politics) of four former local government districts of County Durham. It was granted city status in 1992, the 40th anniversary of the Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom accession. The city had a population of 280,807 at the time of the 2001 census, with the majority of the population (177,739) residing in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear.
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Kathryn Edwards
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, College of Arts and Sciences
Personal page University of South Carolina
Living with Ghosts: The Dead in European Society from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment
The research project analyzes changing beliefs about and practices concerning ghosts and their activities in late medieval and early modern Europe (c.1300-1750). Widely held throughout Europe, belief in ghosts endured and even strengthened despite intellectual, cultural, and social changes in that period that might have relegated it to an obscure folkloric niche. By evaluating the ongoing relationships between the living and the revenant dead and the assumptions on which this belief was founded, Living with Ghosts interprets the spiritual and structural foundations of such interactions. Ghosts were both uncanny and mundane, and the tensions they caused reflected similar epistemological and societal tensions in European culture.
By using ghosts as a specific lens to analyze transformations and continuities in late medieval and early modern culture, this book contributes to and in some cases revises interpretations that would be impossible to address in a less focused monograph or in one devoted to a specific place or smaller chronological framework. Such topics include the socio-cultural changes in Europe after the “crises” of the fourteenth century (such as the Black Death), the effects on European society of the emphasis on death, intercession and Purgatory in late medieval Christianity, the distinctions between Reformation confessions, the rise of nationalized intellectual cultures, the tensions between more folkloric piety and the spirituality of religious and secular reformers, and the relationship between religion and rationality in the Enlightenments. The perpetuation of belief in ghosts and its integration into “rationalist” epistemologies also calls into question fundamental modern academic assumptions about the construct “modernity” and its dissemination. As late medieval and Reformation beliefs about ghosts show, apparitions inspired both hope and happiness, revulsion and terror. That mixture remained at the heart of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century responses to ghosts. The power and durability of belief in the wandering dead and the ways that ghosts remained living members of European society thus contributes to recent reassessments of the Enlightenment and the theological disputes and religious repression against which it was supposedly reacting. It suggests that we would be well served to see such paradigm shifts as gradual processes; in the case of ghosts, it is a process that continues.
Kathryn Edwards earned a PhD in History at the University of California, Berkeley. She is Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, College of Arts and Sciences. She teaches Renaissance and Reformation European history (c. 1400-1700), with special interests in the history of frontiers, religion, families, and folklore.
Visitations: The Haunting of an Early Modern Town (microhistory based on the manuscript translated for Leonarde’s Ghost) (forthcoming).
''And Blood Rained from the Sky’: Creating a Burgundian Identity after the Fall of Burgundy', in Ocker et al. (eds), Defining and Redefining Early Modern History: Old Paradigms and New Directions, Brill, Boston / Leiden, 2007, pp. 344-357.
Families and Frontiers: Recreating Communities and Boundaries in the Early Modern Burgundies, Brill, Boston / Leiden, 2002.
Werewolves, Witches, and Wandering Spirits: Folklore and Traditional Belief in Early Modern Europe, editor, contributor, and translator of 2 articles (Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies), Truman State University Press, Kirksville, 2002.
Karen Hagemann
Xavier Rousseaux
Michael Sappol
Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS)
Chiara Bonfiglioli
Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM)
Raf Vanderstraeten
discipline Sociology
Alexander Knysh
discipline Islamic studies
Pawel Leszkowicz
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Comley Connection on and off the Court
Max Dutton
For anyone who’s ever been to a Sterling College basketball game, you’ve probably heard the last name Comley over the loudspeaker. Multiple times.
The Comley family has a rich legacy of basketball in Sterling that continues to grow each year. Junior guard Kylah Comley is the returning KCAC Player of the Year for the women’s team, and sophomore guard Kenan Comley is one of the top returning members of the men’s team.
Both siblings grew up playing with each other, so getting to play at the same college has been fun for both of them.
“It’s nice because I still get to watch all of her games. I have always loved supporting her and watching her play,” Kenan said.
Kylah agrees with him: “Playing at the same college is incredibly special. We grew up playing basketball together, so to share this moment of our lives together is something I’ll remember forever.”
The Comley basketball bond goes far beyond just the siblings. Kenan and Kylah’s father, Chad Comley was part of the first-ever KCAC Championship team in Sterling College history. The 1992-1993 team finished the season 18-11. Chad was a unanimous first-team All-KCAC selection as well.
“Basketball is a way for my family to spend time together. We grew up in the gym as my dad coached us and continued until now,” Kylah said.
“It’s something the whole family can bond over and something we have been around for a long time. We have just been around each other so much heading to games or even working out together,” Kenan said.
Getting to watch each other play isn’t just a blessing for the two siblings. Their younger sister, Kinzie, also has a good time watching her brother and sister play.
“It has been a privilege for me to watch my siblings work hard and grow athletes on the court and people off of the court,” Kinzie said.
When the Comley family goes to workout in the gym, it can be interesting.
“Everyone is very competitive but supportive at the same time. Everyone is willing to help each other get better;” said Kinzie.
“Growing up, Kenan and I played pick up games all the time. We were constantly pushing each other to get better. Not going to lie, we’ve had our fair share of fights, but we love each other no matter what. Kenan usually beats me. I wish I could tell you differently, but he’s crazy good,” Kylah said.
“We played some pick-up games, and still do. In the beginning, she would beat me, but once I got a little stronger I started to beat her. I beat her now but every once in a while if she’s really feeling it, she can beat me,” Kenan said.
Both brother and sister rep the number three for their teams, which has been a family number for a long time, but could also represent their lethalness from behind the arc. Kylah has led the women’s team in three-point percentage since her freshman year and continues to follow that trajectory. Although, she is still jealous of Kenan’s shot.
“I wish I could shoot threes like him, his shot is pure,” said Kylah.
Kenan also admires his sister’s game.
“My favorite part of Kylah’s game is her pull-up jump shot. I have seen how much she has worked on it, and then to watch her to it in a game is awesome,” said Kenan.
As a spectator, you might think basketball is everything to the Comley family, but that’s wrong. What’s even more important is how they act off the court.
“Kylah and I have both gotten to the point where basketball isn’t everything. We know we have a much bigger purpose than just playing basketball, and that’s something we bond over,” Kenan said.
People recognize their off the court actions very often.
“I have always looked up to Kylah. She has something that a lot of other people don’t have. She is a very good leader. She is always willing to do what’s best for all of her teammates on the court, and off the court, she plays that same leadership role. She always stands up for what is right, and she’s very strong in her faith,” said Kinzie.
Kylah’s former high school coach Jill Rowland had very high praise for her as well.
“Kylah is a tremendous player. I have never coached anyone that has been a better overall leader. I had as many conversations with her on leadership and team concepts as I did on the game itself,” Rowland said. “She wanted those around her to improve and excel as much as she wanted to herself. She has worked hard for her success and has had a willingness to help coach and encourage kids that have looked up to her.”
Kylah is the all-time leading scorer in Sterling High School history with 1,485 points scored in her career. During her high school career, she led the Bears to two state tournament appearances.
Kenan’s former high school coach Derek Schneider also had good things to say about him.
“Kenan carries himself with confidence! He’s fierce. My favorite moment coaching him was when he took over the championship game of the 2018 Sterling Invitational. He made big plays in a big game,” Schneider said.
Both siblings continue to have that fierce mentality in their time at Sterling College. Whether it be on or off the court, the ‘Comley Connection’ remains strong!
Tags: basketball, featured
COVID-19 felt in Arizona and New Mexico
Covid-19:From a Southerner Perspective- “Paying Off a Debt Owed to My Grandmother”
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Economic | well-being Assessment
The Prosperous Wales Well-being Goal contained within the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 strives for Wales to attain:
NPT residents interpret economic wellbeing as income and its relationship to their standard of living.
Economic well-being can be broken down into 5 sub-themes:
In NPT historically the economy has been heavily influenced by steel production and other industrial activities. A decrease in traditional manufacturing jobs is projected, however at a lower rate than previous trends.
The economic impact of large employers such as Tata Steel cannot be underestimated in maintaining the income levels and therefore economic well-being of a significant percentage of the population of NPT.
Gross value added (GVA) measures the contribution to an economy of an individual producer, industry, sector or region. NPT’s GVA is below that of the Welsh regional average which indicates that economic investment is not as strong in NPT as Wales as a whole. It is pleasing to note however that NPT’s GVA is projected to increase consistently until 2030.
In 2016, the average gross weekly pay for full-time workers for residents of NPT was £480.80, which is influenced by the income generation from Tata Steel and associated industries, does not compare favourably with the Wales average of £498.30. In NPT, there is a marked difference between the earnings of male workers compared to female workers. Although this seems to be the case across Wales the difference between the average male and female full-time weekly pay is greater in NPT than across Wales as a whole.
However, when considering earning by place of residence, it is clear that a large number of high earners are working within NPT, but residing outside of the County boundary. This has a detrimental effect on income generation for businesses within the County Borough.
Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation?
There are 91 Lower Level Super Output Areas (LLSOA’s) in NPT and 1,896 across Wales. The tables below show the number in NPT in the most and least deprived 10% in Wales in 2005, 2008, 2011 and 2014, and the average rank across Wales of all NPT LLSOA’s under each measure for each year.
NPT’s deprivation index is improving which suggests that the county is getting less deprived in relation to Wales. The number of LLSOA’s in the most deprived 10% is decreasing.
In the 2014 Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation, NPT had the highest proportion of Lower Super Output Areas in the most deprived 50% in Wales (71.4%). As identified under the Social pillar, there is a very strong link between deprivation and life expectancy.
In 2015, between 24.5%-25.5% of households in NPT were in fuel poverty.
http://gov.wales/docs/caecd/research/2016/160711-production-estimated-levels-fuel-poverty-wales-2012-2016-en.pdf
There are major investment schemes underway in the town centres e.g. over £30m in the Vibrant and Viable Places Programme.
In the county borough 5.5% of households with dependent children have no adults in employment. This is higher than the Welsh average of 4.6% of households (Census, 2011).
The challenges of the geography have created problems with access between rural and urban areas which affects the ability of some people from some communities to access employment opportunities. People from these parts of the County Borough, generally the valley regions, are much more likely to be unemployed or working in low paid or part time jobs than in other areas.
The range of occupations within NPT displays that those employed as managers and directors, professional, associate professional and technical occupations falls below the Welsh and United Kingdom average whilst the process plant and machine operatives sector is representative of the manufacturing base within the County Borough and higher than the Wales average.
The percentage of workless households in NPT (25.9%) is considerably above that of the national average for Wales (18.3%) however the percentage of working age people who are claiming Job Seeker’s Allowance is the same as the Welsh percentage.
The percentage of children that live in a workless household is substantially above that of Wales and GB as a whole which may have a long term impact on the economic well-being of the present and future generations of NPT residents.
People who have been out of work for a long time may not feel very confident or they may feel there is nothing they can or want to do, so it is easier to stay claiming benefits. For people with children, the cost of childcare can prevent them from taking up work.
NPT suffers from more Year 13 school leavers not in full time employment, full time education or work based training than is representative of Wales as a whole. This trend is replicated at the other end of the employment spectrum.
In order to stimulate growth in the economy a wider mix of uses will be permitted in the future on allocated sites and within the existing employment areas. The Port Talbot Waterfront Enterprise Zone has been established and offers a range of economic, labour force and locality benefits to businesses.
A high incidence of Small and Medium enterprises exists in the County Borough and as such the provision of business and management skills training to support entrepreneurship is being encouraged and provided locally.
The local business units provided by NPT are all occupied and can be recognised as a successful method of encouraging and supporting new industry within the County Borough.
Retail across the county has an established hierarchy of town centres, district centres and local centres:
Neath and Port Talbot Town Centres, Harbour side and Glynneath have been allocated for retail development and in order to reinvigorate the valley areas a more flexible approach to applications for shops will be adopted. It is noteworthy, however that NPT residents expressed their desire for quirky and unique shops as shopping centres tend to be the same everywhere.
The population of NPT (aged 16-64) is expected to decrease by 5.7% by 2030 resulting in an even greater skills gap within the County Borough and the population aged over 65 is expected to increase by 24.8% by 2030. This will result in greater economic dependency of this population group, greater demand on health and care requirements and a strain on specific employment areas such as the Health Sector.
There is a link between qualifications, employment opportunities, income generation and ultimately economic and social well-being.
The attendance of primary age pupils decreased from 94.8% in 2014-2015 to 94.5% in 2015-2016.
Secondary age attendance in 2015-2016 was 93.6%, the same as the previous year. Despite this, the ranking across Wales fell from 15th to 18th as the Wales average increased by 0.3% to 94.2%.
The number of permanent exclusions across NPT increased to 20 from 10 in 2014-2015, 19 of which were in secondary schools. NPT continued to have one of the highest rates of permanent exclusion in Wales.
The number of fixed exclusions increased from 703 to 846 (20%) in 2015-2016 with days lost rising by 14% to 1,823.
NPT’s Level 1 (5 GCSE A*-G) performance in 2016 fell slightly from 96% to 95%.
A*-C results for all A level entries in 2016 improved from 73.5% to 74.9% with A*A grades rising by 4.1% to 19.9% although this is below the national average of 22.7%.
NPT falls below the Wales and UK percentages for the full range of National Vocational qualifications and 15.5% of the population have no qualifications.
The percentage of Year 11 school leavers known not to be in education, employment or training (NEET) fell significantly in NPT between 2007 and 2012. Although it did rise again in 2013, it has gradually fallen each year but is still above the all Wales figure of 2.8%.
The growth of Apprenticeship schemes, including the Higher Apprenticeship, may go some way towards improving access to training and adult education as well as closing the qualifications and skills gap between NPT and the rest of Wales.
When compared nationally NPT had the 21st highest free school meal (FSM) entitlement out of 22 Welsh authorities during 2016. This entitlement is often taken as a measure of the socio-economic conditions of a school’s population. It should be noted however that whilst there is a link between FSM entitlement and performance, many other factors affect pupil performance (source: Neath Port Talbot CBC Annual Report on Pupil Performance, 2015/16).
INFRASTRUCTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
The UK government is funding the upgrade of the Swansea-London mainline, which should assist in greater and quicker movement of individuals into, out from and within the County Borough, resulting in opening up new employment opportunities for residents.
It has been identified that better transport links need to be provided to the valley areas for employment opportunities and to encourage people to visit these facilities and services, public transport is very limited during the evening and early mornings which limits people accessing employment, education, health and leisure facilities.
Investment has been provided in recent years to improve and increase the provision of dedicated walking and cycling routes including two sections of the Wales Coastal Path, totalling over 50km in length and the establishment of the Cognation Mountain Bike trails and Great Dragon Ride Route. The development of commuter cycle networks will also improve access across Neath Port Talbot.
Technology and innovation could provide long-term catalysts for economic growth and it is estimated that by 2020 all NPT citizens will have access to superfast broadband and 50% of citizens and businesses having access to ultrafast broadband.
Council Premises
Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council manages approximately 220 units in eleven different locations. Ranging from 150 sq. ft. to 5,000 sq. ft., units are suitable for both new and existing businesses, as well as some specifically designed for young people in business.
Private Premises
There are also a wide range of privately owned industrial premises and land throughout NPT, ranging from 300 sq.ft. to over 50,000 sq.ft. For example:
Baglan Energy Park forms the first stage of Baglan Bay, the largest single development site in the UK totalling 500 hectares. The vision for the area is the phased development of business and manufacturing parks on a low-density quality landscape.
Land/Development Opportunities
There is a good selection of new development sites and land opportunities offering excellent facilities and access available within NPT. Key sites include:
This award winning business park, already home to GE Energy, Intertissue Paper Mill and Baglan Bay Innovation Centre provides a quality environment.
Harbour Way
The £110 million road is a strategic highway improvement that will assist the regeneration of Port Talbot Industrial estate and the docks area and improve access to the seafront and Baglan Energy Park. The Port Talbot’s Harbour side project involves regenerating more than 100 acres of the town’s former docks quarter. It will transform the area into a new knowledge focused business hub, creating hundreds of skilled jobs.
Aberavon Seafront
A three mile stretch of sandy beach with potential for leisure, commercial and mixed development opportunities.
Port Talbot Deepwater Harbour
Potential for development on 30 hectares of land alongside the harbour, an area with rail connections and close to M4 motorway.
Coed Darcy
Coed Darcy urban village is a £1.2 billion, 400 hectare development located at the site of the old BP Llandarcy oil refinery. The development includes four schools, health and sports facilities, a community centre and shops as well as some 4,000 homes.
Glynneath A465
Approximately 34 acres of land available for commercial, industrial and mixed use development. Located on the Heads of the Valley road, the area provides excellent links to the Midlands.
Fabian Way Gateway
Situated on the main route into Swansea Bay from the M4 motorway. This 4 hectares site provides both commercial and mixed development usage opportunities. The first company to locate on the site is global retailer Amazon, in an 800,000 sq.ft purpose designed distribution centre on 33 acres.
Tourism in NPT is a growing industry which provides a vital and valid contribution to the local economy with annual increases in tourists. In 2015 alone there were 1.53 million visitors to the area contributing £110.13 million to the local economy. The tourism industry also provides more than 1,583 jobs within the locality. Significant investment has taken place in recent years strengthening the infrastructure and improving facilities.
Tourism within NPT is heavily linked to the natural environment and the cultural strengths of the County and therefore, protecting and developing environmental well-being, is key to improving the economic well-being of the region.
Specific investment has been made in mountain biking trails and facilities in Afan Forest Park and this is now one of the best established areas for mountain biking within the UK. In particular, investment through the Cognation Mountain Bike Trails South Wales project has further strengthened the mountain biking product across the region, creating one of the most exciting mountain biking destinations in the world.
WHAT YOU TOLD US ABOUT ECONOMIC WELL-BEING IN NPT…
The meaning of economic well-being Survey Respondents in NPT
Factors that contribute to economic well-being Survey Respondents in NPT
Of concern to individual’s mental health, one in ten survey respondents mentioned ‘stress’ or ‘worry’ when talking about economic well-being, suggesting that the two may be linked. Indeed, individuals at the workshop discussed about debt / money worries as being an aspect of economic / financial well-being.
The two most important factors that contributed toward achieving economic well-being were having a job and a good standard of living. Slightly more than half of the sample (51 per cent) mentioned ‘job’ – which rose to two thirds of the sample (66 per cent) when related words were included. And a quarter (26 per cent) mentioned ‘standard of living’.
When asked for two things that would improve their economic well-being, a third of survey respondents (36 per cent) said a pay increase. Other comments referred to reductions in living costs for example:
“Affordable living. Less bills to pay” (survey respondent)
For those without a job, economic well-being was seen as hard to achieve, because of a disability, or through having to care for children. Childcare costs were seen to neutralise any increases in income that might be achieved through choosing employment over claiming benefits.
HOW WILL ECONOMIC WELL-BEING BE AFFECTED BY FUTURE TRENDS?
The aging population will bring employment opportunities, particularly in the health and social care sector however there will be a significant economic cost and effect on health and social service provision.
Unemployment should continue to fall however it is unlikely that this rate will fall in line with the Welsh average. The decrease in manufacturing employment and industries is expected to continue whilst new developments such as the Swansea University Science and Innovation Campus and redevelopment of Baglan Bay could help to stimulate spin off activity in the area.
The Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon is a renewable energy project will generate significant investment in leisure and tourism industries in addition to opportunities in the construction sector.
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As America became laced with railroads in the latter half of the 19th century, it soon became apparent that safety warning signs and signals should be set up to protect people who wanted to cross the tracks.
Initially, a variety of signs were posted at crossings, and in time, watchmen were stationed at the busier crossings to warn of approaching trains.
The first U.S. patent given for a railroad crossing gate dates back to August 27, 1867, and was awarded to J. Nason and J. Wilson of Boston Massachusetts.
At that time, crossing gates were hand-operated by means of a crank mechanism. The gates were lowered and raised by means of cables or chains running through underground piping from the gatekeeper's crank base to each individual gate at the crossing. Generally, each crossing had four separate gates. Due to the extreme length and great weight of the wooden gates, they had to be counterbalanced by very heavy cast-iron weights at their bases. Snow or rain could cause the wooden gates to become even heavier than they normally would be. Additional weight could be added to the massive counterweights as needed by the gatekeeper, who would place cast-iron disks, each weighing approximately 20 – 30 pounds apiece. As a train approached, the gatekeeper would crank the gates, and these would remain down until the train passed safely.
The classic wooden crossing gates displayed at the Whippany Railway Museum were manufactured by the Railway Safety Gate Company of Pawtucket, RI in the early 1900's. They were originally in use at the West Side Avenue crossing on the former Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) line to Exchange Place in Jersey City, NJ. The tracks were also used by PRR subsidiary, Hudson & Manhattan RR (later to become Port Authority Trans - Hudson or PATH). When the crossing was permanently closed on April 30, 1967, the venerable gates, bases, counterweights and watchman's crank base were acquired by the Morris County Central RR (a steam-powered excursion line operating out of Whippany, NJ in the 1960's). The gates were first set up for display at Whippany in 1968. Since that time they have been restored several times over the years by Museum volunteers.
Gatekeepers usually had some kind of shelter for the times between trains, and some of these were elevated as either the second story of a structure, or were sometimes perched on a wood or steel structure reached by a ladder. At the Whippany Railway Museum, a replica Pennsylvania Railroad crossing shanty has been erected to give visitors an example of these unique, little buildings.
By the early 20th century, the use of "crossbuck" signs (the boards forming an "X"), were very common. The design formed the basic warning sign still in use today, but vastly improved with automatic warning advances. In the mid-1920s, sign makers began using road reflectors called Cataphote reflectors or “cats eyes” on crossbuck signs to make them more visible to drivers at night. These were used through the mid-1940s, when reflective buttons became common. Eventually, reflective sheeting gained popularity. Today, the material is still used to make street and railroad crossing signs.
Since it wasn't practical to have employees stationed at all railroad crossings, a way was sought to automatically alert the public that a train was approaching.
The first automatic crossing signals were bells mounted atop poles. They were activated when a train entered a circuit where the rails were insulated to confine the electric current to a designated piece of track. The current flowed through the steel wheels and axles of the train, short-circuiting electricity to a relay which needed the power to hold the electrical connection apart that kept the bell off. When the electricity was diverted through the train...(which was a path of lower resistance)...instead of the relay connection, the contacts connected and the bell rang.
The electric bell idea was quickly expanded to include a swinging round sign with a red light hanging from an arm on the signal pole to simulate a flagman waving a red lantern. The "Automatic Flagman" signals were soon dubbed "Wig-Wags". Only a very few Wig-Wags remain in use today in the United States, much beloved by rail enthusiasts for their nostalgic warning. One historic Wig-Wag signal from the early-1930's (formerly in use on the Susquehanna Railroad just West of Butler, NJ) is currently being restored for operation at the Whippany Railway Museum.
Eventually the Wig-Wags gave way to the alternating flashing red lights mounted as part of a cross-buck sign, and often with the crossing gates as well. The first flashing red light signal was installed in New Jersey in 1913.
At the Museum site, a fully-functional 1940's-era Crossing Flasher from the Central Railroad of New Jersey warns visitors of approaching excursion trains. With it's twin flashing red lights, cast-iron crossbucks and warning bell, the signal is a classic example of mid-20th Century grade crossing protection.
The image bellow shows a prototype railroad crossing signal that was built in Grenada, Mississippi in the mid 1930’s at a railroad crossing that was considered especially dangerous. The design attempted to get motorists to stop with a combination of visually dramatic graphics, lights and sound. The words “STOP – DEATH – STOP” were illuminated with neon lights that would flash when a train approached. An arrow indicated the direction of the approaching train. The skull and cross bones was also neon-lit and flashed from red to blue. A more traditional pair of flashing lights was also included. If that was not enough, the signal also featured an ear-splitting air raid siren.
Today the basic designs come in a wide variety of configurations, depending on the complexity of the street crossing and the railroad company. Each one is custom designed to fit a specific need.
Originally, wooden crossing gates protected the entire width of the roadway. But in the later-half of the 20th Century, most crossing gates were re-designed to protect against motor traffic only in the oncoming lanes...covering only half the street, allowing an "escape" from the tracks for motorists who happened to be on the crossing when the signal was activated.
With a terrifying number of motorists increasingly ignoring the crossing gates and winding up being involved in a deadly accident, the use of "four quadrant gates" currently is being implemented around the country to prevent motorists from driving around lowered gates.
In addition to the signals and signs, operating rules require train crews to sound the locomotive horn or whistle a quarter of a mile in advance of each public crossing until they cross the roadway. Modern locomotives are equipped with a triangle of bright headlights, one mounted high and centered, and two on each lower side of the front of the engine. As soon as the horn begins to sound, the lower twin lights are illuminated and flash alternately.
Since physics makes it impossible to stop a moving train in time to avoid striking a motorist or pedestrian on the track by the time the train crew realizes the danger, the public must always take extreme care when approaching railroad tracks. It takes more than half a mile to stop a heavy freight train, even when emergency braking is used.
Signals, signs, lights, whistles and horns are important safety aids, but ultimately it is the motorist's responsibility to determine whether or not it is safe to cross the tracks.
Always remember to STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN !
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van gogh getty museum
32. Bonafoux, Pascal. Watson, Peter. The museum also presents exhibitions on various subjects from 19th-century art history. 1; p. 142 (letter 819), fig. 5; p. 59 (letter 789), fig. 10; p. 78 (letter 799), fig. Getty Images offers exclusive rights-ready and premium royalty-free analog, HD, and 4K video of the highest quality. Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, Van Gogh, exh. Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam), July 1 to September 18, 2005; The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), October 12 to December 31, 2005 2 vols. cat. Vincent van Gogh (Paris: Braun, 1936), unpaginated, pl. 30, ill., entry by Perrin Stein. An Introduction to Art Theory (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. French Flower Painters of the 19th Century: A Dictionary (London: Philip Wilson, 1989), pp. Julien Tanguy (Père), 1825 - 1894 (Paris, France), sold to Octave Mirbeau, 1892. Stein, Susan Alyson, ed. Lettres à son frère Vincent (Amsterdam: N. V. Maatschappij tot verspreiding van goede en goedkoope lectuur, 1932), pp. In Creative Inspiration, Van Gogh's writings h Bekijk deze stockfoto van Een Gogh Museum Amsterdam Nederland. 19, ill. "'Il faut que les yeux soient émus': impressionnisme et symbolisme vers 1891." Paintings by Van Gogh, exh. The St. Louis Art Museum's exhibition of Vincent van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard features nearly 70 paintings and is the only U.S. stop for the works of art. Vincent van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism, exh. 95. Looking at Paintings: A Guide to Technical Terms (Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, with British Museum Press, 1992), pp. Vincent Van Gogh Paintings at the Getty Center, Los Angeles The J. Paul Getty Museum is part of the J. Paul Getty Trust and is the world’s largest cultural organization dedicated to the visual arts. The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition. Faille, J.-B. Monneret, Jean. The museum is open. 1, ill. Gogh, Théo van. Images and other media are excluded. Het aanzienlijke bedrag zal door conservator prenten en tekeningen Fleur Roos Rosa de Carvalho worden gebruikt voor verder onderzoek naar de prentenseries van … 247-50, fig. 111. Het ontvangt ca. Pickvance, Ronald. Vincent van Gogh, Irissen, 1889, J. Paul Getty Museum. 7, 11, 14, 38, 56, 159, ill. Sund, Judy. All Van Gogh books; Van Gogh Museum Guide; Van Gogh Masterpieces; Van Gogh Art; Van Gogh & his letters; Van Gogh Life story; Van Gogh exhibition catalogues; Van Gogh Kids; Van Gogh Painting & Drawing; Van Gogh Museum research; Artists 1850-1920 Vincent van Gogh's Great Period: Arles, St. Rémy and Auvers sur Oise (Amsterdam: "De Spieghel," 1937), p. 203, ill. Faille, J.-B. 21, ill., entry by Roland Dorn. Van Gogh: Exposition internationale de 1937, Groupe I, Classe III, exh. To offer you the best way to enjoy all about the museum and Vincent van Gogh on our website, we always use functional and analytical cookies. Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, and Nienke Bakker, eds. 4944 (December 4, 1937), unpaginated, ill. Scherjon, W., and Jos. 7, 72, 74, 184-85, 190-91, fig. cat. 2, pp. Vincent van Gogh is geboren en getogen in Brabant. 170, ill. Gogh, Vincent van. Repr. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1929), p. 52, no. 6th ed. (310) 443-7000): A beautiful museum in the very nice Westwood Village of Los Angeles, the Armand Hammer Museum has four Van Gogh paintings on display. Van Gogh (Paris: Éditions Pierre Tisné, 1951), pp. de la. The J. Paul Getty Museum announced yesterday that it had acquired ''Irises,'' the painting by Vincent van Gogh that has come to epitomize the extravagance of the booming art market. Pickvance, Ronald. The Essential Vincent van Gogh (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998), pp. 2 vols. Andersen, Wayne. cat. 31; p. 185, under no. Auguste Pellerin, 1852 - 1929 (Paris, France). 246-47, no. L'Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh: Catalogue raisonné. Fénéon, Félix. View the calendar of exhibitions, activities and events. 168, no. Tout van Gogh. We ask for your permission to use cookies to show third-party content, like YouTube videos. The painting has been bought and sold a dozen times, the last being a 1990 purchase by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, Calif., where the artwork remains to the present day. Students practice their speaking skills while describing a landscape scene for a partner to draw. Rev. (Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995), unpaginated, no. cat. Leymarie, Jean. 110-13, ill. Schaffner, Ingrid. L'Époque française de Van Gogh, exh. Vincent van Gogh, exh. (New York: Knoedler Galleries, 1948), unpaginated, no. Schaefer, Scott, et al. In de Van Gogh Museumwinkel en online shop vind je bijzondere producten geïnspireerd op het werk en leven van Vincent van Gogh. November 11, 1987, unpaginated, lot 25, ill. Sotheby's, New York. Shutian, Liu, ed. 4-7, 51, fig. 203, 204-5, ill. Shiff, Richard. 234-36, 367, no. Sotheby's Newsletter (November 1987), p. 3, ill. Halperin, Joan Ungersma. Getty Images offers exclusive rights-ready and premium royalty-free analog, HD, and 4K video of the highest quality. 4 vols. 31, 254, under no. Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853 - 1890) 74.3 × 94.3 cm (29 1/4 × 37 1/8 in.) cat. Getty Custom Prints Getty - Apparel & Accessories Getty - Exclusive Jewelry Getty - Home, Prints & Gifts Getty Kids Getty Stationery & More Van Gogh's Irises Hercules Mosaic Floor Pattern Exhibition Banners View All. 2; p. 125 (letter 813), fig. Sterling, Charles, and Margaretta M. Salinger. These three founding partners possess detailed art-historical and material-technical information on Van Gogh’s work. This vivid tote bag captures one of the J. Paul Getty Museum's most popular paintings, Irises by Vincent van Gogh. Walther, Ingo F. Vincent van Gogh, 1853-1890: vision et réalité (Cologne: Benedikt Taschen, 1989), pp. 118-21, ill. Bumpus, Judith. 58.187. 90, ill., entry by Sylvie Gache-Patin. 4 (Summer 1955), pp. CA 2780. 1691, ill. Leymarie, Jean. 310, 333. Blanc, Jan. Van Gogh: Ni Dieu ni maître (Paris: Citadelles & Mazenod, 2017), pp. Sjraar van Heugten, ed. 24-25 (letter 776), fig. Christie's, London. Vincent van Gogh, 1853-1890. 755, 783, ill. between pp. 287-88, 471, fig. Select from premium Van Gogh Museum of the highest quality. Van Gogh's Progress: Utopia, Modernity, and Late-Nineteenth-Century Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. Sotheby's Art at Auction (1987-1988) (London and New York: Sotheby's Publications, 1988), pp. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986), pp. 608. : Thomson Wadsworth, 2006), p. 469, fig. Download premium images you can't get anywhere else. Highlights from the Hermitage, exh. 171-72, fig. John Whitney Payson, 1940 - 2016 [sold, Sotheby's, New York, November 11, 1987, lot 25, to Alan Bond.]. no. 117. Vincent van Gogh: sämtliche Gemälde. 284-85, fig. 95, ill. "Un Musée d'Art Moderne à New York." 2, Da Arles a Auvers (Milan: Rizzoli, 1971), pp. 2, pp. From Goya to Wyeth: The Joan Whitney Payson Collection, exh. "Van Goghs in Japan-The Economics behind the Art Boom." Open Content images tend to be large in file-size. Rewald, John. "Un nouveau musée dans le Maine." French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It has locations at the Getty Center, a renowned Richard Meier structure high in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, and at the Getty Villa in Malibu. A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape, exh. Select from premium Van Gogh Museum of the highest quality. Vincent Van Gogh's self-portrait Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images in Modern Art in Paris. Titian. The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa.. 4 (November-December 1990), p. 78. Henriette Beese and Wolfgang Bensch, trans. Van Gogh (London: Phaidon, 2002), pp. All in a Lifetime: A Personal Memoir (New York: John L. Loeb, 1996), p. 217. cat. 2, 3, fig. Nuenen is een 'openluchtmuseum' met maar liefst 21 gebouwen en plekken in het landschap die herinneren aan Van Gogh. 11, ill. Trends in European Painting, 1880-1930, exh. 49, 52, 63-64, ill. Sweetman, David. La Vogue (September 1889). The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh. In these challenging times, let's keep connected through the art of Vincent van Gogh. 14. 72-73, no. Calendar. Gardens in Art. 140. Bernard, Bruce. Alan Bond (Perth, Australia), returned to Sotheby's (New York), 1990. 41, ill. Huyghe, René. ed. Jacques Seligmann et Fils (Paris, France; New York, New York), sold to M. Knoedler & Co., possibly 1945/1946. The Impressionists Revealed: Masterpieces from Private Collections (Auckland: David Bateman, 1992), pp. Freeland, Cynthia. 1,3 miljoen bezoekers per jaar en is daarmee een van … 9, Salons of the "Indépendants," 1884-1891 (New York and London: Garland, 1981)]. Vincent van Gogh au Salon des Indépendants en 1888, 1889, 1890 et 1891; ou, la Passion selon Vincent (Paris: Société des Artistes Indépendants, 1990), pp. Van Gogh (London: Dorling Kindersley, 1992), pp. Updates and additions stemming from research and imaging activities are ongoing, with new content added each week. (Tokyo: Asahi National Broadcasting Co.; Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1993), pp. L'Impressionnisme et le paysage français, exh. Faille, J.-B. 18; p. 30 (letter 777), fig. Faille, J.-B. Doherty, Tiarna, and Anne T. Woollett. There, in the last year before his death, he created almost 130 paintings. Voor de Salon des Indépendants van 1889 koos Vincent twee werken met meer kleurcontrast. The J. Paul Getty Museum and Its Collections: A Museum for the New Century (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1997), pp. 36, ill., entry by Perrin Stein. Les Beaux Arts: bulletin du Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, special no., L'Impressionnisme (1935), p. 26, ill. Bernard, Charles, ed. 1691, ill. Daulte, François, et al., eds. This repository is populated with tens of thousands of assets and should be your first stop for asset selection. Michel, et al Museum of Art in Brabant [... ] Préface de Charles (! Images the Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 22, no large in file-size, advertising and corporate uses display. Ill. Daulte, François, et al 1 ; p. 78 ( 777... Under lot 12, ill. Bussy, Diana de, et al 351, ill., entry by Michael.... 190-91, fig, 1853 - 1890 ) 74.3 × 94.3 cm und Künstler 27 ( March ). Getogen in Brabant A. Lahure, 1889 ), pp p. 21, no Frank... 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Home > English > Latin America and the Caribbean > BRASIL-UNITED STATES - As Bolsonaro and Trump Target the Amazon, Indigenous (...)
BRASIL-UNITED STATES - As Bolsonaro and Trump Target the Amazon, Indigenous Peoples Seek to Unite to Defend the Earth
Gabriel Leao, Americas Program
Wednesday 24 April 2019, posted by Claudia Casal
10 de Abril de 2019 - Americas Program - In March, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro visited U.S President Donald Trump to discuss deepening relations between their countries. Both leaders shareconservative views, making for plenty of back-slapping.They also share a commitment to dismantling environmental protections.
In their joint statement, the two presidents agreed to “catalyze investment in the Amazon region”. More recently, Bolsonaro revealed that he proposed to Trump a joint development program for to exploit the resources in the Brazilian Amazon. He reportedly proposed to create partnerships with his U.S. counterpart to develop projects in the area, including mininginside Indigenous peoples’ territories.
“When I was recently with Trump, I told him that I want to open the Amazon region for him to exploit in a partnership. Currently as it is, we will lose the Amazon, that area is vital to the world”, President Bolsonaro said on the Brazilian radio station Jovem Pan.
The meeting sent up red flags among environmentalists and indigenous leaders. Global warming has turned the spotlight on original tribes around the globe, who have long fostered a symbiotic relationship with the biosphere and developed sustainable practices. From the protests of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against pipelines in Dakota, to the Baka stand against destructive loggers, to the resistance of the Brazilian Kayapó to the Belo Monte Dam complex, original peoples’movements around the globe have stood up to defend not just their territories, but the planet itself. Their lands are among the only conserved parts of nature left on the planet. That has also made them the target of land grabs and attempts to roll back the rights and protections built up over the years.
“Indigenous people are among the best stewards of the forest around the world and this is certainly true in Brazil. Ninety-eight percent of indigenous territory is in the Brazilian Amazon and these are some of the very best-preserved forests in the biome”, explains NGO Amazon Watch’s Program Director, Christian Poirier.
Alessandra Korap Munduruku, a leader of the Munduruku tribe from Médio Tapajós in the Brazilian Amazon, told the Americas Program that one of the main obstacles to uniting among indigenous peoples is the lack of resources.
“We have a hard time reaching peoples from other countries, as we have to rely on crowdfunding. Our tribal chiefs always tell us that we must take our leaders to other tribes, whether abroad or other traditional groups”, referring to groups within the country, such as the traditional African Brazilian former enslaved community called “Quilombolas” or the nearly self-sufficient “Ribeirinho” communities, made up of descendants of indigenous and white people who rely on fishing the rivers and farming.
The Research Director of Survival International, Fiona Watson, notes that international organizations can influence and pressure governments that violate indigenous rights, since they are less prone to being targeted or suffering reprisals as a result.
“Some countries, including Brazil and most others in Latin America, have signed the international law on tribal and indigenous peoples, ILO Convention 169 and are therefore legally obliged to uphold indigenous rights. Most countries have approved the UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples and most in the Americas have also approved the OAS declaration on indigenous peoples. So international bodies have a duty to ensure that these declarations are upheld and to take appropriate action if not”, explains Watson.
“We need to see international responses to these affronts, to attacks on the human rights of vulnerable communities. The indigenous movement in Brazil is calling for international solidarity and is working internationally precisely because they feel that the leverage that could potentially move, potentially reform Bolsonaro’s reckless agenda would come from the international sphere, from international markets, from international policy makers”, states Poirier. The Amazon Watch representative believes that institutions like the European Union could strengthen human rights and environmental demands at the negotiations table. Media, public campaigns and consumer boycotts can be other useful tools to pressure governments that seek to maintain their image in international politics and domestically. They have an interest in avoiding bad publicity, especially when their economies rely on international markets and foreign consumers.
“Virtually no country or government operates in a vacuum. So, if, for example, Brazil wants tosell its minerals and agricultural produce to international markets, consumers should know whether the products have been produced in violation of indigenous rights or not. Then they can take action accordingly”, Watson points out.
Poirier warns of what he sees as a present danger for indigenous rights and environment under the new government of President Jair Bolsonaro following recent announcements aimed at expanding commercial activities in the region.
The Amazon Watch representative argues that international forums are particularly important since Bolsonaro’s cabinet seems impervious to criticism from Brazilian public opinion, national civil society and social movements, and especially from indigenous peoples. The new president has made openly racist statements and has been cited as making the claim, “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.”(Correio Braziliense newspaper, April 12, 1998)
The international community also has a role to play because it is a driver of the destruction. Watson affirms that there are cases of individual foreigners or companies stealing resources and indigenous knowledge, “but much of the destruction of the environment is being led by agribusiness and mining and logging mafias in Brazil. This is being fueled by the international community’s demands for minerals, hardwoods and soy”. This is where the consumer campaigns have been effective.
Another useful tool that indigenous peoples have found is to seek the support of international celebrities. British thespians Gillian Anderson, Colin Firth and Sir Mark Rylance, and renowned Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado have all supported the Brazilian indigenous movements.
“Rightly or wrongly, some people have more faith in individuals than they do in governments. International celebrities can spread messages to a very diverse and global audience that may not know anything about indigenous peoples”, analyses Watson. The well-documented friendship between British rock musician Sting and elder Kayapó leader Raoni dates from 1989.
Korap Munduruku, who moved recently to Santarém, Pará to attend law school, also sees a natural ally in academia.She states that researchers contribute to indigenous people’s struggle for emancipation by bringing knowledge to the tribes. For example, learning legal language helps prevent deceit since tribal members have been fooled due to a lack of understanding of legal terms. Formal education has also enabled them to learn more about their human and legal rights.
“We know what the government has to do for us, at least in terms of trying to minimize conflicts within our territory and from outside invasions”, Korap Munduruku says. The Indigenous leader notes that she has relatives studying Anthropology, Archeology and Forest Engineering.
Indigenous scholars, lawyers and politicians benefit indigenous people’s movements by speaking the language and learning the codes of institutions, and providing status within official circles. Joênia Wapichana, elected as the first indigenous Congresswoman in 2018, is blazing a trail—she was also the first Indigenous woman in the country to become an attorney. For 31 years Brazil didn’t have an indigenous political representative, after Xavante tribe chief Mário Juruna (1943 – 2002) left office.
Munduruku’s voice rises when she talks about all the adversaries indigenous people face. “We have to tackle the government, business people, gold diggers, soy farmers, loggers…” Having so many enemies has put them in a constant alert state. In her view, the biggest current threat comes from soy farmers represented by the political group known as “the ruralistas” (ruralists). Some work outside the law, invading and poisoning the land and waters from the Tapajós River and presenting a life-threatening force for the tribes, she notes.
Around 12.5% of Brazilian soil is considered indigenous land and agribusiness is eager to get their hands on it., The ruralistas, and surrounding industries often act together to strip lands from the resident groups and access the vast protected forests, to expand their monoculture business.
Bolsonaro’s inner circle of supporters includes politicians on the far-right known as the “bull, bullet and bible” caucus. Indigenous groups not only suffer encroachment on their land and usurpation of their civil rights, they also face pressure from religious groups trying to convert them and sometimes murder them–not much different from colonial times.
These forces have vilified foreign NGOs working in the region and their alliances with Brazil’s tribes. “The opponents of indigenous rights in the bull, bullet and bible caucus use the threat of foreigners stealing resources to incite hatred against indigenous peoples and to fire up nationalist sentiment and support for their political campaigns”, exposes Watson.
Media coverage of indigenous causes has just started to gain momentum lately as part of the environmental debate and increased concern about global warming, Poirier points out. As the protection of preserved forests act as a counter to climate change., “Media is paying attention to this and needs to do it increasingly”.
Survival International’s Fiona Watson states that indigenous people have the lightest footprint on the planet, as many tribes are largely self-sufficient and live sustainably, having nurtured and protected their lands for generations. This explains the wealth of biodiversity on indigenous lands today.
Agricultural researchers found that their success owed to their immense zoological, botanical and medicinal knowledge and development of effective measures for maintaining the diversity and richness of their lands. Practices such as taboos, crop-rotation systems, seasonal hunting bans and sacred sites contribute to conservation. Traditional knowledge has helped medicine and is being researched, as in the case of the religious plant ayahuasca that doctors and scholars are studying to treat severe depression and PTSD.
https://www.americas.org/as-bolsonaro-and-trump-target-the-amazon-indigenous-peoples-seek-to-unite-to-defend-the-earth/
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The Fall, "The Frenz Experiment"
There are three main periods The Fall may be grouped into: the raw punk early years, the more “melodious” classic years, and the post-'90s period up to Mark E. Smith’s passing in 2018. The Frenz Experiment, originally released in 1988 and reissued this year by Beggars Banquet, is part of the “classic” years, a time when the band churned out a series of nearly perfect albums.
I came upon The Fall in 1987 by way of the compilation of early singles Palace of Swords Reversed. I remember not being entirely sure what to make of them, but loved “Totally Wired.” In those days, I got most of my music from college radio and MTV’s 120 Minutes, so unless either were spinning The Fall, I had so much other music vying for my attention.
When lo and behold, the band had themselves a bonafide radio hit with “Hit the North (Part 1),” a funky, groovy little number that, what’s this? — was danceable? The wonderful and frightening world of The Fall was suddenly opened to myself and so many others. Additionally, along came a lovely rendition of The Kinks’ “Victoria” that saw airplay on MTV, and the band started to have greater access to the American psyche. It was the album in which I fell in love with The Fall, and became a lifelong listener (as well as a glutton for punishment in attempting to obtain their entire catalog).
The Fall were a band for whom the word "prolific" could have been created, releasing more than 30 studio albums, nearly 50 live albums, and appeared on countless compilations in their 42 years existence. With so many albums to choose from, why reissue Frenz Experiment, as opposed to, say, an earlier classic from their catalog like Perverted by Language? Many have tried to rank the band’s albums, or at least provided a guide through their massive catalog.
It is precisely on the strength of the aforementioned tracks, along with string of nearly perfect tunes that make this a perfect choice for reissue. From the opening track “Frenz” it is obvious the band is favoring tuneful, near pop sentiments, making this one of their most accessible albums in their catalog. The band sounds almost positively joyful, particularly on tracks like “Athlete Cured” and the suave “The Steak Place,” the usual blaring politics dampened in favor of downright humor and joy, MES at his snarkiest but most fun (have a listen to "Oswald Defense Lawyer" or "Guest Informant" as proof). The band sounds as if they had a great time making the album.
The reissue contains the original album, singles and b-sides from "There’s a Ghost In My House," "Hit the North" and "Victoria" releases. "But wait, there’s more! Act now and you’ll also get..." a previously unreleased 4-track BBC session, and finally, a cover rarity of The Beatles "A Day in the Life." There is a 24-page booklet with new interviews included in the set.
Last Updated on Sunday, 18 October 2020 11:12
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7th Jun 11
Above is a photo of Studley Royal, a world heritage site now in the care of the National Trust. Just outside Ripon in the North Riding of Yorkshire, it is one of the NT’s most visited properties. There is a satisfying irony in the knowledge that this national asset is now protected and cared for into the future because it is one of the few assets the British People have that were purchased with the proceeds of the South Sea Company scam of 1721 – the greatest scam in British History before the Great Global Warming Scam of the present day. The water gardens at Studley Royal were commissioned by one John Aislabie. Like Hammond, he was a Tory being the member for Ripon. In 1718 became Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1720 Aislabie put a bill before Parliament to align the nation’s finances with his share push scam. After this collapsed (the South Sea Bubble), he was expelled from Parliament and disqualified for life from public office. His ill-gotten gains however went into the construction of the magnificent gardens we have today.
The other day we set off to visit Studley Royal and went our usual route – through North Rigton. This involves us leaving the A61 Harrogate Road turning left onto Dunkeswick Road that leads to North Rigton. Before reaching North Rigton however two obstacles have to be crossed. The first is the level crossing on the Harrogate to Leeds railway line. The second is the A658 Harrogate Road. Normally the first obstacle is not a problem as most times a train is not on its way. The second, the A road, is nearly always a problem due to the heavy traffic. This time however the barriers were down and we pulled to a halt and waited the couple of minutes for the train to arrive. When it did, it presented the usual spectacle, a two car diesel multiple unit train with all but two passengers! One per rail-car! Truly an expensive way to travel – for we taxpayers that is – for this is heavily subsidised.
This brings us to Mr Hammond. He and his ilk have a familiar refrain: use public transport! Leave your car in the garage!
You see, Mr Hammond is suffering from the delusion shared by most of the political elite in this formerly sovereign country that somehow the emissions from the people’s cars are threatening planet Earth! He is particularly worried about the life sustaining CO2, believing it to threaten him, his children and his grandchildren!
As well as suffering from this particular delusion, Mr Hammond does not understand why his constituents do not take his advice and leave their cars in their drives and garages and do as he asks and use public transport.
Three words can explain this Mr Hammond: Full English Breakfast.
In the early part of the twentieth century, our family owned a farm outside Honiton in Devon. It was called Northcote Farm. It was a mixed farm of just over 100 acres. The livestock included diary cattle, with the bull calves gelded and raised for meat, some sheep for the higher ground and some pigs. Crops were also grown, to feed the livestock and such as barley for local breweries. Seven o’clock in the morning would see my grandmother and her maid in the large farm kitchen busy putting the finishing touches to the breakfast for at that time my grandfather and three or four farm workers would come in for their breakfast. NB: there was no “upstairs downstairs” with the Rogers family – such meals were eaten together – employers and staff. These fine men tucked into this early feast as they had been up and about since around 4:30AM doing physical work – they were hungry.
Today, we like to visit the South West in the summer months on holiday and go round the old places from whence our ancestors came. When we do we “go B&B” eschewing hotels as a nice room, always en-suite, can be had for between £30 or £40, whereas at a modest hotel the tariff is double that. As with the hotel room costing between £70 and £80, the room has a TV and tea/coffee making facilities. Unlike the expensive hotel, breakfast is included in the price.
This brings us back to the Full English Breakfast. You see, it does not matter whether one has a small glass of fruit juice, a bowl of cornflakes and a cup of coffee, or two small glasses of fruit juice, a bowl of cornflakes, bacon, sausage, eggs, mushrooms, beans, black pudding – followed by half a dozen pieces of toast and marmalade and two pots of tea – PER PERSON. You still pay £30 to £40. So what do we do?
Have the Full English Breakfast.
How do we feel afterwards: Stuffed!
And there you have it. Why do we stuff ourselves? Because we have already paid for it! Our problem is that we have been lying in our beds until 8:00AM and have not been up and about digging trenches and so forth since the wee small hours. Such feasts were designed for men who had worked up an appetite, not for those who have just fallen out of bed hours later!
You see, that is what multi-millionaire Tories like Hammond cannot understand. Take for instance a typical constituent of his: a young man setting off to work in his motor car. There is Hammond, jumping up and down like a demented banshee prattling on about CO2, urging his young constituent to abandon his car for “the sake of the planet.”
Why does this young man ignore him: Apart from the obvious that he does not share Hammond’s delusion about CO2, the young man has and is paying for his motor car.
He is likely to have bought his motor car on finance which means that he could be paying around £200 plus a month to the loan company. Then we have the insurance. If the young man is in his mid twenties this will amount to well over a £1,000 per year. Again, the young man will be paying this in monthly stages. Our young friend will of course realise that he will be paying out this money whether or not he uses his car or keeps it locked up in the garage as Hammond wants him to do. Of course, our young friend will still have to pay dearly for his motoring as the taxes on petrol and DERV have been set at such extortionate levels that would even make a Chicago gangster blush!
What does Hammond and his ilk do with that money? Hand out huge subsidies to train operators to put on services to ferry two men from Leeds to Harrogate. It would be cheaper to transport these two by chauffer driven Jaguar – just like the one Hammond has the use of. Wait a minute: there we have it: the two men who want to travel form Leeds to Harrogate can be ferried by Hammond’s Jaguar and Hammond can use the train!
The fact is that people like their cars. Using your car you do not have to stand in a vandalised bus shelter and read the misspelt obscenities written by the nation’s semi literate youth. You do not have to wait for three quarters of an hour and then choose from three buses travelling in convoy (rather than one bus arriving in fifteen minute intervals). You do not have to sit next to an asthmatic vagrant who is intent of infecting as many people of possible with his particular strain of tuberculosis. You do not have to listen to the incessant “thump thump thump” emanating from the earphones of the moron trying to shatter his own ear drums using his MP3 player. Or watch the empty ring pull beer cans hurl themselves across the floor every time the bus is thrown into a corner by the bus driver who learned his craft in the streets of Azerbaijan. You do not have to enjoy your spine been shattered in three places as the bus driver fine tunes the bus’s suspension by seeking out every pothole in roads that would shame the dictator of a banana republic. You do not have to enjoy being hurled bodily down the stairs (from the top deck) when the bus driver does an emergency stop when approaching every bus stop.
In your car you can do things that you would not want to do using public transport: like talk to yourself, even, dare we say it, fart! Of course, there are many less restrained members of society who do just these things whilst using public transport.
cars, CO2, global warming, john aislabie, philip hammond, public transport, south sea bubble, south sea company, studley royal
June 7th, 2011 at 20:44
What a fine polemic ! Every word so completely true. Hammond is typical of the delusional morons who to-day, call themselves politicians..
Tony Butler
One must remember that in 1940, the resident Thief in Charge (Prime Minister , stole the UK and registered it as a business. It was an act of treason, carried out in war time conditions, while our able bodied men were fighting a to preserve our customs, freedoms and rights.
It is registered in Dun and Bradstreet as a Corporation, as is the Ministry of Justice (registered to Jack Straw)
The UK is a business, and you and I its unpaid workers, who are exploited with unlawful taxes on automobiles, only commercial vehicles require a licence, council taxes are a fraud, and a tax on CO2 emissions outright theft.
We can, quite lawfully reject all Parliamentary Statutes, they are merely rules governing the business known as the United Kingdom, which we have never been contracted to work for.
However, for those wishing to wash their hands of Paliament, Google
‘Lawful Rebellion’ and discover why our Government gagged Google’s You Tube video, of the lawful arrest of a judge in his own court i Birkenhead.
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Stricklands in Silverhill – the oldest business in Hastings?
Posted by John Humphries on 25/9/12 • Categorised as 2012, Bohemia Businesses
By Tim Stickland, September 2012
Stricklands’ horse & cart delivery service
Stricklands’ Pet and Garden Supplies shop in Silverhill is almost certainly the oldest business trading in Hastingsand can trace its origin back to 1818. The firm was established by George Strickland as a corn and seed merchants trading from premises in George Street, Hastings. The business expanded rapidly to satisfy the demand for corn and seed both in the domestic and agricultural markets. By the early 1960’s, these markets had begun to change and small garden shops were beginning to be established. These also supplied pet foods and animal feeds. A much fuller history of the business is available due to the habit of previous generations never discarding ledgers or business papers. The archive, stretching back to 1818, is a unique record of agriculture and horticulture in Sussexand is now lodged with county archives.
The Silverhill branch of Stricklands is the last remaining one of eight owned by the business, and was originally established when the Strickland family bought out a corn and seed merchant known as ‘Pelling and Company’ who traded from a very small shop on the site of the Co-Op. They also had an agricultural stores in Silverlands Road and Chatham Road. At some time, the latter site passed to Alsford Timber Merchants and was then sold for development – resulting in the terrace of housing which now occupies the site.
Stricklands in Silverhill traded from the premises previously occupied by Pellings until the site was demolished to make way for the Co-Op. At this time, 1966, the company moved to one of the two current shops it now trades from. The shop was very small with only one member of staff needed. Some of the forecourts of the parade of shops were still the front gardens of private houses and offices. Local shops included two greengrocers (one, Baileys, occupied the whole of the Lloyds pharmacy site), the Dorset laundry, a butchers, a post office, Dexter’s the grocers, two ironmongers, a fish and chip shop, a solicitors’ office and an undertakers. The BP garage was established on the site of a coal merchants.
Stricklands developed its trade in garden supplies, pet foods and garden plants and supplied customers throughout St Leonards via its van deliveries – a service it continues to offer today. By 1980 Stricklands had expanded its pet food range and attracted many new customers as a result of this. It further developed this trade when it bought out another similar but dilapidated business in Silverhill – ‘Drapers’, whose flour mill was located inWindmill Road.
Stricklands’ shop in the 1970s
Stricklands’ colourful forecourt displays of plants, which are a landmark of Silverhill, have developed from the days of a few plants being placed outside the shop door on up-turned potato boxes. For a long time the forecourt was occupied by a glass greenhouse which, in the 10 years it stood, (1970’s) was never vandalised or broken in to.
In spring it is not unusual for over 1000 plants to be displayed on the forecourt and the shop prides itself on being able to supply plants at prices well below those of major garden centres and multiple stores. Customers often ask how long it takes to set out the forecourt – the answer is up to two hours in the spring and at the weekends this starts at 07.30! Extensive stocks of plants are also kept in the garden supplies area at the rear of the shop.
Shopping in Silverhill has changed radically in the past 10 years and the lack of parking has led to an increase in the number of customers who phone for a home delivery. These were originally made by horse and cart, and the slogan on the Stricklands’ van today tells the story of the longevity of the business: “Delivering since 1818”!
More in Category 2012
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Home / Sunday Edition / Holiday News
Highest warning issued as Typhoon Fitow nears
By Xinhua and China Daily (China Daily)
China's meteorological authority on Saturday issued a red alert, the highest in its weather warning system, as Typhoon Fitow approached the country's southeast coastal areas.
At 5 am Beijing time, the center of Fitow, the 23rd typhoon to hit China this year, was 680 kilometers east of Taipei, the National Meteorological Center said in a statement.
The center said the typhoon is expected to move northwestward at a speed of about 15 km per hour, during which it could continue to strengthen slightly.
Fitow is likely to make landfall in the coastal areas between central Zhejiang province and northern Fujian province between Sunday night and Monday morning, according to the center.
Border patrol officers help fishermen take shelter from Typhoon Fitow at a port in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, on Saturday. The National Meteorological Center issued a red alert as the typhoon approached China's southeast coastal areas. Xu Yu / Xinhua
It is unusual for a typhoon to make landfall in southeast China in October and urged local authorities and residents to be alert and keep abreast of all relevant information about the storm.
Fitow is expected to bring strong gales to the waters around northeastern and northern Taiwan, as well as eastern areas of the provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian during Sunday.
From Sunday, Fitow is forecast to bring heavy rain to southeastern China, while eastern and southern areas of Zhejiang province are likely to be hit by heavy rainstorms, according to the center.
Also on Saturday, China's maritime authorities issued an orange alert warning of high waves.
China has a four-tier, color-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe situation, followed by orange, yellow and blue.
Fitow was expected to reach the southeastern part of the East China Sea on Saturday afternoon or night, according to the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center.
The typhoon will bring waves as high as 12 meters in the south of the East China Sea and the waters around the Diaoyu Islands until midday on Sunday, with waves of up to five meters in the north of the East China Sea and in the Taiwan Straits.
The center also warned of severe storm tides, with water levels expected to rise by as much as 90 centimeters in the coastal areas of Zhejiang and Fujian from Saturday night to Sunday noon.
The center urged shipping to be cautious. It also advised coastal authorities to take precautionary measures, undertake regular patrols and make sure dikes and fishery facilities are secure.
The National Commission for Disaster Reduction also issued an early disaster warning on Saturday, asking local governments to be prepared to minimize losses.
Civil affairs bureaus in the affected areas have been asked to remain on duty around the clock, increase monitoring, issue early warnings, evacuate tourists in threatened areas and help fishing boats back into port.
The commission asked local authorities to carry out emergency plans and allocate relief materials and funds when necessary to ensure daily necessities are provided for those affected by the typhoon.
The tourism administration of Ningbo, Zhejiang province, ordered that tourist attractions should be closed by 5 pm on Saturday.
Thirty people were killed and one is still missing after Usagi, the most powerful typhoon this year, made landfall in Guangdong province on Sept 22.
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A Fan Fight from the Brooklyn Dodgers Past
Earlier today, Andy Gray tweeted a photo on SI Vault that strikes me as both outrageous and hilarious. Although, I am sure the subject of the beating above, umpire George "Mage" Magerkurth, doesn't think it's funny.
It is a Monday afternoon at Ebbets Field (September 16, 1940). There was no pennant race. The Cincinnati Reds had a comfortable 9 game lead over the Dodgers- who stood in 2nd place. With only a couple weeks left in the regular season, there wasn't much left to fight over. After all, the Dodgers would not be playing in October, and everybody knew it.
Maybe, that sense of a lost season contributed to the heated feelings that would bring about violence at the Brooklyn borough ballpark that day. Were we looking for someone to blame?
On that night in front of a crowd of 6,782 fans, the Reds were in town to play their final game against the Dodgers. The Dodgers had taken the early lead in the 1st inning, but failed to hold on as the Reds rallied back to win it in the 10th inning. Unfortunately, the Reds win wasn't uncontested. It was as a result of a umpires ruling that allowed runners to be safe, and many folks that night were not happy about it.
All evening long, the Dodgers, especially skipper Leo "The Lip" Durocher, had it in for umpire George Magerkurth. They complained of bad calls and continued to razed him all night. Seeing this, a man named Frank Germano jumped onto the field at the end of the game to pummel George Magerkurth in retribution.
Per the Gotham City Insider blog:
[The berserk Dodger fan] Frank Germano, an unemployed youth of twenty-one, who lives at 128 Thirty-third Street, Brooklyn, was arrested after the fight and taken to the 71st Precinct. “Gernano was held in $500 bail in Brooklyn-Queens afternoon court for a hearing today on a charge of simple assault.
Germano was lucky he blindsided the umpire. Mag, as he was affectionately called, was a former heavyweight boxer. Germano is also lucky that Mag refused to press charges. Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick, on the other hand, was not so forgiving. For Durocher's part in inciting the fan, he was suspended 5 games.
Below is another press photo from the incident that I found at SB Nation.
By ernest at Thursday, September 27, 2012
Labels: Leo Durocher
Dodgers Blog Kiosk: 9/27/2012
Collection: 1996 Roger Cedeno Leaf Signature
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Bangla Articles
সমাজ ও রাজনীতি
মুসলিম জাহান
আমার স্মৃতিকথা
ই-বুকস
Politics & Ideologies
The Calamity of Autocracy & Demilitarisation in the Muslim World
Posted by Dr Firoz Mahboob Kamal
The strategy of de-empowerment
Militarisation of the enemy and the strict demilitarisation of the Islamist Muslims are indeed the two-prong strategy towards de-empowerment of the ummah. The ongoing down-fall of the Muslims and the current calamity in the whole Muslim World indeed owe to quick successes of such an enemy strategy. In fact, it started much earlier than the colonial occupation of the Muslim lands by the Europeans. Such an awful demilitarisation of the ummah was accomplished by the home-grown ruling despots. It shows how the enemies of Islam –whether with the Muslim names or the non-Muslims, take similar route to damage Islam. The calamity indeed started with the monopolisation of war by the enemies with the Muslim name. Such a project severely de-empowered the common Muslims and made them incapable to play their divinely assigned role as the defender of Islam. Hence, most of the individuals of the ummah thus made mere silent observers of the wars and the process of their own enslavement. The defence of the Muslim countries thus made hostage to the whims of the tyrannical selfish despots. A wolf never preys on another wolf; it only looks for a weaker target. The enemies of Islam too, hunt for the Muslim countries with demilitarised cum de-empowered people. And that job was done by the enemies inside. Thus, the de-militarisation policy of the tyrannical despots prompted the enemies to invade the Muslim lands and helped them to take over quickly almost the whole Muslim World.
In the golden days of Islam, the defence of a Muslim state has never been an exclusive domain of the rulers and their cronies. It used to be considered the most crucial issue for every Muslim citizen. According to Qur’anic doctrine, any kuffar aggression against a Muslim land makes jihad obligatory on every believer on the first day of the aggression. But how a Muslim can play such an obligatory role of jihad effectively if he is de-militarised by the ruler? It is indeed the ugliest crime that the despotic Muslim rulers have committed against Islam and the Muslim ummah. They have turned the whole Muslim World into prisons cells for their own citizens. The people in prison cells can’t defend themselves if attacked or get fire. Thus, they are made hostage in their own land by their own rulers. This is why, while the European imperialists invaded a Muslim country, its people couldn’t play any defensive role. They could only stare at them with silent awe.
In the midst of successive debacles in the Muslim World, only the Afghan Muslims could stand as an exception. Since they were not de-weaponised and de-empowered by the rulers. In fact, the per capita weapons in Afghanistan stood highest in the whole world. Hence, they could rightly fulfil the religious obligation in defending Islam and their country. This is why, the poor Afghans could show the most spectacular miracles by defeating three contemporary World Powers like the British, the Russian and the Americans. The same policy could help Hamas and Hizbullah to stand against the Israeli aggressions. The history has repeatedly showed that staying armed with effective weapons is the best deterrence against enemy offence. Keeping such readiness is indeed a Qur’anic obligation. Therefore, it is the religious duty of a Muslim ruler not only to equip his citizens with the necessary weapons and training, but also to mobilise them to the war field so that they can play their desired role against any enemy invasion. But the enemies of Islam –both native and foreign, do not like such militarisation of the common people. They know that such militarisation cum empowerment of the common Muslims makes it difficult to sustain their own selfish occupation. They want that the weapons should work only as the tool of occupation; and must not fall in the hand of common people. As if, the common Muslims have no right or obligation to engage in the defence of Islam and their own country.
In order to give sustenance to colonial occupation, the monopolisation of war by the colonialists and the de-empowerment of the Muslim citizens were used as the key strategies since day one of their occupation. The British colonialists raised more than five hundred princely states in India only to execute such a policy. The rulers of these so-called states were not allowed to have any effective army or frame any war strategy. They were used only as tool to collect revenues, keep people de-empowered, and protect the British monopoly of warfare and the British goods. They could stay in power only because of their full submission to the colonial hegemony. Now, the direct colonial rule has ended; but the same policy of monopolisation of war by the despots and the de-empowerment of people still continues. Serving the interest of the US-led global coalition and keeping the Qur’anic principle away from the affairs of governance, education, culture and judiciary still work as the parts of the same agenda. Like the Indian princely states of the British era, the imperialists have raised 22 states in the Middle East and 57 Muslim States globally. The matters of war policy, warfare and raising new political maps or flags in the Islamic World still remain in the imperialists’ hands. The presence of US-led coalition in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen, and Mali adds enough evidence to such an ongoing policy of imperialists’ hegemony.
The calamity of autocracy
Defending the frontiers of a Muslim country is no one’s monopoly. Nor is it the exclusive domain of a despot and his pet army. It is also crucial that the commanding authority of the Muslims’ defence force must not stay in the hands of the non-Muslims at any point of time –as it became the norm under the European occupation. It must stay as an all-time exclusive domain of the Muslims –as was the rule during the golden days of Islam. Most importantly, it is the religious duty, as well the solemn right of every believer. Moreover, fighting in the way of Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la is the highest ibadah in Islam. As per prophetic narration, spending a moment on the frontier as defender of the Islamic state is more rewarding than standing the whole night in prayer. And, jihad -the greatest ibdah, does not take place in mosque or on a prayer mat; it happens only when one stands in a war face to face against the enemies in a combat zone. A man can’t be a prophet anymore. But he can attain the status of a highly esteemed shahid and can stay very near to the prophets in paradise by taking part in jihad. This is why, most of the companions of the prophet (peace be upon him) took that highly accredited route. Hence, during the golden days of Islam, there was no need of any professional army or any cantonment. Instead, the whole ummah worked as a solidified army and every Muslim was a soldier. And, the whole land of Muslim ummah grew up as the largest cantonment in history. The downfall of the Muslim indeed started at a time when such tradition of the early Muslims was forgotten and the ummah stood de-militarised. It is indeed the ugliest calamity of the autocracy that has engulfed the whole Muslim World over the centuries.
