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PHOTO REVIVES ANGER AT RED GUARD TERROR
by Xujun Eberlein
History would later record this as the first case of Red Guard students killing a teacher
(PNS) -- A month before the 114th birthday of Chairman Mao Zedong on December 26, a long forgotten photo of Mao with a young girl resurfaced on the Chinese Internet. It generated an instant furor around the girl.
It has been 41 years since then. She was 18 or 19 at the time, a senior student at the girls' school that was attached to Beijing Normal University. On August 18, 1966, she went to Tiananmen, as part of a delegation of Red Guards to be received by Mao. She was given the special honor of placing a Red Guard armband on Mao's sleeve. As she did this, Mao asked her her name and she told him: Song Binbin. Loosely translated it means "gentle and refined." Mao had told her in a joking way, according to the photographer, that gentle was out, and "Yaowu" was in. "Yaowu" means "seeking armed conflict."
Almost overnight, the girl became known as Song Yaowu and famous throughout China. Young and proud, little did she know how history is prone to turning fame into infamy. Soon, her new name evolved into a symbol of Red Guard violence, and for a reason.
Just two weeks before this happy moment on Tiananmen, a cruel beating death occurred in Song's school. It was August, and the peak of the three-month activity that marked the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards, mostly middle school and high school students, held power in China second only to Mao. On August 5, in the name of the revolution, teenage girls in Song Binbin's school yelled at and beat up their teachers and administrators.
Bian Zhongyun, the school's Communist Party secretary and vice principal died in the turmoil. History would later record this as the first case of Red Guard students killing a teacher, something that would shortly thereafter become more frequent nationwide.
Song's role in the 1966 beating death remains clouded to this day. All we know is that she was a Red Guard leader at the time. One witness claims that she was on campus with other onlookers, and that she had commented on the righteousness of the action.
Fast-forward four decades. Today, Song Binbin, who goes by this name, has lived a low-key life in the United States for 27 years. On the other side of the earth, in Beijing, her alma mater is celebrating its 90th anniversary. For reasons we don't know, as part of the celebrations, displayed is a special photo album containing the picture of Song Binbin with Mao. On the opposite page is a picture of Bian Zhongyun, the teacher who had so tragically died at the hands of her students.
Earlier this year, the anniversary had sparked a search for alumnae who made a mark in the world. Song Binbin was among those recommended. She embraced the opportunity with enthusiasm, listing among her achievements her doctoral degree in atmospheric and planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She said she was the first doctoral student from China in her department, and provided a picture of herself with her adviser, Fred Frey, a reputed geochemist at MIT.
This appears to be the first time Song Binbin acknowledged her ties to her high school. She had done her best to move away from that time, and always seemed reluctant to talk to anyone about her past. Viewed by most as a villain, and perhaps by history as another fervent believer in a cause gone wrong, she had put the past behind her. That is, until now.
In her write-up of her career, she made no mention of "Red August," 1966. No apology. No justification. Simply nothing. This is a strategy that had been fairly effective in the United States, but her alma mater is not in her adopted land. If she believed her past was forgotten, she was wrong. People saw what she had written, and it generated a furor. Many were outraged that she would hold up her accomplishments in America as if nothing had happened at her high school. They called her the school's shame. They called the school's 90th anniversary celebrations a shame.
Among the 90 honored alumnae, Song Binbin provided the longest self-introduction, as well as the largest number of personal photos. Her eagerness to regain recognition from her old school is a bit puzzling, given how hard she had been trying to have her Red Guard past forgotten. In all the years after coming to America, the only time she spoke publicly was in Carma Hinton's recent documentary, "Morning Sun." With her face blurred, Song told the interviewer Ð and the audience Ð she had never hit anyone; she had always opposed violence. It was her way of indirectly denying any involvement in Bian Zhongyun 's beating death.
In her long self-introduction in Chinese, which can be found online, she talks about her 92-year-old mother and young son. Through her words, I see her keenness to spare her family from the shadow of her past, to allow them to lead normal lives. I have also read articles about Song's gentle personality, which I have no reason to disbelieve.
My big sister, though years younger than Song Binbin, was also a Red Guard and died for her cause at age 16. Knowing my sister, I tend to believe in Song Binbin's good intention. Like my sister, Song was one of countless Red Guards, in fact, an entire generation of Chinese youngsters who had responded with enthusiasm to Mao's call for an ongoing revolution.
There is nothing to suggest that Song Binbin was especially fervent in her beliefs, but the picture of herself next to Mao was enough to make her stand out. Unfortunately, the symbol is long-standing, despite being transformed from glorious to notorious; despite Song Binbin and her family becoming victims of the very revolution she had participated in; despite Song spending her adult life as a scientist, shying away from politics.
But the fact remains that the Red Guards did commit numerous acts of violence, and Song was a notable member of that collective. The violence was aimed at people who were labeled as enemies and the label, in turn, justified the violence. It's like in a war. Remember the American soldier who was tempted to shoot an Iraqi family in an insurgent controlled area? ("Rules of Engagement" by William Langewiesche in Vanity Fair, 2006, reprinted in Best American Magazine Writing 2007, has a great description of this.)
Only history can belatedly judge the justice or injustice of such actions, and the judges are never the litigants. "Praise for good things doesn't go beyond a door; blame for bad things sounds out for thousands of miles." So goes a Chinese adage.
So far, few former Red Guards have come out and talked about their actions. Most are in their 60s now, remaining behind a wall of silence. I can understand their excuse that the violence they were involved in was circumstantial, non-personal, and, at the time, even politically correct. Still, I can't help but wonder: Had Song Binbin acknowledged her part in, clarified her position on, and properly expressed her sorrow for that tragic day of 1966, would people's reaction today have been more restrained? Would she have been forgiven by those who crouched in terror that day, as well as by those who had terrorized and now try to forget their shame?
Comments? Send a letter to the editor.
Albion Monitor December 22, 2007 (http://www.albionmonitor.com)
Contact rights@monitor.net for permission to use in any format.
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‘Alice in Wonderland’ Used To Convince Japan Children Nuclear Power Is Safe
‘Alice in Wonderland’ was used to convince children in Japan that nuclear power is safe (PHOTO & VIDEO)
Nuclear Power after Fukushima | Special Series on Post-Disaster Japan
Uploaded by: Harvard
Uploaded on: August 7, 2012
Speaker: Charles Ferguson, President, Federation of American Scientists
At 40:15 in
Ferguson: Stories have come out that the government was promoting nuclear power so much that they were using cartoon characters, they were using Alice in Wonderland to convince school children nuclear power is incredibly safe. They weren’t showing the other side of the story adequately enough. It was an unbalanced presentation.
The New York Times’ Norimitsu Onishi on the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ theme:
‘Safety Myth’ Left Japan Ripe for Nuclear Crisis
Alice In Wonderland Used To Convince Children Nuclear Power Is Safe
Near a nuclear power plant facing the Sea of Japan, a series of exhibitions in a large public relations building here extols the virtues of the energy source with some help from “Alice in Wonderland.”
“It’s terrible, just terrible,” the White Rabbit says in the first exhibit. “We’re running out of energy, Alice.”
A Dodo robot figure, swiveling to address Alice and the visitors to the building, declares that there is an “ace” form of energy called nuclear power. It is clean, safe and renewable if you reprocess uranium and plutonium, the Dodo says.
“Wow, you can even do that!” Alice says of nuclear power. “You could say that it’s optimal for resource-poor Japan!”
Over several decades, Japan’s nuclear establishment has devoted vast resources to persuade the Japanese public of the safety and necessity of nuclear power. Plant operators built lavish, fantasy-filled public relations buildings that became tourist attractions. Bureaucrats spun elaborate advertising campaigns through a multitude of organizations established solely to advertise the safety of nuclear plants. Politicians pushed through the adoption of government-mandated school textbooks with friendly views of nuclear power.
The result was the widespread adoption of the belief — called the “safety myth” — that Japan’s nuclear power plants were absolutely safe. Japan single-mindedly pursued nuclear power even as Western nations distanced themselves from it.
The belief helps explains why in the only nation to have been attacked with atomic bombs, the Japanese acceptance of nuclear power was so strong that the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl barely registered. Even with the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the reaction against nuclear power has been much stronger in Europe and the United States than in Japan itself.
As the Japanese continue to search for answers to the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, some are digging deep into the national psyche and examining a national propensity to embrace a belief now widely seen as irrational. Because of this widespread belief in Japanese plants’ absolute safety, plant operators and nuclear regulators failed to adopt proper safety measures and advances in technology, like emergency robots, experts and government officials acknowledge.
“In Japan, we have something called the ‘safety myth,’ ” Banri Kaieda, who runs the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which oversees the nuclear industry, said at a news conference at an International Atomic Energy Agency meeting in Vienna on Monday. “It’s a fact that there was an unreasonable overconfidence in the technology of Japan’s nuclear power generation.”
As a result, he said, the nuclear industry’s “thinking about safety had a poor foundation.”
Japan’s government has concentrated its propaganda and educational efforts on creating such national beliefs in the past, most notably during World War II. The push for nuclear power underpinned postwar Japan’s focus on economic growth and its dream of greater energy independence. But as the carefully fostered belief in nuclear safety has dissipated in the three months after the March 11 disaster, Japanese are increasingly blaming the nuclear establishment for Fukushima. In a politically apathetic country, tens of thousands have regularly held protests against nuclear power. Young Japanese have used social media to organize and publicize demonstrations that have been virtually ignored by major newspapers and television networks.
A song, “It Was Always a Lie,” has become an anthem at the protests and a vehicle for Japanese anger on the Internet. Its author, a famous singer named Kazuyoshi Saito, wrote it by changing the lyrics of a love ballad, “I Always Liked You,” that he composed last year for a commercial for Shiseido, the cosmetics giant. Mr. Saito’s performance of the song, surreptitiously uploaded on YouTube and other sites, has gone viral.
“If you walk across this country, you’ll find 54 nuclear reactors/School textbooks and commercials told us they were safe,” the song goes.
“It was always a lie, it’s been exposed after all/It was really a lie that nuclear power is safe.”
h/t EneNews
Categories: NUCLEAR NEWS
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Iran Accuses German Siemens Of Sabotaging Its Nuclear Plant As Turkey Sends Heavy Weapons To Syria Border
Audit Finds Broken EPA Radiation Monitors Broken And Unmaintained
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The Garigue in Spring
Garigue: shrubby vegetation of dry Mediterranean regions, consisting of spiny or aromatic dwarf shrubs interspersed with colourful ephemeral species (Collins English Dictionary)
At first glance it appears to be a barren stretch of land interspersed with rocks and a few shrubs, bent and stunted by fierce winds. But if you look closer and focus on the little things, you will come to realise that the idea that the garigue is barren is just a misconception. On the contrary, it is teeming with life. You just have to know where to look for it. In Malta the garigue is most common on cliff-tops close to the shore, especially in areas like Dingli Cliffs, Ghar Lapsi, Migra Ferha, l-Ahrax tal-Mellieha and the stretch of land between the Mnajdra and Hagar Qim temples and Wied iz-Zurrieq.
The small pockets of red-brown soil in between the jagged rocks are shallow and the only plants that will thrive have short roots and are able to withstand long periods without water under a blazing Mediterranean sun. So the plants that do grow are quite tiny and the best way to appreciate them is to get down on your knees and take a close peek. It is well worth the effort, especially in spring, when the majority of plants will be in flower.
Ironically, although at first glance the garigue appears to be so barren, plants thrive and flower there year round. The most prevalent shrub of the Maltese garigue is the wonderfully-scented wild thyme but it is also common to find asphodel, fennel and spurges. Less frequently, sea chamomile, different species of tiny orchids and irises are encountered. Some of these plants are endemic to the Maltese islands.
In the past, large stretches of garigue were destroyed by urban development and the mistaken mentality that these tracts of land are incapable of supporting any useful vegetation. Nowadays most garigue areas are protected and, thankfully, they continue to be a source of delight to all lovers of nature.
More information about Malta’s garigue may be found on the blogs Maltese Nature and The Malta Photo Blog.
Labels: asphodel, cliffs, endemic, fennel, flora, flowers, garigue, giant fennel, nature, spring, wild flowers
St Agatha’s Tower
St Agatha’s Tower, or as it is more commonly called, the Red Tower is situated on a high ridge that gives anybody in it unobstructed views of the surrounding countryside and, more importantly, the sea.
The tower was built in 1647-1648 during the reign of Grand Master Lascaris as part of the coastal defences of the island and was dedicated to St Agatha – one of the patron saints on Malta. Inside the tower there is a small chapel dedicated to the saint.
Originally, the tower was probably accessed by a drawbridge. The interior of the tower consists of two vaulted rooms with four corner towers. If the need arose, it was able to house a garrison of about 50 men who had at their disposal five cannons positioned on the roof. The tower was manned by British soldiers during both of the world wars. At the base, the walls of the tower are about four metres thick. It is not known when or why the tower was painted red.
In recent years the tower has been restored by Din l-Art Helwa (Malta’s Heritage Trust) with the aid of three private companies.
The Red Tower, Triq tad-Dahar, Mellieha
Opening hours: daily 10.00 – 13.00 hrs; Tuesdays 10.00 – 16.00 hrs
Entrance fee: 2EUR
Labels: Grand Master Lascaris, Knights of St John, Mellieha, red, tower
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Amputees and Those That Help Them
Health — 20 May 2014
Special to American News Report
It is estimated there are nearly 2 million amputees in the United States, and it may only just seem that every one of them has a heroic story.
Meet 72-year old Bill Nessell, an amputee who lives in the Inland Empire of California. He is a former deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue team.
Bill’s been an amputee for 11 years. He didn’t lose his right leg in action — actually he lost it because of peripheral artery disease from smoking.
He is president and spokesman for Amputee Connections of Redlands, a support group for people who have had arms or legs amputated. His group sponsors Kids for Camp No Limits which is set for June 27-30.
Bill and other amputees took part in the National Limb Loss Awareness event on May 18 at the Redlands Community Hospital.
“There are over 500 new amputees in the U.S. every day,” he said, most of them because of diabetes, which is the leading cause of amputation and why he is fighting so hard to raise awareness
And it seems like for every amputee like Bill Nessell there are people helping them like Michael Bissell and Paul Morton.
They are prosthetists from Winston-Salem, North Carolina who recently were part of a team that went to Haiti to fabricate and fit artificial limbs for Haitian amputees.
They joined two Australian prosthetists and over a dozen other medical volunteers in a clinic in the Haitian city of Port de Paix. They volunteered as part of the Phoenix Rising for Haiti program a nonprofit headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, committed to sustainable orthopedic care in Haiti.
The entire medical group saw more than 100 patients per day during their two week stay. All the prosthetic devices were made from donated materials. It’s a little different obviously.
While in the U.S. a prosthetist can make a fitting and order the right parts.
In a situation like Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, it was more of a make do—but ironically, it’s faster.
“The start and finish was one day—eight hours for one patient’s leg,” Morton said. “In the U.S. with insurance and paperwork and proper documentation, it’s three weeks.”
They treated two dozen amputees in the two weeks they stayed in Haiti.
Study: Sperm from infertile men ‘as good as sperm from fertile men’
Sense of control tied to feeling younger for elderly
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Savory Foods May Alter Brain to Promote Healthy Eating
Wait for it: Serotonin and confidence at the root of patience in new study
US Autism Rate Increased Some Per CDC Report
Scientists: positive workplace experiences among Americans with disabilities
American News Report creates custom editorial content that is sponsored by marketing partners. The sponsoring partners do not exert editorial influence over the content, but may be organically integrated within content in an authentic manner that does not impact editorial integrity. This content is identified as being "Special to American News Report".
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The secret to being cool: Try smiling
A News Consumer — 14 April 2018
For many people, one of the unspoken rules for being cool is maintaining an emotionally inexpressive attitude. This message is reinforced through advertisements where fashion models rarely smile and by quotes from celebrities. In an article in the Huffington Post, Kanye West said he doesn’t smile in photographs because “it just wouldn’t look as cool.”
Researchers at the University of Arizona recently questioned whether this connection between concealing emotions and coolness was in fact true. In a series of experiments, the investigators showed participants photographs of celebrities and non-celebrities who were smiling or inexpressive, and their results call into question common assumptions about what makes someone cool. The study is available online in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
“We found over and over again that people are perceived to be cooler when they smile compared to when they are inexpressive in print advertisements,” says Caleb Warren, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Arizona. “Being inexpressive makes people seem unfriendly or cold rather than cool.”
The researchers asked participants to view print advertisements for a clothing brand, and the model in the ad was either smiling or not. The models included well-known celebrities such as James Dean, Emily Didonato and Michael Jordan as well as unknown models, and they were endorsing unfamiliar brands and well-known brands. Then the participants rated the extent to which the model seemed cool on a seven-point scale. The participants consistently rated the smiling models as cooler than the inexpressive models.
Warren was surprised that participants preferred the smiling pictures of James Dean, who is typically inexpressive in photographs and considered a cool icon. The study also showed that participants had a less favorable impression of the brand when the models were inexpressive.
Warren and his co-authors, Todd Pezzuti from the University of Chile and Shruti Koley from Texas A&M University, found one exception to the trend: competitive situations. When a news article showed mixed martial arts fighters who were going to face one another at a press conference, participants rated the inexpressive athlete as more cool and dominant than a smiling athlete. When the context changed to a friendly meeting with fans at a press conference, then the participants rated the smiling fighter as cooler. “This shows that being uncool or cool can depend on the context,” says Warren.
The findings not only have implications for advertisers who are striving to make favorable impressions with consumers, but also for people as they relate to one another. While it may be difficult to change engrained societal assumptions about how to become cool, Warren hopes this research will increase awareness about how people perceive one another. In a world of social media, for example, individuals may want to consider posting smiling pictures rather than inexpressive photographs.
“This inaccurate belief about how to become cool can influence the way we communicate with others, and being inexpressive can hurt relationships,” Warren says. “It also makes it more difficult to understand one another. For these reasons, being inexpressive isn’t necessarily cool.”
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Could Christine Blasey Ford be 100% Right & Still Be Wrong?
Last Thursday, I watched the spectacle that took place before the Senate Judiciary Committee with the testimonies of Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh. Both Ford and Kavanaugh were 100% certain of their version of what did or didn’t happen 36 years ago.
Most every Democrat in America believed Ford when she was certain that it was Brett Kavanaugh who tried to rape her so long ago. Note that she provided no evidence to back up her accusation, but Democrats believed her anyway.
On the contrary, Brett Kavanaugh did provide evidence of his innocence and yet, in a judicial system that is based upon the premise of innocent until proven guilty, Democrats ignored Kavanaugh’s evidence and are prepared to convict him based upon Ford’s recollection.
Just a quick note to emphasize that Ford could not say where the alleged attack took place, nor did she know how she got there or how she got home, and yet Democrats demanded an FBI investigation. As pointed out by one of the GOP Senators present, where and what does the FBI investigate without any evidence location or other information?
Yet, like many others, I believe that Ford was very credible and that she really did experience a sexual assault sometime in her life. However, listening to both Ford and Kavanaugh, I believe that Ford was 100% right in her account and yet still wrong as to who it was who assaulted her.
However, I have seen a number of instances that still cause me to question the accuracy of Ford’s recollection.
I’ll admit here that I am a fan of true crime programs that detail real criminal investigations and court cases. More than one of these real-life cases show victims that have been 100% positive of the identity of their attackers.
I recall one case where a young girl identified a man as the attacker and killer of her parents. She was positive as to his identity and he was convicted and sentenced to prison, largely on the testimony of the girl. Over two decades later, it became apparent that her identification of the attacker was wrong and the man sent to prison was released, after the conviction of the real criminal.
In another case, a rape victim was absolutely positive as to the identity of her rapist and it led to a conviction and prison sentence. Some years later, through forensic evidence, the real rapist was arrested and convicted. After the real rapist was sent to prison, the one rape victim said that she was so sure of who it was that raped her. She was so sure, that she seemed completely credible and would most likely have passed a polygraph test.
Many a lawyer, trial judge and even police officers will testify that eyewitness accounts are often inaccurate and cannot be completely relied upon. I can personally testify to this when I witnessed an auto accident some years ago. I remained at the scene and gave police my account of what I saw. About half a dozen other witnesses also gave police statements of what they saw, and in the end, the police reported having several different accounts as to what happened.
Every eyewitness would most likely have passed a polygraph test because they fully believed what they think they saw and heard, even though not everyone could be accurate.
Legal analyst and criminal defense attorney, Rikki Kleiman, appeared on CBS News and also brought up the fact that a person can be so convinced of something that they fully believe it, even if it is not necessarily the fact. She points out that there is sometimes a difference between memory and fact, even if the victim is dead certain of their memory.
I have no doubt that Ford experienced a sexual assault when she was in high school. However, based upon seeing so many people having false memories as to who the attacker was, causes me to question the accuracy of her identification of Brett Kavanaugh.
It’s possible that she always believed it was him when in fact it may not have been, but after years of believing it was him, it is ingrained in her memory so strongly that she believes it 100% allowing her to pass a polygraph test.
Additionally, she claims to have only drank 1 beer before the incident. To many people, that sounds like nothing, but with some people, 1 beer can have quite an impact. I know a woman who if she drank a whole beer, it would affect her to the point of inebriation and this is true with other people as well. One beer would cause her to say and do things that she wouldn’t normally say or do, and it would impact her memory of what happened while under the influence of that 1 beer. I wonder why no one has ever questioned this aspect of Ford’s story, along with the question of whether she ONLY had JUST 1 beer?
I wonder how many of us, including the members of Congress, never did anything in high school or college that we are ashamed of today and wish we had never done? How many of us would want to be held accountable throughout our adult lives for the actions we took while in high school or college? If that was so, how many of them would be where they are today?
Another thing that makes one question Ford’s account of the incident is that she can’t even say when or where the attack took place. She doesn’t know how she got to the location or how she got home afterwards.
As pointed out by Sen. Lindsey Graham, the FBI basically has nothing on which to conduct an investigation and that this whole affair is nothing but a ruse by Democrats to delay the confirmation until after the midterms. He feels that Democrats used Ford and ruined her life for their selfish political motives to block President Trump from putting a good and honest man on the Supreme Court. After all, as Kavanaugh pointed out in his opening statement, there were Democrat Senators on the Senate Judicial Committee who said at the onset that they would do everything possible to block any nominee that Trump selected for the Supreme Court.
My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that Ford is 100% right in everything except who her attacker was. She has so convinced herself it was Kavanaugh that it is seared into her memory that way, even if that memory is wrong.
I also believe that Democrats are using this whole mess, (the hearings and FBI investigation) as a desperate attempt to delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote until after midterm elections in hopes that they will win control of Senate. That would give them the ability to block any nominee that Trump selects for the high court and could mean that the Supreme Court could remain an 8-person court for the next 4 years.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh has not only proven his innocence, but he is more than qualified to become America’s 114th Supreme Court Justice.
Would America be Better Off if We Outlawed Political Parties? 0
Colorado’s 4 Yrs of Legalized Pot & Broken Promises and Broken Lives 0
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Ernst October 03, 09:38
Christine Blasey Ford could also be a plant set to derail the Kavanaugh appointment. Blasey Ford is a PhD behavioral psychologist specializing in memory manipulation and a left wing radical. With no supporting evidence, her capability and motivation are extremely suspect.
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Cowboy Poetry
Cowboy poetry is a form of poetry which grew out of a tradition of extemporaneous composition carried on by workers on cattle drives and ranches. After a day of work, cowboys would gather around a campfire and entertain one another with tall tales and folk songs. Illiteracy was common, so poetic forms were employed to aid memory. Contrary to common belief, cowboy poetry does not actually have to be written by cowboys, though adherents would claim that authors should have some connection to the cowboy life such that they can write poetry with an "insider's perspective". One example of a popular "cowboy poem" written by a non-cowboy is "The Ride of Paul Venarez" by Eben E. Rexford, a 19th-Century freelance author. Newcomers are surprised to hear cowboy poetry that is contemporary. Many people tend to focus on the historic cowboy lifestyle, but the work that cowboys do continues. The cowboy lifestyle is a living tradition that exists in western North America and other areas, thus, contemporary cowboy poetry is still being created, still being recited, and still entertaining many camp visitors around campfires and convention halls. Much of what is known as "old time" country music originates from the rhyming couplet style often seen in cowboy poetry along with guitar music. Cowboy poetry continues to be written and celebrated today. Baxter Black is probably the most famous, and possibly the most prolific, contemporary cowboy poet. Many cities in the United States and Canada have annual "roundups" dedicated to cowboy poetry. Cowboy Poetry week is celebrated each April in the United States and Canada.
Storytelling is the conveying of events in words, sound and/or images, often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation, and instilling moral values. Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plot, characters and narrative point of view. The term 'storytelling' is used in a narrow sense to refer specifically to oral storytelling and in a looser sense to refer to narrative technique in other media. Storytelling predates writing, with the earliest forms of storytelling usually oral combined with gestures and expressions. In addition to being part of religious ritual, rock art may have served as a form of storytelling for many ancient cultures. The Australian aboriginal people painted symbols from stories on cave walls as a means of helping the storyteller remember the story. The story was then told using a combination of oral narrative, music, rock art and dance, which bring understanding and meaning of human existence through remembrance and enactment of stories. People have used the carved trunks of living trees and ephemeral media (such as sand and leaves) to record stories in pictures or with writing. Complex forms of tattooing may also represent stories, with information about genealogy, affiliation and social status.
With the advent of writing and the use of stable, portable media, stories were recorded, transcribed and shared over wide regions of the world. Stories have been carved, scratched, painted, printed or inked onto wood or bamboo, ivory and other bones, pottery, clay tablets, stone, palm-leaf books, skins (parchment), bark cloth, paper, silk, canvas and other textiles, recorded on film and stored electronically in digital form. Oral stories continue to be committed to memory and passed from generation to generation, despite the increasing popularity of written and televised media in much of the world.
Gary Brace Music
Cowboy Poetry and Storytelling
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Category Archives: Tony Blair
Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Tony Blair, Yemen
Tony Blair Visits Riyadh: is the Weasel Offering Free War Advice?……….
April 21, 2015 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
Arab media report on Tony (the Weasel) Blair visiting the rich moneyed part of Middle East. Tony Blair, the consummate warmonger of our region, has landed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He is also visiting Bahrain, but that is only a footnote visit to a footnote dynasty. You never see him visit poorer Arab countries: Yemen or Sudan or Somalia or Gaza.
Tony must be up to ‘something’. He is as credible among Arab peoples as, say, Benedict Arnold has been in American history. Even though Arab princes and potentates seem to deal with him, actually hire him. So what is he cooking for the Saudi King, whom he reportedly has met with a large delegation? Is Tony trying to keep his useless job of “Middle East Quartet” bullshitter? Is he giving advice on how to achieve “victory” in Yemen?
One thing is certain: Tony Blair never diverges from what the oil princes and potentates like. His eyes are always on the wallet, since long before he kissed Gaddafi on the cheeks (no, the other ones) as he lobbied for J P Morgan Bank. That was just months before he rediscovered how evil and “dictatorial” Gaddafi was.
So what is the weasel up to these days?
m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com
GaddafiSaudi ArabiaTony BlairYEMEN
Central Asia, Corruption, Tony Blair, Uncategorized
Have No Morals, Will Travel: More on Tony Blair’s Sordid New Labor Deals………
“The Kazakh despot who bought Blair for £16million (and Cherie for £320k): How ex-PM sold himself to a ‘virtual gangster’ linked to torture, money laundering, bribery and murder ………. Tony Blair makes a business out of providing consultancy to mostly unacceptable and disreputable clients. How else to explain the work he does for President el-Sisi in Egypt — who obtained his power by a military coup — or Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, not to mention the consultancy he provides, at great expense no doubt, to the unelected leaders of Gulf countries………. Since leaving office, in the wheels-within-wheels world that he now inhabits, Blair, in his turn, was recommended for the job of promoting Kazakhstan and its president by one of his most influential contacts — Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi…………”
He has become a specialist in promoting despots from the Persian Gulf to Central Asia and Africa. It is not so much the ‘consultancy’ as using whatever political and public capital he has left to lobby for their political agendas. The motto of his business empire should be: “Have no morals, will travel“.
Not so much more to say here about Blair, this former British prime minister who is the least respected of former British PMs. Friend and enabler, nay servant, of corrupt despots and princes worldwide. Now why can’t he just vanish from public attention? Like the others, from Churchill to Wilson to Major to Lady Thatcher? It almost feels like an insult mentioning him in the same sentence as Churchill and Wilson.
CorruptionGulfKazakhstanTony Blair
Corruption, Syria, Tony Blair, Uncategorized
Corruption Associates: Middle East Envoy Blair and the Royals……..
“Tony Blair’s company is alleged to have brokered multi-million pound deals that earned £41,000 a month and two per cent commission on each transaction with an oil firm founded by a senior Saudi royal family member………The leaked 21-page contract apparently shows that the former Labour prime minister’s umbrella company, Tony Blair Associates, agreed in November 2010 to arrange deals for PetroSaudi with his senior Chinese officials contacts during his visit to Beijing that month, as reported by The Sunday Times. ………. PetroSaudi, which is registered in the Cayman Islands tax-haven to legally avoid 85 per cent oil and gas company taxes in the Middle Eastern nation, was jointly founded by Saudi businessman Tarek Obaid and Prince Turki bin Abdullah Al Saud, one of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah’s seven sons………….”
Middle East envoy. Pray tell, what has he done about the Middle East problems? (If I were rude and crude, I’d say “whatthefuck has he done” but I ain’t rude, so I won’t). Besides urging more war on behalf of his Persian Gulf benefactors, the absolute princes and potentates.
Tony Blair introduced the ‘stuff’ about New Labor. And it was “stuff” if you know what I mean. Just as Bill Clinton was touted as a New Democrat. Both terms mean moving halfway toward the right, gutting certain programs and introducing extreme deregulation that increased economic instability and widened income and wealth gaps to unprecedented levels.
CorruptionSaudi ArabiaTony Blair
Iraq, Syria, Tony Blair
Tony Blair as Clinton and Sgt. Schultz, Ready to Invade Syria?………
“The world will face terrible consequences over many years to come for failing to intervene in Syria, Tony Blair has said. The former prime minister, who serves as the envoy for the Middle East quartet of the UN, US, EU and Russia, said the failure to confront President Bashar al-Assad would have ramifications far beyond the region. Speaking on the Today programme on Radio 4 on Monday, he said: “We have not intervened in Syria. The consequences are, in my view, terrible and will be a huge problem not just for the Middle East region, but for us in the years to come”………….The former PM, who acknowledged that many people did not want a repeat of the Iraq invasion elsewhere in the world, launched a strong defence of his decision to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003………………Blair said he did not know when the Chilcot inquiry would publish its report into the Iraq war…………..”
Blair now seems to believe he has fully busted out of the prison of his own making. But he has a long way to go to emulate Bill Clinton and get fully rehabilitated. He just doesn’t have that Arkansas je ne sais quoi: he is not nearly as good a bullshit artist as Clinton is, nobody is.
Tony has of late been talking about “political Islam” and its dangers. He is reflecting this new Saudi-UAE-Egyptian-Sisi line of painting the Muslim Brotherhood as ‘terrorist’. Mr. Cameron has also been edging in the same direction in Britain, trying to ingratiate himself with the oil princes and potentates (actually pandering to them).
About Iraq and WMD, Tony might have added, like old Sergeant Schultz would have: “I know nothing, nothing”.
mhg
Britain, Iraq, Tony Blair
Bygone Wars: Washington Protecting Tony Blair’s Nuts, For Now……
“Washington is playing the lead role in delaying the publication of the long-awaited report into how Britain went to war with Iraq, The Independent has learnt. Although the Cabinet Office has been under fire for stalling the progress of the four-year Iraq Inquiry by Sir John Chilcot, senior diplomatic sources in the US and Whitehall indicated that it is officials in the White House and the US Department of State who have refused to sanction any declassification of critical pre- and post-war communications between George W Bush and Tony Blair……………… Without permission from the US government, David Cameron faces the politically embarrassing situation of having to block evidence, on Washington’s orders, from being included in the report of an expensive and lengthy British inquiry..………”
Mr. Obama, in other words, is trying to save Tony (the Poodle) Blair’s nuts for now (for the war that I supported). But not for long.
Arab Revolutions, Britain, Tony Blair, US Foreign Policy
Deep Throat: Tony Blair to Parachute Behind Enemy Lines in Syria and Iran, Not in Fallujah or Baghdad………….
July 9, 2013 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
Against popular demand, at least my popular demand, Tony Blair refuses to just vanish. Once in a while he crawls out of whatever rock he happens to be under and makes some stupid policy recommendation.