The fundamental right cum duty of a believer for defending his faith and country is usurped not only by the non-Muslim imperialist occupiers, but also by the so-called Muslim despots. A believer is thus prevented coercively from fulfilling his obligatory duty to fight against the enemies of Islam. This way, he is prevented from taking part in jihad. It is indeed one of the most catastrophic consequences of occupation by the external or internal enemies of Islam. Then a coercive prohibition is imposed on the promised route to the paradise. The Jihadi spirit and the war-skills of the common people are perceived as a serious threat to their own rule. In order to condemn such an original Islamic spirit, they even put a tag of terrorism on it. Whereas, the most terrorising forces in the whole Muslim World are not the Islamists; they are the tyrannical despots. The main concern of these despots is not to defend Islam or any Muslim country; but to give sustenance only to their own rule. They allow people to grow up only as submissive cowards, and not as death-defying fighters with the Islamic spirit. This way, the brave people are deliberately kept out of the country’s security or military corridors. This is why, the foreign invaders found it very easy to conquer the countries ruled by the most brutal dictators. The army of such despots show their skills only in quick surrender to the enemies or fleeing from the warfronts. The Arab despots’ wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973 against Israel give ample testimony to that.
For an autocratic ruler, war means a battle between two contestant ruling cliques and their pet armies. The common people are kept away from the scene. So, the history books hardly make any mention of the common people. The story of kings, amirs, shahs, sheikhs, presidents and other despots occupy the most part of it. Only the palaces of these despots could show their existence; and the dwellings of the common people show no traces of their presence. Apart from bearing the financial burden of the extravagant corrupt despots, the common citizens are given no political role and responsibility vis-à-vis governance and defence of any Muslim country. Hence, the common people are seldom equipped to do anything else in any war. Whereas, jihad against any kuffar occupation is a Qur’anic obligation on every believer. But, such teaching of Islam stand deeply hidden in the Muslim World. Even the imams of mosques and the teachers of the religious schools seldom mention such Qur’an prescriptions. The ruling despots frame laws, install courts and set media only to sanitise their oppression, suppression and even the genocidal massacres. They deploy huge team of police, prosecution and pet judges only to punish those who stand against their rule.
The autocratic despots have caused awful other calamities, too. It has turned all the value-adding institutions for the common men and women highly dysfunctional, non-functional or corruptive. Hence, the life changing social engineering institutions like schools, colleges and universities, mosques, madrasah, police academies, civil and military staff colleges are doing more damages to the ummah than any good. Instead of promoting an enabling environment for the people, they are generating a culture of de-motivation, de-moralisation and de-empowerment. As a result, the social capital stands very low in almost all of the Muslim countries. The military defeats, the endemic Army coups, the internal strife and other political calamities indeed owe to failures of these institutions. This is why, despite trillions of dollars of unearned money from petroleum, gas, and other resources, the Arab Muslims stay most powerless and defenceless in the world. The despotic rulers in the Muslim world survives only because of the powerlessness of the common people. If these autocrats were put as ruler in any of the western countries, they would have been beheaded or dethroned instantly by the empowered native people –as happened to many of their kings in the past. But, these Muslim despots –since they are the promoters of the enemy agenda, receive constant protection from the western and the eastern imperialists. These slave rulers of the Muslim World have proven their enough competence by keeping the Muslims confined in their heavily protected prison cells -called states. In absence of such servile rulers, the exploitative interest of the imperialists would have been in great peril. This is why the western powers are so strongly behinds these brutal autocrats.
Moreover, the monopolisation of war in the hand of a power-grabbing professional army also has its own catastrophic consequence. If the army betray or collapse against the enemy, there existed no second line of defence. In the Muslim history, the failure of these so-called professional armies is huge. They caused awful disasters even in recent years. The secular Army has minimal appetite to fight any war to the end. In war of 1948, 1967 and 1973 with Israel, the coalition of Arab Armies were badly defeated by the tiny Israeli Army. The whole Sinai Valley, the West Bank and the Golan Heights were quickly lost to Israel. Whereas, few thousand Hamas fighters could resist the Israeli advance under continuous air attacks in Gaza for about 50 days. The coalition of Arab Armies couldn’t withstand that even for a week. In 1971, the Pakistan Army had the same disgraceful failure in East Pakistan. India did much less bombing in Dhaka and other parts of East Pakistan than the Israeli bombing in Gaza or the US bombing on Mosul. Mosul didn’t fall in 9 months, but Pakistan Army with its 45 thousands soldiers surrendered to infidel Indian army in less than 3 weeks. These so-called professional armies could show their skills only in conquering their own countries. In Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and many other Muslim countries they could do that for many times. The army could also grab huge number of residential areas for its officers in major cities.
The Muslim history reveals some amazing truths. All the great victories of the early Muslims against the world powers like the Roman and the Persian Empires were not the works of so-called professional armies raised in barracks or cantonments. These owe to the death-defying common Muslims. Those who defeated the British Army twice in the Afghan soil were not any professional army either, they were the Afghan common Muslims. In the last few decades, the two world powers like the USSR and the USA were also defeated in the Afghan soils by the same common people. The USA was also defeated in Vietnam by the same type of volunteer fighters. On the contrary, the defeat of the professional Bengal Army against the tiny private army of the British East India Company sets an example how they are useless to serve any Muslim cause. The Army of Nawab Sirajuddaulah –the last Muslim ruler of Bengal, had 50 thousand soldiers, 40 canons and 10 war-elephants in the battle field of Palashy. Whereas the East India Company had only three thousand soldiers under Col. Robert Clive. But the Nawab lost the war before it was started. The betrayal of Mir Zafar –the Commander of the Muslim Army caused the catastrophe. When an army is raised out of the people with no commitment to Islam, such a disaster is natural. They change the paymaster if receive a bigger promise. Due to such betrayal, the Nawab’s Army didn’t fight any real war against the enemy. No shot was fired from any canon. Thus, the British East India got an easy victory over a huge area of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa; and the fleeing Nawab was captured and killed. It was one of the fateful day not only for the Bengali Muslims but also for the Indian Muslims as a whole. The disastrous consequence of the Muslim ummah indeed started from there. When the common people are de-empowered and kept out of the fateful scene such terrible consequence is the most common outcome.
Post Tagged with autocracy, de-empowerment, Demilitarisation, Hamas, Hezbollah, imperialism, Israel, Muslim ummah, sirajuddaulah
ওয়েব সাইটটি এখন আপডেট করা হচ্ছে। আগের লেখাগুলো নতুন ওয়েব সাইটে পুরাপুরি আনতে কয়েকদিন সময় নিবে। ধন্যবাদ।
রাষ্ট্রীয় সন্ত্রাস, গণহত্যা ও আগ্রাসন যেখানে গণতন্ত্র
আধিপত্য বিস্তারে আগ্রাসী মার্কিন প্রজেক্ট
বিবিধ ভাবনা (১৪)
বিভক্ত মুসলিম এবং অর্জিত আযাব
মুসলিমদের সবচেয়ে বড় ব্যর্থতাটি প্রসঙ্গে
বাংলা বিভাগ
ইসলাম এবং মুসলিম
ই-বুক: একাত্তরের ইতিহাস
Islam & the Muslims
বিবিধ প্রসঙ্গ-৫
Political, religious & demographic dynamics in South Asia & threatened co-existence of people with pluralities
My COVID Experience
The Hindutva Fascists & the Road towards Disintegration of India
দিল্লিতে সরকারি উদ্যোগে মুসলিম গণহত্যা
Dr Firoz Mahboob Kamal, Powered by WordPress | Copyright © All Rights Reserved.
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Friends and Feminism: Rachel Green and her Independence Arc
Rarely do I have deep thoughts about Friends, the TV show. It's a show I grew up with, and I watched it with the basic reflection: did I like it? Did I laugh? Okay, good. Only recently, eight years after their final episode aired, have I started to really think about the storytelling decisions on Friends - mostly because now I can't help it. It's like watching Friends with a completely different set of lenses, looking at a show with great writing for the quality in the writing itself and not just for laughs. The other day, I caught the Pilot and an episode from Season 3 back-to-back, and together they illuminated a lot about Rachel Green's early arc. Of course, it's something I had never really processed before, and it gave me pause me to think about its execution and continuation in later seasons.
In the Pilot, Rachel Green runs out on her wedding to free herself from her fiancé, and cuts up her credit cards to emancipate herself from her father. She's all about independence! Which is super awesome. I never quite appreciated how great Rachel's story is from the perspective of feminism, and the show makes good on that construct early on. Marlo Thomas, one of the original television figures of feminism on "That Girl," was cast to play Rachel's mother. Inspired by her daughter's liberation, Mrs. Green filed for divorce and wanted to take on New York City like her daughter. Her best friend Mindy came to town, and even though Rachel encouraged Mindy to take a similar stand of independence, Mindy doesn't make the same choice, and returns to Long Island and her wealthy (cheating) fiancé. In short, it's well-communicated that Rachel was intended to go from her father's house to her husband's house, and her bid for freedom from that in the Pilot was a conscious decision to emancipate herself and change the course of her own life, for better or worse. How great is that?
Fast-forward through her job at the coffeehouse, and starting to date Ross in Season 2. In Season 3, she finally gets a foot in the door for a dream career: she starts working at Bloomingdales. Trouble is, the guy who's helping her with networking and transitioning into the job has a crush on her, and Ross is threatened by him. It's paltry jealousy jokes for most of the arc, but a rather enlightening argument takes place at the end of "The One with Phoebe's Ex-Partner." Ross insisted on going with Rachel to a fashion seminar, and embarrassed her by falling asleep and calling attention to himself. Finally, we understand the true conflict:
Rachel: Y'know if what I do is so lame, then why did you insist on coming with me this morning? Huh? Was it so I just wouldn’t go with Mark?
Ross: No. I... I wanted to be with you. I feel like lately, I feel like you’re slipping away from me. With this new job, and all these new people, and you’ve got this whole other life going on. I know it’s dumb, but I hate that I’m not a part of it.
Rachel: It’s not dumb. But, maybe it’s okay that you’re not a part of it. Y'know what I mean? I mean it’s like, I like that you’re not involved in that part of my life.
Ross: That’s a little clearer.
Rachel: Honey, see, it doesn’t mean that I don’t love you. Because I do. I love you, I love you so much. But my work, it’s for me, y'know, I’m out there, on my own, and I’m doing it and it’s scary. But I love it, because it’s mine. I mean, is that okay?
Ross: Sure. (as he hugs her, he mouths an outraged "no")
This exchange is glorious, because it connects Rachel's Season 3 identity with her S1 original intent, two years later. Rachel has something that is her own. She's finally moved forward on her journey, found a worthwhile investment of her talents, and is expressing her independence with success. It's frustrating that Ross protests this. It's wonderful that Rachel rebuffs his protestations with reassurance not only in her feelings for him, but also in her own self-confidence, empowerment, and identity. It is magnificent, that Rachel doesn't budge on the idea that maybe she's not doing this relationship properly because Ross isn't a part of every aspect of her life. She's all about independence! It aligns with her original intent, and is executed fantastically. It's enough to bring a happy tear to my eye.
What sucks is that Ross doesn't really accept that sentiment, and everything blows to smithereens anyways. Their devolution as a couple continues because of Ross' inability to get past the Mark jealousy, and in the infamous "we were on a break" miscommunication, he sleeps with the copy girl while Rachel is under the impression they're still together. They break up, and the rest of the series is dedicated mostly to their dance around each other until they finally get back together for good in the finale. Rachel's independence arc crops up at various further points as well, mainly resurrecting when she gets pregnant with Ross' kid and decides to raise the baby as a single mother.
What I realized, though, is that the show's final cliffhanger - and romantic resolution to Ross and Rachel's love story - creates a situation where Rachel has a job opportunity in Paris and is going to leave Ross behind. She's accepted the position, after having been fired from her job at Ralph Lauren and turned down for a job at Gucci, and of course Mark returns to remind us that Ross has jealousy issues. The prospect of Rachel leaving for Paris is too much, especially after having slept together one last time, and so Ross makes the grand gesture at the airport. She "got off the plane," and decides to stay in New York with him.
I know that there are a lot of attenuating circumstances at the end of a complicated 10-year relationship, with Emma, and with Friends being largely the love story between Ross and Rachel. I'm not saying that Rachel should have shouted at Ross in French and then stormed off to the plane to prove her independence. You could argue that Rachel's independence arc had to evolve and transform to stay fresh, and that it's unrealistic to expect an absolute and inflexible character arc out of a show that intended to relatably reflect the trials and successes of every day life. You could also argue that Rachel fulfilled her journey towards independence in the sum total of her seasons on the show, and one single gesture does nothing to refute that. I definitely see the validity in all of these points.
But I still can't shake the notion that when you look at it in terms of Rachel's original arc, the ending is dissonant. Rachel giving up a career promotion to stay with Ross becomes slightly underwhelming, especially given his pre-established insecurity towards Rachel having something that he's not included in. Some part of me wants Rachel to have jetted off into another adventure of independence, bursting through the door of a French café and changing her life, the way she did in Central Perk ten years previous. But forsaking the specialness of Rachel's belonging to the group of six isn't satisfying, and I can't blame the writers for wanting her to stay local. Maybe if Ross and Rachel had a conversation about trying to make their relationship work in symbiosis with Rachel's career, I'd be less picky. Maybe if there'd been some resolution to what broke them up in the first place, at some point in the seven years' interim, it'd be easier to overlook. Maybe if there hadn't been a constructed cliffhanger around Rachel having to choose, at the last minute, between Option A (Ross) and Option B (career) with no possible negotiation, there wouldn't be a lingering feeling that the writers didn't quite pay off Rachel's original intent as well as they could have.
Ross' story on Friends is about standing up for himself and finding love in the wake of his divorce. Rachel's is about standing up for herself and finding independence in the wake of an unhappy life directed largely by expectations of womanhood. So why did Ross' arc trump hers, at the very end?
Labels: Brain Thoughts, Character Study, Fun with Feminism, TV: Friends
I have something to add. I believe that the choice between career and love has nothing to do with feminism, and you should shove that sexism down your throat. Men are people too. Thank you, and farewell!
I don't believe you understand what sexism is, dear. If you'd look at a dictionary (which I assume you don't), you'd know that sexism is "prejudice or discrimination based on sex" (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). I also do not know if you understand any of the points made by the author of this post. Not at any point within this post did the author display any kind of "prejudice" or "discrimination".
All the author did was describe some significant events in the character arc of Rachel (and, in extension, Ross), link the writing choices made within the context of the show with feminism, and ask the question, "Why did Ross' character arc trump Rachel's at the very end?"
men are people?!
Also, great, thoughtful piece, Doctor! As always, your thoughts are quite illuminating, especially on the Rachel/Ross part of the series. I definitely did find myself asking the same question you ask in this article, and maybe also wondering how different the ending would be had the show ended with Rachel starting her new job in Paris, and everyone's lives continuing in the wake of all the changes happening in their lives. Would the part with the keys and the closing the door one last time have had the same effect if, instead of all of them going to the coffee house, it was hanging over their heads that once they closed that door, it was hanging over their heads that times were changing?
I find it interesting that what is deemed "sexist" is a woman choosing love over a career. Isn't feminism about a woman's right to...CHOOSE? I consider myself a feminist (mostly, although I often don't agree with the loudest feminist political voice), but I don't want to chase a career. I work because I need to work. When the day comes where my husband makes enough money, we will have babies and I will stay home with them. Eventually, I'll volunteer and get a part-time job. These are not the dictations of a narrow-minded leash-holding husband. They are MY choices. It seems too often that feminists aren't for a woman's right to choose so much as they are for a woman's right to choose that which most other feminists believe she should choose. Isn't it MY choice? Ross didn't MAKE Rachel stay. She CHOSE to stay. At a time in her life, she made the CHOICE to pursue a career and she conquered that dream well. Then, she decided to pursue love. How does that make her less enlightened or less feminist?
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Home>Blog>Entertainment>Where to Enjoy Musical Films
Where to Enjoy Musical Films
Those that love the theatre, the ballet,and music are usually fans of musical movies.
A number of live Broadway musicals have become sell-our box offices on the big screen, such as Les Misérables. Starring an all-star cast that includes Anne Hathaway, Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, and Sacha Baron Cohen, the film won several Golden Globe Awards, along withseveral British Academy Film Awards.
Many people would argue that the most popular musical movie of all time is Mamma Mia! Mamma Mia! was first made famous as a stage musical, based on the famous songs by ABBA. Mamma Mia fans are hotly anticipating the release of the sequel – Mamma Mia! Here we go again – which is due for release in the US in mid-2018.
Musicals can be targeted at either a child or adult audience. One of the best-known children’s musicals of recent years is Disney’s Frozen. There would be few children that don’t know and love the hit song ‘Let it go’. Come Halloween, Elsa costumes are a popular choice for children world-wide.
Some people say that musicals are ‘the very definition of human happiness’. The musical genre has certainly increased in popularity in recent years, with TV shows like Glee and movies like Pitch Perfect brining a new flavour to on-screen musicals.
These shows and movies have been credited with bringing huge fame to previously unknown stars such as Glee’s Lea Michele. They have also promoted an increase in people enrolling in dance and singing lessons, with many aspiring to be like the stars they see on the screen.
Musicals are equally as popular as animated and non-animated movies. Animated musicals – like Frozen, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid – give Directors the opportunity to overlay the voices of more talented singers during the musical elements, as the viewer is unable to see the source of the voice.
If you’re feeling down or in need of an energy ‘pick me up’, musicals are a great choice of movie. They are energising and uplifting, and leave many of us wishing we had good singing voices! And, if you see a stage musical that you like you may be able to find the movie version of the same musical, and watch it within a different format.Find your pick at the free-to-watch website fusionmovies.to.
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Home Research > Members > 1604-1629 > LOVELACE, Sir William (1561-1629)
LOVELACE, Sir William (1561-1629), of Lovelace Place, Bethersden and Greyfriars, Canterbury, Kent
Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604-1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, 2010
Available from Cambridge University Press
bap. 30 Sept. 1561,1 1st s. of William Lovelace† of Bethersden, sjt.-at-law, and 1st w. Anne, da. of Robert Lewes, alderman of Canterbury. educ. ?G. Inn 1580. m. by c.1581, Elizabeth (bur. 3 Dec. 1627), da. of Edward Aucher of Bishopsbourne, Kent, 2s. d.v.p. 1da. d.v.p.2 suc. fa. 1577; kntd. 30 July 1599;3 bur. 12 Oct. 1629.4 sig. Willia[m] Lovelace.
J.p. Kent by 1590-5, 1598-at least 1625;5 commr. Kent sewers, E. Kent by 1605-at least 1628;6 freeman, Canterbury 1612;7 dep. lt. and capt. of militia ft., Canterbury by 1617-at least 1623;8 surveyor of the highways (jt.), Bethersden 1623-5,9 vestryman by 1627;10 commr. subsidy, Canterbury 1624.11
Soldier, army in Ire. by 1599, officer in Anglo-Dutch service by 1602-at least 1606.12
Although the Lovelace family traced its origins to the mid-fifteenth century,13 by 1247 it had settled at Bethersden, in the Weald of Kent, and in 1367 purchased the property which was to become Lovelace Place.14 Two members of the family, possibly brothers, joined Cade’s Rebellion in 1450; another allegedly played a crucial role during the Second Battle of St. Albans (1461) by withdrawing his Yorkist contingent from the fight.15 It was probably this man’s son, Sir Richard Lovelace, who served as marshal of Calais under Henry VII and was knighted after the Battle of Blackheath (1497).16 In 1511 Sir Richard’s estates passed to a collateral branch of the family. Seated near Sittingbourne, in north Kent, its most notable member was Serjeant William Lovelace, who married the daughter of a Canterbury alderman, served as the city’s counsel from 1559 and represented the constituency in Parliament three times under Elizabeth. Although Serjeant Lovelace raised the social standing of his family, obtaining a grant of arms in 1573 on the basis of his descent from Sir Richard,17 his purchase of Canterbury’s St. Lawrence Hospital saddled his eldest son and heir, this Member, with acute financial problems. Claimed by the Crown as concealed land, the hospital apparently cost young Lovelace £800 in fines, and involved him in litigation.18 Lovelace’s financial difficulties were exacerbated as he inherited his estates while under-age. His wardship was sold to the earl of Leicester for £173 6s.8d.19
Ownership of the hospital was not Lovelace’s only legal difficulty. In 1586 Canterbury’s corporation disputed his title to his town house, the Greyfriars. However, the corporation’s case was weak, since it had promised this property and the surrounding land to serjeant Lovelace some years earlier in return for a favour.20 In 1589 it capitulated, and also granted him a messuage in All Saints’ parish, the rent from a second property and the right to build a bridge over the Stour, an important concession as the Greyfriars and its ornamental garden was entirely surrounded by water. In return Lovelace granted the corporation a shop and garden in the city’s High Street. 21 Lovelace also succeeded in his dealings with the dean and chapter of Canterbury who, in 1587, agreed to write off the arrears on his late father’s account as steward of the archbishop’s liberties in return for £50. However, it is not known whether he triumphed in his dispute with the chapter over the right to collect the tithes of St. Paul’s parish, which appears to have been submitted to arbitration.22
Lovelace served in Ireland during the 1590s, receiving his knighthood from the 2nd earl of Essex after the fight at Offaly in 1599. His association with Essex has been offered to explain his temporary removal from Kent’s commission of the peace in July 1595.23 He attended the county’s parliamentary election in September 1601, but apparently remained neutral.24 By 1602 he was serving in an unknown capacity with the English forces in the United Provinces. In the following November he and his son, Capt. William Lovelace, were captured in a supply boat off the Dutch coast. Lovelace was held prisoner while his son was released to raise a ransom of 2,000 gulden (about £180), and an additional sum for the 14 soldiers captured with him.25 Helped by friends, Capt. Lovelace put together a ship’s cargo of beer and other goods to sell in Dunkirk, but though despite procuring a royal passport, the vessel was seized by a Dutch warship and its contents sold as prize. Lovelace’s release in early 1604 was only secured following the intervention of the king, the Privy Council and the lord admiral, who persuaded the States-General to order the receipts of the sale to be paid to Capt. Lovelace.26 On his return to England, Lovelace was granted permission to take extended leave ‘at His Majesty’s instance’.27
Lovelace was licensed to undertake further military service abroad in November 1604.28 He returned to Holland, but again ran into difficulty. Writing to Sir Thomas Edmondes* in August 1605, the English ambassador at The Hague, Sir Ralph Winwood*, noted that ‘I have been pressed again and again to trouble your Lordship with these papers of Sir W. Lovelace’. The matter was apparently not serious, however, as Winwood concluded that Lovelace ‘is much more afraid than I think there is cause’.29 A more pressing problem arose in 1606, when Lovelace’s son stabbed to death an English prostitute in Flushing and was nearly lynched by an angry mob.30 Through strenuous lobbying of the States-General and the governor of the English forces in the cautionary towns, Lord L’Isle (Robert Sidney†), Lovelace obtained a pardon for his son.31
A Sir William Lovelace captained a company of foot in the English army that invaded Jülich-Cleves in 1610. However, this was probably Lovelace’s son, who was knighted in 1609, as a residence certificate indicates that Lovelace himself was present in Canterbury in the summer of 1610.32 Lovelace, now nearly 50 years old, appears to have withdrawn from active military life, although he subsequently served as a deputy-lieutenant and captain of Canterbury’s Trained Band. His retirement was plagued with financial difficulties. In 1611 he negotiated a marriage alliance between his son and the daughter of Sir William Barnes† of Woolwich. In return for a dowry of £1,500, Lovelace pledged to convey most of his land in Bethersden to his son, and to raise money for the purchase of additional property by selling all his woodland. However, he was so indebted that he pocketed the £1,700 raised from the sale of his woods, and though he conveyed several properties to his son these were heavily encumbered. In view of such inadequate provision for his daughter and son-in-law, and realizing that they would inherit massive debts, Barnes took Lovelace to court. In order to try to settle matters, in 1616 Lovelace relinquished possession of the Greyfriars to his principal creditor, his son-in-law, the London Mercer Sir John Collymore, but this did not satisfy Barnes, who learned that Collymore still intended to extend Lovelace’s lands when Lovelace died.33 The affair probably drove a wedge between father and son because in his will of 1622 the younger Lovelace failed to mention his father.34
The prospect of obtaining protection from his creditors may explain why Lovelace sought election to Parliament in 1614. It was clearly he who was returned and not his son, for in 1620 the diarist Thomas Scott* recorded that the Lovelace who had sat in the Commons in 1614 had been ‘a free dweller [of Canterbury] ... and our captain [of militia]’.35 Lovelace played no recorded part in the Parliament, except to be appointed to the committee for the bill to settle the debts of the late Sir Robert Wroth II* (25 May), in which he is not known to have had an interest.36 Lovelace again sought election to Parliament for Canterbury in 1620, when he apparently spent some time in the Fleet,37 and also in 1624, but on neither occasion did he prove successful. During the 1624 election campaign, a Canterbury yeoman named Simon Penny told other voters that Lovelace was unsuitable because he ‘did cross himself before the French or Spanish ambassador’, and that ‘many of the city had popes in their bellies and he did not know, but the captain [Lovelace] might have one in his belly’. Lovelace was so incensed that he reported this slander to the mayor, whose investigations revealed that Lovelace’s reputation as ‘a dangerous man’ in religion had been encouraged by Sir Edwin Sandys*, who supported the zealous Protestant Thomas Scott, on whose behalf Penny had been canvassing.38
Lovelace has been described as a ‘local landowner’ at the time of the 1624 elections, but by then his estate had perhaps been reduced to his house and 30 acres in Bethersden.39 He may have recovered possession of the Greyfriars after the death of Sir John Collymore in 1620, as a certificate of 1628 records that the house was then his residence, while his will of 6 Oct. 1629 refers to ‘my chamber in the Greyfriars’.40 However, Collymore’s widow Mabel may simply have permitted Lovelace, her father, to live with her in the house. In July 1627 Lovelace was listed as a Forced Loan defaulter.41 By 1628 he was in such penury that he was unable to pay Sir Nicholas Tufton* rent arrears of just over 50s. for lands in Bethersden Park.42 He was also forced to borrow £10 from the dean of Canterbury Cathedral, a further £10 from the earl of Cork (in order to repay the dean), and £6 from one mistress Hawkins on the security of some of his household goods, including ‘my crimson bed’.43
Six days after drawing up his will, Lovelace was buried, according to his wishes, in the south chapel in St. Margaret’s, Bethersden. His executor was his daughter-in-law, his son Sir William having been killed at the siege of Groll two years earlier. Among the goods she inherited were portraits of Lovelace and her husband, both of which now hang in the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Lovelace’s bequests were few, his grandson, James Collymore, being offered merely ‘my best beaver hat, all my books, my purple cloth cloak, my hose and doublet belonging thereunto, if he will accept thereof’, and two portraits of his parents.44 None of Lovelace’s immediate descendants sat in Parliament, though a member of the family’s junior branch represented Canterbury after the Restoration.
Author: Andrew Thrush
1. Reg. St. Alphaege, Canterbury ed. J.M. Cowper, 2.
2. A.J. Pearman, ‘Kentish Fam. of Lovelace’, Arch. Cant. x. 207-8; J. Hall Pleasants, ‘Lovelace Fam. and its connections’, Virg. Mag. of Hist. and Biog. xxviii. 87, 90; GI Admiss.
3. Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 97.
4. Pearman, 206.
5. Cal. Assize Recs. Kent Indictments, Eliz. ed. J.S. Cockburn, 293; P. Clark, Eng. Prov. Soc. 261; C231/1, f. 54; Cal. Assize Recs. Kent Indictments, Jas. I ed. J.S. Cockburn, 158.
6. Cent. Kent. Stud. S/EK/SO2, p. 80; S/EK/SO3, p. 98.
7. Roll of Freemen of City of Canterbury comp. J.M. Cowper, 56.
8. HMC 9th Rep. i. 162; Canterbury Cathedral Archives, CC/FA/23, f. 152.
9. Bethersden par. recs. CW/2, f. 121v.
10. Pearman, 204.
11. C212/22/23.
12. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, ii. 593, 332.
13. Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. xlii), 125-6.
14. G.F. Rombach, Ped. of Col. Richard Lovelace, 1; Pearman, 185.
15. Pearman, 187, 190.
16. Ibid. 192-3, conflates the two. See Rombach, 1.
17. Grantees of Arms ed. W.H. Rylands (Harl. Soc. lxvi), 158.
18. Pearman, 201, 203; HP Commons, 1558-1603, ‘William Lovelace’; CSP Dom. 1581-90, p. 286.
19. WARD 9/316, f. 10v.
20. C2/Eliz/C11/52.
21. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, CC/PA/2, pp. 23-4, 124. For the location and layout of Greyfriars, see Canterbury Cathedral Archives, MAP 123. The medieval building which straddles the Stour, commonly but mistakenly referred to as Greyfriars, was probably an outbuilding.
22. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, DCc/CA3, ff. 66, 73.
23. Clark, 261.
24. Add. 34828, f. 15.
25. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, iii. 74.
26. Resolutiën der Staten-Generaal 1604-6 ed. H.H.P. Rijperman, 88. We are grateful to George Jones for making a translation.
27. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, iii. 85; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 78.
28. CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 171.
29. Stowe 168, f. 117v.
30. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, iii. 329-30.
31. Ibid. 332, 334-5.
32. E351/275, unfol.; Shaw, ii. 148; E115/255/22.
33. C78/216/12; 78/277/9.
34. Cent. Kent. Stud. PRC32/49, f. 184r-v.
35. Cent. Kent. Stud. U951/Z17/2.
36. CJ, i. 496a.
37. Cent. Kent. Stud. U951/Z17/2; C2/Jas.I/B5/43.
38. SP14/158/67.
39. P. Clark, ‘Thomas Scott and the growth of urban opposition to the early Stuart regime’, HJ, xxi. 12; Pleasants, 179.
40. E115/247/118; Cent. Kent. Stud. PRC32/49, f. 184. Collymore’s will sheds no light on the matter, PRC32/47, f. 97.
41. SP16/73/30.
42. Cent. Kent. Stud. U445/M15, unfol.
43. Lismore Pprs. (ser. 1) ed. A.B. Grosart, ii. 292; Cent. Kent. Stud. PRC32/49, f. 184.
44. Cent. Kent. Stud. PRC32/49, f. 184; Pleasants, 181.
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Home Research > Members > 1790-1820 > DEVAYNES, William (?1730-1809)
DEVAYNES, William (?1730-1809), of Pall Mall and Dover Street, Mdx.
WINCHELSEA
13 Dec. 1796 - 1802
b. ?1730, 2nd s. of John Devaynes, peruke maker, of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Mdx. by Mary, da. of William Barker, City remembrancer. m. (1) Jane Wintle, 1s. 1da.; (2) 3 Feb. 1806, Mary, da. of William Wileman, s.p. suc. bro. John 1801.
Liverpool commr. Africa Co. 1770-8; dir. E.I. Co. 1770-1805, dep. chairman 1777-8, 1779-80, Nov. 1783-4, Dec. 1788-9, 1790-1, chairman 1780-1, 1785-6, 1789-90, 1793-5; dir. French hosp. 1770-d., London Dock Co. c.1802-d., Globe Insurance Co. c.1804-d.
Devaynes was of Huguenot extraction and had spent some of his earlier years in Africa: supporting the Sierra Leone bill, 30 May 1791, he boasted that ‘few men’ had had ‘an opportunity of knowing so much of the country as he did’. By 1790, when his wealth enabled him to retain his seat for Barnstaple at the contested general election, he was firmly established as a leading figure in the City and at East India House, where he supported Dundas and acquired a reputation as a placemonger.1 He had evidently become senior partner in the Pall Mall banking house of Devaynes, Dawes, Noble & Co. (previously Crofts, Roberts, Devaynes and Dawes) by 1797, when the firm invested £30,000 in the loyalty loan. A large government contractor, he continued to support Pitt, though he made little mark in the House. In 1791 he was listed hostile to the repeal of the Test Act in Scotland. On the Indian trade regulation bill, 24 May 1793, he spoke against two proposed additional clauses which he construed as threats to the Company’s power and acted as teller for the hostile majority in the division on the second of them. It was later said that he had frequently chaired parochial meetings called to strengthen the hand of government in the 1790s; and at a St. James’s meeting convened by local Whigs, 24 Nov. 1795, he spoke in favour of the current repressive legislation.2
He was defeated at Barnstaple at the general election of 1796, but obtained a seat for Winchelsea on the Barwell interest soon afterwards. He voted for the assessed taxes augmentation bill, 4 Jan. 1798, and was teller for the minority who divided against the compulsory clause of the London dock bill, 28 June 1799. As a subscriber to the proposed London bread and flour company, he was compelled on a point of order raised by Sheridan in the debate on the incorporating bill, 5 July 1800, to declare his interest, and his vote in the earlier division was accordingly nullified. An active philanthropist, he welcomed the bill raising an additional rate in Marylebone and St. Pancras, 1 July 1800, as a necessary contribution towards the relief of the poor.
Devaynes, who in 1801 inherited £50,000 from his elder brother the King’s apothecary,3 is not known to have opposed the Addington ministry. At the general election of 1802 he again contested Barnstaple, this time successfully. He supported Pitt on his return to power and was listed among those who voted against the censure of Melville, 8 Apr. 1805, though it was later reported that he had in fact ‘retired without voting’.4 In his last known speech, 30 May 1804, he drew on his African experiences to support his case against the abolition of the slave trade. His attitude to the ‘Talents’ is not known, but he was defeated at Barnstaple by two government supporters at the general election of 1806. His failure to be re-elected as a director of the East India Company in 1807, when ‘there was some story against him which made him very unpopular’, was exceptional in this period.5
In 1806 he married a woman said to be ‘60 years younger than himself’ and Farington later heard that ‘he made a settlement upon her which was every year that he lived to have some increase, thereby making it her interest to keep him alive as long as she could’. She succeeded for almost four years and he died 29 Nov. 1809, ‘aged 79’. The terms of the will, in which he made provision for a mulatto daughter and the son of his own illegitimate son, one Benjamin Devaynes of Liverpool, suggested that his personal wealth was considerable, but the bank had been courting disaster for some time and it failed within a year of his death.6
Author: David R. Fisher
1. C. H. Philips, E.I. Co. 26, 45.
2. J. Wilson, Biog. Index (1806), 166; Oracle, 25 Nov. 1795.
3. Gent. Mag. (1801), i. 93.
4. Wilson (1806), 167.
5. NLS mss 11087, f. 38; Philips, 41.
6. Farington, v. 140; vi. 213; Manning and Bray, Surr. iii. 299; PCC 15 Collingwood.
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Visit our Treaty, Convention & International Organization Document Archive
Lausanne Treaty: Part IV
COMMUNICATIONS AND SANITARY QUESTIONS.
Turkey undertakes to adhere to the Convention and to the Statute respecting the Freedom of Transit adopted by the Conference of Barcelona on the 14th April, 192I, as well as to the Convention and the Statute respecting the regime for waterways of international interest adopted by the said Conference on the 19th April, 1921, and to the supplementary Protocol.
Turkey accordingly undertakes to bring into force the provisions of these Conventions, Statutes and Protocol as from the entry into force of the present Treaty.
Turkey undertakes to adhere to the Declaration of Barcelona. dated the 20th April, 1921, "recognising the rights of the flag of States not possessing a sea-board."
Turkey undertakes to adhere to the recommendations of the Conference of Barcelona, dated the 20th April, 1921, respecting ports placed under an international regime. Turkey will subsequently make known those ports which will be placed under that regime.
Turkey undertakes to adhere to the recommendations of the Conference of Barcelona, dated the 20th April, 1921, respecting international railways. These recommendations will be brought into force by the Turkish Government on the coming into force of the present Treaty and subject to reciprocity.
On the coming into force of the present Treaty, Turkey agrees to subscribe to the Conventions and arrangements signed at Berne on October 14, 1890, September 20, 1893, July I6, 1895, June 16, 1898, and September 19, 1906, regarding the transportation of goods by rail.
When, as a result of the fixing of new frontiers, a railway connection between two parts of the same country crosses another country, or a branch line from one country has its terminus in another, the conditions of working, in so far as concerns the traffic between the two countries, shall, subject to any special arrangements, be laid down in an agreement to be concluded between the railway administrations concerned. If these administrations cannot come to an agreement as to the terms of such agreement, those conditions shall be decided by arbitration.
The establishment of all new frontier stations between Turkey and the neighbouring States, as well as the working of the lines between those stations, shall be settled by agreements similarly concluded .
Travellers and goods coming from or destined for Turkey or Greece, and making use in transit of the three sections of the Oriental Railways included between the Grseco-Bulgarian frontier and the Grceco-Turkish frontier near Kuleli-Burgas, shall not be subject, on account of such transit, to any duty or toll nor to any formality of examination in connection with passports or customs.
A Commissioner, who shall be selected by the Council of the League of Nations, shall ensure that the stipulations of this Article are carried out.
The Greek and Turkish Governments shall each have the right to appoint a representative to be attached to this Commissioner; this representative shall have the duty of drawing the attention of the Commissioner to any question relating to the execution of the above-mentioned stipulations, and shall enjoy all the necessary facilities to enable him to accomplish his task. These representatives shall reach an agreement with the Commissioner as to the number and nature of the subordinate staff which they will require.
It shall be the duty of the said Commissioner to submit, for the decision of the Council of the League of Nations, any question relating to the execution of the said stipulations which he may not have been able to settle. The Greek and Turkish Governments undertake to carry out any decision given by the majority vote of the said Council.
The salary of the said Commissioner, as well as the expenses of his work, shall be borne in equal parts by the Greek and Turkish Governments.
In the event of Turkey constructing later a railway line joining Adrianople to the line between Kuleli-Burgas and Constantinople, the stipulations of this Article shall lapse in so far as concerns transit between the points on the Graoco-Turkish frontier lying near Kuleli-Burgas and Bosna-Keuy respectively.
Each of the two interested Powers shall have the right, after five years from the coming into force of the present Treaty, to apply to the Council of the League of Nations with a view to deciding whether it is necessary that the control mentioned in paragraphs 2 to 5 of the present Article should be maintained. Nevertheless, it remains understood that the stipulations of paragraph I shall remain in force for transit over the two sections of the Oriental Railways between the Graeco-Bulgarian frontier and Bosna-Keuy.
Subject to any special provisions concerning the transfer of ports and railways, whether owned by the Turkish Government or private companies, situated in the territories detached from Turkey under the present Treaty, and similarly subject to any agreements which have been, or may be, concluded between the Contracting Powers relating to the concessionnaries and the pensioning of the personnel, the transfer of railways will take place under the following conditions:
(I) The works and installations of all the railroads shall be left complete and in as good condition as possible;
(2) When a railway system possessing its own rolling-stock is situated in its entirety in transferred territory, such stock shall be left complete with the railway, in accordance with the last inventory before the 30th October, 1918;
(3) As regards lines, the administration of which will in virtue of the present Treaty be divided, the distribution of the rolling-stock shall be made by friendly agreement between the administrations taking over the several sections thereof. This agreement shall have regard to the amount of the material registered on those lines in the last inventory before the 30th October, 1918, the length of the track (sidings included) and the nature and amount of the traffic. Failing agreement, the points in dispute shall be settled by arbitration. The arbitral decision shall also, if necessary, specify the locomotives, carriages and wagons to be left on each section, the conditions of their acceptance and such provisional arrangements as may be judged necessary to ensure for a limited period the current maintenance in existing workshops of the transferred stock;
(4) Stocks of stores, fittings and plant shall be left under the same conditions as the rolling-stock.
In default of any provisions to the contrary, when as the result of the fixing of a new frontier the hydraulic system (canalisation, inundation, irrigation, drainage or similar matters) in a State is dependent on works executed within the territory of another State, or when use is made on the territory of a State, in virtue of pre-war usage, of water or hydraulic power, the source of which is on the territory of another State, an agreement shall be made between the States concerned to safeguard the interests and rights acquired by each of them.
Failing an agreement, the matter shall be regulated by arbitration.
Roumania and Turkey will come to an agreement as to an equitable arrangement for the working conditions of the Constanza-Constantinople cable. Failing agreement, the matter shall be settled by arbitration.
Turkey renounces on her own behalf and on behalf of her nationals all rights, titles or privileges of whatsoever nature over the whole or part of such cables as no longer land on her territory.
If the cables or portions thereof transferred under the preceding paragraph are privately owned, the Governments to which this property is transferred will have to indemnify the owners. Failing agreement respecting the amount of indemnity, this amount will be fixed by arbitration.
Turkey will retain the rights of property which she may already possess over those cables of which at least one end remains in Turkish territory.
The exercise of the landing rights of the said cables in non-Turkish territory and their working conditions shall be settled in a friendly manner by the States concerned. Failing agreement, the dispute will be settled by arbitration.
Each of the High Contracting Parties hereby accepts, in so far as it is concerned, the abolition of foreign post offfices in Turkey.
SANITARY QUESTIONS.
The Superior Council of Health of Constantinople is abolished. The Turkish Administration is entrusted with the sanitary organisation of the coasts and frontiers of Turkey.
A single sanitary tariff, the dues and conditions of which shall be fair, shall be applied to all ships without distinction between the Turkish flag and foreign flags, and to nationals of foreign Powers under the same conditions as to nationals of Turkey.
Turkey undertakes to respect entirely the right of the sanitary employees whose services have been terminated to compensation to be appropriated out of the funds of the former Superior Council of Health of Constantinople, and all other rights acquired by employees or former employees of the Council, or their representatives. All questions relating to such rights, to the employment of the reserve funds of the former Superior Council of Health of Constantinople, or to the final liquidation of the former sanitary administration, as well as all other similar or cognate questions, shall be regulated by a Commission ad hoc which shall be composed of a representative of each of the Powers represented on the Superior Council of Health of Constantinople except Germany, Austria and Hungary. In the event of disagreement between the members of the said Commission on a question relating to the above-mentioned liquidation, or the employment of the funds remaining after the liquidation, every Power represented on the Commission shall have the right to bring the matter to the notice of the Council of the League of Nations, whose decision shall be final.
Turkey and those Powers which are interested in the supervision of the pilgrimages to Jerusalem and to the Hedjaz and the Hedjaz railway shall take such measures as are appropriate in accordance with the provisions of international sanitary conventions. With a view to ensuring complete uniformity in the execution of these measures, these Powers and Turkey shall constitute a Sanitary Coordination Commission for pilgrimages, on which the sanitary service of Turkey and the Maritime Sanitary and Quarantine Council of Egypt shall be represented.
This Commission must obtain the previous consent of the State on whose territory it holds its meeting.
Reports on the work of the Pilgrimage Coordination Commission shall be addressed to the Health Committee of the League of Nations and to the International Office of Public Health, and also to the Government of each country which is interested in pilgrimages and makes a request therefor. The Commission will give its opinion on every question put to it by the League of Nations, by the International Office of Public Health, or by the interested Governments.
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Foodtripper.com - For people who travel to eat. Sunday 17 January 2021 Contact Us | About Us | Sitemap
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PERU: Helena Rizzo is Latin America's best female chef
Today Helena Rizzo, executive chef of Mani restaurant in Sao Paulo, was named as the winner of The Veuve Clicquot Latin America’s Best Female Chef for 2013 by the organisers of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants sponsored by Cusque?a.
The inaugural Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list will be announced at an awards ceremony to be held for the first time in Lima, Peru on 4th September 2013. The Awards are organised by William Reed Business Media, the organisers of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants and Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants.
The Veuve Clicquot Latin America’s Best Female Chef Award is voted for by The Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy, a group of over 250 industry experts from across the region.
The Veuve Clicquot Latin America's Best Female Chef award celebrates the work of an exceptional female chef whose cooking excites the toughest of critics across Latin America. The award is inspired by the life and achievements of Madame Clicquot, who nearly 200 years ago set the standard for women in business. The winner reflects Madame Clicquot's attributes of innovation, creativity and determination.
Aymeric Sancerre, Veuve Clicquot’s Director of International Communications, explained: “Madame Clicquot was a woman who two centuries ago revolutionised Champagne with her extraordinary stamina, her thirst for innovation and her quest for ultimate quality. Helena Rizzo represents exactly these values in gastronomy today and I am proud that our name and rich history is associated to such a wonderful personality.”
William Drew, from William Reed Business Media, said: "We are delighted that Helena Rizzo has been recognised as the leading female chef in the region. Since opening her restaurant, Mani, in 2006 she has married Brazilian culinary traditions with more contemporary techniques to increasingly brilliant effect. Her dishes are beautiful, innovative and delicious – and the title of The Veuve Clicquot Latin America’s Best Female Chef is richly deserved.”
Rizzo discovered her passion for food at age 14 and since then she has worked continuously to discover and master new techniques and flavors to enrich and advance her creations. As a young woman, she travelled and worked extensively in leading kitchens across Europe, culminating at El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain – recently named as The S.Pellegrino World’s Best Restaurant – where she met her future husband, Spanish-born Daniel Redondo.
In 2006 Rizzo, together with husband, opened Mani restaurant in the exclusive area of Jardim Paulistano, Sao Paulo. At Mani, Rizzo works with predominantly traditional Brazilian ingredients delicately treated with the latest techniques of international cuisine. While the Spanish influence on Rizzo’s cooking is pronounced, her dishes retain a distinctively local core. She also adds a female sensibility to flavour combinations, allied to stunning presentation, resulting in a unique dining experience. A signature dish on Rizzo’s menu is maniocas baked and served with tucupi froth, coconut milk and a slick of white truffle olive oil.
Mani featured on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for the first time in 2013 at number 46.
Rizzo will be presented with The Veuve Clicquot Latin America’s Best Female Chef Award at the inaugural awards ceremony for Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants in Lima, Peru on 4th September 2013. The list will be published online at www.theworlds50best.com/latinamerica/en/ as it is announced to the assembled chefs and guests.
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HANNA-LIISA KIRCHIN - MEZZO SOPRANO
Awards/Competitions
British mezzo soprano Hanna-Liisa is an alumni of the National Opera Studio, and studies with soprano, Nelly Miricioiu. She is a graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music and ENO's Opera Works Programme.
The 2019/20 season included a return to Welsh National Opera as Woodpecker (The Cunning Little Vixen), a recital wth renowned soprano, Nelly Miricioiu, and participation in the IVC Bel Canto Masterclass. Due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, all contracts in 2020 have been postponed until 2021.
The 2020/21 season hopefully brings Flora (La Traviata), Siebel (Faust) and Mère Marie (Dialogues des Carmelites) with Orquesta Sinfónica de Zapopan in Mexico.
During the 2018/19 season, she sang Kate Pinkerton (Madame Butterfly) with Iford Arts, covered Tisbe (La Cenerentola) and Helene (War & Peace) for Welsh National Opera, as well as Varvara (Katya Kabanova) with Scottish Opera.
The 2017/18 season included Mayor's Wife in Katie Mitchell's staging of Jenufa for Grange Park Opera - in their inaugural season at their newly built theatre, the title role in Orfeo ed Euridice with Longborough Festival Opera, the role of Flora in a new production of La Traviata with the Nederlandse Reisopera, and she will cover the role of Arsace in Händel’s Partenope at English National Opera.
The 2016 season included an international debut with Dutch National Opera/Opera Zuid/Nederlandse Reisopera as Fidalma (Il Matrimonio Segreto) in March 2016, and UK debuts with Grange Park Opera as Wowkle (La Fanciulla del West), and with Longborough Festival Opera as Ruggiero (Alcina) in July/Aug 2016. She was the alto soloist in Handel's Messiah with Nederlandse Reisopera, at Le Carre Theatre in Amsterdam.
The 2015 season included the World Premiere of Nigel Osborne's "Bosnian Voices" with the Liverpool Philharmonic 10/10 Ensemble, an appearance with the Oxford Lieder Festival, and a return to Bayerische Staatsoper as Ensemble in Monteverdi's Orfeo. She was a 2015 Les Azuriales Young Artist, and a finalist in the Jette Parker Young Artist Programme auditions at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
Roles studied in full/in excerpts at National Opera Studio include Cenerentola (La Cenerentola), Rosina (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Prince Charmant (Cendrillon), 3rd Lady (The Magic Flute), Frau Reich (The Merry Wives of Windsor), Annio (La Clemenza di Tito), Despina (Cosi fan Tutte), Judy (Punch and Judy) and Fanny Price (Mansfield Park).
Roles in RNCM excerpts included Helen (King Priam), Carmen (Carmen), Mrs Grose (The Turn of the Screw) Angelina (La Cenerentola), Emilia (Otello), Ottavia/Virtu (L'incoronazione di Poppea), Dorabella (Cosi fan tutte), Phoebe (Yeoman of the Guard), Orfeo (Orfeo ed Euridice), Mistress Quickly (Falstaff), Mrs Kneebone (A Dinner Engagement), Mrs Herring (Albert Herring) and second shining one (The Pilgrim’s Progress). For ENO Opera Works: Orfeo (Gluck), Ruggiero (Alcina) and Annio (La Clemenza di Tito).
Roles at RNCM included The Little Owl (L’enfant et les sortileges), Glasha (Katya Kabanova), Consuela (West Side Story), second woman (Dido and Aeneas - in collaboration with Manchester Camerata), Paquette (Candide), Bacchis (La Belle Helene), Cyrus (Belshazzar), the cover role of Sesto (La Clemenza di Tito) Mercedes (Carmen), Mrs Herring (Albert Herring), Xerxes (Xerxes), Penelope (Il ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria) and Masha (Paradise Moscow). Externally Hanna-Liisa has sung Old Nog (Tarka the Otter with Buxton Festival Opera), Junon (Acteon with DISS), 3rd Wild Goose/Poppet (Paul Bunyan with British Youth Opera 2013) and Ensemble (Orfeo at Bayerische Staatsoper 2014).
On the concert platform, works include Beethoven's Mass in C, Mendelssohn's Elijah, Elgar's Sea Pictures, Haydn’s Paukenmesse, Handel’s Messiah, Bach's Magnificat and St John Passion, Rossini's Petite Messe Solenelle and Mozart’s Requiem.
Awards have included The Elsie Thurston Prize (2007), Alexander Young Prize (2008), The Eunice Pettigrew Prize (2009), The Annie Ridyard Scholarship (2010-12) The Amanda Roocroft prize (RNCM 2010), The Elizabeth Harwood Memorial Prize for Singers (RNCM 2013), A Miriam Licette Scholarship administered by Musicians Benevolent Fund (2013) and an Opera Awards Foundation bursary (2013).
She has sung in master classes with Sarah Connolly, Joan Rodgers, Ryland Davies, Lynne Dawson, Patricia MacMahon, Nelly Miricioiu, Ann Murray DBE and Dame Felicity Palmer, and coached with David Gowland, Raul Gimenez, John Fisher, Steven Maughan, Michael Pollock and Della Jones.
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MAY PEACE PREVAIL ON EARTH
(Peace Etcetera Inc. has granted permission for use of this peace logo which is solely
owned, copyrighted and is a registered trademark of Peace Etcetera Inc.)
The Cornucopia Series #2: The Never-Ending Stories
Here is what I've gathered for you this past week. I may not be able to prepare another regular compilation for you next week, both because of a nagging health problem (pericarditis) I'm currently experiencing and because of the need for a Christmas-time break.
An idea came to me yesterday which I'd like to share with you. Since this time of the year is a good time to take stock of what took place over the last 12 months, I would appreciate hearing from you what have been the 5 stories that you found through my compilations over the past year that struck you as the most important ones or which have been the most helpful to you. To jug your memory, I'd like to suggest that you go review the titles of this year's compilations through http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com, open the archive copies of those in which you believe there was something important to you, draw up this list with the title of each item along with the URL (web address) where it is archived on the ERN site, and if you feel inspired to do so, write up a couple lines (quoting brief excerpts if necessary) as to why it had a significant impact upon you. If you also feel inspired to do so, I would appreciate a brief acknowledgement or any comment you'd like to share as to what it means to you to review every week this material I network as well as the Meditation Focuses I regularly prepare. I'm aware that what I'm asking you will require some of your time, but considering that I spend on average 20 hours/week (over 1,000 hours/year) reviewing emails and websites, preparing, networking and archiving this material for you, I think it is not unfair of me to ask you this ... ;-) Besides, I think it will be an interesting experiences to skim through a year-worth of compilations (close to 5,000 pages of material) and Meditation Focuses (which can be reviewed through http://www.aei.ca/~cep/home.htm - starting near the bottom). Of course, I will compile all your emails into a one-of-a-kind "Best of This Year" compilation that I hope to network on or just before December 31.
I wish you all a happy time with your loved ones in this Holiday season.
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com
Free subscription to a large weekly Earth Rainbow Network compilation by simply sending a blank email to earthrainbownetwork-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
This compilation is archived at http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2006/Cornucopia2.htm
THE QUOTES
"I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, 'Mother, what was war?'"
— Eve Merriam
"Many toxic chemicals have been showing up in humans and animals worldwide, including a compound used to make Teflon, brominated flame retardants in computers and furniture, and chemicals called bisphenol A and phthalates in plastics. Some can alter hormones or brain growth and might harm fetuses and children, though the dangers are not well understood. The EU already has banned many chemicals that remain legal in the United States, including phthalates in toys and cosmetics, high formaldehyde levels in wood and lead in electronics. "When one in three people contract cancer in their lifetime, we need to stop using known and suspected cancer-causing chemicals in commerce. The same goes for chemicals that are now accumulating in our children's bodies," said Bev Thorpe, director of Clean Production Action, an international group advocating green chemistry."
— Taken from Europe Passes Tough Chemical Law below
"I was in touch With Suzy Ward to tell her the reasons, from my experiences in the paranormal, why I believed Matthew's Channeling was on the right track. One incident was in the 1980's where we sent a man in trance a hundred years into the future. We couldn't believe that the changes he reported could happen in only 100 years. There had to have been ET help. In another, a Canadian friend who was many times taken out in space ships told me of a special time when he was beamed up into a rainbow ship where, with perhaps a thousand others, they were shown the earth's aura as it was then, all gray and polluted, and then how it would be fifty years in the future--all pristine. So you see why the spiritual which takes us into the paranormal engages me. I have been on a long quest for "The Truth" but have come to realize that while Truth is eternal and infinite, we are mortal and finite. So what we each take as "truth" is only a piece of Eternal Truth and someone else's piece is probably just as valid as mine because both are limited and fragmented. Thanks for the beautiful channeling from Christ. I have followed channelings since they came into prominence in the seventies. I am suspicious of anyone who professes to channel God or Jesus, but this is a wonderful message and I have sent it on to those I send channelings to."
— Ann Emerson (annemerson@fidalgo.net)
"Hallelujah Jean! Thanks to your Light and your astonishing work, thousands of us are together and ready to celebrate the Biggest Event Ever. Keep shinning as a Sun, we need your warm Love."
— Ricardo (ricardos@auroville.org.in) on Dec 15
"We join our hearts and minds together in a time of meditation or prayer; spoken, silent, sung, and shared. It is a precious time, and all precious times want preparation, so I invite you to settle yourself in a straight posture, both feet grounded on the floor, to take a deep breath, hold it until you notice your need to breathe out, and relax. I invite you to close your eyes, for vision is the single most energy intensive activity of our brains. These next few days are the days of the Winter Solstice, a time when those who are very attentive to the skies note that the sun, which has relentlessly moved southward on the horizon since last June, seems to pause on its journey before beginning to climb northwards to center again. Solstice is a time of pause. So… pause. Breathe. Relax. Rest. Be at peace. Spirit of winter rest, help us to enjoy your peace in this quiet place. Remind us to pause during this season. Grant us awareness, keep our gratitude fresh each day. May the songs in our heart be blessings and insights to us and to others and may compassion always shine forth from the depths of our hearts."
— Taken from Winter Solstice Meditation at http://www.uua.org/worshipweb/meditations/robinsonc-med01.html
This next solstice will be on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 4:23 pm Pacific Standard Time / 00:23 UT Dec. 22 -- If you are unable to meditate at the exact time of the Solstice, choose a time within 12 hours before or after to be part of this hierarchical meditation. Much more details on this through http://www.souledout.org/christmas/solsticelight/solstice2006.html
"Our message to you is to ask that you pour out your Light and Love where you perceive that the darkness is strongest. Do not limit your vision, as you are mighty powerful Beings. It only requires a small number of you with the same focus to bring changes about. The Middle East should still be the main focal point, as the people are crying out for release from the tyrants that rule, and those who occupy the lands of others. Peace is not impossible, but there has to be leadership and direction that is not influenced by political demands. The time for playing power politics is nearly over. "
— Diane - 20-December-2006 (available through http://www.treeofthegoldenlight.com/First_Contact/mike_quinsey/channeled%20messages/December2006/MQ_12_20_06Diane.htm)
1. Christ Consciousness
2. Message from St. Germain
3. The Christmas Truce: A Short, Highly Inspiring Christmas Story
4. About Face: Soldiers Call for Iraq Withdrawal
5. China To Dump One Trillion In U.S. Reserves!!!
6. Analysts: Dollar collapse would result in 'amero' - Think deep recession likely regardless of Fed's actions
7. Alleged Liquid Bomb Plot Credibility Crumbles
8. Putin reported 'furious' over US payment for Lebanon war, CIA Egypt terror ring
9. USA cuts nuclear weapons and builds extra-strong A-bombs at the same time
10. Europe Passes Tough Chemical Law +
11. Wi-Fi as a Health Hazard +
12. Global warming and those portable electrical units
13. Citizens drive politicians towards global action on climate change
14. The CQPolitics Interview: Dennis Kucinich
15. International Law Authority Rips Bush for Illegal Germ Warfare Development
16. Oceans may rise over 4 1/2 feet by 2100
17. Give us non-polluting energy - starting now
18. The Hope Flowers School Bethlehem NEEDS YOUR HELP!
19. What if you knew
LAST MINUTE ADDITION
(...) New Age researchers and students of Mayan ways expect to see startling, unprecedented bursts of Cosmic energy emanating from the Galactic Center at the Winter Solstice of 2012, and predict that the Earth will be inundated by high-frequency waves that will trigger the elevation of human consciousness and simultaneously inaugurate a breath-taking array of profound climatological earth changes, ushering in a new age qualitatively different in every way from our present culture and consciousness.
This Winter Solstice, Lightworkers, meditators and everyone can begin to tune in to the energies of this New Age during the three-day Solstice Window we are now entering. Try it for yourself. Take a quiet moment, light a candle, symbol of the return of the light, and invoke the Higher Consciousness at the Galactic Center, which has been radiating high-frequency, intelligent energy broadcasts throughout this tumultuous year. Sit quietly and meditate upon the alignment of this year's Winter Solstice with that Galactic Center, and upon the scale of the transformations taking place in our world.
Reflect upon the difficulties and the sorrows experienced by so many around the world this year as a result of hurricanes, famine, war, disease, and human greed. Contemplate the fact that humanity is experiencing a difficult and painful initiation that is essential for our spiritual evolution as a species, and consistent with the demands traditionally placed upon humans, as individuals and as societies, during the time of the turning of the Ages.
Reflect upon the Great Cosmic Truth that despite the vicissitudes of life encountered during the cycling of the Ages, the human spirit continues to advance Age after Age, producing a continuous flowering of human culture in the form of Wisdom teachers, artists, scientists, and Lightworkers dedicated to the affirmation of the forces of Life, working diligently in service to humanity, to Nature and to Spirit.
Conscious of the grand arc of human evolution, let us rest in a state of radiant inner equanimity, like the Sun. Despite the tumultuous upheavals in our world today, it is nothing less than our historical and spiritual task to maintain our equilibrium at this time of World Transition, and to steadily, consciously and lovingly assist in the setting aside of old, outworn cultural forms and norms and in the birthing of the New Age that will replace the current global culture of greed, materialism and religious war.
Let us then celebrate the accelerating earth changes occurring around us and let us give thanks for the elevation of human consciousness we are currently experiencing worldwide at this time of conflict and global climate change at the cusp of the Age of Aquarius. Let us maintain a spirit of surrender, love and gratitude despite the physical discomforts, emotional upheaval, mental turmoil and soul angst that horrendously destructive outer events and tremendously demanding inner transformations now trigger within us.
It is ever the task of the clairvoyant, the spiritual being, to channel the energies of humanity's future evolution into the world of today. In this respect, little has changed over the centuries.
Those who are able to maintain their inner balance during this time of transformation are being offered access to the energies of Love generated within the crucible of the New Cosmic Age, as evidenced by the recent bursts of intelligent cosmic energy emanating from the Cosmic Center of our Galaxy.
For rest assured that no love is in vain, love will never lose its own, and those who walk the path of Spirit will inevitably experience for themselves the Victory of the Sun, despite the appearance of darkness all around them.
Love, light, peace, health, happiness, and well-being to you and yours throughout this Festival Season. May you find harmony with Nature, become one with the power of the Spirit, plant the seeds of your own best and highest being deep within your heart, and may you receive the grace and guidance required to help you fulfill your loftiest spiritual goals.
— Excerpted from the Satya Center Winter Solstice Newsletter 2006 edited by Curtis Lang and Jane Sherry (info@satyacenter.com") (To be archived at http://www.satyacenter.com/)
Imagine This - The Video
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1847778207986315796&q=Imagine%2C+John+Lennon&hl=en
ACTION ALERT: Protest Plans to Destroy Uganda's Few Remaining Rainforests for Plantations (December 15, 2006)
http://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=uganda
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is pursuing legally dubious plans to destroy much of Uganda's last few rainforests to grow palm oil and sugar cane crops. Uganda has long been facing a deforestation crisis, with forests covering 20 percent of Uganda 40 years ago, but now just covering seven percent. Loss of forest cover in Uganda has had devastating ecological impacts which will be intensified by the proposed projects. Deforestation has been directly responsible for declining levels of waters in Lake Victoria and the River Nile, resulting in a scarcity of drinking water and reduction in hydroelectric energy production. The whole matter seems to reflect a desperate power grab by the President to reward cronies under false and illusory promises of industrialization. The government has no legal mandate to give out constitutionally protected forest reserves to be cut down by private companies. Please contact President Yoweri Museveni, the entire Ugandan parliament, and Ugandan ministries and embassies and insist that these projects be abandoned, and Uganda's remaining rainforest strictly protected as ecological reserves while restoring forests where they historically occurred. TAKE ACTION NOW at: http://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=uganda and let the Ugandan President and Parliament know rainforests and their ecological services are more valuable than sugar and oil palm production.
I Choose Love
Recommended by "Sandra and Richard" (srkeber@msn.com) who wrote: "Shawn Gallaway's great new music video - makes you feel GOOD!!"
Kayaker meets a killer Whale
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0b19669212
Ski Gliding Down an almost Vertical embankment-Are they Crazy
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b482000d2e
85 years in 40 seconds
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=34e6b8f70a
Awesome clip showing a human from kid to grandpa.
Stoned Weather Lady
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1e012a7e2b
If this lady is acting like this, there can be one and only one reason...
Amazing balancing act
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=63c6bbcd8f
This woman on a unicycle is using one leg to keep it going, with 6 bowls on the other leg. She flips all the bowls onto her head incredibly.
A Large Tsunami Shock Wave on the Sun
Tsunamis this large don't happen on Earth. One week ago, a large solar flare from an Earth-sized sunspot produced a tsunami-type shock wave that was spectacular even for the Sun. THOUSANDS OF STUNNING SPACE-RELATED PICTURES THROUGH http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html
Some outstanding cosmic views... (especially if you access the larger format through clicking on the pic)
In the Shadow of Saturn - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061016.html
Unusual Starburst Galaxy NGC 1313 - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061128.html
NGC 1055 and M77 - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061215.html
In the Arms of NGC 1097 - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061201.html
M31: The Andromeda Galaxy - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061126.html
Hydrogen in M33 - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061123.html
3D Mercury Transit - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061125.html and the same as a flash animation http://www.sungazer.net/3dtransit1.html
M42: Wisps of the Orion Nebula - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061120.html
Mercury and the Chromosphere - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0611/MercuryTransit_jones_f.jpg
The Ghostly Tail of Comet SWAN - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061106.html
V838 Mon: Echoes from the Edge - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061103.html
SH2 136: A Spooky Nebula - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061031.html
The Antennae Galaxies in Collision - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061024.html
Star EGGs in the Eagle Nebula - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061022.html
Blue Lagoon - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060825.html
This is NOT a cosmic view: A Bucket-Wheel Excavator on Earth (!!!!) - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061122.html
The Antikythera Mechanism (As mentioned in a recent compilation - MUCH better picture!)
What is it? It was found at the bottom of the sea aboard an ancient Greek ship. Its seeming complexity has prompted decades of study, although many of its functions remained unknown. Recent X-rays of the device have now confirmed the nature of the Antikythera mechanism, and discovered several surprising functions. The Antikythera mechanism has been discovered to be a mechanical computer of an accuracy thought impossible in 80 BC, when the ship that carried it sunk. Such sophisticated technology was not thought to be developed by humanity for another 1,000 years. Its wheels and gears create a portable orrery of the sky that predicted star and planet locations as well as lunar and solar eclipses. The Antikythera mechanism, shown above, is 33 centimeters high and similar in size to a large book.
Lights & Ice Circle Hemlock River - Near Amasa, Michigan - MUST SEE!
http://www.ufoinfo.com/news/michiganicecircle.shtml
Boston Air Traffic Controller Says 9/11 An Inside Job (December 14, 2006)
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2006/141206trafficcontroller.htm
Knew people in FAA on day of hijackings who said intercept procedures should have been enacted as normal - A former Boston Center air traffic controller has gone public on his assertion that 9/11 was an inside job and that Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon tracked three of the four flights from the point of their hijacking to hitting their targets. In an astounding telephone interview, Robin Hordon claims air traffic controllers have been ignored or silenced to protect the true perpetrators of 9/11. A recording of the phone conversation http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9147890225218338952&hl=en was posted on Google video late yesterday by the Pilots For 9/11 Truth organization. (...) Hordon ended by saying that only with the testimony from the dozens of flight controllers who have been silenced or ignored would the true story about who carried out 9/11 begin to emerge.