Now he has called for the Western powers to support the Egyptian military grab of power in Cairo, elections be damned. He has also called, again and again, for Western intervention in the Syrian civil war, starting with a no-fly zone. The goal being to liberate one side of Syria, just as they liberated Iraq and Libya. Before that he has repeatedly called for a new Anglo-American war in the Middle East, against Iran. The goal being to liberate Iranians from their regime and from themselves. No mention of liberating Saudi Arabia or Bahrain or the domains of any of his Central Asian paymasters.
My mysterious source, wherever the hell Tony is hiding, tells me that Tony was offered the option of being dropped by parachute behind Syrian regime lines, behind enemy lines, to soften them up. She reports that he has declined, claiming that the oil potentates who keep him may not be agreeable to that. Besides, he claims he speaks neither Arabic nor Persian, which is odd given how much he opines on our countries and on what we really want, or should want.
She, my source whom I shall never call Deep Throat, also tells me that some wags have suggested that as an alternative, Tony be dropped inside Fallujah or Sadr City in Iraq, well behind liberated enemy lines. They said he ought to feel fine and comfy among the people that he has helped liberate. She claims Tony has not responded yet to this latest reasonable proposal.
Britain, Corruption, Syria, Tony Blair
The Poodle Roars: Tony Blair is Back, Like a Bad Dream, Calls for War in Syria and Iran and………
June 15, 2013 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
“Britain should arm the Syrian rebels and consider imposing a no-fly zone over Syria to prevent “catastrophic consequences”, Tony Blair has said. The former prime minister said the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government and the involvement of Iran in the civil war meant intervention was necessary. “You’ve got the intervention of Hezbollah, at the instigation of Iran. The other big change is the use of chemical weapons. Once you allow that to happen – and this will be the first time since Saddam used them in the 1980s – you run the risk of it then becoming an acceptable form of warfare, for both sides,” he told the Times…………………”
In the past Tony Blair has frequently called for war against Iran. Now he has his greedy neo-colonialist sights set on Syria as well. Britain imposing a no-fly zone in Syria? He must think we are back in the pre-Suez glory days.
Nothing corrupts Western leaders, even discredited former leaders, more than association with corrupt potentates, especially petroleum potentates in the Middle East and Central Asia. Add to that some Western bankers and you have a very high low bar indeed. And boy, nobody mingles with these characters better than Tony Blair, perhaps the most undignified of former British prime ministers. From the Persian Gulf to Central Asia to North Africa (Qaddafi) and back, Blair has schmoozed and kissed and done whatever he has had to do after leaving office.
I will not repeat here about the most famous case of Tony Blair and SFO and BAE Systems. The BAE Systems has had a long and cozy inglorious history with the Saudi princes. It goes back at least to the famous Al Yamama scandal when they paid prince Bandar Bin Sultan $2 billion as bribe commission for a weapons deal with Saudi Arabia. Tony Blair (as New Labor prime minister) famously killed an investigation of the scandal by the British Serious Frauds Office (SFO). Gulf potentates have been quite grateful to Tony for that. So, no need for me to repeat that shameful case. No need to repeat all that. Perhaps a few links to earlier posts, leading to other media sources, would help:
Netanyahu, Ahmadinejad, and Tony Blair all Pleased with NYC Trip, not Romney
True Arab Opinion of Tony Blair Expressed by a Gulf Man
Return of Tony Blair, Elder Statesman (not)
Bribes and Monkeys and Aesthetics: Babanov of Kyrgyzstan vs. Princov of Arabia
Ugh: More on Tony Blair
The Tony Blair Israeli-Palestinian Barbershop Quartet
Tony Blair Bin Bandar Meets Borat: the Great Money Machine Moves to Kazakhstan
Another Huge Saudi-British Bribery Scandal, Missing Tony Blair
Tony Blair as Scarlett O’Hara: Blair-Gate and the never Ending Saga of International Corruption
ony Blair’s Never Ending Lobbying Act: Living on Uranus
Qaddafi and his Friends, the Rendition of Tony Blair
Miliband and Blair Straddling the Atlantic: Greedy, Selfish, and Immoral
BAE Systems Flexes its Arabian Muscles Again, Ghosts of al-Yamama
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Arabian Peninsula, Britain, Bullshit, Saudi Arabia, Yemen
British Logic on Participating in the Yemen Genocide…..
Tweet to https://twitter.com/
CNN quotes British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt that: “we cannot stop the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in destroying Yemen and killing Yemenis. If we did, we will lose any influence we have to stop the war in Yemen….” Or some nonsense to that effect..
Imagine the police supplying a murderer and hostage-taker with bullets, while he is holding the hostages. Imagine yourself protesting to the police that they should cease supplying the criminal. Imagine the police telling you that “if we stop supplying the killer with bullets (and teaching him how to use them), we will lose any leverage we have over him“. Meanwhile, he keeps holding hostages and killing them….
Too polite to admit that if they stop selling the killing machine, Mr. Trump will be too happy to replace them, and get the money….
Trump, on the other hand, was raised differently, in a different jungle. He is too primitive, he doesn’t have the British finesse at bullshitting in Downton Abbey dialect/class accent: his BS is direct and unfiltered, you can smell it before it comes …..
Arms DealsBritainYEMEN
Arabian Peninsula, Donald Trump, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Foreign Policy
On American Foreign Policy, Middle East Quagmires, and Prostitution to Despots………
August 30, 2018 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
“In our 65-plus years of experience working on U.S. Middle East policy, we’ve never seen anything like the Trump administration’s willingness to prostitute American interests to Saudi Arabia……. But nothing in the 70 plus-year history of U.S.-Saudi ties comes close to the cosmic groveling that now defines President Donald Trump’s relationship with Saudi Arabia and his slavish obeisance to its dangerous and irresponsible policies. Since Trump became president, the U.S. has enabled and supported a disastrous Saudi war in Yemen; watched as Riyadh launched a political and economic war against Qatar that’s split the Gulf Cooperation Council and enhanced Iran’s influence; stood by as the Saudis virtually kidnapped the pro-American Lebanese Prime Minister in a bungled attempt to weaken Hezbollah; remained silent while the Saudis under the guise of reform cracked down on journalists, bloggers, businessmen and anyone else ………”
Not pulling any punches here, but how true……
But it is now universally known that nothing impresses Donald Trump more than money, a lot of money, especially if the money belongs to others (which makes it questionable as to how much money he has himself). On a very primitive level, that is how he sees and judges people and nations. Including the United States (he probably couldn’t care less about the Constitution and its Bills and Amendments).
This explains his often-reported admiration for the likes of Rupert Murdoch or Sheldon Adelson. That is how he sees the Middle East. He sees Saudi princes with access to billions of dollars, with nobody to deny them or question them (nobody who is not dead, in prison, or in exile anyway). To him that is what should be admired. When he says the word “patriotism”, he means fealty to money only. In a way, his form of capitalism is an extremely primitive version of capitalism, a form that history has shown can be self-defeating.
In that sense he is as much a Saudi “patriot” or an Emirati “patriot” (or some East European or Israeli patriot) as an American “patriot”. It is all in the money, stupid.
And yes, he is prostituting American national interests, strategic long-term interests, for the sake of Saudi and other money, plus a lot of the phony praising of him that they mouth. Praising that they know is undeserved, as much as I do.
ConstitutionProstitutionQuagmireSaudi ArabiaTrumpYEMEN
Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arabian Peninsula, Bin Salman, Saudi Arabia, Yemen
The First Frustration of Prince Bin Salman: Horrors of a Complex War in Yemen…….
January 9, 2018 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, known affectionately and otherwise as MBS, has had a rocky period. But that is to be expected for a young man who finds himself suddenly at the helm of a country, purely by the coincidence of birth.
In fairness, Saudi Arabia and her allies (as well as little Qatar) were well on their way to losing the Northern Tier of the Arab World (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon) when his father Salman became king and started prepping his son to take over. By then it was almost certainly too late to roll back Iranian influence in those three countries.
But King Salman and his son and designated heir thought their first new foreign project, closer to home, would be easy. Piece of cake, as they say. Besides, Yemen is a sort of vulnerable underbelly of the Arabian Peninsula: it could be disastrous if controlled by a hostile power, like Iran. Unfortunately it was a piece of bitter hard Yemeni cake that they tried to swallow in the wrong way. By that time Yemen was engulfed in a complex of multiple domestic and regional wars that included AQAP, ISIS, Southern Secessionists, among others. A war of many fronts.
The Saudis should have known from their own recent experience that the Yemeni cake has always been too bitter and hard for outsiders if mishandled. Late in 2014 the largely autonomous northern Houthi group allied itself to influential former President Ali Abdallah Saleh and swept the corrupt Hadi-Islah regime out of Sanaa and the rest of North Yemen. Soon after that the new Saudi regime took power in Riyadh, with Prince MBS as its Defense Minister and Deputy Crown Prince. The 30-year old prince had the Yemen portfolio. Unfortunately he has proven that he is no Alexander.
The original goal of Saudi intervention was to put Saleh’s hapless but also corrupt successor General Hadi back in power, along with the Muslim Brotherhood oligarchs of the Islah and Al Ahmar clan. Hadi’s legal term had actually expired before then. So they blockaded Yemen, and started a ferocious campaign of air bombardment that has killed thousands of people and ruined the infrastructure of that poorest of Arab states. The Saudi war is also a war waged by the USA (under both Obama and Trump) as well as Britain against Yemen. Western powers not only supplied the weapons and the ammunition, including cluster bombs, they also help with targeting and midair refueling of Saudi/UAE bombers. Several impoverished African countries, including Sudan, were also bribed and recruited in order to provide mercenary fighters.
The futile genocidal war on Yemen has lasted three years so far, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel for the Saudis and their allies. It has been a drain on the Saudi economy, to the tune of many billions of dollars. The lightly armed Houthis have even taken the war back into southern Saudi Arabia, with attacks and occasional incursions into enemy territory. Only a political solution can end the Yemen war, which is actually a complex network of multiple civil and proxy wars.
(I had predicted early on that the deposed Hadi will never return to rule from Sanaa. He is now basically a captive of his hotel suite in Saudi Arabia).
Stay tuned. To be followed…..
THE WAR IN YEMEN: EXACTLY WHOSE SIDE IS ALLAH ON?…..
MIRACLE OF THE IRGC: SHIPPING WEAPONS TO YEMEN THROUGH WESTERN MEDIA………
YEMEN: A GENOCIDAL WAR OF CLASHING FOREIGN MERCENARIES…….
Bin SalmanGCCSaudi ArabiaYEMEN
Arabian Peninsula, Iran, IRGC, MENA, Persian Gulf, Yemen
August 1, 2017 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
“Using this new route, Iranian ships transfer equipment to smaller vessels at the top of the Gulf, where they face less scrutiny. The transhipments take place in Kuwaiti waters and in nearby international shipping lanes, the sources said. “Parts of missiles, launchers and drugs are smuggled into Yemen via Kuwaiti waters,” said a senior Iranian official. “The route sometimes is used for transferring cash as well.” The official added that “what is especially smuggled recently, or to be precise in the past six months, are parts of missiles that cannot be produced in Yemen”. Cash and drugs can be used to fund Houthi activities, the IRGC official said……..”
Apparently Iranian Revolutionary Guard leaders, soon including Brig General Qassem Soleimani, are always dying to confess to Western media reporters. Amazing how these high ‘officials’ always confess to Western media, divulging the deepest operational secrets of their organizations and their countries.
From Hezbollah of Lebanon to the Iranian IRGC: all it takes is a Reuters or NY Times correspondent based in Beirut or Abu Dhabi, and they all spill the beans. On condition of anonymity of course, and how convenient is that.
But the important question here is: does anybody actually believe this nonsense, except for the already converted? I mean they should try to make it more plausible: shipping weapons from Iran to Yemen through Kuwait and Iraq (who are at the northernmost tip of the Persian Gulf, hundreds of miles away from Yemen)? Isn’t Saudi Arabia the closest border to Yemen?
Oh, and the “drug” angle is also a cute touch, often used in these cases against “the other side”, and it is always worth adding a bit more darkness. Maybe it is all true, but it is still cute…
Meanwhile, over ten thousand Yemenis have been killed, hundreds of thousands have been wounded. They did not get hit by these alleged simple missiles, smuggled through impossible routes. They got hit by more genocidal bombs, cluster of otherwise, imported by Arab princes from Britain and the United States.
HouthiIRGCMissilesWeapons TradeYEMEN
Arabian Peninsula, GCC, Horn of Africa, MENA, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, U.S. Foreign Policy, UAE, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
UAE-Saudi Game of Bases: from South Arabia to Horn of Africa with Temporary Love and Money….
“Somali President Mohammed Mohammed Abdullahi Farmajo request for mediation Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to persuade not to complete the establishment of a military base in “Somaliland”……..”
“Somaliland signs agreement allowing the United Arab Emirates to set up a military base in Berbera with a 25-year lease…”
An interesting and unexpected development in the Middle East in recent months. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is getting deeply into the business of foreign military bases. In one sense it has been in it for many years now. From early on, the UAE has had military bases on its territory for various counties: the United States, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, as well as Canada (canceled after a commercial dispute). All the while vigorously criticizing foreign (non-Western) bases in Iraq and Syria. Not bad for a country of a little more than 1 million citizens (plus about 6 million foreign residents).
Now the UAE, ostensibly a part-time and wary ally of Saudi Arabia, is getting into the dubious business of establishing foreign bases of its own. Basically the UAE are (for now) the strongest foreign power in the Aden area of South Yemen, having easily outsmarted and elbowed out the Saudi Wahhabis. The Saudis are closer allies to the deposed president Hadi and his corrupt old partners in misruling Yemen (the Islah, the local Muslim Brotherhood). The UAE rulers hate nothing more than the Muslim Brotherhood.
The main Saudi problem in Yemen is that they share a long border with that country. They occasionally get tempted to test these borders. Hence their fear of any perceived foreign (non-Western) influence over Yemen, be it real or imagined. The war they have been waging on Yemen for more than two years often comes back to haunt them in the form of Yemeni retaliatory attacks on their border towns and cities. As well as Yemeni rockets, reportedly local versions of Iranian and maybe Russian missiles.The rockets are a new introduction into the war, and the Yemenis in the capital Sanaa have promised more and more potent ones to come if the Saudis do not desist.
So the Saudis are stuck in a destructive but futile genocidal bombing campaign (with strong and indispensable American and British help), as well as a worrying border war. They are cornered, while the Emiratis expand their influence in South Yemen and now in the Horn of Africa. The Emiratis can better afford it than the Saudis who need to support and subsidize about 16 million citizens (there are also about 10 million foreign residents, a few million of them reportedly illegal).
To the Horn of Africa. That area seems like a favorite place for many powers to establish military bases in recent years. The Russians (Soviets) had a large base at Berbera for years under the Marxist Siad Barre military regime of Somalia. Eritrea and Djibouti have both had bases or presences of the French, Israelis, Iranians and others (including the famous pirates). Natural for an impoverished region. Now the UAE is establishing bases in Somaliland, formerly part of Somalia, which apparently still considers it part of its sphere. To the extent that Somalia can have a sphere. There have been earlier reports of a UAE base in Eritrea as well. There have been reports of a potential UAE presence in Libya as well, but that would be a foolish undertaking.
It is not clear what is the purpose of all these foreign bases and presences by a small country like the UAE. Only Oman among GCC states has had an extensive foreign presence until the 19th century, mainly in East Africa (including Zanzibar).
Oddly the Saudis don’t seem interested in foreign bases, except in Bahrain. But that is a historic cultural thing: Saudis, especially the elite Najdis of Central Arabia, were historically a landlubber people never known as sea-going people, unlike others like the Emirates (or Oman and Kuwait).
There is more. The UAE often splits from the Saudis on Yemen. The two alleged allies support different outlooks for Yemen, but the UAE can afford it financially although they have limited human resources and need local groups as allies. Hence the Hirak Movement which wants South Yemen (capital Aden) to regain the independence it lost in 1990.
My educated guess is that the UAE has the upper hand over the Saudis in that southern part of Yemen. But they need to reckon with three groups that have been strengthened by the destructive Saudi-led air war on Northern Yemen: the Southern Secessionists, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and Islamic State (ISIS). These three groups have gained strength as the Saudis bombed their main enemies in Yemen, the Houthis.
In any case, in the end neither of these Arab allies can last in Yemen. It is already bleeding them, and will kill off many of their soldiers before they realize they have to leave. And they will leave: it has been the story of Yemen since the days of the ancient Persian and Roman empires. The rugged tribal country wears them down, and the aspiring conquerors are forced to give up and leave. A hostile foreign power cannot control Yemen, it has been the case since the days of the rule of Balqis, the Queen of Sheba.
More on this later, stay tuned.
GCCHorn of AfricaSomaliaUAEYEMEN
Arabian Peninsula, GCC, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Trump, U.S. Foreign Policy, Yemen
America and the Saudis: Current ‘Operations’ in Yemen and Syria to Become the Next Endless War………
“Yemen is a war inside a war inside another war, right next to & overlapping several other wars” Me
“The Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda (AQ) is stronger than it has ever been. As the country’s civil war has escalated and become regionalised, its local franchise, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is thriving in an environment of state collapse, growing sectarianism, shifting alliances, security vacuums and a burgeoning war economy. Reversing this trend requires ending the conflict that set it in motion. This means securing an overarching political settlement that has buy-in from the country’s diverse constituencies, including Sunni Islamists. As this will take time, steps must be taken now to contain AQAP’s growth……..” Crisis Group
“The attack (in Aden) struck troops loyal to the airport’s chief of security, who had refused to accept a government order that he be replaced. The incident was yet another sign of the inability of Yemen’s internationally recognized government to enforce order. But it was the first time its allies, the coalition of mostly Gulf Arab states, had intervened militarily in power struggles within the Yemeni armed forces. The Saudi-led coalition has launched thousands of air strikes against the government’s foes, the Iran-allied Houthis, in a campaign to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power. It helped wrest Aden from the Houthis, who control the capital, Sanaa, in the summer of 2015……….” Reuters
During his first week on the job White House spokesman Sean Spicer claimed that Iranian forces had fired missile at the US Navy from Yemen on the Red Sea. An un-truth, since there are no Iranian forces in Yemen: the only foreign forces in Yemen are with the Saudi coalition. Actually the Yemeni Houthis who control the capital and North Yemen had fired a missile (or was it a Yemeni drone that fired) at a Saudi warship that had been shelling their coastal towns. The Saudis claimed it was a suicide attack against one of their ‘peaceful warships’ (you don’t need to read Orwell to speak Orwellian).
This week, on Monday, President Trump had a lunch meeting with the Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. He is the king’s son and widely expected future king, if his dad can swing it before he dies. He is also the minister of defense and architecture of the War on Yemen, a quagmire which just entered its third year. The Yemen war has enabled AQAP to expand in spite of American drone attacks. The war also introduced Islamic State (Daesh/ISIS) into Southern Arabia.
It is likely the Prince may have talked Trump into a more vigorous America role in the Saudi war on Yemen. Perhaps a more direct US role, this time not against the Jihadis, but against the coalition ruling most of Yemen. Which would be an act of desperation, since the Saudis have some of the best and most lethal American and British weapons and could not defeat the lightly armed Houthis and their allies ruling Sanaa. It would be just another never-ending Muslim war. Another twilight war.
The announcement indicated the Saudis will invest $ 200 billion in the United States (presumably new money). The prince also is quoted as having said that he supports the Muslim Travel Ban and that “Trump is a true friend of Muslims“. Such shameless groveling may indicate they got something from Trump: perhaps a promise to inch closer to the Mother of All Muslim Wars, a war of choice against Iran. That should be a doozy: it will certainly last through Trump’s tenure and will define his so-far unpromising legacy. The Prince may have gotten promises related to Syria, particularly Eastern Syria, or Iraq or Lebanon: risky promises the inexperienced Trump could have made in the absence of his secretaries of State and Defense.
As for Yemen, it is not “a” war, it is a complex set of parallel and intersecting wars. I once called it “a war inside a war inside another war, right next to & overlapping several other wars”. Now even the Saudi proxies (mostly Islah Muslim Brotherhood and allies) and the UAE proxies are fighting each other. You get into Yemen, you get involved in all these wars and sub-wars. You can’t pick and choose in such a battlefield.
And you get stuck, losing soldiers and money, a lot of money, just like the Saudis have for more than two years, so far. Like Afghanistan all over again, only a fiercer war.
Back to the promise of $200 billion Saudi investments. I am not sure they can afford this when they are cutting back on their domestic spending. Maybe by moving funds from their sovereign fund that SAMA manages. And can you imagine Donald Trump touting it in, say Tennessee or Alabama, bragging to his Muslim-challenged ‘base’ they he’s gotten Muslims (and Wahhabis at that) to pay out hundreds of billions?
Interesting times coming soon to a war theater far away from you.
M. Haider Ghuloum
Donald TrumpIranMENASaudi ArabiaYEMEN
Arab Media, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, GCC, War, Yemen
July 26, 2016 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
Saudi media, like most Arab and Middle East and Muslim states media, is controlled or severely-monitored by the state. Like most Middle East media, the reporting on the news reflects the state’s official policy. This is also true for Iran and especially for Turkey and to a much lesser extent for Israel.
The war in Yemen has not been going well for the Saudi side. The Houthi militias and their army allies have been stubborn in resisting the attempted well-armed and well-financed foreign assault. Moreover, the ISIS and AQAP terrorist groups have grown stronger in South Yemen, the main sector of operations for Saudis, Emiratis, and their hired African allies like Sudan and others (in addition to logistical and intelligence, air-fueling, and the siege help by the USA and Britain).
The Yemenis are also taking the war seriously into southern Saudi territory, areas some Yemenis still remember were their own land before the Saudis annexed them. It is almost like a war between the Yemenis and most of the rest of the world, and the lightly-armed and besieged Yemenis are winning so far.
More recently the attacking coalition has been losing some expensive aircraft. Apparently God, Allah, or Yahweh has decided to join the Houthi-Salih alliance for now. According to Saudi and UAE media, all their warplane and helicopter losses have been due to “bad weather”. Occasionally “technical issues” are mentioned. This scape-goating has not escaped the notice of some Yemeni commentators on social media. Since bad weather, like good weather, is the work of God, I lean toward concluding that God is moving against the Salafi-Wahabi-Muslim Brotherhood coalition fighting in Yemen. To further complicate matters, Arab media report that the UAE has its own plans for South Yemen, possibly as an independent-again entity but dependent on Abu Dhabi for financial support.
So that is where it stands. You’d think Allah would side with the good pious Salafis, Wahhabis, and MB against an alliance that is dominated by Zaidi quasi-Shi’as with alleged ties to Persian Magi heretics. But apparently not this time, not yet. I personally suspect that HE is remaining neutral in this Yemeni folly.
(Which also brings up another point embarrassing to many Salafis: how come Allah always allows the Israeli Jews to easily win all their wars against the Arabs (except for one in Lebanon)? True, they are a People of the Book, HIS earliest clients, but to the Salafis they are still accursed heathens and, as their more rabid Salafi shaikhs always claim at the mosques, “descendants of pigs and monkeys”).
AllahHouthiIsraelWarYEMEN
Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, MENA, Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Tribes
On the Gulf: Tribal Statecraft, an Embarrassment of Poor Alliances……..
April 8, 2016 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
“Statecraft is not an extended form of tribalism. Its goals are different, so should its tools“ Me
“Too many international and regional alliances, created at too frantic a pace, are a sure sign of weakness rather than strength” Me
Saudi Arabia has been keeping its military forces active: mostly in doing large military exercises and maneuvers with invited, convinced, and bribed ‘allies’. They have been almost monthly events, all these military exercises, with promising names like Thunder of the North. May as well; given that their real southern war, like the Storm of Determination (the massive war against poor, under-armed Yemen) has failed miserably.
None of the titles given these military exercises and wars are original: they are all plagiarized from the original Desert Storm, the American name for the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 from Iraqi Baathists. As I wrote once before, the Saudi leaders and their minions are rarely, if ever, original.
The Saudis have also been very busy announcing new ‘alliances and pacts’, also on an almost monthly basis. Sometimes even the Arab (and Muslim) countries listed as part of an ‘alliance’ are reported to be surprised. Clearly the Saudis don’t believe that their “allies” need to agree to an alliance, or that they may have legislatures that need to have a say. But they must know that not all Muslim (or Arab) countries are ruled by absolute tribal princes.
The Iranians apparently realize that “alliances” are complicated things, given that they have not had many in recent years. So they seem to take them more seriously. They do, however, try to match the Saudi military exercises with some of their own. They also apparently realize that too many international and regional alliances, created at too frantic a pace, are a sure sign of weakness rather than strength. This last fact is something the Saudi princes don’t seem to understand.
Statecraft is not an extended form of tribalism. Its goals are different, so should its tools.
GulfMENAMuslim AlliacesSaudiYEMEN
Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Humor, Jordan, MENA
Hospitable Jordan: Risky Geography and Questionable Alliances…….
“He added that “this is also happening in Afghanistan,” warning that if the Islamic State (IS) was degraded in these countries “Iran will come in to fill the gap,” according to MEE’s source. Jordan has backed Saudi Arabia in its long-running rivalry with Iran……….. In the congressional meeting, Abdullah said that Shia Muslims had been “lumped in” with the executions carried out that day. To purely kill Sunnis would have “looked bad domestically,” he said. He added, however, that it was unfortunate that Nimr had been included among those executed……………”
Jordan, an early child of Sykes-Picot, is in a bind. It is a small country with a divided population and few economic resources, like most other Arab countries. It is sandwiched between large unstable neighbors (Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia), as well as Israel/Palestine. Jordanians have had a long history of unfortunate and failed alliances within the Middle East.
It goes back to 1967, when the King of Jordan joined the Six Day War, apparently without being prepared for the consequences. As a result, the Jordanians handed the West Bank and East Jerusalem (including the Al Aqsa Mosque) to Israel with barely a fight, and within two days. The biggest and most important loss of Arab “property” in modern history. That disaster in itself is sufficient to make any nation lose its sense of humor, assuming it had any such sense before.
In 1980, the Jordanians repeated their mistake. They sided with Saddam Hussein when he invaded Iran. They did not fight directly, but King Hussein made occasional visits to the Front and fired some symbolic shots towards the Iranian lines. Not very kingly behavior, but it stopped once Saddam started losing that war. Another defeat ensued eight years later, but by then King Hussein did not get involved directly, a wise decision.
In 1990, the Jordanians sided again with Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait. They lost big in that one economically, although they were not involved directly in a military sense.
Then came the Syrian civil-proxy-Jihadi war after 2011. The Jordanians helped the Syrian Jihadist “opposition” that was sponsored by the Saudis and some other Persian Gulf autocrats. They also at one point reportedly allowed the US and the Saudis to start training some new opposition groups near the Syrian border. But apparently that did not last long, perhaps it petered out.
In Yemen the Jordanians threw their support more directly behind the Saudi paid alliance that has been bombing Yemen’s cities and infrastructure for over a year. And blockading the country. A futile and hopeless war. But that is a low-risk venture for them: limited military involvement in a faraway country, with the cost paid by the Gulf princes and potentates.
A long record of betting on the losing side. No wonder the king is often welcome to address the U.S. Congress under Republicans. No wonder Jordanians are among the most humor-challenged in our humorless region. Now the humorless Jordanians have gotten more wary of involvement in foreign adventures of other sisterly and brotherly Arab countries, and wisely so. They especially stay away from disputes that are on their border, lest they spill across into their country (the example of the growing instability in Turkey provides a good lesson).
One good thing about Jordan: they (and Lebanon) do welcome many refugees, which is a good thing and almost a national industry now in Jordan. Unlike the richer Arab countries that have provoked and instigated many of these civil wars but refuse to accept the resulting refugees. In that sense of hospitality, they are more characteristically Arab than most of the rest.
HumorJerusalemJordanMENASyriaYEMEN
Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, GCC, Saudi Arabia, Yemen
Control of Aden: Arab-African Royal Alliance Gives Jihadis a Head Start……
Three sure signs that Saudis and Colombians and other assorted corsairs have liberated the largest Yemeni port city of Aden from the Houthis and Saleh and from law and order:
(1) Suicide bombings are escalating in the city. The latest today killed at least 22.
(2) There are no signs of escaped ex-president General Hadi Al Zombie and his PM Khalid Bahahahahah (except in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi 7-star hotels). This is is a blessing for all concerned.
(3) The city is largely lawless now, as is the surrounding country. Ripe for Al Qaeda and ISIS. AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), ISIS, and other local militias are now fighting for control of the city as well as the countryside.
Even the hired Sudanese forces have reportedly disappeared from the streets. Not that they matter much in a real fight. The Sudanese are probably some of the worst soldiers in the world, except against unarmed civilian women and children as in Darfur. The UAE pulled their own troops days (or maybe weeks) ago.
So Aden is now liberated from law and order as ell as from the Houthis and Colonel Saleh’s forces. Other parts of Southern Yemen as well are enjoying the same. All with extensive help from the weapons and intelligence provided by the USA and Britain. Yemen is now heading toward the same fate as Libya and Syria. In all three cases thanks to the sisterly and brotherly intervention by extremely democratic and extremely tribal Arab autocratic kings and princes and potentates.
I just hope these democracy-loving autocratic kings, princes, and potentates don’t get the notion of trying to liberate their own countries. That would be even more disastrous than liberating other countries.
AdenAQAPGCCJihadisYEMEN
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Architecture of Victoria
Architecture of Australia
1882 – Law Courts, Melbourne, Australia
1891 – House at Melbourne, Australia
Architect: Smith & Johnson
English immigrant duo Alfred Louis Smith (1830–1907) and Arthur Ebdon Johnson (1859–95) won a architectural competition for their design and prepared the working drawings. However the competition quickly became a scandal because one of the partners, Johnson, was on the judging panel. Johnson then resigned from the Public Works Department and joined Smith in a long and successful partnership.
Architecturally significant for the excellence of the carving of the Tasmanian freestone and the Malmsbury bluestone base. Additionally significant internally are the very elaborate moulded plasterwork on walls and ceilings, and the robust detailing of the benches, Judges canopies, and cedar panelling.
According to Heritage Council Victoria, the design is reputed to be based on the design of James Gandon’s Four Courts building in Dublin, following a suggestion to Smith and Johnson by Chief Justice Sir William Stawell. The Library of the Law Courts is based in the centre of the courtyard and bares slight similarities withe the dome of the Four Courts.
Tags: 1882, Australia, law courts, Melbourne, Smith & Johnson
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Architecture of Munster
10th C – St. Molua’s Oratory, Killaloe, Co. Clare
St. Molua’s Church was originally constructed on Friar’s Island in the River Shannon, to the south of Killaloe town. Believed to have been constructed in two stages around the 9th and 10th centuries.
1100 – St. Farannan’s Church – Donaghmore, Co. Tipperary
Medieval church consisting of a nave and chancel with a finely detailed doorway and chancel archway. The doorway has good Romanesque detail as does the chancel arch capitals.
1134 – Cormac’s Chapel, Rock of Cashel, Co. Tipperary
Cormac’s Chapel, consecrated in 1134, is the most important building on the Rock of Cashel, from an architectural point of view.
1140 – Monaincha Church, Co. Tipperary
Sited on a hill surrounded by a drained lough and now a bog, the current nave-and-chancel church was built by the Augustinians in 1140.
1142 – Cahir Castle, Co. Tipperary
Once the stronghold of the powerful Butler family, the castle retains its impressive keep, tower and much of its original defensive structure.
1158 – Aghadoe Church, Killarney, Co. Kerry
A stone church has stood here since around 1044. A fine Romanesque doorway in the oldest part of this church which was completed in 1158 by Auliff Mor na Cuimsionach.
1189 – Clare Abbey, Clarecastle, Co. Clare
Established by Donal Mor O’Brien in 1189, the abbey at Clarecastle, County Clare was the first, largest and most important Augustinian house in the region.
1194 – St Mary’s Church of Ireland Cathedral, Limerick
Construction on St. Mary’s Cathedral started in the 12th century, and was completed around 1194. The full title of this Cathedral is the “Cathedral and Parochial Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary”.
1195 – Corcomroe Abbey, Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare
Officially “Sancta Maria de Petra Fertili” or “Saint Mary of the Fertile Rock”. Corcomroe Abbey is sited a few miles from Ballyvaughan within sight of the coast.
1200c – Dysert O Dea Monastery, Co. Clare
The Dysert O Dea Monastic Site is home to the Dysert O Dea Church and the remains of a Round Tower.
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MARCIA POINTON - Peter Paul Rubens and the Mineral World (pp. 229–265)
Rubens has been recognised as an artist of extraordinary erudition as well as a collector, diplomat and linguist. Unsurprisingly the main focus of Rubens scholarship has been iconographical. By focusing on material I address an aspect of Rubens’s life and work that has by comparison been largely ignored. Antwerp, the artist’s home city, was a major centre for global trade in precious stones. There is evidence that the artist not only owned raw stones but dealt in diamonds. During the first two decades of the seventeenth century at which time Rubens was a visitor, Rome was a centre for the development of mineralogical science and collecting, not least through the Accademia dei Lincei with whose members Rubens was associated. By focusing on Rubens’s interest in traditional lapidary matters as well as in nascent scientific enquiry, and by attending to pictorial detail, I aim to shed light on how the artist not only acquired and valued minerals but how precious stones were thematised in portraits and subjects from mythology and the Bible.
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June 13/18 8:36 am - 33rd Tour de Beauce Kicks Off Today
The 2018 Tour de Beauce starts today, and some of the best cyclists in the Americas have arrived in St-Georges to take part in this chsllenging race of 643 km over 5 days.
Five of the top 10 teams from the UCI America Tour will be represented, including the top three teams in Rally Cycling (1), UnitedHealthcare (2), and Holowesko | Citadel p / p Arapahoe Resources (3). In total, 19 teams will compete with the goal of donning the famous Yellow Jersey Ville de Saint-Georges, awarded to the overall champion.
Eric Wohlberg, Team Manager of the American squad Rally Cycling and champion of the 1995 edition of the Tour de Beauce, is confident of his team. " Our Team is coming off a very solid spring racing campaign. Our riders have fared very well against the challenges of racing new events overseas. Since our return to the North American racing scene late April, the team has been on a very good run."
Wohlberg added: "Rob Britton is coming off a great Tour Of Gila and Tour Of California, so I am hoping he can challenge the overall here. Colin Joyce almost doubled up in Winston Salem a couple weeks ago, and the rest of the guys are looking very good. We hope to continue the streak here, against a very competitive 2018 Beauce field." , (Britton who won the final stage in 2017)
Defending champion Andzs Flaksis of the Holowesko team | Citadel p / p Arapahoe Resources will be in the starting line hoping to defend his title. Flaksis won the 2017 edition of the Tour de Beauce on the final stage, trailing by more than two minutes in the overall standings at the dawn of the last stage. The last and only cyclist to win two consecutive editions of the Tour de Beauce dates back to 1998-1999 while Levi Leipheimer with the achievement.
2017 Final podium: Clement Russo, Andzs Flaksis, Jordan Cheyne
"I am really excited to return to Canada for the Tour de Beauce; I am Latvian, so North feels like home for me. That's one of the reasons I like coming here. Last year's race unfolded only on last day, so it's exciting that nothing is certain until the end. You always have hope and can keep on fighting," said Flaksis. "Last year's victory was a true team effort, so this year we, Holowesko-Citadel, brought a strong team to try to defend the title!"
Romanian Sergei Tvetcov of the UnitedHealthcare team is ranked number one in the UCI America Tour. Tvetcov finished third overall in the Tour de Beauce in 2014. In March, Tvetcov won the Tour de Korea (2.1). He finished fourth in Tour of the Gila (2.2), winning the individual time trial stage. Last year, he finished second in the Colorado Classic and third in the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah.
Rob Britton winning the final stage of 2017
Canadian Rob Britton from Rally Cycling is second in the Americas. The British-Columbian won the Tour of the Gila with a pair of second-place finishes in the stage race. At the World Tour's Amgen Tour of California, Britton placed 16th overall. Britton won the last stage of the Tour de Beauce in 2017. Britton also has a second place overall in Beauce in 2014.
Svein Tuft, a WorldTour rider with team Mitchelton-Scott, has 13 Grand Tour starts, including seven starts at the Giro d'Italia, three starts at the Tour de France, and three starts at Vuelta Espana. Tuft has twice won the Canadian title at Canadian Road Championships and 10 Canadian Time Trial Championship titles. His last Canadian road race title took place on the Beauce roads in 2014. Tuft is the last Canadian to have won the Tour de Beauce honors while wearing the colors of the Symmetrics Pro Cycling Team in 2008. That same year, Tuft won the silver medal in the time trial at the UCI World Championships in Varese, Italy, one of two Canadians men to have won a World championships medal with Steve Bauer being the other.
2008 Winner Svein Tuft
"It's always special to come back to Beauce. It's one of the first big races I did way back in 2001. I have great memories from this race, and I believe it's one of Canada's most important races for the development of our younger riders. It's a race that's always difficult and has a European style to it," said Tuft.
He went on to add: "At this point in my career, it's nice to come back and see some of the younger Canadian riders and see how they're progressing. There's no better way to achieve this than to race with them. I hope to pass on some of my experiences.
2016 Canadian Champion Bruno Langlois will participate in a 20th edition of the Tour de Beauce.
Five jerseys will be contested during the five days of competitions: the Yellow Jersey Ville de Saint-Georges awarded the best overall; the White Jersey Hydro-Quebec presented to the best in the points classification; the Red Jersey Le Georgesville offered to the top of the youth ranking (U23); the Polka Dot Jersey Desjardins awarded to the best of the King of the Mountain classification, as well as the Blue Jersey Ville de Quebec awarded to the winner of the Quebec City stage.
The 2018 Tour de Beauce will begins June 13th and crown its champion on Sunday, June 17.
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Born in Fort Monroe, Virginia; grew up in the San Antonio, Texas area.
1974, moved to Nashville to write songs.
Mid-80’s, recorded for Epic Records, scored several hit records, including “Guitar Town (1986),” and “Goodbye’s All We Got Left” (1987).
He has won three Grammies and has had songs recorded by Travis Tritt, Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, many others.
1988-1994, went rock and recorded several albums which were generally ignored by country radio. He became something of a cult figure. He has had several run-ins with the law, including a drug charge.
1998, recorded a bluegrass album called Mountain and toured with the Del McCoury Band. This was his only foray into bluegrass music.
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Need help navigating this site?
1. Use the Search button on the Home Page if you are looking for something specific.
2. Check the following alphabetical overview links to pages on the site with its brief description of each section.
3. When all else fails, Contact Us.
Awards: Bob Nolan was given awards, alone and/or with the Sons of the Pioneers for his contribution to western music. This section itemizes most of them and is illustrated with photographs of the awards themselves.
Biographies: Full biography of Bob Nolan, his parents, his brother and his half-brother plus brief bios of the Sons of the Pioneers and their co-workers.
Discography: albums of Sons of the Pioneers' recordings and current western artists, illustrated with the album covers. Track lists are included plus links to Bob's solo recordings and a huge list of various recordings of Cool Water and Tumbling Tumbleweeds by various artists over the years.
FAQ: Frequently asked questions are answered briefly. This page is for quick answers.
Feedback: You can tell us what you feel about the website, bring errors to our notice or ask questions which we will answer personally and/or on the current Question & Answer page. There is also a link to Contact Us where you can email Elizabeth (Nolan family historian) or write to her by regular mail.
Filmography: All the known films in which Bob Nolan appeared for the various studios are listed and illustrated with posters and publicity or production stills. Links are provided to various personal collections of photos from the movies: The Karl E Farr Collection is from the photos handed down from the original Karl Farr to his son. Fan collections include those of John Fullerton, Jan Scott, Ed Phillips, and Bruce Hickey. The Sons of the Pioneers Fan Club president, Martha Retsch, shares her collection as does Terry Sevigny Scott, who was secretary to the group for several years. There is also a page of Anonymous collections from fans who do not wish their name to appear on the Internet.
Lyrics: One of our most popular sections, these pages contain the lyrics to all of the Bob Nolan songs we have been able to find. Each song has a page of its own with a recording embedded into it so you can read the words while you sing along, karaoke-style.
Puzzles: There are many photos in the Calin Coburn Collections and other collections that we have been unable to identify so we have reproduced them here in hopes that fans may recognize them or give us a clue.
Q&A: Feedback or questions and responses plus current messages of general interest with links to messages from previous years.
Recollections: The recollections of those who knew Bob Nolan personally.
Reference: This section contains an illustrated list of books that deal with Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers plus links to an extensive bibliography of the singing cowboy era, fanzines, essays, photo collections, original song cards, court cases, interviews, and who to contact if you need permission to record Bob Nolan's songs.
Reflections: Links to fans who have written to us about how Bob Nolan's music has influenced their lives or careers in some way.
Search: Use a keyword to bring up all the pages in which it is used. A separate link is provided to find a specific person's page.
Slide Shows: This popular section features six slide shows from different eras of Bob's life.
Special Features: Films, Nolan songs and Nolan photos are featured with plenty of illustrations and music.
UNC: This page records what is in the Elizabeth Drake McDonald Collection (Inventory #20355) in the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This collection is open to the public. Unfortunately, the page has not been updated. Ask for "Bob Nolan 1908-1980" in two volumes, ©2004. You will need permission from Elizabeth to use portions of it.
Videos: The most popular of all, this section contains short video clips of song sequences, etc, from movies featuring Bob Nolan courtesy of Fred Sopher.
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Life, Death, and the Unglamorous Era of Ad-Men
by bicyclemark on March 15, 2012 1 Comment
Photo by FuckNewRave / flickr
John Hall remembers the advertizing business in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, and there was nothing glamorous about it. His personal policy in the work place was not to pursue wealth and happiness, but to pursue work that brought meaning to life, which in turn has always given him a feeling of being content and the richest man around. As a business man, a hospice nurse, an english teacher for French people, and a business teacher – one thing shines through no matter what he is working on – John Hall is a force to be rekoned with in the best possible way.
John joins me on the phone from Paris in this very insightful and fun conversation about the lessons he’s learned from fantastic life experiences, and his struggle to convey that to future global business leaders.
Write Our Own Histories
by bicyclemark on January 6, 2012 1 Comment
photo by heedmane on flickr
The headlines coming out of Chilé this week echo throughout the world, “government shift in policy regarding learning about Pinochet era in school,” from now on to be described as a “regime”, and not a “dictatorship”. Which is immediately met with anger and disapproval, criticized as an attempt to rewrite and whitewash history.
You don’t have to be Chilean to know something about re-writing history. One constant that transcends borders and time is that history gets told in different ways as time passes. People often refer to the old Churchill quote, “History is written by the victors,” in an effort to explain how the stories from the past are told. Christopher Columbus was an explorer. George Washington, a great leader. Genghis Khan, a brave fighter. None may be true, but each is often told, retold and accepted as fact. Few of the victims are alive or represented to tell a different story, though some brave souls with seek out and bring their histories back to life.
In the context of the classroom and what appears in history books, there is no doubt that these things have tremendous influence as to how children will grow up understanding the world and how it came to be as it is. Chileans have every right to be concerned or outraged when their nation’s history is rewritten in favor of those who committed mass murder and other atrocities. Most nations on this planet have marginalized or harmed people in some way in their past, yet not all are willing to admit it and let the shameful stories be told in the classroom. It is easier to hide behind pride and boastful patriotism, far more difficult to be honest and critical of what your country does and has done in the past.
All outrage aside, in our present world of plentiful information and the informal learning renaissance, citizens could also look to each other to address this problem. At home and in our communities, both offline and online, we have the power to tell history from the bottom-up. The government may shift and attempt ridiculous revisions that might even be implemented for periods of time, but we have a fantastic arsenal of experience and communication to counter such hubris. The children of the world could stand up during the revised history lesson on how charming dictators from the past were, and calmly respond — we know this is false. Better yet, they could rewrite the whole section with help from stories of people who lived through the horror.
ctrp402 Learning without Schools
by bicyclemark on December 6, 2011 2 Comments
Photo by Bre Pettis, http://brepettis.com
It is often assumed that in order to be successful and realize your dreams you must go to university. Year after year people of all ages apply to institutions of higher education and go to great lengths to afford the high costs that come with such schools. Increasingly people are realizing that the costs to attend such schools far outweigh the benefits. Beyond that, with the dawn of interest networks online and the availability of information and instruction, there is a real opportunity to learn what you want to learn, without going back to school.
Kio Stark is a grad school dropout who loves to learn. As an author and inquisitive mind, her writing and research has brought her to the topic of informal learning. How does it work? what do different informal learners do to meet their goal and stay focused? These questions and more are part of a new book she has proposed to be published next year: “Don’t Go Back to School – A Handbook for Learning Anything.”
To make it even more interesting, Kio has put the proposal for the book up on kickstarter as a project which people can choose to support financially with the promise of being credited, receiving a copy of the book, and more. What is a refreshing new approach to education is matched by an innovative new approach to funding your work.
How did this project begin? What experiences has Kio had that led to her interest in learning outside of schools? These topics and more are explored in our podcast together. Give it a listen.
Support and Read more about Kio’s Project “Don’t Go Back to School” which has generated a fantastic outpouring of backers.
Her novel “Follow Me Down” available now.
ctrp396 Students Take on the Gov in Chile
by bicyclemark on October 24, 2011 1 Comment
My guest on this edition of Citizenreporter.org is Chilean-American, community organizer, world citizen Nick Farr who has been traveling around Chile observing many of the activities connected with the student protests demanding education reform in that country.
For several months students throughout Chile have been holding mass rallies, protests as well as occupying university and high school buildings, demanding the government take action to address inequality in the education system and the creation of the country’s first free higher education option.
Presently education in Chile consists of a few prestigious charter-type schools, many more prestigious private schools which are very expensive, and then the rest of the public system that is considered poor quality-undesirable schooling. Rural areas, which is most of Chile, are especially plagued by a lack of affordable education. But even in cities these days, access to good schools is entirely dependent on where you live.
The student movement that has exploded throughout the country is focused on the need for better quality and more accessible public education at all levels, especially secondary and university education. While occupy wall street started just over a month ago, students in Chile began occupying school buildings 4 months ago. As part of the occupation, they carry out a fully functioning program of providing meals, classes and cultural activities.
One of the arguments against the students stems from the main leader of the movement who is a very vocal communist. Political opponents and many critical Chileans view his role as “evidence” that this protest is a communist invasion of the country.
Meanwhile the nation, that is highly dependent on the price of copper, struggles as global commodity prices have become so unstable. Graduates who come out of the current higher education system find themselves with little choice when it comes to jobs and career. Despite whatever specialized skills and training they might have had, the only work available to them might be in the low paying service industry.
With the protests as the backdrop, negotiations take place and one point the government hopes students will compromise on is the goal of a “free” education. A point that student leaders refuse to compromise on.
After several decades of tremendous socio-economic progress which saw Chile become a much admired country in the region and around the world, there is talk now of a shrinking middle class and a return to the former paralyzing state of cronyism and inequality.
Will Chilean students achieve their goal? Will the unpopular Chilean government give in to a mass movement sweeping the nation and conducting mass action in the streets and in the schools? In a time where so many nations have bought into the idea of corporate schools or charter schools, could Chile be the place where an old idea is given new life – universal public education.
Educación 2020 – One of the Movement’s Web Sources
El Mercurio – News from Chile
afghanistan agriculture amsterdam belgium berlin ccc china culture democracy dubai dubaitaxiproject education egypt elections environment EU europe family france germany hackers health history humanrights india iraq israel journalism katrina labor lebanon life media netherlands nola podcasting poland politics portugal religion russia travel UK US war
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Cover Reveal & Giveaway
I’m excited to show you the cover of my next English historical novel, Across the Blue and tell you about a special giveaway . . . but before I do, let me tell you a little about the story and characters.
The Heroine – Isabella Grayson, is the eldest daughter of a wealthy, English newspaper magnate. She longs to become a journalist, but her parents don’t approve. They want her to marry well and help them gain a higher standing in society. After she writes an anonymous letter to the editor that impresses her father, her parents reluctantly agree she can write a series of articles about aviation and the race to fly across the English Channel, but only if she promises to accept a marriage proposal within the year.
The Hero – James Drake, is an aspiring aviator, and when he crashes his flying machine at the Grayson’s new estate, Bella is intrigued. James is determined to be the first to fly across the Channel and win the prize Mr. Grayson’s newspaper is offering. He hopes it will help him secure a government contract to build airplanes and redeem a terrible family secret. James wants to win Bella’s heart, but his background and lack of social standing make it unlikely her parents would approve. If he fails to achieve his dream, how will he win the love and respect he is seeking? Will Bella’s faith and support help him find the strength and courage he needs when unexpected events turn their world upside down?
Ready to see the beautiful cover?
I’m thrilled with the design! It perfectly captures Kent, England, and the white Cliffs of Dover, which play a huge part in this story. Bella’s hat is divine and just right for the 1909 time period. And when you see how fragile James’s airplane really is, it makes you appreciate his courage in attempting to be the first to fly across the English Channel!
I can’t wait to share Across the Blue with you! It releases February 20, 2018, and you can preorder a copy from your favorite retailer by following this link.
If you’re on GoodReads I hope you’ll click this link and add it to your “To Read” list!
And now I have a Giveaway for you! Help me spread the word, and you can enter in a drawing for a set of my four English historical novels: The Governess of Highland Hall, The Daughter of Highland Hall, A Refuge at Highland Hall, and Shine Like the Dawn! To enter just share this post on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or other social media sight and then leave a comment below, telling me where you shared it. I’ll draw one winner on Thursday, July 13th. If a US winner is chosen he or she will receive paperback copies, and if an international winner is chosen he or she will receive eBooks. Thanks for helping me spread the word about Across the Blue!
Until Next Time ~ Happy Reading!
This entry was posted in Giveaways, My Books, Uncategorized and tagged Across the Blue, Cover Reveal by Carrie Turansky. Bookmark the permalink.
162 thoughts on “Cover Reveal & Giveaway”
Andrea Cox on July 7, 2017 at 7:46 am said:
Carrie, what a beautiful cover! I shared it on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. I hope the release goes well!
Amy T Hassett on July 7, 2017 at 7:55 am said:
Hi Carrie!
Beautiful book cover, I shared on Facebook and Pinterest!
Lucy Reynolds on July 7, 2017 at 7:58 am said:
Gorgeous, lovely, fabulous! I can’t wait, as I know it will be great. I shared on FB, Pinterest, and Goggle! Blessings on your release.
Renee Jackson on July 7, 2017 at 7:59 am said:
Ms. Carrie – love the cover and looks like a wonderful read. I shared on Facebook!
Deanne Patterson on July 7, 2017 at 7:59 am said:
Carrie,good morning to you. I have read a few of your Love Inspired books but none of your full length novels, The cover of Across The Blue is gorgeous! I am most excited to read it and your four English historical novels. I have some catching up to do 🙂
I have shared your cover reveal on Facebook,Twitter,G+,LinkedIn and Pinterest. Congratulations on not only Across The Blue but all of your releases!
Elma Brooks on July 7, 2017 at 8:15 am said:
As always you do have beautiful covers.
I shared on facebook.Thanks for the giveaway.
Kimberly Duffy on July 7, 2017 at 8:16 am said:
Gorgeous! Shared on Twitter and Pinterest.
Dianna Auton on July 7, 2017 at 8:21 am said:
I shared on Twitter and Pinterest.
Jocelyn Green on July 7, 2017 at 8:23 am said:
Carrie, this cover is breathtaking!! I adore it! Congratulations. And the story sounds just as wonderful! Can’t wait to read it!
Kailey Bechtel on July 7, 2017 at 8:29 am said:
That’s a beautiful cover!! Can’t wait to read it. I shared it on Facebook.
Meredith on July 7, 2017 at 8:33 am said:
I shared on Pinterest. I really like the cover!
~Meredith
Cathy on July 7, 2017 at 8:35 am said:
Looking forward to this new release, as I very much enjoyed Shine Like The Dawn. The cover is very compelling! I shared on Facebook.
Gretchen Bauder on July 7, 2017 at 8:41 am said:
I tweeted! So excited and I live the cover art. The story sounds just like my idea of a good read ?
Susan Snodgrass on July 7, 2017 at 8:41 am said:
Cheryl H. on July 7, 2017 at 8:45 am said:
I shared via email, Pinterest, Google+, and Twitter!
Karen K. on July 7, 2017 at 8:49 am said:
Ooh, this is gorgeous! I can’t wait to read Across the Blue! It reminds me of Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. I love that movie!
Oh, I forgot to add that I shared this post on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram!
Tina Turpin on July 7, 2017 at 8:49 am said:
Best cover yet!!! So excited for you and this release. ?
Mary Tullila on July 7, 2017 at 8:52 am said:
Beautiful cover ! Shared to Facebook and Twitter.
Kimberly on July 7, 2017 at 8:56 am said:
Love the cover, it looks beautiful! I am so excited to read this one! I shared on Facebook. Thank you!
Melissa Henderson on July 7, 2017 at 9:01 am said:
Beautiful cover! I look forward to reading the story. I shared on Facebook, Pinterest and Google+ 🙂
Darci Paice on July 7, 2017 at 9:02 am said:
Looks like a bunch of fantastic summer reads, sign me up please 🙂
Judi Imperato on July 7, 2017 at 9:04 am said:
Carrie, the cover is beautiful! The story line sounds very interesting, I am looking forward to when it comes out. I posted this on facebook. Thank you for the opportunity to win your books.
Michele Hayes on July 7, 2017 at 9:17 am said:
I love the cover. Shared on FB, Twitter and Pinterest.
Christi Lang on July 7, 2017 at 9:19 am said:
I love this! Cannot wait to read it! I come from a family that loves flying. I shared on Facebook
Trisha Robertson on July 7, 2017 at 9:20 am said:
Good Morning Carrie! The cover for Across the Blue is beautiful. I’m excited to be able to team up with you to share this beautiful book reveal and the first line on my blog today!
I’m looking forward to reading Isabella’s story! Have a blessed day! ((hugs))
Grace Hitchcock on July 7, 2017 at 9:23 am said:
Beautiful cover! I shared on Pinterest and Twitter 🙂
Susanne on July 7, 2017 at 9:28 am said:
Shared on Facebook. Beautiful cover… can’t wait to read this one!
Danie walther on July 7, 2017 at 9:30 am said:
I shared your beautiful picture of your new book on Pinterest.
Lori Parrish on July 7, 2017 at 9:36 am said:
Beautiful cover!! I’m such a sucker for beautiful book covers
J'nell Ciesielski on July 7, 2017 at 9:36 am said:
Another gorgeous cover! Shared.
Carrie Turansky on July 7, 2017 at 9:43 am said:
Thank you, J’nell!
Cathy Gohlke on July 7, 2017 at 9:39 am said:
Carrie, this is a stunning cover! The storyline is intriguing and compelling, and I just can’t wait to read it! I shared on Facebook.
Thank you, Cathy!
Bonnieandtim@yahoo.com on July 7, 2017 at 9:45 am said:
Shared on Facebook!
Leslie Waters on July 7, 2017 at 9:47 am said:
Beautiful cover. I shared on Facebook and Twitter.
Amy on July 7, 2017 at 9:47 am said:
Carrie, I don’t think I have had the privilege of reading your books yet. This cover really caught my eye and the book sounds intriguing. Hope I get the chance to read it.
Forgot to include that I shared to pinterest, Facebook, G+
Coleen Jejeran on July 7, 2017 at 9:50 am said:
shared it to Facebook !
shared to pinterest as well :o)
Ola K Norman on July 7, 2017 at 10:03 am said:
I shared on Facebook. Love the cover.
Renee Schultz on July 7, 2017 at 10:06 am said:
Shared on facebook Carrie. Even though I own most of your books I would love to win a set for my church library. I recently loaned mine out to someone from church and you now have another reader fan who likes your books.
Amanda Tero on July 7, 2017 at 10:09 am said:
Such a pretty cover! I shared on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/549509592024059664/
Joan Arning on July 7, 2017 at 10:12 am said:
Shared on Facebook. Am anxious to read!
Theresa N on July 7, 2017 at 10:12 am said:
I shared on twitter. They’re all beautiful covers.
kristine morgan on July 7, 2017 at 10:18 am said:
I shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. I can’t wait to read this, your books never fail to delight!
Olivia on July 7, 2017 at 10:29 am said:
Beautiful cover…I keep seeing it everywhere now!! I’ve heard great things about all your books! I shared on Pinterest 🙂
Dawn Dannenbrink on July 7, 2017 at 10:34 am said:
Carrie, I shared it on my FB feed…..hope others can develop an interest in your books like I have! Thx for giving me my first book!!! It’s been shared a few times over now.
Jenny Waugh on July 7, 2017 at 10:52 am said:
Beautiful Cover and Intriguing Story!
Shared on Pinterest.
Jane Squires on July 7, 2017 at 10:53 am said:
Going to share on fb. Would love to win
Sue Cozart on July 7, 2017 at 11:07 am said:
Beautiful cover. Makes me want to read this book ! Love your books. So interesting.
Marilyn on July 7, 2017 at 11:13 am said:
Looking forward to reading this. I shared your post on Facebook.
Breezy Beckler on July 7, 2017 at 11:21 am said:
This cover makes me so excited to read the book! Well done! I really enjoy all your books. Thank you for sharing your gift of writing. ?
I shared on Facebook!
Vicky D on July 7, 2017 at 11:22 am said:
Can’t wait for this book! Shared on twitter.
Marguerite Gray on July 7, 2017 at 11:39 am said:
Beautiful! I shared on FaceBook.
Joelle Rau on July 7, 2017 at 11:42 am said:
I would read it just from looking at the cover! It’s beautiful! Shared in Facebook!
Rose on July 7, 2017 at 11:43 am said:
Love the cover! I shared on Facebook. Need to figure out how to share on the other sites. Thanks for the opportunity to win.
Winnie Thomas on July 7, 2017 at 11:50 am said:
It’s a beautiful cover, Carrie! It looks and sounds fascinating. I shared it on Pinterest.
Janet Grunst on July 7, 2017 at 11:54 am said:
Congratulations, Carrie. What a gorgeous cover, and a fascinating sounding story. I shared on Facebook and Twitter.
Janet Evans on July 7, 2017 at 12:14 pm said:
Shared on fb/twitter.
Rebecca Tellez on July 7, 2017 at 12:18 pm said:
Oh Carrie this is a beautiful cover. I can hardly wait to open it up and read the story. I pinned it, tweeted it, shared on Facebook and Google +
peggy clayton on July 7, 2017 at 12:20 pm said:
Love the cover and i have shared it 2 times on facebook! so pretty.
Lynda E. on July 7, 2017 at 12:22 pm said:
I shared on Pinterest–thanks for the giveaway. I love that cover–absolutely stunning!
Deana Dick on July 7, 2017 at 12:46 pm said:
Such a breathtaking cover. Shared on Facebook.
Mary Kay Moody on July 7, 2017 at 12:58 pm said:
Oh Carrie, truly a stunning cover & so evocative. Spot on! Story sounds great. Recently watched a film re: Lindbergh’s US-Paris flight, so I’m eager to read this one.
I shared on Twitter and FB, liked on Goodreads & posted in Pinterest. I think it’s fair to say I LIKE it. 🙂
Thanks for the opportunity to win a copy. Blessings, Mary Kay
Sabrina Templin on July 7, 2017 at 1:04 pm said:
A Beautiful cover! I love planes.
I shared on Facebook 🙂
I also shared on Twitter, Google Plus and Pinterest! 😀
Daniele K on July 7, 2017 at 1:07 pm said:
Lovely cover. I shared on Facebook and Pinterest. Thank you for the chance to win.
Anne Payne on July 7, 2017 at 1:12 pm said:
Congratulations on another gorgeous cover design! 🙂
The story sounds great and I look forward to reading it.
Trixi on July 7, 2017 at 1:42 pm said:
Hi Carrie! Just like with all your covers, this is gorgeous 🙂
I’ve shared this on FB, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and added it to my Goodreads want-to-read list.
BJMarley on July 7, 2017 at 1:48 pm said:
I shared on Pinterest and marked as Want to Read on Goodreads.
Abby on July 7, 2017 at 1:55 pm said:
I shared on Facebook. I love the cover! It’s beautiful and captivating. Can’t wait to read.
Lucyl on July 7, 2017 at 2:14 pm said:
Shared on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. And Google + just because 🙂
Andréa Ihle on July 7, 2017 at 2:16 pm said:
Beautiful cover. I can’t wait to read it. ? Congratulations.
Shared on Facebook, Twitter & Pintrest.
Dianne Casey on July 7, 2017 at 2:28 pm said:
Love the cover, Carrie. Looking forward to reading the book. Shared on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Ashley Johnson on July 7, 2017 at 2:41 pm said:
This book sounds great! And the cover is beautiful! I have shared on instagram, Facebook groups, twitter, Pinterest, and Litsy!
Christina Chastain on July 7, 2017 at 2:55 pm said:
I Shared on facebook! As always, your book covers make me greatly anticipate the release of the book! February seems so far away! I will have to reread the others to get me through!
Linda Monroe Ward on July 7, 2017 at 3:02 pm said:
The book sounds great! And the cover is absolutely amazing! I’m looking forward to reading it.
I just shared the book on Facebook and Pinterest. Looking forward to its release in February!
Amanda T. on July 7, 2017 at 3:15 pm said:
Love the new cover!
Gail Hollingsworth on July 7, 2017 at 3:21 pm said:
Shared on Facebook and Pinterest.
Rose McCauley on July 7, 2017 at 3:22 pm said:
Love the cover, Carrie. I shared it on FB, twitter andgoogle+
LuCinda LaMay on July 7, 2017 at 4:02 pm said:
I love the cover! Shared on Facebook.
Elly on July 7, 2017 at 4:09 pm said:
I shared on Facebook and Twitter. I’m super excited about this giveaway!
Elly -Indiana-
Shelia Hall on July 7, 2017 at 4:14 pm said:
Beautiful cover! I shared on Facebook!
Janet Estridge on July 7, 2017 at 4:22 pm said:
Great looking cover. I can’t wait to see what’s inside.
Rebecca on July 7, 2017 at 4:32 pm said:
I shared on Twitter!
Adrienne Everitt on July 7, 2017 at 4:34 pm said:
Shared on Facebook and Twitter. What a beautiful cover!
Kaitlyn on July 7, 2017 at 4:37 pm said:
Amazing cover, I can’t wait to read the book!
I shared on Pinterest, google, and Twitter
Dianne Noland on July 7, 2017 at 4:49 pm said:
I shared on Facebook. I love all of your books! I can’t wait to read this one! Is it a stand-alone? Thanks for the chance to win!
Deborah O'Carroll on July 7, 2017 at 4:55 pm said:
Lovely! Shared on Pinterest! 😀
Terressa T. on July 7, 2017 at 5:02 pm said:
Gorgeous cover! I cannot wait to read the story. I have shared on Facebook.
Jennifer Torres on July 7, 2017 at 5:12 pm said:
Wow, the cover is stunning!!!
I posted it on Pinterest and will let all my friends know. Can’t wait to read your new book!
Lori Smanski on July 7, 2017 at 5:26 pm said:
oh wow this is a gorgeous cover. this story sounds like it would keep me on the edge of my chair.
I shared on twitter and pinterest
Connie Hendryx on July 7, 2017 at 5:27 pm said:
Love the cover and sounds like a great book! Shared on my Facebook timeline…thanks for the giveaway!
Tami le Roux on July 7, 2017 at 5:42 pm said:
Amy on July 7, 2017 at 6:14 pm said:
Nancy Griggs on July 7, 2017 at 6:27 pm said:
What a great cover! I shared on Facebook.
Una Ireland on July 7, 2017 at 6:44 pm said:
Michelle Crandall on July 7, 2017 at 7:03 pm said:
I really like this cover. I can’t wait to read another book by you! I shared it on Facebook.
Becky T on July 7, 2017 at 7:18 pm said:
Shared on Pinterest and Facebook. The cover is gorgeous, and the plot sounds amazing!
Paula S. on July 7, 2017 at 7:21 pm said:
Lovely cover. Can’t wait to read this interesting book! I shared on Facebook.
Connie Scruggs on July 7, 2017 at 7:35 pm said:
So excited for you! I shared on Facebook and Twitter.
Blessings on the new book.
Kathy Jacob on July 7, 2017 at 8:17 pm said:
Beautiful! The cover is perfect! I shared on Facebook and Pinterest.
Linda May on July 7, 2017 at 8:30 pm said:
The books looks amazing, I’m sharing on Facebook, Thanks for this generous chance.
Claudia Thompson on July 7, 2017 at 8:36 pm said:
I shared…Lovely cover…can’t wait to read!
Monica H on July 7, 2017 at 8:46 pm said:
I love the new cover. They are all beautiful though. I shared on Pinterest and Twitter.