NBC anchor: WTC collapse planned"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhDOq305oh0&mode=related&search=
The great conspiracy part 3 (Very revealing!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b9-lnzoirs&mode=related&search=
Why would everybody be silent? Part 1 (20 min. 27 sec. - graphic sex descriptions!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L68t_xGEAzE
Part 2 (22 min. 26 sec.) is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_X2JIoa1RM&NR
These are key excerpts - edited by Eric Hufschmid with his comments - from an 8 hour long interview conducted in 1998 by Pastor Rick Strawcutter with Kay Griggs who explains why the US military ignore 9-11 and other crimes. She talks in details about the sexual perversion from their young age of all top US military brass and all people in positions of power as parts of a program by the international mob allied with the Zionists to control and eventually destroy the US government and also for the purpose of enabling massive weapon and drug sales, source of enormous profits for those behind this evil scheme. The original unabridged interview with Kay Griggs on DVD can be obtained at a cost from http://www.kaygriggstalks.com/ and from http://www.hugequestions.com/ (where there is some other interesting stuff). Check also the various complementary posts on this at http://www.gnn.tv/forum/thread.php?id=4733 and I also really recommend to read the detailed article (dated 25 July 2005) by Greg Szymanski at http://www.arcticbeacon.citymaker.com/articles/article/1518131/29982.htm to get the whole story about Kay Griggs.
Death Of The Dollar (10 minute video)
Former wall street broker, Max Keiser, investigates the US economy and reveals how the American officials have maintained the image of a strong dollar since coming off the Gold Standard. We hear from authors and leading economists who claim that central banks have been helping to manipulate the gold markets and keep the prices down.How will all this unravel? Max looks at the current US debt levels, the shift away from the dollar as a reserve currency and the move to price oil in Euros
Save the Internet - MUST See short and very well made video explaining this issue
http://www.savetheinternet.com/
Fighting for Internet Freedom - Recommended by John Tibayan (john@tibayan.org) who also created a webpage on this http://globalartistvillage.blogspot.com/2006/12/save-internet-independence-day.html
Massive numbers of unexploded mines and cluster bombs continue to kill and maim civilians - a horrific legacy of war. MAG (Mines Advisory Group) is one of the leading organizations helping to address this problem. Please support their crucial de-mining work. The UN has reported over 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets at 359 separate sites in Lebanon. Unexploded ordnance prevents farmers from cultivating their land, families from returning to their homes, and children from playing safely outside. These bombs kill or maim unsuspecting civilians; a number of children in Lebanon recently suffered severe injury after mistaking the small explosive packages for toys. You can help prevent this. MAG, co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, is working hard to make Lebanon safe for civilians by clearing unexploded ordnance. MAG is providing critical equipment, expertise, and personnel to assist with cleanup efforts throughout the country, destroying over 11,000 bombs since the ceasefire and assisting over 450,000 people at risk of death or injury from these harmful remnants of conflict. MAG also has active conflict recovery projects elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. We encourage you to support their work here, to ensure that others may have a more peaceful holiday season: http://www.ceasefirecampaign.org/mines
Recommended by "Ricken Patel - CeasefireCampaign.org" team@ceasefirecampaign.org
Tell Bush to Veto Palestinian Sanctions Bill (December 7th, 2006)
http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=1276
On December 7, the House of Representatives passed S.2370, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006, by Voice Vote (not recorded).The House’s passage of S.2370, which was passed previously by the Senate on June 23, clears the way for the President to sign into law draconian economic and diplomatic sanctions against the Palestinian people for exercising their right to vote in legislative elections held earlier this year. CLIP -- See also an article on the consequences for Palestinians at http://www.abc.net.au/correspondents/content/2006/s1764725.htm
Bush Has Created a Catastrophe in Middle East
Timothy Garton Ash writes: "What an amazing bloody catastrophe. The Bush administration's policy towards the Middle East over the five years since 9/11 is culminating in a multiple train crash. Never in the field of human conflict was so little achieved by so great a country at such vast expense. In every vital area of the wider Middle East, American policy over the last five years has taken a bad situation and made it worse."
Tears of Rage; Tears of Grief
Chris Floyd reports that "just nine months after an American raid that killed 11 civilians, including five children under the age of five, another ground and air assault on suspected insurgents in the area left behind a pile of corpses, including at least two children. As with the earlier incident, Friday's attack has produced conflicting stories of what really happened, but the end result is clear: a multitude of grieving, angry Iraqis further embittered against the American occupation."
Assault on Red Crescent an Escalation in Iraq (Dec 20, 2006) MUST READ!! AND MUST REMEMBER AFTERWARDS EACH TIME THE MASS MURDERER 'DECIDER' IN CHIEF OPEN HIS MOUTH TO UTTER MORE LIES
Less than a mile from where British prime minister Tony Blair was gripping and grinning during a surprise visit to Baghdad on Sunday, agents of the extremist factions that he and George W. Bush have empowered, paid, and heavily armed were raiding the offices of the Iraqi Red Crescent Agency and rounding up some of the few remaining relief workers in the country who attend to the suffering of all sides. This bold, broad-daylight assault came less than 48 hours after top Red Crescent officials publicly accused US military forces of conducting a series of attacks on the agency's offices around the country during the course of the war. As the New York Times reports, the Sunday raid followed a grim pattern that is by now well-established in the bloodsoaked capital, and is likely to have the same grim conclusion. The usual "armed men dressed in police commando uniforms" descended on the Red Crescent office just outside the Coalition's Green Zone island of virtual reality and methodically went through the building and seized all the male employees. Seven men were later released, while the rest were taken off to an unknown location. The "armed men in police commando uniforms" were, of course, police commandos, in this case almost certainly under the control of the Interior Ministry, one of the Shiite enclaves in the sectarian-riddled government. (...) As in previous such raids, it is likely that the Shiite militia/policemen will release any other Shiites and non-Sunnis remaining among the captives, then torture and kill any Sunnis, dumping their bodies elsewhere in the city later. These quasi-official death squads - who receive most of their training, money and weapons from the United States and Britain - have been increasingly brazen in carrying out a broad-based ethnic cleansing campaign in Baghdad. (...) Later, when asked about the Red Crescent attack and the rising violence in Iraq, Blair skittered away into that inner Green Zone of fortified fantasy where the war's backers increasingly dwell. "There is innocent blood being spilled, but it's not being spilled by the Iraqi government," he told the NYT. Yet it beggars belief to imagine that Blair and Bush (or at least the latter's chief advisers) do not know that they have helped form many of the very militias they now rail against daily, and that their much-trumpeted support for Iraq's "security forces" is in fact one of the main engines driving the sectarian civil war. One can only conclude from this that Bush and Blair have decided that the sectarian war should be played to their own advantage, and pushed toward the only result that now offers even the slightest chance of "success" in their war of aggression: the triumph of a Shiite extremist faction willing to cut an acceptable deal on the all-important "oil law" and perhaps allow a continued US military presence in the country, if only a few "lily-pad" skeleton bases. These have always been the main goals of the Bush Faction's warmongers, even before the administration took power in the 2000 judicial coup: to open Iraq's oil fields to cronies of the conquerors, and to plant a US "military footprint" in this strategic heart of the Middle East. They have hewed toward these goals with a remarkable, ruthless focus. This is one key reason why the occupation of Iraq has been such a slap-dash affair; its authors didn't really care what sort of regime sprang up in the wake of the invasion, or how it got cobbled together, as long as it played ball on oil and military bases. (A third main goal of the operation - war profiteering on an unprecedented, almost unfathomable scale - has already been accomplished.) (...) Thus it seems increasingly clear that Bush and Blair have decided to wage all-out war on Sadr, with the help of the "surge" troops now being put together. This will be the "New Way Forward" that Bush's mouthpieces have been talking about. American soldiers will fight for SCIRI and its allies, and for any other faction that seems likely to acquiesce in some measure to the Coalition's twin war aims. The fact that this will be yet another strategic mistake of horrendous proportions will not stop the stunted intellects from giving it a try. Sadr, who commands the fanatical devotion of millions of Iraqis - millions of armed Iraqis - cannot be defeated militarily without a bloodbath that would make even the utter hell of present-day Iraq look mild by comparison. Sunday's attack on the Red Crescent is a harbinger of what's to come, and a microcosm of the great atrocity that is the war itself: a vicious assault by torturers and murderers on innocent people while self-proclaimed liberators look on, mouthing pieties, talking tough, and daintily cleansing their hands of blood.
Bush Calls for Larger Military
President Bush on Wednesday called for an increase in the size of the US military in Iraq, as well as a new strategy to meet "changing realities" on the ground. The statement comes a day after he told a newspaper that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and that he wants to increase troop strength in Iraq and for the long-term fight against terrorism.
Bush Can't Kick the Habit
Robert Scheer writes: "Here we go again: A new secretary of defense and yet another call for ending the war in Iraq by escalating it. What are they smoking in the Bush White House?"
Attacks in Iraq at Record High
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121906M.shtml
A report based on the Pentagon assessment of security conditions in Iraq, which covers the period from early August to early November, found an average of almost 960 attacks against Americans and Iraqis every week, the highest level recorded since the Pentagon began issuing the quarterly reports in 2005, with the biggest surge in attacks against American-led forces.
Diplomat's Suppressed Document Reveals Lies Behind Iraq War
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121506N.shtml
The British Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
McCain's Shameless Call for Escalation in Iraq
Allen Uthman writes: "Early indicators of the depths to which McCain will stoop to win include his freshly-appointed campaign manager, professional scumbag Terry Nelson. Nelson, Bush's national political director for his 2004 re-election campaign and an unindicted co-conspirator named in Tom Delay's money-laundering indictment, is responsible for the infamous below-the-belt white bimbo ad that helped sink Harold Ford Jr.'s senatorial campaign this year by exciting the powerful anti-miscegenation Neanderthal demographic in Tennessee. The appallingly racist ad drew so much heat that Nelson was fired by Wal-Mart, but McCain apparently has lower standards."
The Army, Despite Its $168 Billion Budget, Is Out of Money
The Iraq war has exposed more than a decade's worth of mistakes and miscalculations that are now seriously undermining the world's mightiest military force. According to Major General Stephen Speakes, the Army was sent to war in Iraq $56 billion short of essential equipment. Army officials told the White House that it needs at least an additional $24 billion, not in the 2007 budget, just to pay its current bills. Cash shortfalls have forced the Army to lay off janitorial staff, close base swimming pools, and even stop mowing lawns on Army bases.
Stop the Funding of the War! - View The Video - Sign The Petition
Support H.R. 4232: Introduced by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA)
Pentagon eyes $468.9 bln budget for fiscal 2008
http://tinyurl.com/t4glu
The Pentagon is likely to ask for an additional $100 billion to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars early next year.
Walk for Change: In Search of Peace
Peace mom Cindy Sheehan begins, "As dissatisfaction with the occupation of Iraq soars and the carnage seemingly continues unabated, the new Democratic Congress is on board with staying the disastrous course that BushCo and the Republican-dominated Congress has set for our nation. We progressives who put the Democrats in power so that they could change the course cannot, must not, allow the Congress to give the insaniacs in the White House more money to fund what we all now know is a mistake based on lies."
US Army Might Break Goodyear Strike - Here is a good and simple way to end the war in Iraq!...
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/121806LB.shtml
The US Army is considering measures to force striking workers back to their jobs at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant in Kansas in the face of a looming shortage of tires for Humvee trucks and other military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan. A strike involving 17,000 members of the United Steelworkers union has crippled 16 Goodyear plants in the US and Canada since October 5.
New Documents Reveal Scope of CIA Secret Prison Program
A few days after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the CIA station chief in Rome paid a visit to the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, Adm. Gianfranco Battelli, to float a proposal: Would the Italian secret services help the CIA kidnap terrorism suspects and fly them out of the country? This initial secret contact and others that followed, disclosed in newly released documents, show the speed and breadth with which the CIA applied in post-9/11 Europe a tactic it had long reserved for the Third World - "extraordinary rendition," the extrajudicial abduction of Islamic radicals overseas for interrogation in friendly countries.
US Sec of Navy admits they oversee mind control research (Dec 15)
Here below is a link to a document, made available on the web by the Federation of American Scientists, in which the Secretary of the U.S. Navy admits in writing that the Navy is the authority giving approval for research in "severe and unusual intrusions" on human subjects, such as mind control work. Mind control is an important weapon in the 21st century. Mind control includes electromagnetic devices which can affect the brain and physical functioning, some pharmaceuticals, some behaviour modification "conditioning" and "chaining", and regular hypnotic techniques. Some of these may be used in conjunction with others. CLIP
Peace Women Teach US Government Lesson in Diplomacy
Medea Benjamin writes: "It must sound absurd, perhaps even unbelievable, that four peace women were arrested and put on trial for attempting to deliver a peace petition to the US Mission to the United Nations. But while our arrests reflected the 'shoot first, ask questions later' style of George Bush and outgoing UN Ambassador John Bolton, we ended up teaching the government a lesson in diplomacy."
Conservative Party linked to pro-U.S. annexation cabal (Dec 16, 2006) http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2006/10/11/01243.html
Activities tantamount to Treason, involving Breach of Parliamentary Oath and conspiracy to overthrow Her Majesty "Stand Up for Canada" appears to have been devised as a technique of mass deception, under the joint auspices of former ultra-right wing Alliance Party and U.S. Republican Party advisors.In the last 2006 Federal Election, the Conservative Party kept trumpeting its slogan that it would "Stand up for Canada". Then, Opposition Leader Stephen Harper during that elected indicated that he would similarly "Stand Up" for Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. Mr. Harper portrayed his party, as a party which would govern Canada with integrity and openness in a spirit of renewed democracy, in contrast with the 'corruption' of the Martin Liberals. As it turns out, these assertions by Mr. Harper could not be further from the truth. Mel Hurtig, the founder of the Council of Canadians, and also a variety of other reliable sources including veteran CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, now reveal that senior elected representatives and advisors to the Conservative Party, are currently planning a scheme that would hand over Canada to the Bush regime by 2007. The official name for this scheme, is called "North American Union". Mel Hurtig, a noted Canadian author and publisher who was the elected leader of the National Party of Canada, provided researchers with the agenda and attendee list of the so-called "North American Forum" at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta, Sept. 12-14, 2006. Mel Hurtig reveals that the Stephen Harper's Government has appointed a Ministerial Team in order to "surrender" Canada to the U.S. by 2007, so that its political-military-industrial complex can fully control oil and other Canadian resources. Alberta "Conservatives", including at least one former Premier, are reportedly among prominent Harper Government operatives of this ultra-right wing effort. CLIP - Numerous comments on this at http://www.blog.agoracosmopolitan.com/?p=31 including this one: "I have read many U.S. sources which further confirms the apparent treason of Harper’s minority government."
Gender Equality and Well-Being of Children Inextricably Linked
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/121406WB.shtml
Millions of children across the world will continue to suffer from lack of food, health care and education as long as their mothers are forced to live with abusive conditions at home and discrimination in the workplace.
U.S. fermenting civil war - U.S. training Fatah in "anti-terror" tactics
http://tinyurl.com/yxegfm
U.S. officials training Palestinian security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas are emphasizing urban anti-terrorist techniques as part of a systematic effort to bolster Abbas and his Fatah loyalists to counter the political success of Hamas, according to Palestinian analysts and officers receiving the training.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/6217188.stm
There are hundreds, possibly thousands of Palestinians working covertly for the Israeli intelligence services.
He can't leave the West Bank. She can't get in. (Nov 12, 2006) http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0611120452nov12,1,6508718.story?page=2&ctrack=1&cset=true
Israeli border policy keeps out those with foreign citizenship - Critics of the Israeli policy say it is designed to make it impossible for Palestinians from abroad to come and live with spouses or other relatives in the West Bank.In a recent report on the freeze of family unification permits, the Israeli human-rights group B'Tselem and another rights group, HaMoked, suggested that the policy is part of a deliberate attempt to limit the Palestinian population in the West Bank. (...) Faced with the prospect of being denied entry himself the next time his visa runs out, Bahour has been leading a campaign to reverse the Israeli policy. "The people contributing to economic stability and investment are being kicked out, which means that the part of society that can help build a modern economy is not going to be here," he said. CLIP For a full report on the subject, see
http://www.btselem.org/Download/200607_Perpetual_Limbo_Eng.doc
Congress extends Israel loan guarantees
http://tinyurl.com/yk8ahc
The new aid package comes on top of the annual US aid package for Israel, as well as special packages, such as for the Arrow anti-ballistic missile program.
Jimmy Carter: Revisiting 'Apartheid'
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16240761/site/newsweek/
"You and I both know the powerful influence of AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee], which is not designed to promote peace. I'm not criticizing them, they have a perfect right to lobby, but their purpose in life is to protect and defend the policies of the Israeli government and to make sure those policies are approved in the United States"
Duke interview about Zionism on CNN (Dec 13, 2006) MUST WATCH!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v2f-WC4cjo
David Duke Delivers Speech in Tehran, Calls for Free Speech on the Holocaust Issue (Dec 11, 20060
http://www.davidduke.com/?p=1532
(...) The Zionist-influenced media in America and Europe is trying to mislead the U.S. and Iran toward a war that would be catastrophic for your country, for my country and for the world. Here too images of a Holocaust against Jews are used to justify and promote a terrible war against Iran that would constitute a new Holocaust, one against the Iranian people and indeed for all of us in the world.I believe the people of Iran want peace, and I can tell you that the average American also wants peace.
Tehran's Holocaust Conference: No Matter What Ahmadinejad Does He'll be Portrayed as the New Hitler (Dec 15, 2006)
http://www.counterpunch.org/gowans12162006.html
Was the two-day conference on the Holocaust held earlier this month by the Iranian government intended to cast "doubt on the Nazi Holocaust during the Second World War," (1) or was it Iran's rejoinder to the Jyllands-Posten affair, an attempt "to embarrass the West and say, 'Look, we are practicing what you preach. We are allowing freedom of discussion of just about any issue, including the Holocaust'"? (2) It's pretty clear how Western journalists summed up the event. The point of the conference was to assemble the world's most notorious Holocaust-deniers and Jew haters, among them KKK kook David Duke, to lend support to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claims that the Holocaust is a myth and to cheer on the Iranian president as he prepares to perpetrate a genocide against the Jews and 'wipe out' Israel. The problem is, matters aren't quite as black and white as all that. Not even close.Let's start with the claim that Ahmadinejad "has referred to the Holocaust as a 'myth'" (3), a claim made by almost every major media outlet in North America. CLIP
Iran: Ahmadinejad Loses as Political Rivals Win Key Seats - Good example of a Muslim country where democracy seems to work just fine...
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was facing electoral embarrassment yesterday after his supporters apparently failed to win control of key councils in elections and his most powerful opponent enjoyed a political comeback.
US Plans Military Buildup to Warn Iran
The Pentagon is planning to bolster its presence in the Persian Gulf as a warning to Iran's continuously defiant government.
Darfur: Genocide Without Borders (Dec 20, 2006)
As anarchy spreads, rampaging militias bring death and carnage to refugees in neighbouring Chad. (...) About 90,000 Chadians have fled their villages to find shelter in nearby towns, with many of them arriving in camps already crowded with 232,000 refugees who fled the violence in Darfur. The wave of ethnic cleansing began in eastern Chad at the end of last month. But the most recent attacks around the small town of Koukou-Angarana have raised the stakes. For the first time, the Arab militia have targeted camps for refugees and internally displaced people. And for the first time the Chadian army, which until last week was engaged in a campaign against several rebel groups in the Abeche region, 250 miles north of here, took on the militia.
Darfur no-fly zone to be considered
http://tinyurl.com/shshu
The US and Britain are considering enforcing a no-fly zone over Darfur if the Sudanese government does not allow UN-led forces to deploy in the region.
Zimbabwe President Extends His Stay in Office for Two More Years
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-12-14-voa29.cfm
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who is 82, says he wants to stay in office two years beyond his present term. Some observers believe he will stay in power for the rest of his life.
Somalis brace for war, troops test weapons
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061215/wl_nm/somalia_conflict_baidoa_dc
Residents of the town housing Somalia's interim government stocked up with provisions on Friday as troops tested weaponry ahead of a feared attack by rival Islamists in the Horn of Africa nation.
SOMALIA: Residents flee fighting near Baidoa (20 December , 2006)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/63f763ff61716254b4609b59d57c3d5a.htm
NAIROBI (IRIN) - Scores of people were fleeing their homes near the southern Somali town of Baidoa on Wednesday after fighting broke out between forces of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), officials from both sides said.The fighting, which began on Tuesday, coincided with the arrival on Wednesday of the European Commissioner (EC) for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, who is in the country to mediate between the two sides. (...) Humanitarian agencies have warned that an all-out war in Somalia would have disastrous consequences, especially when the country is facing the impact of flooding. Up to 454,500 people are estimated to have been displaced by floods countrywide, particularly in the Juba and Shabelle riverine regions, after heavy rains in September-November in Somalia and Ethiopia.The TFG was installed in late 2004 in an effort to bring peace and security to the Horn of Africa country, which has not had an effective government for 16 years. In June this year, the UIC defeated the warlords who had controlled Mogadishu since 1991, after the collapse of the regime led by Muhammad Siyad Barre. The UIC has since extended its authority to large areas in the south and central regions of the country.
Rival groups in Somalia agree to peace talks (Dec 20)
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/12/20/somalia-fighting.html
Somali government officials and Islamic militia leaders agreed Wednesday to resume peace talks, a European Union envoy said as fighting between the two rival groups broke out in a government-controlled town."I am very happy the Islamic courts have accepted to engage in political dialogue with the transitional government," said Louis Michel, European commissioner for development and aid. "For me this is very significant."Michel met government officials in the town of Baidoa before heading to the capital, Mogadishu, for talks with leaders of the Union of Islamic Courts.Clashes between forces for the rival groups were reported in the villages of Moode Moode and Daynunay, both near Baidoa, after the meeting began. But Michel said he was pleased with the outcome of the last-ditch peace mission.Leaders of the Islamic movement said they would return to peace negotiations without any conditions. They had demanded that Ethiopia, which supports the interim government, pull its troops from the country.
Mayors: More Americans Hungry, Homeless in 2006
More Americans went homeless and hungry in 2006 than the year before, and children made up almost a quarter of those in emergency shelters, said a report released on Thursday by the US Conference of Mayors.
Comet dust yields surprises about universe (19 Dec 2006)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003480694_comet16m.html
University of Washington astronomer Don Brownlee expected surprises from the pinch of comet dust collected by the Stardust spacecraft. But he didn't foresee such a shake-up. The tiny specks have changed ideas about the birth of our solar system and offered hints about the origin of life on Earth. "We're learning incredible things," said Brownlee, principal investigator for the $212 million National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission. Since the capsule parachuted to the Utah desert in January, nearly 200 researchers have employed some of the world's most powerful scientific tools to probe the particles. Their findings are laid out in seven reports in Friday's issue of the journal Science.Among them is the discovery of organic molecules, very similar to the amino acids that are the building blocks of proteins. The compounds contain a biologically useful form of nitrogen, which would have been important to early microbes. "The fact that we see these suggests that the presence of amino acids is not an insane idea ... though we haven't detected them yet," said Scott Sandford of NASA's Ames Research Center in California. The comet dust also contains bits of organic material similar to tar or soot, Sandford said. The organic molecules bolster the theory that a rain of comet dust may have delivered the basic ingredients of life to the early Earth. CLIP
ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS SECTION - PLUS MUCH MORE NEAR THE END OF THIS COMPILATION
US Scientists Reject Interference
10,000 US researchers have signed a statement protesting political interference in the scientific process. The statement, which includes the backing of 52 Nobel Laureates, demands a restoration of scientific integrity in government policy. According to the American Union of Concerned Scientists, data is being misrepresented for political reasons. It claims scientists working for federal agencies have been asked to change data to fit policy initiatives.
Female Troubles for Wildlife Raise Human Worries
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/121906HB.shtml
Across the US, female animals exposed to toxic chemicals are suffering from a flurry of health problems. As scientists examine the impact of environmental pollution, some are pondering what the results may mean to female humans.
The Hereditary Consequences of Environmental Pollutants
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/122006HA.shtml
It starts in the first weeks of life. As the umbilical cord sends nutrients to the fetus, pumping 300 quarts of blood per day, it also delivers what nature never intended: synthetic chemicals that may wreak havoc with development and cause health problems later in life.
Unusual Weather We're Having, Ain't It?
http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2006/12/15/1/
Number-crunchers say 2006 on track to be the sixth-hottest on record - As 2006 limps to a close, it's measuring in as the world's sixth-hottest year on record. It's the warmest Britain has seen since wenches were hoisting tankards of grog (er, since records began in 1659), and the third-warmest in the U.S.'s Lower 48 since 1880. Weird weather has gripped the globe this year, from rainy Africa to droughty Australia and China. According to the U.K. Meteorological Office, the 10 hottest years on record have been in the last 12 years, and scientists say it ain't no coincidence. Yes, the globe has warmed and cooled over time, but the last 50 years don't fit natural patterns, and most say human behavior is to blame. "I cannot see how else this can be explained," said U.K. climate researcher Phil Jones, who noted that changing weather patterns fit climate-model forecasts. Adding to the grim vibe, a study published in Science says sea level rise due to global warming could be 59 percent higher than previously thought. Oh, waiter! Another pint of grog, please.
2006 was Earth's sixth warmest year on record (Dec 14, 2006)
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn10800-2006-was-earths-sixth-warmest-year-on-record.html
(...) The report also finds that virtually no corner of the planet was spared from extreme weather events in 2006, many of which were record-breaking.The US experienced its warmest January to September on record, and July in Europe was also the warmest on record, nearly 3°C above the norm. In the southern hemisphere, Brazil and Australia also experienced heat waves between January and March. The town of Bom Jesus in Brazil recorded 44.6°C on 31 January – one of the highest temperatures ever in the country. Nor was Africa spared. Having suffered its worst drought in a decade this summer, Somalia is now undergoing its worst flooding in recent history. The extreme rainfall is affecting the entire Great Horn of Africa, where some regions have received more than six times their average monthly rainfall and hundreds of thousands of people have been affected.Even the Sahara desert got rare heavy rainfall in February, which damaged 70% of food production and displaced 600,000 people. Back in Europe, the River Danube rose to its highest level in more than a century because of heavy rainfall and snow melt. And in the US, New England and the north-east suffered exceptional rainfall which forced some 200,000 people to evacuate. Vancouver, in Canada, received nearly twice its monthly average rainfall in November. In China, millions of hectares of crops were damaged by drought in Sichuan province during the summer and in eastern China during the autumn. China also suffered its worst tropical cyclone season in a decade: more than 1000 people died and the storms cost China $10 billion in economic losses.In the Philippines, typhoon Durian affected some 1.5 million people in November and December, claiming more than 500 lives with hundreds still missing. As for Arctic ice, researchers have noted that it is continuing to melt faster than ever. The WMO estimates that sea ice is now declining by 8.6% every decade, equivalent to 60,421 square kilometres a year.Most climate researchers agree that rising greenhouse gas emissions from human activities will lead to global warming of between 1.4°C and 5.8°C, the range of predictions made by in the last IPCC report.
Environmental Group Offers Road Map to Curb Global Warming
A regional environmental group Monday released a comprehensive "climate change road map" to reduce pollution linked to global warming by 75 percent in the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. Environment Northeast said the proposals included in the 275-page plan draw from many of the best practices already found within the region, including Massachusetts's use of low-emission, hybrid buses and Maine's requirement that new state buildings exceed energy codes by 20 percent.
Carmakers Fight Global Warming Lawsuit
The six largest automakers asked a federal judge to toss out a lawsuit by California that accuses them of harming human health and the environment by producing vehicles that contribute to global warming. The American and Japanese auto companies filed a motion Friday to dismiss the state's suit, and an attorney for the carmakers said Saturday that state officials who want to reduce auto emissions should do it through regulation, not litigation.
Lawsuits Call Air Pollution Standards Deadly, Arbitrary
As the government rolls out new pollution standards this week, critics are charging federal regulators with ignoring science and arbitrarily allowing toxins into the air.
It Takes a Village to Cool the Planet
Kelpie Wilson describes the controversial issue of carbon storage: "Non-governmental organizations that advocate for forests and indigenous people have worked hard to exclude the use of forestry credits to offset fossil fuel burning, and with good reason," writes Wilson. "The rural poor pay twice - once by suffering the effects of climate change caused by affluent countries, and again by having their land taken to offset the guilt of affluent people," says Wilson.
The Year the World Woke Up
None too soon, the West awoke in 2006 to the vast economic, political and social implications of climate change. As temperature and rainfall records tumbled and unseasonal, intense heat waves, droughts and floods struck many countries, local and national politicians scrambled to beef up their green policies and credentials. Some businesses found they could make a packet from trading carbon, and a broad-based global social and ecological movement emerged, linking climate change to social justice, as well as to poverty and lifestyles.
Vast African Lake Levels Dropping Fast (December 14, 2006) http://www.truthwinds.com/NewsServer/ArticleFunctions/ArticleDetails.php?ArticleID=12355
(...) At 27,000 square miles, the size of Ireland, Victoria is the greatest of Africa's Great Lakes -- the biggest freshwater body after Lake Superior. And it has dropped fast, at least six feet in the past three years, and by as much as a half-inch a day this year before November rains stabilized things.The outflow through two hydroelectric dams at Jinja is part of the problem -- a tiny part, says the Uganda government, or half the problem, say environmentalists. But much of what is happening to Victoria and other lakes across the heart of Africa is attributable to years of drought and rising temperatures, conditions that starve the lakes of inflowing water and evaporate more of the water they have.An extreme example lies 1,500 miles northwest of here, deeper in the drought zone, where Lake Chad, once the world's sixth-largest, has shrunk to 2 percent of its 1960s size. And the African map abounds with other, less startling examples, from Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, getting half the inflow it once did, to the great Lake Tanganyika south of here, whose level dropped over five feet in five years.“All these lakes are extremely sensitive to climate change,'' the U.N. Environment Program warned in a global water assessment two years ago.Now, in a yet unpublished report obtained by The Associated Press, an international consulting firm advises the Ugandan government that supercomputer models of global-warming scenarios for Lake Victoria “raise alarming concerns'' about its future and that of the Nile River, which begins its 4,100-mile northward journey here at Jinja. The report, by U.S.-based Water Resources and Energy Management International, says rising temperatures may evaporate up to half the lake's normal inflow from rainfall and rivers, with “severe consequences for the lake and its ability to meet the region's water resources needs.'' A further dramatic drop in Victoria's water levels might even turn off this spigot for the Nile, a lifeline for more than 100 million Egyptians, Sudanese and others. “People talk about the snows of Kilimanjaro,'' said Aris P. Georgakakos, the study's chief author, speaking of that African mountain's melting glaciers. “We have something much bigger to worry about, and that's Lake Victoria." CLIP
One in five species of livestock endangered: FAO (Dec 15, 2006)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061215/sc_afp/faolivestock_061215173836
ROME (AFP) - Some 20 percent of the world's livestock species -- cattle, pigs and poultry -- are threatened with extinction, with one breed disappearing each month, the Food and Agriculture Organization warned.Over the past five years alone, some 60 breeds of cattle, goats, pigs, horses and poultry have become extinct, the Rome-based UN agency said in a draft document, blaming globalization as the "biggest single factor" in the erosion of livestock biodiversity."Of the more than 7,600 breeds in FAO's global database of farm animal genetic resources, 190 have become extinct in the past 15 years and a further 1,500 are considered at risk of extinction," the draft says.Some 150 experts from 90 countries met in Rome this week to review the findings, the first of their kind on a global scale.
Two-Thirds of Congo Basin Forests Could Disappear (December 18, 2006) http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39523/story.htm
YAOUNDE - Two-thirds of the forests in the Congo River Basin could disappear within 50 years if logging and mineral exploitation continues at current rates, environmental group WWF said in a report.The Congo Basin, the world's second largest tropical forest after the Amazon, loses some 3.7 million acres a year to agriculture, logging, road development, oil exploitation and mining, WWF's Central African regional office (CARPO) said in a report published late on Thursday."Tropical forest is vanishing at a rate of 5 percent a decade, wrecking habitats and releasing 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, which is a fifth of global greenhouse emissions," CARPO director Laurent Som said in the report.About 400 mammal species live in the Congo Basin, including the world's largest populations of lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and forest elephants, all under threat as their habitat is destroyed.More than 655 bird species fly under its dense canopy and over 10,000 plant species take root in the forest floor, many of them unique to the region and containing medicinal properties."The region is blanketed by a patchwork quilt of logging concessions. While the logging itself is usually selective and does little damage, the associated roads, infrastructure and migration degrade surrounding landscape and result in massive wildlife depletion," the report said."Studies show that if current trends continue, two-thirds of the Congo's forests could be lost within 50 years." CLIP
NASA overwhelmed by climate data (15 December 2006) http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com:80/articles/defensetech-org-archives-003031-html
NASA's climatologists have an enormous problem: when it comes to data on the atmosphere, they have too much of it.To help understand climate change, NASA has created its Earth Observing System (EOS), made up of a dozen satellites plus a host of weather balloons and ground-based sensors that collect data such as air temperatures, water-vapour densities and aerosol concentrations. Terabytes of such measurements have been streaming in each day, and the agency was quickly swamped with so much data that all it could do was dump it on disc drives. Now it has hit on a simple way to make that data accessible: software that superimposes it on the global 3D maps provided by Google Earth.Called iEarth, the NASA software scours EOS databanks for information and converts it into a file that can be viewed via Google Earth. Choosing a spot on the planet's surface will prompt iEarth to display ground-based measurements for that location, as well as data relating to the atmosphere and space above it."This is the first time we've been able to do multi-instrument atmospheric science," says Brian Wilson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who demonstrated a prototype of iEarth at this week's meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. "You can pick a specific spot on the planet and, starting with the surface, move up in altitude through the troposphere and stratosphere," he says.The iEarth system will be available for anyone to use in April, NASA says.
Plastic Trash Vortex Menaces Pacific Sealife: Study (Nov 6, 2006)
Old toothbrushes, beach toys and used condoms are part of a vast vortex of plastic trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, threatening sea creatures that get tangled in it, eat it or ride on it, a new report says. The contents of the 'Yellow Thing' after a trawl in the high seas of the Central North Pacific Ocean, October 30, 2006. The environmental group Greenpeace is highlighting the threat plastic poses to the world's oceans. Old toothbrushes, beach toys and used condoms are part of a vast vortex of plastic trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, threatening sea creatures that get tangled in it, eat it or ride on it, a new report says. Because plastic doesn't break down the way organic material does, ocean currents and tides have carried it thousands of miles (kms) to an area between Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast, according to the study by the international environmental group Greenpeace. This swirling vortex, which can grow to be about the size of Texas, is not far from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, designated as a protected U.S. national monument in June by President George W. Bush.The Greenpeace report, "Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans" said at least 267 species -- including seabirds, turtles, seals, sea lions, whales and fish -- are known to have suffered from entanglement or ingestion of marine debris. Some 80 percent of this debris comes from land and 20 percent from the oceans, the report said, with four main sources: tourism, sewage, fishing and waste from ships and boats. The new report comes days after the journal Science projected that Earth's stocks of fish and seafood would collapse by 2048 if trends in overfishing and pollution continue. CLIP
Disposable Oceans? (09.12.2006)
http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=80&news:oid=n6410&template=news_detail.html&flash=true
(...) Today, we're continuing to move through the Trash Vortex, an area of the North Pacific where currents and winds gather plastic pollution from both sides of this peaceful ocean. We're watching in awe as pieces of trash large and small pass us by, and with our sampling and discovery efforts, we can even see how this garbage is becoming one with ocean creatures. The problem is much worse than we could have thought. We had thought that the large bits of plastic floating by were a significant problem, but we had no idea just how many tiny pieces of plastic would turn up in our daily sampling efforts. CLIP
The Solution to Global Warming Is Us (Dec 15, 2006) http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/121506EB.shtml
It is time to shift from personal denial to personal responsibility when it comes to climate change. (...) The truth is, humans can change, and change fast. Our hallmark is adaptability. Long ago, we looked out from the trees and saw the savannas. Beyond the savannas we glimpsed further frontiers. History proves that when we behold a better world, we move toward it - one person at a time - leaving behind what no longer works. We know what to do. We know how to do it. We know the timeline. We are our own tipping point.
Wartime values to save the planet (December 15, 2006)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20930396-30417,00.html
LONDON: David Attenborough, the elder statesman of the natural world, called yesterday for a return to wartime values to save the planet from global warming.He hit out at four-wheel-drives, electrical standby facilities and lights that were left on unnecessarily as he demanded a change in moral and intellectual attitudes towards climate change.He said that even tiny amounts of wasted electricity were immoral because they put "our grandchildren's lives in danger". (...) For the northern hemisphere, this year was the fourth hottest since records began in 1850, while for the southern hemisphere it was the seventh warmest.Sir David, who was giving evidence to the Commons Environment Select Committee, said it was not all doom and gloom. He was convinced the public's attitude was changing."I'm hopeful that there's real change taking place in moral attitudes, which isn't to do with saving a penny here and there. The moral drive is there," he said."It can only be done by changing the moral and intellectual climate."
Omega-News Collection 16. December 2006
NOTE FROM JEAN: On Dec 14, I wrote the following to Suzy Ward:
Dear Suzy
As a follow up to my recent recommendation of the exceptional Christ's Letters, and knowing how precious little time you have to explore websites, I thought you would like to have for your review an excellent sample of the VERY highly spiritual material this woman from South Africa has channelled from Christ in the last few years. There will be in my next compilation another such excerpt from what she received last years - look for it under "Consciousness Energy".
If you could take a couple minutes to assert this short document from Christ below (to be included in a coming compilation), you will see how well it meshes with Matthew's own high quality descriptions of how each soul is able to access, once in Nirvana, only the layer of consciousness that is in synch with the evolutionary and vibrational status of each soul.
The clarity and extremely insightful quality of the soul's consciousness at the origin of these thoughts below is indicative, to me, of just Who the actual Source is. Once again, I feel it would be a great service on the part of you and Matthew to lend a helping hand through commenting on this material and recommending it in some form, if you both sense, like me, that only good can come from doing so.
With much Love and Light
AND HER REPLY WAS:
Dear Jean....
How right you are about "precious little time" -- I had none at the computer yesterday. I'll ask Matthew to comment on the excerpt you sent.
With love like always...
"Dear soul Jean, what a JOY to read these words that you sent to my mother! From this excerpt of a greatly larger body of transmitted messages, I would say that 'Christ's Letters' is a most appropriate name -- this is clearly expressed TRUTH about the soul's stages of conscious awareness and spiritual growth. That LOVE is the key to knowing all souls' Oneness was the essence of Christed souls' teachings; this and other truths were expunged from the authentic records by self-serving early religious leaders whose own ideas set the beliefs of the masses and kept them in the lower planes of human characteristics and understanding. Now the guidance of ones from the Christed realm is re-emerging through highly evolved souls who went to Earth specifically to nurture the truth-seekers during this unique opportunity to ascend with the planet into the higher planes of enlightenment. This is Matthew conveying the gratitude of all at this station to our beloved soul sister who agreed to receive and disseminate the information that is so essential for all of you to know in these unprecedented times."
HERE IS THE ENLIGHTENING COMMUNICATION FROM CHRIST I MENTIONED ABOVE...
From: http://christsway.co.za/blog/christ-consciousness/
It is not enough to be concerned about your life on earth. You should be equally concerned about your life and well-being when you move into the next dimensions.
Here, more than ever, you find yourself within the dimension of ‘Being’ which is the outer manifestation of your own consciousness but to an even greater extent than when you are on earth.
When on earth, you do create your own unique environment from the fabric of your overall consciousness, but you can also partake of your neighbour’s environment when you meet or live together. This means that when you are on earth, you can move into a more pleasant environment, meet more pleasant people than your own consciousness normally creates or attracts towards you. But this incompatibility leads to friction and discomfort.
People either feel out of their comfort zone or stifled by the higher consciousness they encounter and can’t wait to get back to the lower consciousness environment in which they feel at ease. Some people are drawn and born into a consciousness stratum in which they feel they are aliens and spontaneously begin working, even in childhood, to move away into the stratum of consciousness in which they will be able to thrive.
The level of CONSCIOUSNESS you die with, is the level you will bring back.
Sometimes, a person with a high level of spiritual perception may be drawn, at birth, into a family of lower spiritual levels because the environment will strengthen their awareness and increase their spiritual stamina as they struggle in their early years to return to their rightful consciousness ‘home’ in the spiritual strata on earth—and later, in the next world.
Just as you experience your undeveloped consciousness when you pass over, so do you go into the higher dimensions which reflects your own consciousness when you have re-incarnated several times and worked on gaining spiritual insight. You find that you and everyone else you encounter, is of the same consciousness. You will be magnetised into the conditions which are compatible and by reason of your own creativity, you can perfectly contribute to.
If, on passing over, the consciousness has been ego-oriented and vicious, the individual will quickly reincarnate, since the feeling of discomfort will be intolerable. Gladly, such a person returns to earth in another identity. At this level of existence, earth conditions seem to be preferable to those in the astral world. It takes many lifetimes before the soul awakens to the fact that escape is only possible when the human mind sets itself to try to lift the perceptions and consciousness to a more endurable comfort zone.
The more spiritual the consciousness of a person before they pass over, the more that they have looked back over their lives, gained insight into the ego control of their minds and feelings, the damage they have done to other people’s lives, the unhappiness they have caused, the greater the spiritual progress will they make.
As they experience burning remorse, so does the pain of the remorse eradicate the ego-domination in their minds and hearts, until, little by little, they eventually leave this life fully aware that the PATH of UNCONDITIONAL LOVE is the only way to follow.
Such people fully understand, acknowledge and are clearly aware that all misery, sickness, deprivations, lack of success, unhappiness are derived from lack of LOVE in one’s approach to life, people, environment. CRITICISM is the biggest obstruction of all to inner happiness because it is highly destructive. It is reflected in the person’s life because when you judge, judgement comes home to roost, as the saying goes.
Criticism of others interferes with their well-being and consequently, as we damage others even in the slightest, again, the damage will return with interest.
Therefore, when you undertake to walk Christ’s Way, you must understand that it is a path of relentless self-analysis and finding the courage to look at your actions in the light of LOVE, willing to see the truth about your thought and emotions.
As you move forward along the path, it becomes easier to move into a perception of the truth of others, of what drives them, motivates them, causes them to make mistakes in their relationships, in their workplace and close family.
The more you can empathise with others, understand what motivates them, perceive the difficulties which push them into ill-considered actions, the higher becomes your own spirituality, your own sense of compassion and love towards those who—you now realise—are really doing the very best they can in the environment and circumstances they have created for themselves.
From this standpoint, it becomes easier and easier to apologise, until the time comes when, seeing the truth of the other person so clearly, you cannot wait to forgive and erase all tension and criticism of them from your thinking.
When it comes your time to pass over, such an illumined person, living in peace and harmony with the entire world, will move into a stratum of utter blessedness and joy. They move into Light and there is no looking back at earth. At last, they find that they have moved into that dimension of Being where they are content and fully at peace.
After a while, they begin to notice that there are even higher dimensions of existence and they set about preparing, enlarging, expanding their consciousness to absorb even higher vibrations of Divine Consciousness and they become ever more creative and radiant transmitters of UNCONDITIONAL LOVE.
Such people are truly the CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
Much more such wisdom from Christ at http://christsway.co.za
Forwarded by "Ricardos" ricardos@auroville.org.in">
Message from St. Germain 11-December-2006
People sometimes wonder at a time when the earthly vibrations are increasing, why there is so much discord upon Earth. Why when there are so many enlightened souls upon it, that their presence does not seem to have any noticeable effect. I will tell you that this situation is not through the design or intention of those in charge of your progress, but is quite natural. The Light works quietly and magically transforms the dark energies without drawing attention to itself, but nevertheless relentlessly marches onwards and continues to become firmly established upon Earth.
For millennia of time, the level of a souls vibration has determined which dimension they go to after each lifetime. Those who have developed a reasonable vibration of Light, would find themselves in or near the dimension often referred to as the Summerland and also Nirvana. The name defines exactly what it is like, and it is from where spiritual contact is often made resulting in much knowledge being conveyed to you about these levels. Beautiful ones that are akin to those that exist above them, but not quite so refined. Nevertheless, they are idyllic and extremely pleasant where there are none of the chores or worries of Earth.
What exists in the Summerland is a creation of Man’s, inasmuch that it reflects known or subconscious desires of a higher nature. Their expression in the higher realms is to a degree of perfection that you would rarely experience upon Earth, where you have obvious difficulties in creating what you have in mind. Artistic work such as painting or sculpture would be such examples, where the artist cannot always find the means to illustrate exactly what is envisaged in the mind.
Close to the Summerland are levels of lower vibrations, and as they drop so does the possible degree of manifestation. Collectively they are also known as the Astral Regions, and the lower you go the more they can aptly be described as ones where there is a gradual loss of light. It is where colors are not as vivid, and the souls have less ability to create for their needs. In the absolute lowest regions there is virtually a complete loss of light, and darkness prevails. Yet regardless of what level souls exist in, it would to them seem to have some degree of normality. They would be blinded by greater levels of light such as would be found in the higher dimensions, and are therefore more at ease with vibrations consistent with their own development.
Some teachings or religions promise an afterlife similar to the Summerland, with rewards and everlasting pleasure. However, they fail to understand that it is you alone who through your actions, deeds and thoughts, determine the level you go to. Many of you will already be aware of the Astral Dimensions, and upon your transition you will automatically be drawn into them. By the Law of Attraction you will find yourself at the correct level, therefore one in which you will feel comfortable. In fact, regardless of any personal desires for something different, you can but go to the correct one.
I am now coming to the point of this lesson, and it is to tell you that now we are at the end-times of this cycle a different scenario is being created. The lower Astral regions have opened up, and over the last 50 years or so have gradually been emptied of their occupants. They have incarnated upon Earth for the last time, to have the experience of standing alongside those who have raised their light vibrations. They may not consciously be aware of absorbing the light, but it will have a marked affect upon them and help their own evolution. It also presents an intended challenge to those who have left the lower levels behind and now exist in the Light, testing their resolve to continue rising above the negative energies.
The Astral Regions will continue to serve those now passing over, but will not be carried forward with the new Earth into the higher dimensions. There will be no further need for them, although they will continue to exist around the new 3D Earth. It has been created to enable non-ascending souls to continue their experiences, and the cycle of rebirth will commence yet again.
What you now see around you is a constant battle between the Light and dark, as it escalates to levels not experienced for thousands of years. The dark ones are unable to appreciably raise their vibrations, and sometimes as a way of expressing their frustration they cause mayhem and destruction. They are not helped by condemnation and punishment, but instead love and understanding. For those who are at the receiving end it is a salutary lesson in self-control. Better still, it will promote their understanding and tolerance for those who have lost their way.
You have God given abilities, and they are coming out from behind the veil as you begin to understand your true Self. You all have latent powers to reclaim, which will come to you as you increase your vibrations. Healing and psychic powers are beginning to return and they should be developed and not ignored. These are quite natural attributes that will become commonplace to those on the path to Ascension.
The lessons of duality are meant to give you experience of both sides, and for certain over millennia of time you have touched both the heights and depths in the course of your many lifetimes. Recognize that all souls including those of the dark, have every right to take a physical incarnation when it will best benefit their evolution. Currently all people are plotting their own path even if they are unaware of it, and in this present period it is creating a natural division between the two realities.
Knowledge is a valuable asset and it will help you go forward with a firmer focus on your goal. There is no need to get too involved with the antics of those who create discord and destroy what is the foundation of your societies. The dark souls who struggle to find their Light, will be helped by your compassion and love for them. Never forget that when this cycle commenced all of you were exalted Beings, graciously and bravely accepting the challenge presented to you by Duality. Each one of you were initiated in the presence of Heavenly Beings, who avowed to ensure your full return to the Light.
It is time to ride on the crest of the waves of higher vibrations coming to Earth. Never have you had such opportunities as now exist, take them and ignite your passion and determination to rise above all that does not serve your purpose. Heavenly Beings continue to watch over you, and many personally accompany you through these last vital experiences to ensure your success. As you have been told many times, you are never alone in your experiences and are constantly given the attention that such courageous and beautiful souls deserve.
I am St.Germain, and seeing everything in the Now, I see your successful progress through the remaining years of this cycle. The year 2007 beckons and will be one of great cleansing and immense changes. It will also see many of you having your personal proof of the intense Light being sent to Earth. Prepare yourselves for a measure of upliftment, that will leave you in no doubt as to the power of the incoming energies. You are in for pleasant surprises, and the satisfaction of seeing your grand work for the Light come to fruition. We of the higher dimensions bless you all, and our love continues to go with you on your never-ending journey into the Light.
Thank you St.Germain.
A VERY MOVING AND ABSOLUTELY TRUE STORY - CHECK AT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce TO VERIFY AS I DID. AMAZING!
From: "PEERS: WantToKnow.info List" noreply2@wanttoknow.info
Subject: The Christmas Truce: A Short, Highly Inspiring Christmas Story
This message is available online at http://www.WantToKnow.info/christmastruce
by David G. Stratman
From his book We Can Change the World
It was December 25, 1914, only 5 months into World War I. German, British, and French soldiers, already sick and tired of the senseless killing, disobeyed their superiors and fraternized with "the enemy" along two-thirds of the Western Front (a crime punishable by death in times of war). German troops held Christmas trees up out of the trenches with signs, "Merry Christmas."
"You no shoot, we no shoot." Thousands of troops streamed across a no-man's land strewn with rotting corpses. They sang Christmas carols, exchanged photographs of loved ones back home, shared rations, played football, even roasted some pigs. Soldiers embraced men they had been trying to kill a few short hours before. They agreed to warn each other if the top brass forced them to fire their weapons, and to aim high.
A shudder ran through the high command on either side. Here was disaster in the making: soldiers declaring their brotherhood with each other and refusing to fight. Generals on both sides declared this spontaneous peacemaking to be treasonous and subject to court martial. By March 1915 the fraternization movement had been eradicated and the killing machine put back in full operation. By the time of the armistice in 1918, fifteen million would be slaughtered.
Not many people have heard the story of the Christmas Truce. On Christmas Day, 1988, a story in the Boston Globe mentioned that a local FM radio host played "Christmas in the Trenches," a ballad about the Christmas Truce, several times and was startled by the effect. The song became the most requested recording during the holidays in Boston on several FM stations. "Even more startling than the number of requests I get is the reaction to the ballad afterward by callers who hadn't heard it before," said the radio host. "They telephone me deeply moved, sometimes in tears, asking, `What the hell did I just hear?' "
I think I know why the callers were in tears. The Christmas Truce story goes against most of what we have been taught about people. It gives us a glimpse of the world as we wish it could be and says, "This really happened once." It reminds us of those thoughts we keep hidden away, out of range of the TV and newspaper stories that tell us how trivial and mean human life is. It is like hearing that our deepest wishes really are true: the world really could be different.
Christmas in The Trenches - Song
To listen to this inspirational Christmas story in song: click here (free RealPlayer required)
Words & Music by John McCutcheon, c. 1984, John McCutcheon / Appalsong
This song is based on a true story from the front lines of World War I that I've heard many times. Ian Calhoun, a Scot, was the commanding officer of the British forces involved in the story. He was subsequently court-martialed for 'consorting with the enemy' and sentenced to death. Only George V spared him from that fate. -- John McCutcheon
My name is Francis Toliver, I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here,
I fought for King and country I love dear.
'Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung.
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung.
Our families back in England were toasting us that day,
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.
I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground,
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound.
Says I, "Now listen up, me boys!" each soldier strained to hear,
As one young German voice sang out so clear.
"He's singing bloody well, you know!" my partner says to me.
Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in harmony.
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more,
As Christmas brought us respite from the war.
As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent,
"God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" struck up some lads from Kent.
The next they sang was "Stille Nacht," "'Tis 'Silent Night,'" says I,
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky.
"There's someone coming towards us!" the front line sentry cried.
All sights were fixed on one lone figure trudging from their side.
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright,
As he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night.
Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man's Land,
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand.
We shared some secret brandy and wished each other well,
And in a flare lit soccer game we gave 'em hell.
We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home.
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own.
Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin,
This curious and unlikely band of men.
Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more.
With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war.
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wondrous night:
"Whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
'Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter hung.
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung.
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war,
Had been crumbled and were gone forevermore.
My name is Francis Toliver, in Liverpool I dwell,
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well,
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame,
And on each end of the rifle we're the same.
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A GREAT SIGN OF HOPE. WHEN THE SOLDIERS THEMSELVES WILL NO LONGER WANT TO FIGHT IN ANY WAR, AND INSTEAD TURN AWAY ENTIRELY FROM ALL THE BRAINWASHING THAT BROUGHT THEM TO BEAR ARMS AND KILL FOR A PAY, WAR WILL BE NO MORE ON EARTH.
From: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070101/cooperweb
Also from http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121606Z.shtml
About Face: Soldiers Call for Iraq Withdrawal
By Marc Cooper - The Nation
For the first time since Vietnam, an organized, robust movement of active-duty US military personnel has publicly surfaced to oppose a war in which they are serving. Those involved plan to petition Congress to withdraw American troops from Iraq. (Note: A complete version of this report will appear next week in the print and online editions of The Nation.)
After appearing only seven weeks ago on the Internet, the Appeal for Redress, brainchild of 29-year-old Navy seaman Jonathan Hutto, has already been signed by nearly 1,000 US soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, including dozens of officers - most of whom are on active duty. Not since 1969, when some 1,300 active-duty military personnel signed an open letter in the New York Times opposing the war in Vietnam, has there been such a dramatic barometer of rising military dissent.
Interviews with two dozen signers of the Appeal reveal a mix of motives for opposing the war: ideological, practical, strategic and moral. But all those interviewed agree that it is time to start withdrawing the troops. Coming from an all-volunteer military, the Appeal was called "unprecedented" by Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.
The Nation spoke with rank-and-file personnel as well as high-ranking officers - some on the Iraqi front lines, others at domestic and offshore US military bases - who have signed the Appeal. All of their names will be made available to Congress when the Appeal is presented in mid-January. Signers have been assured they are sending a communication to Congress protected under the Military Whistleblower Protection Act. The Pentagon is powerless to take official reprisals and has said that as long as active-duty personnel are not in uniform or on duty, they are free to express their views to Congress.
There are of course other, subtler risks involved. The military command exercises enormous power through individual reviews, promotions and assignments. But that hasn't kept a number of signers from going public with their dissent.
Navy Lieut. Cmdr. Mark Dearden of San Diego, for example, enlisted in 1997 and is still pondering the possibility of a lifetime career. "So this was a very difficult decision for me to come to. I don't take this decision lightly," he says. But after two "tough" deployments in Iraq, Dearden says signing the Appeal was not only the right thing to do but also gave him personal "closure."
"I'm expressing a right of people in the military to contact their elected representatives, and I have done nothing illegal or disrespectful," Dearden adds.
Other interviews with active-duty soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen who have signed the Appeal for Redress reveal an array of motivations. Here are excerpts:
"Lisa" - 20 years old, E-4, USAF, Stationed at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii:
I joined up two weeks after I turned 17 because I wanted to save American lives. I wanted to be a hero like any American child.
I supported the war when I joined because I thought it was justified. Only after my own research and the truth coming out did I learn how wrong I was, how - for lack of a better word - how brainwashed I was.
Now I know the war is illegal, unjustified and that our troops have no reason for being there.
When I saw an article about the Appeal in the Air Force Times I went online right away and signed it and have encouraged others to do the same.
"Sgt. Gary" - 21 years old. US Army. Deployed with 20th Infantry Regiment, near Mosul, Iraq:
I joined up in 2001, still a junior in high school. I felt very patriotic at the end of my US History class. My idea of the Army was that you signed up, they gave you a rifle and you ran off into battle like in some 1950s war movie. The whole idea of boot camp never really entered my head.
I supported the war in the beginning. I bought everything Bush said about how Saddam had WMDs, how he was working with Al Qaeda, how he was a threat to America. Of course, this all turned out to be false.
This is my second tour, and as of a few days ago it's half-over. Before I deployed with my unit for the second time I already had feelings of not wanting to go. When in late September a buddy in my platoon died from a bullet in the head, I really took a long hard look at this war, this Administration, and the reasons why.
After months of research on the Internet, I came to the conclusion that this war was based on lies and deception. I started to break free of all the propaganda that the Bush Administration and the Army puts out on a daily basis.
So far in three years we have succeeded in toppling a dictator and replacing him with puppets. Outlawing the old government and its standing army and replacing them with an unreliable and poorly trained crew of paycheck collectors. The well is so poisoned by what we have done here that nothing can fix it.
"Lt. Smith" - 24 years old, 1st Lieutenant, US Army. Deployed near Baghdad:
I cannot, from Iraq, attend an antiwar protest. Nor could I attend one in the States and represent myself as a soldier. What I can do is send a protest communication to my Congressional delegate outlining grievances I feel I have suffered. Appeal for Redress gives me that outlet.
I am encouraged by the November elections, but still wary. We rushed into the war on false assumptions, and now we might rush out just as falsely. What troops need now is a light at the end of the tunnel, not just for this deployment but for all deployments. Bringing everyone out this summer is too fast to be supported by our Army's infrastructure. We would hemorrhage lives if we do so. But so would we if we stay the course.
I am encouraged by politicians who call for a withdrawal by the conclusion of President Bush's term in office. That seems a realistic timetable for me.
Mark Mackoviak - 24 years old. US Army. Recently returned from Iraq. Stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina:
I joined the Army on September 23, 2001. I had been out of school for a year when September 11 came around, and I was supportive of our action in Afghanistan. I wound up there a year later, and it was pretty eye-opening to see how people live.
I was also in Iraq for about a year, deployed near the International Airport, west of Baghdad. I was never that supportive of the invasion. I thought the media coverage of it was horrendous, really disgusting.
Just about everything I saw in Iraq reinforced my views that it was wrong. The point that really hit me was when the Asmara Mosque got blown up. I said, Wow, this is really a civil war.
I really enjoy being in the Army, enjoy the experience. I just happen to not support this war. I'm very open about that. My buddies either disagree with me or just pay no attention. But I get absolutely no hostility. None.
"Rebecca" - 26 years old. 101st Airborne, US Army. Just returned from Iraq. Stationed at Fort Hood, Texas:
I joined in 2004. I was trying to go into the human rights field, but it was very competitive. I was in need of health insurance, and the Army seemed feasible. Now it looks like I will be stop-lossed until 2010.
I had strong feelings about the war, against it, but I'm the type of person that wants to fully understand both sides of the argument.
My experience in Iraq confirmed my views, but it also gave me a more multifaceted view of things. I did see some of the good things being done, but it seemed like a Band-Aid on a gushing wound. Mostly I saw the frivolity of the missions, the lack of direction, the absurdity of the mission. You go out in your Humvee, you drive around, and you wait to be blown up and get killed by an IED.
About 40 percent of my unit were stop-lossed. Their first mission was to take down Saddam and his regime, and they seemed to understand that and agree with the mission to take down a ruthless dictator. Now they can't seem to understand why they are there, caught in the cross hairs of a civil war.
I think it is safe to say that the majority of soldiers are wondering what this grand scheme is that we keep hearing about from those above us but that is never translating down to the ground level.
Some politicians are starting to see that not only a majority of Americans oppose to this war. Now they see this very powerful statement of soldiers who have already been on the front line and who are still in uniform and are also opposed. None of them have been where we have been, none of them have seen what we have seen. It's time they do.
Up to 50,000 Troops May Soon Be Sent to Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121606Y.shtml
Military planners and White House budget analysts have been asked to provide President Bush with options for increasing American forces in Iraq. Officials said that the options being considered included the deployment of upwards of 50,000 additional troops, but that the political, training and recruiting obstacles to an increase larger than 20,000 to 30,000 troops would be prohibitive.
White House OKs Massive Pentagon Budget Increase
The White House has approved a $468.9 billion budget for the Pentagon in fiscal year 2008, a six percent increase over last year's request, according to a Defense Department document obtained by Reuters. It is also asking the Pentagon to cover some Army and Marine Corps war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the regular budget, rather than through emergency budget requests. The 2008 budget request is $4.7 billion more than the level the Pentagon forecast in its 2007 budget documents.
Kucinich Says He Can "Save Presidency for Democratic Party"
Speaking to a reporter about the Iraq war and his run for the White House in 2008, Democratic senator Dennis Kucinich said, "People aren't looking for the Democrats to be better managers of the war, they want the Democrats to end the war and to bring our troops home."
EVEN IF HAL TURNER - FALSE RUMORS' CHAMPION - IS DEFINITELY NOT A RELIABLE SOURCE, IT IS STILL AN INTERESTING "NEWS" TO CONSIDER IN LIGHT OF THE OTHER POST AFTER THIS ON THE AMERO.
Forwarded by "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@gmail.com">
From: http://fourwinds10.com/NewsServer/ArticleFunctions/ArticleDetails.php?ArticleID=12395
China To Dump One Trillion In U.S. Reserves!!!
Tells visiting Bush administration officials they will not sit back and lose their shirts as U.S. Dollar collapses; they are getting out fast and large!!!!!!
BEIJING, CHINA -- Sources with a U.S. Delegation in Beijing have told The Hal Turner Show the Chinese government has informed visiting Bush Administration officials they intend to dump One TRILLION U.S. Dollars from China's Currency Reserves and convert those funds into Euros!
China was allegedly asked to withhold the announcement until Bullion Markets closed for the weekend to prevent an instant spike in gold and silver prices. This delay will give the world the weekend to consider appropriate actions rather than have a knee-jerk reaction which could see the U.S. Dollar totally collapse in value Monday.
According to this Senior source, China told the U.S. delegation they no longer have faith in U.S. Currency for several reasons:
1) The Federal Reserve Bank ceased publishing "M3" data in March, making it nearly impossible for anyone to know how much cash is being printed. China said this act made it impossible to tell how much a Dollar is worth.
2) The U.S. Dollar has lost upwards of thirty percent (30%) of its value against other foreign currencies in the recent past, meaning China has lost almost $300 Billion simply by holding U.S. Dollars in its reserves.
3) The U.S. has no plans whatsoever to reduce deficit spending or pay down any of its existing debt without printing money to pay it off.
For these reasons China has decided to implement an aggressive sell-off of U.S. Dollars before the rest of the world does so. China reportedly told the US delegation; "we are the largest holder of U.S. Currency and if the rest of the world unloads theirs before we unload ours, we will lose our shirts."
Early this week, in an unusual move, the Bush administration sent virtually the entire economic "A-team" to visit China for a "strategic economic dialogue" in Beijing Dec. 14 and 15.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke lead the delegation, along with five other cabinet-level officials, including Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez. Also in the delegation is Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, Energy Secretary Sam Bodman, and U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab.
The Bush administration wanted to get China's cooperation in preventing a dollar collapse. The Hal Turner Show has been told the effort failed.
According to the source, Fed Chairman Bernanke left the meeting "pale and in a cold sweat" as the implications of China's decision seemed to sink in.
The implications are enormous: The U.S. Dollar is likely to collapse in value against all other major currencies as early as Monday, December 18.
This would cause a worldwide sell-off of dollars, create almost immediate "hyper-inflation" in the US and also impact world markets at a level "worse than the Great Depression of 1929."
Arabs to the rescue?
In a strange twist of fate, Arabs and OPEC may come to the rescue of the U.S.!
Senior officials in OPEC made clear that they too would be severely harmed if the U.S. Dollar collapsed, and hinted they "would not be inclined to sell oil to any particular nation that intentionally caused such a collapse."
This was a thinly veiled threat to China, which depends heavily on OPEC oil for its rapidly developing energy needs.
The OPEC officials even went so far as to say "Since China lacks the ability to project their military power, OPEC nations need not worry about any Chinese military response to an oil cut-off."
Such brutally candid remarks will not sit well with China; and signal ominous things for the U.S. .
Arabs and OPEC will want something in return for saving the U.S. from economic collapse and it is already widely speculated what they want will be a complete change in U.S. backing of Israel in the Middle East.
If such demands are made by the oil-rich Arabs, the U.S. would be left with little choice but to virtually abandon the Jewish state to preserve itself.
More details will be reported here as they become available.
US sends the A team for key Beijing talks (Dec 14, 2006)
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2006-12/14/content_758547.htm
Nearly half of the Bush administration is in Beijing for the first Sino-US strategic economic dialogue scheduled for today and tomorrow.The two sides will focus on wide-ranging issues, including the bilateral trade imbalance, the renminbi exchange rate, further opening-up of China's financial sector to foreign competition and the ongoing poser of intellectual property rights protection. CLIP
China-U.S. Trade: The Real Issues (Dec 15)
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/dec2006/gb20061215_420725.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives
As the two nations talk trade in Beijing, the yuan is front and center, but radically different savings and spending rates are more to the point - There is shadow play aplenty at the U.S.-Chinese "strategic economic dialogue" taking place in Beijing. A Team America of policy bigwigs led by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, including Bush Administration Cabinet officials and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, are in China to show U.S. displeasure over the country's swelling global trade surplus and reluctance to let the yuan trade more freely against other currencies.Right on cue, both sides are making nice in front of reporters and television cameras. Paulson told reporters in Beijing on Dec. 15 after emerging from a meeting with Chinese Vice-Premier Wu Yi that "we agreed on many principles" and that Beijing is open to more currency flexibility. At the same time, the yuan, which is carefully managed by Chinese financial authorities, has been trading at its highest levels against the dollar since Beijing abandoned a decade-long fixed exchange rate of roughly 8.3 back in July of 2005. It's up about 3% this year and nearly 6% since the dollar peg gave way to a new system in which the yuan fluctuates against a basket of currencies including the yen and euro in a tight trading band. So another mission accomplished for the Bush team? Not quite. The reality is that Washington is going to have to live with supersized bilateral Chinese trade deficits for many years to come. The colossal U.S. trade imbalance with China has less to do with currency rates than most people assume—and is far more driven by the radically different savings and spending behavior of both countries. Fixing this will take a lot more than trade missions to Beijing and jawboning with the Chinese about their currency. Here is a guide to the real issues involved.Well, how much stuff is China actually exporting around the globe and what's the outlook for the sensitive bilateral numbers with the U.S.?China's export machine is white hot. The mainland is now the world's No. 3 trading nation, exporting and importing about $1.5 trillion worth of goods and services a year. The country is on track to record a global surplus of $208 billion in 2006, predicts Standard Chartered Bank, more than double last's year $102 billion figure.China's mind-boggling bilateral surplus with the U.S. is expected to finish the year in the $230 billion range, vs. $202 billion in 2005. That will be one for the record books. CLIP
China and Darfur: The genocide Olympics?
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/commentary/commentaryother.asp?file=decembercommentary622006.xml
NEWSPAPERS have been running harrowing ads on the genocide in Darfur. They feature images of suffering coupled with appeals to President Bush to halt it. But the key to this tragedy lies not in the killing fields of western Sudan nor even in the White House. It is to be found instead in Khartoum, Sudan’s booming capital. The sleek new office towers sprouting up in the commercial district explain why Sudan’s government has resisted American and European pressure to end the genocide. But they also show why Arabs and Asians – and especially the Chinese – have the power to influence Sudan and the responsibility to use it. Sudan has been subject to US sanctions since the 1990s. It has been condemned in numerous United Nations resolutions, and Western firms that do business there risk alienating customers and investors. And yet a $4bn complex of offices, parks and hotels is rising at the confluence of the White and Blue Niles, complete with the new sail-shaped headquarters of Petrodar, a Chinese-Malaysian-United Arab Emirates oil partnership.Thanks to these investors, along with Kuwaitis, Saudis, Indians and Pakistanis, Sudan’s petro-economy is flourishing. This year the economy is expected to grow 13 per cent on the back of oil exports, most of which go to China. So Sudan’s government feels it can ignore Western revulsion at genocide because it has no need of Western money. But the bigger question is why China, along with Sudan’s other Arab and Asian partners, feels free to trample on basic standards of decency. China’s economic model rests on access to Western markets – access that can’t be assured given popular resentment of China’s growing trade surplus. Equally, China seeks acceptance at the world’s diplomatic top table – and this cause is unlikely to be advanced if China is perceived to be complicit in genocide.Imagine the newspaper ads leading up to the Beijing Games in 2008: Human rights campaigners will call on the world to boycott the Genocide Olympics. China recently demonstrated its leverage over Sudan, prevailing upon the regime to allow the embattled African Union force in Darfur to be supplied with better equipment. But China should join with the United States and others to broker a cease-fire in Darfur, without which even a beefed-up peace monitoring force cannot save civilians. In recent weeks, fighting has intensified in the region and spilled into neighbouring Chad; refugees are fleeing to the Central African Republic, which is embroiled in its own internal conflict.A regional catastrophe is brewing that could be worse even than the past three years of killing. This crisis isn’t going to fix itself. Sudan’s President Omar Hassan Al Bashir rivals Iran’s leader in genocide denial: He recently accused aid workers of exaggerating Darfur’s crisis to preserve their jobs. Doesn’t China feel qualms about propping up this ogre?Perhaps Treasury Secretary Henry M Paulson Jr, who is in China along with a team of Cabinet officials and the Fed chairman this week, might trouble to ask that question.
Iran shifts its foreign currency reserves from dollars to euros (Dec 19)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/business/6190865.stm
Dollar dropped in Iran asset move - Iran is to shift its foreign currency reserves from dollars to euros and use the euro for oil deals in response to US-led pressure on its economy.In a widely expected move, Tehran said it would use the euro for all future commercial transactions overseas.T he US, which accuses Tehran of supporting terrorism and trying to obtain nuclear weapons, has sought to limit the flow of dollars into Iran.It wants the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran. Analysts said Tehran had been steadily shifting its foreign-held assets out of dollars since 2003 and that Monday's announcement was unlikely to affect the value of the dollar, which has weakened significantly in recent months. CLIP
Forwarded by "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@gmail.com
From: http://tinyurl.com/y95nvj">http://tinyurl.com/y95nvj
Analysts: Dollar collapse would result in 'amero' - Think deep recession likely regardless of Fed's actions
Two analysts who have reconstructed money supply data after the Fed stopped publishing it argue a coming dollar collapse will set the stage for creating the amero as a North American currency to replace the dollar.
The reconstructed M3 data – the broadest measure of money – published on econometrician Gary Kuever's website, NowAndFutures.com , shows M3 increased at a rate of 11 percent in May, compared to 9 percent when the Federal Reserve quit publishing M3 data earlier this year.
Asked why the Fed decided to stop publishing M3 data, Kuever told WND, "The Fed probably wants to hide how much liquidity is being pumped into the market, and I expect the trend to keep pumping liquidity into the market will continue, especially since the economy is slowing down."
"The trend line in my M3-plus-debt chart is staggering," Kuever said. "There has been a straight, long-term trend line of M3-plus-credit increasing since 2000. Long-term, we are creating inflation and the dollar has lost almost 98 percent of its value in the past 100 years."
Kuever, a retired investor, is concerned that with growing budget and trade deficits "the dollar could collapse."
"Especially if the Fed cannot increase rates, because we have already entered a recession," he said.
Bob Chapman, who issued a reconstructed M3 estimate to the 100,000 subscribers to his newsletter, "The International Forecaster", agrees.
"The world is awash in money and credit," Chapman told WND. "My numbers show M3 increasing at about a 10-percent rate right now."
Chapman believes the U.S. economy entered a recession in February. In his newsletter of Dec. 9 he predicted the Fed would hold interest rates at 5.25 percent.
"The Fed is in a very tough spot here," Chapman wrote, "If they raise rates, the real estate market will collapse, and if they lower rates, the dollar will collapse."
Meeting yesterday, the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee voted, as Chapman had predicted, to hold the overnight lending rates between banks steady at 5.25 percent. This was the fourth straight meeting the Fed had voted not to change rates. In its rate announcement, the Fed affirmed the economy had slowed.
Almost immediately after the announcement of the Fed's decision, the dollar weakened to a new 20-month low against the euro, with currency markets reportedly pricing in the expectation the Fed will be forced to lower rates next year to bolster the economy. Following the announcement by the Fed, the U.S. Dollar Index, or USDX, also dropped, with the dollar going below 83.
A dollar collapse is imminent, Chapman declared.
"Technicians studying the USDX think there is a support level for the dollar at 75, but I don't think so."
How low could the dollar go?
"If the dollar breaks through 78.33 on the USDX," Chapman answered, "my guess is the dollar will go through a 35-percent correction, which would put it at 55."
"The key in how low the dollar goes is the interest rates," Chapman told WND. "In January, the Fed is going to have to make a decision which way to go. If Fed rates go up, the dollar will hold in the 78.33 range, but the stock market and the economy will tank. If next year the Fed lowers rates to keep the economy from crashing, the bottom will fall out of the dollar, and I see it going as low as 55. Once the dollar hits bottom, it will take the stock market and the economy right with it anyway. The Fed is in a box they can't get out of."
As WND reported earlier this week, in an unusual move, the Bush administration is sending virtually the entire economic "A-team" to visit China for a "strategic economic dialogue" in Beijing Thursday and Friday. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are leading the delegation, along with five other cabinet-level officials, including Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez. Also in the delegation will be Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, Energy Secretary Sam Bodman, and U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab.
But Chapman doubts the trip will help the Fed to engineer a slow dollar slide.
"The Chinese are going to do what the Chinese want to do, not what we want them to do," he said. "I believe the Chinese are going to send Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke home packing, with little or nothing to show for the trip."
How severe will the coming dollar collapse be?
"People in the U.S. are going to be hit hard," Chapman warned. "In the severe recession we are entering now, Bush will argue that we have to form a North American Union to compete with the Euro."
"Creating the amero," Chapman explained, "will be presented to the American public as the administration's solution for dollar recovery. In the process of creating the amero, the Bush administration just abandons the dollar."
From: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2006/131206liquidbomb.htm
Alleged Liquid Bomb Plot Credibility Crumbles
Court clears Rauf of charges as much vaunted transatlantic airliner attack dissipates into another staged terror alert
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet
The alleged ringleader of a much vaunted plot to blow up multiple transatlantic airliners using liquid explosives has been cleared of terrorism charges and of being a member of any terrorist group, rendering August's terror scare another hyped creation of government scare mongering.
In every single major terror bust or terror alert we have proven the evidence to be flawed and the charges to be cooked up nonsense aimed at prolonging the illusion that terror cells are lurking around every corner waiting to cause mayhem. The geopolitical agenda of the U.S., Britain and Israel depends on the proliferation phony terror threats in order to continue the farcical war on terror and take more of our innate freedoms at home to stifle dissent against the plot for worldwide hegemony.
The supposed transatlantic bomb plot has dissipated into another staged terror alert.
The BBC reports,
"A Pakistani judge has ruled there is not enough evidence to try a key suspect in an alleged airline bomb plot on terrorism charges. He has moved the case of Rashid Rauf, a Briton, from an anti-terrorism court to a regular court, where he faces lesser charges such as forgery."
"The Pakistani authorities described him as a key figure."
"But an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi found no evidence that he had been involved in terrorist activities or that he belonged to a terrorist organisation."
Since the panic surrounding the ridiculous hoax that led to an outright ban on all liquids in U.S. and British airports, the credibility of the alleged plot itself has crumbled.
In a series of reports following the August 10th scare, we traced the source of the alleged attack plot to Pakistani and British intelligence and were rapidly able to confirm that the story was nothing more than a manufactured ploy to frighten travelers at the height of the holiday season.
It comes as no surprise that the Pakistanis have acquitted Rashid Rauf. His involvement with the Lashkar-e-Toiba group provides a direct lineage back to the Pakistani ISI , which is in turn controlled by the CIA and British intelligence. Rauf likely acted as the willing patsy for the plot to be pinned on while the Blair government waved it in front of Britons as another reason for them to accept the Blairstrip One fascist surveillance state without dissent.
It was revealed that the alleged terrorist cell that planned to blow up ten planes had been completely infiltrated for weeks before the announcement of the foiled plot by British intelligence. From the evidence at hand allied with past history of how MI5 work, which was presented in our article, it can be reasonably claimed that an MI5 mole within the group orchestrated the entire operation.
According to news reports the British government and MI5 wanted to wait at least a week before busting the liquid terror cell that their agents had fully infiltrated, including planting a mole within the bomb squad. From the acknowledged timeline and admission that the real attack was scheduled for August 16th - little else can be deduced but the shocking fact that MI5 wanted the bombings to go forward - arresting the perpetrators only after the attack.
Echoing the activities of the 7/7 bombers, some of the main suspects in the case aside from Rashid Rauf exhibited behavior that in no way suggested they were preparing to launch mid-air suicide attacks on jumbo jets. Far from preparing his last will and testament, psyching himself up for his imminent death or acquiring the necessary materials to conduct the operation, Tayib Rauf was caught on CCTV hours before the launch of the plot doing something far more mundane - he was buying cakes for his father's confectionary business.
Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray slammed the so-called foiled plot story as "propaganda" on behalf of Bush and Blair who yearn for a "new 9/11" to reinvigorate their flagging support base.
"None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time," said Murray.
Unconfirmed sources suggest that insider speculators with informants inside the British intelligence apparatus took advantage of their foreknowledge of the announcement of the foiled terror plot to place put options on airline stocks, reaping the benefits of their subsequent fall. Airline stocks dropped as much as 28 per cent during morning trading following the announcement of the alleged liquid bomb plot.
From: http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/14-12-2006/85920-Putin_Lebanon-0
Putin reported 'furious' over US payment for Lebanon war, CIA Egypt terror ring
Reports from the Kremlin today are portraying President Putin as being 'furious' with the American War Leader Bush over his breaking of a promise to the Russian President to not provide US funding to the Israelis for their Lebanese War. Less than 3 weeks after making this promise the United States used a little known provision in their security agreements with Israel to fully pay for the war, and as we can read as reported by Israel's Ynet News Service in their article titled "US to double emergency equipment stored in Israel", and which says:
"The American Congress gave Israel financial and security encouragement when the Senate and the House of Representatives gave their approval to double the emergency equipment the United States stores in Israeli stockpiles. Within the next two years the Americans will fill the military emergency stockpiles in Israel with double the equipment they now hold.
In addition, the US will allow Israel to use the remainder of the US's monetary guarantees given to them that have not been used yet, and add up to USD 4.5 billion, by 2011. The emergency stockpiles are meant to store American military equipment in the Middle East in case of an emergency. However, in case of an emergency, Israel is allowed to use the stockpiles. The bill was approved by the Senate and House and it renewed authority to transfer equipment to be stored in Israel.
A great portion of the American equipment stored in Israel last year was used for combat in the summer war in Lebanon.
In an even greater affront to Russia, and its supposed Middle Eastern ally Egypt, these reports also accuse the United States of operating a CIA/French Intelligence backed terror ring on Egyptian territory for the recruitment of foreign fighters to be deployed in the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars, but which Egyptian authorities had infiltrated and arrested the American and French Ringleaders, and as we can read as reported by the Forbes News Service in their article titled "Egypt Releases Details on American Man", and which says:
"Security officials in Egypt released new details Monday about an American man in their custody on suspicion of links to a terror network which allegedly recruits Muslims to fight the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. In Washington, the administration said Monday it expected an American detained in Egypt as a suspected terrorist to be freed.
From: http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/14-06-2006/81973-nuclear_new-0">ttp://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/14-06-2006/81973-nuclear_new-0
USA cuts nuclear weapons and builds extra-strong A-bombs at the same time
Nuclear disarmament has become one of the most important elements of safe future and peaceful cooperation between the countries around the world. President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin signed in 2002 the treaty that calls for each country to cut inventories to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by 2012.The treaty outlined the direction for further cooperation in this field, but the USA has found a loophole and are going to turn the treaty to their advantage and to use it to gain their aims.
In the Cold War arms race, scientists rushed to build thousands of warheads to counter the Soviet Union. Today, those scientists are racing once again, but this time to rebuild an aging nuclear stockpile. Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are locked in an intense competition with rivals at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area to design the nation's first new nuclear bomb in two decades.
The new weapon, under development for about a year, is designed to ensure long-term reliability of the nation's inventory of bombs. Program backers say that with greater confidence in the quality of its weapons, the nation could draw down its stockpile, estimated at about 6,000 warheads.
Scientists also intend for the new weapons to be less vulnerable to accidental detonation and to be so secure that any stolen or lost weapon would be unusable.
By law, the new weapons would pack the same explosive power as existing warheads and be suitable only for the same kinds of military targets as those of the weapons they replace. Unlike past proposals for new atomic weapons, the project has captured bipartisan support in Congress.
But some veterans of nuclear arms development are strongly opposed, contending that building new weapons could trigger another arms race with Russia and China, as well as undermine arguments to stop nuclear developments in Iran, North Korea and elsewhere.
And, the critics say, It would eventually increase pressure to resume underground nuclear testing, which the U.S. halted 14 years ago.
The program to build the new bomb, known as the "reliable replacement warhead," was approved by Congress in 2005 as part of a defense spending bill. The design work is being supervised by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is part of the Energy Department.
The laboratories submitted detailed design proposals in March that ran more than 1,000 pages each to the Nuclear Weapons Council, the secretive federal panel that oversees the nation's nuclear weapons. A winner will be declared this year.
If the program is implemented, it would require an expensive remobilization of the nation's nuclear weapons complex, creating a capacity to turn out bombs at the rate of three or more a week.
Proponents of the project foresee a time when nuclear deterrence will increasingly rest on the nation's capacity to build new bombs, rather than on maintaining a massive stockpile.
The proposal comes as Russia and the United States have agreed to further reduce nuclear stockpiles. The Moscow Treaty signed in 2002 by President Bush and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin calls for each country to cut inventories to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by 2012.
Without the reliable replacement warhead, U.S. scientists say the nation will end up with old and potentially unreliable bombs within the next 15 years, allowing adversaries to challenge U.S. supremacy and erode the nation's so-called strategic deterrent.
The new bomb "is one way of ensuring that our capability is second to none," said Paul Hommert, a physicist who heads X Division, the Los Alamos unit that built the first atomic bomb during World War II. "Not only today, but in 2025."
But critics say the program could plant the seeds of a new arms race.
The existing stockpile will be safe and reliable for decades to come, according to defense experts and nuclear scientists who have long supported strategic weapons. They say that rather than making the nation safer, the program will squander resources, broadcast the message that arms control is dead and even undermine the reliability of U.S. weapons.
The new bomb would have to be built and deployed without testing. The U.S. last conducted an underground test in Nevada in 1992 and has since imposed a moratorium on new testing.
But without a single test, doubts about the new bomb's reliability would eventually grow, said Sidney Drell, former director of Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center and a longtime advisor to the Energy Department.
"If anybody thinks we are going to be designing new warheads and not doing testing, I don't know what they are smoking," Drell said. "I don't know of a general, an admiral, a president or anybody in responsibility who would take an untested new weapon that is different from the ones in our stockpile and rely on it without resuming testing."
If the U.S. breaks the moratorium on testing, then Russia, China, India and Pakistan, if not Britain and France, probably would conduct tests as well, said Philip Coyle, former assistant secretary of Defense and former deputy director of Livermore. Those countries would gain more information from testing than would the U.S., which has invested heavily in scientific research as an alternative to testing.
The stockpile includes thousands of weapons held in reserve in case a defect is discovered. Each year, some of those weapons are disassembled for inspection. The U.S. could significantly reduce the reserve if it had greater confidence in the reliability of its warheads, Brooks said.
That confidence involves not only whether a weapon will explode, but whether it will do so with the intended force. In every U.S. nuclear weapon, a primary blast must be strong enough to trigger a secondary thermonuclear reaction. If the first stage falls short, the weapon has half the power.
The driving force for developing the new weapon has come from the scientific community and members of Congress. Although the Defense Department did not initiate the program, it has won wide support within the military as well as the Bush administration.
Meanwhile, the Los Alamos and Livermore labs are revving up their culture of one-upmanship.
During the Cold War, the scientists adhered to a motto that the Soviet Union was the rival, but the competing lab was "the enemy." Still, it is a scholarly competition with few fighting words.
Though neither lab has developed a new weapon since the late 1980s, they have received billions of dollars in investments by the federal government for office buildings and massive physics machines.
Since the end of the Cold War, the labs' top priority has been to maintain existing weapons. The labs predict that the plutonium components in existing weapons have a life of 45 to 60 years, meaning that in the next 15 years some will begin to deteriorate and replacements will be needed.
On average, the U.S. has spent an estimated $6 million per warhead since World War II, said Stephen I. Schwartz, author of "Atomic Audit," a history of strategic weapons costs. Based on that, replacing all of the nation's 6,000 nuclear weapons could cost $36 billion.
The idea of having two labs compete to design nuclear weapons dates to the 1950s, when federal officials concluded that such a system would promote innovation and also allow the labs to monitor each other's science in an area crucial to national security. The labs are federally funded and operate under contract with the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Each has about 20 physicists, chemists, metallurgists and engineers on its reliable replacement warhead team, backed by a few hundred other experts working part time on the weapon. Among them are younger scientists learning the art and craft of nuclear bomb design from Cold War veterans.
Over the last decade, the labs have invested several billion dollars in computing, creating a succession of the world's fastest supercomputers and other innovations. Livermore has taken the lead in that field. Its "purple" computer, with a footprint the size of a tennis court, does mathematical models of nuclear detonations. It uses enough megawatts of electricity to supply about 4,000 homes with power.
Meanwhile, Los Alamos is developing better ways to cast molten plutonium into hollow spheres, a key part of nuclear bombs, according to Deniece Korzekwa, a casting expert at the lab's manufacturing center.
Each laboratory's culture and body of technology is very different from the other's. Each has developed its own recipes for plastic explosives used to start an atomic chain reaction.
Even in promoting their designs, each lab has taken a different approach.
Source: The Los Angeles Times
Topol-M missile systems to be outfitted with multiple warheads (Dec 15, 2006)
http://english.pravda.ru/news/russia/15-12-2006/85953-topol_m-0
Russia will replace single nuclear warheads on some of its strategic missiles with multiple warheads, Russian news agencies reported Friday. "In the near future we will begin to substitute the single warheads on Topol-M intercontinental missiles with multiple warheads," the Interfax-Military News Agency quoted Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces, as saying Friday.Fitting multiple warheads to one-warhead Topol-Ms is a cheaper way for Russia to upgrade its nuclear arsenals and maintain nuclear parity with the United States. It also makes it theoretically easier to evade missile defense systems, the AP says. "This makes the task of replacing aging missiles much easier," said Alexander Pikayev, a Moscow-based defense analyst who is co-chair of the Committee of Scientists for Global Security.On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin's visit to a unit of newly deployed Topol-M missiles mounted on mobile launchers. Putin called their deployment a "serious step forward in strengthening Russia's defense capability.""It has a stronger survivability, faster launch and an ability to penetrate any prospective missile defense," Putin said.The Topol-M missiles, capable of hitting targets more than 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles) away, have so far been deployed only in silos. The new version, which is mounted on a heavy off road vehicle, makes it harder for an enemy to track it down.The United States has not deployed similar mobile launch systems, but it has much more unlimited access to the sea and can concentrate its nuclear missiles in submarines, Pikayev said. A shortage of cash following the collapse of the Soviet Union slowed the modernization of Russia's strategic arms arsenals. The military has commissioned just over 40 of the Topol-M missile since its deployment in 1997, and aging Soviet-era missiles have continued to form the backbone of the nation's nuclear capability.In 2002, Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush signed a treaty obliging both sides to cut their strategic nuclear weapons by about two-thirds by 2012, down to 1,700 to 2,200 missiles.When the treaty was signed, many analysts said the number of Russian nuclear weapons could fall far below the number set by the treaty.However, the oil boom of recent years allowed the Kremlin to bolster the military budget and speed up the pace of military modernization.Topol-M's chief designer, Yuri Solomonov, said earlier this year that Russia would easily be able to maintain at least 2,000 nuclear warheads by 2011 and beyond.
Russia launches test missile in bid to scare USA (24.04.2006)
http://english.pravda.ru/russia/politics/24-04-2006/79468-missile-0
Our missile engineers have finally come to the fore once again. On Saturday an intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from Kapustin Yar test-site in the Astrakhan region, and just a few minutes later successfully hit its target at the Sary-Shagan test-site in Kazakhstan. It would have been impossible to tell whether this was a new or old missile from its flight, because the very latest warhead for the 'Bulava' sea-based missile complex had been placed on an old K65M-P carrier produced in the 1960s. It was this new 'head' that was the subject of the tests carried out by missile engineers. The launch of this missile can be seen as our reply to the Americans who have started to afford themselves statements along the lines that there is no nuclear parity anymore, and Russia can be written off on a strategic level. They wish..The commanding officer for Strategic Missile Troops General-Colonel Nikolay Solovtsov said the following about the significance of Saturday's launch: 'The USA is planning to develop its articulated ballistic missile defense on such a scale that it could disturb strategic stability. The main task of this launch was to test a single fighting block for both land and sea-based ballistic missiles and a series of elements which have been developed to overcome ballistic missile defense systems'. CLIP
From: http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/121406EB.shtml
Europe Passes Tough Chemical Law
By Marla Cone
EU's parliament votes to regulate 30,000 toxic substances. The reforms will have a major effect on US industry.
The European Parliament on Wednesday approved the world's most stringent law aimed at protecting people and the environment from thousands of toxic chemicals - legislation that will have a far-reaching effect on industries and products worldwide, including in the United States.
The new law, which regulates about 30,000 toxic substances, is far more restrictive and comprehensive than U.S. regulations. The most hazardous - an estimated 1,500 - could be banned or restricted. Included on that list are some compounds used in electronics, furniture, toys, cosmetics and other everyday items.
The Parliament's vote in Strasbourg, France, came after seven years of review and contentious debate. The legislation, though adamantly opposed by U.S. industry and the Bush administration, was not as strong as some European political parties had sought.
Still, environmental activists in the United States were thrilled, saying that Washington has fallen behind in regulating chemicals and predicting that the European law will lead to safer products on both sides of the Atlantic.
The legislation, called REACH or Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals, is intended to force industries to register chemicals and submit health and safety data and replace the most hazardous ones with safer alternatives. It also will replace 40 European Union rules with a comprehensive program. A new European Chemicals Agency, based in Helsinki, Finland, will become a central regulatory authority.
The law will become effective in June and be phased in over 11 years. It must be approved next week by the European Council, which represents the EU's 25 member nations, but that is considered a technicality since it was Parliament's approval that was in question.
European Parliament President Josep Borrell of Spain said the legislation "offers EU citizens true protection against the multitude of toxic substances in everyday life in Europe." Parliament officials said it is one of the most far-reaching, ambitious and costly pieces of legislations in EU history.
"This vote, on one of the most complex texts in the history of the EU, sets up an essential piece of legislation to protect public health and the environment ... without threatening European competitiveness," Borrell said.
Parliament member Avril Doyle of Ireland called it a "hard-won compromise" that "will have a very positive influence on standards worldwide."
The U.S. chemical industry, the global leader in chemical production and a major exporter, had battled the proposal for years, calling it costly and bureaucratic.
"This will have a huge impact well beyond the chemical industry," said Steven Russell, senior director of the American Chemistry Council, which represents Dow Chemical, DuPont, ExxonMobil and other companies.
"REACH does not limit its provisions to trade in chemicals but also [affects] trade in products, from airplanes to adhesive tape. It applies equally to products made in Europe and products made outside Europe."
Nevertheless, Russell said, "the U.S. chemical industry is going to focus quickly and smartly on getting the job done. Our customers need our products and we have a strong motivation to continue to supply them."
Cost in Billions
The cost to European industry has been estimated by the EU at $2 billion to $6 billion over the 11-year period in which the law will be phased in. No estimate for U.S. companies has been calculated, but "this legislation will be incredibly expensive to all parties," Russell said.
Health and safety assessments will be mandatory for chemicals used in volumes exceeding 1 ton annually. The European Commission says there is little existing safety information on 99% of the tens of thousands of chemicals put on the market before 1981.
The most hazardous compounds, those that are carcinogens, reproductive toxins, or that accumulate in the bodies of people and animals, could be used only if authorized by the new agency.
Under the United States' 30-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act, the Environmental Protection Agency has little legal authority to ban or restrict chemicals in use before 1976 because it must first prove they pose "an unreasonable risk."
"To protect the health of Americans and the competitiveness of U.S. companies, we must now overhaul our own laws on toxic chemicals," said Daryl Ditz of the U.S. environmental group Center for International Environmental Law.
U.S. industry leaders said the EU law will divert their attention to bureaucratic mandates.
"It's a poor use of time, energy and resources," Russell said. "A really historic amount of work and expense will have to focus on the implementation. As a result, there will be fewer resources available for innovation and research and development."
The law "casts its net so broadly" that it fails to "focus smartly enough on areas where real improvement can be made," he said. The vast majority of the 1,500 compounds deemed the most hazardous, he said, are "already well controlled" so exposure is "unlikely."
However, many toxic chemicals have been showing up in humans and animals worldwide, including a compound used to make Teflon, brominated flame retardants in computers and furniture, and chemicals called bisphenol A and phthalates in plastics. Some can alter hormones or brain growth and might harm fetuses and children, though the dangers are not well understood.
The EU already has banned many chemicals that remain legal in the United States, including phthalates in toys and cosmetics, high formaldehyde levels in wood and lead in electronics.
"When one in three people contract cancer in their lifetime, we need to stop using known and suspected cancer-causing chemicals in commerce. The same goes for chemicals that are now accumulating in our children's bodies," said Bev Thorpe, director of Clean Production Action, an international group advocating green chemistry.
Debate Lasted Years
European leaders debated for years how to safeguard people and the environment from chemicals without overburdening its chemical industry.
Parliament's two largest parties, the People's Party and the Socialist Group, agreed reluctantly to remove some stringent provisions, but the compromise drew the ire of Europe's environmentalists and the Green and Left parties.
The original proposal mandated that when a safer substitute existed for one of the most dangerous chemicals, it must be used. Instead, under the law as passed, companies must submit plans to replace them. Where no alternative exists, they must conduct research to find one.
"REACH has been watered down to such an extent the current proposals are unacceptable," said Bairbre de Brun, a British member of the United Left party.
Socialist Andres Tarand of Estonia, by contrast, said: "This has not been an easy journey for any of us. However, we have found a good solution."
From: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72265-0.html?tw=wn_technology_1
Wi-Fi as a Health Hazard
By Rob Beschizzar
Electromagnetic field sensitivity is an empirical chimera.
Riding in on peer-reviewed research, but flunking every major test, the idea that wireless technology amounts to a modern health threat presents a conundrum to proponents and skeptics alike. With Wi-Fi networks blanketing homes, schools and even whole cities, they've become the latest flash point in a struggle that's arced from power lines to microwaves, cell phones and even computers, spanning decades of debate.
To sufferers of EMF sensitivity, however, such academic battles are exasperating. To them, it's as if their symptoms, and even their sanity, are under attack.
"A professor called it Compulsive Risk Assessment Psychosis, otherwise known as CRAP,'" said Rod Read of ElectroSensitivity-UK, a registered charity in Britain. "He says everyone is deluded. It insults and abuses people who are sick. I thought that went out with the Victorian era."
British author Kate Figes recently described a sensation akin to being "prodded all over your body by 1,000 fingers" when in the presence of a Wi-Fi signal. When Michael Bevington fell ill, he blamed a network recently installed at the prestigious school where he'd worked for 28 years: "Over the weekend, away from the classroom, I felt completely normal."
Plans for a Wi-Fi network at an Illinois school were scuppered after parents filed a lawsuit. The president of Canada's Lakehead University banned Wi-Fi on campus, likening it to second-hand smoke. In March, Toronto's public health department questioned plans to install a citywide network.
"It's the whole insidious and invisible exploitation of the EM spectrum," said Read, who estimates between 1 percent and 3 percent of the population may be susceptible. "To the sensitive, it's like being shouted at all the time."
Sufferers report headaches, nausea, stomach upsets, tinnitus, brain fog and short-term memory among the symptoms, Read said. Skeptics, however, suspect that blaming EMF sensitivity for their ills amounts to an easy answer to almost any medical problem.
"There is no known mechanism by which EMF from any source -- power lines, cell phones or Wi-Fi networks -- can cause health problems of any kind," said Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine. "In fact, there is nothing that even needs explaining."
While some groups focus on nonspecific symptoms, others claim links to more severe conditions such as cancer.
"We're in it for a long fight," said Cindy Sage of Sage EMF Design, a California environmental consulting firm that profiles locations for their EMF characteristics. "Around the world, we've seen the affected giving up hope. But they're burning down cell towers in Israel, dismantling them in Ireland, taking it to a civil disobedience level when they can't get their governments to respond."
Scientists recognize the dangers of high-frequency ionizing radiation, such as gamma rays unleashed by nuclear fallout. Non-ionizing radiation, however, such as Wi-Fi signals, cellular networks, television broadcasts and visible light, cannot break down atomic bonds and has long been considered safe.
"The fields that are induced by Wi-Fi transmissions are well below those that could cause problems to humans," said Chris Guy, head of The University of Reading's School of Systems Engineering. "The maximum power that is allowed to be transmitted by any Wi-Fi unit is one-tenth of a watt."
EMF sensitivity advocates, however, believe studies reveal that even these low-frequency, low-power fields can cause subtle damage to human tissue, citing evidence of cell death, faster-growing tumors and DNA damage.
Sage, who published a 30-page critique of San Francisco's decision to pursue a citywide wireless network, said the proven effects on biological systems caused by EMF do not diminish with signal strength.
"The trend is looking like there is no lower limit," Sage said.
Graham Philips of Powerwatch, which seeks to highlight the alleged dangers of EMF, said no peer-reviewed research demonstrates dangers specific to Wi-Fi. That said, he claimed that the vast majority of studies into EMF indicate a negative health impact, and that a precautionary approach should be adopted.
"What isn't yet agreed upon is whether or not it is attributable to the electrical devices being accused of being the problem," he said, "or whether it is psychological."
The precautionary principle is misapplied here, skeptics say, pointing out that whatever evidence exists for biological effects, it does not amount to proof of biological harm.
"We don't even need to study Wi-Fi networks in terms of health concerns, because there are no health concerns that need explaining," Shermer said. "All we have are anecdotes, and anecdotes do not make a science."
Epidemiological studies consistently fail to uncover negative health effects. On Wednesday, a Danish study, tracking a cohort of 420,000 over 20 years, reported no increase in cancer among cell-phone users.
It's as if death forgot to return their calls.
"What do you do with uncertain science, where there is evidence but not proof?" Sage asked. "We don't have the kind of science process that would provide conclusive evidence."
"There is no such thing as truly conclusive evidence," Philips said, "and nothing can really be done to provide any."
To others, the lack of such evidence, after years of attempts to find it, sends a clear signal. "It was codswallop then, and it's codswallop now," Shermer said.
And yet the lines of the battle seem fluid. Most mainstream scientists may consider EMF sensitivity unlikely, but more studies are under way. Some governments are taking a cautious tack, reviewing exposure limits and recommending that youngsters, at least, avoid habitual use of cell phones. And on the other side, the virtues of wireless technology are not lost on its critics.
"We don't see us doing away with mobile phones or Wi-Fi," Read said. "We suspect there are frequencies that don't have any effect on people at all.... That's the research that really has to be done."
"It's a problem we've created with science, and we can uncreate it with science."
Much much more on this topic through http://www.buergerwelle.de/english_start.html and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/emf-omega-news/
From: "Patty-Lynne Herlevi" patriciacrowherlevi@gmail.com
Subject: Global warming and those portable electrical units
It has been awhile since I have contacted you. I hope you are well.
The reason why I am contacting you is that I recall articles on your site that had to do with an invention that would allow people to provide their own electricity. The inventors were being gagged when they tried to get their invention out to the public.
Do you know which articles I am talking about? And could you send me the links if possible.
I am writing a letter to the Governor of Washington State about global warming and what we need to do to prepare for it. A million people in the Pacific NW were without power on Friday and some will be without power for up to 5 days. Obviously homes need to be retrofitted with solar panels, both passive and active and those portable units for electricity would be much better than gas-powered generators which of course only contribute to global warming!
And people will act out of fear too and chop down trees which also contributes to the problem. So I would appreciate any assistance you can give me in regard to those articles that appeared on your site in the past.
I also told a reporter about those articles and sent him to your website. He is from the Seattle Post Intelligencer and might do a story on those units, whatever they are called.
Much thanks.
Peace & good will,
Patty-Lynne Herlevi
AND MY REPLY WAS:
Hi Patty
Nice to hear from you.
You will find every compilation that relates to "free energy" through http://tinyurl.com/y2hkee
And you may also go directly at http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2002/NewEnergy.htm
And there this old one too...
Miracle in the Void: The New Energy Revolution (March 13, 2000) http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/MiracleinVoid.htm
To find out about the current status of the Motionless Electromagnetic Generator mentioned in this compilation above, go at http://www.cheniere.org/megstatus.htm
Obviously the "evil cabal" people are doing their best to prevent such technologies from becoming widely available which would threaten their oil profits - see http://www.cheniere.org/correspondence/081206.htm
Just for your info, whenever you need to find something in the ERN archives, you go at http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com scroll down to the on-site google search field (just above the archive section), type in the key words for what you seek (using "quotation marks" when you have more than one word, this is important otherwise you won't get what you need) and the results will lead you to what you look for.
From outside of the ERN archives, you may want to look at this:
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)About New Energy Science and Technology http://www.infinite-energy.com/resources/faq.html
(...) Are there now any New Energy devices on the market that generate electricity or produce heat and cooling?
No, not as of January 2003. (We will obviously have to update this reply in the future— we hope in the near future!) All New Energy devices—for generating electricity, heat, and cooling—are currently in the research and prototype development stage. You cannot buy one of these experimental devices—yet— from anyone. That could change at any time. When it does, the worldwide interest in prospective utilitarian New Energy technologies will ramp up considerably, since it will then be very clear to many scientists, technologists, and investors (who are now far too skeptical) that this science and technology is for real. The New Energy Foundation hopes to play a significant role in getting these prototype demonstration devices on market.
Open Letter from Dr. Eugene Mallove May 13, 2004 http://www.newenergymovement.org/newenergyp1.aspx
(...) We acknowledge, of course, that there are now no robust new energy devices on the market-not yet. But when adequate, well-targeted research funding is applied, a revolution in energy technology will occur that will dwarf the personal computer revolution in intensity. It will have much in common with that revolution too, since power sources will be highly distributed. The very troublesome and erratic power grid is doomed to obsolescence.
BTW Eugene Mallove has been mysteriously assassinated - possibly by the Cabal
From: http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2004/NewDemocracy.htm
Galileo of our Time - In Memory of Dr. Eugene Mallove (May 17, 2004)
http://www.newenergymovement.org/mallove_eulogy.htm
We are heading towards almost certain global ecological disaster through unsustainable energy practices. Our addiction to oil, coal, natural gas and uranium has killed hundreds of millions of us and untold species from foul air, water and earth and accelerating global climate change. It has created wars, obscene profits and false economies that could do us all in. For all their promise, solar, wind, hydrogen, bio fuels and other conventional renewables have limited potential to replace the fossil fuel economy. They can consume a lot of land, materials and capital. Moreover, wind and solar power cannot operate under all weather conditions. The tragedy of all this is that elegant solutions may soon exist with further research and development: vacuum (aka. space or zero-point) energy, cold fusion and advanced hydrogen chemistry. Since the time of Tesla, the powers-that-be have so effectively suppressed the research of hundreds of unsung inventors whose technologies promise a quantum leap that could catapult our economy and environment into a clean, safe and sustainable 21st Century. Nobody knew and expressed this potential better than Dr. Eugene Mallove--scientist, journalist, educator, visionary, humanitarian, friend. On May 14, he was mysteriously murdered during an apparent robbery in the home of his parents. He was in the prime of his career at age 56. CLIP
Many more important articles at http://www.newenergymovement.org/articles.htm
Check also the New Energy Movement website at http://www.newenergymovement.org
More on Mallove also through http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi
I recommend you keep a close eye on what is published at http://www.infinite-energy.com/ to discover if and when any such technology becomes available. Check also this Integrity Research Institute http://users.erols.com/iri/ which has some current information. Their Second International Conference On Future Energy took place on September 22-24, 2006 - details at http://users.erols.com/iri/cofe.html and especially at http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org/library/related_writings_05.asp
Please keep me posted if you find anything worth mentioning in a future compilation ;-)
NOTE FROM JEAN: I believe it is highly time similar commitments by elected politicians—with the active "encouragement" from mobilized citizens!—are made in all other countries around the world, especially in the US and Canada to go pass the bottleneck of competitiveness fears now preventing the adoption and implementation of urgently needed policies to actually cut down on total greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. There is no more time for stupid political procrastination while our planetary house burns!
When seeing this intro note above, John Bunzl wrote back: "You know, to me the crisis of globalisation is humanity trying to get from it's adolescent, irresponsible, oil-violence-competition stage to its evolutionary species maturity. But as we all know, the big lesson is that adolescents don't make it if they don't TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. And that, too, is the message for citizens around the world. If we keep on abdicating responsibility by waiting for politicians and governments to solve global problems for us, humanity won't make it. So each of us has to TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for DRIVING our politicians and governments to take action. And you're intro encapsulates that perfectly!"
From: "John Bunzl" jbunzl@simpol.org">
Subject: Citizens drive politicians towards global action on climate change
The Simultaneous Policy Organisation of the UK
Simultaneous Policy: Rediscovering the Sense of our Collective Humanity
PRESS RELEASE: 15th December 2006
20 UK MPs lead drive for simultaneous action on climate change
The Simultaneous Policy (SP) campaign, aimed at addressing global problems such as climate change, unfair trade and unsustainability, has gained further support in Parliament. Malcolm Bruce, Liberal Democrat MP for Gordon and Vice-chair of Globe UK, became the twentieth MP from all the main UK political parties to sign a pledge to implement SP alongside other governments. (See website for full list). "I strongly support action by governments working together to tackle climate change," Mr. Bruce said.
To avoid governments‚ fears that the unilateral implementation of stringent environmental controls would see capital and jobs moving elsewhere, the Simultaneous Policy is to be implemented simultaneously, only when all or sufficient governments have signed up. In this way, supporting SP poses no-risk to any nation's international competitiveness and is helping to build international and cross-party support while opening the way to far more robust measures being adopted than those presently envisaged under agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol.
The fear of competitive disadvantage is rapidly being recognised as the key barrier to solving global warming and many other global problems. The Stern report recently warned governments to act urgently to curb carbon emissions, but the Financial Times (6th Dec. 06) noted that "governments remain reluctant to address this threat because any country acting alone to curb its greenhouse gas emissions, without similar commitments by other governments, risks damaging the competitiveness of its industries." David Milliband, UK environment minister, confirmed this problem, noting that: "There is a collective action problem internationally."
To short-cut inter-governmental paralysis, the design of SP's range of global policies is undertaken, not by political parties, but by thousands of citizens around the world who support SP, known as Adopters. To secure sufficient international support for SP, Adopters vote in their respective national elections for any candidate, within reason, who has signed the pledge to implement SP alongside other governments, or to encourage their preferred party to support SP. In this way, politicians who fail to sign the SP Pledge risk losing their seats to those who do. With more parliamentary seats and even entire national elections being won or lost on fine margins, only a relatively small number of Adopters may be needed to make it in the vital interests of the main politicians and parties to support SP. In this way, citizens around the world are adopting SP as a way to seize the political initiative and to drive even uncooperative governments, such as the U.S. administration, towards the internationally co-operative solution that SP provides.
Apart from the UK, there is support for SP in the EU and Australian parliaments and SP campaigns are under way many in other countries. SP is supported by the prime minister of East Timor, Dr. José Ramos-Horta, and by many ecologists, activists and economists.
Adopting SP is free. Citizens wishing to do so, go to http://www.simpol.org/dossiers/dossier-UK/html-UK/how_do_i_adopt_sp-UK.html
For further information visit http://www.simpol.org/ (global site) and/or http://www.simpol.org.uk (UK site) or contact Diana Trimble on the numbers below.
Simpol-UK 27 London Road, Bromley, BR1 1DF, UK
info@simpol.org.uk Tel +44 (0)20-8464 4141 Fax +44 (0)20-8460 2035
From: http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20061215/pl_cq_politics/thecqpoliticsinterviewdenniskucinich
The CQPolitics Interview: Dennis Kucinich
"People aren't looking for the Democrats to be better managers of the war, they want the Democrats to end the war and to bring our troops home."
- Dennis Kucinich
Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio this week became the second officeholder to announce a bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. And since the other candidate is retiring Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, Kucinich is the first member of Congress to officially enter the Democrats’ presidential sweepstakes.
He also is the first repeat candidate for the party’s 2004 White House field. Kucinich did not gain serious political traction that year — earning less than 4 percent of the overall primary vote — and his candidacy was largely seen as a symbolic effort to represent the liberal activist wing of the party.
In an interview Thursday with Marie Horrigan of CQPolitics.com, Kucinich made it clear that he again will emphasize the trademark issue of his 2004 campaign: his fervent opposition to the Iraq war, which he described as “a Hydra-headed disaster.”
Kucinich contends he is the only current or likely candidate in the 2008 Democratic field to reject the war from the beginning and also to vote against funding the war. He touts this as a credential that will make him a much stronger contender in his second run than in his first.
“I’m in a position to save the presidency for the Democratic Party and to be elected the next president because people will know not only is there someone who has had the foresight on this and a plan, but people will know that my leadership can implement the plan,” he said.
The 60-year-old Kucinich has a political career notable for its iconoclasm and its ups and downs. He took a seat on the Cleveland City Council in 1969 at age 22; his election as mayor in 1977 drew him national notice as a political “boy wonder.” But his stormy tenure lasted only two years, during which he had to weather a recall election.
Kucinich returned briefly to the city council in the early 1980s. The loser of U.S. House bids in 1972 and 1974, he ran for that office again and lost in 1988 and 1992.
Yet in one of the strongest second acts in recent American politics, Kucinich won a state Senate seat in 1994 and then in 1996 won the Cleveland-based 10th District seat that he has held since. Popular on his home turf, which has a strongly Democratic lean, Kucinich won re-election Nov. 7 with 66 percent of the vote.
The following are excerpts from the interview.
CLIP - read this interview at http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20061215/pl_cq_politics/thecqpoliticsinterviewdenniskucinich
Here is the conclusion:
CQ: And just one final question, in terms of the nitty-gritty of campaigning, a number of potential candidates who have not even thrown their hats in the ring yet have astronomical amounts of money — one person who comes to mind is [New York] Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Do you feel that you will be able to compete in terms of campaign fundraising to run a competitive campaign?
Kucinich: I think it’s possible to be elected president of the United States without outspending other people, and I’ll tell you why: because this election is not going to be about money, it’s going to be about truth, and it’s going to be about integrity. And I’m on a quest for integrity, and people respond to that and they’re looking for a candidate not just who’s gifted of tremendous financial resources, but who’s gifted of integrity, gifted of truth, gifted of foresight, gifted of leadership. And so I think that as people look at our campaign they’re going to support it. ...
But you know what? I can’t say that I had planned to run this time. I knew after the Democrats came back and we had our caucuses returning from the Thanksgiving break, I knew when I heard our leaders start to talk about continuing funding for our war, I knew that I had to step forward.
I knew I had to step forward for the young men and women whose lives are on the line while leaders in Washington temporize, I have to step forward for their families who are worried about whether their loved ones are ever going to return. I have to step forward for the people of Iraq who are left in unimaginable violence. ...
I want to change this. I have to. As I said in my announcement, my conscience calls me to action here, and because I’ve been consistent and because I understand exactly what’s going on and because I’m in a singular position right now, I expect that I’m on my way to being elected president of the United States.
From: Sherwood Ross sherwoodr1@yahoo.com">
Sent: December 19, 2006
Subject: International Law Authority Rips Bush for Illegal Germ Warfare Development
BUSH DEVELOPING ILLEGAL BIOTERROR WEAPONS FOR OFFENSIVE USE
By Sherwood Ross
In violation of the U.S. Code and international law, the Bush administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2-billion spent in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb.
So says mailto:FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU">Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He states the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and win‚ biological warfare" pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted "without public knowledge and review" in 2002.
The Pentagon's Chemical and Biological Defense Program was revised in 2003 to implement those directives, endorsing "first-use" strike of chemical and biological weapons(CBW) in war, says Boyle, who teaches at the University of Illinois, Champaign.
Terming the action "the proverbial smoking gun," Boyle said the mission of the controversial CBW program "has been altered to permit development of offensive capability in chemical and biological weapons!"
The same directives, Boyle charges in his book "Biowarfare and Terrorism"(Clarity Press), "unconstitutionally usurp and nullify the right and the power of the United States Congress to declare war" in blatant violation of the United States Constitution."
For fiscal years 2001-04, the Federal government funded $14.5-billion "for ostensibly civilian‚ biowarfare-related work alone," a "truly staggering" sum, Boyle wrote.
Another $5.6-billion was voted for "the deceptively-named Project BioShield" under which Homeland Security is stockpiling vaccines and drugs to fight anthrax, smallpox and other bioterror agents, Boyle wrote. Protection of the civilian population is, he said, "one of the fundamental requirements for effectively waging biowarfare."
The Washington Post reported Dec. 12 both houses of Congress this month passed legislation "considered by many to be an effort to salvage the two-year-old Project BioShield, which has been marked by delays and operational problems." When President Bush signs it into law, it will allocate $1-billion more over three years for additional research "to pump more money into the private sector sooner."
"The enormous amounts of money" purportedly dedicated to "civilian defense" that is now "dramatically and increasingly" being spent," Boyle writes, "betrays this administration's effort to be able to embark on offensive campaigns using biowarfare."
By pouring huge sums into university and private sector laboratories, Boyle charged Federal spending has co-opted and diverted the U.S. biotech industry to biowarfare.
According to Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, over 300 scientific institutions and 12,000 individuals have access to pathogens suitable for biowarfare and terrorism. Ebright found the number of National Institute of Health grants to research infectious diseases with biowarfare potential shot up from 33 in 1995-2000 to 497.
Academic biowarfare participation involving the abuse of DNA genetic engineering since the late 1980s has become "patently obvious," Boyle said. "American universities have a long history of willingly permitting their research agendas, researchers, institutes, and laboratories to be co-opted, corrupted, and perverted by the Pentagon and the CIA."
"These despicable death-scientists were arming the Pentagon with the component units necessary to produce a massive array of DNA genetically engineered biological weapons," Boyle said.
In a forward to Boyle's book, Jonathan King, a professor of molecular biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote "the growing bioterror programs represent a significant emerging danger to our own population" and "threatens international relations among nations."
While such programs "are always called defensive," King said, "with biological weapons, defensive and offensive programs overlap almost completely."
Boyle contends the U.S. is "in breach" of both the Biological Weapons and Chemical Weapons conventions and U.S. domestic criminal law. In Feb., 2003, for example, the U.S. granted itself a patent on an illegal long-range biological weapons grenade.
Boyle said other countries grasp the military implications of U.S. germ warfare actions and will respond in kind. "The world will soon witness a de facto biological arms race among the major biotech states under the guise of defense and despite the requirements of the Biological Warfare Convention(BWC)."
"The massive proliferation of biowarfare technology, facilities, as well as trained scientists and technicians all over the United States courtesy of the Neo-Con Bush Jr. administration will render a catastrophic biowarfare or bioterrorist incident or accident a statistical certainty," Boyle warned.
As far back as September, 2001, according to a The New York Times article titled, "U.S. Pushes Germ Warfare Limits," critics were concerned "the research comes close to violating a global 1972 treaty that bans such weapons." That treaty forbids developing weapons that spread disease, such as anthrax, regarded as "ideal" for germ warfare. The Pentagon did not respond to the charges made by Boyle in this article.
(Sherwood Ross is a Virginia, USA-based writer. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com">)
From: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/climate_oceans_dc
Oceans may rise over 4 1/2 feet by 2100
By Alister Doyle
OSLO (Reuters) - The world's oceans may rise up to 140 cms (4 ft 7 in) by 2100 due to global warming, a faster than expected increase that could threaten low-lying coasts from Florida to Bangladesh, a researcher said on Thursday.
"The possibility of a faster sea level rise needs to be considered when planning adaptation measures such as coastal defenses," Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research wrote in the journal Science.
His study, based on air temperatures and past sea level changes rather than computer models, suggested seas could rise by 50-140 cms by 2100, well above the 9-88 cms projected by the scientific panel that advises the United Nations.
A rise of one meter might swamp low-lying Pacific islands such as Tuvalu, flood large areas of Bangladesh or Florida and threaten cities from New York to Buenos Aires.
"The computer models underestimate the sea level rise that has already occurred," Rahmstorf told Reuters of a rise of about 20 cms since 1900. "There are aspects of the physics we don't understand very well."
Sea level changes hinge on poorly understood factors such as the pace of the melt of glaciers and of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Water also expands as it gets warmer but the rate of penetration of heat to the depths is uncertain.
"My main conclusion is not that my forecast is better but that the uncertainty is much larger because of the different results you get with reasonable methods," he said.
Almost all climate scientists reckon the world is warming because of emissions of greenhouse gases from human use of fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars. Rising temperatures could bring more droughts, floods and heatwaves.
Rahmstorf likened his approach to predicting the height of tides along a coast, largely based on past observations.
He said seas were 120 meters below present levels during the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago and 25-35 meters higher than the present in the Pliocene epoch 3 million years ago.
In the Ice Age temperatures were 4-7 Celsius (7.2-12.6 Fahrenheit) cooler than today and 2-3 C (3.6-5.4F) warmer in the Pliocene. That suggested sea levels change 10-30 meters per rise or fall per degree Celsius (1.8F), over thousands of years.
The U.N. climate panel has projected temperatures will rise by 1.4-5.8C (2.5-10.4F) by 2100, mainly because of human influences.
"Sea level is a very slow component of the climate system so what we see by the year 2100 is just a small percentage of the total we are causing," Rahmstorf said.
There was still time for the world to cut greenhouse gas emissions but he said the slow pace of U.N. talks on extending the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 "gives you the impression that governments are not very well aware of how urgent the whole problem has become."
Coastal cities in the North Atlantic -- from New York to London -- could be especially vulnerable because a possible slowdown of ocean currents could also raise sea levels in the North Atlantic and lower them in the southern hemisphere.
"Any time you change ocean currents you change the sea surface...if you slow down the North Atlantic current you get a rise in the North Atlantic," Rahmstorf said.
From: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2466603,00.html
Give us non-polluting energy - starting now
Anatole Kaletsky - November 23, 2006
The investment in fighting climate change is pathetically low.
November 2006 promises to be a momentous month in the history of human influence on the earth's climate. First there was the Stern report, which presented the first fully coherent economic analysis of climate change, challenging the wilful misrepresentation of reality on both sides of this debate. Then came the US election, which inflicted a crushing defeat on the one important global leader who persisted in denying the importance of climate change. Then, last Tuesday came an even more significant, though far less publicised, event: the signature in Paris of a ¤10 billion international agreement to build the world's first nuclear fusion reactor at Cadarache, in the South of France.
The construction of this international thermonuclear experimental reactor, which should take about ten years to complete, could pave the way to commercial availability of electricity from nuclear fusion by around 2045, according to the Iter management.
Since fusion, which is the energy principle of the sun and of the hydrogen bomb, requires no significant quantities of raw materials apart from water and produces no serious problems of pollution, success of the Iter programme would, in theory, provide the world with unlimited amounts of energy and resolve the problem of global warming once and for all.
Does this mean that we can all now relax and just wait for the boffins to deliver their miracle cures? Of course not. First, because the energy released by fusion is so enormous that many of the scientists involved put the probability of controlling and harnessing this process successfully no higher than 50 per cent. Secondly, because by the middle of the century, when the first commercial fusion reactors may be in action, the world will have suffered serious climate changes and this would become catastrophically irreversible if by then the gamble on fusion did not deliver results.
For at least another generation, therefore, we must economise on energy and look for other non-polluting sources. But can these objectives be achieved without reducing economic growth or accepting big changes to affluent lifestyles? The answer, to the dismay of anti-capitalist environmental puritans, is almost certainly "yes". What the Stern report showed, and the Iter programme could inspirationally remind us, is that the rational response to global warming is not to find ways of stifling economic growth or curbing travel. It is to accelerate technological advance.
The first point to understand is that global warming is caused mainly by electricity generation, not transport - and especially not air transport, which now seems the main obsession of environmental campaigners.
Aircraft contribute just 2 per cent of greenhouse gases and will account for a maximum of 6 per cent by the middle of the century, even on ambitious projections of airline growth. Cars are more important, but they only produce around 12 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide. And while there will certainly be rapid car growth in China, this could be easily offset by fuel economies. For example, if American cars delivered the same fuel economy as European ones, this would eliminate pollution more than equivalent to all the cars in China without anyone having to drive less at all.
In any case, the environmental impact of China's drivers will be far outweighed in the coming decades by the country's electricity programme, which will add power stations equivalent to Britain's entire electricity output every two years, mainly fuelled by highly polluting coal. India will soon be doing the same.
The top priority should therefore be to develop less-polluting methods of power generation, which the Chinese and Indians would find preferable to burning coal. In an ideal world, a base-load of continuous electricity - somewhere between 40 to 60 per cent of total supplies - would come from large centralised zero-carbon power stations, either nuclear or more expensive "clean coal" technologies that extract carbon dioxide and then "sequestrate" it deep underground. The rest would be supplied by non-polluting sources such as wind and solar power, supplemented by small amounts of carbon-emitting gas generators, preferably in small local turbines, widely distributed across cities, villages and even individual buildings.
But how could these changes be achieved? To answer this we must ask another question: why is it that the Iter fusion programme has only just started, given that it was mooted more than 20 years ago, at the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in 1985? The answer is surprisingly simple: lack of interest and money. The fact is that, despite all the public ballyhoo about global warming, both governments and private businesses, have been drastically reducing their investment in energy research over the past 20 years.
The US Federal Government, for example, has halved its energy research and development spending and now spends $5 billion a year on energy research and development. The rest of the world's governments between them spend about the same amount. This is one-fourteenth of the US Government's military research spending and one sixth of its spending on medical R&D.
The disparity is even greater in the private sector. Power generation companies on average spend just 0.5 per cent of turnover on R&D, compared with 3 per cent in the motor industry, 8 per cent in electronics and 15 per cent in pharmaceuticals. The British Government has proudly announced the creation of a new Energy Technology Institute, funded with £50 million a year of public money, but this is a tiny figure, given the importance of global warming and the vastly greater amounts spent by both public and private sectors in other fields of research.
What these disparities suggest is a monumental case of market failure: markets are simply not sending the right price signals to motivate economic activity, investment and innovation in energy technology on the scale now required. The reasons for this market failure were presented in the Stern report: very long lead times in power generation projects; the collapse of oil prices in the mid-1980s; and the fickleness of political fashions on nuclear power.
But whatever the causes of these market failures the implication is clear. Research, development and deployment of new non-polluting energy sources require and deserve far greater levels of public support. If environmentalists really cared about global warming, they would stop demonstrating against nuclear power stations, motorways and airport expansion and start demanding serious government commitments to energy research.
Concern over Europe 'snow crisis' (Dec 17, 2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6185345.stm
Unseasonably warm conditions across Europe are being greeted with a mixture of disbelief and despair by those who normally rely on cold winters. - Ski resorts across the European Alps are becoming increasingly worried as current bad snow conditions threaten the all important Christmas holiday period.This autumn has been one of the worst on record with high temperatures and little snowfall.Many resorts have had to postpone their openings and the main ski races have been cancelled because of a lack of snow. (...) Temperatures in Moscow sank to minus 29C this time last yearNobody knows what to make of it. This is the middle of December in a country known for the severity of its winters.There's not a snowflake to be seen. Red Square should be covered in white by now. It's not. Its cobblestones are as stubbornly damp and grey as the skies overhead.There would normally be ice on the Moskva River. There's none."It's just fantasy!" is the way the weather forecast began on one of Moscow's radio stations earlier this week. The announcer's voice betrayed a mixture of disbelief and despair.That's because Russians are proud of their cold winters. CLIP
Antarctic Ice Core Reveals Climate Link with Greenland (November 13, 2006)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448089,00.htm
The ice in the Antarctic is giving German scientists a unique glimpse of the earth's climate history. They have discovered evidence of a global temperature seesaw, connecting the two hemispheres. (...) His main concern was with the evidence of unusual climate change Greenland ice cores had revealed a few years ago. Temperatures during the last Ice Age, the cores revealed, had swung repeatedly up and down -- "by more than 10 degrees within a few decades," Fischer explains.Scientists have long wondered if these enormous swings in temperature were only a regional phenomenon. This latest research now shows that they weren't. The 2,774 meter-long ice core the EPICA team finished extracting out of the Antarctic ice in February reveals a mirror image of the temperature changes in the Northern Hemisphere. "When it was warm in the north, the ocean surrounding Antarctica cooled down," says Fischer. "And vice versa: the Southern Hemisphere warmed up when it got colder in the north."(...) And the ice core contained another surprise for the researchers. The massive ice masses of the Antarctic are a lot less stable than had been thought up to now. When the team's drillmaster Frank Wilhelms bored deeper into the rock, water surged into the hole. "There is a bubbling brook underneath the ice crust," he reports.The massive pressure of 250 bar is apparently causing the ice to melt -- even at the temperature of minus 2 degrees Celsius (28.4 degrees Fahrenheit). "We would have to assume that a considerable part of the Antarctic interior ice lies on top of this watery layer," the AWI scientist concludes. CLIP
Warming Oceans Less Hospitable for Plant Life (December 7, 2006) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6591611
The ocean has been getting bluer, according to a study published in the journal Nature. But that's not really good news for the planet. It means that the plants that give the ocean its green tint aren't doing well. Scientists say that's because the ocean has been getting warmer.
Fog Raises Air Pollution Levels in Chinese Cities (December 13, 2006) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6618314
Thick fog has rolled into the north and northeast of China in the last couple of days, raising air pollution levels to near "hazardous" conditions in Shanghai, Beijing and other population centers.
Australian bushfires leave grisly trail of environmental damage (Dec 17, 2006)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061217/wl_afp/australiafiresanimalsenvironment_061217103018
SYDNEY (AFP) - Tens of thousands of iconic Australian creatures including koalas and kangaroos may have died in fires that swept through vast tracts of southern Australia this week, environmentalists say. The blazes have devastated thousands of hectares, razed clusters of homes and claimed one life since they began earlier this month. But they will also leave a significant environmental legacy because of their impact on flora and fauna, according to Wildlife Victoria spokeswoman Sandy Fernee. "I think we've already lost tens of thousands of animals when you consider how widespread the fires are," she told AFP. The wildfires, caused by lightning strikes in some areas and arson in others, have raged in the southern states of Victoria and Tasmania as well as New South Wales and Western Australia for two weeks. Victoria is the worst affected, with the scorched area stretching over more than 5,000 square kilometres (2,000 square miles), equivalent to twice the size of Luxembourg. Fernee said volunteers visiting Victorian firegrounds this weekend were expecting to see "Pompeii-like" scenes of burned and charred animal remains. "It's very grim. A lot of what we come across are animals we can't even recognise. It's just a pile of ashes," she said."It's rare that we find something we can help. Mostly we come across dead animals that are badly burned that we have to euthanise." While koala, kangaroo and wallaby populations are expected to have been hit, smaller animals such as possums, bats, birds, lizards and snakes are thought to have perished in greater numbers because they are generally too slow to outrun a fire, she said. CLIP
Australian Fires Kill Thousands of Native Animals
Hundreds of thousands of native Australian animals such as koalas and kangaroos have been killed in bushfires that have burnt across southeast Australia in the past two weeks. The bushfires, which are still burning in three eastern states, have been so big and intense that wildlife officials fear some species may become extinct as the fires destroy large swathes of animal habitats.
FACTBOX - Key Facts about Australia's Bushfires
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39496/story.htm
From: Palden Jenkins palden.jenkins@btopenworld.com">
Subject: The Hope Flowers School Bethlehem NEEDS YOUR HELP!
I'm writing about something I'm personally involved with and care about.
http://www.hope-flowers.org - the Hope Flowers School in Bethlehem - peace and democracy education in action
Work has recently started on the building of the Israeli security wall, cutting right across the edge of the Hope Flowers School in Bethlehem, on the West Bank. Their newly-built school cafeteria, plus a Palestinian farm in a lovely little valley opposite the school, are to be demolished.
The wall cannot be stopped, but the school is appealing for a gate to be built into the wall near the school. The school has for over twenty years been a pioneer in peace and democracy education, bringing Palestinians and Israelis together. Without a gate, the wall will stop this.
Details on the school's website, where you can download a letter to send to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and Condi Rice at the US State Dept - as a Christmas present for children in Bethlehem, and perhaps for Ehud and Condi too! If you prefer not to do this, the site also happily receives donations and gives info about the school's guest accommodation - useful for the trip of a lifetime you could make during 2007!
The Hand of God moves in mysterious ways, and we want to see if we can nudge it, to turn a local disaster into a gift of hope. You know how a pearl is made when a piece of grit gets into an oyster's shell? Forwarding this e-mail and sending those letter might just do it!
Season's greetings, with love from me. Thank you for your attention.
Here's a present for you: http://www.palden.co.uk/photos/bethlehem.html
Palden
Glastonbury, England
From: "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@gmail.com
Subject: What if you knew
If you knew that the earth was dying
If they said this on the news
If they would clarify the picture
Instead of seeking to confuse
If you could see the ice caps melting
If you could watch the oceans rise
If you could see the consequences
Right before your eyes
If you knew the kids were dying
If you could look inside
The river where their food comes from
Filled with cyanide
If you could hear the parents pleading
If they were looking right at you
If you could see the anguish in their hearts
What if you knew
If you knew the bombs were falling
If they showed them hit the ground
If you could see the bodies flying
If you could hear the sound
If you could see the rubble
Where the hospital once stood
If you saw the child's lifeless limbs
Would you hold them if you could
If you knew that they were lying
Every time they spoke
For every laser-guided pinprick
There were lives lost in the smoke
If instead of just the generals
They had doctors, too
To describe the carnage of the cluster bombs
If you knew what they were saying
When they think you cannot hear
If you understood what they do
If for you it was so clear
If you knew they shut down the factory
In an economic ruse
If you could kiss the cheek of the child
In the sweatshop that made your shoes
If every time we went to war
To fight our evil foes
They told you we were really fighting
For the good of CEOs
If you could feel the hunger of the many
And see the riches of the few
If they told it like it is
If you knew that you were living
In a huge conspiracy
Would you leave your suburbs
Get out of your SUV
Would you hit the streets
And fight for all our lives
Would you hold your ground
When the stormtrooper arrives
If you knew that the whole planet
Depended on what you do now
Would you take command
With the speed our times allow
If the pundits told the truth
For just a week or two
And real life was shown on TV
— David Rovics
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Home > News > Korea > Water main break floods UCLA campus, 10 million gallons of water lost
Water main break floods UCLA campus, 10 million gallons of water lost
People walk down a stairway leading to a parking structure across from Pauley Pavilion on the UCLA campus after flooding from a broken 30-inch water main under nearby Sunset Boulevard inundated a large area of the campus in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, Tuesday, July 29, 2014. The 30-inch (75-centimeter) 93-year-old pipe that broke made a raging river of the street and sent millions of gallons (liters) of water across the school’s athletic facilities, including the famed floor of Pauley Pavilion, the neighboring Wooden Center and the Los Angeles Tennis Center, and a pair of parking structures that took the brunt of the damage. (AP Photo/Mike Meadows)
LOS ANGELES (CNS) – A 93-year-old, 30-inch-diameter water main ruptured north of UCLA today, blasting a geyser of water through Sunset Boulevard and sending an estimated 8 million to 10 million gallons cascading down the street and inundating a number of vehicles as it made its way onto the university grounds.
Sunset Boulevard was closed between Veteran and Hilgard avenues while fire crews ensured no motorists were stuck in the deluge. No injuries were reported, but a Los Angeles Fire Department swift-water team helped about five people out of two underground garages, including some people who tried to retrieve their cars from flooding parking structures.
About 3:30 p.m., water inundated the street and blasted a 15-foot sinkhole in the roadway, with the water flowing into at least two UCLA parking garages, with flooding reported over the wheel wells of vehicles. University officials said parking structures 4 and 7 were closed and an alert was sent to students urging them to avoid the area.
A UCLA spokesman said there may be 100s of cars still in parking structures 4 and 7.
Chancellor Gene D. Block said tonight that people with cars in the structures should not to go to the parking structures or surrounding areas as emergency personnel “are on site and will not grand access.”
Instead, they should complete a form posted online at sustain.ucla.edu/flood, Block said.
The structures may be closed for a few days for evaluation, Block said.
DWP announced the water was shut off by about 8 p.m.
Los Angeles firefighters help drivers whose cars became stranded on Sunset Boulevard after a 30-inch water main broke and sent water flooding down Sunset and onto the UCLA campus, background, in the Westwood section of Los Angeles on Tuesday, July 29, 2014.(AP Photo/Steve Gentry)
A portion of Sunset Boulevard near UCLA will remain closed Wednesday so repairs can continue, Block said. Mayor Eric Garcetti advised drivers to consider Santa Monica or Olympic boulevards as alternatives.
Mud and water also covered the university’s Drake Stadium — a track-and-field facility — along with the adjacent intramural athletic field and the concourse surrounding Pauley Pavilion.
Despite fire crews and university workers piling sandbags in front of entrances to Pauley Pavilion in an effort to prevent further damage, its floor and locker rooms “sustained significant flooding,” Athletic Director Dan Guerrero said.
“The water will be removed from the floor tonight,” Guerrero said. “We will then reassess the situation tomorrow morning and be able to provide additional information at the appropriate time.”
According to the university, flooding also affected the J.D. Morgan Center, which houses athletic staff and administration offices; the George Kneller Academic Center; the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame; and the John Wooden Center.
The riveted-steel water main, which carries water to the area from the Upper Stone Canyon Reservoir, ruptured on Sunset near Marymount Place just north of the campus shortly before 3:30 p.m.
Department of Water and Power crews had reached the area through stifling traffic by 5 p.m. to turn off three valves before the flow could be stanched.
Reports from the scene indicated that at one point, as much as 36,000 gallons of water per minute was gushing from the pipe. DWP officials said the pipe normally carries water at a rate of 75,000 gallons per minute.
According to the mayor’s office, the water line dates back to 1921.