Cynthia Roemer on July 7, 2017 at 8:49 pm said:
A beautiful, eye-catching cover design!! Love it. Story sounds great too! Congrats, Carrie!
Cynthia St. Germain on July 7, 2017 at 9:10 pm said:
Thank you for another beautiful cover. You have wonderful covers on all of your books.
Tina Rice on July 7, 2017 at 9:53 pm said:
Wow, beautiful cover, Carrie! Congratulations! I can’t wait to read it.
I shared on facebook, Google+ & Pinterest.
Blessings, Tina
Amy on July 7, 2017 at 10:49 pm said:
I shared on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter!
The cover is gorgeous! I can’t wait to read the book!
Mary Wagenbach on July 7, 2017 at 10:49 pm said:
Exquisite cover! I posted on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr and Google+. Hope that helps sell some copies! Exciting news for you and it looks great to read!
Caryl Kane on July 7, 2017 at 11:56 pm said:
Carrie, this cover is STUNNING!
Shared on Facebook, Pinterest and Google+
Carolyn on July 8, 2017 at 12:07 am said:
Can’t wait to read it, shared on facebook :).
Donna B on July 8, 2017 at 2:52 am said:
I shared on twitter. Such a beautiful cover on Across The Blue as well as your other books. Thank you for this giveaway.
Debbie Clatterbuck on July 8, 2017 at 10:22 am said:
Love the new book’s cover, Carrie. I shared on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+. Thanks for the giveaway and good luck everyone.
CutePolarBear on July 8, 2017 at 10:50 am said:
Does Goodreads count as a social media platform? I don’t have any other social media accounts.
CutePolarBear
Angelique on July 8, 2017 at 11:00 am said:
Awesome cover. I shared it on Facebook and Pinterest
Jonna Marsh on July 8, 2017 at 2:53 pm said:
Great cover and giveaway! Shared on Facebook!
Loraine Nunley on July 8, 2017 at 5:06 pm said:
Congrats on your new book Carrie! The cover is absolutely beautiful. I am so excited to add this to my reading list.
I shared this post on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.
Kimberly on July 8, 2017 at 8:17 pm said:
Hi Carrie ?
I love this cover, and am looking forward to this story!
I shared this on Facebook ?
Alyssa Washburn on July 8, 2017 at 8:42 pm said:
Can’t wait to read! Shared on Facebook!
Rory Lynn Lemond on July 8, 2017 at 8:50 pm said:
Stunning cover that shows the essence of the story…shared 2 times on Facebook and twitter….Thanks for the chance…
Sherri R Myers on July 8, 2017 at 9:49 pm said:
Love this cover, book sounds really good too!! Shared on Fb
Raechel L. on July 9, 2017 at 7:30 am said:
What a beautiful cover!! I love it.
I shared on Pinterest and Twitter -thank you!
Lori Ewing on July 9, 2017 at 8:04 am said:
The cover is gorgeous!! I cannot wait to read yghis book, it sounds wonderful!! I shared this on Facebook.?
Elisabeth Espinoza on July 9, 2017 at 9:31 am said:
Stunning cover! I posted a link to this page on my Facebook timeline. I’m looking forward to reading Across the Blue!
Rebekah on July 9, 2017 at 11:23 am said:
Shared to Facebook!
Airieanne Andrews on July 9, 2017 at 12:41 pm said:
Shared my Goodreads “Want to Read” and your cover rereal website on Facebook.
Nina Rowan on July 9, 2017 at 1:24 pm said:
I shared on Twitter.
Carrie Turansky on July 9, 2017 at 3:03 pm said:
Thanks, Nina!
Beth Bullington on July 9, 2017 at 1:40 pm said:
I pinned this. It looks like a good book. We recently took the ferry from Dover to France and loved seeing the White Cliffs.
Hi Beth, that’s fun to hear you just traveled across the English Channel. I hope you enjoy Across the Blue and it brings back happy memories for you!
Evangeline on July 9, 2017 at 4:02 pm said:
Beautiful cover! You are a new author to me, and I would love to read your book. ?
Jennifer on July 9, 2017 at 4:26 pm said:
Love the cover! Looking forward to reading this book. I shared it on Pinterest
Elizabeth on July 9, 2017 at 4:55 pm said:
I pinned this to Pinterest.
Brenda Scruggs on July 9, 2017 at 7:00 pm said:
I can’t wait to read this! My maiden name is Kendall and I traced my ancestry back to Kent. In my research, Kendall means, church by the river. And. my married name Scruggs means river also.
Love the book cover!
I will share on facebook.
susan beamon on July 9, 2017 at 7:18 pm said:
Do really like the cover. Posted to Facebook and Twitter.
Added to my Goodread TBR list.
Brenda Murphree on July 9, 2017 at 8:13 pm said:
I shared on FB, Twitter & Pinterest. I Love the cover! I hope to win your books! Thanks for this great giveaway!!
Pat Moore on July 9, 2017 at 8:15 pm said:
The cover is beautiful and the blurb caught my attention. Would love to win and read this book. You would be a new author for me. Looking forward to reading your book whether I win or not.
Jeanne Crea on July 9, 2017 at 8:20 pm said:
I re-tweeted your tweet about this Giveaway! Kate Breslin has recommended your books and I can’t wait to start reading! Thank you for the chance to win. I would be thrilled!
Becky Eldredge on July 9, 2017 at 10:34 pm said:
I shared on twitter. The new cover looks great, and the story sounds so good! I added as a “to read” on Goodreads!
Bhriv on July 10, 2017 at 12:12 am said:
Great cover and sounds like a great storyline, Carrie…but the release sounds like so far away :/ 🙂 I shared it on Twitter and Pinterest. Excited to see so many talking about it on FB, too!
Carrie Turansky on July 10, 2017 at 7:13 am said:
Hi Bhriv, February does seem like a long time to wait for the release. I agree! Have you read my other books? That might keep you busy until February. Here’s a link to my book list: http://carrieturansky.com/index.php/books/ Happy Reading!
Sam on July 10, 2017 at 12:57 am said:
Hope to read this soon! Shared on Facebook and wish you tons of success with Across the Blue! Congratulations!
Emmalisa Tilli on July 10, 2017 at 1:30 am said:
Shared on Facebook and twitter and then when I went to do Pinterest I lost what I was doing because it went into the app, and nothing came up. Will give it another try. I never have won a competition in my life and recently my sister won a cruise, now I am trying hard to win a competition! Haha!!!! You know me, I would be happy with a book! Especially yours. The Governess of Highland Hall has made a huge impact on me and the story never leaves me. My sister says I rave on about it just a tad! Haha! Shared this post on Facebook too I think! I love your writing…. a modern day Jane Austen.
Thank you Emmalisa!
Brenda Soto on July 10, 2017 at 1:49 am said:
Love the cover! It draws you in right away. I am sharing this on Facebook. Thank you for the opportunity to win.
Thanks for sharing, Brenda!
Kim Ferrell on July 10, 2017 at 9:52 am said:
Thank you for a chance to win a set of your works. The cover is very well done and leaves you with a sense of missing something, drawing you into opening and reading.
Marion on July 10, 2017 at 2:08 pm said:
I shared on facebook. The book looks like a wonderful read.
Pam Myers on July 10, 2017 at 2:44 pm said:
The cover is beautiful and looks very intriguing can’t wait to read it Love all your books
Tina Wyatt on July 10, 2017 at 4:26 pm said:
The cover is so pretty . Would love to read it . Thanks for the giveaway .
I did Pinterest and Facebook
Kate Yetter on July 10, 2017 at 6:19 pm said:
The covers on all your books are so eye catching! I know they say you can’t choose a book based on its cover but I still do. It is the first thing I look for. I shared your giveaway on Twitter, and pinterest. Thanks for the giveaway. Hoping I win!
Nancy Luebke on July 10, 2017 at 7:44 pm said:
Love the cover. What an interesting topic too. Shared on my facebook.
Michelle Fidler on July 10, 2017 at 8:14 pm said:
Shared on Facebook. The books sound great. I discovered your books by finding one at the library in the new books section.
Melissa Mathis on July 12, 2017 at 1:41 pm said:
I shared this on Facebook!
Dianna on July 12, 2017 at 8:33 pm said:
Shared on Twitter (@dedezoomsalot) and Pinterest (Savinginseconds)
The cover is gorgeous. Congrats!
Laurie Iglesias on July 12, 2017 at 11:43 pm said:
That is a lovely cover!! And what an attractive website you have. I shared the post on Twitter.
Brooke Irwin on July 13, 2017 at 7:56 am said:
I shared on Facebook! The book looks great!
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Democratic Party Platform
Paul Ryan knocks Democrats for having 'purged' platform reference to 'God'
Republican running mate Paul Ryan criticized Democrats Wednesday for having "purged" the word "God" from their official platform, calling the move "peculiar" as Democrats downplayed the omission.
"I think it's rather peculiar. It's not in keeping with our founding documents, our founding vision, but I guess you'd have to ask the Obama administration why they purged all this language from their platform," Ryan said in an interview with Fox News.
He was among several conservatives complaining after the official party platform was adopted late Tuesday at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C.
The Democrats' 2008 platform, like platforms before it, included the word "God"...
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/05/paul-ryan-knocks-democrats-...
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1. Islam, Democracy, and Post-9/11 Nation Building (Nov. 10)
2. TUNISIA: A Model of Middle East Stability or an Incubator of Extremism? (Nov. 13)
3. Muslim-Christian Reations in Nigeria (Nov. 13)
4. Religious Minorities in the Muslim World: A Reality Check (Nov. 15)
5. In Pakistan, Thousands Protest Emergency Rule (by Griff Witte)
6. Pakistan Police Attack Lawyers at Protest (by Jane Perlez and David Rohde)
7. Ousted Pakistani Chief Justice Urges Lawyers to Continue Protests (by Griff Witte and Howard Schneider)
8. Don’t expect Washington to push democracy on Cairo (by Hrach Gregorian)
9. Regression in the Muslim Brotherhood’s platform? (by Amr Hamzawy)
10. Debunking the myth of Islamist intransigence (by Mohammed Herzallah and Amr Hamzawy)
11. Tunisia’s Ben Ali set to extend 20-year rule (by Sonia Ounissi)
12. Tunisia – A textbook case in press censorship for the past 20 years (by Reporters Without Borders)
13. Mixed Reviews for U.S. from Erdogan’s Old Home (by Amar C. Bakshi)
14. U.S. ‘Studying’ Islamic School Report (by Valerie Strauss)
15. Mistrial for most defendants in Muslim charity trial (by David Koenig)
16. The new wars of religion (The Economist)
17. Post-Islamism (by Ali Eteraz)
18. The Art of The Possible (by Lee H. Hamilton)
19. Muslim superstar (The Guardian)
20. CSID: Office Space Available for Sublease (Washington DC)
The Regent Journal of International Law, in cooperation with Regent Law School, proudly announces its Fall 2007 Symposium:
“Islam, Democracy, and Post-9/11 Nation Building,” to be held on November 10, 2007.
Internationally recognized expert on modern Islam, Dr. Vali Nasr, will deliver the keynote address. The keynote lunch will begin at 11:45am.
The first panel, beginning at 9:30am, will focus on the question: “Is modern Islam compatible with constitutional democracy?” Panelists include:
Stephen Schwartz
Author and Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism
Mehrangiz Kar
Author, Attorney, and Iranian political exile
Dr. Radwan Masmoudi
President, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy
For the second panel, beginning at 2:00pm, panelists will address the question: “What aspects of post-9/11 nation building are indispensable for success?” Speaking will be:
Dr. Vali Nasr
Dr. Joe Kickasola
Professor of International Affairs, Robertson School of Government, Regent University
Professor Jennifer Jefferis
Professor, Robertson School of Government, Regent University
Dr. John H. Johns
Professor and twenty-six year Army veteran.
The symposium and lunch are FREE for those with a valid Regent University email address. The cost without a Regent email address is $10 for the entire day. All attendees are requested to register at www.regent.edu/rjilsymposium
TUNISIA: A MODEL OF MIDDLE EAST STABILITY OR AN INCUBATOR OF EXTREMISM?
Hart Auditorium, First Floor, McDonough Hall, Georgetown University Law Center
9:00 a.m. Registration
9:30 a.m. Welcome and Introduction
Representative of the organizers
9:45 a.m. Panel I: Stifling One of the Most Open Civil Societies in the Middle East and North Africa
Chaired by: Neil Hicks , Director of the Human Rights Defender Program at Human Rights First.
Clement Henry, Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin:
An Overview of Tunisia under Presidents Habib Bourguiba (1956-1987) and Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali (1987- ?): Did the “Architect of Change” Learn from the Mistakes of the “Supreme Combatant”?
Moncef Marzouki, former President of the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH) and former Spokesperson of the National Council for Liberties in Tunisia(CNLT):
Tunisian Civil Society’s Achievements and Disappointments.
11:00 a.m.-11:15a.m.: Coffee Break
Khadija Cherif, President of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD):
Threats and Challenges to Women in a Country that Claims Gender Equality.
Mokhtar Trifi, President of the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH):
What Future Role for the Crippled and Oldest Human Rights Group in the Arab World?
-Representative of the Tunisia government (TBC)
12:30 p.m. Lunch Break
1:30 p.m. Panel II: A War on “Islamist Extremism” or on Freedom of Association and Expression?
Chaired by: Daniel Brumberg, Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University, Washington D.C.
Naziha Rjiba, Deputy President of the Observatory for the Freedom of the Press, Publishing and Creation (OLPEC), and editor of online magazine Kalima:
Coping with the Intensifying Siege of Freedom of Expression and Association.
Ahmed Rahmouni, President of the Association of Tunisian Magistrates (AMT),
Mohamed Abbou, member of the International Association for the Support of Political Prisoners (AISPP) and the National Council for Liberties in Tunisia (CNLT):
The Need to Reform the Judiciary and to Protect its Independence.
2:30 p.m.-2:45 p.m.: Coffee Break
Omar Mestiri, member National Council for Liberties in Tunisia (CNLT) and managing editor of online magazine Kalima:
Presentation of a CNLT documentary on torture in Tunisian jails.
Radhia Nasraoui, president of the Association against Torture in Tunisia (ALTT):
The Intensification of the Use of Torture since the Adoption in 1988 of CAT and its Consequences.
3:45 p.m. Panel III: What Can the International Community do to Help Protect Basic Rights in Tunisia?
Chaired by: Sarah Leah Whitson, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Human Rights Watch.
Representatives of Tunisian human rights groups
Representative of Amnesty International
Joel Campagna, Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator, Committee to Protect Journalists
Claire Tixeire, International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
Representative of International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX)-Tunisia Monitoring Group
5:30 p.m. Concluding Remarks by Clement Henry
American Islamic Congress – Capitol Hill Distinguished Speakers Series
Religious Minorities in the Muslim World: A Reality Check
Thursday, November 15, 2007 Cannon Building 121, Capitol Hill 12 p.m. – Lunch provided
Diverse religious minorities challenge any monolithic image of the “Muslim world.” Druze in the Levant, Coptic Christians in Egypt, and Bahai’s in Iran are but a few of the minorities facing the on-going challenge of integration with the Muslim majority. This month’s Capitol Hill panel addresses pressing questions: What is the status of minorities in the Muslim world? How can these communities contribute to reform efforts in the region? And why do obstacles to genuine religious freedom remain?
Samuel Rizk
Director of the Forum for Development, Culture and Dialogue & former spokesperson for the Middle East Council of Churches in Lebanon
Edouard Al Dahdah
World Bank, Operations Office
Zahir Janmohamed
Amnesty International USA’s Advocacy Director for Middle East and North Africa
Hussain Abdul Hussain
Media Analyst & former editor of Beirut Daily Star
The event is free. Kindly RSVP to kristin@aicongress.org and include your name, title, and affiliation.
You are cordially invited to a public event:
Muslim-Christian Relations in Nigeria
Date: Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Time: 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: U.S. Institute of Peace
2nd Floor Conference Room 1200 17th St, NW Washington, DC 20036
Nigeria’s population is roughly evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, with Muslims dominant in the north and Christians in the south. While in many parts of the country, Muslim-Christian relations are amicable, religious violence has flared in some parts of Nigeria resulting in many casualties. Nigeria’s religious leaders are making increasing efforts to improve Muslim-Christian relations and to maintain religious peace.
Sa’ad Abubakar, the recently chosen Sultan of Sokoto, is recognized as the principal leader of Nigeria’s Muslim population. He will assess the state of Muslim-Christian relations in Nigeria and the efforts being made to maintain religious peace and harmony. He will also analyze the extent to which so-called religious conflict in Nigeria is actually religious in character.
Sa’ad Abubakar
Sultan of Sokoto
David Smock, Moderator
U.S. Institute of Peace
To RSVP, please send your name, affiliation, daytime phone number, and name of the event to Renata Stuebner atrstuebner@usip.org.
In Pakistan, Thousands Protest Emergency Rule
Lawyers, Police Battle at High Court Complex
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/05/AR2007110500308.html?hpid=topnews
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 5 — Police used tear gas and baton charges Monday to break up protests as thousands of lawyers took to the streets across Pakistan in the first significant demonstrations against President Pervez Musharraf’s declaration of emergency rule on Saturday.
The largest rally took place in the eastern city of Lahore, where lawyers and police battled each other at the city’s High Court complex. Several lawyers were injured, and hundreds were arrested before the protesters were dispersed.
Lawyers vowed to continue their protests in the coming days.
“We are determined that until there is freedom for the judges and the overturn of emergency rule, this war will continue,” said Anwar Shaheen, a lawyer in Lahore. “They can’t quiet us.”
Clashes between authorities and protesters also took place in the western city of Peshawar, the southern city of Karachi and elsewhere on Monday. In Islamabad, hundreds of lawyers shouting “Go Musharraf, go!” and “Musharraf is a dog!” protested at the district courts but were blocked from taking their procession to the streets.
“He has held the whole nation of 160 million people hostage, just with the backing of the gun and the Western powers,” said one protesting lawyer, M.S. Moghul.
For several hours Monday, reports circulated across the country that Musharraf had been overthrown by a group of subordinate generals. The rumors proved untrue, but that did not stop some from distributing sweets in celebration.
Independent television stations remained off the air for the third straight day, and the security presence in Islamabad was noticeably greater than on Sunday. Army rangers poked their automatic rifles from the tops of sandbagged bunkers near critical government buildings. Lines of barbed wire sealed off the entire area within a quarter-mile of the Supreme Court, and police refused to allow journalists to enter.
The country’s deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, remained under house arrest along with six other Supreme Court judges who had made a desperate attempt Saturday afternoon to block Musharraf’s declaration. All were fired.
The United States pressured Musharraf on Monday to go ahead with parliamentary elections that had been slated for January but which now may be delayed for up to a year, and also encouraged him to release those arrested in recent days. As of late Monday night in Pakistan, no decision had been made about the parliamentary vote, according to deputy information minister Tariq Azim Khan.
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“We believe that the best path for Pakistan is to quickly return to a constitutional path and then to hold elections,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a news conference during a visit to the West Bank during a Middle East trip. She also called for Musharraf to step down from his job as army chief, as he had promised to do.
“We cannot support emergency rule or the extreme measures taken during the emergency,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said during a morning briefing. “Such actions are not in Pakistan’s best interest and damage the progress Pakistan has made on its path to democracy.
“The president and his advisers . . . right now are urging him to quickly return to civilian rule, to get back on the path of democracy, to restore the freedoms of the press as well as release detainees.”
In the first tangible step that Washington has taken against Musharraf since Saturday, the United States suspended annual defense talks with Pakistan that were due to begin Tuesday.
Opposition political parties stayed quiet Monday. Several have been hit hard by government sweeps that have netted more than 1,000 arrests.
The nation’s largest opposition party, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s center-left Pakistan People’s Party, has not taken to the streets. But Bhutto said in an interview Monday night that her supporters would protest in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Friday.
“Our goal is to get Musharraf to revive the constitution, to retire as chief of army staff by November 15 and to have the elections held on schedule,” Bhutto said.
While other opposition parties have said they do not believe free and fair elections are possible now that Musharraf has suspended the constitution, Bhutto said there is still time.
“We can do it,” she said.
Pakistan’s government on Sunday executed a nationwide crackdown on the political opposition, the news media and the courts, one day after Musharraf imposed emergency rule and suspended the constitution.
Police throughout the country raided the homes of opposition party leaders and activists, arresting at least 500. Top lawyers were also taken into custody, and 70 activists were detained at the offices of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in the eastern city of Lahore. Police confiscated the equipment of journalists covering the raid and ordered them to leave the premises. The United States continued to express outrage at Musharraf’s decision, and Rice said Washington would review its $150 million-a-month assistance program to Pakistan.
In an address to the nation that ended in the early minutes of Sunday, Musharraf justified his declaration on the grounds that he needed a free hand to battle rising militancy in Pakistan.
But a top adviser conceded later Sunday that the final decision came only after a Supreme Court judge quietly informed the government last week that the court would rule against Musharraf’s effort to stay on as president.
“After that, there was no option,” said Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League. “He is not happy with this decision, frankly speaking. We are all not happy with the decision. But there was no other choice.”
The only televised news Sunday came from the state-run channel, which ran clips from Musharraf’s speech to the nation.
The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad issued a statement Sunday saying Washington was “gravely concerned” about the crackdown. “Such extreme and unreasonable measures are clearly not in Pakistan’s best interest, and contradict the progress Pakistan has made toward becoming a fully democratic society,” the statement said.
A close adviser to Musharraf said Sunday that the president’s inner circle believed that before he issued the order, the United States and Britain had grudgingly accepted the idea of emergency rule, despite earlier objections. He said he did not expect any action against Musharraf by the West. “When we convinced them that it would only be for a very short time, they said, ‘Okay,’ ” the adviser said.
A Western diplomat hotly disputed that contention. “The U.S., along with Britain and other countries in the E.U. and the Commonwealth, made every effort to try to dissuade Musharraf’s government from doing this,” the diplomat said on the condition of anonymity, adding that “Rice couldn’t have been stronger in several phone calls” to Musharraf.
It was unclear, however, whether U.S. disapproval would translate into punitive measures.
The police presence in Islamabad, the capital, remained heavy Sunday, and a tense calm prevailed in much of the city.
At the residence of former chief justice Chaudhry, hundreds of security officers kept visitors away. Musharraf fired Chaudhry on Saturday, along with at least six other Supreme Court judges.
Of 17 judges on the bench, five agreed to take an oath to uphold Musharraf’s new provisional constitution. The government pressured several others Sunday to sign the oath or lose their jobs, according to a Musharraf aide.
Near the Supreme Court, a small group gathered in hopes of starting a rally against Musharraf. But police ordered the crowd to disperse, citing a ban on public gatherings of more than three people in one place.
“We’re in despair, and we don’t know what to do,” said Sofia Shakil, an Islamabad resident. “Just when things looked like they couldn’t get any worse.”
The mood in the western city of Peshawar, too, was grim. “As a Pakistani today, I’m feeling so down that I wish I could be a citizen of India, Bangladesh, or even Afghanistan,” said Tariq Hussain, a pharmacist. “It’s really shameful to meet with people of other countries and introduce yourself as a Pakistani because of our greedy rulers.”
In Islamabad later in the afternoon Sunday, several dozen protesters attempted to march to Chaudhry’s house, shouting, “We want democracy now!” But police blocked their path and began making arrests.
“We don’t need martial law imposed on us,” said Laila Ashraf, a protester. “We need to assert our rights.”
Washington Post correspondent Emily Wax and special correspondent Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report.
Pakistan Police Attack Lawyers at Protest
By JANE PERLEZ and DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/world/asia/06pakistan.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 5 — Police officers armed with tear gas and clubs attacked thousands of protesting lawyers in the city of Lahore today and rounded up lawyers in other cities as the government of the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, faced the first signs of concerted resistance to the imposition of emergency rule on Saturday.
The opposition to emergency rule, which many here are describing as martial law, was led by lawyers, students and journalists. The main opposition political parties, however, mounted no immediate large-scale rallies or protests. The next few days will show whether they can organize in the current atmosphere, which is highly restrictive.
Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the country’s biggest secular political party, remained at her home in Karachi, although she said she would fly to Islamabad on Wednesday to take part in a protest rally. Ms. Bhutto has sharply criticized the emergency rule but so far has stopped short of criticizing General Musharraf himself.
Pakistani officials say an estimated 500 opposition figures have been arrested since emergency rule was imposed at the weekend, although lawyers and analysts said the figure could be far higher, probably around 2,000.
General Musharraf, in a televised address on Saturday night, cited the danger to the country posed by extremists and said only emergency rule could solve it. He suspended the Constitution, fired the judges of the Supreme Court, closed the transmission of privately owned television news channels and curbed the broadcasts of international broadcasters. Parliamentary elections scheduled for next January were delayed for up to a year, officials said.
Today, the Musharraf government deployed police forces and threatened political opponents with more arrests.
An estimated 150 lawyers were arrested in Lahore after a pitched battle between the police and lawyers who stood on the roof of the High Court throwing stones at the officers below. Some of the lawyers had bleeding heads as they were shoved into police vans, and some fainted in the clouds of tear gas. In Multan, another city in the province of Punjab, two new judges who had taken the oath of office under emergency rule Sunday were forced to leave the courtroom by hundreds of angry lawyers.
“We threatened them, saying: ‚Äö√Ñ√≤You’ve taken an unconstitutional oath. If you don’t go we will throw eggs at you.’ They left,” said Riaz Gilani, a lawyer from Multan.
Many lawyers in the capital, Islamabad, and the nearby garrison town of Rawalpindi said they did not go to the courts because they were warned they would be arrested and possibly beaten.
Despite the warnings, more than 100 lawyers demonstrated outside Islamabad’s main court complex today. The lawyers, clad in black suits and ties, shouted, “Musharraf, dog!” and “A Baton and a bullet will not do!” Haroon Rashid, president of the Islamabad Bar Association, instructed lawyers not to attack the watching police because he did not want to give the police a pretext for arrests, he said.
This is the second time this year that the country’s lawyers have emerged to fight the government. They led weeks of protests in the spring when General Musharraf fired the Supreme Court chief justice.
Liaquat Baluch, the deputy leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, an opposition Islamic party, told Reuters that the police had detained about 700 party supporters Sunday night.
In a showdown this afternoon between the government and the news media, hundreds of journalists and printers at the Jang Group, Pakistan’s largest media group, confronted the police and officials from the government’s press information department at the offices of Awam, the afternoon newspaper in Karachi.
The government officials ordered the newspaper’s editor, Nazeer Leghari, not to print a supplement, and the police threatened to close down the plant, according to a statement issued by the Jang Group. When the newspaper’s management refused to obey, the officials withdrew, the statement said.
Protests were held at two of the country’s top universities. Several hundred students and faculty members gathered at the Lahore University of Management Studies, shouted anti-government slogans and planned further protests, according to a faculty member. Several dozen students protested at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.
In the first practical sign of international displeasure at the emergency rule, the United States said today it had suspended annual defense talks with Pakistan.
Eric Edelman, an under secretary of defense, was meant to head an American delegation to the talks, beginning on Tuesday, but the meetings will be delayed until conditions are “more conducive to achieving the important objectives of all those who value democracy and a constitutional role,” said Elizabeth Colton, a spokeswoman at the American Embassy.
To shore up the emergency rule, the government appeared to be bypassing the regular police channels and instead sending orders for arrests through regional, politically-appointed mayors, said Syed Fakhir Imam, a former speaker of the National Assembly.
Mr. Imam said he was receiving telephone calls about arrests across the country. One man was arrested in the press club in Quetta, the main city in Baluchistan, he said.
In his own relatively small district of Jhang in the western Punjab, 47 lawyers who were politically active, including a senior lawyer, Fareed Naul, had been jailed, he said.
The chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who was dismissed earlier this year and then reinstated, was again dismissed by General Musharraf on Saturday.
Mr. Chaudhry said in an interview in a newspaper, The News, this morning that “everything that is happening today is illegal, unconstitutional and against the orders of the Supreme Court.”
In a telephone interview, one of the seven Supreme Court justices now under house arrest, Rana Bhagwandas, urged the United States to support the restoration of democracy in Pakistan.
“The United States is a democratic government, and democratic governments should work for democratic values across the globe,” Mr. Bhagwandas said. “Pakistan is no exception.”
Analysts said the resistance to emergency rule would gain momentum only when, or if, the main political parties showed their hand.
“The resistance is unlikely to succeed unless the political parties come into the process,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, an analyst in Lahore who teaches at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
In a telephone interview from her home in Karachi, Ms. Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan last month with the blessing of the United States, said she would fly to Islamabad on Wednesday, where she hoped to meet with other opposition political parties.
She insisted a rally planned by her party would go ahead on Friday in Rawalpindi. It would be staged as a protest rather than a political gathering, she said.
“We decided this would be a protest meeting where we would protest the imposition of military rule,” she said. “This protest movement will continue until the Constitution is restored.”
Even so, there was doubt among some of her supporters which way Ms. Bhutto would swing.
“I hope she resists,” said Syeda Abida Hussain, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. “If she co-operates, she will be politically annihilated.”
Ms. Hussain said there were plans for Ms. Bhutto to meet a cross-section of political parties in Islamabad under the umbrella of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy.
In a two-hour meeting with foreign ambassadors today, General Musharraf gave a lengthy explanation for the emergency rule, repeating much of what he said in his formal televised statement Saturday night, and dismissed criticism of the detention of his opponents.
Recounting the events of the last few days, Mr. Bhagwandas, the Supreme Court judge, said that he and seven other justices had gathered in the Supreme Court building very late Saturday night after General Musharraf suspended the country’s Constitution.
There they drafted a ruling declaring the emergency order unconstitutional and faxed it to Mr. Musharraf’s office, the country’s four governors and senior judges across Pakistan.
Police officers then allowed the seven justices to return to their houses, but since then they have been barred from leaving, he said. This morning he woke, he said, to find the gates to his house locked.
Ousted Pakistani Chief Justice Urges Lawyers to Continue Protests
By Griff Witte and Howard Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/06/AR2007110600516_pf.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 6 — Ousted Pakistani chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry urged the country’s lawyers to continue protesting against the emergency rules imposed by President Pervez Musharraf over the weekend, saying the country’s constitution had been “ripped to shreds” and they need to fight to restore it.
Under house arrest since his firing along with six other Supreme Court judges, Chaudhry reached a gathering of lawyers in the capital via cell phone and told them to “go to every corner of Pakistan and give the message that this is the time to sacrifice,” the Associated Press reported. “Don’t be afraid. God will help us, and the day will come when you’ll see the constitution supreme and no dictatorship for a long time.”
Chaudhry is as an influential critic of Musharraf. He survived an earlier attempt by Musharraf to remove him from office, and under his leadership as chief justice, the court was reviewing a challenge to Musharraf’s recent reelection as president.
His call for further protests comes amid continuing turbulence on the Pakistani streets, and reports that Islamic militants had overtaken the town of Matta in the northwest of the country. The area has been the scene of intense battles between militants and Pakistani troops. The wire service attributed the information to local police and a spokesman for a rebel cleric.
The Pakistani cabinet, meanwhile, was meeting to discuss the country’s security situation and debating whether to hold parliamentary elections as scheduled in January, or delay them by as much as a year. President Bush and other world leaders have urged that the elections be held on schedule.
Pakistani lawyers have so far taken the lead in demonstrating against the emergency declaration and continued those protests on Tuesday, vowing to keep up their dissent until Musharraf resigns.
After turning out across Pakistan by the thousands on Monday, the crowds were smaller but still substantial, with wire services reporting that roughly 1,000 lawyers had clashed with police in the central city of Multan.
While some political opponents and rights activists also participated in the protests — the most significant since Musharraf declared emergency rule Saturday — it was the lawyers who dominated. In recent months, they have clashed repeatedly with a government they accuse of interfering with the judiciary, and on Monday, they voiced outrage over the president’s decision to suspend the constitution and fire a group of dissident Supreme Court justices.
The Pakistani government made clear that it would brook no opposition, swiftly deploying police with tear gas and batons to beat back demonstrators.
Political parties are expected to join the protests in the coming days, although it remains unclear to what extent members will turn out in the streets. Opposition leaders said that several thousand party activists, human rights advocates and lawyers have been taken into custody since Saturday in a bid by the government to snuff out the anti-government movement before it can gain traction.
Authorities defied mounting domestic and international pressure to end emergency rule and schedule parliamentary elections that are supposed to be held by January. President Bush urged Pakistan to “restore democracy as quickly as possible,” but stopped short of saying that the moves by Musharraf, a top U.S. ally in counterterrorism efforts, would affect U.S. aid.
The largest rally Monday took place in the eastern city of Lahore, where lawyers and police battled at the city’s High Court complex. Several lawyers were injured, and hundreds were arrested. Musharraf adversaries said larger protests are expected later this week.
Clashes between authorities and protesters also took place Monday in Islamabad, the capital, the northwestern city of Peshawar, the southern city of Karachi and elsewhere. “Today we make a solemn pledge that we will continue our struggle till our last breath,” Fida Gul, a lawyer, told a rowdy group of protesters in Peshawar.
For several hours Monday, reports circulated across the country that Musharraf had been overthrown by a group of subordinate generals. The rumors proved untrue, but that did not stop some people from distributing sweets in celebration, and they underscored the air of uncertainty that prevails in Pakistan.
Musharraf said in an interview with the Reuters news agency that the report of his ouster was “a joke of the highest order,” adding that he planned to play tennis later in the day.
On Saturday, Musharraf said he had declared an emergency in the interest of fighting terrorism. But top Musharraf aides have conceded that his primary motivation was an impending Supreme Court decision that would have disqualified him from serving another term.
Musharraf aides have said the government has no plans to use the emergency to launch an offensive against insurgents in the northwest, where the military has suffered embarrassing losses recently. On Sunday, authorities freed 30 Taliban fighters in exchange for more than 200 captured soldiers, even as police continued to round up activists from the mainstream political parties.
Musharraf met in the morning with dozens of foreign diplomats, telling them he had no choice but to declare an emergency and suspend the constitution.
“I can assure you there will be harmony,” he said, according to state-run television. “Confidence will come back into the government, into law enforcement agencies, and Pakistan will start moving again on the same track as we were moving.”
Musharraf declined to give details of when elections would be held or when he would step down as army chief, as he had promised to do. One Western diplomat called the meeting “uncomfortable and tense” and said that Musharraf was “dismissive” of objections to his decision.
The U.S. ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, told Musharraf of Washington’s concern about his government’s “extraordinarily heavy-handed measures,” including the arrest Sunday of 70 human rights workers. “It would be hard to imagine a group less threatening to the security of Pakistan and more in accord with the democratic values you have espoused,” Patterson said, according to the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In the first tangible step it has taken against Musharraf since Saturday, the United States postponed annual defense talks with Pakistan that were due to begin Tuesday. The Dutch government went much further, becoming the first country to suspend aid to Pakistan as a result of the emergency declaration.
The Pakistani government kept independent domestic news stations, as well as the BBC and CNN, off the air for the third straight day, and Pakistani journalists said they had been given no timetable for when transmissions might resume.
The opposition group led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, one of the main targets of the government’s raids, said it had decided to back the lawyers in a nationwide movement against Musharraf.
But the nation’s largest opposition party, the Pakistan People’s Party, led by former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, is in a trickier spot. Bhutto had spent months before the imposition of emergency rule negotiating a possible power-sharing arrangement with Musharraf that might have allowed her to become prime minister.
Musharraf’s announcement, she said in an interview Monday night, violated their agreement. Bhutto said that her supporters would protest in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Friday, although she played down predictions of the kind of massive crowds that greeted her return from exile last month. She said she still hopes that Musharraf will reverse course, adding that protests would help.
Other opposition parties have said they do not believe free and fair elections are possible under Musharraf, but Bhutto disagreed.
Asked if she would meet with Musharraf to possibly negotiate a government, Bhutto today said “No, and nor do I intend to meet Musharraf.”
Correspondent Emily Wax in Lahore and special correspondent Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report.
Don’t expect Washington to push democracy on Cairo
Commentary by Hrach Gregorian
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=86329
President Hosni Mubarak has ruled Egypt for over a quarter of a century. Almost 80, and reportedly in poor health, Mubarak appears intent on quashing all but token opposition and clearing the path for the ascension to the presidency of his son, Gamal, a 43-year-old former investment banker. It is no accident that the office of the vice president remains vacant, and the military, where all of Egypt’s presidents have come from, is being kept at a distance. The press is also on notice to temper its criticism or suffer intimidation, jailing, and perhaps worse at the hands of the state security apparatus.
While recently acceding to some of the demands of workers in one of the most widespread strikes seen in Egypt in modern memory, the regime was quick to shut down and ban the activities of the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services, which was instrumental in spearheading the labor protests. Mubarak has vowed to serve out his current term, which runs until 2011. During this period, there will be significant turnover in the political leadership of the United States as well as other key players in the Middle East.
The Mubarak regime’s key objective during this period of transition is to ensure stability and continuity. Regardless of who among the frontrunners in the current US presidential campaign ends up in the White House, it is highly likely that Washington will refrain from any further calls for regime change in the region, albeit quietly pressing for political and economic reform in Egypt. For the time being at least, the very public American campaign to champion democratic change in Egypt and in other key states in the Arab Middle East is over. Of course this does not mean that the US cannot or will not continue to exercise its considerable economic leverage to press Cairo for greater political openness; it does mean that in light of strategic interests in the region as well as the immediate fallout from the democracy experiment, the US will mute further public scolding of the regime and look for much more gradual change. In this regard, it is striking how dramatic the change in rhetoric has been.
It was just June 2005 when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking on the campus of the American University in Cairo, delivered a speech apparently marking a major shift in US policy toward the Arab world. Rice noted: “For 60 years my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.”
More arresting than this overarching theme was the explicit call on the Egyptian government to provide its citizenry with freedom of choice, free elections, the right to public assembly and political participation. Given the highly stunted nature of Egypt’s political culture, it is not entirely clear why the US administration assumed that such reforms would witness the rise to power of moderate, modernizing elements in the Egyptian polity. What did happen was that in the first round of parliamentary elections held late in 2005, candidates affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood won most of the races in which their names appeared on the ballot. Only the heavy-handed tactics and outright vote-rigging of the government ensured that these individuals would not achieve victory in subsequent rounds. Still, the Muslim Brotherhood made substantial gains in its share of parliamentary seats. This development, coupled with the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections in January 2006, appears to have substantially tempered the US zeal for democratization.
This was the context for Rice’s pronouncement in Cairo in early spring 2006 that in the parliamentary elections, President Mubarak had “sought the consent of the governed.” With Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu al-Gheit at her side, she went on to say, “We can’t judge Egypt … We can’t tell Egypt what its course can be or should be.” And in what is likely to be the theme of US policy in the region for some time to come, the secretary added, “It [democratic change] takes time … We understand that.”
Time and space are what the US will give Egypt in the years to come. There are a number of reasons for this backpedaling on democracy. The Egyptian government has played a significant role in supporting the US-lead campaign against Al-Qaeda and other extremist elements in the region. It has even taken on the dirty work of forceful interrogation of suspects where US law would not permit such activity by an agency of the US government. Egypt has tightened the clamps on Hamas, to the point of imposing travel restrictions on the organization; it has increased border security to stem the flow of weapons from Sinai to Gaza; and it has declared its support for Fatah and its leader, the US-backed Mahmoud Abbas. Furthermore, the US can count on the Egyptians to act as a stabilizing force in Arab-Israel relations. Egypt is also lending Uncle Sam a helping hand in Iraq and Iran.
Most notably, the Mubarak regime is undertaking all these steps in the face of domestic sentiment that has been characterized as the most anti-American in the region. For now, at least, Washington’s strategic interests and the Mubarak government’s political interests are in close alignment. This being the case, there is little reason to believe that significant change in US-Egyptian relations is in the offing, regardless of who wins the upcoming presidential elections and as the mantle of power in Egypt is slowly passed from father to son.
Hrach Gregorian is president of the Washington-based Institute of World Affairs, a partner in the consulting firm Gettysburg Integrated Solutions, and associate professor in the Graduate Program in Conflict Analysis at Royal Roads University in Victoria, Canada. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter.
Regression in the Muslim Brotherhood’s platform?
Commentary by Amr Hamzawy
The Muslim Brotherhood’s draft party platform sends mixed signals about the movement’s political views and positions. Although it has already been widely circulated, the document does not yet have final approval from the movement’s guidance bureau.
The platform’s detailed treatment of political, social, and economic issues marks a significant departure from previously less developed positions, articulated inter alia in a 2004 reform initiative and the 2005 electoral platform for Brotherhood parliamentary candidates. This shift addresses one of the most important criticisms of the Brotherhood, namely its championing of vague ideological and religious slogans and inability to come up with specific policy prescriptions.
The document raises troubling questions, however, regarding the identity of a future Brotherhood political party as well as the group’s position on several political and social issues. Released in the context of an ongoing standoff between the Egyptian regime and the Brotherhood, it reveals significant ambiguities and perhaps regression in the movement’s thinking.
First, the drafters chose not to address the future relationship between the party and the movement. In doing so, they have deliberately ignored important ideas recently discussed within the movement, especially among members of the parliamentary bloc. Inspired by the experiences of Islamist parties in Morocco, Jordan, and Yemen, these members advocate a functional separation between a party and the movement, with the former focused mainly on political participation and the latter on religious activism. In addition to its superficial treatment of the nature of the party and its internal organization, the platform includes no clear statement on opening party membership to all Egyptians regardless of their religion, one of the requirements for establishing a political party according to the Egyptian Constitution.
Second, the draft Brotherhood platform identifies implementation of Sharia as one of the party’s main goals. Although this is consistent with the group’s interpretation of Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution (“Islam is the religion of the state, and Islamic law is the main source of legislation”), it departs from the pragmatic spirit of various Brotherhood statements and initiatives since 2004 in which less emphasis was given to the Sharia issue. The return to a focus on Sharia in the platform has led to positions fundamentally at odds with the civil nature of the state and full citizenship rights regardless of religious affiliation.
The platform undermines the principle of a civil state by stipulating that senior religious scholars would have the right to veto legislation that does not conform to the principles of Islamic law. It calls for the establishment of a board of elected senior religious scholars, with whom the president and the legislature would have to consult before passing laws. In effect, this would put the legislature and the executive under the scrutiny of an extra-constitutional body. Setting aside impressionistic inferences regarding the Brotherhood’s adoption of a theocratic state model, these provisions constitute a significant departure in the movement’s thinking away from the more moderate positions articulated by its leadership in recent years. Over the past few years, the Brotherhood had consistently asserted that the Supreme Constitutional Court was the only body that can adjudicate the constitutionality of laws, and denied that a religious body could perform this task. The draft platform also discriminates against Egypt’s Copts by arguing – on religious grounds – that only Muslims are allowed to compete for the highest executive offices, the presidency and prime ministership. This constitutes a violation of basic principles of universal citizenship, which the Brotherhood’s discourse had once seemed to accept.
Finally, the party platform’s treatment of social and economic issues reveals a preference for a strongly interventionist state that would mitigate the effects of free trade. By contrast, the platform’s provisions regarding political reform and democratic change focus on a more limited role for the state and a greater role for civil society and nongovernmental organizations. Calling for a state that systematically intervenes in social and economic spheres while at the same time advocating limiting its political role is contradictory.
Ambiguity and regression in the Brotherhood’s party platform cannot be seen outside the current political context in Egypt. Since their strong showing in the parliamentary elections 2005, the Muslim Brothers have been once again facing a repressive state apparatus that places strict constraints on their political participation. In such an uncertain environment, it is highly unlikely that nonviolent religious opposition movements open up to fully embrace democratic norms and principles.
Amr Hamzawy is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dina Bishara translated this article from Arabic. This commentary is reprinted with permission from the Arab Reform Bulletin, Vol. 5, issue 8 (October 2007) www.CarnegieEndowment.org/ArabReform (c) 2007, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Debunking the myth of Islamist intransigence
By Mohammed Herzallah and Amr Hamzawy
Recently the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood issued a draft of its first ever political party platform, making major strides toward a comprehensive public policy program espousing freedom of expression and pluralistic politics – ideals that were previously immaterial to Islamist discourse in Egypt. While the Brotherhood remains a movement without a political party – barred by the Egyptian government and a constitutional prohibition against parties based on religious preferences – the movement’s new party platform gives policymakers and experts plenty of reason to take notice.
By and large, the platform advances a fairly progressive understanding of freedom of religion and expression, of property rights, and of women’s enfranchisement. More than that, it advances the notion that the people are the source of state sovereignty – a clear departure from orthodox Islamic teachings that God is the undisputed origin of virtually all sovereignty.
Other key provisions in the document, however, have proven fiercely controversial among Egyptian intellectual and policy circles. Namely, the program calls for the establishment of a board of elected senior religious scholars with whom the president and the legislature would have to consult before authorizing any laws or decrees. This would effectively place the government under the scrutiny of an extra-constitutional entity. Setting aside accusations by critics that the Brotherhood is calling for an Iran-style theocratic state, the provision reveals a degree of regression in the movement’s thinking from more moderate positions upheld by the movement’s leadership in recent years.
Regrettably, the draft also contemplates legally sanctioned discrimination against women and non-Muslim citizens, who are explicitly denied the right to run for the highest executive offices – namely president and prime minister. The Muslim Brotherhood argues that these positions of authority involve religious duties that only Muslim men are enjoined to perform. Certainly, such a position represents a clear violation of the principle of equality, a fundamental element of modern democracies.
Nonetheless, the controversy obscures the fact that the Brotherhood’s positions are not born out of animosity toward non-Muslims, women, or democracy, but stem from cultural and religious norms that are continuously debated and modified by the Brotherhood’s leading members. To be sure, internal disputes over comprehensive equality, like many other disagreements over Shariah law, have yet to be settled, and the Brotherhood’s leading members do not pretend otherwise in public.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
An example that bears special emphasis is the new platform’s endorsement of the right of the people, irrespective of their race, gender, religious or ideological affiliations, to form political parties and associations. Given that the founders of the movement were firmly opposed to factionalism and the political party system, the move illustrates the growing capacity of progressives within the Islamists’ ranks to shape the movement’s intellectual trajectory.
The story of today’s Muslim Brotherhood is one of struggle to advance liberal thought in a culturally conservative, religiously oriented movement. But the group’s religious inclinations are not entirely responsible for its somewhat sluggish march toward full-fledged commitment to liberal democracy. The Muslim Brotherhood’s reluctance to reverse some of its controversial positions is also partly rooted in Egypt’s hostile political environment. Since their strong showing in the 2005 election, the Muslim Brothers have been subjected to relentless government-sponsored waves of intimidation and repression. This has served to empower hard-liners and demoralize the forces of reconciliation and moderation among the Islamists.
Ultimately, when all is said and done, the movement that is today advocating freedom of expression and political participation has been once home to some of the darkest ideas ever to rock the precarious sphere of Arab politics, including those of Sayyed Qutb – who inspired the terrorist ideology of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawhri, and their Al-Qaeda followers. That the Brotherhood has renounced violence and relinquished the detrimental rhetoric of self-righteousness in the hopes of becoming legitimate political actors resembles the kind of raw and authentic progress that has been largely overlooked in the global war on terrorism; it should be welcomed, studied, and carefully cultivated.
Mohammed Herzallah is a junior research fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Amr Hamzawy is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. They wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
Tunisia’s Ben Ali set to extend 20-year rule
Tue 6 Nov 2007, 12:57 GMT
By Sonia Ounissi
http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL06369599.html
TUNIS, Nov 6 (Reuters) – Supporters of Tunisian President Zine al Abidine Ben Ali predict he will seek another mandate when his latest term ends in 2009, confident the veteran leader will make the Maghreb’s most modern state more prosperous.
Critics say the continued leadership of the 71-year-old, who celebrates 20 years in power on Wednesday, risks perpetuating an authoritarian system with tight controls on politics and press.
Ben Ali has yet to confirm he wants to continue leading the north African country of 10 million. But his backers’ mood is reminiscent of their confidence in 2002, when he won the right in a referendum to stay in power for life if he chose to do so.
Streets in Tunis and other cities are decked with Tunisian red flags and portraits of Ben Ali and posters and other slogans declaring he would be the “best choice in 2009”.
Commentators say Ben Ali can take credit for making Tunisia the healthiest and best educated population in north Africa.
The country has north Africa’s biggest middle class. More than two-thirds of households own homes. A fifth of the population own a car, up from a 10th two decades ago. Access to schools and basic health care are available to all.
But they say he has much to do to close a democratic deficit that makes the political process a sterile exercise in state control.
“Tunisians do not suffer from poverty. … They suffer from mental hunger due to a lack of initiative and poor freedom of expression and press,” said political analyst Slah Jourchi.
“The political regime in Tunis had provided social stability during 20 years, adopting a liberal economic policy without harming the interests of Tunisia’s large middle class.
“But this development is unbalanced, with poor political initiative and superficial multi-party politics”, he added.
QUASI-MONARCHY
Long-serving rulers are nothing new in the Maghreb. Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi has clocked up 38 years — equalling the reign of former Moroccan King Hassan, whose son Mohammed ascended the throne in 1999. In Algeria, army-backed leaders have been the norm since independence from France in 1962.
Critics of Ben Ali say another term would push Tunisia towards a quasi-monarchical system, making a mockery of Ben Ali’s statement when he took over on Nov. 7, 1987, that Tunisia would never again have a president-for-life.
He became president in 1987, six weeks after becoming prime minister, when doctors declared president-for-life Habib Bourguiba, founder of modern Tunisia, senile and unfit to rule.
“Certainly we have recorded social stability and economic benefits over the past two decades. But we have recorded also a remarkable political regression,” said Maya Jribi, the head of the opposition Progressive Democratic Party.
“Before, there was a real political debate. Now it’s a become a complete desert. Without freedom of the press, without respecting the rights of assembly, without political rehabilitation, we risk blocking sustainable development.”
The International Federation for Human Rights has warned the country that it risks violence unless it allows wider freedom of expression and further improvement of dissidents’ rights.
“Tunisia’s human rights situation is difficult … Without an independent civil society … (Tunisia) will face more uncontrollable relapses like those events in the (Tunis) suburbs,” Federation President Souhayr Belhassen told Reuters.
Tunisia’s quiet atmosphere was hit at the turn of the year by rare shoot-outs between security forces and radical Salafist Islamists near Tunis in which 14 of the gunmen were killed.
The government bans Islamist parties on the grounds that political Islam is a cause of conflict and ultimately bloodshed.
Ben Ali said in March Tunisia must take more interest in developing its youth and “safeguard them against the currents of extremism, fatalism and terrorism”.
The government insists it is committed to further democracy and liberty, arguing that a minority of dissidents habitually attempt to discredit the country’s human rights record.
Multi-party politics began in the early 1980s and the government says it recently started granting legal opposition groups financial support to boost democracy.
The ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally, dominates the legislature, as by law 80 percent of the seats in the 189-seat parliament are reserved for the ruling party. The remaining 20 percent are contested by six opposition parties.
“Tunisia is at a crossroads. It achieved satisfactory growth and a good economic performance,” said Azzam Mahjoub, an economist and professor at Tunis University.
“But we cannot have sustainable development if we block political aspects, unless we have a co-existence between economic and social progress and political issues.”
(writing by William Maclean, editing by Mary Gabriel)
Tunisia – A textbook case in press censorship for the past 20 years
In the run-up to 20th anniversary of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s takeover as president on 7 November, the pro-government newspapers, which constitute most of the Tunisian press, have of course been praising the “president of change.” The local media is making much of Tunisia’s economic and social development and is ignoring civil liberties and human rights, which have been flouted for the past 20 years.
President Ben Ali enjoys the support of most western countries because they seem him as a “bulwark against the Islamist threat.” This is the case with the European Union, which signed an association accord with Tunisia in 1995 that is nothing like as binding on human rights issues as the accords reached with countries of the Africa-Caribbean-Pacific regions.
His first years as president saw an easing of political tension, but Ben Ali lost no time in reining in the media. The early 1990s and especially the first Gulf war marked the end of media diversity and free expression in Tunisia. Independent newspapers, which had been very active in the latter years of Habib Bourguiba’s presidency, were closed one after another.
In the past 20 years, Ben Ali has neutralised all the checks and balances and brought them under his control, starting with the press and the justice system. At least 48 publications have been subjected to various forms of censorship (including seizure of issues, suspension and closure), half of them in his first six years in office.
During all these years, Ben Ali has never stopped silencing dissidents, both in the press and in civil society. Using either seduction, intimidation or repression, the authorities have taken over the main news media, which are nowadays managed by the government directly or by the regime’s supporters.
Yet another hunger strike in defence of freedom of expression and association has been waged by government opponents in the run-up to the 20th anniversary. This seems to be the only way to make oneself heard in Tunisia. Journalist Taoufik Ben Brik in 2000, lawyer Radhia Nasraoui in 2002, journalist Hamadi Jebali in 2003, journalists Abdallah Zouari and Lotfi Hajji, and lawyer Mohammed Abbou in 2005, and journalist Slim Boukhdir in 2006 are just some of the people who have gone hunger strike in order to appeal to the international community.
On 20 September, it was the turn of Maya Jribi, the general secretary of the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), and Mohamed N‚àö¬©jib Chebbi, the managing editor of the Arabic-language weekly Al-Maoukif (the PDP’s mouthpiece), to launch a hunger strike in protest against a court case aimed at evicting them from their premises in Tunis. The PDP says the authorities got their landlord to break the rental contract on the pretext of “misuse of the premises.” They finally ended the hunger strike after 30 days, when the government’s intervention paved the way for an agreement with the landlord.
Sham pluralism
Al-Maoukif (which means “The Viewpoint”) will therefore continue for the time being to be published. It has overcome many obstacles to double its circulation to 10,000 in the past two years ago. It is denied any state subsidy and it is boycotted by all private-sector advertisers bar one, who is in conflict with the authorities.
“Our problems are not just financial,” editor Rachid Khechana told Reporters Without Borders. “We have a lot of difficulty getting access to information. Officials refuse to answer our questions or to receive us. So we have to find other channels and sources of information.” Khechana added: “Printers and distributors are also subjected to a great deal of harassment, including on tax matters, which means they often have to distribute the newspaper up to 48 hours late.”
Two other publications that belong to opposition parties – the weekly Mouwatinoun and the monthly Attariq Aljadid – are subject to the same constraints. The Democratic Forum for Labour and Freedoms (FDTL) launched Mouwatinoun (Citizens) in January of this year after getting a permit – something that is extremely rare – in less than six months. Managing editor Mustapha Ben Jaafar told Reporters Without Borders that the newspaper nonetheless was subject to drastic discrimination as regards distribution.
“There are very few news stands that put it on display,” he said. “Mouwatinoun is invisible because that is what the government wants, and because vendors are scared.” These obstacles obviously have financial consequences for the newspaper, which has already reduced its print run from 5,000 to 3,000 copies. These party newspapers are not safe from censorship either. Sometimes issues are unofficially seized. “The police may confiscate an issue from the news stands without warning us and without giving us an explanation,” Ben Jaafar said.
Independent newspapers and magazines are in very short supply. Many applications for permission to create a new publication are unsuccessful. Since 1999, Sihem Bensedrine has applied four times to the interior minister to register and publish a weekly print version of the French and Arabic-language news website Kalima. Each time, the authorities have refused to issue her with the receipt that a printer needs in order to print a newspaper. As Kalima’s website is inaccessible in Tunisia, Bensedrine currently distributes it as an email newsletter.
Overall, the rest of the privately-owned media take a pro-government line tinged with proselytism. They have become the main vehicle for orchestrated attacks on regime opponents, whether journalists, hunger strikers, intellectuals or politicians. The journalists working for these media, like those working for the public media, are instructed to cover only information coming from the governmental news agency, Tunis Afrique Presse (TAP), which is under the interior ministry’s control. The Association of Tunisian Journalists (AJT) said: “The only subjects they are allowed to cover are those in the TAP’s news schedules, and most of the time these are official activities. Any additional initiative is unwelcome.”
Journalists working for the official press – the two government newspapers, La Presse and El-Sahafa, and the ruling RCD’s two mouthpieces, Le Renouveau and Houria – are allowed no room for manoeuvre and follow this directive strictly. They clearly fulfill the role of propaganda tools. Yesterday’s issue of La Presse, Tunisia’s leading French-language newspaper, had this perfect example of government cant:
“On this 20th anniversary of the Change that Tunisians of all categories and ages are celebrating with extraordinary pride, the gains of the economic, political and social achievements initiated and promoted by President Ben Ali continue to confirm our conviction that Tunisia’s development experience is clearly a model to be followed.”
The broadcast media are even more uniform. The state TV stations (Canal 7 and Canal 21) just broadcast news favourable to government policies. There are some commercial TV and radio stations, but they all belong to people who support the government. The foreign minister, for example, is the biggest shareholder in Mosa‚àö√òque FM, while Hannibal TV, which was inaugurated on a 7 November, is owned by a member of the First Lady’s family.
Only one privately-owned TV station, Al-Hiwar Attounsi (Tunisian Dialogue), offers a bit of diversity, but it broadcasts for just one hour a day because its resources are limited. Its chief executive, Tahar Ben Hassine, has never obtained the required permits to launch the station inside Tunisia. It has been broadcasting from Italy since 2002. “There is a complete lack of definition as regards the criteria for assigning broadcast licences,” Ben Hassine told Reporters Without Borders. “The reasons for refusals are never given. Any decision is directly subject to President Ben Ali’s approval.”
No favours for the foreign media
“If you are invited to Tunisia and you want to thank your hosts for their hospitality, bring them the latest issue of a newspaper that is censored inside the country,” a Tunisian journalist recommends. His advice highlights the news shortage suffered by his fellow-countrymen, for whom many foreign publications are banned. Le Canard Encha‚àö√Ün‚àö¬©, Al Hayat and Charlie Hebdo are among those that are no longer available. Many others are occasionally denied entry in an arbitrary manner, or are held up for several days at the port of entry. These seizures are not random. In most cases they are prompted by articles about the country’s leaders, above all Ben Ali.
The Qatar-based satellite news station Al-Jazeera has also had a lot of problems in Tunisia. The authorities have refused to issue accreditation to its correspondent, Lotfi Hajji, and have prevented it from opening a bureau. Tunisia even decided to close its embassy in Qatar in October 2006 in protest against Al-Jazeera’s “hostile campaign” after it broadcast an interview with opposition member Moncef Marzouki.
Foreign journalists generally have little problem in travelling to Tunisia, but once there, they are subject to surveillance by plain-clothes police who do not prevent them from working but, by their very presence, intimidate all those who would like to talk to them. The activities of local journalists working as stringers for foreign media is closely controlled and often banned.
Swiss TV reporter Flore Dussey of T‚àö¬©l‚àö¬©vision Suisse Romande (TSR) went to Tunisia on 2 November with a cameraman but could not interview members of the public. “We were constantly followed throughout our visit,” she told Reporters Without Borders. “We requested shooting permission from the Tunisian Agency for External communication (ACTE), but it was never granted. Instead, an official from the agency accompanied us everywhere we went. Our chaperone refused to allow us to be accompanied on a shoot by someone who works for Al-Hiwar Attounsi.”
Unusually, a visiting reporter from the French daily Libération, Christophe Boltanski, was stabbed in the back in November 2005 as policemen looked on without intervening. He had gone for a World Summit on the Information Society that the UN was staging in Tunis, and was preparing a story on the human rights situation.
Playing cat and mouse on the Internet
The Internet does not escape government control, either. Internet caf‚àö¬©s are watched. In the provinces, Internet users must often show ID in order to be able to sit down at a computer. And Internet caf‚àö¬© owners often ask them not to visit certain “subversive” sites in order to spare them problems. Under Tunisian law, they are responsible for their clients’ online activities. The regime thereby enlists their help in its policies of repression and control.
To download something or add an attachment to an email message, the client must go through the central server, in other words, the manager’s computer. Furthermore, under a post and telecommunications law adopted in 1998, the authorities can check the content of email messages at any time. The law authorises the interception of any message that could “jeopardize public order and national security. The communications ministry keeps information exchanged online under very close surveillance.
Bloggers and independent website editors are also exposed to sanctions. Lawyer Mohammed Abbou spend 28 months in prison because of what he posted on opposition websites. Since leaving prison on 24 July, he has been banned twice from leaving the country. In one case, he was supposed to go to London to record a programme about human rights.
The Reporters Without Borders website is not accessible within Tunisia, like the sites of many human rights organisations and foreign news media. The authorities regular block and unblock access to certain sites in order to protect itself from charges of censorship. The private connections of some journalists and opposition members are often cut because of “technical problems” or their speed is slowed right down so that web pages take a long time to load and surfing becomes almost impossible. Tunisia currently has around a dozen ISPs but Planet.tn, owned by one of Ben Ali’s daughters continues to have the lion’s share of the market.
President Ben Ali is on the Reporters Without Borders list of the world’s 34 worst press freedom predators. Tunisia was ranked 145th out of the 169 countries in the latest Reporters Without Borders world press freedom index, issued last month.
Mixed Reviews for U.S. from Erdogan’s Old Home
by Amar C. Bakshi
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/america/2007/11/bush_erdogan_pkk_turkey.html
ISTANBUL – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan shakes President Bush’s hand on the grainy television screen in Hodja Yashar’s Caf‚àö¬© on Yumak Street in Kasimpasa, Istanbul, just minutes from the flat Erdogan inhabited as a teenager. The old men light their cigarettes to celebrate.
“Miracles can happen!” says one of them, smiling as the anchorwoman reports that America will increase its support of the Turkish government in its battle against Kurdish guerillas in the southeast.
Another man who sells cleaning cloths to car mechanics is less optimistic: “I don’t expect anything from America.”
And so their banter goes back and forth, from praise for the U.S. to deep suspicion. They settle on neither.
They’re all well over sixty, with deep coughs and creased skin. Kasimpasa as a whole is an aging community of shopkeepers and laborers, many of them living off government checks of little over two hundred U.S. dollars per month. It’s not much, the men say, but they get by.
“When a place grows out of poorness, people help each other get by, and [they] become closer and closer,” explains the caf‚àö¬© owner Hodja. People on Kasimpasa’s windy, sloped streets know each other’s faces. They know who they can trust and who they cannot.
“We are allies of America,” says Hizir Balci, “but America cannot be trusted.” He’s a well regarded local council member who speaks with authority on both local issues and global ones. For years, Balci has watched the big powers play games on the TV set hovering above him, from the cold war to the Iraq wars. He and his friends talk about it all over tea. After all the years, he says he harbors a deep suspicion of the involvement of foreign powers in Turkey. But he has faith in Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).
This Islamist party has done remarkably well since its birth in 2001. It has appealed directly to the grassroots, which other Turkish parties have so far resisted. AKP organizes at the local level and provides social services in what some consider a populist fashion. This kind of local involvement helped the party win 34% of the popular vote in 2002 and 46% in 2007. The party claims to be moderately conservative and pro-Western, but its opponents fear it aims to undermine Turkey’s secular character through the gradual Islamicization of the country.
Kasimpasa natives are visibly more pious than residents in other parts of the city. Most women on the street wear the headscarves, and a few wear a full black chador, though younger girls do neither.
“We have always been true to our faith here. This is nothing new,” Hodja says. “Now there is more exposure to the world. It is more democratic, and we can display our faith‚Äö√Ѭ∂like in America. That is why Erdogan has sent his children, and his daughters, to study in America: so they can display their faith.”
This is the good of the U.S. — their acceptance of religion in public. But as a power on the global stage, and even as Turkey’s NATO ally, they say America is still not to be trusted.
“The main motivation of all foreign forces is to divide Turkey,” Hodja says. As proof, he recounts World War I history and the Treaty of Sevres, which threatened to carve Turkey into pieces and divide it between its allied neighbors.
Balci chimes in: “We are allies of America [but] they are still…tricking us.” He believes the U.S. is supporting the PKK as punishment for a 2003 Turkish parliamentary vote that blocked the U.S. from opening a northern front in the war in Iraq. He believes the U.S. arms the PKK to help the rebels carve out a Kurdish state from Turkey.
The day before Erdogan’s meeting with Bush he said, “We are one with America in the war against terror. But Americans do not realize this.”
Two days later, Erdogan left the White House with a smile on his face, saying cooperation was forthcoming. Bush called the PKK the common enemy of Iraq, the U.S. and Turkey. Did that make these men any more hopeful?
“America says the right things, but will it act?” asks one of the men. Hizir coughs, and replies, “We’ll wage war anyway, with or without America’s permission.”
But then Hodja, the owner of the store, steps in. “Let Erdogan decide,” he proclaims. “If he is happy with Bush, I am happy.”
U.S. ‘Studying’ Islamic School Report
Officials Have Not Talked to Saudis Since Panel Urged Shutdown
By Valerie Strauss
Saudi Embassy officials say no U.S. authorities have contacted them about a federal commission’s recommendation last month to close an Islamic school in Northern Virginia accused of promoting intolerance and violence.