Dozens of people, likely UCLA students, gathered on the northern portion of campus to get a look at the growing flood, which flooded some walkways and turned stairwells into waterfalls. Some students could be seen with skimboards trying to take advantage of the flowing water.
Officials at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center said hospital operations were not affected by the break.
Some residents near the break reported having no water service, but no one lost service in today’s flood.
The UCLA campus will remain open and classes will be held on Wednesday, Block said.
However, UCLA summer camps and the Fernald and Krieger childcare centers will be closed, with further information regarding child care and camps will be provided Wednesday, Block said.
Garcetti, who is in Michigan on vacation, said he was “closely monitoring the situation” and in contact with DWP, police and fire officials, along with UCLA, “to make sure we are leading a closely coordinated response.”
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Detroit Tigers vs. San Francisco Giants: Team Grades from World Series Game 3
by Dan Tylicki under MLB
Three games into the 2012 World Series, it looks like barring a complete miracle, the Series is already over. The San Francisco Giants are one game away from winning it all after beating the Detroit Tigers, 2-0.
The game ended up being a pitcher’s duel, with Ryan Vogelsong and Anibal Sanchez controlling things. The Giants were able to get just enough successive hits to allow them to win.
The grades for each team’s hitting, pitching and fielding make the two teams seem somewhat evenly matched this game, even though that was not the case. All that mattered in the end was the win, which the Giants have.
2012 World Series, Baseball, Game Recap, NL West, San Francisco Giants, World Series Leave a Comment more...
Grading All Key MLB Trade Deadline Deals 1 Month In
Baseball is a game of risks late in the season. When a team makes a big-time deadline deal, it could either go extremely well or terribly. Those that merely play average baseball tend not to be the major deadline deals anyway.
A week after the deadline I took a look at the traded players and came away unimpressed. That is, of course, a small sample size. How do they fare when that sample size is widened to a month?
Some have done well after getting used to their surroundings, but others have mightily struggled.
2012 MLB Trade Deadline, Rankings/List Leave a Comment more...
MLB: Up-and-Coming Managers Who Could Lead Their Clubs to the Playoffs
It seems like every year at least one manager brings his team to the playoffs out of nowhere. Buck Showalter in particular looks to do that this year, though in his case he’s been around and knows how to get it done.
For new managers, it’s far more surprising if they are able to work with a team so well so quickly. Who saw Kirk Gibson and the Arizona Diamondbacks making a run last year?
It will happen again this year, and it can happen over the next couple years as well. Here are a few relatively new, up-and-coming managers who can get it done.
Rankings/List Leave a Comment more...
MLB Trade Deadline 2012: Recap and Grades for Every Deal
After months of MLB trade rumors and speculation, the trade deadline is now over. Players who were expected to move stayed on their own teams, and players who completely slipped by all the trade rumors were shipped out.
As a result, as is the case every year, the landscape of baseball looks different. Which teams made great moves to push themselves to the playoffs and which teams stocked up on solid prospects?
For that matter, which teams completely whiffed at the deadline? Each deal will be graded on both sides to figure this out. Trades from July 30 and 31 will be evaluated.
2012 MLB Trade Deadline, Baseball, Rankings/List Leave a Comment more...
Ubaldo Jimenez Traded to Indians: 5 Reasons They Gave Up Way Too Much
The Cleveland Indians have surprisingly made the biggest splash of this year’s MLB trade deadline. It was tough to say whether they were going to pull off a trade or stick with what they have, but clearly they have shown that they would rather win now by trading for Ubaldo Jimenez.
The Indians acquire Jimenez in exchange for pitchers Alex White, Drew Pomeranz, Joseph Gardner and first baseman Matt McBride. As an Indians fan, I’m not used to being on this side of the trade market, but it was exciting to see the trade go down.
Having said that though, this was not the trade the Indians should have made if they’re that focused on winning. It’s a mistake that could cause trouble, and here’s why.
AL Central, Breaking News, Cleveland Indians, Ubaldo Jimenez Leave a Comment more...
Roy Oswalt Video: Phillies Pitcher Gets Hit in Head by Manny Ramirez Line Drive
When you go through Spring Training, you don’t expect to have to see players go down due to injury. Nonetheless, it does happen, and when it’s a line drive right back to the pitcher, it’s always a very concerning moment, since you worry if the pitcher’s going to be alright.
Such a situation happened today in an exhibition game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays. Roy Oswalt was facing Manny Ramirez in the bottom of the fourth inning. Ramirez hit the ball right back to Oswalt, and he went down.
While the video looked like he was hit in the upper back, the slowed down replay showed he was instead hit behind the ear, on the neck. He was able to get up on his own power, and didn’t look to have any serious aftereffects from the shot.
He was taken to a hospital, and X-rays done were negative. Oswalt also noted that he did not suffer from any dizziness or concussion symptoms, though he did end up with a neck bruise.
The big story here is, of course, that a crisis was averted. Shots like that can go badly so easily, and he could have ended up with a concussion or even a broken neck had it hit slightly over.
There are probably some people out there that want to blame Manny Ramirez for the shot, but that would just be foolish. One can’t magically dictate exactly where a ball is going to go when they hit it, so I would hope no one really believe that was meant to happen.
It’s too early to tell if Oswalt will miss any time as a result of this, though I would imagine his preseason is over just to be on the safe side. After all, we know he’s going to be one of the stars in the rotation, so he might as well look forward to that.
Breaking News, NL East, Philadelphia Phillies, Roy Oswalt Leave a Comment more...
Fantasy Baseball: Is Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera Worth the Risk?
Should Miguel Cabrera Be a Fantasy Baseball First-Round Pick Despite Off-the-field Issues?
The Detroit Tigers had a big issue to deal with in the offseason after Miguel Cabrera’s arrest. Now that seems done, as Cabrera has quietly been productive during this year’s Spring Training. Does this mean that he should be taken in the first round without question?
Unless, you’re drafting first and taking Pujols, absolutely. Yes, Cabrera had his personal demons in the offseason, but at least he manages to keep those issues in the offsesaon. Besides, if you look at his stats then there’s no reason not to pick him up.
Every year, he either gets near .300 or passes it without a problem, he’s never went under 24 HR or 100 RBI in a full season, or 30 doubles for that matter. His plate discipline is getting batter as well, as evident by 86 walks and 95 strikeouts last year, the closest those two numbers have been.
Because of all the issues, there’s a possibility that he could slide down the rankings, possibly even out of the top five or first round if you’re in a small league. Yes, if he is mandated to miss games it could be a problem, but if we’re going by talent then he should be taken second overall.
He’s being touted as a high-risk, high-reward guy, but I still find the first part hard to believe. When the fantasy draft starts, if he’s available, pick him up. It’s no more complicated than that.
Breaking News Leave a Comment more...
Fantasy Baseball: Is Boston’s Carl Crawford a Top Five Pick?
Fantasy Baseball Projections Have Carl Crawford in Top Five, But is This Right?
The Boston Red Sox made a huge move in Carl Crawford, and fantasy owners know entirely why they wanted to pick up a player like this. He is easily ranked as one of the top outfielders due to a nice enough home run and RBI count, as well as great marks in stolen bases and batting average.
Is he, however, a no-brainer in the top five? since many leagues use the roto format, having a guy that can rack up the triples and stolen bases is in fact very valuable, especially since the players who knock a good number of home runs will still be available in later rounds.
On top of that, Crawford had a career year for Tampa Bay last year, finishing the year with a career high .OPS. While I would expect that to sink a bit, since he won’t hit as many home runs in Fenway, but his triples should remain high.
ESPN’s Fantasy Projections have him ranked third: “You know what you’re getting with him, and you know it will be business as usual. His legs are as good as ever, and he’s as safe a bet as speedsters come.”
The key with Crawford is that even if his other stats take a dip, Boston’s lineup is so powerful that he’ll still have a great RBI total to do along with whatever he’s putting up, so having him as your selection is you’re picking around fifth really is not a bad move.
Barry Bonds, Adrian Gonzalez, Fantasy Baseball and Wednesday’s Top MLB News
There are now only eight days and change until MLB‘s Opening Day, and at this time, the Opening Day starters are being decided on, lineups are being finalized and 2010 award winners from last year are starting to get hot.
Of course, the big story related to MLB is the Barry Bonds trial, and we will see what has happened now that his trainer has refused to testify. Also, Adrian Gonzalez’s agent is scheduled to meet with Red Sox management in hopes of ironing out a contract extension. Will they get close to one?
What else is happening in the world of baseball as Opening Day nears? Will Giants closer Brian Wilson be ready to go? Is Jake Peavy’s recovery on the right track? Why is Derek Jeter being considered for the leadoff spot?
All of today’s MLB news can be found right here as it comes in.
Albert Pujols, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Nyjer Morgan and Monday’s MLB Trade Rumors
With only a couple weeks until opening day, teams are concentrating on finalizing their lineups and rotations. While that usually means that teams are deciding between a few players for a couple positions, it can also mean that players will be traded even though the season is to start soon.
The usual suspects seem to be making the rounds in current MLB trade rumors. Albert Pujols’ name has been popping up since the Adam Wainwright injury, and will probably continue to do so until the trade deadline; is there any chance at all he goes anywhere?
Beyond that, others such as Nyjer Morgan have likely been shopped around, yet remain with their own teams. Will they still be there on opening day, or could they be traded right before the season is set to start?
All the latest MLB Trade Rumors will be touched on today as they come in through the wire.
Baseball, Breaking News, MLB Trade Rumors Leave a Comment more...
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Paintings of Light: A NYC Artist’s Ethereal Vision of the Concrete Jungle
NY Artscapesby Vincenza Di Maggio
Gift of Grace by Marlene Luce Tremblay
Pintography is a process that consists of black and white photograps mixed with colorful paints. Using this technique New York artist Marlene-Luce Tremblay creates images that feature the contamination between nature and the urban landscape and the intersections between world cultures. In the background there is New York, a city that nourishes her art and love / Leggi in italiano
Dressed in all black, her long skirt fluttering at her ankles, Marlene-Luce Tremblay had a mystical air about her as she graciously moved around her small studio apartment, a cozy haven snugly tucked away in Tudor City. Much like her artwork, the dark hues of her ensemble contrasted the vibrant bursts of color that peppered her surroundings. Table lamps filled the charming space with a warm, intimate glow. Hanging on the cream colored walls, and leaning against the wooden dresser were her canvases, painted in vivacious hues of red, gold, blue. One depicted a Western cityscape. Another, Spain’s Alhambra palace, and the mysterious guise of a Nepali woman.
We sipped on white wine as the soothing jazz sounds of Diana Krall’s album The Look of Love played softly in the background. Marlene sat comfortably on her plush bed; I sat on the couch across from her. She told me her story.
From exploring the Middle East and replanting her roots in New York, to enduring a painful divorce and surviving cancer, Marlene is a woman who has used her art to overcome hardships. As an artist who has exhibited her work in Montreal, Paris, London, New York, Tunis and Algiers, Marlene’s work not only crosses international boundaries, but through her art she also offers viewers and intensely transcendental vision of the world, one that borders on surreal. “When I go into my art, it’s like therapy. It gives me life,” she said.
Her story as a New York artist begins in 2009 when, as a result of her marriage ending, she moved from Montreal, Canada to New York City to work at the United Nations. By day, she works in the Office of the Spokesperson and prepares news reports for the Secretary-General, a good fit given her educational background in Political Science. By night, the painter and fine art photographer feeds her true passion: pintography.
It’s a process that is unique to her artistic oeuvre. It consists of photographing people, objects, and landscapes. Using her computer, the black and white photographs are tinted with pigments she visualizes and creates, and then enlarged and reproduced on canvas. The scans are striking, but the desired effect isn’t achieved until the canvas is painted over in acrylic or oil paint, a technique that accentuates the shades of the particular color she’s selected to realize her unique vision. “With the paint I bring out the color, it makes the composition come alive,” she explained.
Today, her lab is her computer and her studio the snug corner of her apartment where she likes to paint, but that hasn’t always been the case. While living in Montreal, Marlene worked as a full-time artist and only shot film photography. Relocating to New York City called for an adjustment in her artistic practices. Without the luxury of having her own lab to develop her prints, the artist was forced to put down her treasured 35mm film camera and reluctantly purchased a digital one. “I didn’t want to do digital photography, for me it was only film. But I had no choice,” she said. With her new camera in tow, she enrolled in a couple of classes on digital photography at the International Center of Photography.
Safari Green & Cobalt Blue Fern by Marlene Luce Tremblay
On the weekends, when she wasn’t working her 9:00 – 5:00 job preparing media reports for the Secretary-General, she would take walks around the city, and with her digital camera in hand she started to photograph her surroundings. “I found inspiration in the cityscape, the architecture mixed with the landscape. The trees, with little birds, blooming in the middle of a concrete city.”
Her fascination for New York’s green spaces is brilliantly captured in works such as Safari Green and Cobalt Blue Fern, Pink Flamingo on 42nd Street, and Sunny Gold on the Hudson. Though she dislikes color photography, the artist does not shy away from pigments. On the contrary, from cobalt blue, neon green and hot pink, to warm gold and crimson red, her dreamlike pintographs are ablaze with hypnotic explosions of color, juxtaposed by the dark shadows of the represented subject. “It’s all about the light and the shadows. I see a tree and I can already see how I am going to paint it. It’s something that rises from within me and overflows to the outside world,” she explained.
It’s fitting that she should be so drawn to the trees and flowers that blossom across the city despite their less than ideal urban habitat. Notwithstanding the toxic fumes emanating from taxi cabs, and the pollution that taints the air, flora thrive in the few, but treasured green spaces of this metropolis. Upon moving to Manhattan on her own, and being unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer in 2009, Marlene had to overcome her own warped circumstances in order to survive.
“When you go through something like that, it shocks you. The doctor tells you you have cancer and right away you think, ‘Ok, I’m going to die.’” There are a lot existential questions that came to mind as to what really matters in life.”
During this difficult time Marlene discovered comfort in the friendship of those who surrounded her, both in New York City and overseas.
Pink Flamingo on 42nd Street by Marlene Luce Tremblay
“I want to tell you about my friend Faye,” she said to me. Perhaps it’s true that a name reveals a person’s intrinsic nature. The name Faye derives from the Middle English faie meaning fairy and when you hear the story, you’ll understand why it suits her. “She lives in England. I told her the news and she asked if I had someone with me. I said no, I didn’t want anyone with me. I live in a very small place, and I was uncomfortable. A few days later Faye calls me and says, ‘I’m coming over.’ She flew from England to stay with me.” A sweet smile spread across Marlene’s face as she reminisced the gesture.
Faye’s visit to New York initiated a tradition among Marlene’s group of friends that they continue to honor today. Before she returned to England they planned a dinner and named it: ‘To Life and Friendship.’ Now, every two months Marlene and her friends relive that ritual. Everyone brings a different dish and together they celebrate those gifts.
“My experience has given me a greater appreciation for things. I feel closer to people. I see the beauty in nature,” she reflected. Her struggle with, and defeat of cancer manifests itself in the transcendental nature of her artwork, but while Manhattan’s multifaceted cityscape serves as Marlene’s muse, this city also nourishes another one of her fascinations: people and cultures. Rich, poor, American, European, Catholic, Muslim, Marlene finds inspiration in the people she meets everyday. “In New York people come from all walks of life. I can apply that diversity to my photography because it’s individual. I can paint the tree red, or blue, however I feel, and I love that.”
Then there is the Arabic aspect to her work that is impossible to ignore. One of the most resounding themes present in her oeuvre is an emphasis on multicultural exchange, specifically between the Western and the Arabic world.
Golden Patch on 42nd Street by Marlene Luce Tremblay
Marlene has extensively traveled the Middle East. She’s been to Syria and Jordan, and in 2004 she was invited to Egypt by the government to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between Canada and Egypt. The trip marked a defining turning point in Marlene’s artistic career. “When you travel somewhere and see something for the first time, that’s when something totally unusual comes out. When I took my trip to Egypt my creativity went wild,” she said. Up until that moment the artist had only exhibited her work in black and white, but the light and the shadows reflecting off of the sandy, ancient Egyptian ruins inspired her to visualize things in color.
Marlene presented her pintographs at Harrod’s in London in 2005 in an exhibition titled Iconic Egypt and Beyond. That’s where she met the woman from Nepal, the one with exotic facial features and the enigmatic look in her eyes.
Words of Grace by Marlene Luce Tremblay
“I don’t even know her name, but I thought she looked like the Mona Lisa,” said Marlene. Her portrait appears in two of the artist’s most recent creations, Gift of Grace and Words of Grace. The pieces, worth $1,400 each, were specially created to be donated to a charity-event supporting victims of the Nepal earthquake. Unfortunately, the event was canceled.
Both paintings, one tinted in gold, the other in blue, feature this half Indian, half English woman’s portrait, superimposed over Arab calligraphy and images of the architecture of Spain’s Alhambra. The palace, which sits on a hill overlooking Granada, was constructed in the thirteenth century and exists as a symbol of the multicultural society of Moorish Spain. With its courtyards, domes, columnar arcades, gardens, muqarnas, and Arabic inscriptions, the architectural masterwork was thought to be a physical realization of the descriptions of Paradise in medieval Islamic poetry. “I merged those two images for it represents a dialogue among diverse cultures from the intimate to the multicultural aspect of humanity,” she explained.
From the series Iconic Egypt by Marlene Luce Tremblay
“What’s happening now in the Middle East is giving everything that is Arab a negative connotation,” she said. As a result of her travels and the many friends she’s made along the way, Marlene realized that Arabic civilization is so different from that of the West, yet as people we share so many commonalities. “We’re all human. Pain is the same. We can all feel it, in different ways. Joy, love, pain, those things have no nationality.”
Marlene plans to continue nurturing this interchange between cultures. Next year she will be traveling to Morocco where she is organizing an exhibition with her female Tunisian friends. “We call ourselves ‘The Dream Team.’ We come from different cultures, but there is a nice symbiosis when we exhibit together. There is a dialogue between our art.”
She is also preparing for an upcoming show at the Ashok Jain Gallery in downtown Manhattan in January. “I’ve had a few shows in New York. It’s not easy because there are so many critics, and also a lot of people competing. You know the saying, ‘If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere?’ It really is true.”
Despite her international artistic success, Marlene is still an emerging artist because she’s not relying entirely on her work to support herself. She hopes to retire in two to three years so that she can fully devote her time to her passion, art. New York City has proven to be a source of boundless inspiration for her work. “Paintings of light,” she calls them. As a result Marlene has encouraged viewers to look at their seemingly grey, sometimes-monotonous surroundings through the vibrantly surreal perspective of her own distinctive lens.
And as for the answer to that existential question she asked herself years ago, about what really matters in life? She’s realized, “It’s love, love of people, love of nature. Love is at the base of everything. When you go what you take with you is love. The love you gave, the love you received. That has been my journey, and it still is.”
Vincenza Di Maggio
NY Artscapes
It started with a painting. It was Titian’s Venus and Adonis. “Write what you see,” my college art history professor said to me. With those four words she ignited a fire within me that would drive... [More]
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Out-of-network coverage in New York? We left it up to the insurers
Original Reporting | By Craig Gurian |
Health careInsurance
Oct. 30, 2013 — New York’s health insurance exchange (called “NY State of Health”) offers individuals and families numerous insurance plan options at various “metal” levels. What it doesn’t offer in most parts of the state are plans that provide coverage for non-emergency out-of-network care. In a sample Manhattan zip code, for example, there are 62 plans available at all metal levels. Not one of those plans pays for out-of-network care (see graphic).
This outcome is not a “glitch,” a State Department of Health official has confirmed to Remapping Debate. Instead, it is a function of New York’s decision to permit insurers to elect whether or not to sponsor plans that include out-of-network coverage. That decision, some worry, will have a negative impact on patient choice and patient care.
“We left it up to the insurers”
Out-of-network coverage had, until recently, commonly been available via employer-based plans (albeit with ever-increasing deductibles and co-payments). And a state establishing an exchange pursuant to the Affordable Care Act certainly has the authority to require coverage of out-of-network physician services. Indeed, in the small business part of the exchange (“SHOP” plans), New York requires a participating provider to include a plan with out-of-network coverage if it offers such coverage in the commercial insurance market (see bottom box for the limitations of that policy). But, on the individual and family side, the state decided not to use its authority.
Out-of-network tally
A print-out from the NY State of Health website of the 62 individual and family plans available in an Upper West Side Manhattan zip code. The list indicates whether a plan covers out-of-network care.
Randi Imbriaco, director of plan management for the Department of Health (DOH), said she didn’t think anything was lost by not having an exchange option for individual and family plans that provides out-of-network coverage. Pointing to a process of state review of each plan for access to and adequacy of both specialists and primary care providers, Imbriaco said that insurers are required “to allow their members to go to the out-of-network provider” if “there’s a specialty lacking or they don’t have enough providers.”
Mo Auster, the vice president of legislative and regulatory affairs for the Medical Society of the State of New York, a physician advocacy organization, said that the lack of a requirement to cover of out-of-network care would reduce patient choice and increase insurance company leverage.
Mark Scherzer, a health insurance attorney for patients and legislative counsel to the advocacy organization New Yorkers for Accessible Health Coverage, characterized the absence of the requirement as a lack of a “fundamental consumer protection,” and asserted that the theoretical right to go out of network when there is not an “appropriate” in-network provider is enormously difficult to achieve in practice. The burden of proof, he said, is on the patient, and it is not enough for the patient to show simply that her out-of-network choice would be better.
If “you have a choice between a doctor who’s in the network who has done the procedure you need done three or four times and who is board-certified in the specialty that typically treats your disease, your plan is going to say that person is ‘appropriate,’ even though there may be someone down the street, who is out-of-network, who does 20 of these procedures a week and is a recognized expert [and with whom] it’s going to be far safer for you, far better outcomes for you. But the burden on you to get to that person is to prove that the person in the network is inadequate for your needs…And that’s a really hard case to make.”
Why then did New York State not require out-of-network coverage? “We left it up to the insurers,” said DOH’s Imbriaco, and the insurers, she continued, arguing that “a closed network helps keeps costs low,” chose not to provide out-of-network coverage in most of New York State, including New York City (some plans in the western part of New York State do offer such coverage).
Wouldn’t it be a useful option for New Yorkers to be able to select a plan with out-of-network coverage, even if that plan were more expensive than one without such coverage? Imbriaco had the same answer: “Well, that was a choice made by the insurers, and they decided not to.”
Increased leverage for insurance companies
The Medical Society’s Mo Auster said that the idea that insurance companies and individual doctors engage in a genuine negotiation — whether concerning fees or medical decisions — is a fiction. Since the insurer’s terms are “pretty much ‘take it or leave it,’” he said, a doctor’s only influence over the process was his or her ability to run a practice without signing up with a network. “The extent to which that ability is minimized,” Auster said, “further enhances the negotiating leverage of the health insurance company to basically take the clinical control away form the doctor.”
Dr. Andrew D. Coates is an internist based in upstate New York who is president of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), an organization that advocates for a single-payer health insurance system. Coates, who was speaking during the interview for himself and not as a representative of PNHP, agreed with the idea that the lack of out-of-network options would enhance the ability of insurance companies to engage in cost cutting, regardless of whether patients were harmed, as, for example, in a push for doctors to see more and more patients each day.
He thought that doctors were increasingly being put in an “ethical bind” where their medical instincts might tell them in a particular instance to recommend an out-of-network physician — the “one oncologist that you can think of that should really evaluate what to do next” in the case of a rare cancer — even as they knew that following that recommendation would be financially ruinous for the patient.
Small business plans and out-of-network coverage
Using the same Manhattan zip code as we did for individual plans, we found that only one of three providers — UnitedHealthcare’s Oxford — offered out-of-network coverage in the SHOP market. And, it turns out, these plans (available at the “silver” and “platinum” levels, not the “bronze” or “gold”) also have limits. They do not offer Oxford’s broadest (Freedom) network of doctors, and they require a written referral before a plan member is permitted to see a specialist.
We asked Maria Gordon-Shydlo, a spokesperson for UnitedHealthcare, why an “ungated,” Freedom plan wasn’t being offered. Her emailed response said that UnitedHelalthcare was “offering state standard options” but did not answer why an ungated Freedom plan was not being offered.
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Jesse Boykins III-"Amorous" (New Video)
Jesse Boykins III - Amorous (Official Music Video) from Jesse Boykins III on Vimeo.
http://twitter.com/jb3music http://itunes.com/jesseboykinsiii
Directed by Dr. Woo
Light Up Film
"I am a reawakening of the Romantic Movement ; an observer of Love and the Power it holds. So when given the opportunity to document my priceless experiences and connect them with moments in melody I've captured, I am humbled. Amorous is my appreciation for the relationship and the magic it holds between two people. The essence of a bond and its affect on its environment for the better. Special thanks to London for its environment and the Lovers that shared their intimacy. The Beauty Created."-Jesse Boykins
Jesse Boykins III released his last visual, "Amorous", from his '09 album The Beauty Created. The video was shot in London and even though the video just came out, it has been a fan favorite for awhile. This is said to be the last video off of The Beauty Created album as Jesse begins to work on his next LP. To the true fans of Jesse and the new fans, this will be a visual pacifier until he drops something next.
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← The Gift of Labor in Stalinist Nowa Huta
CFP: Cities of a New Type: New Industrial Cities in Popular Democracies after 1945 →
Utopia in the Matrix
Posted on October 7, 2014 by Katherine Lebow
Many, many thanks to Steve Harris and Daria Bocharnikova for creating such an excellent blog and for inviting me to participate in it; likewise to Ari Sammartino, Sofia Dyak, Kim Zarecor and Łukasz Stanek for their deep and thought-provoking readings of my book.
In my response, I’ll focus on two clusters of themes that seemed to pop up across the contributions. These are questions, broadly, about the book’s title (unfinished/utopia); and about what I’ll call comparisons, contexts, and interconnections.
First, what kind of utopia was Nowa Huta, and in what sense was it “unfinished”?
The book’s title arrived late. It replaced a pretty awful working title; at the time, it seemed both to come out of nowhere and to feel absolutely familiar, right. Soon after the book was published, though, I realized that I must have been subconsciously channeling the title of an album I’d come across some years before, András Gerő and Iván Pető’s wonderful Unfinished Socialism: Pictures from the Kádár Era (CEU, 1999). So I plead guilty to a shameless lack of originality.
I don’t have the book by Gerő and Pető in front of me, but I seem to remember that the “unfinishedness” alluded to seems intentionally ambiguous. On the one hand, it’s seemingly an ironic reference to the cynical and half-baked “real socialism” of the Kádár period; on the other, it clearly expresses a poignant sense of arrested development, which itself has two possible variants: if the revolution of 1956 had been allowed to take its course, it would have a) finished socialism by turning it into something more democratic and workable; b) finished socialism, period.
With this in mind, I see why Kim Zarecor wonders whether my title contains overtones of socialism as “a good idea gone horribly wrong.” This, however, was not the message I wanted to send. (If anything, Nowa Huta seems to have been a bad idea that turned out surprisingly well.)
The title was meant, rather, to echo a quote from Zygmunt Bauman in the book’s conclusion. (Note to self: in the next book, provide clues about the title in the introduction!) Bauman argues that utopian thinking “hinges on a feeling of incompleteness; the better world it envisions must be ‘felt as still unfinished and requiring an additional effort to be brought about.’” Bauman’s wonderful writing about utopianism, like the book’s title, arrived on my doorstep late in the writing process. It captures what I wanted to articulate in my own awkward critique of Popper in the first chapter. Popper equates utopianism with the production of blueprints for the future, and insists that it can have only one outcome (a very bad one). Bauman, by contrast, is more interested in utopianism’s starting-point than where it ends up: he identifies the utopian impulse as a refusal to accept that things can’t get any better (or that they will magically do so on their own). Bauman’s utopianism is an imaginative disposition and a commitment to action that can exist in various forms, with various consequences.
Łukasz Stanek’s brilliant formulation of the two contradictory forces in Nowa Huta—as he puts it, the “calculating economy” of rational planning and the “gift economy” of enthusiasm and experience—echoes the contrast between Popper’s technocratic utopianism and Bauman’s socio-emotional one. Acting on Bauman’s utopian impulse, we could say, necessitates going beyond what we are symbolically “paid” to do under the current system—thus, Nowa Huta as one big potlatch (thanks for that metaphor!). It also answers Ari Sammartino’s question: Who were the real utopians—the planners or the people? Answer: it depends on your definition of “utopian.”
Ari Sammartino also asks, what might it mean to finish this utopia? According to Bauman, though, utopia can never be finished, just as a city can never be “finished.” Perhaps Nowa Huta’s perpetual indeterminateness only underscores the kernel of utopianism intrinsic to all cities.
The second cluster of themes revolves around comparisons, contexts, and interconnections.
Steve Harris and Daria Bocharnikova, for instance, wonder if the sense of “ownership” that Nowohucians felt about their city was unusual in the Polish context, and further, whether such a feeling of belonging was more common in the socialist world than the capitalist West. They also ask whether Nowa Huta served as a model for architects in the West or for those working in the so-called developing world. As Sofia Dyak neatly puts it, was Nowa Huta part of an “interurban matrix”?
The first question is both intriguing and hard to answer. In many Polish cities, as in Nowa Huta, a large percentage of the post-World War II population was made up of rural migrants, the country’s pre-war urban population having been decimated by war, Holocaust, or ethnic cleansing. This was true of some rural areas, too. I recently read an interesting manuscript about the Bieszczady mountains, which were repopulated after the war by Poles from the East, taking the place of the former Jewish and Ruthenian/Lemko/Ukrainian inhabitants. The author tries to understand how locals today make sense of their own personal and familial histories—often ones of unarticulated postwar loss and displacement—in light of EU-funded efforts to promote the region’s “heritage.” It seems that inhabitants really struggle to find narratives linking personal identity with the region’s past; they can’t locate themselves in the landscape.
This contrasts strikingly with Nowa Huta, where any number of available narratives allow for the seamless interweaving of biography and local history. Padraic Kenney’s work suggests the same for a city like Wrocław, and I would direct Ari there for a splendid discussion of the interrelated processes of “becoming Polish” and “becoming socialist” in the postwar Western Territories. As for other cities in Poland, while it’s tempting to think that a sense of ownership and belonging was integral to socialist urbanity, I’m less willing to go out on a limb. A taxi driver in Łódź recently assured me that my rosy view of contemporary Polish life was completely distorted, the result of spending too much time in Warsaw and Kraków. When I looked out the window at the crumbling nineteenth-century textile-workers’ barracks we were driving past, he seemed to have a point.
Yes, Nowa Huta was known and studied by Western planners and architects, although whether (or how) the lessons they drew from these studies were applied, I don’t know (I wish I did). Several of Nowa Huta’s architects went on to work in the developing world (Łukasz Stanek may be able to say more about this): Stanisław Juchnowicz worked on plans for the Nigerian city of Abua; Tadeusz Ptaszycki and a team from Miastoprojekt won a competition for the general plan of Bagdad in the 1960s; Bolesław Skrzybalski designed housing and “recreational” buildings in Iraq and Kuwait. Otherwise, over the years many of the original architects continued to work in Kraków, erecting buildings throughout the “old” city that, at least to my untrained eye, seem architecturally very much in line with their work in Nowa Huta. Ironically, these structures have become so familiar and naturalized within the urban landscape that I think few Cracovians would ever associate them with Nowa Huta.
To riff a bit on Sofia’s question, did the planners or residents feel a connection to other “socialist cities” (or even just to other socialist cities)? Interestingly, I saw no evidence of this, official paeans to Soviet sister-city Komsomolsk notwithstanding. The frames of reference, comparison, and self-identification were first local, then national: the surrounding villages (and/or one’s home village); Kraków; Warsaw. I saw no evidence of, any emergent new-town internationalism, more’s the pity, as it would be a brilliant research topic—but I may not have been looking in the right places.
Finally, some doubts were expressed about the extent to which Nowa Huta was typical of socialist cities more generally, focusing especially on Nowa Huta’s dynamic of dissent. Kim notes that Nová Ostrava remained quiescent throughout the Communist period—why bite the hand that feeds you?—and wonders whether Nowa Huta’s explosion into protest had more to do with general Polish realities in the 1980s than the city’s Stalinist past. I’d like to pose a question in return, based on my working typology of socialist cities—which I hope is not an overly simplistic one. Both East Germany and Hungary had a relatively large skilled workforce after World War II, allowing Eisenhüttenstadt and Dunaujváros, for example, to be built by one group of workers (unqualified) but subsequently inhabited by another (qualified)–a bit like Brasília (although at least the displaced construction workers didn’t end up in shanty towns). Poland, by contrast, was desperately short of skilled labor, so the same people who built the city (and their children) moved into its finished apartment buildings and went on to reap the benefits of well-paid jobs at the steelworks. As I argued in the book, this particular trajectory imprinted local subjectivities in critical ways. Did Nová Ostrava, I wonder, conform to the first model, or does it bust my typology apart?
I’ll wrap this up here, aware that I’ve left many questions unanswered. I hope I can address more in subsequent posts. This format’s openness is a great reminder, I think, of the bashful utopian impulse embedded in our own work: ultimately, it’s about conversations that remain, at best, unfinished.
This entry was posted in Book discussions, Unfinished Utopia. Bookmark the permalink.
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Blog : Posts tagged with ‘buses’
Slash, slash, slash
In which spending cuts may be a good thing
Published at 6:32 pm on May 25th, 2010
Filed under: Geekery, Political.
Following on from yesterday’s post about government spending cuts: there is, of course, one thing that would save quite a bit more money than freeing up some unused phone numbers. Regular readers of this blog will – especially if they were regular readers about a year ago – be very bored of me droning on about the West Of England Partnership‘s* ongoing guided busway scheme, which consists essentially of turning former and current railway alignments such as the Bristol-Bath Railway Path or the Bristol Harbour Railway into private roads for the exclusive use of First Group, at public cost. Rather high public cost, at that, as for any road scheme; and the first phase of the project would have no purpose other than to replace the current Ashton park-and-ride services with new, less useful, park-and-ride services from the same car park. Follow this link to read more.
Well, the local press has suddenly noticed that cancelling this scheme might be a nice easy way to cut the Department for Transport’s budget down a bit; and other local bloggers have had similar news on another poorly-thought-out local transport scheme. That big hole in the government budget, it appears, is suddenly going to mean no money for new roads, whether that be a replacement for Hartcliffe Way, or paving over the Harbour Railway so that bus routes 903 and 352 can avoid Hotwells Road.**
You might also notice a quote from Councillor Hopkins in that article. “An alternative might be a much cheaper ultra-light rail system, which was tried out on a short stretch of Bristol’s dockside several years ago.” He’s referring to a machine called the Parry People Mover, a small lightweight railcar powered by a flywheel that gets charged up at stops. I don’t see it happening, either. Parry People Movers have been tried at various sites, including the Bristol Harbour railway, but they’ve never seemed to last very long except for one location, Stourbridge (West Mids), a very short line with no intermediate stops. They need a railway line to run on, and reinstating the railway to Ashton Gate then extending it to Ashton Vale would be as expensive, probably, as building a road. Similarly, you couldn’t extend a Parry People Mover line into the city: you’d have to lay tramlines, for one thing, and if you were doing that, you may as well go with a real tram that doesn’t have to wait for a 5- or 10-minute recharge at each stop.
So: a short-for-cash government means no new buses and no new roads. In the long run, no new public transport is a Bad Thing; but new roads, public or private, always mean more traffic, higher emissions, and more oil used up. Hopefully, an enforced pause will mean we can wait for a while, until we can design a transport scheme that’s actually useful, not just one that’s easy.
* I do wonder sometimes what other local councils, like, say, Somerset, Devon, Dorset or Cornwall think of the CUBA local authorities claiming the name “West of England” for themselves and themselves alone.
** Because that, essentially, is all that first phase of the “Bus Rapid Transit” scheme, for all the work it needs, amounts to.
Keyword noise: Bedminster, Bristol, Bristol Post, Bristol Harbour Railway, buses, Gary Hopkins, government, guided bus, light rail, North Somerset, Parry People Movers, spending cuts, West of England Partnership.
Awoken by the poltical hubbub
In which there has apparently been a lot of fuss over nothing
Published at 7:01 pm on April 29th, 2010
Filed under: Political.
Well, yes. It’s been quiet round here, hasn’t it. And, as I’ve said before, modern politics makes me want to retreat further into a bunker. There’s a reason why the three sane-and-national parties are so close together in the polls right now: on the surface they’re so close together on everything else. Do you support the ex-public-schoolboy who wants to cut taxes on business and cut public spending, or the ex-public-schoolboy who wants to cut taxes for lower incomes and scythe public spending? Or, of course, the ex-university-firebrand who is also going to cut public spending, but not yet? If you don’t like those, there’s the right-wing fringe: the doddery old chap who leads his party from the House of Lords, who responds to most questions with “I’m not a professional politican, so I don’t know all the details or what’s in our manifesto – can you ask me the questions I wanted you to ask me, please?” If you don’t like his apparent lack of knowledge of most things his party plans to do, there’s always the Cambridge graduate* who thinks that Ireland is part of Britain, and that none of those nasty foreign types should be allowed to settle here unless maybe they’re from a country like France where potential voters might want to retire to.** There’s probably a left-wing fringe, too, but they’ve not popped up on my radar.
Having said all that, I do feel slightly sorry for the former university firebrand, who, I’m told, caused havoc with the administration of my own alma mater back in the 1970s. Because, to be honest, I’m fully aware that politicians aren’t angels. Practically everyone I know, everyone I’ve ever come across, is willing to be polite to someone’s face, then complain about them behind their back. We’re all happy to say things in private, when we think it’s private, and we don’t expect that our enemies are listening in. If there’s one thing you can criticise Gordon Brown for over the events of yesterday, it’s that maybe he was too polite in public, and wasn’t willing to stand up strongly enough for what he presumably believes: that people who ask vague and poorly-stated non-questions that imply they don’t like the free movement of labour in Europe are, bluntly, wrong.
My vote, to be frank, doesn’t exactly make much difference. I live in one of the safest Labour seats in South-West England, one which even Michael Foot didn’t manage to lose in 1983. To move it to either of the other parties would need a monumental local swing: 13% for it to go Liberal, 15% to go Tory. The last local elections did see some movement towards the Liberals in some wards, but not, I think, enough to unseat our MP. Because of that, I don’t have any real expectation that the option I choose next Thursday will make any difference at all to the overall result. I’m fairly sure I promised one of our local councillors, too, that there was no way I was voting Labour whilst he still wanted to build a guided busway through Ashton and Spike Island; he still does, I assume, so I feel duty-bound to uphold my promise. Unfortunately, the Liberal Democrats also seem to like the idea, so it looks like this may well be the first election in which I end up spoiling my vote. Having said all that, though, the fuss over Gordon Brown and Gillian Duffy*** has had one effect on my voting intentions. For the first time in a couple of years, I’m considering voting for Labour.
* Robert Graves had a lifelong antipathy to Cambridge graduates. I must say, I think his instinctive reaction to them was wrong; but possibly, in this case, it would have been justified.
** Or they know how to build the nuclear power stations that he’s going to fill the country with, of course. I wonder how much uranium we have left.
*** Whose anger at being called a bigot is slightly tempered by the fact that she didn’t really understand what the word meant.
Keyword noise: Bedminster, Bristol, Bristol South, buses, elections, Gillian Duffy, Gordon Brown, guided busway, Labour, Mark Bradshaw, voting.
Not Photo Post Of The Week
In which we don’t have many photos, but do have some of the latest guided busway gossip
Published at 9:41 am on April 24th, 2009
Filed under: Linkery, Photobloggery, Political.
Back in August, we went away to Cornwall. As you’d expect, I took the camera, and took hundreds and hundreds of photos. They slowly went online – very slowly, because I’m impatient, and it takes a long time to upload photos when each one weighs about 4Mb.
Moreover, a few weeks after we got back from Cornwall, we moved house; and after we moved house, we were offline for about two months whilst we argued with various broadband providers whether our flat really existed or not. All that time, we were out taking more photos, which slowly built up. As a result, when we did finally get online, I had a rather large backlog of photos to deal with. Plenty of photos for me to upload 30-35 photos per week, and post the best few on here every Friday.
800-odd photos later, though, the end is in sight. I’m still working on the photos from the Easter weekend, but after that, that’s about it. The backlog is over, and I’m going to be putting photos up within a few days of taking them. Which leaves Photo Post Of The Week a little stuck, without the regular flow to pick the best of. I’m not entirely sure what to do with it. Do I return to it when I have more to show, or do I go back and post here photos that I took months or years back? I’m still trying to decide. Maybe it will just be replaced, with a sign like this:
In the meantime, there have been more Bristol Guided Busway developments following my most recent post on the topic. Chris Hutt yesterday published “At Last, The Truth” about the history of the West of England Partnership’s plans for Prince St Bridge, and Bristol Traffic has pointed out that their plans to replace the Bristol-Bath Cycle Path with a buses-only road are still marked out clearly on their maps despite being tactfully edited out of the text, which merely mention their aspiration to build an Ashton-Emersons Green route one day. Personally, I think Chris is being a tad optimistic as to whether he’s discovered the truth and the whole truth, as you could say, but we’re certainly closer to it than we’d be if we were relying on the West of England Partnership’s own somewhat misleading and vague publications and press releases.
Keyword noise: Bedminster, Bristol, buses, guided busway, photography, West of England Partnership.
The Detail
In which we look at the detailed plans of the Guided Busway
Published at 11:39 am on April 7th, 2009
Long-term readers will recall that, particularly last November, I’ve been covering the local guided busway developments: to whit, the West Of England Partnership, the quango which is, you could say, the haunting ghost of Avon County Council, and its plans to turn an old railway line into a private buses-only road. Sort of. Railway lines, of course, aren’t generally wide enough for that sort of thing; so they will mostly be building half a road.
Well, all has been quiet for a while; the consultation was completed, and the Partnership wrote off to the Department for Transport to say “can we have some money, please? Oh, go on.” A reader of this site, the other day, tipped me off to the fact that WEP have published their persuasions on their website. So, finally, we can read all the details which were conspicuously absent from the public consultation documents.
Firstly, there seems to be a change as to where the money is coming from. In the past, it was mooted that this application would be to the Transport Innovation Fund,* and therefore would need to have a congestion charge element to it. That’s not the case: the application is for Major Scheme Funding. So, no congestion charge: nothing is going to be done directly to reduce traffic. All we get is a new, shiny, park-and-ride service which replaces the still-shiny existing park-and-ride service, but serving Spike Island instead of Hotwells.
Secondly, it includes documentation on service frequencies. And half of the buses using the route won’t be the shiny new “Rapid Transit” buses; they’ll be the same old buses to Weston and Nailsea that already exist. Another thing which isn’t going to make the guided busway scheme any friends: it’s being marketed to the government as the first stage of a Rapid Transit Network, in which it becomes the Ashton Vale-Emerson’s Green route. In other words, the old let’s-pave-over-the-Railway-Path scheme which attracted large amounts of protest.
One of the most interesting bits, though, is the detailed plan of the new route. We learn, for example, that the rather worn and tired old swing bridge across the New Cut is to be “refurbished” – it sounds cheaper, after all – with a new footbridge alongside it. The small Butterfly Junction nature reserve is to be flattened and paved over – it isn’t even marked on the maps – and the Bristol Harbour Railway’s stop there is to be replaced by a new one.
The Bristol Harbour Railway is where it gets most silly. The plans finally confirm what was hinted at in the consultation: it is to be turned into a tramway, with buses running on top of it. According to the bid documents:
The tracks for the heritage railway will be retained to provide for seasonal Sunday services and events such as the Harbourside Festival. When these infrequent events occur, services will run on Cumberland Road.
In other words, trains on the Harbour Railway will run on about half as many days as they do now, and along a tramway, which doesn’t quite tally with what my local councillor has told me in the past. As the railway is only just wide enough for one bus, one bus there will be; outbound buses will run along the road all the time, not just on Sundays. To squeeze under Cumberland Road and keep the cycle path, the busway will be narrowed to a single-track road/tramway with traffic lights.
One of the vaguest parts of the consultation documents was: what happens at Prince St Bridge, which isn’t currently strong enough and probably not wide enough to take buses. The consultation map was hard to read; the Evening Post reported that there would be a new bridge. Some people suspected that the current “trial” arrangement of having cars on one side of the bridge and pedestrians on the other was a taste of things to come, ready for the guided bus scheme. Well, it turns out they were right.
Red in that diagram means “bus lane”. Prince St Bridge will be closed to cars; with this scheme, it will be divided between pedestrians on one carriageway, and buses and cyclists on the other. Instead of cyclists being able to run into pedestrians whilst dodging opposing traffic, as now, they’ll be able to get flattened by buses instead. It’s also quite hard to work out how much money has been set aside for Prince St Bridge works, because the costs aren’t itemised very clearly – indeed, the surveyors who reviewed the WEP costings also had trouble on that point.
I don’t think the busway scheme is going to go ahead. That’s partly because the funding bid includes a convenient “low cost alternative” scheme. It is, essentially, the same scheme, same nice new buses, new bus stops, but using the existing park-and-ride route with no new infrastructure. The funding bid says:
A key element of the [Low Cost Alternative] route is the avoidance of the main bridge structures at Ashton Avenue and Prince Street … in order to reduce the construction costs.
The infrastructure will, they say, halve travel times along the park-and-ride route. Whether the Department for Transport think that that will make it worth the money remains to be seen. I’m not convinced they’re going to go for it. In a few months, though, we will all find out.
* as you can see from this Joint Transport Forum presentation released under FOI. Thanks to correspondant Gareth for pointing me to that URL.
Keyword noise: Ashton Vale, Bedminster, Bristol, Bristol Harbour Railway, buses, guided bus, Prince St Bridge, railway, Southville, Spike Island, transport, West of England Partnership.
A Medley
In which we discuss local things, and eat pancakes
Published at 12:55 pm on February 26th, 2009
Filed under: Dear Diary, Political.
A few different things on my mind today, none of which are worthy really of a full post.
Firstly, in serious local political news, the city council’s minority Labour administration has collapsed, to be replaced with a minority Lib Dem administration. Whether the change in cabinet will lead to any changes to or abandonment of the destructive and wasteful guided busway scheme, much blogged about here in the past few months, we will have to wait and see. For that matter, there may well be changes to the rather rushed scheme to pedestrianise half of Prince St Bridge, which some people think was part of the guided busway plans; but which I think was more likely to be some sort of council sop to transport charity SusTrans, whose main office overlooks the bridge.
Talking of things round the Harbourside, regular readers might remember me talking about Folk Tales, the monthly music-and-storytelling event at the Scout Hut on Phoenix Wharf. February’s Folk Tales was last night; however, me and K didn’t remember this until about half-seven last night, at which point we didn’t really feel like going out. Oh well: roll on the next one. I remembered, when noticing that people have been searching the internet for information about it (and finding me).
Aside from that: we had plenty of pancakes on Tuesday night, as is only right and proper; and enjoyed them so much, we had more yesterday. Which is probably slightly going against the point of Shrove Tuesday, but never mind. More pancakes has to be a good thing.
Keyword noise: Bristol, buses, city council, events, folk music, Folk Tales, guided bus, Labour, Liberal Democrats, local government, music, Pancake Day, pancakes, Phoenix Wharf, Prince St Bridge, public transport, Redcliffe, Scout Hut, Shrove Tuesday, storytelling, SusTrans, transport.
The Guided Busway Still Haunts Us
In which, yes, the guided busway is apparently still on the agenda
Published at 9:32 am on January 21st, 2009
Yes, it’s back in the news again. The Ashton Vale guided busway route, which I devoted several posts to at the end of last year, has reared its ugly head again. A quick update: the local councils want to convert a chunk of South Bristol railway line – most of which operates as a council-run heritage railway – into a private buses-only road, to replace the current park-and-ride bus route through Hotwells. They had a consultation about it. Now, 7 weeks later, the consultation results are about to be revealed.*
What do they say? From what’s been released so far, not very much at all. Only that the previous rather low price estimate is already on the way up – no surprise there then. It’s confirmed that a new bridge is going to be built alongside Prince St Bridge – that will take a big chunk out of the budget, for starters. But one of the big empty questions from before the consultation – the route the buses will take from there – still isn’t addressed. The planners are also positive that these will be fast, rapid, high-speed buses, because there will be Special Measures to make sure that they don’t get delayed in the city centre – but they have no idea what said Special Measures actually will be. The buses are still due to run along Cumberland Road – a decision which, as I discussed previously, means taking both the Bristol Harbour Railway and most of the width of Cumberland Road and giving it over to the bus route.
Furthermore, there’s still a great silence over where the money’s going to come from, exactly. Because that’s where the problem is, as it happens. Secretly, this isn’t going to be a bus scheme at all, because of how the council want to raise the money. Regular readers can skip ahead, because I’ve talked about this before, too. The money is coming from the Transport Innovation Fund, a body which provides grants for “demand management” schemes – in other words, congestion charging or similar. This new bus route might be being promoted, so far, as a new fast bus route: but at some point, unless the funding radically changes, the truth will pop out from underneath it. This is a congestion charging scheme with buses on top; the congestion charging part has, so far, been kept quiet.
None of this has been mentioned widely as yet. The Evening Post’s reporting has mostly been limited to repeating the relevant press releases, which of course have been rather quiet about this. It’s not surprising that councillor Mark Bradshaw says, according to the paper, that he wants to get the scheme finished as soon as possible. He’s presumably hoping that the funding bid will be written and in the post before anyone asks him what the demand management part of the bid is going to consist of.
* I like the way the Evening Post went with the headline “New Bristol bus route revealed” when barely anything has changed since before the consultation.
Keyword noise: Ashton Vale, Bristol, Bristol Harbour Railway, buses, Cumberland Road, guided bus, Mark Bradshaw, Prince St Bridge, transport, West of England Partnership.
Return Of The Guided Bus
In which I discuss the likely and hoped-for death of the Bristol guided busway plans
Published at 9:24 am on December 17th, 2008
Regular readers – local regular readers, if there are any – might have noticed that it’s a while now since I’ve mentioned “Bus Rapid Transit”, the West Of England Partnership’s unloved and highly expensive scheme for a South Bristol guided busway to replace the current park-and-ride route. Because, you know, the way to improve bus services in Bristol is to replace the bus routes that are, erm, already the best bus routes in the city, with slightly different buses* on their own private roads. If you’ve not heard about this: you might want to read this, this, and this, in which – with a few misconceptions which got sorted out along the way – I demonstrate that it will be rather tricky to build the thing.**
I’ve been quiet, because, well, there’s only so many times you can ridicule these plans, and I hardly have enough space here to point out all their shortcomings. Their consultation phase is over; and presumably the Partnership is now collating the results. Catching up on the blogs I read, though, I’ve noticed that the other day Chris Hutt of the Green Bristol Blog has spotted that the project is probably doomed. Not because of anything going on here in Bristol, but because of events up in the North, where Mancunians have overwhelmingly rejected the proposed Manchester Congestion Charge scheme.
The Manchester proposals were horridly complex, with two rings of toll lines, motorists paying to cross each line in either direction, and the outer ring following the M60 motorway.*** But the scale of the no-vote is bound to put off any other councils from putting forward further congestion-charge proposals in the near future. Even though, as London’s shown, they definitely work in terms of reducing traffic, no city population as a whole is going to vote for them. Even in an apparently-green city like this one.
The reason this is important is: the Bristol guided bus scheme was, essentially, nothing more than a pill to sweeten a congestion charging scheme which would be coming along with it. None of this was mentioned in the consultation documents, of course; but then, you had to study the consultation documents pretty damn carefully to even spot that it was about a bus route. The key is that the guided bus route will be funded from a bid to the Transport Innovation Fund – a body which only accepts bids for “demand management” schemes. You can’t just have the carrot of a new bus route; you have to be proposing a stick to go with it. The exact nature of Bristol’s stick is, as yet, unknown; but it would almost certainly involve some sort of road pricing.
You never know; the council – sorry, the Partnership – still might push forward with the scheme. Presumably they’re planning to produce positive results from the consultation,**** and then say: well, you wanted this scheme, and we can only have that if we have the congestion charging too. But I doubt anyone in Bristol really wants a guided bus – itself a grand waste of public money which would be much better spent improving the ordinary bus routes – enough to agree to congestion charging in return.
* using vague and unspecified “sustainable fuel”, of course. Not that the planners have said what said fuel is going to be, or even shown any sign that they have any idea what it would be.
** and – for train geeks – that it will effectively destroy the Bristol Harbour Railway in its current form, as the route requires almost the entire railway trackbed right up to Prince St Bridge.
*** The only circular motorway in Britain, road trivia fans.
**** Would I be cynical to suggest that they had planned the overall tone of the consultation result beforehand? Would I?
Keyword noise: Bristol, Bristol City Council, buses, congestion charge, driving, guided bus, Mark Bradshaw, transport, West of England Partnership.
The Return of the Guided Bus
In which we wonder how the Misguided Bus will fit along Winterstoke Road
Published at 10:38 am on November 18th, 2008
Time to return to the West Of England Partnership’s misguided Bristol Guided Bus project,* I think, although Councillor Bradshaw never did reply to my last email. The rude chap. In the meantime, I’ve been poking my nose around the Winterstoke Road area.
Whilst I was doing so, the Evening Post, as I’d done, interpreted the scheme’s maps to read that a new bridge was going to be built over the harbour. It apparently isn’t, although you have to look at the maps very very carefully to spot this. Which is a sign of how poor this whole “consultation exercise” is, if the main local press outlet is allowed to get the wrong impression like that. In the same story, the partnership admitted that they have only a vague idea of the cost of the scheme. And then, Cumberland Road was closed for emergency repairs, due to a burst water main. At present the road’s mostly used by cars, with relatively few buses. What’s going to happen to it when there are buses putting much, much more stress on it every few minutes?** Moreover, this, like any other traffic incident on either Cumberland Road or Coronation Road,*** froze the rush-hour traffic trying to get south out of the city centre. What’s going to happen when the westbound side of Cumberland Road is taken up by bus lane?
Anyway, pressing on. Winterstoke Road, where the new bus road is due to run alongside the railway to Portbury. This railway line was only used occasionally for the best part of thirty years, before being rebuilt for heavy coal traffic from the docks. When that happened, it was singled, so there’s plenty of space alongside the line. Plenty of space for a new road, you might think. Let’s look.
Not much room there at all, really. That blue band is the width of two guided busways, with a narrow kerb at the side for access and evacuation. I’ve drawn it right up to the edge of the still-active railway; and it takes up, well, pretty much all the space available. No room at all for the promised cycleways alongside the road. I’ve widened it a bit at the site of the Ashton Gate stop shown on the maps;**** if it’s any bigger than I’ve drawn, it then starts to swallow up the existing (and rather poor-quality) cycle/footpath too.
What’s going to happen to that building alongside the line? The partnership’s simulation video shows it on the ground and unaffected by the busway – which, at the bottom of that picture, is due to ramp up onto a flyover and, at the top, execute a sharp turn across the railway and off to the left. Is there really enough room for that, though? Without scraping the side of the building every time a bus passes? I’m not very convinced.
* You know, the one they like to call “Bus Rapid Transit”, or just “Rapid Transit”, to gloss over the fact that it’s nothing more than a slightly-altered bus route.
** Some useful information here: the stress caused on a road varies with the fourth power of the axle loading, more or less. In non-maths language: if you double the weight on a wheel, that wheel will cause 16 times as much damage to the road. A car’s axle loading isn’t likely to be above 1.5 tonnes even for something big; a bus will be more like 9 or 10 tonnes on its heaviest axle. That six-times weight multiple turns into a 1296-times damage multiple. So, a stream of cars with one passing every couple of seconds – supposedly the safe separation, according to the Highway Code – causes roughly the same amount of road damage as one or two buses per hour. That’s a very rough back-of-envelope calculation, but gives you an idea of the scale of difference we’re talking about. Trucks, of course, are even worse.
*** such as the fatal motorbike accident at the Coronation Road/Dean Lane junction a few weeks ago.
**** using the size of the Leeds guided busway stops as a guideline
Keyword noise: Ashton Vale, Bedminster, Bristol, buses, Cumberland Road, guided bus, Mark Bradshaw, transport, West of England Partnership, Winterstoke Road.
More on that guided busway
More on the guided busway, as it paves over the Bristol Harbour Railway and replaces most of Cumberland Road
As promised yesterday, I’ve been doing some closer looking at the West Of England Partnership’s guided busway – sorry, I mean “Bus Rapid Transit” plans, and some measuring up on aerial photos. It seems I made a couple of misconceptions, though. Firstly: some of the plans show the Harbour Railway converted into a sort of tramway running along the same road as the buses. Secondly, I was slightly wrong about the route in the Winterstoke Road area. My mistake was to assume that it might actually serve a residential area; I was wrong, it doesn’t, and its sole use is as a replacement for the current park-and-ride services. The council have also said it will serve the football ground; but that slightly contradicts other things they’ve said.
Anyway, here we go: what does a guided busway actually look like? Never mind the Partnership’s shiny traffic-free plan: here’s a real one. This is the A64 on the outskirts of Leeds, which has a single-carriageway busway down its central reservation.
Never mind the bus lanes at top and bottom; the busway is that lovely expanse of concrete in the middle. The width of the whole thing, by my calculations,* comes out at about 3.8m. So, for a two-way busway such as the council wants to build in Bristol, you’re looking at 8m width. That’s for plain road without stops. Here’s a picture of where the council wants to build it: Cumberland Road. To the same scale, as you can tell by the cars.
From the top: road, railway, cycle track, river.
The plans include building over the railway for one side of the bus route. Remember what Councillor Bradshaw told me: the plans “do not prevent” trains being run. Does that mean no bus services at weekends when the railway’s running? Or fewer trains? Who, at present, knows? Anyway, that means, for our FP Militant Invective Laboratories simulation (better value that the Partnership’s, I’m sure), we only need paint over part of the road:
There goes the railway and just under 4m of the road, painted over in wobbly freehand. That’s the amount of land the council’s planning to concrete over for its posh new buses (and all the older ones which will also be allowed to use the busway).
So, goodbye to half of Cumberland Road – even by narrowing the pavement on the north side, there wouldn’t be enough room to make the road full-width. The council’s simulation does seem to show there being a bus lane in the road at this point, rather than a proper busway. However, there’s a slight problem with that: the buses and the road traffic would be going in opposite directions, unless one were to drive on the right, so no space gets saved. The published proposals go on and muddy this point by showing both buses and normal traffic driving on the right at this point – which, of course, would be no help at all.
Still to come: the even more awkward pinch-point where the busway is due to run alongside the Portbury Dock railway line, at Winterstoke Road, with a stop which will take up even more space. They seem to be planning to run the busway over Network Rail land – I wondered if Network Rail knew about that, so I’ve asked them. For that matter, I wonder who owns the land the rest of the busway will run on – presumably either Network Rail or BRB Residuary, the organisation that is one of the last remaining stubs of British Rail. BRBR’s website is a bit broken at the moment, so I can’t search their property listings to see what they do or don’t own.
* including the small width of kerb separating bus and road on the buses’ left, which is presumably needed for safety reasons.
Keyword noise: Bristol, Bristol Harbour Railway, buses, Cumberland Road, guided bus, Leeds, Mark Bradshaw, planning, transport, West of England Partnership.
Guided Bus
In which we discuss the West Of England Partnership’s misguided bus proposals
Filed under: Political, Trains.
Through my door the other day: a leaflet from the West Of England Partnership, the organisation made up of local councils* that replaced the dead and unlamented Avon County Council. It’s about their proposals for a guided busway scheme in this part of the city. A new road, in other words, limited to buses only. Some of the buses on it would be expensive new buses cunningly disguised to look like trams, and running on “sustainable fuel”;** the rest would be the boring ordinary diesel ones that already serve this area. It would replace the current park-and-ride buses in this area, which are already the nicest and most modern buses in this part of the city. So, frankly, I don’t see why that’s the bus route that most urgently needs replacing.*** You can see their proposals for yourself, on the Partnership’s website – they very carefully avoid using the term “guided busway”, and instead call it “rapid transit”, using the word “bus” as little as possible.
The route isn’t really any more useful than the current park-and-ride scheme, either. It’s going to be built along the old railway line that served Bristol Harbour. A small part of this is disused; some is still used by trains to the docks that are still open, but most is used by the Bristol Harbour Railway, a council-owned steam railway that chugs up and down the Avon and the Harbourside, and does a pretty good trade. Here’s an extract from the map on the website:
The purple line there is the new bus route, and the yellow line is the railway. The black blob there, looking like a station, is a proposed Cumberland Road bus stop – handy for Southville, because there’s a footbridge across the river there. The green line is a cycle path.
Now, so far, this is just a line on a map. Not much detail design work seems to have been done – one of the councillors responsible, Mark Bradshaw, said as much to the local paper with the words: “Residents, businesses and other stakeholders are invited to engage in this work and help shape the detail of the proposals.” However, the Partnership have gone as far as producing a mockup of the proposed Cumberland Road bus stop. Here’s their design. On the right: the new bus stop. On the left: a photo I took a few days ago from almost the same location, although I didn’t quite get the angle right.
You can see, on my “present day” photo, the railway line – it’s behind the yellow fence and in front of the road, and you can make out the rails if you look carefully. More interestingly, you can see that on the Partnership’s artist’s impression, the railway isn’t there any more. The cycle path along the riverbank is still there; but the railway line on the other side of it has been paved over and turned into busway. So, in fact, has half of the road on the other side – you can see, the busway near the platform comes out almost as far as the centre-line of the road.
Mark Bradshaw is, as it happens, one of the councillors for my ward. I wrote to him, and my other councillor, before I’d realised that he was on the relevant West Of England Partnership committee that has put these proposals forward. Based on that artist’s impression, I wrote:
The project will be hugely expensive in infrastructure costs, [and] will apparently destroy the popular tourist attraction that is the Harbour Railway and replace it with a buses-only road
I must have been writing in Pompous Mode that day. You can see, based on the above, why I’d think that. Councillor Bradshaw replied:
The Harbour train service will continue and the BRT services will not prevent this (see yellow line on map in consultation leaflet)
Which is fair enough – you’ve already seen that yellow line on the map. The problem I have, though, is that building a busway isn’t quite as simple as drawing a line on a map, as the artist’s impression shows. If the Harbour Railway is still going to be there, why did the Partnership put out proposals for consultation that show it paved over? And how is the busway going to fit between the railway and the road? Something will have to be moved, for sure.
If this scheme does go ahead, I strongly suspect that the guided busway along that section of the route will have to be dropped, purely because there isn’t room to build it. In the meantime, I’ve replied to Councillor Bradshaw and asked why that artist’s impression shows the buses running over the site of the railway when the railway is, according to the map, still going to be there; when he replies, I’ll update this post. Tomorrow, I’ll show you – with the aid of Google Maps and existing guided busways – just how much room the proposals would need on the ground, and how much land it might take up.
UPDATE: local blogger SteveL has, in the comments, pointed me to the Partnership’s video of the scheme. Which apparently shows the railway being turned into a tramway along the southbound busway, something that wasn’t apparent on the still images. So, the busway won’t prevent trains from being run, so long as trains only want to run when there aren’t any buses about. I see.
* and “a range of social, economic and environmental partners”, they say. Personally, I think it’s a bit of a grand name for what is, in land area, only a small part of the West of England, but it’s hard to think what else they could have called it – anything with Avon in it was and is taboo, and “Greater Bristol”, although that’s essentially what it is, would no doubt irritate everyone out in the hinterlands.
** They haven’t decided what fuel, only that it will definitely be Sustainable. Buzzwordtastic!
*** except the political reason. This is going to be built in Bristol, but funded partly by the local councils in the surrounding area. Hence, it serves commuters from North Somerset who might want to park-and-ride more than it serves Bristolians.
Keyword noise: Ashton Vale, Avon, Bristol, Bristol Harbour Railway, buses, Cumberland Road, guided bus, heritage, Mark Bradshaw, marketing, public transport, railway, West of England Partnership.
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Forest Green Rovers FC launch international stadium design competition
You are here: Home / Latest news / Forest Green Rovers FC launch international stadium design competition
Tags: Forest Green Rovers (FGR), Frank Whittle Partnership (FWP), International Design Competition, new stadium plans
Forest Green Rovers (FGR FC) have launched an international competition to design them an iconic new football stadium.
The new stadium will be the centrepiece of the GBP£100m development dubbed Eco Park – a 100-acre sports and green technology business park proposal beside junction 13 of the M5 in Gloucestershire – which is being proposed by green energy company Ecotricity.
Dale Vince, FGR Chairman, said:
This is the start of a very exciting process for us – we’ll be looking for radical, fan-focused stadium designs.
Sustainability will be key: we expect that to run through the core of the design, as through a stick of rock.
There are two aspects of that sustainability – first, it’s about sustainable construction, in terms of the material used, and second, it’s about the long term operational stability of the stadium.
We’re starting with a blank sheet of paper. We’ve taken the sustainability concept as far as we could at The New Lawn, our current stadium, and we learned a lot at the same time about what’s possible in a retrofit situation – now we want to push the boundaries with a design from scratch.
The competition will be held in three stages – after the initial entries, the judges will select a shortlist of eight designers, who’ll be asked to produce concepts. From these, FGR will select two finalists, who will be awarded an honorarium – and they will work up their ideas in further detail, including the production of a scale model. The winning design will be unveiled in September.
Half of Eco Park will consist of state-of-the-art sporting facilities, including the new stadium, grass and all-weather training pitches, multi-disciplinary facilities that will be open to the public, and a sports science hub. The other half will comprise a green technology business park with sustainably-built commercial offices and light industrial units, giving Eco Park the potential to create up to 4,000 jobs, including room for the continued expansion of Ecotricity, which is already the biggest employer in Stroud with 700 people located across four sites in the town centre.
The final element of the proposal is a nature reserve located on the west side of the M5. The overall concept also includes the potential development of a public transport hub, including a Stroud Park & Ride, and will also see Ecotricity help with the restoration of the Stroudwater canal under the M5.
Vince continued:
Eco Park is going to be a place where green businesses and technology companies come together and share ideas, a real focal point of creativity and innovation for the area – and a part of the green industrial revolution that’s beginning to take off around the world.
While there can only be one winner of the competition, we expect to find good people through the process who we might work with on the business park too – so this competition should lead to further opportunities for radical sustainable designs.
Design competition notes:
The club has appointed Frank Whittle Partnership (FWP), one of the UK’s leading sports stadia experts, to oversee the competition.
The brief challenges architects to design a winning entry that will be “bold and innovative and designed to the highest architectural and sustainability standards,” as well as “sustainable and future-proof”.
Entrants have until the end of April to make their initial submission.
For further entry and competition details, interested parties should email: ecoparkcomp@fwp.uk.com
ICC Sydney makes key tech appointment & tasks him to deliver creative A/V solutions
Events DC reveals RFK Stadium-Armory Campus masterplan concepts
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Walter P Moore
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Looking back with Malcolm Tucker – 1914
Last updated: 31st March 2020
RETURN TO LOOKING BACK WITH MALCOLM TUCKER MAIN PAGE
When war was declared in August 1914 no-one could have envisaged the carnage which was to follow. It was the war which everyone thought would be over by Christmas.
In Timsbury a public meeting was immediately called at the Temperance Hall and it was agreed to set up a relief committee to give help to those in the district whose husbands and supporters had been called away on active service. The committee would represent Timsbury, Camerton and Farmborough.
The following week a meeting was held in the new Church Room in support of the proposed formation of a new Somerset Battalion in response to Lord Kitchener’s appeal. Lord Strachie proposed that a committee be formed in Timsbury to help recruit villagers for the great national struggle. Rev. Meade-King declared that the young men of Timsbury should offer themselves to fight for their King and country.
The Church Room (The Legion)
A special football match took place between Timsbury Athletic and a team representing the Army Corps Motor Transport Department from Avonmouth in aid of war funds. The soldier players accompanied by 50 supporters travelled to Timsbury in 2 motor lorries. After the game which Timsbury won 3-0, Rev. Meade-King laid on refreshments at the new Church Room followed by musical entertainment.
The year had begun with a fancy dress ball organised by the rector in connection with the weekly dancing class. A good number of those interested in the “fascinating art of dancing” were present from all over the area. The spectacle at the Church Room was said to have been one of the best ever seen in the village.
Both the Timsbury Unionist Association and the village Liberal Party held annual dinners in March. The speaker at the former gathering was J.W. Lewis, the prospective candidate for North Somerset who expressed his pleasure at the rapid progress being made by the party in this area. At the Liberal party dinner a public meeting followed presided over by Henry Cox with the chief speaker Mr. A.J. Beer, the party agent for North Somerset.
The young wife of Somerset cricketer and Timsbury resident James Bridges died suddenly at the age of 29. Mrs Bridges had been admitted to Winsley Sanatorium suffering from consumption and stayed there for 6 weeks before going to her parents’ home in Kent where she died. She left a young baby who was just a few months old. James Bridges was an all-rounder who represented his county from 1911-1929. He had a top score of 99 not out and a best bowling of 7-41. He died in Hackney in 1966.
Timsbury Athletic had a poor season and finished bottom of the Somerset Senior League (Section B), winning just one match. That was one win more than the Reserves who failed to gain a single point in the Chew Valley League, losing all 10 matches, scoring 4 goals and conceding 66. It was therefore not surprising that at the AGM it was decided to revert to Junior football.
A violent thunderstorm caused havoc in Timsbury in July 1914. Mrs J.S.P. Sambourne lost a valuable cow which was struck by lightning and several horses belonging to business men in the village were seriously injured. One in particular was severely lacerated by barbed wire probably due to the animals being frightened by the storm.
Finally the Timsbury and District Flower Show was revived after a gap of some 10 years. It was held in a field near the Temperance Hall and the exhibits were staged in a large tent. The opening ceremony was performed by Mrs. H. Barker-Hahlo of Camerton Court who was presented with a bouquet by Ursula Bevir, daughter of the local doctor. Staged in July 1914. it was the last village social occasion to take place before everyone’s life was thrown into turmoil with the outbreak of hostilities.
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Women and the New Business Leadership
By: Peninah Thomson with Tom Lloyd
This review first appeared on CSRWire.com on 10th January, 2012
In Women and the New Business Leadership, the authors discuss the role women directors can play in the reform of corporate governance systems following recent financial, crises in leadership, governance and the economy. The financial and economic crisis and the public belief that failings in corporate governance were partly to blame for it have politicized the debate about how, and by whom, our companies should be run. There is a new belief within the political establishment that companies would be better run, and less likely to act recklessly and so put the financial system in jeopardy, if there were more women on their Boards. This is accompanied by an expectation that companies will respond appropriately when filling Board vacancies. Progress towards gender-diverse boards will be watched closely as a proxy for corporate governance reform and a sign that the lessons of the crisis are being learned.
To quota or not to quota? That's a controversial question and one, which is central to the multiple themes discussed in Women and the New Business Leadership. How do we repurpose our corporations to ensure gender parity in the boardroom? Opinions on the issue are sharply divided. Some feel that quotas undermine the "meritocratic principle" and deny companies the right to appoint the best person for the job. Some see quotas the book acknowledges, "as heavy handed interventions in the market that are sure to inhibit the movement of directorial talent to its highest value deployment". Others argue that a reduction in market efficiency is a price worth paying to correct the gross under-representation of women on Boards—something that represents a far greater market inefficiency in the first place.
In recent years, several countries have adopted laws to advance representation of women. For example, in 2010, the French National Assembly adopted a law that imposed minimum quotas for the representation of women on French listed companies and public enterprises; Iceland adopted a similar quota law covering listed and privately owned companies; the Netherlands passed a law requiring 30 percent of Board seats and 30 percent of executive positions to be held by women, and new quota laws are being considered in several other countries. Wherever you are on the spectrum, what is clear is that the voluntary actions of corporations have not created gender balance or gender equality on company Boards.
The authors quote Harriet Harman who said, "The world would not have been plunged into recession if the most conspicuous bank casualty of the crisis has been Lehman 'Sisters'", claiming that the "more gender-diverse Board has become an important symbol of the new “post-crisis enlightenment." Women and the New Business Leadership is a review of these very challenges facing companies and their Boards with regard to the position of women and their absence in the global financial crisis of 2008. Perhaps, as the author goes on to suggest, appointing "more women to corporate Boards may be a more effective way to achieve the desired changes in behavior than trying to change the behavior of male directors?”
Nevertheless, it is important to note that the backdrop for the New Business Leadership message delivered in this book is the FTSE 100 Cross-Company Mentoring Programme, in which FTSE 100 Chairmen mentor senior executive women in other FTSE companies, with proven success. Author Peninah Thomson founded this program in 2003 and it became a separate not-for-profit organization called The Mentoring Foundation. This followed the November 2010 publication by the Financial Times of a special report called Women at the Top, which suggested that Europe lagged behind the U.S. and other countries in terms of the rise of women to CEO positions. "By November 2010, 15 of the mentored women have been appointed to the board of the FTSE company they worked for, nine were appointed as non-executive directors in a private sector company, seven were appointed as non-executive directors in not-for-profit organizations, eight were appointed to a public sector or government role, 15 were promoted in their own company and three were appointed CEO of a non-FTSE 100 company. A total of 57 "advancements" among a total of 62 mentees."
Finally, Women and the New Business Leadership explores the qualities that women bring to Boards, and the roles they play after appointment. Part of the advantage of the presence of women is the limiting effect on "groupthink", as well as the depoliticizing of Boardroom conversations. One mentee is quoted as saying: "Women tend to want to get everything on the table, because they believe it is only when all the sometimes painful facts are on the table that the truth of the matter can emerge."
Additionally, the presence of women in the Boardroom supports greater empathy, adaptability, and full and fair discussion, leading to more considered and higher quality decision-making processes.
Positioning women on boards as one of the urgent challenges of corporate governance in the post-crisis 21st century and Women and the New Business Leadership makes a powerful contribution to the body of knowledge and experience of what works and what hasn’t worked.
Peppered with profiles and quotations as well as input from a range of the FTSE 100 Chairmen participating in the mentoring program, this book offers a fascinating range of perspectives on women and leadership, practical directions that can make a difference and compelling arguments for more gender-diverse corporate leadership.
Labels: book review, CSR, leadership, mentoring, responsible business, responsible management, sustainability, women
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A Curated Comics Show: The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival
This December, I will be attending The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, which is kind of a big deal for me because I haven't been to a comics convention outside of Houston for many years. This has partly been a result of no professional need to go (I no longer work in the comics business), no particular desire to go, and not enough money. But lately I've been getting the ache to check one out. I almost went to TCAF and SPX, but in both cases, they both conflicted with things I wanted to do here (the Art Car Parade and the Fringe Festival). But this time I bit the bullet and bought a plane ticket for a long weekend in NYC. I'll spend one day hitting galleries and museums, and the next day at the festival.
I don't know much about the festival, except that this is its second year and that it got a very good reaction after the first year. But its biggest distinguishing feature is that it is a "curated" show. I'm not sure exactly what this means--I've been told details will be published on their site. But if I am correctly inferring the situation from the comments in this article, it sounds as if the organizers decided who they wanted to have exhibit and invited only those people. This is exactly how a curator might curate a group exhibit in an art museum. But here, we are not talking about exhibiting art (although I believe that will be part of the festival), but setting up tables to sell stuff--comics, original art, etc. In short, this is a dealers room-style show where the dealers have been selected by the organizers. (The "dealers" in this case will be artists and alternative comics publishers.)
A curated festival is highly unusual in the world of comics. It caused a degree of argument and upset among the commenters in the article by the Beat. But I think this was mainly because folks aren't used to this approach in the realm of comics festivals. In other kinds of art festivals (and in pretty much all group art exhibits), this is a common practice. For example, the Bayou City Art Festival is juried, even though it is a completely commercial event. Exhibitors are judged on the quality of the work they have for sale and on the quality of their booth design. But comics festivals--even ones that are deliberately alternative--are governed by a powerful sense of tradition and inertia.
The difference between the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival and the Bayou City Art Festival is that in the latter festival, potential exhibitors submitted a proposal, and the final selection was chosen from among the proposals. The BCGF apparently dispensed with the first step and solicited exhibitors they wanted. The upside to doing it this way is that you remove one difficult, time-consuming step from the process. The downside, however, is that you may miss out on a great new talent whose work you were hitherto unaware of.
But that is not a fatal flaw. In fact, I would say that every possible selection criterion for a festival of this sort is inherently flawed in some way. The traditional "first come first served" approach for comics conventions favors people who are already familiar with the comics world, who are, in a sense, insiders. It also doesn't guarantee the highest quality exhibitors, nor exhibitors who will be just right for the market the organizers are trying to reach. The BCGF curated show method also allows the organizers to reach out to potential exhibitors who might not ordinarily consider exhibiting at a show like this. It allows them to narrowly focus the festival for a specific kind of comics fan. I think this a completely reasonable, grown-up way to go.
As I find out more about the show, I will report it. And, of course, I will blog about the show itself when I go. In any case, it looks like it will be lovely. The guests include artists like Lynda Barry, Gabrielle Bell, Charles Burns, Jordan Crane, Renee French, Mark Alan Stamaty and Adrian Tomine and many more.
Labels: Adrian Tomine, Charles Burns, comics, festivals, Gabrielle Bell, Jordan Crane, Lynda Barry, Mark Alan Stamaty, Renee French
Christoph Hüppi and Carlos Rosales-Silva at Box 13
There was a lot of exciting art in the new collection of shows at Box 13. Seriously, go down and check it out--lots of it need to be experienced in person to get the full impact (I'm thinking of the especially cool sound piece, Sounds for Stairs by Lina Dib). The Kenmore had a more ambitious than usual program (although not much can beat what it had at the Big Show this year). The Kenmore, recall, is a small refrigerator owned by artist Emily Sloan. She usually keeps it in her studio, but occasionally gives it duty as a micro-exhibit space. This time around, Ariane Roesch had a light installation inside, and a painter named Christoph Hüppi had tiny magnets and small paintings on the outside of the refrigerator. Hüppi's presence may be the result of a little evangelizing by Paul Middendorf, the guest judge of the Big Show. Evidently he liked what he saw in Houston and came down later in the summer to hang out and meet artists. Hence Hüppi, not to mention an upcoming performance at Skydive.
Hüppi's art is latter-day op art. It is abstract, and he uses exotic paints, including metallic paint. It's really hard to photograph--I took a picture with no flash and with flash, and it's like I shot two totally different paintings. I think he uses some fluorescent paints in his work, and my flash must include ultraviolet light in its spectrum. The thing about this kind of art--geometric, optical, etc., is that it has a kind of lowbrow appeal. A friend of mine once referred to it as "van art," and I've heard the term "dorm room decoration" in relation to this kind of thing. (Ironically, I had a little Kenmore fridge just like this one in my freshman dorm room.) One thinks of Victor Vasarely and the optically vibrating rock posters of Rick Griffin and Victor Moscoso. There is also another influence that people associate with this kind of art.
Which reminds me of a story. I was a freshman in college, and I got it into my head to do a Victor Vasarely-style piece of art with red and green markers (colors that totally vibrated when placed next to each other). It was a grid with an undulating, bubbling surface. The markers really reeked though, so my roomie kicked me out of the dorm room for the duration. So I was sitting on the floor in the hall, patiently drawing this ridiculous piece of work, when two guys walk up. They weren't people I knew, but they were obviously students. They asked me about the piece and we chatted and then they invited me to lunch the next day. I went, and it turned out to be an evangelical Christian gathering, filled with people like me who had been likewise tricked into attending. But why did they pick me? One reason was that I was alone, and it's easier to gang up on a lone person. The other was that I was doing this freaky, psychedelic drawing. And the only kind of person who would be doing that is a druggy in desperate need of being saved, right? Ironically, while I wasn't a drug virgin, I was close. Certainly I wasn't the acid-head that this drawing might have lead them to believe.
So that's the other influence for this kind of art--LSD. And mushrooms, I guess.
I have no more notion if Hüppi's work is influenced by drugs than the two wandering God-botherers had about me. I make no assumptions. However, in honor of this psychedelic lineage, I have made a gif of one of Hüppi's pieces consisting of the version shot without a flash and the version shot with a flash.
Christoph Hüppi, Pipe No. ?, acrylic on board
All these pieces are named "Pipe No. XX", but I can't remember what number this one was. Actually, giving these abstractions a name like "Pipe" suggest one other influence: Peter Halley, whose geometric abstractions were given a pomo gloss by being identified by the artist as paintings of "cells" and "conduits."
The big show up in front was by Austin artist Carlos Rosales-Silva. He takes as his subject Hispanic and Native American identity. He plays with cliches that come from Anglo culture, but also from Hispanic culture. For example this untitled piece:
Carlos Rosales-Silva, untitled, custom fleece blankets, latex paint, wood, found objects, 2010
I'm guessing the guy on the right is Rosales-Silva himself, in all his highly unidealized glory. Show him a cultural cliche or two dealing with Native Americans, and he'll take a whack at it as well.
Carlos Rosales-Silva, Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before..., modified found objects
This next one I don't get. I see the op art quotation, but I don't see how the lowbrow text, an update of "No Viet-Cong ever called me nigger," has any particular relationship with Op Art. The only thing I can think of--and this is a stretch--is that Mohammad Ali made his famous statement in 1966, more-or-less at the same time that Op Art was at its height, and Op Art was definitely a kind of apolitical art. So maybe Rosales-Silva is taking non-engaged art to task. (I told you it was a stretch.) See for yourself:
Carlos Rosales-Silva, Op Art, archivally mounted digital print
If this is a jab at unengaged, purely optical art, it is ironic that it is being displayed in the same place as Christoph Hüppi's optical semi-abstractions.
Labels: Ariane Roesch, Carlos Rosales-Silva, Christoph Hüppi, installation, Lina Deb, painting, sound art
Edward Lane McCartney at Goldesberry Gallery
I had seen Edward Lane McCartney's work before at Goldesberry and in a group show at Gallery 1724. The thing to remember about McCartney is that he is something of a crossover artist. He is a jeweler, which is to say he works in a form of art often associated with "craft." But he also creates objects that can only be thought of as sculpture. Despite the wall between "craft" and "art" that has existed since at least since Vasari, there are craftspeople who work very hard at making the distinction meaningless. We saw that at Hand+Made. There are other seeming contradictions in McCartney's work. He is a jeweler, skilled in shaping fine pieces of metal into rings, bracelets, necklaces and broaches. But he is just as likely to make jewelry out of plastic cable ties as gold. Some of his materials are extremely humble, and some would count as found objects. As a sculptor, he is in many of his pieces primarily and assemblagist.
Edward Lane McCarthy, Don't Ask...Don't Tell, steel, plastic army men, cable ties, paint
He has used tiny plastic army men in his sculptures before. You know the type--you could order them from comic books back in my childhood. This piece is quite large, and from a distance appears to be a rough but textured triangle of some undetermined material. You can only tell they're army men when you get in close.
Edward Lane McCarthy, Don't Ask...Don't Tell detail, steel, plastic army men, cable ties, paint
As a piece of political art, it's not subtle (but it is very timely!). McCartney's weakness is his obviousness. Particularly when addressing issues where there is clearly a right and wrong side. For example, Wolves in Sheep's Clothing.
Edward Lane McCarthy, Wolves in Sheep's Clothing, acrylic, brass, copper, sterling steel, paint and photographs
Here's a detail.
Edward Lane McCarthy, Wolves in Sheep's Clothing detail, acrylic, brass, copper, sterling steel, paint and photographs
Get it? Here is a beautifully crafted piece with the message that priests abusing children is BAD! I am sure this is something that McCartney feels strongly about, and I certainly don't doubt for one second his sincerity. But art is most powerful, it seems to me, when it draws you into its metaphors, its subtleties, its mystery. When it leaves at least part of the "work" ("work" that is, for me, pleasure) to the viewer. This doesn't. It has the subtlety of an antiabortion billboard on I-45.
A piece that works much better is this one.
Edward Lane McCartney, Is the Cure Worse then the Disease?, sterling silver, fine silver, transfer print on linen
This is another beautifully crafted piece, and every aspect of it refers in some way to the medical regimen that people with HIV must undergo. The title seems to indicate that McCartney has a specific beef, but the work itself is much more ambiguous.
Edward Lane McCartney, Is the Cure Worse then the Disease? detail, sterling silver, fine silver, transfer print on linen
The preciousness of the material must in some ways reflect the preciousness of the drugs--both in actual cost and in terms of what they give someone taking them--more hours and days and years. The presentation reminds me simultaneously of a rich medieval place-setting and of a sacrament. Of course the chain and cuff connected to the goblet are a reminder that you can never leave the regimen. So it is a blessing to be alive and a burden to be chained to these drugs forever.
Edward Lane McCartney, Wounded, wood, acrylic, paint, band-aids
I'll close with this witty piece, made out of the very humblest materials imaginable. When I see someone produce a piece with a strict grid, I inevitably think of Agnes Martin. But her work is calming, partly because grids are calming, and partly because of the materials and colors she used and finally I think because her grids featured horizontal rectangles instead of squares. McCartney makes his grid the opposite of calm. Aside from the obvious association of band-aids with cuts and scrapes, the rigid squares within squares don't give the viewer the feeling that the squares are resting on something. Unlike Agnes Martin, this piece doesn't suggest a landscape. Nor does it suggest a figure or a portrait. It's a true abstraction made of many small pains, a gameboard of tiny wounds.
This show is packed--there are many more pieces besides the one I have described here. McCartney is an interesting and highly skilled artist, and his work is well worth seeing.
Labels: Agnes Martin, craft, Edward lane McCartney, sculpture
Last Chance--see Boozefox and Tobiah Mundt at Lawndale
I am so behind on writing about shows I like that the shows are almost over when I get around to writing. These shows--"Math of the Aftermath" by Boozefox and "Being" by Tobiah Mundt--end on September 25, so go see them now!
These shows both should have been Halloween shows. Mundt's spooky bone-white plush figures and Boozefox's giant walk-through skull--they are like two parts of an excellent haunted house. But Lawndale traditional has its Dia de los Muertos retablo show for Halloween. So consider these two as teasers for Halloween.
Tobiah Mundt, Roscoe, felted wool and mixed media, 2008
Roscoe here is a book worm with some very nasty claws. He's the kind of creature that might pop out when you open a really good Stephen King book very late at night.
Tobiah Mundt, Octobunny, felted wool and mixed media, 2008
Cute and disturbing are not things that can be measured on a one-dimensional scale: they are orthogonal. Octobunny proves this by being simultaneously cute and disturbing.
Tobiah Mundt, (not sure about the title), felted wool and mixed media, 2008
If I were a collector who bought this piece and brought it home, set it up on a shelf or a plinth in my bedroom, fully conscious of what I was doing, I think I'd still scream when I saw it if I woke up during the night.
But maybe I'm just a big old chicken, because Mundt thanks her son Maddox "for thinking my work is funny--not scary."
Boozefox is an Austin-based collective consisting of Mike Phalen, Jules Buck Jones, Scott Eastwood and Drew Liverman. The best way to experience Math of the Aftermath is to walk through it, so I did.
Labels: Boozefox, sculpture, Tobiah Mundt
Notes on the Joanna Gala
Saturday, The Joanna had their "gala." It was not a black tie affair. In fact, it was officially a costume party. The theme? Sexy Godz. Guess who I came as.
This photo was taken by Troy Schulze, the art writer for The Houston Press. Someone I know once complained to me that Schulze writes too many bad reviews, but I say, kill 'em, Troy. Reviewers need to challenge artists to do better, and to challenge readers to expect more.
Cody Ledvina was the maestro of the raffle. They did it Box 13 style. But they made an error when they set up the raffle. They made the tickets too cheap: $1 each. It was too easy to game it. Consequently, I ended up winning four pieces. (I'll put them up later.)
This photo was taken by whoever was holding Aimee Jones' iphone. From right to left: Skeezer Stinkfist, me, Aimee Jones, and some person I don't know.
One pleasing thing about this party was the large number of beautiful women there. There were even a pair dressed as nymphs (or elves, but since I was Pan I chose to interpret them as nymphs). But I have to admit, being around young pretty women like this made me feel like a dirty old man. (But I felt like a dirty old man at the Rice-UT game a couple of weeks ago, so perhaps feeling like a dirty old man is a natural result of being 47.)
The most interesting conversation I had, in a night full of interesting conversation, was with a sculptor who I won't name who ragged on painting. He considered it a pointless, archaic exercise, the need for which was utterly obviated by computers and various graphic softwares. He was specifically talking about how wrong it was, in his opinion, that painting seemed to be favored at UH over sculpture. And he spoke of sculpture's obvious superiority over painting--how sculpture could be almost anything: assemblage, installation, performance, etc.
Now I thought this argument had begun in 1979 with "Sculpture in the Expanded Field" by Rosalind Krauss and ended in 1981 with "Last Exit: Painting" by Thomas Lawson. But apparently it is alive and well, and what was kind of exciting was that this somewhat theoretical argument had a real-world effect--the focus of teaching studio art at UH. I liked the passion the sculptor had. What do you think, painting fans? Can you defend this ancient artistic medium?
Anyway, that was the Sexy Godz Gala. I'll try to refrain from writing about (or attending, for the most part) galas in the future...
Labels: Aimee Jones, Cody Ledvina, sculpture, Skeezer Stinkfist, The Joanna
St. Boniface's Last Days at Art Palace
The new exhibition at Art Palace is beautiful and mysterious. Peat Duggins, an artist living in Cambridge, MA, but with lots of ties to Austin, made the pieces here. St. Boniface was an Anglo-Saxon priest who went among the Frisians and Germans to convert them from paganism. His big symbolic act was to chop down a tree, Donar's Oak, dedicated to the god Donar. He challenged Donar to strike him down, and when no lightning bolt appeared, he was able to convert the Germans. (The legend has it that he didn't even chop the tree down--once he started chopping, a wind came and blew it over, proving that God was on Boniface's side.) One interpretation of this is that this represents a change in the Germans' relationship with nature. No longer was nature sacred, once Boniface chopped down a holy tree. And to be certain, Christianity is notably lacking in holy natural spots--no sacred groves, for example.
The historical record of St. Boniface (such as it is) has his last days among the Frisians, trying to convert them with limited success, when his party is attacked by Frisian bandits and Boniface is killed. But Duggins seems to imagine a different end for him. One where he makes peace with nature, perhaps. Does Boniface roam among the trees in a cloak of leaves?
Peat Duggins, Robe, felt, silk, wood twigs, wood veneer marquetry, fiberglass, 2010
Spooky, no? Especially the way the face is completely covered. It makes one think of the Spanish penitents who wear masks during Holy Week, as well as the itinerant Zen monks called komuso who wore woven baskets over their heads to symbolize their detachment from the world.
But Robe is not a depiction of St. Boniface. It's literally the robe. Supporting it is a custom-made tailor's dummy. It's the part of the piece made of fiberglass and wood marquetry.
Peat Duggins, Robe detail, felt, silk, wood twigs, wood veneer marquetry, fiberglass, 2010
The fiberglass in his pieces takes the place of finely carved wood. If he had been working a century ago, he would have made his tailor's dummy out of wood, doing some amazing decorative carving then staining it rich dark brown.
Peat Duggins, Bust, felt, wood veneer marquetry, fiberglass
In Robe, the leaves were a garment. Are they still a garment here, or they actually his face? It could be a seen as a fiberglass bust with a leaf mask, or a bust with leaves for the skin. Again he uses fiberglass as a substitute for carved wood, making it deep brown and setting the marquetry within it.
Peat Duggins, Bust detail, felt, wood veneer marquetry, fiberglass, 2010
Duggins' marquetry is gorgeous, and portrays nature as a violent place, as in Alterpiece (Snake).
Peat Duggins, Alterpiece (Snake), wood marquetry drawing and fiberglass, 2010
The image is grimly witty: a snake is consuming a frog, whose dying act is to eat a butterfly.
Peat Duggins, Alterpiece (Snake) detail, wood marquetry drawing and fiberglass, 2010
This suggests that seeing this show as a simple repudiation of Boniface's symbolic act against nature (felling Donar's Oak) is probably an over-simplification. After all, he is depicting nature as "red in tooth an claw." That phrase is significant. It comes from Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H.:
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed
Tennyson, in this line, seems to be setting pitiless nature against the idea of God as love. And this is an issue for neopagans and Christians alike. If you sanctify nature (either as a holy place, in a pagan sense, or as part of God's creation, in a Christian sense), you have to accept that the snake eats the frog and the frog eats the butterfly and that there is a lot of violence and death there.
Perhaps that is what Duggins is playing with here. Our complex spiritual relationship with nature, regardless of what religion (if any) we choose. But the work is gorgeous, and maybe that makes interpretation unnecessary.
The exhibit also contains a very interesting animated video and an artists book in its own fiberglass case with wood marquetry. (Oh I craved one of those. But it was understandably pricey.)
Labels: Peat Duggins, sculpture
This Post is for Digg!
(Pay no attention to this post--it's just to get Pan into Digg.)
Labels: housekeeping
Two Books by Norman Lindsay
Earlier this summer, I wrote about Age of Consent, the late 60s movie based on the 1938 novel by Norman Lindsay. Lindsay (1879-1969) was an Australian painter, print-maker, illustrator, and novelist. Seeing Age of Consent made me very curious about this figure, a man both geographically and stylistically outside the mainstream of art history. People like this are often fascinating figures, and Lindsay more than most. Here's what his art looks like:
Norman Lindsay, Crete, 1940
He was also a skilled watercolorist, as you can see here.
Norman Lindsay, Visitors from the Moon, watercolor
(I wish this image were better reproduced. I suspect his work looks a lot more vivid in person.) So you get the idea. Norman Lindsay, a Victorian lad, loved nothing more than to paint and draw and sculpt naked ladies. His work was a scandal in early 20th century Australia (and the USA), and Lindsay himself lived a bohemian life worthy of French artists--lots of sex, lots of living in sin--before marrying and moving to a country estate (more on this later).
So to follow up on this odd character, I got copies of the novel Age of Consent and his memoir, My Mask.
Age of Consent follows a bachelor artist named Bradly Mudgett into a remote coastal area away from people where he can paint. In the movie, Mudgett is a very successful artist coming off a huge gallery show in New York--here, he lives a fairly marginal existence on the collectors in Sydney, which was something of a backwater in the English-speaking world back then. Mudgett is a misanthrope and shy around the ladies (he sees a prostitute occasionally when he has some cash).
Aside from the period, Mudgett's level of success, and the location (in the novel, the action is near Sydney but still remote; in the movie, they have to go out to The Great Barrier Reef to get a suitably remote location), the movie follows pretty close to the novel. One difference is that when Mudgett starts painting Cora and posting the canvases off to his dealer, they start selling. That's actually an important plot point, because Mudgett, though he is living on next to nothing, is nonetheless running out of money. And now that he has discovered Cora--his model and his muse--he is reluctant to leave. The money from the gallery enables him to stay. And just as in the movie, Cora ends up staying with Mudgett.
This book is quite amusing, and really, it's like the ultimate middle-aged male artist's fantasy--finding a sexy young model who you end up sleeping with. I wonder if it caused any scandal when it was published. There are no sex scenes or much in the way of "vulgarity," but sex is assumed and nudity is constant. It is easy to see how the painter who so loved the female form--and not in some abstract way, but specifically as an erotic object--would write a book like this.
Norman Lindsay, Spring's Innocence
When Lindsay wrote his memoir, My Mask, in 1957, he wrote it assuming the reader would have read some of his books, which I understand were pretty popular in their time. He is constantly telling the reader that this or that person from his life is the model for this or that character. If, like me, you've only read one book, this becomes tedious. His roundabout way of telling his life story is also kind of a drag. I would really like to read a biography of Lindsay written by someone else.
He tells the story of his birth and continues up to when he and his second wife settled down at Faulconbridge. His father was a doctor who loved life, and his mother was a highly religious woman who (according to Lindsay) suppressed this life-loving side in all of them. As he and his siblings left home, they all became artists and pleasure-seeking bohemians. Over and over, the ideal of hedonism is expressed in Lindsay's book. He goes over to London in 1910 with his friend Bill Dyson and his sister Ruby, whom Dyson had married. He later brings his model/girlfriend Rose over, and sets up house with her. Bill and Ruby, one-time bohemians, disapprove of this unmarried shacking-up! Lindsay is outraged at their hypocrisy and their new-found Victorian morality, and the friendship ends. He and Rose return to Australia later and he tragically never sees Ruby again (she died in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1919). Lindsay married Rose in 1920, but the implication is that he may have dallied with the occasional model subsequently.
So he seems like a very appealing character. But there are aspects of him that rankle. He comes off in one point as a white supremacist (positing that the white race began in Atlantis, and the most beautiful women were those who were most directly descended from the Atlanteans). Fortunately, this is not a theme he repeats. He also seems extremely closed-minded about modern art (forgivable given when and where he was born and given his own preferences as an artist) and about France in general (despite loving the novels of Balzac).
These two books have given me a powerful urge to see his paintings. Maybe a trip to Australia is called for!
Labels: Norman Linsay
Jeff Forster and Jillian Conrad at The Art League
These two artists have a small show up in the front gallery at the Art League. I wasn't familiar with Jillian Conrad, but Jeff Forster's work is work I have encountered several times over the past few months, up to and including winning a piece of his in the Box 13 raffle. So I was eager to see what he had for this show.
Jeff Forster, Endangered Species, native clays and palm fronds dipped in porcelain then fired, 2010
Palm fronds dipped in porcelain then fired--so that's how he makes those little clay chips. I was wondering that ever since I saw his piece Frailty. What interests me about the process is, what happens when you take something organic and/or flammable and fire it in a kiln? Does the organic part burn away, leaving just the ceramic part? This has been on my mind ever since I won the two Marie Weichman porcelain rags which were apparently made in a similar way.
This piece (and one other in the show) were made out of similar little ceramic pieces. Installing them means scattering the stuff on the floor, so the dimensions are, as they say, variable. I think maybe the are meant to evoke a sense of crumbling ruin, as if you have stumbled across a site that was once built up but is now a shattered and decayed remain. That's how it feels to me. There is something amusing about transporting this into a pristine art gallery.
Jeff Forster, Remnant of Reflected Space, fired native clay, mirror, and naturally collected vegetation, 2009
If the former piece was meant to evoke the decay of something man-made, this piece seems like an attempt to contrive something that appears natural. Except for the mirror--I'm not sure what that's all about. The location is particularly interesting--against a glass. It can be seen from the outside and when you view it from the inside, you see the sidewalk and the street and trees and passing cars, forming kind of a backdrop for the piece. If the object is man-made nature--a "rock" formed from natural clay (as slate is nature-made rock formed from clay), then what we see through the window, our built and grown environment, is also man-made "nature." Maybe then the mirror is meant to remind us that the "rock" is a reflection of what we do in our cities and towns. We build our own "nature," our own environment.
Jillian Conrad, Pile, wood, concrete,foam,paint, glitter, 2010
Jillian Conrad, at first glance, seems like an apt partner in this exhibit. But there is a difference in their work. While Forster's work may be chaotic and may resemble decay, it is ultimately crafted using one of mankind's oldest crafts. Conrad's pieces, while constructed, seem deliberately uncrafted. For instance, the wooden table in Pile is not the result of carpentry, but rather the result of nailing pieces of wood together. The concrete looks more like concrete accidentally spilled at a worksite than concrete deliberately formed for some purpose. That's the feeling I get from looking at this--a temporary work-table assembled at a construction site. All the materials (save the glitter) are materials construction workers might use to build a house or commercial structure. It's the kind of object that, after the job was done, would be broken up and thrown in the dumpster with the rest of the waste products. Put in a gallery recontextualizes it. Whether this interpretation has anything to do with Conrad's intent, I have no idea. But it's what I saw.
Labels: Jeff Forster, Jillian Conrad, Marie Weichman, sculpture
Note on Leo & His Circle
Gallery owners are some of the key gatekeepers for art, and some have the ability (and good luck) to be tastemakers. This is a fact that drives artists crazy, and causes them to conceive elaborate strategies to avoid being gallery artists. Personally, I'm for whatever works to get art to people who want to see it. That necessarily includes galleries.
And the fact is that it's hard to successfully run a gallery (I would be surprised if they had a success rate significantly higher than restaurants). And few gallery owners succeed in bringing truly great artists before the public eye. But some do, and because some do, anyone interested in the history of art needs to know something about galleries and their owners and directors. (Just as, likewise, anyone interested in the history of culture has to be aware of the great editors and great A&R men and great movie producers and great impresarios.)
For that reason alone, Leo and His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli by Annie Cohen-Solieil would be worth a look. That it is a really well-written, compelling biography is an unexpected bonus. Castelli was born Leo Krausz in 1907. His family was forced to adopt his mother's family name when Mussolini decreed that all Italians must have Italian names--a decree that was apparently aimed mainly at Trieste's Slovene population. But Castelli's father, a Hungarian Jew, was affected by this decree as well. The book deals with Castelli's complex family roots--as complex as the city of Trieste itself. Partly Italian and partly Austro-Hungarian, Italy got Trieste as settlement after the first World War. One result of Castelli's multinational upbringing is that he was himself multi-lingual. Combine that with an extremely suave personality, superb social skills, and a fantastic feel for art, and you have the perfect recipe for a successful New York art dealer.
The book discusses how Castelli got there. It wasn't instantaneous, to say the least. He and his wife collected art and then just before World War II, Castelli opened a gallery in Paris with a dealer named Rene Drouin. Talk about bad timing! This was the exception, though. Castelli was really a guy who mostly lived off his wife's family's money until he was 50. They helped him get jobs, set him up in business, while he spent his time as a socialite and art lover.
But as an art lover, he got deeply involved in art, especially in the art being done in New York after the war. He got involved in what was going on, helped people, acted as a host for parties, etc. Nothing that made him any money, but stuff that made him an important figure on the scene. He laid the groundwork for a gallery. And finally, in February 1957, he opened it up in his apartment. He was 50 years old! A true model for all late-bloomers.
He quickly signed on such artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, etc. He put his artists on a salary of sorts, so they could live between shows. This was risky behavior for a gallery owner, and some of the minimalist and post-minimalist artists Castelli scarcely paid off this on-going investment. He also franchised his gallery nationally and internationally with galleries he owned as well as with strategic partnerships. (I wish the mechanics of the latter had been better explicated in the book. If, for example, if there was a Roy Lichtenstein show at Janie C. Lee in Dallas, how did Castelli get paid?)
Castelli was famous for having a waiting list to be able to buy art from particular artists. How this waiting list worked was fairly arbitrary--Castelli wanted to make sure you were the right customer to be buying the art. He well understood that there was a brand value to certain collectors. What the book doesn't say is whether Castelli originated this practice, which has been used since (my friend Robert Weiss was on waiting lists for Robert Williams paintings--it was a strictly numerical list, and when a new Williams show opened, there was a lot of trading of spots among collectors. Weiss eventually acquired two Williams paintings before his tragic death in a car accident. He was the first serious art collector I ever knew).
In the 80s and 90s, young gallery owners who learned Castelli's techniques started to eclipse him. Some of his top artists jumped ship. Still, he had an extremely successful career, and it is reasonable to ask if the recent history of art would have been the same without him. (Cohen-Solal implies it would not have been.) Would Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg have been the giants they were if Castelli hadn't been there pushing their work? It's not a totally comfortable question to ask, but it's true that cultural gate-keepers like Castelli may have an effect on the art form with which they are are associated. The magnitude of that effect is impossible to quantify (because it is impossible to test the alternative outcome). But the effect is there.
Labels: collectors, galleries, Jasper Johns, Leo Castelli, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Williams, Roy Lichtenstein
Malanie Crader at O'Kane Gallery
O'Kane Gallery may be off the beaten path for lots of art lovers in Houston, but it always has interesting shows. The Eula Project by Melanie Crader is no exception. When you walk in, you'll see a variety of small geometric paintings that mostly look quite abstract. (I want to apologize right now for not getting the titles of these pieces.)
Melanie Crader, don't know the title, some kind of paint on board
They are maybe a foot wide by about 18 inches high--maybe a little bigger, but not much. Painted on board, they don't have much three-dimensional presence. Crader uses some kind of metallic paint or leaf on some of them.
Some of the images are not really abstract. Occasionally you can see that Crader is depicting some real thing, like this envelope.
But mostly the pieces seem to be patterned abstractions, usually with fairly restricted color-schemes (but not always). They look great. The size, the flatness, the colors all work. They feel familiar, too.
And there is a reason for that. Crader's grandmother was not much of a packrat, apparently. She died fairly young, and passed on a small number of objects to her children. Crader discovered a small box of these objects ibn her mother's attic--all that was left of Eula. The objects are on display as well.
Now the paintings are not free-floating abstractions. They are depictions--abstracted to be sure--of her grandmother's last possessions. They collectively form a sort of portrait of Eula. A pretty strange way to depict a person, no? Maybe, but this has a long history in American art. Had Crader been a late 19th century American artist, she could have made her "portrait" of Eula in the fashion of William Hartnett or John Peto--her ancestors. They too used mundane, modest objects to tell personal stories.
Labels: John F. Peto, Melanie Crader, William Hartnett
My Comic Art Collection
I am a collector of comics art in addition to collecting contemporary fine art. Collecting comics art is a lot easier than collecting contemporary fine art for one simple reason--original comics artwork is a lot cheaper. Why? I don't really understand it, to be honest. It seems like in the past decade especially, there has been a growing acceptance of the importance of comics as an artistic medium in this country. This has affected a lot of things--the format of comics (they are much more likely to be published in book format as opposed to the more disposable comic book format), the acceptance of certain comics in the literary world. and obviously (and somewhat regrettably) the embrace of comics by Hollywood.
James Kochalka, Skull, acrylic on paper
But the art world lags behind. Comics art is not collected by museums (that I know of) and there are few art galleries that deal with it. The MFAH has a page where you can search their collection, which is mammoth. I put in the names "Herriman," "McCay," "Crumb," "Spiegelman," and "Chris Ware" and got bupkis. The CAMH had a show called "Splat Boom Pow! The Influence of Comics in Contemporary Art" in 2003. It featured the following artists: Laylah Ali, Candida Alvarez, Polly Apfelbaum, Ida Applebroog, John Bankston, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dara Birnbaum, Roger Brown, Enrique Chagoya, Michael Ray Charles, George Condo, Cat Chow, Renee Cox, Henry Darger, Jason Dunda, Michael Galbincea, Kojo Griffin, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Keith Haring, Rachel Hecker, Arturo Herrera, Roy Lichtenstein, Liza Lou, Kara Maria, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Takashi Murakami, Elizabeth Murray, Yoshimoto Nara, Raymond Pettibon, Sigmar Polke, Robert Pruitt, Mel Ramos, David Sandlin, Peter Saul, Kenny Scharf, David Shrigley, Roger Shimomura, Andy Warhol, and Jennifer Zackin. In short, it had precisely zero comics artists. That is indicative of the lack of respect (if not outright condescension) comics art gets from art world institutions.
OK, enough griping. The point is, I think this is a cultural error. But this is how it is, and for me, one unexpectedly nice aspect of this is that comics art is relatively cheap, as I mentioned above. So I have bought a bunch of it over the past few years.
James Kochalka, Worms, acrylic on paper
There is a website called Comic Art Fans where collectors post their collections. Now most of these collections are pretty mainstream--not what I personally would consider artistically interesting artwork. But there are a lot of adventurous, sensitive collectors who post there. For instance, Suat Tong Ng's collection, or Dries Dewulf's (you can deduce from the names that the collectors come from various points on the globe).
I have put my own collection up there (there are still a couple of pieces I need to photograph, but this is most of the comics and comics-related art I have). Take a look. What's enjoyable about this site is that it becomes a database for the work you have collected, which means it becomes a database for everyone's work. I can easily find people who have similar interests as collectors as I do, and vice versa. So it is a small but perfectly focused social network.
If I ever get my comics festival off the ground (unlikely given the resounding shrug of indifference the proposal has evoked in the readership of this blog), CAF will be a valuable resource. For example, if I were curating a show of Chester Gould Dick Tracy originals, focusing on his use of silhouette, I could look Gould up on CAF to see what collectors have examples and if there might be any I want to borrow for the exhibit.
Yirmi Pinkus, untitled, pen and ink and watercolor, 1998
Labels: Chester Gould, collecting, collectors, comics, James Kochalka, Yirmi Pinkus
New Acquisition: The Great God Pan Is Dead by Gary Panter
Gary Panter has this really cool thing he does. He allows you to commission art from him for a highly reasonable cost!
Limited time offer 3.0. Customized drawing by GP for you. 6 x 8" ink-drawing on 3-ply Strathmore bristol. On the subject of your choice (within reasonably wide parameters of taste). You provide one-to-three keywords (see samples below) and the artist will free associate thereupon. The drawing will be signed to your name or initials.
He charges $225 for them. I had one made in 2004 and decided to celebrate a year of blogging with a new one. In 2004, I hadn't thought too hard about art values, but now that I have, this deal that Panter offers is very interesting to think about. Panter writes:
Often I am selling art objects for thousands of dollars and I hope to continue doing that; however I realize that a lot of the people who like my work don't have thousands of dollars with which to purchase fine art. So for a limited time, I am offering this reasonably-priced little drawing in case you do want a drawing by me for you.
So how does he price these drawings? If Gary Panter drawings were interchangeable commodities, the price would be no higher and no lower than the market price. If he priced them significantly lower than the market price (determined by auction), there would be an opportunity for arbitrage. A buyer could buy as many custom drawings from Panter as possible for the low price and then sell them for the market price (at a profit). Depending on how many drawings Panter could produce, the market price would gradually decline as the market was flooded with new 6x8" Panter drawings.
So Panter should definitely not price the drawings lower than the market price according to this logic. Can he price them higher? Yes. Because they are unique items, and because they are commissioned, the buyer is getting something she will want more than anyone else. They are more valuable to the person who commissioned them than to the market as a whole. So according to this logic, his price should be either the market price or the market price plus a premium.
But wait! Panter is primarily a painter. But his paintings, as he says above, go for many thousands of dollars. Many collectors don't have that kind of money now, but will later. (As people age, their earning power increases.) Panter may be engaging in a strategy of enticing beginning collectors, who have relatively little money to spend on art, into collecting his work. As one learns in marketing, the best predictor that someone will buy something from you is if they have done so before. (This is a far more powerful predictor than any demographic or psychographic measure.) So Panter is creating Panter collectors by offering inexpensive art in hopes that they will eventually buy more expensive art from him. By that logic, he should sell for less than the market price.
But that still leaves him open to arbitrage, which he doubly doesn't want--one because he doesn't want these drawings flooding the market and pushing the market price down, and two, he doesn't want the people buying these drawings to be mere speculators (as anyone engaging in arbitrage is), but rather collectors who may buy again in the future. So he creates a "poison pill" that might (might) make these drawings less valuable in the market--he personalizes them. The one I just got says:
GARY PANTER FOR ROBERT BOYD
THE GREAT GOD PAN IS DEAD.
So if you are buying Panter drawings on the open market, you probably don't want one that is personalized to Robert Boyd. Or, all other things being equal, you would prefer one that wasn't so personalized.
Given all these considerations, I suspect Panter is underpricing these drawings. But it would take more research than I am willing to do to find out for sure. In any case, I think this is a great program Panter is doing, and I would encourage other artists to do something similar.
Oh, and by the way, here is the piece I bought.
Ah, bliss.
Labels: art acquired, drawing, Gary Panter
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New Acquisition: The Great God Pan Is Dead by Gary...
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Letter To The Decent Guy
February 15, 2013 by Chinello Ifebigh Leave a Comment
Dear Mr. Decent Normal Guy,
For a long time, I’ve been longing to have this talk with you, but was at a loss for the right words. I wanted to ask you stuff in a respectful and cordial manner, a manner that encourages dialogue and open answers. I wanted to be able to trust in the safety of your goodness, to bare my soul and be vulnerable with you without my twitter account being hacked or overwhelmed with cyber aggression. The last thing I want is to attack you, for I need your strength and solidarity more than ever.
Let’s talk about the issue of violence and abuse towards women. I need to ask you certain questions, I need to know where you stand on this.
You are the good husbands, sons and fathers. The men we love, who make us proud. The men we dream of marrying, the heroes we hope our sons will become. You are the breadwinner and the job holder; the decent guy who supports, respects and honors women. The man who pulls his weight at home.
Still my question is about a problem that also concerns you. It concerns the plethoric display of violence, abuse and undiluted misogyny which the “bad guy”, your fellow specimen of the male species, (let’s call him) your evil twin, has been dishing out to women worldwide.
You know, for a long time, I was convinced that you and your brother are not identical at all. It seemed easy enough to tell you both apart. You were as different as night and day.
But today I am not so sure I know who you are. I can no longer blindly vouch for the honor of your convictions. Today, in this age of internet anonymity, the situation has changed. Thanks to the wonders of internet your brother and you now deploy the same avatar. One can no longer tell you apart.
It is hard to say where one brother ends and the other begins. I thought I knew you so well; that I would always recognize you inspite of any given circumstances.
Today I have come to realize that I don’t know you at all. I can’t in all certainty identify what you stand for, it seems you and your brother have morphed into a bizarre siamese entity.
Recently, I saw the Tedxwomen video of Anita Sarkeesian. It was about cyber harassment and misogynism. The magnitude of rape threats, murder threats and other acts of cyber aggression channelled to this woman was staggering. The lengths to which hundreds of men went, to try to make her life hell makes one speechless.
I wonder at the identity of the guys who did this. Are they the same guys as the rapists in the Congo, South Africa and Srebrenica? Of course not. Those are the “bad” guys. Those are the savages. The monstrous, kingless, uninitiated creatures who have never learned that the quality of a true warrior lies in the fact that he is a protector of boundaries and is in service to a purpose greater than himself. These gruesome and pathetic manimals, these wretched creatures enslaved by testosterone and madness. These underachievers, losers who evolution left behind. Surely, these blights on humanity can’t be “our” men, right?
Uhm…. wrong.
I wish the answer was all that easy and concise.
You, the normal men, are the guys who did all that stuff to Ms.Sarkeesian. You, the very same decent guys we are married to, the same guys who call us mom and grandma, the very ones who work in offices beside us and raise our kids together with us. You, the guys we make love to at night, the guys who take out the trash in the morning. You, the normal, decent, savage, good, bad guy. Of course there is no evil twin. You are all of it; he’s all contained in You.
For as far back as history goes, women have been struggling with issues of gender equality. We have fought to obtain every right, every privilege, every square inch of equality that we possess today. It was never handed over freely, it has been an eternal struggle with you.
Granted, you have supported us along the way and without you, the struggle would have been futile. It was you, the decent man, who convinced the other men to open their eyes, to expand their intellect, to hasten their evolution so as to comprehend the urgency of our plight.
Today females all over the world are still victims of grand scale violence and abuse. Today women all over the world are regrouping and fighting back by educating themselves; by empowering one another and externalizing these issues. Women have made this problem a women’s issue and men like you have supported us from the sidelines.
But you know what?
What I miss the most in this whole violence-from-men-against-women-issue; what profoundly breaks my heart, is the absence of the avalanche of outrage from normal men like you. How come this male perpetrated problem is perceived by all as a women’s issue? Why aren’t men rising up in masses, hitting the streets and taking a stand against this horrific misrepresentation of their gender?
Why are decent normal men like you not publicly rising up in multitudes and redefining manhood and saying: “We don’t want to be associated with these monsters!” Why aren’t men teaching their sons, brothers and peers what real manhood is all about?
Why aren’t men volunteering their time en masse, in service to their communities to intensely re-educate and initiate boys into what real, hate-free manhood is all about? Why aren’t the decent men voluntarily spreading the gospel, going to- and speaking up in prisons, educational centers, sport clubs and offices? Where are the male evangelists preaching love and respect of women to their fellow men?
Why do female crisis- and domestic violence centers exist worldwide and not one male-initiated prevention center? Why on earth is this male generated problem still a women’s problem?
We are your mothers and your sisters. Your daughters; for crying out loud! We are in this together, as your only partners on the planet. According to an ancient african proverb, “When the eyes weep, the nose cannot fail to join”. We need you as much as you need us. How can you claim to love us and yet stand at the sidelines, watching your brothers maim and destroy us? Don’t you care about us at all?
Aren’t we worth fighting for?
Until men make this a MALE problem, until you, the decent guy, stops being an accidental tourist, until you step out of the secondary supportive role, into the primary protagonists’ role; unless you take the full responsibility for this culture of violence towards women, I am afraid that all the efforts we women have been making will never be more than that and misogynist inspired violence will never end.
It is alright to try to cure the “symptoms” of an illness: making women self aware and empowered: battered women’s shelters and assertivity classes, pepper spray and self defence lessons; blah, blah, blah. But the crux of the problem, the missing link in this issue sadly remains the absence of primary male involvement and the fact that enough men do not feel enough outrage, shame and compassion to own and prioritize this issue.
Yes I know that even women are violent too, that there are enough cases of women battering men. This too is very wrong. Nevertheless, compared to the magnitude of the atrocities that men have and are perpetrating, these cases are practically non-existent.
I believe that until men wake up with the burning conviction that these acts are an insult to manhood and everything humanity stands for; until most men evolve to a level of compassion where the wellbeing of humanity becomes priority number one; until the unlikely hero, the unobtrusive decent guy, steps into the gaping vacancy and assumes his cataclysmic role in the process, there will never be an end to rape and violence towards women.
Chinello Ifebigh
Filed Under: General Tagged With: Cellar Wild, Chinello Ifebigh, sexual violence, violence against women
How the corporate university exploits sexual assault
November 5, 2012 by Paul Seltzer 3 Comments
Sexual assault happens on university and college campuses. It happens a lot. More often than not, women are on the receiving end of this violence.
How does the university respond when it becomes aware of such violence? It responds with blaming and insulting survivors, with bogus advice about not drinking alcohol, and with purposely underfunding resources for survivors. One way or another, the university removes itself from the narrative and responsibility, and places the work of preventing sexual assault on individual students, often individual women.
This is institutional violence, the violence that flows from institutions like the university through the active neglect of certain groups deemed extra, or surplus. The story of institutional violence is the story of a crisis, and that crisis is a lack: a lack of institutional responsibility, a lack of proper safety measures, a lack of proper resources for survivors, and a supposed lack of a proper amount of time for the university to put together a proper response. The university actively creates these lacks, crises, and violence.
Stories of sexual assault and university neglect repeat, campus to campus. These cases of sexual assault appear to fit the model of the “crisis ordinary,” when crisis is everywhere and inescapable. The crisis ordinary gives the university the excuse to hide behind resources it fails to provide or else provides paltry, inadequate sums. The crisis ordinary of sexual assault lets us see the inherent instability in the university’s bumbling, ineffective responses to this violence. It also allows us to re-narrate the crisis, and the new narration might go something like this:
There are women who have been sexually assaulted. These women do the work of finding and utilizing resources for survivors, the work of telling and re-telling their stories, and the work of demanding accountability from the university and its administration.
The university increasingly wants diversity. But it has not provided adequate resources to survivors of sexual assault and further pressures survivors to do their own work of coordinating resources. Then, the university shows its cruelty by insulting survivors for not following “widely accepted” advice. Within the supposedly diverse community of the university, survivors and their labor are produced as victims, as extra, as surplus, as valueless, as the university backs away slowly.
The university passes off the actual work of diversity, of maintaining a safe and inclusive community, onto survivors of sexual assault—and it makes a profit! It diverts the savings from this unpaid work to projects that are in its real interests: accumulating as much capital in as little time as possible. The university is not merely the university, but the corporate university.
The corporate university appears diverse through the spectacle of branding, but this hides the violence underneath: the violence of sexual assault, the violence of workers’ rights abuses on its ever-expanding campuses, and the violence of producing women, people of color, LGBTIQ people, disabled people, and others as key members of its so-called diverse community at the same it produces them as victims. None of this is shocking—it’s business as usual, ordinary business, for the corporate university.
To abolish institutional violence, we must abolish the farce of the institution that is the corporate university. It is in organizing for abolition that we find alternatives.
(Photo Credit: Nicholas Mirzoeff)
Filed Under: General Tagged With: corporate university, Fierce, Paul Seltzer, sexual violence, university
Soni Sori haunts more than India
October 11, 2011 by Dan Moshenberg 24 Comments
Sometimes the colonizer becomes the colonist. For some, this is what has happened to India, specifically as regards land grabs in Ethiopia and elsewhere.
But the transformation doesn’t stop at “colonialism”. Colonialism is more than settlers and mass and brutal extraction of other peoples’ natural resources. Colonialism involves imperialism, empire building, and not only abroad. Welcome to Chhattisgarh … again.
Chattisgarh has been in the news the last few years for a series of “curious adventures” on the part of police, security, and military forces, responding to a purported Maoist “crisis”. Binayak Sen spent three years and some in prison, for no real reason. Earlier this year, Ilina Sen, a prominent feminist scholar and activist, was charged with organizing an international Women’s Studies conference without proper registration of “foreign nationals.” Kopa Kunjam, a Ghandian human rights and development worker, has also been in prison for years for similarly spurious reasons. Himanshu Kumar worked for almost two decades in the jungles of Chhattisgarh, teaching the poorest of the poor how to vote, how to access better food and any health care. His reward? His ashram was burned to the ground, two years ago. As is so often the case, when security forces occupy a zone, they bring sexual violence as part of the package. For women, the price of national security is high.
And so is the price of national “wealth”. Ask Soni Sori, recently arrested last week in Delhi, shipped back to Chhattisgarh, interrogated there, and sent to hospital yesterday, unconscious and with back and head injuries. Police claim she slipped in the bathroom There’s no real evidence against Soni Sori, nothing that actually links her with any Maoist group or identifies her as a Maoist. Instead, there are “suspicions.”
What is going on in Chhattisgarh? The State would tell us that these stories are part of the larger “security” narrative, that there is a Naxalite, or Maoist, emergency in Chhattisgarh that necessitates the infamous state of exception. Dangerous times require dangerous men … with even more dangerous guns and techniques, including torture.
This is not a story of “poverty”. Rather it is a story of wealth. Chhattisgarh is rich in resources, has an extensive forest, and a large tribal population. The women of Chhattisgarh historically have enjoyed a unique position in India … and beyond. The population is more or less equally divided between women and men. Women have participated in every aspect of agricultural production, of labor, and of public life. Chhattisgarh is a place in which gender equity and female subservience have always been in tension.
With the arrival of the global market, that tension has increased. The areas women dominated, in particular that of food security and food sovereignty, don’t carry the same value in a global economy. Both multinationals and the national government have given men positions of authority in the new economies.
Soni Sori is a primary school teacher. Thanks to “security” campaigns, Chhattisgarh has one of the lowest literacy levels in India. State security forces and their paramilitary brethren occupied schools. Then they were attacked by Maoists. The State then closed the schools and moved them to State-controlled areas. For village children, those are impossibly distant areas, both in miles and in culture. And so, literacy levels, never high, plummeted. And what is the shining solution? Build a residential complex, even further away, for the few high school students who are preparing for engineering and medicine.
The rest, and especially the girls, can simply work the fields, build the roads and bridges and malls, watch the distance between rich and poor grow greater and greater, and more and more violent. This is the crisis in Chhattisgarh. Chhattisgarh doesn’t need more troops. It needs more teachers, more schools, more women like Soni Sori. Soni Sori haunts more than India. Soni Sori haunts the world economy.
(Photo Credit: Front Line Defenders)
Filed Under: General Tagged With: Binayak Sen, Chhattisgarh, colonialism, Dan Moshenberg, education, Haunts, Himanshu Kumar, Ilina Sen, India, Kopa Kunjam, military violence, sexual violence, Soni Sori
Instead of Women’s Day, What About Women’s Enjoyment of Freedom Day?
August 12, 2011 by Dan Moshenberg 1 Comment
In South Africa, August 9 is National Women’s Day, and August is Women’s Month. This August, the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre, a South African women’s rights and well-being organization has a simple and direct question for everyone, “So just how real are women’s rights?”
They began, publically, to answer that question yesterday, August 11, with a new report, “The Right & The Real: A Shadow Report Analysing Selected Government Departments’ Implementation of the 1998 Domestic Violence Act and 2007 Sexual Offences Act”. On one hand, the answer paints a dismal picture. Only 8% of police stations meet their obligations under the Domestic Violence Act. Compliance would include helping a victim to find shelter and obtain medical assistance, serving notice on an abuser to appear in court, arresting an abuser who breaks a protection order, and, critically, keeping records of domestic violence. Failure to comply means misconduct, and should result in various forms of sanction and punishment. It hasn’t. Police stations ignore their responsibilities with impunity.
In 2007, 57% of police stations were compliant. Now … less than 8%. That’s not a drop, not even a steep drop. That’s a nose dive.
The report focuses on the failure of the South African Police Services and the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development (which includes National Prosecuting Authority), as well as the Departments of Health, Social Development and Correctional Services. The press has covered this failure as a failure to protect women and women’s rights, which it certainly is.
But Tshwaranang’s analysis goes far beyond the failure to protect.
The real of women’s rights is more than, bigger than, and more profound than “protection”. The real of women’s rights is freedom, and specifically the enjoyment of freedom:
“South Africa’s Constitutional Court makes it clear that, `few things can be more important to women than freedom from the threat of sexual violence.’ So important is this right to be free from all forms of violence that, along with the rights to life and dignity, it imposes two sorts of duties on the state: the first obliging the state to refrain from acting in ways that infringe on these rights, and the second compelling it to develop legislation and structures guaranteeing those rights….It is not only sexual violence that constitutes a rights violation of the sort requiring state intervention: `Indeed, the state is under a series of constitutional mandates which include the obligation to deal with domestic violence: to protect both the rights of everyone to enjoy freedom and security of the person and to bodily and psychological integrity, and the right to have their dignity respected and protected, as well as the defensive rights of everyone not to be subjected to torture in any way and not to be treated or punished in a cruel, inhuman or degrading way.”
Imagine a South Africa in which all women are free to move around as they please, dressed as they please. Imagine a world in which all women are free to move around as they please, dressed as they please. Imagine a world in which democracy means the enjoyment of freedom. Instead of celebrating Women’s Day, what about Women’s Enjoyment of Freedom Day?
(Photo credit: Halden Krog / Times Live)
Filed Under: General Tagged With: Dan Moshenberg, enjoyment of freedom, freedom, Haunts, National Women's Day, police, protection, sexual violence, Shukumisa, South Africa, The Right & The Real, Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre, women, Women's Month
Violence against women haunts independence
August 7, 2011 by Dan Moshenberg 3 Comments
Egyptian men and women in one hand
“After the revolution”. In Egypt and Tunisia, women who made the revolution, women who pushed Mubarak out, are now facing the struggle for more rights, autonomy, and physical safety. This should come as no surprise to the rest of the so-called independent world.
Yesterday, August 6, Jamaica celebrated 49 years of independence from the United Kingdom. There were celebrations. At the same time, sexual violence against girls is both increasing and intensifying.
Across the African continent, August is celebrated as Women’s Month. August was chosen to commemorate the August 9, 1956, women’s march in Pretoria, in protest of the infamous pass laws. The women chanted, shouted, screamed: “Wathint’Abafazi Wathint’imbokodo!”. “Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock!”
That was 55 years ago. Today, the women are still being `touched’, and in the most violent ways. Across the nation, campaigns, such as the One in Nine Campaign, and organizations, such as the Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust, struggle to address and end violence agains women. Organizations such as Free Gender struggle to address and end violence against lesbian, and in particular Black lesbian, women. All of these women’s organizations, all of these women, all of these feminists, struggle to address and end the hatred that is rape.
In many places, such as in the United States, that hatred often takes the form of legislation. For example, in 2005 Wisconsin passed a law that barred access to hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery for prison inmates and others in state custody. Three transgender women prisoners, Andrea Fields, Jessica Davison, Vankemah Moaton, challenged the law, and this week, after six years, won their case in a federal appeals court.
Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, the nation’s capital, transgender women are hunted, attacked, often killed. For the crime of being transgender women. For the crime of being women.
What is independence? What is a revolution? Across the globe, women continue to struggle for the basics of independence, of autonomy. That begins with real recognition, that begins with the State as well as the citizenry and the population ensuring women’s safety. Women are not specters and are not promises to be met. Until women’s simple physical integrity is ensured, rather than promised, violence against women will continue to haunt independence.
(Photo Credit: NPR / STR / AP)
Filed Under: General Tagged With: Andrea Fields, Dan Moshenberg, Egypt, Free Gender, Haunts, independence, Jamaica, Jessica Davison, One in Nine Campaign, Pretoria, Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust, sexual violence, South Africa, Tunisia, United States, Vankemah Moaton, violence against women, Washington, Wisconsin
What will be our King trial?
June 2, 2011 by Chai Shenoy 1 Comment
As a teenager, I remember listening, watching, and wondering about the outcome of the Rodney King criminal trial. When the jury acquitted three of the four Los Angeles Police Department officers, and couldn’t determine guilt or innocence of the fourth officer, I felt anger, loss, and hopelessness. The riots that ensued in the greater Los Angeles area, although horrific, seemed justified in my teenage mind. A black man, savagely beaten by four white officers, all caught on candid camera. An injustice unpunished.
Flash forward to 2009. Two then-New York Police Department (NYPD) police officers were called to assist a taxi cab driver with a drunk female passenger. The police officers assisted the female to her apartment, and then one of them allegedly raped her, while the other stood guard. Last week, a jury acquitted both police officers of sexual misconduct and falsifying business records. This verdict comes on the heels of the International Monetary Fund’s then-Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest and arraignment of committing several sex crimes towards a hotel maid.
As a lawyer representing sexual assault survivors in civil legal court, I have profound respect for the theoretical implications bolstering the legal system. Yet, in practical terms, the justice system seems unfair in sexual assault cases where, unlike in other cases, victims are met with profound skepticism by the trier of fact. Indeed, as one juror mentioned after the NYPD trial, the need for physical evidence that a rape occurred – which isn’t necessary in all criminal cases to reach the government’s burden of “beyond a reasonable doubt” – is often the linchpin.
What makes the Rodney King trial and the NYPD Rape trial interesting is a common thread: both victims were highly intoxicated. With the NYPD Rape trial, the questions were always “where is the DNA,” and “how can we believe a woman who doesn’t remember.” With King, the looming question was “is this a just way to act.”
To me, these are strikingly different questions to crimes where police abuse and power had similar lasting physical and emotional effects on the victims and the community at-large..
The acquittal of abusing a man, turned into race riots. It became a symbol of those in power versus those not in power, abuse of authority, police brutality, and historical implications of slavery.
The acquittal of raping a woman turned into social networking outrage, with change.org petition, Twitter and Facebook posts, a protest in front of NYC’s courthouse, and an attitude that this is another trial added to the long master list where the victim’s credibility was questioned and then destroyed, with the perpetrator walking away with nothing but a bruised ego.
Although I condemn riots and strongly believe in non-violence, I ask, where is our, female, feminist King-like response to this trial? Where are the boycotts, the outward anger and rage? Where are the speeches, the opinion pieces, and the gobbling of media airtime?
More importantly, where are the leaders of this movement who are willing to step forward and say enough is enough already?
Like the King trial shaped my understanding of the world, I wonder if and how the NYPD Rape trial is shaping the views of our youth.
(Photo Credit: The Villager / Jefferson Siegel)
Filed Under: General Tagged With: Chai Shenoy, NYPD, NYPD Rape trial, rape, Rodney King, sexual assault, sexual violence
Zimbabwe, Haiti, just go …
April 10, 2011 by Dan Moshenberg Leave a Comment
“What are these lies?
They mean that the country wants to die.”
Haitians, Zimbabweans, everything at home is just fine. So say the United States and the United Kingdom. Everything is just fine and you must just go.
Except that everything is not just fine.
In Harare yesterday, Saturday, April 9, 2011, thousands met at a church service at St Peters Kubatana in Highfield. They engaged in a peaceful demonstration to pray for peace. They came together to pray to end the escalating violence in Zimbabwe. Police threw tear-gas canisters into the church, and when the parishioners and congregants ran out or leapt through the windows, the police attacked them, beating them with batons.
This is peace and unity in Zimbabwe today.
But, according to the UK, Zimbabwe is a-ok, so much so that it’s time to start deporting all those pesky `failed’ and `undocumented’ asylum seekers, people like Nyasha Musvingo. Musvingo fled Zimbabwe after her husband was beaten, tortured, and then died as a result. She knows she can’t return, because of `the situation’.
The UK would disagree. Last month, on March 14, the most senior immigration judge in the country, Mr. Justice Blake of the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), ruled that Zimbabwe is fine. The violence is over. People need not live in fear in Zimbabwe nor need they fear returning. So what if disappearances, indefinite detention, torture and violence have returned and are on the rise? Zimbabwe is `safe’ enough.
Likewise, in Haiti, everything is not just fine.
In Haiti, high levels of violence continue. Rape is epidemic. Over a million people remain homeless. Everyday, the so-called temporary camps seem to become more and more permanent. Cholera is on the rise. A recent study suggests that by November the number of cholera cases in Haiti will be close to 800,000, and the number of deaths will reach a little over 11,000. The crisis is worsening in Haiti.
The United States would disagree. This week, the United States government announced it has formally resumed deportations to Haiti. Haiti is `safe’ enough.
Cholera is on the rise in Zimbabwe as well.
In 2008 – 2009, in large part due to the intensification of political violence, Zimbabwe suffered a cholera epidemic that killed over 4000 people. Close to 100,000 cases were reported, and, according to a recent report, a rapid response, once the 400 cases were reported, would have reduced the number of cases by 34,900, or 40%, and the number of deaths by 1,695 deaths, also 40%. Why was nothing done, why were so many allowed to die? `The political situation.’
But that was then. This past Friday it was reported that over the last month, 36 people died of cholera in Manicaland and Masvingo provinces, in Zimbabwe. In the past week alone, 13 died, and the Ministry of Health notes that the death toll could be higher, as records are not up to date.