State Department officials say publicly that they are “studying” the Oct. 19 report issued by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which includes a recommendation that the Islamic Saudi Academy be shuttered until it can prove it is not teaching religious extremism.
But State officials and others with knowledge of the issue, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing inquiry, said U.S. officials believe the commission was premature in asking that the school, supported by the Saudi government, be closed. They said the State Department was proceeding cautiously, speaking with Saudi officials about issues of religious tolerance and school curriculum, to avoid creating a crisis.
The school, whose main campus is in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County, remains open.
Commission members said their non-binding recommendation was made after careful study and a number of failed efforts to review a comprehensive set of textbooks from the Saudi government.
They said they were less concerned about intolerance than whether school officials are promoting violence.
A report last year by the nonprofit organization Freedom House showed that textbooks used in Saudi Arabia contained an ideology of hatred toward Christians, Jews and Muslims who do not follow Wahabism, a branch of Sunni Islam seen by many Muslims as extremist in its views toward women and non-followers. Osama bin Laden is perhaps the best-known follower of that branch.
An earlier review of textbooks at the Virginia academy was critical of some parts, and a 2003 report produced in Saudi Arabia by a former Saudi judge showed that parts of Saudi textbooks promoted violence against non-Wahabis.
Saudi officials say the books have since been revised. And officials at the Virginia school said they have created their own textbooks, in part by ripping out pages from books obtained from Saudi Arabia.
The criticism of the Virginia school reflects the delicate nature of U.S.-Saudi relations, according to academic scholars. It also casts light on the line the federal government must straddle as it tries to determine the difference between teachings that are intolerant and those that are violent and illegal.
“The challenge with Islamic schools is first of all the language barrier,” said Charles C. Haynes, senior scholar for religious freedom at the nonprofit First Amendment Center in Arlington County. “The reason there is so much controversy is that nobody knows what is being taught.
“Even if they were teaching things that sound to the outsider like it is hateful, the question is, ‘Are they teaching people to break the law and go and attack other people?’ ” Haynes said. “Those are the kinds of things they may not do. That’s the line.”
The Saudi academy, which operates on two campuses in Northern Virginia, was founded in 1984 to educate pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade children of Saudi diplomats; about 30 percent of the roughly 1,000 students are Saudi, the school said. The school has a governing board headed by the Saudi ambassador to the United States and receives much of its funding from the Saudi government.
The commission was created by Congress eight years ago and issues an annual report about religious freedom around the world. Its members are appointed by the White House and congressional leadership. The current chairman is Michael Cromartie, vice president of the D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, at which he directs the Evangelicals in Civic Life program.
The commission has been studying Saudi curricula for years, said Commissioner Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the D.C.-based nonprofit Hudson Institute.
Shea said the Saudi school is unlike any other private religious school in the country because of its connections to Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of most of the Sept. 11 hijackers, a number of whom were adherents of Wahabism.
She said Saudi officials have promised since 2004 to revise the school’s curriculum to remove material.
“Ronald Reagan used to say, ‘Trust but verify,’ ” she said. “I now believe we must verify and not take the Saudi government’s word on faith.”
School officials said the commission did not call and ask directly for the books. The commission said it asked the embassy and never received a response.
Nail Al-Jubeir, spokesman for the Saudi Embassy, said the Saudi ambassador has exchanged letters with Freedom House and invited officials to the school in the past few years. He said the last letter was sent Oct. 16, 2006.
“We never got a response,” he said. “This whole issue should never have been raised.”
Tom Melia, deputy executive director of Freedom House, said letters had been exchanged but called the embassy invitation “a red herring.”
“We’ve asked them for the textbooks, and they said, ‘Sure, when the new editions come in.’ We’ve never received them,” Melia said. “We’d still like to see them. . . . We are always interested in dialogue.”
Ali Al-Ahmed, founder of the nonprofit Saudi Institute, which monitors Saudi Arabia, said he has seen the revised textbooks and finds that they still contain unacceptable material that promotes extremism. “It is like trying to remove a piece of bread that has a lot of mold,” he said. “You can’t do it. You remove a spot, but the bread is bad.”
But Zenit Chughtai, who said she graduated from the academy and is attending Michigan State University, praised the school. “A terrorist school? A school of hate? This is the exact opposite of how I recall school,” she said in an e-mail. “We were taught respect, tolerance, love, and decency.”
Mistrial for most defendants in Muslim charity trial
By DAVID KOENIG / Associated Press
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8SEFSUO0.html
A judge declared a mistrial Monday for former leaders of a Muslim charity accused of funding terrorism after jurors who spent 19 days deliberating deadlocked on most charges.
Prosecutors said they would probably retry leaders of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which the federal government shut down in December 2001.
The jury found one former Holy Land leader, Mohammed El-Mezain, not guilty on 31 of 32 counts. Two other defendants were initially acquitted on most or all charges, but in a confusing courtroom scene, three jurors disputed the verdict.
The judge declared a mistrial against those men and two other former foundation leaders for whom jurors never reached any decisions.
Outside the courthouse, jubilant family members and supporters hoisted defendant and Holy Land chief executive Shukri Abu Baker on their shoulders and cried, “God is great!”
The mistrial came after two months of testimony in the biggest terror-financing trial since Sept. 11. President Bush personally announced the seizure of Holy Land’s assets in December 2001, calling the action “another step in the war on terrorism.”
FBI agents and Israeli officials testified that Holy Land funneled millions to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has carried out suicide bombings in Israel. The U.S. government designated Hamas a terrorist group in 1995, making financial transactions with it illegal.
Lawyers for Holy Land said the Texas-based group was a legitimate charity that helped Muslim children and families left homeless or poor by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A juror told The Associated Press that the panel found little evidence against three of the defendants and was evenly split on charges against Baker and former Holy Land chairman Ghassan Elashi, who were seen as the principal leaders of the charity.
“I thought they were not guilty across the board,” said the juror, William Neal, a 33-year-old art director from Dallas. The case “was strung together with macaroni noodles. There was so little evidence.”
Neal said the jury was split about 6-6 on counts against Baker and Elashi. He said the government should not retry the case ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ a call picked up by Holy Land’s supporters.
But lead prosecutor James Jacks said in court that he expected the government to try the case again.
Jacks, however, was not able to explain his decision to reporters. District Court Judge A. Joe Fish extended a gag order he placed on lawyers in the case, citing the possibility of prejudicing a new trial.
Jurors heard two months of testimony, mostly from FBI and Israeli agents who described thousands of pages of documents and hours of videotapes seized from Holy Land, from former associates of the group, and from Palestinian charities that got money from Holy Land.
The prosecution’s key witness was lawyer for the Israeli domestic security agency Shin Bet, who testified under a false name. He said Palestinian charities that got Holy Land money were controlled by Hamas.
Prosecutors hoped the Israeli agent’s testimony would complete a loop that started with Holy Land bank records, and show that the group secretly funneled millions to Hamas.
“A lot rested on how believable the jury found him and how concerned they were of not really knowing who he was,” said Jeffrey Kahn, a constitutional law professor at Southern Methodist University and former civil lawyer for the Justice Department.
Neal, the juror, said he found the Shin Bet officer’s testimony unconvincing ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ that he would expect an Israeli official to condemn an ally of Palestinians.
Holy Land was founded in California in the late 1980s and moved to the Dallas area in 1992. FBI surveillance of the group’s leaders goes back at least to 1993, when agents eavesdropped on a Philadelphia meeting in which participants talked of supporting Hamas’ goal of derailing a peace agreement between Israel and Palestinians.
The case stirred emotions in the American Muslim community, at least partly because prosecutors named dozens of Muslim groups as unindicted co-conspirators.
The Holy Land case followed terror-financing trials in Chicago and Florida that also ended without convictions on the major counts.
The government “failed in Chicago, it failed in Florida, it failed in Texas,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ one of those unindicted co-conspirators. “The reason it failed is the government does not have the facts; it has fear.”
Besides Baker, Elashi and El-Mezain, the other defendants were fundraiser Mufid Abdulqader and Abdulrahman Odeh, the group’s New Jersey representative, and Holy Land itself.
The men faced life in prison if convicted on the most serious charges and if their actions led to deaths, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Associated Press Writer Anabelle Garay contributed to this report.
RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE
The new wars of religion
An old menace has returned, but in very different forms
Nov 1st 2007
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10015219
EARLIER this year Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking to his country’s parliament, posed two questions: “Who are our enemies?” and “Why do they hate us?” He described an axis of evil, with Iran’s enemies being “all the wicked men of the world, whether abroad or at home”. The root cause of their hatred was religious‚Äö√Ñ√Æa loathing of “whomsoever should serve the glory of God”. Having described George Bush’s atrocities, he told the cheering MPs, “Truly, your great enemy is the American‚Äö√Ñ√Æthrough that enmity that is in him against all that is of God in you.” Fortunately, Iran would not fight alone: it had the support of Muslims around the world. Be bold, he advised, and “you will find that you act for a very great many people that are God’s own.”
The Bridgeman Art Library Oliver’s army
For Mr Ahmadinejad, read Oliver Cromwell; for Iran, England; and for America, Catholic Spain. The quotes above come from a speech made by Cromwell to the English Parliament in 1656. Parliament then passed an oath of loyalty in which English Catholics were asked to disown the pope and most of the canons of Catholic belief, or face losing two-thirds of their worldly goods. Shortly afterwards Cromwell invaded Ireland.
“Faith is a source of conflict,” reads a sign at St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace in the City of London‚Äö√Ñ√Æadding that it can also be “a resource to transform conflict”. Appropriately, the centre was built in a church blown up in 1993 by Irish terrorists, brought up, no doubt, with tales of Cromwell’s atrocities.
Conflict, of course, does not necessarily equate to war. But there are some depressing echoes of Cromwell’s time.
•Faith is once again prolonging conflict. Religion is seldom the casus belli: indeed, in many struggles, notably the Middle East in modern times, it is amazing how long it took for religion to become a big part of the argument. But once there, it makes conflicts harder to resolve. A squabble over land (which can be divided) or power (which can be shared) or rules (that can be fudged) becomes a dispute over non-negotiable absolutes. If you believe that God granted you the West Bank, or that any form of abortion is murder, compromise is not really possible.
‚Äö√Ѭ¢Once again, politicians are stirring up religious passion. Mr Ahmadinejad may not have told Muslims that the Israeli “has an interest in your bowels” (as Cromwell did of Spaniards), but he has called for Israel’s removal and denied the Holocaust. Osama bin Laden rages that Islam is under sustained attack: any Muslim who “collaborates” with the West is an apostate.
American leaders have been more careful, but many use religious imagery. In his new book, “God and Gold” (see article), Walter Russell Mead compares Ronald Reagan’s denunciation of the Godless Soviet Union (the “Evil Empire”) to Cromwell’s speech. Franklin Graham spoke for many on the religious right when he denounced Islam as a “very evil and wicked religion”. American conservatives seem undecided on whether the battle against “Islamofascism” is the third world war (Newt Gingrich) or the fourth (Norman Podhoretz).
‚Äö√Ѭ¢Once again, outsiders are rushing to defend their religions: religious scraps attract money and soldiers. Just as Guy Fawkes, Britain’s most famous religious terrorist, hardened his radical beliefs when fighting for Catholicism in the Netherlands, European Muslims have gone to defend their faith in Kashmir, Chechnya and Iraq. Some of the most fervent supporters of India’s Hindutva movement come from the diaspora. Many migrants define themselves by their faith, not their new home.
‚Äö√Ѭ¢One of the world’s great religions, Christianity, split into Catholic and Protestant in the 16th century. Now Islam is having to contend with a sharpening split between Sunni and Shia. Once again nation states are weak: most Middle Eastern countries are recent creations. And there is a ring of instability on Islam’s southern frontier, which runs roughly along the 10th parallel from West Africa to the Philippines.
‚Äö√Ѭ¢Terrorist outrages are once again presumed to have religious connections, as they would have done in Cromwell’s time. In the 1970s terrorism seemed to be the preserve of Maoist guerrillas, middle-class Germans and Italians or the then very secular (and partly Christian-led) Palestine Liberation Organisation. Now three out of the four most likely flashpoints for nuclear conflict‚Äö√Ñ√ÆPakistan-India, Iran and Israel‚Äö√Ñ√Æhave a strong religious element. The only exception is North Korea.
Wars can be Godless too
It is possible that these similarities could escalate into something horrifying. A confrontation between nuclear Iran on one side and Israel and America on the other would reverberate around the globe. But the idea that the world is reverting to a former age is too simplistic.
Most obviously, humanity can find plenty of reasons for genocide and suffering without troubling God. “The 20th century was the most secular and the most bloody in human history,” argues George Weigel, a leading American conservative. What he calls “the Godless religions of Nazism and communism” killed tens of millions of people. Each had its theory of salvation, its rites, its prophets, its sacred places and its distinctive idea of morality; but communists and Nazis did not use God to stir up passions. The Cambodian genocide was similarly secular.
Where it does exist, religious conflict is now far less of a top-down affair. No government officially approves of killing people solely because of their religion, and no significant religious leader sanctifies that killing by blessing armadas or preaching crusades. Last year the pope took issue with Islam in a speech at Regensburg, but he also opposed the Iraq war. Most Islamic authorities preach non-violence. Ayatollah Sistani, the most revered Shia on the planet, has often urged restraint in Iraq.
Of course, this does not prevent individual clerics from committing appalling acts of brutality: Catholic priests helped torture people in Argentina, Buddhist monks have led murderous attacks in Sri Lanka and imams have encouraged suicide-bombing in Israel. But every zealot interviewed for this special report, including those with blood near their hands, insisted that his religion was peaceful.
Meanwhile, the power of governments to control religious politics has declined. The wars of religion took place in an age of “cuius regio, eius religio”, where the monarch dictated the religion. England once turned to Protestantism because Henry VIII found the Catholic church’s rules on matrimony irksome. Nowadays, nobody is trying to improve America’s relations with the Middle East by marrying off the Bush twins to Arab princes.
The new battles
With national armies no longer marching under religious banners, grievances have reappeared in several guises. None of them is easy for the West to deal with.
The one that gets most attention is terrorism—especially Islamic terrorism. States are certainly actors in this: Iran may not openly wage religious war, but it has been happy to back Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. But then neither Hamas nor Hizbullah is a purely sectarian organisation. Like the IRA in Ireland, they both have political-territorial objectives.
Most of the main jihadist terrorist organisations are bottom-up affairs. Mr bin Laden would no doubt like to control another state (as he once did from Afghanistan). But his organisation has been able to mount attacks and recruit volunteers without help from a government.
The second way in which religion thrusts itself into politics is inter-communal violence. Once again, other forces are often at work, such as tribalism in Nigeria or nationalism in India. But religion supplies the underlying viciousness. Sectarian violence has been responsible for most of the killing in Iraq in the aftermath of the war. Some 68,000 Sri Lankans have died since 1983. Other, lower-level conflicts, such as Catholics and Protestants attacking each other in Mexico’s Chiapas, occasionally flare up. Outside parties can play a role in stoking up such struggles (and supplying arms), as Iran has done in Iraq and Syria has done in Lebanon. But most of these fights have a local, tit-for-tat feel. The violence is often set off by events such as marches, feast days or elections.
Third, there is state-based repression, where religion is either the target or the motivation. In the Muslim world the repression is sometimes by theocracies (like Iran or Saudi Arabia), against irreligious sorts, such as adulterers, heretics and homosexuals. But it also goes the other way, with secular states (Syria, Egypt, much of North Africa) discriminating against religious dissidents. In the most bizarre example, China recently banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. The religious-affairs agency explained that this was “an important move to institutionalise management of reincarnation”. The real purpose is to prevent the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, from being succeeded by someone from outside China.
Yet the foremost way in which religion has expressed itself around the world has been more peaceful: the ballot box. Religious people have either formed religious parties (such as India’s BJP) or converted secular ones into more faith-driven outfits (such as America’s Republican Party). In places where religion was frowned upon by the state, such as Mexico or Turkey, greater freedom has allowed the pious to form parties, such as the Catholic-oriented PAN party or the Islamic AK Party.
And it has not just been a case of democracy helping religion. Timothy Shah of the Council on Foreign Relations argues that it can go the other way too. By his calculation, more than 30 of the 80 or so countries that became freer in 1972-2000 owed some of the improvement to religion. Sometimes established churches helped to push for democracy (eg, the Catholic church in Poland), but more often it was pressure from the grassroots: religious people usually look for a degree of freedom (if only to pursue their faith).
All this means that the modern wars of religion are mercifully less violent and all-consuming than their predecessors; but also that tackling the politics of religion is more awkward than it used to be. Culture wars are now global (a subject to which this special report will return).
This complicates foreign policy enormously. Should America focus on the tiny number of angry Muslims with guns, or the millions who have voted for Islamic parties in Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, Algeria and Palestine? If most religious fanatics were bent on conquest and terror rather than democracy, their causes would be easier to discredit. And if religion were the sole cause of the conflicts, it would be easier to work out “why they hate us”.
Post-Islamism
The future of Islamic reform lies with post-Islamism – a recognition that politics rather than religion provides for welfare in this life.
Ali Eteraz
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ali_eteraz/2007/10/postislamism.html
There is universal consensus that Muslim dictatorships, supported by the west, are the root of evil. They destroy political culture, kill extra-judicially and their repression foments violence.
The primary opponents of these dictators are the populist Islamists. They want to vote; except after voting they want to appoint an extra-constitutional body of clerics to strike down legislation they do not approve of.
Faced with only these two options – dictators or elected theocrats – in Muslim majority countries, the usual reaction by westerners is to throw their hands up in frustration and opt for apathy or give into a militaristic pessimism. These are both uninformed reactions. They fail to take into account the future of Islamic reform, which lies with the emergence of a post-Islamist political order in the Muslim majority world.
Post-Islamism is at hand because a new crop of Muslims have figured out how to reconcile liberal democracy with Islam. Upon doing so, they give up on creating religious organisations devoted to “da’wa” (Islamic evangelism) and move towards becoming organised as civil-political parties with platforms based on equality and pluralism. Incidentally, part of the credit for the popularity of post-Islamism goes to the theocratic Islamists. In their eagerness to merge religion with politics, they thought the result would be religion. Instead, the devout middle class realised that religion alone could not provide for their social concerns. Post-Islamism, thus, is the recognition that while religion may provide salvation in the next life, politics is what provides for welfare in this one. It is, at its barest, politics subsuming religion.
Today, post-Islamist groups are at work in various Muslim majority countries, including Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan. These parties look to Germany’s Christian Democratic Union as a model.
Egypt’s premier post-Islamist party (pdf) is called Center Party (Hizb ul-Wasat). It was founded in 1996, breaking away from the Muslim Brotherhood due to various factors. The reasons for the split included: the Brotherhood’s unwillingness to accept non-Muslims as members of the party or as citizens of Egypt, unwillingness to cease splitting the world between the “Abode of War” and “Abode of Islam”, and unwillingness to change their focus away from Islamic evangelism. Although Wasat calls itself an Islamic party, it is open to Christians and secularists. In fact, Rafiq Habib, a Protestant intellectual in Egypt, was among its founding members, and is on its five man board of operations. After a 10-year battle, Wasat was officially recognised as a political party in 2007.
One way to assure that Wasat is not Islamism in disguise is to note how much opposition from the Muslim Brotherhood it has faced, which went so far as to petition the hated Mubarak regime to not legalise it.
The fundamental point that makes Wasat post-Islamist is that instead of defining Islam as a religion, it defines Islam as a culture, or civilisation, which is inclusive of minorities. Thinking of Islam as a culture is similar to how certain people in the west refer to the west as “Judeo-Christian” while still leaving room for Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists to practise freely therein.
Further, the Wasat Party’s platform assures the separation of powers, rejects religious or gender-based discrimination, explicitly calls for pluralism and equality between men and women, and makes space for unions and syndicates. Most importantly, unlike the Brotherhood’s platform it does not set up an extra-constitutional body of clerics who can veto legislation (like they do in Iran). Oddly, having laid out such a liberal platform, Wasat insists that it will still uphold the sharia, a claim that has been described as “lip service.” For example, the Cairo Times stated in 1998 that Wasat considers “people rather than scripture as the ultimate source of authority”.
While Wasat’s location and its face-off against the Muslim Brotherhood make it the most intriguing of the post-Islamist groups, it is not the most successful. That designation belongs to Turkey’s ruling AKP Party, which, just as Wasat, originated by breaking away from a fundamentalist Islamist organisation.
Comprehensive analyses of the AKP positions vis a vis the three important benchmarks – women, the west and Israel – show that its breakaway from traditional Islamists has been clear and conclusive, and that it is nothing like the traditional Islamists such as the Brotherhood. For example, one of the first things that the AKP declared upon its election in 2002, as reported by the New York Times, was that “secularism is the protector of all beliefs and religions. We are the guarantors of this secularism, and our management will clearly prove that.” Certainly western liberals will be dissatisfied that in terms of social and economic policy AKP is center-right, but the dissatisfaction ought not be any different than that felt when a conservative in Paris or Rome comes to power.
Pakistan, in the form of Tehreek i Insaf Party, is also showing signs of developing a post-Islamist alternative, though there it is in its infancy. It has emerged only during the Musharraf years, led by cricketer turned politician, Imran Khan. One of the most notable elements about it is that while it is grounded in Islam, it rejects Wahhabism (opting for “Sufism”) and further, in its manifesto explicitly rejects having any “parallel” legal system in the country, which is a reference to the sharia courts in Pakistan that currently co-exist with the secular courts.
Tehreek’s other innovative solutions include, free education for women, legislation against sexual harrassment and setting aside 33% of the seats in all legislative assemblies for women. It justifies all of these by citing principles of Islamic welfare.
Interestingly, just as the Wasat has antagonised the Brotherhood in Egypt, Tehreek has criticised (link in Urdu) Pakistan’s hardline Islamist organisations for collusion with anti-democratic forces. This again shows that post-Islamists are more concerned with the democratic pie than appeasing Islamists. While Tehreek is nascent, it should be monitored closely, because it has increasing support among Pakistan’s youth and expatriate communities. It should be remembered that it took Turkey’s AKP party barely 10 years from formation to become the ruling party.
Today, political Islam is entering its third generation. The first round was revolutionary and violent. The second round, still with us, became more methodical but was still domination-oriented and supremacist. The third round – the post-Islamist push – is committed to the democratic process and has ceased to think of itself as a religious movement, instead adopting a civil-political platform. A paper (pdf) presented at the University of Virginia sets forth an interesting link between economic patterns and the post-Islamist push, stating that “economic liberalisation strengthens and expands the devout middle classes” who then push for “moderation in political Islam for they believe that democracy, rule of law, and a limited state would serve their interests betters”. If this is true, then it means that the way for the west to challenge traditional domination-oriented Islamists like Jamat e Islami and the Brotherhood is to engage citizens in business, paving the way for post-Islamism.
When post-Islamist groups come to power, they will be social conservatives focused on family and spirituality (though not Wahhabism). On the issue of religion in politics, a post-Islamist politician will sound somewhere between John Edwards and Mike Huckabee. In their foreign policy they will reject intrusions upon their sovereignty from all foreign groups, including on one hand Nato and other western coalitions, and on the other, al-Qaida and the Taliban. However, they will generally abide by international norms and not launch themselves into international conflicts, finding them to be fiscally and socially expensive. This makes sense because their largest support comes from the middle classes. Their biggest trouble will be local and national rebel groups, whether it’s Kurd separatists, al-Qaida or the Taliban. Finally, just as Europe’s Christian democratic parties gave birth to liberal democrats, it is likely that after consolidating power, post-Islamic parties will create space for openly secular parties to gain more traction.
As a conclusion to this seven-part series, I’d like to submit that since 2001 we have devoted far too much time to the Islamic reform cult of personality. Faced with an increasingly complicated world, the time for heightened sophistication is now. Structural and political discussions – for example, about separation of mosque and state, the making of a Muslim left, the ideas of Muslim secularists, the debate over Islamic liberal democracy and the emergence of a post-Islamist Islam – are a completely overlooked part of this thing called “Islamic reform”. The true and original goal of Islamic reform was to help voiceless Muslims and minorities. The social transformation necessary for creating such a landscape requires acknowledging that Islamic reform is at its heart a political, not merely religious, project.
The Art Of The Possible
By Lee H. Hamilton
In The National Interest , Opinion
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=15992
AMERICAN FOREIGN policy confronts a basic paradox. The United States stands alone as the world’s most powerful nation, with the strongest military, the largest economy, the highest level of technological capacity and the most extensive cultural influence around the world. Even after the setbacks of recent years, no other single power or grouping of states comes close to matching the United States. And yet America’s ability to accomplish things abroad has rarely‚Äö√Ñ√Æin recent memory‚Äö√Ñ√Æseemed so limited. Why?
Objectively, we are not the omnipotent power we appeared to be in 2003, nor are we the impotent power we sometimes appear to be today. But by President Bush’s own rubric, American foreign policy is failing. He declared in his second inaugural address: “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” When the standard for foreign policy is so high, failure is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Robust rhetoric renders the essential prioritizing of foreign-policy objectives impossible. If you look at any national security strategy or presidential campaign platform, the stated aims exceed our implementation capabilities. There are authoritarian regimes throughout the world. Does bringing democracy to Egypt take precedence over bringing it to Turkmenistan or Zimbabwe? Do democratization efforts in the Middle East take precedence over stabilizing Iraq, which, as the Iraq Study Group noted, will require assistance from Iran and Syria, not to mention authoritarian allies like Saudi Arabia?
Lofty oratory has a long and proud history in American politics, and it is a feature of our Union that will never disappear. But just as it can inspire, grandiose rhetoric can handcuff our policymakers, binding them to rhapsodic words that limit their freedom of action in confronting international challenges.
BOTH OUR overreach and the course correction that seems to be taking place today—with an increasing deference to diplomacy and international cooperation—have ample historical precedents. A foreign policy that avoids extreme ups and downs better suited to a roller coaster would serve us well. The unachievable goals we set for American foreign policy distort policy implementation. Our competence suffers as we seek to carry out hugely ambitious missions, and our leaders ask the American people to shoulder unbearable burdens.
We often hear about the balance between our interests and our ideals, as though they are mutually exclusive. But freedom and liberty are not just universal abstractions that flow freely in presidential addresses and opinion pieces. They have concrete meaning, real costs and there are limits to the lengths we will go in their name. This paints a stark contrast to today’s policy discussions. What we do not often hear is a frank discussion of what we can achieve and what we cannot achieve in the world; what we are prepared to sacrifice in terms of lives and resources; what we can accomplish on our own and what we must seek to achieve through international cooperation; which objectives we can realize quickly and which ones will take steady time and effort. American foreign policy would be better off if it reflected a core aspect of the American character that is often overlooked: pragmatism.
AFTER THE attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush set astonishing goals for U.S. foreign policy—at a time when countries around the world, even hostile regimes like Iran, were offering support. We would defeat terrorism and states that sponsor terrorism, not hesitating to take pre-emptive action to do so. No longer would we rely on distasteful regimes in the Middle East to advance our interests; instead, we would create a network of democratic states that would enthusiastically embrace the American agenda for the region. We would ensure that no competitor to American hegemony was permitted to emerge, solidifying our global role and the existing international hierarchy.
To implement those goals, U.S. action was robust. We launched a global war against terrorism. We largely spurned an international system of our own making, rejecting several international norms and treaties—the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Geneva Conventions, to name two. We invaded Afghanistan. We refused to engage our adversaries. Most notably, we invaded and occupied Iraq. It is hard now to take ourselves back to 2003. In the days running up to and following the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the mainstream debate in this country dealt openly with the transformation of the world with American power. Some spoke openly—and favorably—of American empire.
Today, we confront a very different international landscape, and the heady days of 2003 permanently belong to the past. Everywhere we turn, we confront the limitations of our power. In Iraq, the definition of success has been lowered to the containment of sectarian violence. In Afghanistan, we struggle against a resurgent Taliban and rampant opium trade. In Pakistan, Al-Qaeda has reconstituted its sanctuary and its top leaders elude capture. In Iran, a defiant president chastises us, foments instability in Iraq and continues to pursue a nuclear program. China and particularly Russia openly defy us‚Äö√Ñ√ÆPresident Putin has accused us of provoking a nuclear-arms race, acting “illegitimately” and has criticized our “hyper use of force.” In Latin America, Hugo Ch‚àö¬∞vez has consolidated his power and stands at the vanguard of a new generation of leftist leaders. Across the Islamic world, extremism only seems to be increasing, and the cause of democracy appears to have stalled.
THIS ALL appears catastrophic in the context of our unachievable goals. In articulating foreign policy, presidents aim for simple and dramatic frames that can rally the nation. A few rungs down the ladder, our policy elites’ approach to the world is by nature interventionist‚Äö√Ñ√Æthe aim of the specialist is to find solutions to every problem, not to set priorities about the key interests of the American public. Without executive prioritization and management, the political aims of presidents often find common ground with the policy aims of our foreign-policy elites on ambitiously interventionist goals. And these problems are not unique to our time.
Take President Kennedy’s vow to “pay any price, bear any burden” in defense of liberty or President Bush’s aforementioned goal of “ending tyranny” in the world‚Äö√Ñ√Æthe former sets the bar too high, the latter is simply impossible. But these goals have practical consequences. Vietnam becomes tougher to abandon when it is a test of our national will, not simply a distant nation with an internal conflict. The post-Saddam Hussein problems in Iraq can be attributed in part to the zeal to spread transformational democracy, not maintaining stability coupled with gradual reforms. The requisite identification of the costs we were willing to endure was markedly absent. In short, once set, such goals lead to dilemmas for everyone from the cabinet official in Washington to the diplomat to the soldier on the ground.
Our resources are not unlimited. We cannot effectively fight a war in Iraq, stabilize Afghanistan, deal with Iran and North Korea, and combat radical Islamist terrorism and nuclear proliferation around the world. When we try to do everything at once, we do things less well. And we certainly become even more reactive, wrestling with implementing these huge goals and not anticipating what might be over the horizon: the next 9/11 or the next nuclear domino to fall. In turn, we often have trouble sustaining our policies.
It is important for presidents to rally and inspire the nation and for specialists to consider ambitious solutions to the challenges that we face. Yet those efforts must be complemented—in both our political discourse and our policymaking process—with a greater focus on how these goals will be carried out in practice and how they will impact the lives of ordinary Americans. All of our policies should be able to pass the basic test of pragmatism: not just how proposals sound in speeches or what they would accomplish with limitless resources—but how would they work out in practice?
That means we should seek progress instead of perfection in our policies. And we should be more precise in our aims. Let’s take the War on Terror: Instead of conflating all terrorist and extremist groups, we should focus our resources on the core of Al-Qaeda. Instead of demanding the change of regimes we do not like, we should try to change their behavior‚Äö√Ñ√Æand we must decide what kinds of behavior deserve our immediate attention because there is plenty of egregious behavior in the world to go around. Instead of demanding the immediate transformation of closed governments into full-blown democracies, we should seek the extension of more rights and opportunities to their citizens, and more transparency and accountability by their governments. Instead of demanding American hegemony, we should try to shape a multipolar international system to serve our interests, as is the case with the Six Party Talks over North Korea and the Iraq Study Group’s proposed regional conference on Iraq’s future. We should be idealists without illusions and pragmatists with a vision.
ONE CANNOT discuss foreign policy today without mentioning democracy, but the democracy that demands the most attention is our own.
The understandable fact is that foreign-policy debates are driven by domestic politics. Thus, candidates often fall back on sloganeering‚Äö√Ñ√Ædebates about who is “tough” or “strong” or, as the cover of previous issue of The National Interest phrased it, who loves America more. Instead of looking ahead to how a candidate will govern in office, much of the debate revolves around a simplified or partisan analysis of the headlines‚Äö√Ñ√Æso as a candidate, George W. Bush decried “nation-building” in reference to Kosovo, but it became a central aspect of his own foreign policy; or Bill Clinton ran for re-election on a collection of domestic-policy platforms, and then focused his second term on the Balkans and Middle East peacemaking. When ethnic constituencies come into play‚Äö√Ñ√Æas they do, for instance, with Cuba or the Middle East‚Äö√Ñ√Æ?campaign positions can be shaped by our political map, not our overarching interests.
The political considerations of foreign policy are even more acute in Congress. Foreign policy rarely dominates congressional campaigns. When it does‚Äö√Ñ√Æor when it comes to votes‚Äö√Ñ√Æmembers are often driven by party discipline or ethnic politics. I’ll never forget talking to one member about a particularly contentious question involving U.S. policy toward Turkey. My colleague told me his district was 100 percent for taking a hard-line toward the Turks. When I asked him the basis of this determination, he said he’d heard about the issue at three Greek Orthodox churches over the last recess.