Sending people back to Zimbabwe is a death sentence. The United Kingdom would disagree … or would it? The Foreign and Commonwealth Office describes Zimbabwe: violence on the farms, in the streets, random and targeted; abominable prison conditions; torture; and a culture of impunity. The most recent Foreign and Commonwealth Office Human Rights report, from 2009, paints an equally grim picture.
The Department for International Development describes the state as `unstable’. 25% of Zimbabwean children are described as `vulnerable’. Most live in households, and neighborhoods, built of poverty, HIV/AIDS and State violence. Well over half live in households headed by single women or girls. Of special concern are children living alongside incarcerated mothers and pregnant and breastfeeding women.
All of these statements come from United Kingdom government websites. And yet, somehow, Zimbabwe is now `safe enough’ for asylum seekers to return to.
Sending people back to Haiti is a death sentence. The United States would disagree … or would it? This past week the US State Department released its 2010 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Haiti? “Alarming increases of sexual violence” against women and girls. Alarming increases of domestic violence. No effective agency to deal with sexual or domestic violence, and not much of a plan to do so. “Corrupt judges often release suspects for domestic violence and rape.” Often. LGBT persons face constant violence. The prisons are a hotspot for violence, torture, cholera, and worse.
All of this comes from the US State Department.
If the government of the United Kingdom finds Zimbabwe perilous and the government of the United States finds Haiti perilous, how is it possible in the same breath to determine that Zimbabwe and Haiti are `safe’? In both Haiti and Zimbabwe, the prisons are a nightmare. Deportees to both countries typically `return’ through an extended stay in prison. In both Haiti and Zimbabwe, cholera is on the rise, violence is epidemic, violence against women and girls is more than epidemic, and not only sexual violence.
Sending asylum seekers and prisoners to Zimbabwe and to Haiti is a death sentence. Whether the individual persons live or die matters … terribly. At the same time, the political economy of this moment is that the lives of Zimbabweans and of Haitians to the so-called democracies of the world are of no value. If you are Haitian, if you are Zimbabwean, you must just go. If you die, you die. If you live, perhaps you were fortunate, perhaps not. Either way, you are no longer `our problem’. Your country is `safe enough’. Just go.
(Photo Credit: http://www.marieclaire.co.uk)
Filed Under: General Tagged With: asylum seekers, cholera, Dan Moshenberg, deportations, Haiti, Harare, Haunts, homeless, IDP, LGBT, Manicaland, Masvingo, Nyasha Musvingo, peace, police, prison, rape, Robert Bly, sexual violence, The Teeth-Mother Naked at Last, United Kingdom, United States, violence, violence against women, Zimbabwe
State sexual violence haunts the world
March 28, 2011 by Dan Moshenberg 1 Comment
Eman Al Obeidy burst into a hotel dining room in Tripoli, Libya, on Saturday, and struggled to tell the story of how she’d been raped and beaten, for two days, by Qaddafi’s forces. She was then attacked, in the hotel dining room, and carried out. Journalists present were disturbed, as much by the treatment they witnessed as by Al Obeidy’s account. The latest report suggests that she is being held hostage at Qaddafi’s compound in Tripoli.
Salwa al-Housiny Gouda was one of the proud citizens of Tahrir Square, in Cairo. She was also one of seventeen women, arrested by the Egyptian army, imprisoned, tortured, stripped and subjected to a `virginity test.’
These women’s stories are critical to any understanding of the ongoing struggles in particular places, such as Libya, such as Egypt. They are also part of the treatment of women in prisons around the globe. There are more prisons and jails now then ever before, and women are the fastest growing prison population, globally and in many regions of the world. Across the world, nation states rigorously refuse to address sexual violence. At the same time, across the world, nation states build more prisons in which sexual violence against women intensifies and spreads.
From the United States to Jamaica to South Africa and beyond, rape kits sit unprocessed for months, some times years. In the United States, many cities, such as Los Angeles and Chicago, have failed to process rape kits in a timely manner … if at all. When called to task for the failure, the administrations stonewall or, if forced to reform, drag their feet. Illinois just this past week passed a law “that will force law agencies to submit DNA evidence for testing.” They had to pass a law to make agencies process DNA. In New Jersey, also last week, the State legislature passed a law banning the practice of charging rape victims for the cost of processing the rape kits.
In Jamaica, rape survivors wait an average of two years for their attackers’ cases to be heard. In South Africa, the State has failed to adequately educate police about the appropriate procedures to follow in cases of sexual violence. Sometimes the training is a pro forma run through, with little follow up or evaluation. More often, there’s no training at all.
This is the state of the world. This state is made most manifest in the asylum and immigrant detentions centers. When the United Kingdom set up its fast track asylum processes, it did so with complete disregard for the women asylum seekers who are fleeing sexual violence. For example, one woman applied for asylum. She was part of a dissident movement in Angola, had been tortured, raped, and suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome, among other mental issues. The first official to hear her case, in 2008, decided she was `lying’. She was detained at Yarl’s Wood, despite compelling evidence of both torture and mental illness. All part of the system.
This is just one of many such tales. The asylum system has been described as “simply not equipped to handle rape, slavery, the threat of ‘honor killings,’ or other complex claims”. The simplicity of being unequipped is this: the state chooses not to equip, because women, and especially women of color, don’t matter.
At the same time, women prisoners suffer sexual violence at the hands of prison staff. Jan Lastocy is a woman prisoner in the United States, and hers is a typical story. She was raped, repeatedly, by a corrections officer. The warden made it clear that any reports of problems tagged the prisoner as a troublemaker. Lastocy was a few months from release. For seven months, three or four times a week, the prison guard raped Jan Lastocy. Terrified and desperate, she kept her silence. Upon release, she reported the assaults, and now suffers a sense of great and intense guilt for her silence. According to recent US government studies, the vast majority of sexual violence committed in prisons is committed by the staff.
Prison rape is a human rights crisis in the United States today. It is a crisis in juvenile prisons. It is a crisis in women’s prisons across the globe. This crisis is not accidental nor is it exceptional. It is the crisis of predictable consequence. Rape today is being used in Libya as a weapon. That is terrible. Rape has been used, across the globe, as a tool in the construction of so-called criminal justice systems, in the construction of more prisons with more women prisoners. That too is terrible, and to continue to claim shock and surprise at the use of rape is unacceptable. State sexual violence haunts the world.
(Photo Credit: suzeeinthecity/ Mira Shihadeh and El Zeft)
Filed Under: General Tagged With: Chicago, Dan Moshenberg, Egypt, Eman Al Obeidy, Fast Track Asylum System, Haunts, Jamaica, Jan Lastocy, Liby, Los Angeles, mental illness, New Jersey, prison, rape, rape kits, Salwa al-Housiny Gouda, sexual violence, South Africa, torture, trauma, United Kingdom, United States, Yarl's Wood
Black women prisoners haunt International Women’s Day
March 8, 2011 by Dan Moshenberg 2 Comments
BobbyLee Worm
Stacey Lannert grew up in the middle of the United States, in Missouri. Her father sexually abused her, starting when she was eight years old. On July 5, 1990, at the age of 18, Lannert walked into her father’s bedroom and shot him, twice, killing him. The `final straw’ was her father raping her younger sister. Two years later, in December 1992, Lannert was sentenced to life in prison without parole. In January 2009, at the age of 36, Stacey Lannert was released, thanks to the outgoing Missouri governor, Matt Blunt, who commuted her sentence: “After eighteen years, I was allowed to be Stacey Ann Lannert instead of Offender #85704. I’ll never completely shed the number, but I did start over.”
Wilbertine Berkley would like to start over as well, but the State of Florida has other plans.
In the United States, over five million people cannot vote because of past criminal offenses. One million of those people live in Florida. In one state alone, a million people who have served their time are disenfranchised. Of that million, almost 300,000 are African American.
Wilbertine Berkley is a Black woman in Florida who struggled with drug abuse, spent time in jail, turned her life around, joined a program, got clean, went to college, and gave back to the community in volunteer work. She was awarded the Presidential Volunteer Award. She did everything she was supposed to do and more, and the State response has been to `alienate’ her, to identify her as frozen in the past. Her good work counts for nothing.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, March 9, 2011, the Florida Board of Executive Clemency will vote on whether to make it even more difficult for former prisoners to be re-instated. The proposed change would include a five-year mandatory waiting period before being able to apply for `clemency’. Florida’s Attorney General sees this as a fight against entitlements: “I believe that every convicted felon must actively apply for the restoration of his or her civil rights and that there should be a mandatory waiting period before applying. The restoration of civil rights for any felon must be earned, it is not an entitlement…The burden of restoring civil rights should not fall on the shoulders of government, but rather it should rest on the individual whose actions resulted in those rights being taken in the first place.”
Wilbertine Berkley wants and deserves respect for who she is today, for who she has become, for what she has made of herself and of her world. She made a mistake. She worked hard. She paid her debt.
But for Black women, the debt of incarceration is the gift that keeps on giving.
Ask BobbyLee Worm. BobbyLee Worm is a 24 year old aboriginal woman prisoner in the Fraser Valley Institution, a Canadian federal prison that describes itself as “a multi-level facility for women…. Programs focus on the particular needs of women offenders, including Aboriginal inmates and those with psychological problems or learning disabilities.”
One of these particular programs is called Management Protocol.
Management Protocol is “a special program for handling women prisoners who have been involved in a major violent incident or threat of incident while in the system.” Established in 2005, seven women prisoners have been on Management Protocol. All seven have been aboriginal women.
Management Protocol is open ended, unrestricted solitary confinement. Twenty- three hours a day for as long as the prison deems `adequate’ and `necessary.’ How does one leave Management Protocol? One earns one’s way out. How does one earn? What are the wages? No one knows.
BobbyLee Worm entered prison June 7, 2006. She is a first time offender, sentenced to six years, four months. She has spent the majority of her time in segregation, paying off the debt of years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse and trauma. For Black women, the debt of incarceration is the gift that keeps on giving.
These stories are typical of the conditions of women, and girl, prisoners around the world. Girls whose only `crime’ is being the daughters of asylum seekers, or of being born into oppressive communities, are stuck into detention centers, such as the Inverbrackie Detention Center in Australia. Once there, they suffer nightmares, turn violent, and refuse to eat. What is their crime, what is the debt to society that must be paid? They were born in Iran, they sailed to Australia.
Around the world, women of color, Black women, and their daughters, sit in prisons. Their debt grows incrementally by the second. Their numbers grow incrementally by the day. Today is March 8, 2011, International Women’s Day. These women prisoners haunt International Women’s Day.
(Photo Credit: British Columbia Civil Liberties Association)
Filed Under: General Tagged With: asylum, asylum seekers, Australia, Black women prisoners, BobbyLee Worm, Canada, child prisoners, Dan Moshenberg, debt, disenfranchisement, Florida, Fraser Valley Institution, Haunts, International Women's Day, Inverbrackie Detention Center, Iran, Management Protocol, prison, segregation, sexual violence, solitary confinement, Stacey Lannert, United States, vote, Wilbertine Berkley, women prisoners
Protection: when the powerful offer protection, women know
January 23, 2010 by Dan Moshenberg 1 Comment
The day after Obama won the Presidential election, The New York Times wrote that Obama won a decisive victory because “he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens”. At the time, I wrote that protection was the wrong goal, that from India to Haiti to Zimbabwe to the Democratic Republic of Congo to Ciudad Juárez, and the Mexico-US borderlands more generally, the powerful offer protection to those they call citizens, and ignore women’s demands for democratic, full and mutual engagement, for the right and capacity to dream and love in public as well as in private. The powerful offer protection as a means to ignore women.
That was November 2009. It’s January 2010, time to consider, again, protection. Not the protection that follows mass devastation, such as in Haiti. Nor the protection that follows extreme violence, as with the massacre near Jos, Nigeria. Nor the protection of legislative and other forms of hate campaigns, as in the current anti-gay Bill in Uganda, where we are all being protected from the threat and scourge of same-sex love and sexuality.
Instead, consider two linked national – global moments in which the powerful few claim to offer the gift of protection to the citizens of the nation.
The World Cup is coming to South Africa. Across the country, “the question of how to deal with sex workers grows louder”. What exactly is the problem, the to-deal-with, with sex workers? Because sex work is illegal, the issues of health and safety for both clientele and workers remain insoluble, and the rights and well being of the sex workers remain distant: “Sex work is illegal in South Africa. Cape Town-based Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT), has been campaigning to decriminalize sex work for the past 12 years, said spokeswoman Vivienne Lalu. Rights activists say legalizing sex work would protect the workers and their clients from HIV and abuse; there are moves afoot to review the Sexual Offences Act. But, Lalu says, `We are still some years away.’”
Legalizing sex work would protect the workers, not because the law, given by the powerful, would afford protection, but because the entire issue would move from the realm of sexuality to that of workers. Once sex work in South Africa, as anywhere, is legalized, sex workers can unionize, can create their own formal, autonomous, sanctioned spaces, alliances, affiliations. Workers, and especially women workers, don’t seek protection. They demand the right to association. They demand respect for the dignity of their individual and collective labor. That is the reason that the lead up to the World Cup in South Africa has been marked by so many protests. Across South Africa, the poors, largely women, have rejected the promise and offer of protection, in the form of forced removals for their own good, and instead have called for housing, public services, education, and health care.
The Olympics are coming to Canada, and so Canada, British Columbia in particular, anticipates an increase in sexual assaults during the 2010 Olympics, and, of course, all the money has been spent on `security’. The buildings and international `visitors’ must be protected.
But British Columbia had enough money recently to outsource welfare-to-work to a company called WCG International HR Solution. WCG is a subsidiary of Providence Service Corporation, based in Tucson, Arizona. WCG billed the government for `no-shows’. This is business as usual. When you outsource `helping’, women and children are the first casualties. This is not new information. It’s been available to British Columbians since at least 2005, when Policies of Exclusion, Poverty & Health appeared, sharing stories of 21 women who did not seek protection but rather struggled and organized for change. Instead of change, they got the Olympics and the gift of protection: evictions, clinic closures, increased police presence.
When the promise of protection comes from the powerful, it is always fatal, first to women and children, then to everyone and every thing else. Women know the pitfalls of powerful protection. Women know, in their bodies, the economies of extraction, theft, exploitation and abuse. Change from below seeks material equality, space, time, and it begins and ends with women. Protection from the powerful is what it always has been, an insurance policy forced upon people by extortionists.
(Image Credit: http://sites.psu.edu/jld5710/2013/02/03/cartoons-are-a-powerful-medium/)
Filed Under: General Tagged With: Canada, Dan Moshenberg, Olympics, protection, sex workers, sexual violence, South Africa, SWEAT, Vivienne Lalu, World Cup
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TASD to hold musical auditions for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
In the rich history of Tyrone Area School District’s music and drama program, the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat has never been performed. All that is about to change with the upcoming auditions for the musical which are scheduled to be held Monday, February 10 and Tuesday, February 11 at 6 p.m. in the high school auditorium. Students in grades six through twelve are welcome to audition. Anyone interested should fill out an application located in M-1 in the music suite at the high school and have a song ready to perform for auditions that showcases their vocal ability.
“It was originally written for a church pageant and ran about 20 minutes,” said Cathy Young, TASD teacher and musical director and producer of the production. “Over the years it’s just gotten bigger and bigger, and now it’s a huge show.”
The lyrics to the musical were written by Tim Rice, and the music was composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber. This famous duo also wrote such productions as Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. The musical consists of two acts, a cast of 17 men, one narrator, one woman, a chorus, 17 songs and instrumentation.
“We have a lot of really good kids we could feature in this musical,” added Young. “You look to see what would fit these kids. I can’t pick a musical and fit them into it. It doesn’t work that way. It seems like we have a lot of good guys and a great chorus.”
The plot of the musical is taken from a biblical story. Joseph is the favorite son in the family, and his brothers get jealous of him when their father gives Joseph a coat of many colors. The brothers sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt. However, he has the gift of interpreting dreams, so Joseph helps to save the country and comes into favor with the Pharaoh. He is reunited with his estranged brothers at the end.
In larger productions of the play, Michael Damian has starred in a Broadway version in New York City, and Donny Osmond played in the movie version.
“Practice will have to start right away. Then it’s everyday until the kids learn the music,” said Young of what happens after auditions. “Karen Volpe, a person who works with the Altoona Community Theater and works for the Blair County Arts Foundation, is the person who blocks it all out. Reverend Kim MacGuiness-Green is new to the area and is the new drama advisor at the school and Ed Kuhstos is also helping out.”
Art teacher Mr. Stuck will build the sets, and art teachers Mr. Feather and Ms. Ferrari will also help with art designs for the production.
There are no speaking parts in the musical; the story is being told through songs. The audience will need to follow along from one song to the next to be able to figure out what is going on. This adds a unique feature to the student production.
“There’s all styles of music from reggae, to calypso, a disco scene and a cowboy song. It’s not just musical Broadway songs,” said Young.
The musical is scheduled to be performed in the high school auditorium on April 25-26.
“Tyrone has a huge tradition of musicals. It’s a way to get the kids involved in drama, and anybody that wants to get on stage gets to do it. It’s a really fun show too, and I’m really looking forward to working with the kids on it,” said Young.
← Drug sweep in Blair County results in arrest of New York man believed to be a major Tyrone supplier → Elizabeth K. Test
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The Lion King is a 1994 American animated musical adventure film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 32nd animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. The story takes place in a kingdom of lions in Africa, and was influenced by the biblical tales of Joseph and Moses and the Shakespearean play Hamlet. The film was produced during a period known as the Disney Renaissance. The Lion King was directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, produced by Don Hahn, and has a screenplay credited to Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton. Its songs were written by composer Elton John and lyricist Tim Rice, with an original score by Hans Zimmer. The film features a large ensemble voice cast led by Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons, James Earl Jones, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Moira Kelly and Nathan Lane. The Lion King tells the story of Simba, a young lion who is to succeed his father, Mufasa, as king; however, after Simba's uncle Scar murders Mufasa, Simba is fooled into thinking he was responsible and flees into exile in shame and despair. Upon maturation living with two wastrels, Simba is given some valuable perspective from his friend, Nala, and his shaman, Rafiki, before returning to challenge Scar to end his tyranny.
Rob Minkoff
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Memo: The Hundred Year Titan
The direct-to-consumer (DTC) era has yet to influence how we consume big budget, blockbuster films. To watch the latest Marvel Studios production, consumers still have to endure the trip to the movie theater, eat the expensive popcorn, and pay the exorbitant prices for soft drinks. In a recent conversation with the co-founder of AfterMarq and Executive Member Vincenzo Landino, I learned why the DTC era was coming to big budget film.
A day-and-date release combines theatrical release with a video-on-demand (VOD) offering while the film is screening in the theaters. The length of this window is typically 60 days, and there is a notable disparity in the price by venue. According to an Indiewire article from 2015, traditional VOD rental costs a consumer around 50% of the price of the theatrical showing. Traditional studios make more money on theatrical releases than VOD releases. Non-traditional studios (Amazon, Netflix) do the same, except their economics are reversed. Streaming is more profitable for them than theatrical release (though brick and mortar releases unlock awards season potential). We will see on occasion. Some recent examples include Amazon’s award-winning Manchester by the Sea or Netflix’s Roma.
Both Manchester and Roma are films produced by a streaming service. The films were provided a day-and-date release to improve their chances in award season. But we’ve yet to see a traditional film studio (Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century-Fox, Sony, Universal Pictures, United Artists, Warner Brothers Pictures, or MGM) lean into a day-and-date release for a mainstream film. There is a significant reason for this. None of the major studios of the time controlled the exhibition side between 1948 and today. Only Walt Disney’s Studios is in position to benefit from end-to-end control.
The market power of the studios is less than it was [in the 1940s]. Per se offenses like price fixing and market allocation are still illegal. But other horizontal arrangements between competitors or vertical arrangements between companies and their partners are more likely to be upheld today.
Michael Carrier, an antitrust expert at Rutgers Law School
Long before the modern DTC era, movie studios did control the product from production to the theater house. This changed in 1948. The Paramount case, and its resulting decrees, changed the motion picture industry for decades. Between 1945 and 1948, the Supreme Court mandated a separation between film distribution and exhibition by requiring that the major studios divest distribution or their theaters. It was a near-unanimous decision to divest in the theaters and not divest their distribution businesses.
Understanding the 1948 Paramount Decrees
When Netflix announced to shareholders that players like Fortnite gave executives more anxiety than rivals like Hulu, YouTube or HBO, they explained with this:
Our growth is based on how good our experience is, compared to all the other screen time experiences from which consumers choose.
This is an echo of a sentiment Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, told Fast Company in 2017 in an article titled Sleep Is Our Competition:
It’s 8:00 in the evening, you’re next to your TV–which remote control do you pick up: PlayStation remote? TV remote? Or do you turn Netflix on?
Understanding Paramount Decrees: research and breakdown by 2PM contributor Tracey Wallace.
It makes sense that Netflix views Fortnite as a primary competitor. For younger people, two years ago, the answer to Hastings’ 2017 question would have been Netflix. Now, that’s being challenged by gaming platforms or by subscription services like MoviePass or AMC Stubs A-List. While MoviePass remains on the decline, thanks to poor unit economics, AMC’s native service boasts a reported 600,000+ subscribers paying at least $19.95 per month. Services like AMC’s are bridging streaming media prices and the in-theater premiere experience.
Of course, Netflix has its own premieres like the acclaimed Bird Box or Bandersnatch or Outlaw King. Each featured a Hollywood-esque budget and at least one A-lister.
Netflix finished up 2018 with 139 subscriptions worldwide, up by 29 million from the beginning of the year. The incredible subscription growth clearly justifies hiking membership prices in the US. Netflix reported $4.19 billion in revenue, just under international forecasts of $4.21 billion.
Netflix is experiencing a renaissance in audience growth and fanfare. What is stopping Netflix from implementing a direct to consumer approach to in-home blockbuster films? The The Paramount Decree, a 1948 antitrust law, prevents it.
In this landmark US Supreme Court case, it was determined that movie studios could not own their own theaters or grant exclusive rights to preferred theaters. At the time (1945), film studios like Paramount owned – either partially or outright – 17% of the theaters in the country. This accounted for 45% of American commercial film revenue in 1945. The 1948 decision caused a massive recession in movie studio revenues, lasting more than two-and-a-half decades. In 1972, the release of The Godfather became the first modern blockbuster and the first project to increase movie studio revenue to pre-Paramount Decree levels.
The ruling is also considered a bedrock of antitrust law and is often cited in cases where issues of vertical integration play a prominent role in redistricting fair trade. But in 2019, Netflix boasts 139 million subscribers worldwide and produces a handful of their own minor premieres, turning our living rooms into intimate cinemas. Fortunately for Netflix, the Department of Justice recently announced that it would review the 1948 decree that prohibited Hollywood studios from pursuing a DTC approach to owning and operating theaters.
The review of the 1948 antitrust ruling, and its potential reversal, would give major distributors, exhibitionists, and streaming service providers – like Netflix or Disney – real power to run more like direct-to-consumer entertainment brands. The revision of the ruling would allow Netflix to seek partnerships with companies like AMC Theaters (or the aforementioned studios) to co-brand in-theater and in-app premieres.
It’s unlikely that Netflix and AMC Theaters will partner when the time comes, but the line in the sand is marked deeply. Once those antitrust laws expire, these two companies stand to gain a lot from cooperating with studios. But not the most.
The 100 year titan in waiting
Netflix is the dominant streaming service with over 139 million paying customers. AMC Theaters has the best prospects in all the cinema-side of the film industrial complex. The company has successfully navigated the Moviepass economy by instituting its own growing movie-watching program ($19.95 / month). While heavily dependent on revenue driven by concessions and alcohol, the membership program grew to over 600,000 users in its first year. Its dependence on external revenue (concessions) is the program’s flaw.
While it is fun to envision a world where Netflix offers an AMC Premiere package in which at-home consumers pay $50 for the rights to rent a big budget blockbuster on its opening day, AMC remains the middle man. According to Matthew Ball, an analyst and former Head of Strategy for Amazon Studios:
[AMC] owes 55-67% per ticket [to distributors], with floors. [Concessions] are a big priority because of confection economics. Like gym memberships, these subscriptions only work if predicted use is <x%.
According to CNBC: in the past year, Disney has lost nearly $1 billion in its streaming business between its investment in Hulu and its work with BAMtech, the technology behind ESPN+. But DOJ’s reversal of the 1948 decree could change everything for Walt Disney Studios, a company that began just 25 years before the 1948 decision. And was but a blip on the Hollywood radar, at the time.
Disney is hoping that, over time, millions of paying customers will subscribe to Disney+ for its new original content and library of Disney movies and TV shows. Pricing hasn’t been disclosed. Netflix, which announced its quarterly earnings on Thursday, has 139 million global subscribers and just informed them that it’s raising prices by 13 percent to 18 percent.
Alex Sherman for CNBC
Disney is best suited for the DTC era. There is organic demand, loyalty, and the mechanisms to deliver it to your doorsteps. When the company announced an end to its streaming deal with Netflix, the writing was on the wall. The Disney+ product is slated to be the exclusive home for Disney films, television projects, and other original programming. According to Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO, the streaming service is the company’s priority in 2019-2020. He’s also assured the press that major releases (Marvel Studios, Star Wars etc.) will not go straight to the streaming service – though with time, even that will change.
But through the lens of the Paramount Decrees being overturned, it’s smart to consider the implications of Iger’s words vs. Disney’s impending actions. When the US Department of Justice reviews and amends these decrees, Disney will have the power to upcharge for a blockbuster premiere streamed into your home. And they will. Disney will be able to command a fee that is more lucrative than traditional day-and-date releases and at margins far greater than their streaming competitors (Netflix), marketplace vendors (Apple’s iTunes), or cinema competitors (AMC Theaters). Before Walt Disney Studios’ 100th anniversary, you will be able to rent a blockbuster premiere through your Disney app. With respect to the overturning of the Paramount Decrees of 1948, this is Walt Disney’s end game.
Report by Web Smith and Tracey Wallace | About 2PM
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What Happened to Phil Connors After ‘Groundhog Day,’ According To Its Writer
We’re very lucky we never had to endure a Groundhog Day sequel. The massive success of the movie should have made one inevitable. Heck, the movie’s original twist ending would have given you the perfect premise for another film. For a variety of reasons, including the fact that director Harold Ramis and star Bill Murray had a falling out after the making of Groundhog Day, it never happened. That’s for the best. No perfect film should be dragged down by an inferior carbon copy, especially one about throwing off the shackles of greed and egomania and embracing your purest, best self. (There is a tangential video game sequel, for those who are interested.)
Still, it’s perfectly sensible to wonder what happened to Phil Connors after his years of endless Groundhog Days. Phil experienced thousands of February 2nds, learned to be a better man, then finally woke up on February 3. Did he maintain his perspective on the world once he didn’t know what’s going to happen at every waking moment? Or did he relapse into self-absorption and narcissism?
Although he never made an official sequel, Groundhog Day creator and co-writer Danny Rubin did reveal what happened to Phil after the film. A few years ago on his personal blog, he described Phil’s journey beyond Punxsutawney:
He had stayed on to live in that town for a while, but after multiple lifetimes in perpetual winter, Phil wanted to go to the beach. And he wanted to see more of the world, too, experience the smells and tastes, the peoples and the cultures. He played and laughed and learned and suffered, he volunteered, he started businesses. He learned to sail and spent years going every place he had ever read about, which was pretty much every place there was.
According to Rubin, Phil eventually settled “in a beautiful corner of the Sangre de Christo Mountains in New Mexico” after realizing “being around people wasn’t as desirable as spending time alone with his thoughts and the simple things he wanted to keep around him.” Interestingly, Phil’s love interest in Groundhog Day, Rita, is never mentioned by name in this entire post; it appears that they broke up somewhere along the way.
Phil did receive guests at his home in the mountains, where he fielded questions like “How many days were you stuck in the time loop?” and “What’s Bill Murray really like?” He would try to answer them as best he could but, (and here Rubin is quoting “Phil”) “The truth is most people are looking for answers from someone who can just tell them and get it over with.”
So there you have it: Phil Connors, reluctant New Mexican guru. Sounds about right.
Gallery — The Best Movies of 1990:
Source: What Happened to Phil Connors After ‘Groundhog Day,’ According To Its Writer
Filed Under: Bill Murray, Groundhog Day, Harold Ramis
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THE JOURNAL COMPANY, Publisher
EIGHTH, M'GEE AND OAK STREETS.
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MEN WHO
MADE KC
BLIND WOMAN WAITED
AT DEPOT IN VAIN.
Hostess Detained by Accident -- Mrs.
Aldrich Writes Literature
for the Blind.
Mrs. Clara Aldrich, totally blind and a stranger in Kansas City, arrived at the Union depot last night from Joliet, Ill. She was expecting friends to meet her at the station, but was disappointed. She told Mrs. Ollie Everingham, matron at the depot, that Mrs. O. P. Blatchley of 220 South Ash street, in Kansas City, Kas., had promised to meet her. The matron called the Blatchley home over the telephone and found that Mrs. Blatchley had fallen on the ice near her home yesterday morning and received injuries which confined her to bed. The matron sent Mrs. Aldrich to the Young Women's Christian Association boarding house for the night.
Dr. O. P. Blatchley said last night that his wife's parents were friends of the parents of Mrs. Aldrich, and that she had arranged to locate her in Kansas City, Kas. Dr. Blatchley said that Mrs. Aldrich for many years has been engaged in writing religious literature for students in the blind schools over the country.
Mrs. Blatchley suffered a dislocated left shoulder and a ruptured artery over her left eye in her fall yesterday.
Labels: accident, depot matron, doctors, Kansas City Kas, telephone, Union depot, visitors, visual impairment, YWCA
COLONEL SWOPE LEFT AN
ESTATE OF $3,000,000.
ENTIRE INSTRUMENT WRITTEN
IN HIS OWN HAND JUNE 15, '05.
Full Text of the Paper as Filed in
Independence Shows the Wide
Extent of Kansas City's
Benefactor's Holdings.
An estate of $3,000,000, by the provisions of the will filed yesterday in the Independence division of the probate court was left by Colonel Thomas H. Swope to his near relatives, friends and to charity. The greater part of his property is bequeathed direct to his blood relations. City lots left to the Humane Society is the largest gift to charity.
The will was filed for probate by J. G. Paxton, an attorney of Independence, Mo., who framed it June 17, 1905. Mr. Paxton since has been its custodian. In filing the will, Mr. Paxton was accompanied by Stuart S. Fleming, Mr. Swope's nephew, who lives in Maury county, Tenn.
Colonel Swope named Mr. Paxton, Mr. Fleming and James M. Hunton of Independence his executors, and requested that they be allowed to serve without bond. George B. Harrison, Arthur F. Day and F. T. Childs, all of whom live here, signed as witnesses. The three men were present yesterday morning in court to attest their signatures.
A "HOLOGRAPHIC WILL."
The instrument states that "this is my holographic will." This is to indicate that it was written by Col. Swope. There were no changes in the instrument as written by him.
The bequests to charity are as follows: To Humane Society, two lots in Turner Company's addition; to Park College, two lots in West Kansas addition; to the Women's Christian Association, $10,000 cash; to Young Women's Christian Association, $10,000 cash; to Young Men's Christian Association, $10,000 cash; to the Provident Association, $25,000 cash.
After providing for charity and making specific bequests to his near relatives and friends, the balance is left to his nephews and nieces, to be divided share alike.
S. W. Spangler, attorney for Mr. Swope, has prepared a conservative estimate of the values of some of the real estate bequests made in the will. The values are as follows:
One-half of the two story building at 1017-1019 Main street, left to Ella J. Plunket, $75,000; the other half of the same property, left to Gertrude Plunket, $75,000; the undivided half of lots Nos. 10 and 12 on East Fourth street, left to Felix Swope, $13,250; the northeast corner of Hickory and Joy streets, now occupied by the John Deere Plow Company's warehouse, left to James Hunton, $40,000; the northeast corner of Twelfth and Walnut streets, 85-115 feet, left to Margaret Swope's five unmarried children, $400,000; 1112-1114 Walnut street, left to the same children, $190,000; 916-918 1/2 Main street, to the same children, $120,000; the northwest corner of Mulberry and Eleventh streets, to the same five children, $50,000; the southeast corner of Twelfth and Campbell streets, left to the five children, $60,000; 915 Walnut street, left to Frances Swope, $87,500; 120 acres, to the south half of the ground occupied by the Evanston Golf Club, to Thomas H. Swope, Jr., $240,000; the eight-story building at the southeast corner of Eleventh street and Grand avenue, to his nine nephews and nieces, $400,000.
Labels: charity, circuit court, Evanston Golf Club, Humane Society, Independence, probate, real estate, Swope Mystery, Thomas Swope, YMCA, YWCA
SWOPE PROVIDED FOR
AGED, POOR AND NEEDY.
ORPHAN'S HOME AND CHILD-
REN'S OUTINGS REMEMBERED.
Will Gives $25,000 to Provident As-
sociation and Contains Other
Charitable Bequests,
PUBLIC BEQUESTS BY COLONEL SWOPE:
To the Humane Society of Kansas City, Mo., I give, grant, devise and bequeath in trust forever lots 1 and 2 in clock 43 of Turner & Co.'s addition to Kansas City, Mo., the proceeds of the rental thereof to be used by said Humane Society in the entertainment of children in Swope park, near Kansas City, annually, forever.
To Park College, situated in Platte county, Missouri, I give lots 15 and 16 in block 3, West Kansas addition No 2 to Kansas city, Mo.
To the Women's Christian association I give the sum of $10,000.
To the Young Women's Christian Association of Kansas City, Mo., I give the sum of $10,000.
To the Young Men's Christian Association of Kansas City, Mo., I give $10,000.
To the Provident Association of Kansas City, Mo., I give the sum of $25,000 to be known as the "Swope Fund," and to be used for the benefit of the poor and needy of Kansas City, Mo.
Before the body of Colonel Thomas H. Swope was removed from the family home in Independence, Mo., yesterday afternoon to be brought to this city to lie in state in the rotunda of the public library building, J. G. Paxton, an attorney who had possession of the philanthropist's will, gave out the public bequests mentioned therein. They are enumerated above.
"It was thought befitting," he said, "that bequests made to public institutions and to charity should be published before the funeral. The complete will, enumerating private as well as public bequests, will be filed for probate Saturday."
The lots left to the Humane society are situated at the southeast corner of Union avenue and Mulberry street in the West Bottoms. The corner lot is occupied by the Union Avenue Bank of Commerce. Good rentals are secured from the two buildings of the property.
"The bequest of Colonel Swope to the Humane Society is not a surprise to me," said E. R. Weeks, president of the society last night. "Colonel Swope had a life membership in the society and for several years has been its first vice president. He has been identified with the work for more than twenty-five years and was our closest friend.
WROTE PORTION OF WILL.
"Several years ago Colonel Swope sent for me to come to his office. When I arrived he told me that he intended to remember the society in his will which he intended writing himself. At his suggestion I wrote that portion of his will which he later copied. That is why it is no surprise. There is a provision regarding this bequest to the effect that the society may sell this property at any time it deem necessary or advisable."
The property left to Park college, Parkville, Mo., also is situated in the West Bottoms and is said to pay a good annual rental.
The Women's Christian Association, to which Colonel Swope left $10,000, has charge of hte management and maintenance of the Gillis Orphan's Home and the Armour Memorial Home for Aged Couples, Twenty-third street and Tracy avenue. Colonel Swope gave the land on which the orphanage is built. It is a large tract and later Mrs. F. B. Armour built the home for aged couples which bears her name. Sometimes it is known as the Margaret Klock home, named for Mrs. Armour's sister.
"We had hoped that we might be remembered in a small way," said Mrs. P. D. Ridenhour, acting president of the Women's Christian Association, when informed of the $10,000 bequest. "But this comes to us as a most pleasant surprise, and I might say that it comes at a time when we need it most. We had not expected anything so handsome as our benefactor has given us and to express our thanks would be the smallest way in which we can show our gratitude. In honor of his memory we will endeavor to do the greatest good with what he has left us.
Y. W. C. A. GIRLS REJOICE.
"Have you heard of the $10,000 left the Y. W. C. A. by Colonel Swope?" a young woman at the association rooms was asked over the telephone last night.
"Humph," she replied quickly, "he gave us $50,000."
"But this is over and above the $50,000," she was informed. "This is a bequest in his will."
"Oh, goody, gracious, goodness, isn't that just scrumptiously grand," she cried, dropping the telephone to fairly scream the glad news to other young women present. "Won't we have a dandy home, now, God bless him."
At that moment someone began a song of praise in honor of the welcome news. The telephone was forgotten.
"This certainly comes to us as a glad surprise," said Miss Nettie E. Trimble, secretary for the Y. W. C. A.
"Colonel Swope was so good to us when we were struggling for our new building that we had no idea of getting a bequest from his will. Years ago when the building of a home for the Y. W. C. A. was mentioned, he said he wanted to have a part in it. While committees were out working he sent us $25,000 unsolicited. Toward the close, when it looked as if we would not reach the $300,000 mark by the time set, he sent for me and asked how much we lacked. When told that we needed $22,000 to complete the figure he promptly gave us $25,000, making a total of $50,000 which he gave toward our new home.
AN ENDOWMENT FUND.
"As we have plenty of money to complete our home it is possible that Colonel Swope's bequest of $10,000 will be made a nucleus for an endowment fund to carry on industrial and Bible work. The industrial department never has been self sustaining and teachers for both have to be hired and paid. That the name of Colonel Swope will forever remain dear to the members of the Y. W. C. A. goes without saying."
Henry M. Beardsley, president of the Y. M. C. A. was out of the city and James. B. Welsh, a member of the board of directors, was notified of the bequest of $10,000 to that association.
"Good, good," he cried, "that comes to us at a time when we need it most. We have been in pretty hard straits to complete our new building and this most gracious gift will put us on our feet under full sail. The association, no doubt, will take appropriate action when notified officially of the bequest. I will sleep better tonight and so will many others."
Labels: attorney, charity, Humane Society, orphans, Parkville, probate, real estate, Thomas Swope, West bottoms, YMCA, YWCA
Octoberr 4, 1909
GIFTS TO CITY AND OTHERS.
Swope Park But One of His Contributions.
During his lifetime, Colonel Swope did much for the city in which he amassed his fortune. He gave to the city Swope park, 1,354 acres of land valued at $1,000 per acre. This beautiful tract of land has been converted into one of the finest natural recreation grounds in the Middle West, and it gave the donor much pleasure to see it appreciated as it is.
The land for the new city hospital at Twenty-third and Locust was given to the city by Colonel Swope.
He gave the Young Women's Christian Association $50,000 for its building fund. To the Young Men's Christian Association he gave $5,000.
He gave the ground for the Home for the Aged at Thirty-first and Locust. He recently gave the Franklin Institute, a charitable organization at 1901 McGee street, $50,000 to be used in building a new home, on the condition that the organization raise another $50,000 to add to it.
Many other smaller donations were made toward the work of extending charity to the needy and afflicted and it is said that never did he refuse to heed a plea for funds to conduct such work.
Colonel Swope devoted his time and energy almost entirely to his business. He was at his office early and late. He had been absent from his office but a few days in four or five years until he was taken ill September 2. On that day he was at his office the last time, but he directed his affairs from his sick room and took the same keen interest in the transaction of his business.
HELPED HIS OLD SCHOOL.
The first gift known to have made by the philanthropist was for the sum of $1,000 to the Presbyterian church in Danville, Ky., where he had worshiped so long as a student at Center college. Being a graduate of the famous old institution, Colonel Swope never lost interest in his alma mater, and learning that the school needed a library he made it possible for the old college to obtain one. He offered to give $25,000 to the school for the purpose if another $25,000 was raised. On March 15, 1902, the authorities of the school notified him that the required amount had been subscribed, and he sent his draft for $25,000. The name of the donor had not before been given, as he had requested that it only be given out that an alumnus had offered the money.
Labels: charity, general hospital, Locust street, Swope park, Thirty-first street, Thomas Swope, Twenty-third street, YMCA, YWCA
Y. W. C. A. GIRLS GUESTS
OF PROMINENT BANKER.
GIVEN A RIDE OVER BOULE-
VARDS IN HIS MOTOR CAR.
Regular Daily Programme Is Being
Carried Out by Devoted Father at
Daughter's Request -- Moth-
ers as Chaperones.
Three pretty young women, members of the Y. W. C. A., with one of their mothers as a chaperone, enjoyed a ride over the boulevards of Kansas City last evening in one of the most luxurious touring cars in the city. Their ride was through the generosity of a prominent banker of Kansas City who is greatly devoted to his daughter. She departed for a several weeks' visit North and when she left she asked that he arrange to take some of the Y. W. C. A. girls out in the machine.
Tonight another set of girls will be taken for a ride. This will continue each evening until the return of the daughter. The names and addresses of the young women to be taken on these rides will be furnished by Miss Ida Wilson, the desk secretary of the society.
That the idea will be a popular one and will be followed to a great extent by wealthy citizens who do not use their machines much while their families are away during the summer, developed last evening. Henry C. Lambert, cashier of the German American bank, said he thought that the idea should be taken up by the automobile club. "My machines can be placed at the disposal of such a cause at least once a week," said Mr. Lambert; " and I think there are probably a dozen other men in town who would loan their machines an evening or two a week."
"Some of our members have enjoyed the pleasure of auto rides while others have not," said Miss Ida Wilson yesterday afternoon. "Of course, to the majority of those who have not ridden in one of the big touring cars, such an invitation would hardly be refused. I believe that if other citizens hear about our banker friend they too will proffer their machines. If they do, I think we will have no trouble in furnishing the girls to ride. Our idea in this is, of course, to give the girl the full pleasure of the ride. The name and address of each girl and the chaperone will be given to the gentleman who drives the machine or his driver and the girls will be called for at their homes and returned there. In this way they will get the full pleasure of the auto ride.
"While we are not in any way soliciting automobiles for this purpose, I believe that as soon as this fact becomes known we will have several proffers of machines."
Labels: automobiles, banking, charity, organizations, women, YWCA
HUGH C. WARD DIES
APOPLEXY FOLLOWED HEAT
PROSTRATION A MONTH AGO.
Mrs. Ward and Judge PHilips at His
Bedside -- With Family Was
Spending Summer at Bass
Rooks Point, Mass.
HUGH C. WARD.
Hugh C. Ward, one of the most prominent attorneys of Kansas City, and a member of a pioneer family of Western Missouri, died from a stroke of apoplexy in New York yesterday morning.
An attack of heat prostration which he suffered in Chicago a month ago was one of the causes which led up to the death of Mr. Ward. He had never fully recovered from this attack, although his condition had improved sufficiently to permit him to continue his journey to New York, accompanied by his wife. With Mr. Ward at his death were Mrs. Ward, Judge John F. Philips and several relatives.
WESTERN TRIP FATAL.
Mr. Ward had taken a cottage for the summer at Bass Rocks Point, near Gloucester, Mass., and he left for that place in June with Mrs. Ward and their four children. Business matters required the presence of Mr. Ward in Kansas City and he came home for a few days in July. He left again for his summer home on July 13, but became ill as a result of becoming overheated in Chicago.
Mrs. Ward was called to his bedside by telegraph, and after a week his physician pronounced him able to travel. Mrs. Ward and her mother, Mrs. J. C. James, started for the East with Mr. Ward, but it was found necessary to make a stop in New York where Mr. Ward was taken to a hospital and given the attention of some of the best specialists of the city.
SUDDEN CHANGE FOR THE WORSE.
His improvement was slow, but a telegram from Mrs. Ward to her father, J. C. James, on Tuesday announced that he was much better. A sudden change occurred, however, and at 4 o'clock Saturday afternoon Mr. James received a message that Mr. Ward had grown much worse. Mr. James left at once for New York.
The announcement of the death of Mr. Ward came in a telegram from L. T. James, Mrs. Ward's uncle, who landed in New York yesterday morning from a European trip.
The funeral services and interment will occur in Kansas City, the details for these to be arranged as soon as Mr. James reaches New york.
In addition to his wife and the children, Hugh Campbell, Jr., James Crawford, Francis and John Harris, Mr. Ward is survived by his mother, the widow of Seth E. Ward, and his brother, John E. Ward.
LEGISLATION AND POLITICS.
Hugh C. Ward was born March 10, 1864 at Westport. His parents were Seth and Mary Frances Ward. Hugh was reared on the farm and received his elementary education at a private school in Westport and his collegiate education at William Jewell Collete, Liberty, Mo., and at Harvard University. He was graduated with honors from Harvard, a bachelor of arts, in 1886. He then entered the St. Louis Law School and in June, 1888, received his diploma. He then was admitted to the bar in Kansas City.
In recognition of his ability as a lawyer came in 1894 his appointment as receiver for the John J. Mastin & Co., banking business, on dissolution of partnership. The property involved consisted mostly of real estate, and amounted to more than $3,000,000.
Aside from his profession Mr. Ward was known in business circles as a director of the National Bank of Commerce, Commerce Trust Company, Kansas City Railway and Light Company, and of the Kansas City Home Telephone Company.
He was long influential in Democratic circles, and in 1892 was elected to the state legislature where he did much work in connection with constructive measures.
In case preparation Mr. Ward was known as thorough and exhaustive, and in presentation before a judge or jury clear and vigorous in expression, and intensely earnest.
As a politician he was equally successful and well known. In the legislature in 1892 besides being made vice chairman of the judiciary committee, he was appointed chairman of the committtee on conditional amendments.
In 1898 he was appoointed police commissioner by Governor Stephens, who also made Mr. Ward a member of his staff, and placed in his hands the organization of the Missouri National Guard. He resigned as police commissionier and retired from politics in 1902.
SOCIAL AND PERSONAL SIDE.
Mr. Ward was a member of the Society of Colonial Wars, deriving his eligibility through the lineal descent from Seth Ward, a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. H e was also a member of the Elks lodge, the Country Club, the Commercial Club, the Harvard Club of the Southwest and the American Bar Association.
Mr. Ward was married October 26, 1898, to Miss Vassie James, a graduate of Vassar college and a daughter of J. Crawford James.
One of Mr. Ward's last acts was to give $25,000 to the Young Women's Christian Association of Kansas City.
Labels: attorney, banking, business, death, Judge Philips, Liberty, New York, politics, universities, Westport, YWCA
Y. W. C. A. FUND OF
$300,000 IS RAISED.
THOMAS L. SWOPE DOUBLES
SUBSCRIPTION OF $25,000.
Other Voluntary Donations Make a
Total of $303,000, Which Is
$3,000 in Excess of the
Amount Asked.
Through the donation of $50,000, by Thomas L. Swope, the largest single gift ever made for a similar enterprise in the history of the Y . W. C. A. , a gift of $20,000 by the R. A. Long family and $10,000 from the banks of Kansas City, the hard fought battle of the Young Women's Christian Association for $300,000 to build a new home was yesterday changed from a faded hope to a joyous reality. At the close of the campaign, May 25, the sum subscribed was $37,000 short of the necessary amount.
Since the end of a most strenuous campaign, every day of which was fraught with brilliant prospects which faded, forces have been at work, and yesterday the announcement was made that the money needed had been raised and there was some to spare.
Mr. Swope, feeling the absolute need of an institution such as has been proposed for the women of Kansas City, agreed to double his first subscription, raising it from $25,000 to the magnificent sum of $50,000. The amount was given with the proviso that the donor's name be withheld from the public, but Miss Nettie E. Trimble, general secretary of the association, considered such a proposition unfair to the man through whose charity their hopes are to be realized.
SUBSCRIPTION DOUBLED.
Following the lead made by Mr. Swope, R. A. Long added another $5,000 to his already large donation, making the total $20,000. Then through the Kansas City clearing house, the various banks donated $10,000, making in all a total of $40,000 since the closing of the original campaign. This brings the subscriptions up to $303,000, $3,000 more than was originally asked. This money will be used for equipments for the new building.
A meeting of the members of the board of directors of the association will be held some day next week to decide upon the plans for the new buildings. The "Home," which is to be erected at Eleventh street and Troost avenue, will be started at the earliest moment. Plans for this building have not yet been decided upon, as the national association has agreed to furnish them, provided use can be made of some that have already been used.
"We wish to thank the public spirited people of Kansas City who have helped in this campaign and made our project possible," said Miss Trimble yesterday. "Especially do we feel indebted to the press of Kansas City for the interest it has shown in the work and the good it has done to further the interests of our cause. We feel the responsibility of our position and we will do all within our power to merit the confidence of the people who have put this great sum at our disposal."
Labels: charity, Eleventh street, R A Long, Thomas Swope, Troost avenue, YWCA
Y. W. C. A. HAS YET TO
BRIDGE $125,000 GAP.
MUST RAISE $40,000 A DAY FOR
Hundreds of Women Are Working
in the Campaign, and Still
There Are Not Enough
Canvassers.
Y. W. C. A. HEADQUARTERS IN THE R. A. LONG BUILDING.
With only three days of its ten-day campaign left, the Young Women's Christian Association has obtained pledges amounting in all to $178,3443.45. A gap of nearly $125,000 yawns between the $300,000 required for the contemplated new buildings, and to bridge it successfully an average of about $40,000 a day must be obtained in the short space of time that is left. It seems an impossible task, and yet there is not the slightest indication of discouragement among the scores of women workers who are giving ever moment of their time to the campaign.
"Fail? Why such a contingency has not even been considered," said one of the officers of the ways and means committee last night. "Everyone of us is perfectly confident that the $300,000 mark will be reached before Saturday. Although hundreds of women are working in the campaign, still we haven't enough canvassers to call on all of the persons we have on our lists. If there was some way we could see all of these people in the next few days, we could get more, much more, than the amount needed. There can be no doubt of this. I know that hundreds and hundreds of people we have not seen are only waiting for our solicitors to call before giving their subscription. What a help it would be if they would send in the amounts voluntarily."
The total amount obtained yesterday was nearly $9,000. About $6,000 of this was pledged in the morning, and the remainder in the afternoon. Besides five gifts of $1,000 there was one $500. The names of the $1,000 givers are as follows:
The Kansas City Journal, the Missouri and Kansas Telephone Company, Mrs. J. L. Abernathy, Mrs. C. A. Baker and Mr. and Mrs. Albert Marty.
Hundreds of donations in varying amounts have been received during the subscription campaign, including $25,000 from Thomas H. Swope, $15,000 from Mr. and Mrs. R. A. Long, $10,000 from Frank Hagerman, and $10,000 from Emery, Bird, Thayer Dry Goods.
Labels: charity, R A Long, R A Long building, Thomas Swope, women, YWCA
"FIGHTING BOB" CRIPPLED.
Wheel Chair Ordered for Admiral,
Who Has Rheumatism.
"Rear Admiral Robley D. Evans will arrive on the Burlington from St. Louis Saturday morning at 7:10. Meet him with a wheel chair and see that he is cared for. He has a severe attack of rheumatism."
This was the order received by Union depot officials last night. "Fighting Bob" is coming to Kansas City to lecture next Tuesday evening at Convention hall under the auspices of the local Young Women's Christian Association on "From Hampton Roads to San Francisco," relating interesting incidents in connection with the cruise of the American battleships during the first leg of their globe-encircling journey.
It was not known here that Admiral Evans was ill until the above instructions were received by the depot authorities. Kansas City business men had planned to have a delegation meet the distinguished visitor and entertain him, but it is probable that his condition will prevent him from taking part in any social functions. It is thought, however, that he will be able to fill his engagement.
Labels: Convention Hall, illness, military, railroad, St Louis, Union depot, veterans, visitors, YWCA
TOOTHSOME HINDU EATABLES.
Will Be on Sale at the Y. W. C. A.
Bazaar Friday Night.
"An Evening in Calcutta" is the latest entertainment of the Young Women's Christian Association. The association rooms Friday night will represent a Hindu bazaar. There will be relics from India to entertain the visitors and Dr. Caroline Coats and Miss Ella M. Schooley, both of whom have done missionary work in that country, will relate some of their experiences and tell something of the people and their mode of life.
Around the walls of the association room little booths will be erected where Christmas gifts costing from 5 to 50 cents will be sold. It is a bazaar intended for the young woman of moderate means, anxious to buy Christmas gifts for the smallest amount of money. There will be other booths, where real East Indian sweetmeats will be sold. The association is in possession of some of the recipes from India and the cooking department is proud of its achievements with them.
Labels: food, organizations, YWCA
WHAT'D THE MEN GIVE
TO SEE THIS PARADE.
Nothing but Girls, Young Ones, in
the Spectacle to Be Given
by the Y. W. C. A.
Gaudy-colored posters in the quiet lunch room of the Y. W. C. A. will next week announce the first of the series of jolly evening planned by that organization for its members. October 1 has been decided upon as the rally day for both the educational departments and the gymnasium, and in place of the usual routine speeches there will be a parade in the gymnasium. It will combine humor, instruction, and beauty. For a few days prior to that eventful night the youngsters will look in vain for their Irish Mail wagons, their coasters and their tricycle automobiles, for these are to be the foundations of the floats.
The pageant will be headed by a band in uniform. This band will render at least three selections. Old horns, jews harps, fine and course tooth combs and all sorts of wonderful instruments are being collected and the band members have promised to rehearse their repertoire before their engagement. The lights in the gymnasium will all be extinguished that the effect of the floats may not be lost. Ahead of each float will march two dominoed torch bearers and the floats will be ablaze with lanterns and candles.
The subject of the floats is still a mystery. "Jackson" will be on hand and will distribute souvenirs indiscriminately. No one need to subscribe anything to obtain them. Each float will throw out handfuls of circulars advertising the department it represents. The gymnasium is to have two floats and promised something unique. The pottery and metal workers are going to show something beautiful in the way of their handicraft. The lunch room, the cooking department, the sewing, the millinery, the extension and language departments will all be represented, and even the dignified members of the Bible classes have promised to march in cap and gown.
A cordial invitation is being extended to everybody except the men.
Kansas City's Y. W. C. A. now stands sixth in the United States in point of membership, and it is said that a large percentage of this number has been gained through the good times originated by the various committees. A large number was also gained through the membership campaign of last year when the organization divided into two bodies and held a war of roses. A campaign for new members will be held again this year, but it will be along different lines and promises to be even more unique.
Labels: music, organizations, parades, women, YWCA
JAPANESE YOUNG WOMAN SANG.
Miss Okajima Entertained Members
of the Y. W. C. A. Yesterday.
Many Japanese and English songs were sung by Miss Okajima, a young woman from Japan, at the Y. W. C. A. rooms on Baltimore avenue yesterday afternoon. Miss Okajima sang for almost an hour and then to the group of admiring young women around her she told stories of Japanese life and of the curious customs observed in her country.
That Japan has taken rapid steps forward by enlightenment and Christianity within the last ten years was championed by the young woman most sturdily, and it is her opinion that a great deal of such advancement comes from the United States. She says that her government is apt to look upon ours as a model and that Japan holds this country in high esteem.
Those who heard Miss Okajima sing declared that she had a remarkably sweet voice with a great range of tone. Some of the renditions were from the old music masters and extremely difficult. The young woman received several years of vocal training in her own country and has come to America to pursue her studies.
Labels: Baltimore avenue, immigrants, music, YWCA
BASKETBALL MAKES GIRLS QUARREL,
SAYS MISS CAPEN.
New Physical Director of Y. W. C. A.
Will Not Allow Dr. Naismith's
Game to Be Played.
"Basketball cannot be played by girls without making them quarrel," said Miss Julia Capen, who yesterday took charge of the physical education work of the Kansas City Y. W. C. A.
That is the reason that there is to be no competitive basketball in the Kansas City association this year. Miss Capen is following the lead of many other physical directors throughout the country in putting the ban on the most strenuous of girls' sports. Dr. Clark Hetherton, director of athletics at the University of Missouri, aroused much criticism last year when he contended that the game was bad for women and that every girl who played basketball on the university teams suffered from a nervous collapse before she left school or immediately afterwards. Now Miss Capen says it is bad for the girls' tempers and will forbid it for the association girls. A little mild practice might be allowed, but no real scrimmaging.
Miss Capen succeeds Miss Tamson Weatherbee, who goes to Milwaukee. She plans to enlarge the enrollment in the gymnasium classes, especially the classes for little girls. Children ranging from 6 to 12 years of age will be given instructions in all manner of games, such as Boston ball captain ball, indoor baseball, volley ball, long base, and others.
The Swedish system of correctional gymnastics will be introduced by Miss Capen and instruction in dancing and fancy drills will be given the older girls' and married women's classes.
"It is alarming the number of women you see every day with one shoulder higher than the other or with some other defect which the girl scarcely notices herself, but which is remarked at once by all who see her," said Miss Capen. "Careless habits of standing and walking and breathing are to blame for these defects, which could be remedied by proper gymnastic exercises."
Miss Capen graduated from the Boston Normal school of Gymnastics and has taken work in the Yale summer school. For the last five years she has been physical director of the Binghampton, N. Y., Y. W. C. A. and taught in the Lady Grey School for Girls.
Labels: Boston, sports, University of Missouri, women, YWCA
HEIRESS ENDS
LIFE WITH ACID.
ONCE WON PRIZE AS MOST BEAU-
TIFUL GIRL IN MISSOURI.
WEDDING WAS SET FOR TODAY.
DOCTOR PRONOUNCED HER DEAD
3 HOURS BEFORE SHE DIED.
Mother of May Williams Had Her
Committed to Reform School.
Girl Took Poison Rath-
er Than Go.
On the night before her wedding, and on the eve of being sent to the girl's reform school, pretty little May Williams committed suicide by drinking carbolic acid in the presence of her mother and Mrs. W. W. Smith, an officer of the juvenile court. Miss Williams was heiress to $15,000 and her life within the last three months had been a checkered one.
Two months ago, a few weeks after her mother had married Sol Mead, a railway conductor, Miss Williams was sent to the juvenile court, charged with being incorrigible. Mrs. Smith, the probation officer of the Detention home, thought the girl should be in a better place than the home. Consequently, according to Mrs. Alice Page, the matron of the Y. W. C. A. home at Eighth and Harrison streets, arrangements were made whereby the girl was taken to the Y. W. C. A. home. Mrs. Page found the girl to be anything but incorrigible.
A short while ago it became rumored that Miss Williams was to be married today. Shortly after the rumor became public, and the girl admitted that she intended to marry this morning, she was taken from the Y. W. C. A. home and hauled back to the Detention home. At her mother's request the reform school authorities decided to take the girl and to keep her for an indefinite length of time.
SOMEONE WAS NEGLIGENT.
The threat of the reform school had been made to the girl time and again by her mother, Mrs. Mead, and each time Miss Williams had replied that she would die before she went to the institution. Mrs. W. W. Smith accompanied her to her home, 816 Euclid avenue, in order that the girl might pack her trunk. On the way home the girl told Mrs. Smith that she was going to commit suicide. After the two had reached the Mead home, Miss Williams sat in the parlor and talked to her mother of the reformatory. Rising, she said:
"I will die first, and it will be before your eyes."
Whether any attention was paid to the girl's remarks has not been learned. At any rate, she was allowed to leave the presence of the court probationary officer and her mother, with the threat of suicide fresh upon her lips, and over fifteen minutes passed before she was missed. The court officer was present all of that time, and it is said she had heard the threat which the girl made.
In the meantime Miss Williams had gone to the Woodland pharmacy, three blocks away, convinced the druggist that her mother wanted three ounces of carbolic acid, and walked back home again. When she reached her home she walked up the back steps and raised the bottle of carbolic acid to her lips. She had heard footsteps approaching and desired to be successful in her attempt to end her life. At that moment Mrs. Smith caught sight of the girl and called to Mrs. Mead, the mother. With both women looking at her, standing as if rooted to the floor, the girl drank the contents of the bottle and then murmured:"Now, I suppose you are satisfied."
Instantly the probation officer ran to he 'phone and called a doctor and neighbors. Someone called the police ambulance and Dr. J. Park Neal.
DOCTOR THOUGHT HER DEAD.
Dr. A. H. Walls, who lived in the immediate neighborhood, was called. He replied that he could not get to the Mead home for twenty-five minutes. Ten of those twenty-five had elapsed when someone called the police ambulance. The ambulance made a rapid run and arrived at the home of the Williams girl shortly after Dr. Walls had arrived. As Dr. J. Park Neal, probably the most successful combater of carbolic acid suicides in Kansas City, jumped from his ambulance he was met by Mrs. Smith and Dr. Walls. They told him that the girl was dead an d that nothing could be done for her. Taking Dr. Walls's word for it, and knowing Mrs. Smith as a court officer, he did not attend the girl, but went back to the emergency hospital.
As the ambulance turned the corner of Eighth street an undertaker's wagon appeared around the corner of Ninth street. No one knows who called it. By that time Dr. E. R. Curry arrived and pronounced the girl alive. She had been alive all of the time and lived for three hours after she had taken the poison.
"Could she have been saved had you attended her when you were at the house?" was asked Dr. Neal.
"I believe she could," he said. "In fact, I know she could have been saved. But I took Mrs. Smith's and Dr. Wall's word for final. I had no reason to believe the girl was still alive."
Dr. Neal could not understand why he was turned away while there was hope that the girl might not be dead.
Long before the girl was really dead, another undertaker's ambulance had driven up to the front door, and the neighbors looked on and wondered. No one could be found who would admit calling the second undertaker's ambulance.
Mrs. Mead, the girl's mother, says she is heart broken and will see no one. A doctor was called to see her.
May Williams was a beautiful young girl of uncertain age. Her mother swore in court that May was but 15 years old, while May swore that she was 17. Had the girl been 15 years old three years would have expired before she attained her majority; 17 years of age meant only one year until she came into the $15,000 which her father had left her.
WON A BEAUTY PRIZE.
Last spring May Williams won the prize in St. Louis as being the most beautiful unmarried woman in Missouri. The prize was given by a local newspaper. Everywhere she went her beauty was remarked upon. In St. Louis, say those who knew her there, she was not considered incorrigible, nor even wayward.
Mrs. Mead was divorced from her first husband and May lived with him until his death. In his will he left May $15,000, and, it is said, cut off his divorced wife without one cent. At the time of the Williams divorce, which occurred in St. Louis, the whole family history was aired.
Mr. Mead, who is a conductor on the Chicago & Alton railroad, has not been notified of his step-daughter's death. He is expected in from his run this morning at 10 o'clock.
Labels: detention home, Dr J Park Neal, druggists, Eighth street, Euclid avenue, juvenile court, Ninth street, probate, St Louis, Suicide, undertakers, women, YWCA
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Albert Angus Turbayne
Albert Angus Turbayne FAQs: Facts, Rumors, Birthdate, Net Worth, Sexual Orientation and much more!
Who is Albert Angus Turbayne? Biography, gossip, facts?
Albert Angus Turbayne (1866 - April 29 1940) was an American book designer and bookbinding artist. Turbayne was born in Boston Massachusetts. He worked in London for the London County Council School of Photoengraving and Lithography and also for Carlton Studio . His principal artistic work was the design of books and bindings. He won a bronze medal (third place) for book binding design at the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris. Turbayne married in London on two occasions.
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Insider Forum
Warrior Insider
The Inside Source for Hawaii Men's Basketball
Pacific Risk Solutions
Big West weekly review-preview
Posted on February 17, 2020 • Filed under Insider News • 0 Comments
Tweet Written by Warrior Insider
It was only two weeks ago that it appeared as if four or five teams had a legitimate shot at winning the Big West Conference regular-season championship. Now, with three weeks still remaining in the regular season, UC Irvine has established a commanding lead in the standings.
The Anteaters scored key road wins at UC Riverside and Hawai’i last week to improve to 9-2 in the conference. UC Davis and CSUN are tied for second place at 6-5.
UCI has a magic number of three to clinch its second consecutive Big West regular-season title. The Anteaters host Long Beach State on Wednesday, then travel to CSUN on Saturday.
Here is a look back at last week, and a look ahead to this week.
• UC Davis makes a move up
Despite UC Irvine’s separation atop the standings, the Aggies are now the hottest team in the conference. UCD is on a three-game winning streak, including crucial home victories last week over fellow contenders UC Santa Barbara and CSUN.
The Aggies set a school record for most points in a game during their 110-98 win over CSUN. UCD is now 6-5 in Big West games, and tied for second place in the conference.
• Hawai’i falls at home
The Rainbow Warriors went 4-0 at home in Honolulu after the first half of the conference season. That changed in a hurry last week, when Hawai’i lost home games to Long Beach State and UC Irvine.
The Warriors have now lost four games in a row, and dropped from second place to a tie for fourth during that span. UC Irvine (5-0) is now the only undefeated team at home in conference play.
• Carter III is clutch for the Beach
Long Beach State won two games in the closing seconds last week, and sophomore guard Michael Carter III provided the winning points both times.
In a 50-49 win at Hawai’i, Carter hit a fadeaway jumper with less than a minute remaining to tie the score, then he hit one of two free throws with 3.0 seconds remaining to win it.
Three days later, in a 65-63 overtime win against UC Riverside, Carter hit an 18-foot jumper with 2.0 seconds remaining in OT to score the game winner.
• Player of the Week
UC Davis freshman guard Ezra Manjon was named the Big West Conference Player of the Week on Monday after leading the Aggies to two home wins last week.
He averaged 18.0 points, 4.5 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game and shot 13 for 13 on free throws in the two games.
It is the second time this season that Manjon has received the Big West Player of the Week honor. He is the first true freshman in 46 years to earn multiple Player of the Week awards in one season. Clifton Pondexter of Long Beach State accomplished the feat on Feb. 11 and 18 of the 1973-74 season.
CSUN’s Lamine Diane won it three times last season as a redshirt freshman.
• Best game of last week
Cal State Fullerton 105, Cal Poly 101 (4 OT). The Titans out-lasted the Mustangs in a game that featured a combined 64 fouls and 89 free throw attempts. Seven players were on the court for 50 or more minutes, including four for Fullerton. Jackson Rowe played a game-high 57 minutes, and finished with 15 points and 17 rebounds.
It is the second time this season that the teams have played a high-scoring thriller. Cal Poly won the first meeting, 101-100, in overtime.
• Game to watch this week
Long Beach State at UC Irvine, Wednesday. The 49ers pulled off the upset of the season so far when the teams last met on January 22. Long Beach won that game, 63-56, but have been up and down since.
If the 49ers can pull off another upset this week, it will give hope to the other teams still in contention for the regular-season title. On the other hand, if the Anteaters can avenge the loss at Long Beach, they will build an almost insurmountable lead atop the standings.
This week’s games
Long Beach State at UC Irvine
UC Santa Barbara at Cal State Fullerton
UC Davis at Cal Poly
Hawai’i at UC Riverside
Hawai’i at Long Beach State
UC Davis at UC Santa Barbara
UC Riverside at Cal Poly
UC Irvine at CSUN
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UPDATED: CSU Bakersfield stymies Warriors, 60-55
Warriors meet new Big West member CSU Bakersfield
Warriors gain valuable experience from road split
Manel Ayol enters the transfer portal
Warriors at UC Riverside for long-awaited Big West opener
Warriors use ‘double-bye’ week to improve in practice
© 2021 Warrior Insider LLC All Rights Reserved. • Contact Warrior Insider
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West Coast Ecofeminist Conference
WHY THE CONF
TICKET INFO.
Below is the list of 2015 speakers
Dr. Lina Gupta - professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at GCC, was educated in India and in the U.S. She received her Masters in Philosophy from University of Calcutta, India and her Ph.D. in Comparative Philosophy from Claremont University, California. Her research focuses on ecofeminism with a specialization in Hinduism and Feminism. She is presently a consultant for the Economic and Social Council at the United Nations.
Dr. Eleanor Rae - has a Ph.D. in contemporary systematic theology from Fordham, is the founder of the Center for Women, the Earth, the Divine in New York City. She is co-author of Created in Her Image: Models of the Feminine Divine and the author of Women, the Earth, the Divine. Working at the United Nations for two decades she founded and co-chaired the Earth Values Caucus. Currently, she serves as president/founder of the Hutchinson River Restoration Project, which river is primarily located in her home in the Bronx. She is wife, mother to three children and grandmother to eight grandchildren.
Alka Arora, PhD is chair of the Women’s Spirituality program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her teaching and research are centered on the intersection of feminism, spirituality, and social justice. Some of her recent courses include “Sacred Lineages: Goddesses, Foremothers, and Activists,” “Animal Ethics,” and “Spiritual Activism.” A long-time vegetarian, she went vegan a little over two years ago, and is passionate about the importance of including nonhuman animals in our work for social and ecological justice. Dr. Arora is currently doing research for a co-authored book on feminist spiritual activism.
Simone Reyes - feminist and grassroots animal rights activist for most of her adult life, Simone was the breakout star of Oxygen's reality TV show "Running Russell Simmons" and became an overnight hero in the animal rights community. Amongst her many accomplishments, she has worked with Sea Shepherd as a Cove Guardian in Taiji, has been arrested with PETA for protesting Sea World at the Rose Parade and recently did a TEDx talk on activism.
Lisa Kemmerer - is a philosopher-activist working against oppression on behalf of nonhuman animals, the environment and disempowered human beings. Graduate of Reed, Harvard, and Glasgow University (Scotland), Kemmerer has published nine books , including Eating Earth: Dietary choice and Environmental Health , Animals and World Religions, and Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice. She currently teaches philosophy and religions at Montana State University Billings. You can learn more about her work at lisakemmerer.com or on her Facebook page.
Sharon Lungo - Executive Director of the Ruckus Society, has been a trainer with Ruckus since 2001, a founding member of the Indigenous Peoples' Power Project (IP3) Advisory Board, and a key member of the Ruckus staff since 2007. Sharon directs all Ruckus Programs, manages the implementation of Ruckus's strategic priorities, and cultivates and holds our strategic partnerships with ally organizations and frontline partners. She was a co-convener of the Mobilization for Climate Justice West (2008-2011) and has served on the coordinating committee of the Global Women's Strike. Sharon has an unwavering commitment to holding a racial justice analysis within non violent direct action organizing and implementation, and and has extensive experience working with grassroots frontline communities and big NGO groups alike consulting on Ruckus's Action Framework and how groups can work together to successfully advance our movements' goals. The scope of her more than 18 years of political and non violent direct action experience range from local to national to international. Sharon is the daughter of migrant parents from the Pipil nation (indigenous to Cuzcatlan, El Salvador).
Charlotte Cressey is an animal liberation activist and educator, ecofeminist, creator of Earth Energy Yoga, a certified Chopra Center Meditation Instructor, lover of life, and enthusiast for the many benefits of a vegan lifestyle. She holds a BA in Women's and Gender Studies. Charlotte's passion for helping animals began at the young age of 3 when she learned the flesh on her plate was once a living being. Since that young age, she has been seeking to understand why a culture that prizes love and compassion inflicts violence on those most at our mercy - animals. Charlotte helps expose the insidious and pervasive manifestations of this 'might makes right mentality' so we can free ourselves of it, heal our relation to other beings, and so we may all enjoy a happier existence. Charlotte believes in the revolutionary power of love and the innate kindness of the human heart. She views veganism and treating all animals with respect as the foundation of a larger goal to create a peaceful, harmonious existence for humans, animals, and the Earth. Her yoga, meditation, and empowerment sessions are designed to help each individual access their own inner wisdom, insight, and guidance directly so they can become happy, healthy, and a beneficial presence on the planet. Connect at www.CharlotteCressey.com.
Mauro Oliveira is the Executive Director of SOL Communications (stands for Signal of Love), a direct action non-profit whose environmental and human rights projects span three decades. SOL was formed during the mid 1990s in response to Native American Elders in the southwest resisting federal relocation from their lands. Some of his personal projects include producing Small World Radio, First Issues quarterly news magazine and creating a two-story map of the clearcutting decimating the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade ranges of California. Mauro has continuously escalated his strategy of defending our environment, wildlife and humanity leading him deeper and deeper into civil disobedience and a rejection of corporatism, capitalism and corrupt government. Mauro has been arrested twice in the last year during direct action campaigns against US drone assassinations and warfare in the Middle East and the construction of the Alberta tar sands, the source of fossil fuels to be transported in the XL pipeline. Mauro is a Native American sun dancer, father of four youth activists, husband, musician, writer and graphic artist.
Erin Evans was involved in grassroots organizing work for over 15 years before pursuing Ph.D. research in social movements in 2009. She worked extensively with Marti Kheel, a prominent eco-feminist scholar, and presented with her at University of Oregon's Public Environmental Law Conference on ecofeminist approaches to activism. Erin published work on intersections between scientific racism and gender while earning her master’s degree in political science in 2008. During this time she also studied animal activists’ use of political opportunities to pursue their goals, specifically constitutional amendments in Germany and Switzerland. This work was published in the top journal specializing in Animal Studies: Society & Animals. As a PhD student in the Sociology Department of UC Irvine, Erin studies social movements, mass media, political opportunities, and culture. Her current research deals with media coverage of social movement protest events and organizations, as well as the long-term effects of movement-relevant policy reform on science.
Ava Park - Author, Activist, Teacher, Ritualist. Ava lives to empower women as the world’s natural spiritual authority. “When women are leading the world as Good Queens, life will be as it was always meant to be.” Ava teaches that “reverence for all life” is the essential principle for humanity’s health, happiness and prosperity on earth. Founder/Director of the only museum of its kind in the world, The Museum of Goddess History & Culture, an Orange County, California, museum returning to humanity the knowing of our common heritage of goddess veneration –the first religion on earth, dating from at least 250,000 BCE (www.museumofgoddesshistoryandculture.org) Founder/Presiding Priestess of the only church of its kind in the world, The Goddess Temple of Orange County, a world sacred site of devotional pilgrimage, historical education and spiritual ceremony, with SundayServices both for women only and also for all genders, located in Irvine, California (www.GoddessTempleOC.org)
Founder/Board Member of the longest-running animal rights group in Orange County, Orange County People for Animals (www.ocpausa.net) Author, “The Queen Teachings with Ava”© --original teachings changing the lives of women with the knowledge of the Queen Archetype within Woman. Member, Board of Directors, International Tibet Independence Movement
Ellie Laks, is a celebrated animal welfare advocate, Founder of TheGentle Barn Foundation and author of “My Gentle Barn: Creating a sanctuary where animals heal and children learn to hope”. Ellie has always loved animals. From the time she was 7 years old, Ellie has rescued lost, abandoned, sick or injured animals and brought them home to heal. Even at such a young age, Ellie vowed that one day she would teach the world the beauty of these living beings. In 1999, a few years after majoring in Psychology and Special Education, Ellie’s dream became reality. The Gentle Barn Foundation was established as a sanctuary to severely abused and neglected animals that no one else wants. She came up with a special healing process that allows old, sick, injured and terrified animals to recover using a mixture of Western medicine and holistic healing modalities as well as nutritional products, holding therapy and lots of love. Once healthy and happy, the animals help Ellie heal at risk, inner city and special needs children who have the same stories of abuse and neglect as the animals. Through the interaction with the animals and the stories of the animals, the children learn kindness, compassion, confidence, and cultivate self-awareness and hope for the future.Ellie has saved thousands of animals to date. The Gentle Barn is home to more than 180 animals and has two locations in Santa Clarita, California and Knoxville, Tennessee. The Gentle Barn has also served more than 300,000 children and families. Ellie lives on the property with her husband Jay, and their 3 children, and together they get to see miracles every day. It is their goal to build Gentle Barns around the world, “Teaching people kindness and compassion to animals, each other and our planet.” For more information, please visit: www.gentlebarn.org.
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Displaying items by tag: Bénéteau 3
Introducting 'Figaro Bénéteau 3', The World’s First Production Foiling Monohull
In 2019, as the Solitaire Le Figaro race celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, the Figaro Bénéteau 3 will take over from its illustrious predecessor, the Figaro Bénéteau 2, which has been sailing the length and breadth of the French and Atlantic coasts since 2003.
This Figaro Bénéteau 3 is the fruit of a collaboration formed by the Bénéteau Group, with the Class Figaro, OC Sport, the organiser of the Solitaire URGO- Le Figaro and Le Figaro group. Penned by naval architects Van Peteghem – Lauriot-Prévost, whose designs won the last two Vendée Globes and are likely to be on the podium for the 8th edition, the latest of the Class Figaro one-designs is the first production foiling monohull.
Around a hundred Figaro Bénéteau 2s have been built since 2003, which augurs well for the 3rd iteration. In order to optimise the manufacture of production boats, whilst adhering to the drastic criteria of the one-design, the Group has just created the Bénéteau Racing Division Group. It is a powerful signal of the company’s desire to forge ahead with innovation that is geared towards performance. A dedicated construction site has been put in place in Nantes-Cheviré (Loire-Atlantique). This hub comprises around fifteen experts and will also be tasked with piloting and producing the Group’s future racing and regatta projects.
There has been positive reaction from Yoann Richomme, Winner of the Solitaire Bompard Le Figaro 2016 and Head of the Class Figaro’s Measurement and Safety Committee
'With this new Figaro Bénéteau 3, we’re hoping to offer the fleet and those who are inspired to join us an exhilarating and more modern boat. Inevitably, after 15 years of offshore racing on the same boat, you get a little tired of it. As such, it was an opportune moment to make the move and, in so doing, get in touch with the status of science. It wasn’t about making the Figaro Bénéteau 2 vintage, rather it’s about bringing something innovative and visible to the fore. Foils are clearly the future, especially in a competition environment. The skippers will be able to get to grips with these tools in the Figaro and this will give them the building blocks to move onto something else further down the track should they so wish.
There are sure to be gains in speed, if only from the power of the hull and the contemporary sail plan. However, anticipating the gains isn’t easy, especially for a small boat. It should equate to around 15% downwind'.
Published in Boat Sales
Bénéteau 3
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Advances in the History of Psychology
a current look at the history of psychology, with news, notes, and additional resources
Recent History in History Textbooks
Tag Archives: Merton
Merton, Mesmerists, and More in JHBS 2010
2010.01.14 Book Reviews, General, Journalsgolden section, JHBS, Merton, Mesmerism, race relations, sociologyJacy Young
The first issue of the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences for 2010 has just been released online. The winter 2010 issue of JHBS includes four all new articles which explore topics as diverse as mesmerism, race relations, and the golden section, as well as eight book reviews.
In “Merton as Harvard Sociologist: Engagment, Thematic Continuities, and Institutional Linkages” Lawrence Nichols, Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University, examines the importance of the years sociologist Robert Merton (pictured at right) spent at Harvard University. Early intersections of mesmerism and Asian mind-body practices are explored in “The Mesmerists Inquire about “Oriental Mind Powers”: West Meets East in the Search for the Universal Trance,” by David Schmit, of the Department of Psychology at St. Catherine’s University, while in “The Individual and “The General Situation”: The Tension Barometer and the Race Problem at the University of Chicago, 1947-1954″ Leah Gordon, of the School of Education at Stanford University, investigates the triumph of individualistic conceptions of the cause of racial oppression in the post-war United States. In the final article, John Benjafield, Professor Emeritus at Brock University, explores the use of the concept of the golden section in early American psychology. Continue reading Merton, Mesmerists, and More in JHBS 2010 →
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Site Name: Tranquillity
Location: Mendota (W Adams Ave), CA
Mendota (W Adams Ave) CA, US: 36.6324, -120.3822
Jan. 9, 2021, 11 p.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 30.0 ppb (28) N/A N/A 3.0 μg/m3 (13) 28.0
Jan. 9, 2021, 9 p.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 31.0 ppb (29) N/A N/A 6.0 μg/m3 (25) 29.0
Jan. 9, 2021, 6 p.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 19.0 ppb (18) N/A N/A 12.0 μg/m3 (50) 50.0
Jan. 9, 2021, noon N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 16.0 ppb (15) N/A N/A 13.0 μg/m3 (53) 53.0
Jan. 9, 2021, 11 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 19.0 μg/m3 (66) 66.0
Jan. 9, 2021, 10 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 16.0 ppb (15) N/A N/A 22.0 μg/m3 (72) 72.0
Jan. 9, 2021, 9 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 13.0 ppb (13) N/A N/A 20.0 μg/m3 (68) 68.0
Jan. 9, 2021, 8 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 7.0 ppb (7) N/A N/A 20.0 μg/m3 (68) 68.0
Jan. 9, 2021, midnight N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 21.0 ppb (20) N/A N/A 17.0 μg/m3 (62) 62.0
Jan. 8, 2021, 11 p.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 22.0 ppb (21) N/A N/A 12.0 μg/m3 (50) 50.0
Jan. 8, 2021, midnight N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 18.0 ppb (17) N/A N/A 9.0 μg/m3 (38) 38.0
Jan. 7, 2021, 4 p.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 7.0 ppb (7) N/A N/A 3.0 μg/m3 (13) 13.0
Jan. 7, 2021, 2 p.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 5.0 ppb (5) N/A N/A 1.0 μg/m3 (5) 5.0
Jan. 7, 2021, noon N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 8.0 ppb (8) N/A N/A 0.0 μg/m3 (0) 8.0
Jan. 7, 2021, 11 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A -1.0 μg/m3 (0) 0.0
Jan. 7, 2021, 10 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 8.0 ppb (8) N/A N/A 2.0 μg/m3 (9) 9.0
Jan. 7, 2021, 9 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 9.0 ppb (9) N/A N/A 4.0 μg/m3 (17) 17.0
Jan. 7, 2021, 7 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 11.0 ppb (11) N/A N/A 3.0 μg/m3 (13) 13.0
Jan. 7, 2021, 6 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 3.0 ppb (3) N/A N/A -4.0 μg/m3 (0) 3.0
Jan. 6, 2021, 6 p.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 16.0 ppb (15) N/A N/A 2.0 μg/m3 (9) 15.0
Jan. 6, 2021, 3 p.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 3.0 ppb (3) N/A N/A -4.0 μg/m3 (0) 3.0
Jan. 6, 2021, noon N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 8.0 ppb (8) N/A N/A -2.0 μg/m3 (0) 8.0
Jan. 6, 2021, 11 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 0.0 μg/m3 (0) 0.0
Jan. 6, 2021, 9 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 6.0 ppb (6) N/A N/A 0.0 μg/m3 (0) 6.0
Jan. 5, 2021, 11 p.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 32.0 ppb (30) N/A N/A 1.0 μg/m3 (5) 30.0
Jan. 5, 2021, noon N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 13.0 ppb (13) N/A N/A 1.0 μg/m3 (5) 13.0
Jan. 5, 2021, 10 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 15.0 ppb (14) N/A N/A 0.0 μg/m3 (0) 14.0
Jan. 4, 2021, 4 p.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 6.0 ppb (6) N/A N/A 11.0 μg/m3 (46) 46.0
Jan. 4, 2021, noon N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 6.0 ppb (6) N/A N/A 11.0 μg/m3 (46) 46.0
Jan. 4, 2021, 10 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 5.0 ppb (5) N/A N/A 12.0 μg/m3 (50) 50.0
Jan. 4, 2021, 3 a.m. N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 11.0 ppb (11) N/A N/A 2.0 μg/m3 (9) 11.0
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Brown, Gordon (1885–1967)
by Nicholas Brown
Gordon Brown (1885-1967), by unknown photographer
Gordon Brown (1885-1967), politician, was born on 11 February 1885 at Chesterfield, Derby, England, son of William Brown, a shoe salesman and Primitive Methodist, and his wife Jane, née Woodcock. Educated at Clay Cross Grammar School, Gordon grew up in modest, happy circumstances. He was apprenticed as an engineer's pattern-maker, joined the Social Democratic Federation and became 'steeped in Marxian theory'. A restless disposition led him through a range of jobs, from piano salesman to coalminer. Anxious to understand the lives of the 'submerged tenth', he left full-time employment to move through the workhouses: his radicalism was fuelled by experiencing the 'fearful conditions' of the itinerant poor. Brown sailed to Canada where he was imprisoned for street agitation, then came back briefly to Britain before migrating to Australia in 1912.
Although he took part in public meetings in Sydney, he grew dissatisfied with 'the reiteration of generalities' in socialist oratory. Yet, he continued his activities on moving to Queensland in 1913 and spent further terms in gaol. On 21 December 1914 in St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Brisbane, Brown married Beatrice Agnes Hinchsliff. In 1918 he found work with a time-payment firm. Finally convinced of the necessity for more organized industrial politics, he joined the Shop Assistants' Union and the Labor Party. From 1925 to 1927 he was vice-president of the Trades and Labor Council of Queensland. He was elected to the Senate in 1931.
Throughout the 1930s Brown spoke often on the issue of economic protection. Arguing against Empire trade preferences, he maintained that Australia's secondary industries should be assisted to attain 'self-reliance and independence'. In his speeches, as well as his keen interjections, he called for thorough economic management and equity in welfare provision, rather than for more radical reforms. His preference for a 'lighter vein' in serious proceedings led to his suspension from the House. Deputy-leader (1935-38) of the Opposition in the Senate, he was chairman of committees from 1941 until 1943 when he became president of the Senate. While Brown refused to wear the wig and robes of office, he was proud to be the custodian of the chamber's privileges and authority.
Believing in the constructive role of propaganda and in the need to educate the young, he took a close interest in the morale campaigns of World War II and in the Workers' Educational Association, and criticized excessive censorship then and later. He emphasized the skills of oratory and counselled colleagues on the art of delivery. Brown was renowned for the 'stories' he told in Yorkshire brogue, regardless of the company. Following a serious illness and his replacement as president in 1951, his contributions in the Senate tended to be incisive—sometimes teasing—questions, rather than extended speeches. He later published his autobiography, My Descent from Soapbox to Senate (Brisbane, 1953).
Brown was over six feet (183 cm) tall, 'strong in t' arm' and an optimist by nature. Throughout his life he applied principle and conscience to public issues. He retired in 1965. Survived by his wife, son and two daughters, he died on 12 January 1967 in Brisbane and, after a state funeral at St Philip's Anglican Church, Annerley, was cremated.
Parliamentary Debates (Commonwealth), vol 137, 1932, p 2859, vol 152, 1936, p 2360, vol 164, 1940, p 241, vol 168, 1941, p 599, vol 169, 1941, p 358, (Senate), vol 11, 1957, pp 237, 836
People (Sydney), 17 Jan 1951, p 8
Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 13 Jan 1967
Sun (Sydney), 14 July 1977.
Nicholas Brown, 'Brown, Gordon (1885–1967)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/brown-gordon-9598/text16919, published first in hardcopy 1993, accessed online 17 January 2021.
Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England
autobiographer/memoirist
Member of Upper House
trade union official
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https://apnews.com/article/9a22fd5602eeced9cf24a0677aa9f2b3
Virus Outbreak
Nevada men alleged to have ‘boogaloo’ ties plead not guilty
By MICHELLE L. PRICEJune 24, 2020 GMT
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Three men that prosecutors say have ties to an anti-government movement and tried to spark violence during recent Las Vegas protests pleaded not guilty Wednesday to federal explosives and firearm charges.
Prosecutors allege that the Nevada men have ties to the right-wing extremist “boogaloo” movement, an internet-based network expressing support for overthrowing the U.S. government.
According to the court documents, prosecutors believe the men hoped to create civic unrest by capitalizing on protests over businesses closed due to the coronavirus and more recently, the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
They were arrested May 30 on their way to a downtown Las Vegas Black Lives Matter protest over Floyd’s death while allegedly preparing gasoline-and-glass-bottle Molotov cocktails.
A federal judge on Wednesday set an Aug. 24 trial date for Andrew T. Lynam Jr., 23, Stephen T. Parshall, 36, and William L. Loomis, 40.
They also each face terrorism and explosives charges in state court stemming from the same investigation. They have not yet entered a plea to those counts but are due back in state court next week.
Defense attorneys have questioned the FBI’s reliance on a confidential informant to make the allegations. Federal prosecutors say they have audio and video recordings to back up much of the information from the informant.
According to court documents, the men discussed plans to firebomb a power station or federal property including a fee station at Lake Mead near the Hoover Dam or a U.S. Forest Service ranger station. The discussions included plans to try to incite chaos and possibly a riot, according to charging documents.
The anti-government “boogaloo” movement is a loose network of gun enthusiasts who often express support for overthrowing the U.S. government. Its name, a reference to a 1984 movie sequel called “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” is a code word for a second civil war.
The movement is rooted in online meme culture, but the coronavirus pandemic has become a catalyst for real-world activity. Many “boogaloo” followers have shown up at COVID-19 lockdown protests armed with rifles and wearing tactical vests over Hawaiian shirts and leis, a nod to the “big luau” derivation of the movement’s name.
Federal investigators say an Air Force sergeant who has been charged with fatally shooting a federal security officer and wounding his partner outside a California courthouse during a protest over Floyd’s death also had ties to the “boogaloo” movement.
Authorities say Staff Sgt. Steven Carrillo, 32, also separately killed a California sheriff’s deputy and injured four other officers.
He has not yet entered a plea to state and federal charges he faces.
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Conventus Law - www.conventuslaw.com
Jurisdiction - Australia
Legal News & Analysis – Asia Pacific – Australia – Regulatory & Compliance
Corporations Legislation Amendment (Remuneration Disclosures and Other Measures) Bill 2012
On 17 December 2012, the exposure draft of the Corporations Legislation Amendment (Remuneration Disclosures and Other Measures) Bill 2012 was released.
The Bill is intended to clarify the operation of the dividend test in section 254T of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth), but in the process may have destroyed the original rationale for that new test.
The Bill also effects the Government’s further reforms to disclosure of executive remuneration, with proposals to require listed companies to disclose details of their “remuneration governance framework” and the total amounts paid to key management personnel (“KMP“) during the financial year attributable to past pay or present pay or remuneration granted during the year but payable in future years. The Bill also includes the Government’s proposal around disclosures relating to the “claw back” of remuneration where there has been a material misstatement or omission in financial statements for prior years.
The deadline for submissions on the exposure draft is 15 March 2013.
The current section 254T was introduced into the Corporations Act by the Corporations Amendment (Corporate Reporting Reform) Act 2010 (Cth). With effect from 28 June 2010, it replaced the former section which provided that a dividend could be paid only out of profits. The current section 254T prohibits a company paying a dividend unless:
the company’s assets exceed its liabilities immediately before the dividend is declared and the excess is sufficient for the payment of the dividend; and
the payment of the dividend is fair and reasonable to the company’s shareholders as a whole; and
the payment of the dividend does not materially prejudice the company’s ability to pay its creditors. Assets and liabilities are to be calculated in accordance with the accounting standards in force at the relevant time.
The Bill proposes that the current section 254T be replaced with a new section 254T. Proposed subsection (1) of the new section relates to the declaration of dividends and subsection (2) to paying a dividend without a declaration. They are in similar form (the words in square brackets are the words used in subsection (2)):
A company must not declare [pay] a dividend unless, immediately before the dividend is declared [paid]:
a) the company’s assets exceed its liabilities, and the excess is sufficient for the payment of the dividend; and
b) the directors of the company reasonably believe that the company will, immediately after the dividend is declared [paid], be solvent.
The proposed new section 254T recognises that it is common practice for directors of companies to determine to pay a dividend, rather than declare a dividend. The current section 254T appears to assume that all dividends are declared before they are paid.
The second and third limbs of the current section 254T are dropped from the proposed new section 254T:
The second limb, namely, that payment of the dividend must be fair and reasonable to shareholders as a whole, is dropped entirely.
The third limb, that the payment of the dividend must not materially prejudice the company’s ability to pay its creditors, is replaced with the more specific and less onerous requirement that the directors must reasonably believe that the company will, immediately after the dividend is declared [paid], be solvent. This aligns section 254T with the requirements of section 588G of the Corporations Act (director’s duty to prevent insolvent trading).
If there is no doubt about a company’s solvency, then the proposed new section 254T will, in effect, simply prohibit a company declaring/paying a dividend unless the company’s assets exceed its liabilities by an amount sufficient for the payment of the dividend. But if the excess is sufficient, can the company pay the dividend notwithstanding that it has no profits from which to do so? In that situation, where the dividend is being paid out of capital, must the company satisfy the requirements (including shareholder approval) for a reduction of capital? Apparently, yes. The draft explanatory memorandum (“EM“) to the Bill states that:
The new dividends test does not displace the existing requirements in relation to conducting share capital reductions and share buy-backs under Part 2J of the Corporations Act. These provisions will continue to apply under the new dividends test. (at paragraph 1.16)
This seems to be at odds with Parliament’s previous clear intention to do away with the profits test. It is also inconsistent with previous statements made by Treasury (most recently in its discussion paper Proposed Amendments to the Corporations Act released in November 2011) where it was stated that the “Treasury considers that the test for paying a dividend in section 254T of the Act is a circumstance where a reduction in capital is ‘otherwise authorised’ by the law.”
It is not now easy to discern any rationale for replacing the profits test contained in the original section 254T. A dividend paid other than out of profits, will be subject to the rules governing capital reductions in Part 2J.
The proposed new section will at least clarify that assets and liabilities for the purpose of the test are to be calculated in accordance with accounting standards only where a company is required to prepare a financial report. Otherwise, the calculation can be made in accordance with the company’s financial records.
The additional reforms to executive remuneration disclosure will, if enacted, apply to remuneration reports for financial years starting on or after 1 July 2013. The changes contemplated by the Bill are likely to increase the amount of disclosure in listed companies’ remuneration reports. It remains to be seen whether the proposals, in particular those relating to disclosures about “remuneration governance frameworks” and “remuneration outcomes” (described below), will address complaints that remuneration reports are overly complex and lengthy.
The proposed reforms to executive remuneration are summarised as follows:
Proposed reform Comment
Description of the company’s “remuneration governance framework”
The remuneration report must include a description of the company’s process (the remuneration governance framework) for determining remuneration of KMP for the company (or if applicable, the consolidated entity).
Alternatively, if the framework is set out in the financial report or in another section of the directors’ report, the remuneration report must contain details of where it is set out.
(new section 300A(1)(aa))
The Bill does not mandate the content of the disclosure about a company’s “remuneration governance framework”.
The draft EM to the Bill notes that a description of the remuneration governance framework could include:
qualifications and experience of each member of a company’s remuneration committee;
length of time the chair of the committee has served in that capacity;
changes in the composition of the committee since the last remuneration report;
management advice to the committee;
conflicts of interest that may have arisen and how they were managed; and
general “wrap up” information, namely any other information that a shareholder would reasonably require to make an informed assessment of the remuneration governance framework of the company.
Remuneration outcomes
The remuneration report must include, for each KMP, the total amount of remuneration that was:
granted before the start of the year and paid to the person during the year;
granted and paid to the person during the year; and
granted during the year (whether or not payment is dependent on satisfaction of a performance condition), but that is not to be paid until after the end of the year.
(new section 300A(1)(ca))
This change is intended to ensure companies disclose KMP remuneration information in a manner that will enable shareholders to distinguish between present pay, future pay and pay that has been received due to past pay being crystallised.
The amounts to be disclosed for “past pay” and present pay” are those amounts actually paid.
This change is aimed at giving readers information on “take home” pay of KMPs. It is in addition to the KMP remuneration disclosures currently included in remuneration reports, describing the various components of total remuneration. Disclosing the remuneration outcomes for all KMPs will add to the length of remuneration reports (eg additional tables of data). Listed entities might also consider including explanations of how the “past pay”, “present pay”, disclosures etc are reconciled to the full remuneration disclosure.
If options granted to a KMP as remuneration lapse during the year – the number of those options and the year in which they were granted must be disclosed in the remuneration report.
(new section 300A(1)(e)(iv))
The requirement to disclose the percentage of the value of the person’s remuneration for the year that consists of options is to be repealed (current section 300A(1)(e)(vi))
This change will remove the requirement to report on the value of “lapsed” options.
Item 15 of Corporations Regulations 2M.3.03 will continue to require disclosure of the number and value of any options that have been granted during the reporting period and the number of options that have vested during that period.
Benefits on termination
The remuneration report must contain for each KMP details of:
the benefits to be given by the company or a related body corporate to the person in connection with the person’s retirement from an office or position of employment in the company, if a failure to give the benefit would constitute a contravention of a law in Australia or elsewhere (otherwise than due to a breach of contract or trust);
the benefits to be given by the company or a related body corporate to the person in connection with the person’s retirement from an office or position of employment in the company, if the above paragraph does not apply to the benefit; and
any other benefits to be given to the person, or arrangements entered into or to be entered into with the person, by the company or a related body corporate, that relates or that will relate to a period beginning after the person’s retirement from an office or position of employment with the company (whether or not the benefit is required to be given or the arrangement required to be entered into under a contract or in accordance with any law).
A reference to a benefit given in connection with a person’s retirement from an office or position of employment with a company has the same meaning as in section 200A. (new section 300A(1)(ea) and (5))
This change will require companies to disclose details of non-contractual payments made to a KMP “in connection with” the person’s retirement. This will include amounts paid that reflect statutory and other accumulated payments, amounts paid specifically for termination, and a summary of post-severance arrangements (eg consulting services provided by the executive post termination).
The draft EM states that the definition of “benefit” is given by section 200A. Strictly, section 200A defines circumstances when a benefit is given in connection with a person’s retirement. Section 200AB defines “benefit” for the purpose of the termination benefit provisions in Part 2D.2. Otherwise, section 9 defines benefit to be “any benefit”.
Therefore, benefit, as used in the proposed new disclosure requirement, is broader than that which applies for the termination benefit provisions in Part 2D.2. On this basis, payments that are not benefits for Part 2D.2 (eg see those items in Corporations Regulation 2D.2.02(2)), may nevertheless be benefits for disclosure purposes.
Claw back where material misstatement or omission in financial reports
If the company becomes aware during the financial year of a “material misstatement or omission” in the financial statements in relation to the company in any of the previous 3 financial years, the remuneration report must include details for each KMP:
of any reduction, repayment or other alteration of the person’s remuneration made, or to be made, because of the misstatement or omission; or
if a reduction, repayment or alteration of the person’s remuneration has not been made, and will not be made, because of the misstatement or omission – an explanation of why.
A misstatement or omission in the financial statements for a financial year is a material misstatement or omission if the misstatement or omission is material within the meaning of the accounting standards.
(new section 300A(1)(i))
Rather than proposing prescriptive rules about the claw back of prior years’ remuneration following a material misstatement of a prior year’s financial report, the Bill proposes a disclosure-based approach.
If a material misstatement or omission arises, the company’s response in respect of KMP remuneration must be disclosed. Shareholders will then be able to consider that disclosure when they come to vote to adopt the remuneration report and the spill resolution, etc.
The disclosure obligation only relates to action taken in respect of people who were KMPs during the year being reported on. The proposed sub-section, as drafted, does not require disclosure of actions taken in respect of former KMPs.
For the concept of material misstatement or omission, the draft EM refers to AASB 1031: “omissions or misstatements of items are material if they could, individually or collectively, influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of the financial statements. Materiality depends on the size and nature of the omission or misstatement judged in the surrounding circumstances. The size or nature of the item, or a combination of both, could be the determining factor.”
As an aside, if a listed company discovers a material misstatement or omission in its financial report for a prior year, changes to remuneration payable to KMPs will be one of a number of issues the company may need to respond to.
Other changes The Bill also proposes to:
relieve unlisted disclosing companies from the obligation to prepare a remuneration report. Rather, the obligation will apply only to listed companies; and
relieve companies limited by guarantee with annual revenue less than $1 million from the requirement to appoint an auditor;
transfer the remuneration setting responsibility for the offices of the Financial Reporting Council, the Australian Accounting Standards Board and the Auditing and Assurance Standards Board to the Remuneration Tribunal.
Corey Lewis, Ashurst
Geoff Hone, Ashurst
Herbert Smith Freehills Advises Genesis Care On Its First Overseas Acquisition.
Baker & McKenzie Advises APG On Its Investment In Chongbang Holdings.
Skadden Closes Three Transactions Involving High Yield Bonds For Agile Property & Wuzhou International.
Duane Morris & Selvam Hosts The Ambassador Series Program "USA: New Opportunities for the Asian Investor".
Kirkland & Ellis Represents Ascendent On Closing Of Second China Fund.
Baker & McKenzie Welcomes Arbitration Partner Joel Greer To The Tokyo Office.
Baker & McKenzie Advises On The Global Offering Of Chen Xing Development Holdings Limited.
Drew & Napier Acted For Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology In Its USD 1.03bn Takeover Offer For STATS ChipPAC.
Conventus Law Monthly Round Up
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JAMES HALLAHAN: “Dream Manipulation”
As the first consideration, it should be made clear that the traditional notion of the dream as “fantasy” is now, most assuredly, open to question. In light of what has been revealed with reality and the nature of multi-dimensional experience, it seems probable now that the dreamworld is in fact an aspect of our universe—a type of “non-physical” plane which our consciousness seems to have access to while in lower brainwave states.
Presumably, this is something analogous to the astral, perhaps contained within it, but with certain notable distinctions: There seems to be some kind of mechanism or energetic structuring which partitions it from that of the outlying regions, forming somewhat of an inter-realm between frequencies, which is in some measure exclusive to the individual. The reason for this feature is up for speculation. What seems most feasible is that this is something natural that functions almost as a kind of “safeguard”—containing the erratic manifestations of the subconscious and perhaps insulating us, to some degree, from the activity of the astral. The point here is that this is not just a matter of chemical activity within the brain; this is truly an area of reality which we are exposed to on a regular basis—and in which, I would argue, we are still without a very complete understanding. Considering that they likely play a fundamental role in our being, it would probably be wise to thoroughly investigate their nature and to perhaps re-examine the conventional wisdom to which we largely refer.
One of the central issues is of course the capacity that dreams have as a source of spiritual guidance. As mentioned, the dream-state allows conscious access to a non-physical plane, which, contrary to the physical plane, has a kind of fluid nature in which thought can manifest instantaneously into various forms of perceivable phenomena (imagery, sounds etc.). This essentially makes possible the conveyance of information. The reason the information is conveyed by way of symbolic imagery—rather than, for instance, English lettering—is presumably in part due to the extreme fluidity of the environment and its tendency to fluctuate from our emerging thoughts, which can distort words and actually change them into what we mistakenly perceive them as. Larger (pictorial) images, which we’re able to quickly recognize, are less susceptible to be altered in this way. So essentially what we’re looking at here with dream content, in large part anyway, is information that has been deliberately encoded into a format that is more suitable for the dream medium. The major question, which I think garners far too little concern, is where the information is coming from. Is it exclusively derived from the divine, via the higher-self? Or is it perhaps of more diverse origin?
The answer to the preceding question, however disagreeable it may be, seems far more likely to be the latter. As mentioned, the dream plane is likely intrinsic to the astral (or fourth dimension) and as is exceptionally known within alternative communities—it is inhabited. The spatial realms of the fourth dimension are replete with a diverse array of conscious (non-physical) entities—and their nature we must concede is, at best, dubious. We should bear in mind here that anything operating below fifth-dimensional status is likely not in complete accordance with Universal law. We know with certainty as well that deception is extraordinarily common and, owing to the current evolutionary phase, we’re certainly more liable to be interfered with. It therefore stands to reason that our approach to dreams should be that of maximum discernment. Further than that, we should perhaps explore the possibility that the dream plane is not exclusively under our own private control, but is perhaps subject to the same regulations as the astral or even the physical plane—entailing that it is still a collective environment and therefore able to be influenced (or manipulated) by outside intelligences, without constituting as any kind of transgression or infringement of sovereignty.
The idea of dream manipulation, though I’m introducing it as hypothetical, is certainly more than just speculation. I think that with just a cursory examination its legitimacy is quickly uncovered. To begin with, there are surely countless numbers of individuals who can attest to dreams that clearly exhibited an overt malignancy—not simply a foreshadowing of misfortune—but rather a definite pernicious display which tends often to incite emotional distress and worry. Of course, what immediately comes to mind when suggesting this is the “nightmare”—and along with it the notion of its commonality and our perception of them as being altogether natural. This seems on the surface to be common-sense, however, the foundation of this belief is of course stemming from the orthodox conception, which we all now know to be without basis. From an informed perspective, bearing in mind what we’ve just covered, it is entirely conceivable that nightmares, for as back as we’ve known them, may very well be, at least in part, the result of deliberate psychic manipulation. I’m certainly not suggesting that this is uniformly the case or that a negative mindset, carried into the dream, could not manifest frightful imagery—but I do feel confident to suggest here that a substantial percentage of them are in fact being externally generated. Add to this, incidentally, the fact that “nightmare” derives from the Middle English word “mare”—denoting “female evil spirit”—and likewise that ancient cultures, almost unanimously, thought of bad dreams as being the result of negative spiritual influences, attributed directly to negative (or demonic) spirits.
This premise, for some anyway, will likely give rise to a certain degree of doubt. Not only does it entail an enormously widespread effort to generate fear and distress, but clearly suggests as well a kind of coordinated strategy at work—which, very significantly to my point, strongly indicates that there is significant organization. These features, it should be pointed out, very much contradict the common portrayal of entities being propagated by mainstream paranormal enthusiasts. The negative entity, as conveyed by these enthusiasts, is essentially that of a mindless, roving beast who attacks seemingly at random for no purpose other than to self-satisfy. In response to this, I would suggest that this is perhaps far off the mark. In truth, when we closely analyze the various components of what we can observe of their actions, there’s clearly a level of sophistication here that hints at something much more than bestiality. What we’re really dealing with here, I would think unquestionably, are advanced intelligences—possessing, in most cases, a more proficient understanding of reality than that of humans. From this, I feel that the following can be speculated:
The underlying reason for dream manipulation is probably relatively obscure and more complex than we would initially suppose.
The deceptive techniques which are incorporated into the dream are likely highly developed and very skillfully concealed.
The overall agenda is of perhaps a much broader design of which dream manipulation is only one small aspect.
Now as for the purpose behind dream manipulation, I would say it’s clear that there are at least several different underlying reasons. Perhaps one of the most apparent would be the potential it has to influence our manifestation capacity. To illustrate what I mean, I will draw the reader’s attention to the following subject: It is fairly well recognized that a substantial number of the spiritually-minded hold the view that dreams carry a kind of prognostic significance. This notion is of course justified as we do possess a multi-dimensional constitution which enables a capacity to transcend time and space boundaries—which does in fact happen during the course of sleep. However, we should maybe question whether this is exclusively the cause behind prophetic dreams. I would point out first that such dreams are more often than not a kind of simulated (or symbolic) representation of the portended event—and not the actual event. How do we then account for this disparity? To speculate: perhaps it is the higher-self who is actually witness to the event and that it is then reconstructed as a dream—which, with this interpretation, suggests that precognitive experiences are not accidental and are divinely intended. If we’re to premise this, we should ask the question of why these prognostications are necessary. What function or purpose do they serve?
With respect to this, we can perhaps query the notion of prophetic dreams as being a kind of “advance notice”—given so that we may circumvent certain outcomes. This is a questionable supposition because of course it is common understanding that the vast majority of our dreams do not come true and, apart from that, are never known to be prognostic until the moment of fruition. Because of this, it is unlikely that a pre-emptive action would ever be taken on account of a dream. In addition, this “opportunity of circumvention” seems perhaps slightly at odds with what is normally understood of divine intention. If every experience, positive or negative, is divinely intended and has been calculated to be precisely what is needed for our advancement—then giving any kind of notice, or ability to circumvent, seems maybe inconsistent with this. In addition, there’s also the fact that a certain percentage of them foretell what seem to be very trifling occurrences, leading some to believe that the dreams are inadvertent—and due simply to our multidimensionality.
Due to these uncertainties—and the potentiality of extensive dream manipulation—we should maybe entertain some alternative possibilities: As most are aware by now, entities, from their perspective in the fourth dimension, have the notable advantage of being able to see potential future timelines and are thus bestowed with the means to predict future events. Given this fact, there is little doubt that this is something they would attempt to profit from. In regard to the idea of influencing manifestation—which requires the inducement of beliefs and anticipation of outcomes—the widespread notion of dreams having a predictive quality would certainly constitute as a favorable condition towards this aim. If we believe that our dreams may have some bearing on future events, then naturally this will, in some cases, give rise to a degree of expectancy (even if slight)—and thus have a latent impact on what we manifest. Because of this, we can perhaps speculate that such entities (who engage in these endeavors) would have within their interests the object of reinforcing this belief and perhaps dispersing more evenly. Could it perhaps be a possibility that organic prophetic dreams are less common than we have thought? Could the prevalence of prophetic dreams potentially be attributed to a manipulative design—intended to facilitate an avenue of influence over our creative capacity? There may be enough basis here to at least consider this as a possibility.
What may be consistent with this is the fact that prophetic dreams seem predominantly to be negative. What they most commonly prognosticate are adverse circumstances, frequently involving death or terrible accidents—very much akin to “nightmares”. If we’re looking at this from the angle that they’re intended and not accidental—why then would this be the case? We know there is small probability for avoidance; we know that apprehension can bring us more vibrationally in line with negative outcomes; we also know, with certainty, that negative emotions (stimulated by such dreams) can adversely affect our energy field. This is not to say that there could be no legitimate reason for them, but only that there are valid questions needed to be asked, so that we can better ascertain the source of this phenomenon.
Touching back on our collective attitude towards dreams, we must admit that we do in fact have a latent sensitivity regarding their content. We are affected by them and, when unfavorable, they do at times cause varying degrees of concernment. It must be noted that this sensitivity is not limited to the spiritually-minded but is present, to some degree, in perhaps the majority of the human population. Accentuating this, I’ll briefly highlight a conversation I had with my sister (who is not spiritual) just a few weeks back: She remarked that she had a dream the previous night where she was in a car accident and had overturned her car. I asked her, before anything else, how it made her feel. Widening her eyes slightly, she responded “Like I might be in some kind of car accident!” … I think we should reflect on this and bear in mind that this kind of reasoning is not uncommon—and maybe not accidental. Lastly on this, I will just point out that I am not suggesting that prophetic dreams, in and of themselves, are necessarily a bad thing—but rather that an artificially induced inflation of their numbers (if they are in fact naturally infrequent) may precipitate an undue sensitivity regarding their significance—which, as I say, could be seen as favorable to the agendas of dream manipulation. Please note that, at present, this is only speculation. I am simply presenting, for the sake of open inquiry, an alternative hypothesis from which we can draw our own conclusions.
As another motive for dream manipulation, which could perhaps be the overarching reason, we should consider the principal source of sustenance required by dark entities. Peculiar as though it may be, it seems that the nourishment needed by such entities takes the form of negative (low-vibrational) emotional energy. The reason for this is presumably that, through some dubious feat, they have somehow managed to actually disconnect themselves from source-creator and thus have effectively rendered themselves cut-off from life-force energy. I suspect this wasn’t actually due to their being “banished”, but rather that their energy fields, through their own actions, had reached a virtually incompatible wavelength with the background cosmic energy. And now, in order for the continuation of their existence, unsuspecting host systems have to be found and clandestinely converted into production facilities—which is essentially a process of downgrading energy to a frequency that is in sympathy with their own vibration. Obviously, once a source has been secured, the procedure would likely be to optimize its output, using any and all means to increase fear-based emotion and—most fundamentally—the negative manifestations which give rise to it.
As to the role that manipulated dreams play in this, I would say it’s self-explanatory that the nightmare not only generates fear, but perhaps a relatively potent form of it. Excluding people who live in, for instance, war-torn or dangerous parts of the world, it is probably nightmares that give rise to fear the most often. I have to say, for myself anyway, that nightmares are really the only time that I experience fear. And I should remark here, considering my own dreams at least, that there are definitely indications that some of them are purposefully designed to do just that.
I cite here my persistently recurring dreams of being stranded in inescapable darkness—one of which, the most noteworthy of them all, occurred conspicuously the night of my last birthday: As usual, I suddenly find myself in my house in complete darkness—although this time there’s an unusually foreboding atmosphere and, to my perplexity, I find that all my appliances are amiss; my fridge is wide open; my oven has been pulled away from the wall; there’s an overly large trash bag in the middle of the floor (which I was uneager to open); and, most portentously, my television has been turned on. Immediately persuaded that this was paranormal activity, I rush in an attempt to turn on the lights, but as usual I’m foiled in this as the power has been cut-off. As regularly unfolds, I bewilderedly struggle to find a source of light, discovering every contrivance to be mysteriously dysfunctional (even candles)—except this time, quite unprecedentedly, I find when I awaken that my real television has surprisingly been turned on, moderately loudly, to an irregular music station which, I further noted, was playing an exceptionally disagreeable tune.
The preceding dream, for the record, exemplifies what I think are some of the classic hallmarks of an “overt” manipulated dream, which I would characterize as a sort of mischievous trickery; however, as far as a fear producing dream, this of course in no way typifies their standard form. Some of them, which surely many can bear witness to, are to a far degree much more malicious. For the record, I have evaluated the dream in the sense of it being natural and symbolic, however, due to its association with the subsequent paranormal event, there seems a strong likelihood that this was attributable to manipulation.
Returning to the idea of their generation of fear, I would also draw attention to the fact that most dreams go unaccounted for—perhaps as much as 95% of them. So the impression we have that only a small amount of dreams incite fear is perhaps not substantiated. We could really only speculate as to how many dreams are actually fear producing and, as should be pointed out, even the most acute and severe nightmares, as I have discovered myself, can go entirely under the radar and all memories of them rendered completely irretrievable. In addition, we should bear in mind that fear is only one particular variety of negative, low-vibrational emotion. We should contemplate all off the other dream scenarios which evoke negative emotions other than fear—of which there are undoubtedly plenty. Furthermore, it should be made clear that I am not at all suggesting that manipulated dreams are the primary stimulus of negative energy, but rather, as I alluded earlier, are probably more intended as a supplementary derivation, used with the aim of elevating it to more optimal levels.
The last practicable reason for dream manipulation, which is likely to be the most incontrovertible, would be as a means to corrupt one’s spiritual guidance. In regard to this, it should be taken for granted, given the methods of the opposition, that virtually every source of multidimensional information will be seized upon and compromised using advanced methods. It follows from this that the procedure used in evaluation of dream material would necessarily have to be up to par with such refined techniques. I would think it should be somewhat comprehensive and, of course, gauged according to what we understand of higher dimensional principles—Is its guidance in complete accord with oneness? With this being said, I would further suggest that it needs to be somewhat analytical and not entirely based on intuition. My estimation is that they have taken intuition into account—and have likely devised ways to circumnavigate its perusal. One such method—which is universal and could certainly be applied to dream content—is to immerse the deceptive portion of information into an overall context containing distinguishable truths. This would mask the disinformation and through sensing the validity of the surrounding information may potentially cause your intuitive faculty to misfire and resonate as genuine truth. In view of this, I would consider some minor analysis advisable—not to exclude intuition—but to supplement it so as to fail-safe against such techniques.
So with dream-based guidance, depending on the wariness of the individual, the foremost role of the corruptive entity I should think would be to maintain the belief that the source of information behind the dream is secure. This would naturally be a very delicate task of implanting dream content which always, on the surface, seemed to be benevolent and never going too far with the corruptive elements so as to not arouse suspicion. As I’ve touched on in the preceding, it would be to package the deception into a very wholesome, auspicious-looking dream, however, the intendment of the message (if correctly deciphered) would divert the individual away from his true interests. One of the most common tactics to corrupt guidance in this way is to introduce “distractive” elements.
To illustrate what I mean, say for instance a novice spiritual initiate goes to see a medium for a reading. Completely unbeknownst to the initiate (and the medium as well), the entities which are channeling the information are clever imposters who, through a sleight of hand, reveal to him that he is none other than the long-awaited reincarnation of King Tut. Intrigued, but in no way convinced of this, the initiate leaves and during his sleep that night (unaware that dreams can be manipulated), is bestowed with imagery of pyramids, obelisks and hieroglyphics—and upon awakening is seen as glorious confirmation that after all he was indeed the long-awaited King Tut. And thus, instead of focusing on genuine spiritual attainment, he embarks on a long drawn-out journey to rediscover his past as Tutankhamen—much to the satisfaction of the entities.
Where dream deception gets a lot more complex is in situations where the dreamer is aware of the reality of manipulated dreams. In such situations, what seems to unfold is that the entities will attempt to shape your impression of what “the manipulated dream” looks like. Depending on the individual, they will first hold fast to the hope that you retain the impression of manipulated dreams being exclusively negative in appearance. They’ll likely very early on deliberately stage a few “transparent” manipulated dreams, which will be negative and which you will latch onto and form a conception as to the tell-tale features of a manipulated dream. And thereafter, you will evaluate the authenticity of dreams based on these learned clues. Unbeknownst to you, however, the entities had all along possessed the means to replicate the exact characteristics of any quality of dream, even the most benevolent in nature. So, by and large, it seems as though their procedure is to gradually condition our perception of dreams with the overall aim of camouflaging their deception. In addition to this, once the dreamer has been primed in this way and is consciously looking for the “false” clues of a manipulated dream, the entities may then attempt to undermine your legitimate dream guidance by using a process which can be referred to as “earmarking”. How it is achieved is through duplicating whatever your genuine advisements would be and then attaching to them certain details which will cause you to suspect its origin. Such details could encompass a variety of things, but are usually slightly ignoble elements, based in materiality and unreflective of higher principles. Ultimately what this results in is a disregard for your legitimate objectives—or at the very least confusion.
In return to the overall subject of dream manipulation, an important question that we should feel compelled to answer is—to what extent are our dreams being manipulated? If we know they have the capability; if we know they’re already engaged in it; if we know they have rather strong motivations for doing so—then what safeguard is there to prevent their dominance over the dream landscape? Moreover, what reason would they have to refrain from it? I’m not presupposing this is our situation, but in such a scenario, deeper questions would need to be explored. In particular, it seems fairly demonstrative that there is an inverse permeation that occurs with our conscious experience in the dream plane. To explain: It is fairly well recognized that our conscious experience in the real-world filters into the dreamworld via our subconscious. However, I feel confident in asserting that there’s clearly an observable transference which occurs in the other direction. Quite simply, our experience in the dreamworld has an influence on our consciousness in the real world. This is exhibited clearly when we notice how different we feel in the morning after having a pleasant dream compared with that of a nightmare. This may seem obvious, and perhaps pointless to some, however, in light of dream manipulation, it has all new meaning and relevance.
The implications of this became clearly recognizable to me on the following occasion: I was in the midst of an important spiritual practice where one willfully abstains from sensory pleasure with the aim of vibrational enhancement. I intended to go for at least a month with this and near to the halfway point, unsurprisingly, there came a climax of discomfort. I started to rationalize throwing in the towel, although, for the most part, was successfully maintaining. However, very conspicuously at this low-point, I was besieged with a series of exhilarant dreams, full of excitement and people, and very markedly centered around material indulgence. Upon waking from these, I was completely saturated with this desire to go out and luxuriate in material pleasures. It was however no doubt spiritually inadvisable and of course irrational, because I had already embarked on this practice and would have rendered it null not going through with it the whole way. Nevertheless, my mindset was so significantly altered from this, and the urge so strong, that I deviated anyway—and in so doing careened way of my spiritual path, as I didn’t recommence with the practice for at least another month. So ultimately what this seemingly benign dream ended up facilitating was the complete derailment of my primary spiritual endeavor—at which I would have been naïve not to realize as having been calculated.
So essentially what I’m hypothesizing here is that there may be a hidden subversive element to dreams that has so far gone largely unaccounted for. If it was in fact the dream which drove me off course, then what we have here, more or less, is a subtle form of mind-control. The dream engendered a particular frame of mind which was clearly used in deliberation of swaying my decision making. Additionally, the fact that it was premeditated suggests that such methods have already been in use. In consideration of this, it may be worthwhile to think carefully about the extent of how this could be utilized and its overall implications. If, as I’ve suggested as a possibility, our dream scenarios are often being tampered with by interdimensionals, and we’re submersed in these scenarios eight hours of every day, then perhaps there exists, to some degree, the possibility of conditioning (or subconscious programming). Reflecting on this, I would remind the reader that virtually the totality of dream experience is lost to conscious memory, however, still exists alive and well within the subconscious and, as would certainly be agreed, has a latent impact on our psychological condition. I’m certainly not prepared to draw any far-reaching conclusions, but as I think I’ve pointed out, there are reasonable grounds here which suggest this is something perhaps worthy of our attention and further investigation.
In conjunction with this topic, I would like to focus attention on the particular characteristics of the dream state of consciousness, which I feel sheds an important light on the nature of dream manipulation and perhaps the mechanism by which it is enabled. When we actually take stock of our awareness while in the dream, there are many peculiarities which should be given some consideration. Overall, what’s particularly noteworthy is the nebulous and shifting nature of our focus and attention span. It’s rather as if our awareness is perpetually fading in and out—acutely aware of something in one instant, yet, in the next, has shifted entirely to something else, leaving all recollection of the previous moment by the wayside. What seems to be driving our sporadic attention is this incessant and irregular stream of thoughts, which on some level appear to be fairly random, however, when broadly examined, clearly show a definite design and planning behind them. Ultimately, and rather interestingly, these emerging thoughts always appear to be generating the outline of a theme or story; a story which very often is curiously unreminiscent of our ordinary knowledge and experience. When seriously scrutinizing these stories, I’m not very inclined to agree that it’s only a matter of subconscious defragmenting. There’s too much that’s extraneous; too much that’s of a recondite nature and inconsistent with the human mind. As for the higher-self, I’m not discounting this source, but for it to be solely derived from there seems questionable, as there are just too many aspects of dreams that are unreflective of higher-dimensional attributes. In consideration of this, I would say it’s hardly implausible to suggest that, in some cases, this stream of thought which is shaping the stories is actually being telepathically projected from an outside source.
As is widely known now, the human mind possesses a natural telepathic capability, which essentially entails the faculty of more or less that of a radio receiver. As a consequence of this, we’re openly subjectable to externally originated thought-forms. For the most part, this isn’t easily perceptible because of the high activity of our normal brainwave state, which, because of its quick oscillation, congests our mind to the point of being non-receptive. However, as we descend into sleep our brainwave frequency slows down and we become increasingly receptive to outside thought-forms. Considering this reality and our obvious vulnerability in not being aware of it, it’s likely this avenue of influence would be exploited. In vindication of this, I’ll briefly highlight a particular moment in a dream where I had apparently been asked about my broad views of society: It was by a girl named Lauren, and I have little recollection of the context, but, as my response, I proceeded to give her a quite detailed philosophy but which, astoundingly, was in no shape or form resemblant of my own views. I suspect there must have been calculation with this, as these views were not only objectionable to me, but were the very views of which I disapprove the most. It was essentially that of the “cut-and-dry” logic, typical of authoritarianism. I remember saying something along the lines of: “The biggest problem with society is the overburden of lazy and unproductive people”—to which I was absolutely stunned in recollection of. Even more curious, and which should not be passed off, was the fact that at no point during this discourse did I ever recognize my extremely uncharacteristic behavior. In review of this—underscoring the distinctive and tell-tale sentiment of the above—it seems more than probable that this was originating from a lower-vibrational intelligence. Moreover, it’s conceivable to me that this may very well be one of the central mechanisms by which dreams are being manipulated. Very craftily, it is being done from the inside out. Thoughts are being projected inward and, through our own agencies, are then manifested outward into the dream.
In closing, we can perhaps conclude here that the conventional model of dream philosophy is, to some degree, incomplete. The reality of dream manipulation is a crucial factor and is most certainly a game changer. Many of us not only take dreams seriously but are consciously deriving information from them, which is then at times implemented into a course of action. It is therefore perhaps important that we are taking into account the possibility of deception. The notion of setting an intention, which could work to some benefit, may not negate entirely the potential of outside influence. It may turn out that there are clever loopholes with this, and as I’ve mentioned the dream plane may still technically qualify as a collective environment, entailing that we may not be capacitated to disallow communal manifestation—just as in third dimensional reality. Furthermore, I think we should acknowledge the fact that dreams are undoubtedly a means of influence over our manifestation capacity, and that our limited awareness of dream manipulation is primarily what enables this. By becoming streetwise to manipulation, we are in a better position to discern their validity and less likely to be swayed by dreams that seem to denote negative portent—which, with many, are a frequent occurrence. On a final note, I would suggest that we remain opened-minded with dreams and continue to explore alternative ideas. Let us not go the way of the mainstream and become rigid in our thinking, dismissive of possibilities which we have not yet endeavored to rule out.
About the author: I would consider myself a spiritual advisor who’s focused primarily on the newly awakening—helping to facilitate soul-purpose activation. I see it as central the task of bringing abstract metaphysical concepts further in range of acceptability of the rationalistic mainstream. In addition, I see it as also vital the need to reassess the whole of spiritual philosophy and to establish with greater certainty the veracity of our prevailing beliefs. It is an exhilarating line of work, and I’m greatly honored to take part in it. I reside in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania USA, and I make myself available to anyone who wishes me to expand on anything. I can be reached at: Hallahan11@yahoo.com
~via In5D.com
Dreams / Dreaming, Lucid Dreaming Astral, Astral Beings, Astral Body, Astral Plane, Astral Plane Dark Magicians, Astral Realm, Astral Realms, Brain, Brain Waves, Brainwave States, Brainwaves, Conscious Dreaming, Consciousness, Dark Entities, Dream, Dream Interference, Dream Interpretation, Dream Life, Dream Manipulation, Dream Messages, Dream State, Dream Symbols, Dream World, Dreamer, Dreamers, Dreaming, Dreaming Lucidly, Dreams, Dreamscape, Dreamtime, Dreamwalking, Dreamworld, Facing Fears, Fantasies, Fantasy, Fear, In5D, Interference, Interpretation of Dreams, James Hallahan, Lucid Dreaming, Lucid Dreams, Messages, Multidimensional, Multidimensionality, Negative Entities, Objective Thinking, Parasitic Entities, Philosophy, Spiritually-Minded, Study of Dreams 4 Comments
EARTH WE ARE ONE: “The 11 Types of Lightworkers — Which One Are You?”
While you may feel called to serve and care for those around you, the term Lightworker may be one you hesitate to fully connect with. This term may bring to mind overtly new age individuals, preaching their views of spirituality to large audiences, saving large crowds of people with a single inspirational talk.
While some may choose to use their gifts in a very public way, others take a more ‘behind the scenes approach’. There are several different types of Lightworkers operating around us each and every day, helping to serve and bring peace to those that they encounter. Many of these individuals live what we would see as completely ‘normal’ lives — holding down a corporate job, living in your neighborhood, driving a modest vehicle.
You don’t have to be in the spotlight to bring positivity to the world around you. That doesn’t diminish your journey and purpose in any way! Each of these 11 types of Lightworkers play a very important role.
It is important to note that most Lightworkers find they embody many of these descriptions, or that their role may change overtime. This is normal, and identifying where you fit is a very personal, spiritual journey. Trust your intuition and inner guidance, and you will find the best method for you to use your gifts to be of service to those around you.
Wayshowers have found their own inner peace, and live their life in a way that sets an example for others who wish to follow in their footsteps. They may not be actively trying to teach and share their gift, but by simply being themselves and continuing in their own journey they help to bring peace to those that are following their example.
There are many different forms of healing, and those that identify as Healers may focus on one, or many, in their efforts to serve all souls and beings including humanity and the animal kingdom. They may find themselves called to focus on mental, emotional, physical or spiritual healing. These individuals recognize the importance of prioritizing their own self-healing to be able to share their gift with others.
Messengers receive guidance from Spirit, and their job is to relay this message to humanity. The way in which they choose to share this message may differ, employing a variety of mediums including blogging, writing, public speaking and YouTube. Regardless of how they choose to share it, their message is an important step in the awakening process and needs to be heard.
Lightworkers who act as dreamers are able to tune into the alternate dimensions of experience available only through dream space. They can understand and interpret the various imagery that comes through to them in their dreams, analysing what that means for themselves and those that they encounter in our current reality. Dreamtime allows one to connect with your higher self, bringing back messages from the angels that they feel you need to know at this current stage in your journey.
Divine Lightkeepers
Divine Lightkeepers have the very important task of embodying the light. During times of turmoil in our world, these individuals will in turn share the light that they have embodied, uplifting humanity and neutralizing the chaotic events around us. They are the support in times of trial that allow humanity to move forward into more peaceful times.
Seers, Psychics, Clairvoyants
Seers, Psychics and Clairvoyants have been able to connect with those beyond the veil, opening their third eye. They can see beyond the physical, embodying the ability to provide readings or services to those that seek guidance, inspiration or empowerment.
Ascension Guides
These Lightworkers are actively working towards ascension in their own lives, and sharing the process with those that feel called to learn more. They are hands on, still in the learning process themselves, connecting at various stages of this journey in their lives, from the initial struggle to overcome their own struggles through to the final steps and the peace they feel as they continue to ascend.
Transmuters
Transmuters carry the important task of transforming negative energies, neutralizing past karma and keeping balance throughout humanity. While some Transmuters will work in a broader scope, others have a specific focus for their gifts, such as being born into a family with a long history of negative karma that requires their healing touch.
Divine Blueprint Creators and Manifestors
Divine Blueprint Creators and Manifestors are not only travelling through the journey of ascension, but in doing so they are able to bring back ideas in which they can weave light to promote positive change, enhancing the lives of those that are also joining them on this journey. They have moved past the need to work for self interest, and instead focus on the highest interest of all.
Divine Blueprint Holders
All Lightworkers carry a divine blueprint for their fully awakened self. Divine Blueprint Holders are able to tune into this template. Their ability to tune into this template, and share it with those around them brings about ascension in the present moment — sharing this code though the human heart grid.
Gridworkers and Gatekeepers
Interdimensional gates exist in various capacities in the world, providing an opportunity to connect and share with other awakened humans, allowing higher levels of light to descend upon us. Gridworkers and Gatekeepers are responsible for working these grids including the human heart grid (connecting the hearts of all awakened humans), the crystalline grid and other higher energetic grids, and those that lay along lines on the earth connecting sacred sites.
Regardless of which of these gifts you connect with, your roll as a Lightkeeper is an important one! You may change roles, or grow to connect with one above all others. Only you can connect with your own inner self and discover what you feel called to do throughout your unique journey.
~via EWAO.com
Lightworker / Lightworkers, Lightworkers Ascension Guides, Dreamers, Gatekeepers, Gridwork, Healers, Lightkeepers, Lightwork, Lightworker, Lightworkers, Messengers, Wayshowers 0 Comments
LISA RENEE: “Aurora Re-Encryption of our DNA Blueprint”
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More Mo’Nique: Readying A New Talk Show
Oscar-winning actress Mo’Nique is readying a return to television with a talk show pilot for ABC/Disney. The 45-year-old comedienne currently had a daytime talk show being developed by Vicki Dummer, ABC’s Executive Vice President Current Series and Specials. A source ...
PhotosTV
Dancing with the Stars: New Cast Revealed
ABC revealed the latest cast for the new season of “Dancing with the Stars” today on “Good Morning America.” There will be 12 new celebrities vying for the coveted mirrorball trophy when the show returns for its two-hour premiere on ...
New View: ABC Unveils New Cast Photo With Jenny McCarthy
ABC has released the first photo of the new quartet of hosts that will be in place when “The View” returns this fall. Whoopi Goldberg, new co-host Jenny McCarthy, Sherri Shepherd and Barbara Walters are all featured in the newly ...
Raven-Symoné: Out The Closet
Actress-singer Raven-Symoné appears to have come out of the closet. The “That’s So Raven” star posted a message on Twitter on Friday that apparently puts to rest the speculation over her sexual orientation. “I can finally get married! Yay government! ...
First Look: Check Out New Talk Show “The Real”
On June 3, AlwaysAList.com reported that Fox was launching a sneak peak of their new talk show, “The Real.” The daytime chat show will feature five under-40 co-hosts including comedienne Loni Love, actress Tamera Mowry, singer/reality star Tamar Braxton, singer/actress ...
New Talk: Loni Love, Tamera Mowry & Tamar Braxton Join ...
Fox is launching a new daytime talk show called “The Real” starring comedienne Loni Love, actress Tamera Mowry, singer/reality star Tamar Braxton, singer/actress Adrienne Bailon and TV talent Jeannie Mai. The ensemble talk show produced by Telepictures will get a ...
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Principal Investigators and Staff
Documentary Features
Episodic Documentaries
The Empowerment Project
Filmmaker: Sarah Moshman
The Empowerment Project is the incredible journey of a crew of female filmmakers driving across America to encourage, empower, and inspire the next generation of strong women to go after their career ambitions. Traveling over 7,000 miles from Los Angeles to New York over the course of 30 days, the documentary spotlights 17 positive and powerful women leaders across a variety of lifestyles and industries. In celebration of the all-female focus in front of and behind the camera, the filmmakers turned the cameras on themselves, capturing their transformational journey. The film challenges the audience to ask themselves, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid to fail?”
Sarah Moshman is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and TEDx speaker whose work has been featured on Upworthy, Marie Claire, CNN, and Good Morning America. After directing two short documentaries about female empowerment in young women, (Girls Rock! Chicago (2010) and Growing up Strong: Girls on the Run (2012)) she set out to direct and produce her first feature documentary The Empowerment Project: Ordinary Women Doing Extraordinary Things (2014) which has been screened over 350 times around the US and around the world in schools, groups, organizations and corporations starting conversations about gender equality. With Indieflix as the distributor, the film has been sponsored by major brands like Nordstrom, American Girl and Microsoft to spread this important message far and wide. Sarah’s second feature documentary, Losing Sight of Shore follows the incredible journey of four women who rowed across the Pacific Ocean which will be released globally in Spring 2017. Sarah is dedicated to telling stories that uplift and inspire as well as showcase strong female role models on screen.
Numbers at a Glance
278 programs
171292 people
© Copyright 2021 USC School of Cinematic Arts | This is a program of the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government, administered by USC.
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Step 1 of 4 | CHECK AVAILABILITY
Property: Augusta Bay Bahamas
Arrival: Departure:
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 2021 2022 2023 2024 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 2021 2022 2023 2024
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Adults: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Children: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Rates & Packages:
Travel Agency IATA #:
The Queens Hwy overlooking Elizabeth Harbour at Jolly Hall, George Town, Exuma The Bahamas
Email: reservations@augustabaybahamas.com
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