The problem with this simplified or distorted debate is that whereas education or health-care policies are subjected to extensive vetting by a broad cross-section of the American population, foreign policy ends up being debated and shaped by an elite group of people‚Äö√Ñ√Æacademics, pundits, lobbyists and activists who follow the issues closely. It is from this group that the president’s closest advisors are chosen. This was the case when I came to Congress in 1965, and it is very much the same today. With regard to military intervention‚Äö√Ñ√Æwhich takes place at an alarming clip of roughly one major intervention every two years‚Äö√Ñ√Æthis may be more pronounced today since we shifted to an all-volunteer fighting force, insulating the direct consequences of military action from the vast majority of the American people.
This is not to criticize America’s foreign-policy elite‚Äö√Ñ√Æmany talented and patriotic individuals rise through these ranks. But there are problems borne out of this disconnect between policymaking and the people. The decision-making responsibility that policymakers inside the beltway have is disproportionately greater‚Äö√Ñ√Æin astronomical terms‚Äö√Ñ√Æto the burdens they bear for those policies. The opposite is true of the American people. Ordinary Americans‚Äö√Ñ√Ænot just the troops and their families, but taxpayers who fund expensive endeavors, consumers and workers whose well-being is increasingly tied to our relations with other countries, or, most dramatically, the person going to work in the World Trade Center‚Äö√Ñ√Æpay the price for our policy follies. Yet the root of so many ambitious foreign-policy decisions‚Äö√Ñ√Ætake, for example, the decision to go to war in Iraq‚Äö√Ñ√Æis made by a strikingly small group of people.
After 9/11, Americans knew we needed to be more engaged in the world. After the shock of the last few years, Americans understand the limits of what we can accomplish. They are ready for leadership that speaks candidly about these questions: laying out goals that are achievable; setting priorities; using our awesome power not to transform the world, but rather to make the lives of ordinary Americans safer and better, moving the arc of history steadily in the right direction.
Muslim superstar
Sami Yusuf is perhaps the most famous British Muslim in the world. Adored in the Middle East, his records sell millions and he has just sold out Wembley Arena. He talks to Aida Edemariam about music and faith, extremism and why he thinks Islam needs a marketing campaign
http://music.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2205380,00.html
It’s a nondescript place, where Sami Yusuf is staying, a muted Quality Hotel in a west London suburb, but its neighbour rather makes up for it – Wembley Stadium, arching silver into clear, cold autumn air. And next to it, Wembley Arena, which Yusuf filled, a few nights ago. His concert, organised by Islamic Relief in aid of Darfur, was sold out: 10,000 people came to hear him sing.
“It was amazing,” he says. He is courtly, friendly, but obviously entirely strung out on sleeplessness and adrenaline. “Really amazing. I mean, I’ve performed for big crowds – 13,000 people in Cologne Arena, 200,000 people in Istanbul. It’s not about crowds. Wembley is very symbolic.” Here, I think he’s going to say that it’s because finally he was at home, singing in London, where he grew up, but he doesn’t. “It symbolised the true spirit of the British public, and among them the British Muslims.”
Unless you’re a British Muslim, or you live in the Middle East, or, say, Bosnia, you probably won’t have heard of him, but Sami Yusuf has good claim to being the most famous British Muslim in the world. He has sold more than 3m albums, though, “if you consider the bootlegging – no, really, because in the Muslim world copyright has no meaning – it’s millions. Dozens of millions.” His team was expecting only about 50,000 at that concert in Istanbul, and was taken aback when 200,000 came. He gets red-carpet welcomes when he lands in countries across the Middle East, must give press conferences to 50-odd journalists before he’s allowed even to leave the airport (where guards often let him bypass security checks, because they know who he is). A 10-minute walk down the street in Cairo, where he now lives part of the time, can take two hours, so many people want to talk to him and shake his hand.
Much of this adulation, in the letters he receives, from those who call in with questions when he is interviewed on, for example, al-Jazeera, is tinged with gratefulness. Yusuf really can sing – in swooping ballads, in the note-filigree of Arabic maqamat, against violins and rousing male choruses – but it is his subjects, and the modern-ancient hybrid with which he treats them, that seem really to strike a chord. So, for example, Hasbi Rabbi, his latest hit (and, incidentally, a ringtone heard everywhere from Cairo to Damascus) begins, jauntily, “Oh Allah the Almighty/Protect me and guide me/To your love and mercy.” The video shows him in a suit, walking down a London street, giving up his seat for an old lady on a bus, then, when the lyrics switch to Hindi, strolling around the Taj Mahal. My Ummah, the title song of his second album (Ummah means nation, and in this context, nation of believers) is a call to praise and pride: “Let’s become whole again/Proud again/’Cause I swear with firm belief in our hearts/We can bring back the glory of our past.” He is unafraid to be baldly political, to sing about Aids, about Beslan (“Would he [the prophet Muhammad] allow the murder of an innocent child? Oh no”), about the right to wear the headscarf. There is nothing subtle or particularly poetic about it, but it’s defiant and addresses the now: “Time and time again/ You speak of democracy/Yet you rob me of my liberty.”
It has been suggested that much of his popularity stems from recognition – from young Muslims seeing, finally, a role model they understand and who speaks to their own situation, but he’s defiant about this, too, for the understandable reason that it belittles his skill. “Possibly. But I do have to say that a lot of the time when I perform concerts, I get people coming, in huge numbers, who are perhaps nominally Muslim. It’s not about faith, it’s not because they like me because of faith. And then again, my second album isn’t that religious. My supporters – my fans, if you like – they don’t see me as a munshid, or in Arabic they call it a nasheed, a religious figure, they don’t see me as that, and in the Arab world they call me an international artist. Because they appreciate the fact that I play most of my own instruments, I compose my own music, I arrange my own music. What I’m trying to get at is, they like my music.”
Fine, but there’s something else going on there as well, isn’t there, apart from simple music appreciation? “Recognition. I think it does apply, but again, I think, quite frankly, what it boils down to is quality and music and the art. Because in the end everything else dies away. You know, I went to Azerbaijan, and in Azerbaijan – I mean, it’s a Muslim country, but they’re not particularly – I had 10,000 people in the stadium. And four of them were covered, wearing hijab. The niqab – that scares me.” Has he performed in Saudi Arabia? “I have. It was,” and he pauses, pointedly, “a very interesting experience. But they still knew my songs, and sang all my songs.”
Recognition and representation, he does point out, go both ways, and if there is something he would like to stand for it’s moderation, tolerance and anti-extremism. “Mecca and Medina are holy for Muslims. Saudi Arabia isn’t. They’ve got their own problems and their own issues and they need to deal with them. They don’t represent Muslims.” As for the Abu Hamzas of the world – they’re why he thought his Wembley gig so symbolic. “Just contextualise it, just for a second, the situation with Muslims in the UK. I think it was about time that they had something like this. Because Abu Hamza, and Abu this and Abu that – they don’t represent us. They can go back to wherever they came from, frankly. I’m serious. They really don’t represent us. I’m just sick and tired of seeing those ugly – and they are ugly, really they’re ugly. I’m scared of the guy with the hook – I mean, who is he? I’ve hardly come across people like that. It’s just in the media. And it scares me.”
He is as scornful of Muslims he sees as being on the other end of the spectrum, “opportunists” such as Dutch writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali: “She doesn’t attack extremism – she attacks Islam. And these people – they make money. They sell out halls. And this is sad. The world we’re living in wants to hear this kind of thing. What we need, in my opinion, are people to bring back everything and say, ‘Look, chill out. Cool down.’ That’s what I’m about.”
Yusuf was born to Azerbaijani parents, in Tehran. They moved to Britain when he was three, and he grew up in west London. (His parents now live in Stockport, where he also lives with his wife, some of the time.) “And this is the thing -” he turns vociferous again “- when I grew up, in school, we had Janet and Jack and Ahmed and Mohammed and Dipesh and Meninder – and we were just chilling together. Now you’ve got, ‘Oh, he’s a Muslim, and he’s a that, and he’s a this.’ D’you know what I mean? This is not what London’s about! This is not what I grew up with. And it’s scary! I don’t wanna see that.” The majority of his friends were English, “middle-class, white guys”, and even when, at 16, he went through a period of deepening spirituality and became a much more committed Muslim, he says there were no issues with peer pressure, no feeling that he was being left out because everyone else was experimenting with drink, for example; it’s discrimination against them to expect that, he argues, and anyway, “they were good people, they were good guys. They weren’t naughty.”
He started learning music from his father, a music teacher, and became an omnivorous student: he plays piano and violin, “from the western instruments. Eastern – most of the Persian instruments: santoor, taab, tombak, katar, daff – and the Arabic instruments – tabla, dufoof – and of course the Turkish instruments …” He says, “I used to be an addict of Classic FM. I used to listen to it from 14 to 16, every night it was on in my room. It’s a bit sad, but – I love classical music.” And though he always knew his future lay in music, he thought it would be in composition and arranging, not in singing. He didn’t even know he could sing, until his father heard him crooning in the bathroom one day and suggested he look after his voice.
The Royal Academy accepted him as a composition student, but he wasn’t there for long. “I left.” Why? “You’re making me feel really uncomfortable,” he says, laughing. “There’s an interrogation element.” As interrogation goes, “Why?” is not exactly being Jeremy Paxman, but Yusuf, his manager tells me later, is used to a very different interviewing style: more fawning, by fans who more often than not want an autograph, or have brought along a nephew to meet him. “It was kind of snobby,” he adds. “I felt a bit uncomfortable. And I had some personal problems at the time. And they were personal, so don’t ask me what they were – they were personal.”
I try but no elaboration is forthcoming, so why uncomfortable? “I think classical music has been hijacked by – certainly in my day – by a kind of upper-middle-class white-oriented population, whereas in fact classical music was the music of the people in Mozart’s time, in Beethoven’s time – opera, for example, would be like the movies. I felt a bit uncomfortable, but I think mainly I really had some … I just didn’t want to be there.”
His first album was accidental, self-produced, arising out of a personal need to sing praise songs, and no one was as surprised as he was when it sold out in its first week. He has been famous ever since, which has brought its own uncomfortablenesses. Yusuf has come in for criticism from other Muslims about the fact that he sings at all (the issue seems to be the atmosphere that surrounds singing, rather than the singing itself); and about his celebrity – something he himself sometimes feels uneasy about. At Wembley, as one audience member put it on YouTube, “The concert was gud and bad as all the girls were screaming wen he came bak as they all fancied him it was lyk get ova him. the atmosphea was gr8 tho”, but he is quick to dissociate himself from, say, the likes of Robbie Williams (though, it must be said, he wouldn’t mind competing on similar turf: “I’m an artist, I wouldn’t mind getting a Grammy or an MTV award. That’s how I see myself”). “The reason I never wanted to be a pop star was because of a lot of the things they get up to after concerts,” he says. “My father noticed something in me from a very early age and groomed me. But I just didn’t want to get involved in the pop industry. I was scared of it. I’ve seen what it can do and I didn’t want to get involved. I’m really glad that I’ve got this huge niche, if you like.”
And though he may slightly shrug off the suggestion, he knows it’s a niche that gives him power. He’s hoping to record a Christmas single, with an as yet un-named artist, to raise money for Darfur, and in the new year he and his record label, Awakening, will be launching a foundation called Exploring Islam, the aim of which will be to shatter, through ambitious national media campaigns, the misconceptions and stereotypes currently surrounding Islam here. They’ll be commissioning polls, by YouGov, for example, to discover the top five misconceptions about Islam, and then tackle them head-on. “We’ll treat it like a product that has a bad name,” says Sharif Banna, co-founder of Awakening, “and then market it. We don’t want people to convert, necessarily, just not to be afraid of it.” The tag is to be “mainstreaming Islam” ; the intent to drive home the message that Muslims are as normal as everyone else.
Yusuf is posing for the photographer when he calls over to me to make one thing absolutely clear. “You know something? I love human beings, I absolutely love human beings. It might sound a bit cheesy and corny, but I do. I love people, irrespective of their race and background. When people incite hate, it just gets to me, whether they be Muslims, or Christians.” And then he has to be off, racing to catch a plane to Cairo. “God bless you,” he says.
OFFICE SPACE AVAILABLE FOR SUBLEASE
FURNISHED office space available for sublease at CSID office in DOWNTOWN WASHINGTON DC (1625 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 601, Washington DC). Space available ranges from 1 to 4 office rooms (fully furnished) and rent is between $1,500 and $4,000 per month. Rent includes use of board and conference rooms (from 10 to 90 people). Ideal location and flexible terms.
EXCELLENT LOCATION – next to Johns Hopkins, SAIS, Brookings, Carnegie Endowment, and USIP. Close to DuPont Circle metro.
For further information, please contact Aly Abuzaakuk at (202) 265-1200.
The articles in this bulletin do NOT necessarily reflect the opinions of CSID, or its board of directors. They are included in the CSID bulletin to encourage and facilitate diversity of opinions, discussions, and debates about democracy in the Arab/Muslim world, and how best to strengthen and promote it.
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Book review: Mrs. Engels, by Gavin McCrea
Published in Fiction
Gavin McCrea was inspired to write this fictionalised account of Lizzie Burns by the fleeting references to her in Tristram Hunt’s biography of Engels. Obviously, had he read the superior description of the latter’s life by John Green, he would have learnt a little more about her. Nonetheless, the relative lack of information about both Lizzie and her sister Mary, an earlier lover of Engels, provides the spaces within which McCrea has been able to imagine her voice, her body and her character in this exceptionally absorbing and satisfying novel. And in so doing, McCrea gives flesh and feeling back to not only Engels, but also Karl Marx, his family and a host of others associated with the birth of scientific socialism. These are the poster boys of our movement taken down from the banners we carry and placed firmly in the midst of their own challenges and triumphs.
The action alternates between London in 1870/1 and Manchester in the 1860s. In the former, Lizzie and Engels are establishing themselves, with varying degrees of success, in Primrose Hill so as to be nearer to the Marx family and the centre of the nascent International during the tumultuous times around the rise and destruction of the Paris Commune.
The mood progressively darkens, not only because the Engels’ household becomes the target of state agents and brick-wielding thugs, but also due to Lizzie’s declining health. In the earlier period, there is an equal sense of tension, but in this case largely confined within the domestic sphere as Lizzie’s ambiguous and at times downright suspicious attitude to Engels and his treatment of Mary is played out. Engels comes across as being genuinely concerned with both of them, but all too frequently distracted by his wider work and relationship with Marx.
The Lizzie created, or maybe more accurately re-created, by McCrea is an expression of her class and nationality’s growing sense of their own subservient situation.
‘Mrs’ Engels emerges as a no-nonsense Sancho Panza to her partner’s Quixote. She is better by far in dealing with the nuances and stresses of straddling two quite distinct social worlds, although this didn’t extend to building a mutually respectful relationship with her domestic workers – wonderful Moliere characters both better with the back chat than with the breakfast. Whilst only tangentially interested in the fate of continental revolutionaries, Lizzie maintains her old Irish contacts and involves herself in providing a safe house for those involved in the daring but ultimately failed attempt to rescue two Fenian freedom fighters, Kelly and Deasy, from their fate at the hands of British justice.
Purists might dislike and recoil from descriptions of Engels’ penis or Marx’s carbuncles, but McCrea re-creates such a detailed sense of turbulent times and turbulent people that the reader is engaged and enthralled by both the personal and revolutionary worlds colonised by his characters no matter what. Lizzie Burns emerges from it all as a working class woman to be admired and loved, not only because of her loves and friendships, but because of her unsentimental courage and determination to build a better world.
This is an edited version of a review which first appeared in the Morning Star.
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Drain Oregon
Gateway to the Pacific
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Home→Victorian Houses
Charles E. Hasard House
This Queen Anne style house was built in 1902. It is listed in the Statewide Inventory of Historic Sites and Buildings. The house has a variety of features and exterior textures with multiple ornamented gables and a tower rising above the main entrance. The home is currently a private residence and is not open to the public.
Charles Hasard moved to Oregon in 1880 and was employed as a carpenter for the Oregon and California Railroad. He arrived in Drain in 1892 and begin work as a hotel keeper. Later he bacame a farmer and merchant. Hasard was appointed a U.S. Land Commissioner in 1902.
Van Scoy House
Professor Van Scoy was the last administrator of the Central Oregon Normal School.
Drain Oregon Gateway to the Pacific
Copyright 1995-2019 © RMK Research All rights reserved. NO photos, text or data may be copied from this web site without written permission. Web site established March 25, 1995. Disclaimer
Drain is 8 miles west of Interstate 5 halfway between Eugene and Roseburg. The coast is 55 miles west. Portland is 140 miles north. Pass Creek and Elk Creek run through Drain and feed into the Umpqua River. State Highway 38 is considered one of the most scenic highways in Oregon. Topography: Low coastal mountains with small valleys and clear run-off streams. Flora: Heavily forested with Douglas Fir and other species of hard and soft woods. Native grasses, flowers and berries. Climate: mild Average temperatures: January - 40F July - 67F Average annual rainfall: 47 inches Elevation: 292 feet Area: City of Drain is one square mile.
The original townsite of Drain was settled in 1847 by Warren Goodell who received 320 acres as a Donation Land Grant from the U.S. government. Goodell's claim was long and narrow in order to encompass as much of the valley's bottom land as possible. This claim was sold to Jesse Applegate (Oregon Trail) in 1858. Charles C. Drain emigrated from the midwest and purchased the land in 1861.
© 2019 - Drain Oregon
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You are here: Home / In the Media / The Jewish Agency’s New Vision
The Jewish Agency’s New Vision
May 3, 2010 By Dan Brown
The Jewish Agency for Israel is undergoing change. Over the past year, on the leadership side, we have seen the election of Natan Sharansky as chair of the Executive and the recent appointment of Alan Hoffmann as Director-General. On the governance side, the Board of Governors approved sweeping changes to JAFI’s relationship with Israel’s political system. And now, just weeks away from the annual convening of the Assembly and JAFI’s June Board meeting, the finishing touches are being placed on JAFI’s new strategic plan. In the words of Board chair Richie Pearlstone, “We want to build on the Jewish Agency’s strengths – chief among them, as the organization which links the Jewish People worldwide with Israel and Israel with the Jewish communities around the world. We seek to take the next important steps in our long history of achievement in building Israel, in providing Jewish Zionist education in the Diaspora communities and in addressing the most critical challenges facing our people.”
Following the just concluded meetings in New York of the strategic planning committee, I had the opportunity to sit with the charismatic Sharansky for an in-depth discussion of these new initiatives and on the current state of funding for Jewish Agency programs in the countries of the FSU.
From all my discussions of the past ten days, the one thing that is clear – whether from Hoffmann, Pearlstone or Sharansky – the top lay and professional leadership of this organization is set to refocus and redefine the work of this 80+ year old organization. Sharansky himself sees the major challenge for the Jewish people today as one of “how to reconnect themselves to their history, to their people and to their country”. He speaks a great deal about “identity”, and while we didn’t discuss it, the word “peoplehood” seems to have disappeared from the Jewish Agency’s vocabulary. He told me we have entered a “new era – where a strong Israel and strong Jewish communities are the most important.”
These are words one seldom hears from an Israeli – a country that all to often appears oblivious to the rest of the Jewish world. Yet, while Sharansky feels strongly that “Israel is the center of the Jewish people” he believes that “both Israel and the Diaspora need to take from each other the best each has to offer.” And without a doubt, the Israeli government not only should, but must, also join in and take an active part in strengthening and guaranteeing the future of the Jewish people.
It’s impossible to view the role of the Jewish Agency without looking at the one area that has defined the organization since the beginning, aliyah, and the role it has played in building and developing Israeli society. While we still have Jewish communities in distress, it is obvious that we have entered a period of “aliyah by choice.” In furthering this direction, the Jewish Agency believes that through the work of Israel Experience, Taglit, MASA, Lapid and other programs, building both pride and Jewish identity is the best way to increase the pool of potential olim.
While we are speaking of a younger demographic, as a long-time observer of the Jewish Agency, it strikes me that on the lay leadership side they have historically not paid much attention to (choose one) the next generation, now generation or emerging leaders in trying to define the future, or for that matter the present. Yes, both the Assembly and Board meetings often plan initiatives and highlight participants in these various programs. But what about the decision making process. At the table, to use a common expression. Sharansky assures me this is changing; that the “entire strategic plan is oriented to a younger generation.” He continued, “we need to connect to this generation and need the active participation of emerging leaders. The big debate on the new mission statement was will it say ‘connect Jews throughout the world’ or ‘connect young Jews…'” By the way, Sharansky preferred the latter, even though this was not to be.
Speaking of the proposed new mission statement, here it is:
Connect Jews throughout the world with their people, heritage and homeland, and inspire and empower them to build a thriving Jewish future and a strong Israel.
According to Sharansky, “those who care will understand this new direction of the Jewish Agency.”
My interview continues here, Sharansky on Funding in the FSU.
Filed Under: In the Media, The Blog Tagged With: Aliyah, Lapid Israel, Masa Israel Journey, Taglit-Birthright Israel / Birthright Israel Foundation, The Jewish Agency/JAFI
Daniel E. Levenson says
I have also been writing about the changing direction of the Jewish Agency For Israel in my own publication, the New Vilna Review, and I believe that Mr. Brown is quite correct in identifying the need for young leaders to be “at the table,” as a key issue. I think it would serve both JAFI and the Jewish community at large to begin to include the next generation of Jewish leaders when it comes to making important decisions about the future of the organization. Speaking from personal experience, it is true that programs for young adults are often used to tout the success of various JAFI programs – when I was living in Jerusalem I spoke to potential donors and visiting groups from abroad a number of times on behalf of the Jewish Agency, but I can vividly recall giving the d’var torah for the opening session of the Education Committee in June of 2009, and seeing very few people in their twenties or thirties sitting around the room. I feel that the new proposed mission statement will set a tone for stronger engagement between Israelis and Diaspora Jews, which will ultimately benefit Jews living everywhere.
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Violation of FDA Regulations Prompts Seizure by U.S. Marshals
Home/Blog/Government Compliance/FDA/Violation of FDA Regulations Prompts Seizure by U.S. Marshals
On August 25, 2011, U.S. Marshals seized various seafood products from a manufacturing facility in California. Prompting the seizure, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested the marshals take action against Meiko Food Co. after finding the companys operations were not compliant with the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) and accompanying FDA regulations.
As discussed here, the FDA sought action against the seafood manufacturer because of continued non-compliance, despite repeated FDA warnings. In particular, the FDA found that Meikos seafood products were adulterated because the company failed to have a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan in place. A HACCP plan is one of many preventative controls that the FDA requires manufacturers to have in place in order to ensure health risks are being monitored and reduce food borne illness outbreaks.
As found in an FDA Warning Letter to Meiko late last year, the FDA had previously cited the company for its failure to have a HACCP plan. Thus, the seafood manufacturers continued failure to address FDAs warnings led the Agency to step up its enforcement actions against the company. Had the seafood manufacturer taken the necessary steps called for by the warning letter, it may have avoided further FDA action.
Because the FDA typically issues warning letters before taking any serious action against non-compliant parties, it is important to take warning letters seriously and take any necessary corrective measures in order to avoid further enforcement action.
For more information on FDA enforcement measures or other compliance issues, please contact us at contact@fidjlaw.com.
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Who are you, no really, who are you for real?
I have a friend, Bill Roddy, who used to own the Southern Humboldt Life and Times. Each week he would publish an interview of two southern Humboldt residences, a man and a woman. This was before computers were relied on to keep things sorted out for us. One day he called a gentleman to ask him for an interview, and the man replied, “Bill, you already interviewed me a long time ago, remember?” He then went on to say that he would be glad to do it again, but only this time he wanted to be a fighter pilot. Bill got a lot of laughs out of that.
My grandmother used to say that “if you don’t like who you are, pretend to be someone that you would like to be until it fits”.
It has been said that the truest test of who you really are is who you would be, or what you would do, if nobody ever found out about the things you that you do.
Part of what I like about living in a small town is you can be anything that you want to be. Want to be on the school board? Chances are all you have to do is show an interest. Want to be president of a Rotary club? It’s fairly possible in a small town. How about; would you like to be a fireman when you grow up? It could happen.
I’ve lived a long Mittyesque existence, due to the fact that I live in a small town. Not to change the subject, but most folks know who Walter Mitty was, but for those of you who don’t, he was a man that lived mostly in his mind, and every small occurrence gave him the opportunity to drift off in a daydream about him being the hero who solved the problem and saved the day. I first read the story by James Thurber in high School, and I remember thinking at the time “My god that’s me!”
"WE'RE going through!" The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We can't make it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said the Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're going through!" The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" he shouted. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" shouted the Commander. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. "The Old Man'll get us through," they said to one another. "The Old Man ain't afraid of hell!" . . . “
Yep! I’ve flown many airplanes through the Stormy North Coast sky's above my nice toasty bed!.
I’ve been a logger, a soda jerk, I’ve made ice cream, my wife and I built our own house. I change my own head gaskets on my truck when it needs them, and if the old truck needs painting, I do it myself. I've been a fireman for thirty-three years, I did all the refrigeration in major supermarkets. Every time I drive past a house down here I tell my wife, “I did the heating and air-conditioning on that house.” It has all been because I didn’t know that I couldn’t. And in my mind I had to do it, because nobody else could do it as well as I would. I think that I’ve come to believe that. Thanks gramma. I’ve been doing a real good job of becoming who I want to be.
Lately, I've been pretending to be a blogger..... "What? I didn't ask your opinion dammit, rev 'er up to twelve million megapixels... Poketa-poketa-poketa-poketa... Paste a new photo on the header bar... Aye Aye sir"
Have you ever done something because it reflected who you wanted to be? Or do you daydream about the greatness that you might achieve? Come on, give, I don’t want to think that I’m the only one! The Secret life of Walter mitty, By James Thurber. Required reading if you want to know who I am.
Kim Sallaway, "Have fun!"
Kristabel asked me, “P.S. Who's that cute guy in the camo. pants next to Santa?”
Kristabel, I'm glad you asked. The mans name is Kim Sallaway. He is a professional photographer. He does what I would describe as “Character Photography”. I don’t know how he would describe himself. But, if you want to see a collection of his photo’s go to www.Kimbacan.com. I’ll put the link at the bottom of this page.
Everything in his collection was photographed in a public place. But some of his stuff should be rated “Not For Kids”. But you should get a kick out of the photo’s. He has also been the official photographer for “Reggae on the Whatever” since the very start. He is a very cheerful guy, and his personal motto is “have fun”.
To my relatives that read this blog: “No Toto, this ain’t Kansas anymore”. And admittedly am glad that I’m just looking at the photo’s and not being there in person. But Kim lives his life to collect photo’s like you see in his albums. Be sure to check out his nature photo’s, he capture critters “character” as well as people.
He also sends out to his subscibers a "Photo of the day". Which always has an "Everyone included" rating. He took the best photo of a Brush Robin that I've ever seen. (Whoops!, I forgot, he's a "Newcomer", he's only been here thirty something years, he calls it "Varied Thrush". My people didn't even have a fancy word like "Varied". You probably think that I'm kidding, don't you?)
I consider Kim a true artist of the highest caliber, and a true friend. If you go to his web-site you will see artistry like you’ve not seen in many places. Each of his photo’s either tells a story or suggests one. I tease him with; “If Shakespeare had a camera, this is what he would have said”.
This is a good example of a “Cross Culture’ friendship. But, I see many signs of the culture barrier disappearing. It's hard to not appreciate talent like Kim has, and it is an instant conversation to view any of his stuff.
Kim Sallaway Photography
We can’t judge what happened then by who we are now.
I was reading Kim's Blog, “The Redheaded Blackbelt” the other day, and she was talking about her ancestors and their part in an Indian massacre. She was deeply ashamed of her ancestors, and their part in what “The Eel River Rangers” did to the Indian people that lived here at the time. I explained to her that, although what they did to the Indians was horrid, that it was possible that her ancestors were doing what they had to do to survive. We can’t judge what happened back then by our standards today. Few people realize the context of our ancestor’s survival, nor do most people have the background in history to know what forced them to do the things that they did.
There is no way to justify what our ancestors did, and no way to make make all of the Indian massacres okay. None of history has been fair, right, or just. But, we are all living evidence that our ancestors survived. In order to put some perspective on who we are, and where we came from, we need to know a little bit about history, and not so much about right and wrong.
Who were our ancestors? How far back in history should we go to make a valid judgment of what they were? Why did they behaved the way they did?
The Crusades. 1006--
(In Italics from Wicapedia)
The Muslim presence in the Holy Land began with the initial Arab conquest of Palestine in the 7th century.
Western attitudes towards the East came in the year 1009, when the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre destroyed.
Christian Pilgrimages were allowed to the Holy Lands, but for a time pilgrims were captured and some of the clergy were killed.
Christians saw, with some validity, that the pursuit of their religion was being jeopardized by the Muslims. Consequently Pope Alexander II gave his blessings for the Christian soldiers to protect and defend the holy land and return it to Christian rule. Thus began the first Crusade. Christians felt that they were fighting for a holy cause, and to win meant everything to them, and there was nothing that they wouldn’t do to win their battle. There were no “rules of engagement”. There were no “Geneva Convention rules”. You either won the battle, or you died a miserable death at the hands of the Muslims. And, to be fair to the Muslims, they felt that they rightfully owned the Holy land, and the Christians had no right whatsoever to be there. So both sides fought with self-righteous-indignation, and both sides felt that “God was on their side", and winning at ALL costs meant everything.
There were nine major Crusades, and several other minor Crusades, with much the same stories of each side blaming the other for the horror and the destruction that ensued. Both sides, surely thought that nothing was too horrible to thrust upon such an ungodly enemy.
The Spanish Inquisition. 1478--
(In italics from Mega-essays.com)
The Inquisitions were run by both civil and church authorities, which were used as a way for the Spanish rulers to unify the country into a strong nation. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella established the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, along with a reluctant approval of Pope Sixtus IV. Entirely controlled by the Spanish kings, the pope barely had a grip on the Inquisition, the only thing that he had control of, was naming who the inquisitor general was. The entire purpose of the Inquisition was to unify and organize the country by punishing, or trying to convert any “non-believers” like the Jewish, Muslims, Pagans, Moors, and any others. Any heresy was intolerable for the Catholics.
It is documented, that anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 people, male and female were executed during the 350 years of life that the Spanish Inquisition lived. They often used torture to try and persuade people to give in, and confess to their apparent sins. The amount of women that were killed in these trials seems insanely high, especially when compared to the amount of females and males that were put on trial and killed in Spain. earlier stages of the Spanish Inquisition, people that were accused of heresy would have inquisitors try and force them into the catholic religion. After all, this was the reason that the Spanish Inquisition began! The whole point of the Inquisitions was supposed to be organizing and strengthening the country by practicing only one religion, Catholicism. The reason being is that men were mainly the persons in positions of power throughout Spain. The only case in the Inquisition where more women were accused and executed then men, was with Pagans.
It was their way of thinking, that the need to unify people into one Religion was a Holy Cause, and anything that they did to another human being was justified. After all, it was for the betterment of their Kingdom and mankind. Many people that didn't fit the background, of being purely Catholic, were tortured into confessing their transgressions upon the church. Many people were burned alive for being heretics. Imagine being burned alive!
Medieval to 1870 Europe.
(Italics from Wicapedia)
Until 1814, the full punishment for the crime of treason was to be hanged, drawn and quartered in that the condemned prisoner would be:
Dragged on a hurdle (a wooden frame) to the place of execution. (This is one possible meaning of drawn.)
Hanged by the neck for a short time or until almost dead. (hanged).
Disembowelled and emasculated and the genitalia and entrails burned before the condemned's eyes (This is another meaning of drawn. It is often used in cookbooks to denote the disembowelment of chicken or rabbit carcasses before cooking).[2]
Beheaded and the body divided into four parts (quartered).
Typically, the resulting five parts (i.e. the four quarters of the body and the head) were gibbeted (put on public display) in different parts of the city, town, or, in famous cases, country, to deter would-be traitors who had not seen the execution. After 1814 the convict would be hanged until dead and the mutilation would be performed after death. Gibbeting was abolished in England in 1843. Drawing and quartering was abolished in 1870.
Treason was not a crime against their country, as we think or it today, but a crime against the King, his property, or his rule. Anyone that dared to even utter a treasonous statement was dealt with in a very brutal fashion, and it was well understood that a person was to obey they Kings Rule, and the rules of his lords. There was no government of “We The People” back then. You did as the King willed, or you died. Your chances of surviving were better if you were one on the kings men, but that meant that you did the dirty work of the king no matter how repugnant that it might be to you. The King had the ultimate authority over a persons life or death, for what ever reason he might have.
Being gutted alive was not banned until 1814, and the body being mutilated, and quartered, and spread to the four corners of the land was not banned until 1870. This was a time in history that was contemporary to the American wild west.
King Henry the Eighth
King of England 1491-1547.
The story of King Henry the Eighth is too long and convoluted to detail here, and most people are at least vaguely familiar with the fact that he was a tyrant. But a little detail about the power of a King needs to be illustrated. This is what can happen to a Queen that falls into disfavor. (In italics, from Wicapedia)
“Henry the Eighth had Anne Boleyn arrested on charges of using witchcraft to trap him into marrying her, of having adulterous relationships with five other men, of incest with her brother George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, of injuring the King and of conspiring to kill him, which amounted to treason. The charges were most likely fabricated by Oliver Cromwell. The court trying the case was presided over by Anne's own uncle, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. In May 1536, the Court condemned Anne and her brother to death, either by burning at the stake or by decapitation, whichever the King pleased. The other four men Queen Anne had allegedly been involved with were to be hanged, drawn and quartered; however, their sentences were ultimately commuted to decapitation. Anne and her brother George were also beheaded soon thereafter. At her final Mass, the Queen publicly swore to her innocence in the presence of a priest and various witnesses.”
Why didn’t anyone stop this execution that was perpetrated against a good woman? People surely knew that she didn’t deserve to die. The King had her executed because she bore him no male heirs, and he was in love with Jane Seymore. ( Same name, different woman) It speaks volumes about what power a King has over his subjects.
Did you notice that the king had a henchman in the form of Oliver Cromwell? Did you notice that the judge that condemned her to death was her own uncle? Why didn’t he just say “This is Wrong and I’ll have no part in it”. The reason that he did the things that he did is because it would have meant sure death for him and his family had he not participated in the death of his niece. There are a lot of people with the last name of “Howard” today because of what he did.
Black People were not allowed testify, for or against, white people. (Italics from “The History Of California” Theodore H. Hittell. 1897)
Patrick Cannay offered a petition in the assembly from
free negroes of San Francisco, praying such a change in the
laws as would enable them to give testimony against white men.
But such was the prejudice then existing against negroes that
when Richard P. Hammond offered a resolution that the house
should decline to receive or entertain any petition upon such a
subject from such a source, it was adopted by a vote of forty-
seven ayes to a single no.
Chinese were sent to California under contract and their families were held back in China as security that they would do their jobs well, yet they were highly despised. The only reason that they were here, was for their cheap labor. The Chinese that were doing our dirty work weren’t slaves, but their folks back home were held in slavery to make sure that they performed their duties here. (Italics, History of California)
Criminals, it was true, had not already come in numbers, because the Chinese in California had been sent by contractors who held their families as hostages; but, if the system had so far worked well, it was probably only owing to the limited number sent. But—he went on to say—the allowance of this immigration and the commingling of races would expose our own people "to pestilences as foul as leprosy and the plague, which with the bowlings of insanity would be likely to devastate the land."
This was the world in the mid to late Eighteen-Hundreds. There was no thought of “Civil Rights”. The only people who were thought of as “People” were White People. Some white settlers were surprised to find that Indians could cry. The Indians were thought of, and treated like animals. That didn’t make that kind of thinking right, but this is what you would have been up against, had you gone back in time to instruct these people as to what they were doing wrong.
On the White Settlers side, there was many stories about what the Indians had done to the Homesteads of the North coast. Some true, and most were exaggerations. But many Indians were just as brutal as the whites. And, they were very sneaky and cunning. Most Settlers at the time thought of them as a “Potential Menace”. And with their lack of education, they were easily convinced that “the only good Indian was a dead Indian”. And the mere thought of how fragile the settlers frontier existence was, scared the hell out of them, and they most likely decided that the best way to make sure that they didn’t have anything disappear in the middle of the night from a group of Indians was to eliminate them.
As I have also pointed out before, not all settlers thought this way, and they befriended and protected the Indians at their great peril. The people protecting the Indians would be in for sure trouble if it became known.
I think that in conclusion I need to tell you about the people that lived in the North Coast Hills. They were, for the most part, uneducated, poor, honest, hard working people. Their history is in being recently from Europe, where brutality was the norm. They well understood the power of a King. And the power of his henchmen.
What I say repeatedly, is that the mistake we are making, is that we are judging who we are now, and what we would do now, and placing that in a different context that most of us have no concept of at all.
You need to read a little history about what people were like back then. Especially Cattle King White. Then you need to imagine what you would do if his henchmen came to your door, and told you what you were going to do, understanding full well that you were going to do their bidding, or you would die! And your family would die! Remember, you just bought the land that you were on, had no place to go even if you could afford it. And the law, and all of people in authority, were afraid of cattle king White, and would do nothing to protect you…. In that context what would you do? Be honest. For your enlightenment I'm going to include two comments that I received recently:
The point of Jarboe's or Fleming's militias was to simply clear this country of Indians for the whites. Indians were not considered human beings by the majority of settlers in those days. They were not allowed to testify in court nor was killing an Indian considered a crime. The justification for killing an Indian baby was: "Nits make Lice." and this phrase was common not just here, but throughout the west. However, Indian children were useful as servants and so were captured and sold to whites. Woodman Creek near Laytonville is named for the notorious slaver George Woodman.The indentureship law allowed this even after the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War. The Army was the only law in Southern Humboldt and they were under orders to kill any Indian male who was not attached to a white settler or on the Reservations at Ft. Bragg or Round Valley. Within ten years, the Indian population was reduced to about a tenth of what it had been when whites arrived. The introduced diseases of smallpox and syphilis reduced the population further. Thousands died.The absence of any Rancheria in Southern Humboldt is evidence of the efficiency of the genocide in our area. Mrs. Bowman was living near Camp Grant when she was attacked. The year was 1869. There is evidence that the Indians involved were a renegade group of Chilula from Redwood Creek. The Bull Creek Indians said that they were also attacked. The vicious attack on Mrs. Bowman and her children was used as an excuse for more forays against local Indians. An entire culture, probably as complex and beautiful as the surviving culture of the Klamath and Trinity area was wiped out. Songs, dances and language were lost. It is important to remember what happened here. That we had slavery, just like the South and that human beings were hunted like animals. My umpty great uncle was tomahawked and killed on the banks of the Ohio River in Indiana. His brother was captured and made a slave of the Kickapoo in Illinois. He escaped and spent quite a bit of his time hunting Indians afterwords. Some of my more recent Indiana relatives were sympathetic with the Ku Klux Klan. As long as we stayed away from politics, we got along fine. They were terrific guys. Just a bit backward.
EkoVox said...
Eric, Have you read Genocide & Vendetta: The Round Valley Wars in Northern California by Lynwood Carranco and Estle Beard. It is very difficult to find as it is a very rare, out of print book. But, if you can find a copy, it is an incredible depiction of Southern Humboldt/Northern Mendocino in the 1850's to about 1880's.Here is a synopsis from a customer of Amazon:The book consists of three major sections:1) The genocide of the aboriginal inhabitants of Humboldt & Mendocino Counties. 2) The rise & fall of the Asbill brothers; two early settlers in the area. 3) The story of the infamous George E. White. Cattle King of Round Valley & the Yolla Bolly country in northwestern California from the 1850's to 1902.The first section is difficult to read. Partly because of the content, & partly because of the format. Appears to be written in the format used for a Master's thesis. Does contain a wealth of information. Some of it repeated from various sources. Gives an overview of the Indian population decline as well as graphic descriptions of some of the murderous incidents. Horrific. Bosnia today has nothing on what a few pitiless men did in the Yolla Bolly country during the 1850's & 1860's. Easier reading covering some of the same material are "The Story of the Stolen Valley," by Rena Lynn, and "The Saga of Round Valley The Last of the West," by John E. Keller.The second section is easier reading because it is based largely on the narrative of Frank Asbil. Son of Pierce Asbill & nephew of Frank Asbil. Follows their story from their arrival in the Yolla Bolly country as hide hunters through the rise & fall of their livestock operations. Colorful & entertaining. My favorite part of the book. If you like this section, look for the "Last of the West" by Frank Asbill & Argle Shawley The third section relates the story of George White's livestock empire. Includes examples of the brutal methods used by his henchmen to control the rich grazing land of the Yolla Bolly country. These included threats, theft, arson, perjury, false accusations, corrupt officers of the law, & murder by various cowardly means: poisoning, shooting in the back from ambush. Over a twenty year period in a population of only a few hundred people, over fifty murders occurred FOR WHICH NO SUSPECTS WERE EVER ARRESTED. Because of the large number of crimes, the authors present selected incidents to illustrate typical methods used by these organized outlaws to keep out homesteaders for nearly fifty years. This section reaches it's climax in the murderous vendetta against the two men that ultimately stood up to George White's outlaw buckaroos, and in the accounts of the killers' trials in Weaverville. It has lighter portions too. These cover cattle ranching methods of the day as well as anecdotes illuminating the character of some individuals involved. For fictionalized adventures in the Yolla Bolly country from this era look for the book "Wylackie Jake of Covelo."Contains an epilogue and an extensive bibliography. Compliments to Lynwood Carranco & the late Estle Beard on their thorough telling of this chilling history. Should be made into a movie by someone like Robert Redford
It makes you think doesn’t it? Remember, there were many unreported murders and disappearances, food poisonings, etc. One man, that had paid a good deal of money for his ranch, crossed White over a land use issue, and he was offered enough money to “get out of town” for his ranch, and again, it was well understood that to refuse the offer was sure death. Whites henchmen would kill you for the boots that you were wearing if they caught you out in the open. What the folks did back then had far more to do with survival than morality.
I would love to see any of the moralist that spout about what everyone did wrong back then, go back and live there for just one week. I wonder how many times that they would compromise their integrity for their families survival.
To even judge the people that survived back then is arrogant. Was what they did wrong? Yes! Did they have any choices? Slim, and damn few.
The Indians were caught in the middle of this mess, and "The King" didn’t want them around, because they were taking up valuable grazing space. When the pony soldiers pulled out for the Civil War, the area was left to be “protected” by private contractors, like Jarboe’s Eel River Rangers, who were hired to keep the Indian population under control. Most all of these men had connections to people like Cattle King white, or other wealthy, but ruthless, land owners. The current thinking of the time was “The only good Indian is a dead Indian”. The backlash to the planned massacres is what finally brought some recognition of the problems that the Indians faced to the civilized parts of the world, and the killing was stopped.
Honestly. Tell me where do you think that you would have fit in in this mess. Remember you have no money, no education, no where to go, and you love your wife and kids. Why don’t you put yourself at about the head waters of Keckawaka Creek, just north of Covelo. Cattle Kings men come by to eat dinner every month or so. What are you going to do? Piss them off?
We have the luxury of living in one small bubble in ALL of history where peace and harmony is even thought of as a viable concept. Also, we have the luxury of living in one small part of today’s world where peace and harmony is thought of as “Ideal”. We have in less than One-hundred years emerged as a peaceful people. Any other time in history, everyone did what they needed to do to survive. We are indeed unique in all of history, or in all of this world, with a few notable exceptions.
This is like a "Guess what I did for Christmas" post. Saturday, December 22nd we loaded Santa onto our old 1937 American LaFrance fire truck and drove him around Redway. We have tons of photo's of happy little folks sharing their Christmas wishes with Santa. We spent the whole day at it, and by the time we got back to the fire hall it was dark and raining quite heavily. Everyone had a good time.
Taking Santa around Redway on the Fire truck is a tradition that goes back to sometime in the fifties, where a man by the name of J.P. Rusk started it. He was one of the original framers of the Redway fire department , and he was big on Santa. The tradition stuck, and as far as anyone knows, we've never missed a year. It is one of the most special things that can ever be witnessed. Some kids are terrified, and some others run toward him with their arms open like he was their favorite person in the world. Maybe He is! Anyway, it is one of the most rewarding things that we do in the town of Redway. That is, other than a nice stop on what might have been a tragic fire.
I'm the one that's not anyone else. (Hint, I have a sweatshirt on)
It seemed like we had about twice as many kids this year, and I don't know why, but it sure made it fun. We had people chasing us down the street and one person even went to Garberville to pick up her kids to see Santa!
Later that night we had our annual Christmas Party. We parked all of the fire-trucks in a local garage. We decorated the fire hall so it was quite festive, complete with fireplace and Christmas Tree. I had a cut of prime-rib that must have weighted a pound, complete with all the trimming's. Then we danced to the "Roadmasters" until midnight. My wife hasn't been up that late for years. She even danced to "Night-Riders in the Sky", and she used to say that she doesn't like County and Western music. They are a great band and can please any crowd. J.P. Rusk's widow, who will soon be one-hundred, was up dancing to the Music. She attends our party every year as one of the founders of the Redway Fire Department.
The some of the rest of the firefighters were in the following support vehicle. And there were some back decorating the fire-hall. There Is a hint of another truck with us in one of the photo's. Everyone was it complete turn-outs, and ready for a fire, except one noticeable exception, apparently he didn't now it was going to rain.
It's going to take awhile.
A few days ago on the “Redheaded Blackbelt” I posted a reply to Kym, that I felt that she might be judging a relative to harshly. The relative was a member of Captain Jarboe’s Eel River Rangers that had massacred dozens of Indians.
In putting together an accounting of the way people thought back in the 1850’s, I have ran into so many interesting stories, of the interaction that the new settlers and the Indians had, that I have become side-tracked.
I called my cousin Penny in Laytonville who has an accounting of Mrs. Bowman’s flight from Hydesville to Laytonville to escape an Indian attack. Mrs. Bowman was gravely injured and was almost killed, yet she got herself and her kids to a neighbors cabin. Where the story gets even more dramatic. I called her because I knew she had a printer-ready copy of the story, and I didn’t want to re-type it.
While we were talking she casually mentioned; “You knew that Great, Great, Grampa and Gramma Middleton were the only survivors of an Indian attack in Arizona on their way to California didn’t you? ( I guess that I didn’t know that story was about my folks) Then she went on to say “You knew about the Indian attack on their cabin at Mud Springs, when the Indian sneaked down the chimney didn’t you? I vaguely remember that. But the good thing is her father, my uncle Ben, wrote the story down and she still has it, and we are going to get together at the next family reunion and photo copy it. Later I will transcribe it into my computer.
I also know that I had a Great Aunt who had her throat cut by an Indian, but his knife was dull and she was able to survive the attack
Anyway these are the same ancestors that helped hide the Indians, and help feed them, through the times of great strife. When they and anyone protecting them was being murdered.
It’s going to take a great deal longer to write about my feelings on this subject than I thought. It may even be a chapter in the book that I want to write about this canyon that I like so much.
I’m very much interested in any true stories about the early days. No, I haven’t read Ray Raphael’s new book yet. I don’t want my mind going in too many directions, until I get my thoughts together. I’ve always thought that there were two sides to the story, and all that I’m interested in is the truth.
Most of what people did back then was survival related, and I think that I can make that point glaringly clear.
Posted by Ernie Branscomb at 12:37 PM 9 comments Links to this post
Weott today!
Please click on the following link For a graffic view of the city of weott today!
Very dramatic to someone that remembers the town as I do!
The town of Weott after the '64 flood.
Weott before the 1955 flood.
Weott after the 1955 flood.
The water was high enough to leave this sawhorse in the phone lines of what was the town of Weott. The water was still very deep when this photo was taken, if you click your cuser on the photo it will enlarge and you can see what lookes like a large tank still submerged. What's left of the town is washed up against the trees in the background. The town of Weott was no more.
A few posts ago I showed the town of Weott, before and after the '55 flood, this is a photo of down town Weott that they took after the sixty-four flood, as the waters were still receding and they realized that the town was totally destroyed. They rebuilt the town up the hill about a quarter of a mile, beside the new freeway that was just being built at the time.
The Railroad at Dyerville, where The South Fork meets the main Eel, was under twenty-one feet of water. One of the three rail bridges was destroyed and had to be rebuilt. Over one hundred miles of rail in the Eel River canyon had to be replaced.
Travel on the 101 highway was restored in only Forty-one days, but it was years before traffic was back to normal.
Twenty-eight people lost their lives to the flood in Humbodlt and Del Norte. Over five thousand head of cattle were lost.
Ed's Interesting Story
Most everyday I skim my list of links on the left side of this page.
( <--- Over there, near the bottom.)
Marco Polo, Orient Lines Antarctic Cruise Ship. Built in 1965, 22,080 tons, 826 passengers.
The last few days I’ve been following Ed And Mary Alice Densen’s trip to the Antarctica. I figured that they are mighty brave to be taking a trip down there after all the cruise ship disasters and illness’. So I found with some humor that they couldn’t get into port in Montevideo, Uruguay, because a Cruise Ship collided with a Cargo Container ship in the channel. A few cargo containers were knocked loose and fell into the pathway, and divers had to go down and rig them for removal, so Ed and Mary Alice were stuck at sea. Their ship was anchored beside the cruise ship that had been in the collision, it had a big hole knocked in the bow, and Ed said that he thought that they were nearby in case there was an evacuation, but apparently the damage was not that bad.
I wondered if it was the same Chinese cargo container ship that ran into the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. Then I thought about the fact that they are trying to get cargo ships and cruise ships into Humboldt Bay, in the winter. Sorry, but if they can't put a ship into San Francisco bay without running into things, how are they going to navigate Humboldt bay!
Pardon my Language, but how in the hell can ships these days run into anything. They have GPS, Radar, Sonar, Fog Horns, Harbor pilots, Captains, men on the bridge, and I could go on. And they still run into things!
I thought about Ed and Mary Alice taking a cruise right after the Ice-Breaking Cruise Ship hit an iceberg and sank in the Antarctic last month. That alone would have scared me off. That, and I have a morbid fear of freezing to death. Plus don't they have that Norovirus that Baywood County Club has? That dosn't sound like fun. They tell me that it's worse than drinking the water in Mexico. I don’t relish the thought of be stranded or drowning in Antarctica either. I firmly believe that the Antarctic should to be left for Penguins and Ozone Holes, and leave me here, where the sun shines!
Ed must have that lawyer thing, where he thinks that he can talk himself through any natural disasters, and give good enough "reasoning" to talk himself out of drowning or freezing to death. I don’t have that much faith in myself. I never go out in a boat where I can’t swim to shore.
Anyway, Ed got some good Photo’s and you can link to his site here.
P.S. My wife just informed me that we won a cruise ship trip to the Caribbean. Don't they have Hurricanes there?
Bloggers Picnic
So, okay. I’m confused but optimistic. It appears that EkoVox has organized a bloggers picnic. Somewhere in Scotia or Rio dell.
To be Honest, I’m really looking forward to this picnic. I wonder why nobody thought of it before… What? They did? This is the sixth annual? And I wasn’t invited before?
I think that my family reunion is on the 17th of August, I wonder if Ekovox and everyone could move the date to Saturday the 16th, before this thing gets rolling to fast.
Does anyone else have a preference.
Rehash of an historic election.
Okay, I know that I promised that this blog would stick history or local topics, and stay away from politics, but something has been bothering me lately, and I just want to know if I’m the only one. The election is past so this post won’t be considered to be political.
I made a service call to Alderpoint Tuesday afternoon and when I got there, I notice three prominently placed “Carlos Quilez” campaign signs. After leaving Alderpoint, I drove to the New Harris Store to repair a refrigeration unit there, and on my way I noticed another prominently placed Carlos Quilez sign. A first I laughed and thought of the Alderpoint people just being behind the times, then it started to bother me that the signs were still up. I’m sure that Carlos had nothing to do with the signs, but the people that put them up should be responsible to take them down.
The other thing that I wondered about is, why did signs pop up in places to be immediately replaced other candidates signs, only to go back to the original? What kind of people do that? Is it the land owner changing his mind, or is it unscrupulous campaign workers?
The next thing that I wondered about is the shotgun that Quilez drew to protect his wife. Did that issue really change anyone’s mind about who they were going to vote for, or was it just used as a red-herring smear against Quilez by someone that was not going to vote for him anyway. I know it had nothing to do with the way I voted, so why was it made to be such an issue?
Next, I know that Eric Kirk made a significant difference in the number of people that voted for Quilez in the Southern Humboldt area. If more people had shown up to vote, would it have made any difference in the outcome.
Geneses of a blogger.
People often asked me about why I didn’t have my own blog. They said that I seemed to enjoy writing and commenting so much that I should have a blog.
Well, it’s fun to drop in on somebody else’s blog, where the topic has already been chosen, make a few witty comments and scurry away, without having to take any responsibility to be entertaining. Add a few anonymous zingers, point out how ridiculous that something someone said was, make a few valid points, and feel like you have contributed to the conversation greatly, then go about the other things that you should be doing without worrying about not making a fresh posting.
I saved some of what I perceived to be my better comments on other peoples blogs. I secretly squirreled them away on what I thought was my “secret blogsite”. Thinking someday I might clean them up, rearrange them, and make an interesting posting, then go public. I was just trying to save those thoughts that I had for reminding me of something that I had said, that I might use in another context. I didn’t publish the URL, and I checked the box that said I didn’t want my site publicized. I know that that was awfully naïve. But, that is how it is when you just start blogging.
When I first started commenting on blogs, I was highly offended when someone would ridicule or lie about what I had said. Most all of the hateful comments were made anonymously. Which also bothered me. Then I figured out that you could just ignore most of what “Anonymous” had to say. Then, there is the higher class of blogger that stays anonymous for some “good reason”, but they are polite enough to make up an identity to give your conversation with them some continuity. I liked that, it seems like you know who you are talking to, and it is easier to follow a thought.
My ego took a real boost when Eric posted on his blogsite, “Sohum Parlance”, that “Ernie has a Blog’. Wow, my site meter count doubled overnight. In a panic, I decided that I had better post something for people to read and think about. I had a lot of fun, and thought wow, this is great to be able to carry on a conversation with people anywhere in the world. My ego came down a bit when the site-meter stopped spinning so rapidly. I figured out what everyone already knows, that Eric’s blog is the eight-hundred pound gorilla on the north coast, and the mere mention of something on his blog is going to generate a lot of hits in that direction. But, I noticed that there is still a small, but steady stream of people that are checking on my blog. They are probably looking for the latest acorn recipe, or something equally exciting.
My family started reading and critiquing what had to say. I thought that it was funny that they all e-mailed their comments to me. They say that it’s just too complicated to put their comments in that “little box”, and that it doesn’t have spell check, and when they tried to send it that their comments got eaten and they had to start over. That was real funny to me because those were the same problems that I had at first. Then I started doing everything in my word processor and cutting-and-pasting my comments into the box, and when they didn’t send, or something fouled-up, I could just re-paste them.
Some of the blogs that I enjoy the most are a few of the less active sites, like 299 Opine, Greg and Carol, and Chocolate Covered Xanex. I’ve discovered that I have a tendency to go to sites where there are no, or few comments by “anonymous”. It just gets to confusing for me to try to follow any train of thought with so many people being purposefully hateful or disruptive from behind their curtains. Like everyone else, I check Eric’s blog like it was the latest newspaper or something, and I enjoy most of the postings, and try to ignore most of the rants that make no sense.
You probably wont see too much comment on politics or religion here, not because I’m not interested, it’s just that I value my friends more than my opinions. And, I need all the friends that I can get.
Most of what I like are Human Interest stories, Family stories, local history, local news items, and whatever you are interested in, because if a person is interested in something, the interest becomes contagious.
Mussel feed recipe.
Recipe for a mussel feed by request, thanks to Lodgepole
Mussel feed:
Clean and steam mussels with a half inch of water in the bottom of the steaming pan. Cover and steam until the mussels on the top open. Remove meats, and remove the beard. If the mussels are large, throw out the tough white muscle parts.
Then eat as many as you can eat. Use hot butter and lemon juice for dipping sauce. My wife prefers fresh crushed garlic butter with her mussels. Breads, cheeses, and fruits go good with mussels. And a green salad with tomatoes and avocado works well. White, or red wine, or a good beer, also go good with mussels. If you are an alcoholic, or you can’t drink, you should switch to peanut butter sandwiches because a mussel feed just screams for a good bottle of wine to cut the butter sauce. Invite as many friends as you can. Good friends are the most important part of a Mussel feed. And there should be a least one friend to tell you how icky they look and how they would never eat anything that looks like that, it makes them that much tastier.
Pickled mussels:
Take all of the left-over meats clean them and put then in a bowl.
Make a pickling brine out of left over juice in the bottom of the boiling pot. Taste the juice and if it is too salty add some water until it is acceptable.
For each quart of meat: Leave meat in the bowl, the brine will be poured over it later. Take two cups of juice and add one cup of apple cider vinegar to it. Put it in a pot and start to bring it to a boil, as it is heating add one tablespoon of off-the-shelf pickling spices, like can be bought at any grocery store. Add three bay leaves. Add a half of a small lemon, give it a little squeeze and toss it in the boiling brine. Then add as much crushed red pepper as you feel brave enough to try, but put at least a little bit in because the final product doesn’t seem to be as spicy as you thought it was going to be.
Simmer the pickling brine for forty-five minutes then pour it over the mussel meats. Cover and place in the refrigerator. They will be ready to eat cold the next day. Makes a good hors-d-oevres. I don’t know how long they will last; they don’t last over a week at my house because they get eaten.
My grandmother would have a whole shelf of her pantry filled with picked mussels. She would take us kids to the ocean and we would pick a whole large gunny-sack full and we would bring them home and have a mussel feed, and then can the rest. The kids got stuck with cleaning them, but I didn’t mind. I’ve always loved pickled mussels.
Poor mans Mussell feed
A few posts ago I taunted everyone with what a great Mussell feed that we had the Friday after thanksgiving, but I had to beg my wife to download a photo for me because I asked her to use her brand new “high-dollar” digital Cannon Camera. From now on I am going to just take a picture with my cell phone and e-mail it to myself. It works good enough for this blog-site, and it’s a whole lot cheaper.
As you recall I said: "This time I got a great photo of dinner that I will post as soon as my wife downloads it onto my computer. I'm not sure when that will be, because she "has more important things to do than blog". She has different priorities. Don't be angry with her, she can't help herself, that's just the way she is!”
It seems that after I almost got insulting about wanting her to download her “Great Picture” I ended up owing her “big time”. The “big time owe her” took us to Eureka to look at area rugs. We took my truck to town “just in case” she found something that she liked. Fourteen-hundred-dollars later we are home and she seems to be happy, but she reminded me that I still owe her for downloading some pictures for the fire department that she took. At first I objected to this “Great camera“, but she said not to worry that it would pay off well for her. I’m beganing to see that she was right. So I’m going to show you the fourteen-hundred dollar picture of a “Poor Mans” dinner.
Just place your cursor on the photo and click, and it will open in a high-resolution Photograph. Please feel free to copy it and put on your wall if you like. But, if you do, just say that you did in the comments box; in fact say you did even if you didn't. Maybe I can take a tax deduction by proving that the photos were used for charitable purposes.
I’ll begrudgingly admit that she is a “Fine Photographer”, but darned expensive. I hate to think what it’s going to cost me for the fire department pictures, but I guess time will tell.
Now back to the mussel feed, they were delicious. We had dipping bowl full of hot lemon-butter, hot garlic butter, and we had fresh sliced guava fruit. We had sour-dough Italian Bread, because we are still boycotting the French for voting against the war, (the low life’s).
Back to the Mussel feed, We had green salad, with veggies, and a bunch of other stuff. And, oh, did I mention that we had a dozen bottles of wine? But now that I count them, I notice that there are only eleven bottles on the table. My wife has only fooled herSELF this time because her photograph is good enough to read the labels, and I noticed that her favorite brand of wine is NOT on the table. She does that at Halloween also. She goes the store to get the ”Kids” Halloween candy. When she comes back from the store, she always has extra Snickers Bars. When she puts them out for the Kids, there are NO Snickers Bars in the bowl. Her breath always smells like Snickers for a day or two after Halloween.
Back to the Mussel feed. We ate mussel until we couldn’t eat any more then I pickled the rest, and we ate them for snacks for the next few days. They were also delicious. Let me know if you would like the recipe.
I’m still worried what the fire department pictures are going to cost me. It seems like the longer it takes to decide, the more expensive that it gets.
Post script note:
My wife just informed me that the photo of the mussels was taken with her "old camera", and that anyone could CLEARLY see that the background was fuzzy. Then she told me that the camera focuses on the first thing that it sees, and that’s a perfect example of why she needed a “good camera”.
So, I’m thinking “why did I pay “high-dollar” for this photo???” Then I remembered; the fire department pictures that she hasn’t downloaded may be bad pictures also. I started to smell a bargain. I opened negotiations to buy the photos at a reduced price. Her reply was “oh no, those were taken with the “good camera” and that they are “high-dollar” photo’s".
Frosty morning along the Benbow hedgerows.
Gee! "Home" doesn't look so bright and cheery this morning!
Interestingly, I was just reading this morning about the ice sheet that covered America less than twelve thousand years ago. I guess the Eskimo's didn't pay their tree farmers well enough for their "carbon offset credits", so they had to move further North to stay cold. As I left the house this morning I noticed that we had our first "Killing Frost" and all of my Petunias were killed. If this darn global warming doesn't let up I'm going to freeze to death.
They have just recently found a huge rock that was deposited in Garberville by a glacier. They are calling it a "Glacier Drop Rock". They are now busy studying where it came from, and how long ago. I'll bet that they find it came from Al Gores front yard!
We can’t judge what happened then by who we are no...
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As part of the Sustainable Development Goals, the international community adopted the ambitious goal of ending child labour by 2025. But millions of children around the world are still trapped in child labour, depriving them of their childhood, their health and education, and condemning them to a life of poverty. Recent global estimates indicate that a total of 168 million children aged 5 to 17 are engaged in child labour (down by some 30% from 246 million in 2000). These figures indicate a steady decline in child labour, but progress is far too slow.
Despite the fact that business are more aware of and increasingly proficient in developing responses to child labour risks, Global Child Forum’s benchmark report findings raise concerns around the actual impact of the policies in place and their implementation throughout operations and supply chains.
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The world has taken on a tremendous task: to eliminate child labour. Global Goal for Sustainable Development no 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth states that by 2025 child labour in all its forms shall be eliminated. This is ambitious as the target is supposed to be reached five years earlier than 2030, the end date for the Global Goals as a whole. At the same time, the latest report on child labour from the International Labour Organization (ILO), shows that even though child labour is on the decline, it’s not declining fast enough, and in recent years, the pace has slowed considerably. At the current rate, the ILO estimates that by 2025, 121 million children will still be in child labour. So, what are we doing wrong? And more importantly, how can we improve, so that child labour can finally be a thing of the past?
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In an effort to provide insights and guidance on how businesses protect – or fall short in protecting – children’s rights in South America, this report draws on one of Global Child Forum’s essential research products ‘The corporate sector and children’s rights benchmark’. More specifically, insights are provided across three areas where the corporate sector impacts children’s rights: The Workplace, The Marketplace, The Community and the Environment. In 2017, Global Child Forum, in partnership with Boston Consulting Group, published a benchmark study of the 300 largest companies in the region. This report is a follow-up to that study. An updated benchmark analysis has been conducted on 20 of the region’s largest companies.
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Corporate Responses to Protecting Children's Rights in South Africa
In an effort to provide insights and guidance on how businesses protect – or fall short in protecting – children’s rights in South Africa, this report draws on one of Global Child Forum’s essential research products ‘The corporate sector and children’s rights benchmark’. More specifically, insights are provided across three areas where the corporate sector impacts children’s rights: The Workplace, The Marketplace, The Community and the Environment. In 2015, Global Child Forum, in partnership with Boston Consulting Group, published a benchmark study of the 271 largest companies in the region. This report is a follow-up to that study. An updated benchmark analysis has been conducted on 20 of the region’s largest companies.
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You are here: Home / *Articles of the Bound* / Thomas Ricks: Apologist for the Sins of David Petraeus
Thomas Ricks: Apologist for the Sins of David Petraeus
November 27, 2012, 1:40 pm by Cliff Kincaid 1 Comment
A former Washington Post reporter is excusing the secret sex life and lies of David Petraeus, the retired general who resigned in disgrace as Obama’s CIA director. Petraeus and his mistress Paul Broadwell are currently under investigation for unauthorized disclosure and possession of classified information.
Thomas E. Ricks, a veteran correspondent who covered the U.S. military for The Washington Post from 2000 through 2008, was invited on CNN on Sunday to blast the media for its coverage of the scandal. This reporter, who is now also a blogger, thinks the cover-up of the affair that was engineered by Petraeus and Broadwell was perfectly proper and that it was nobody else’s business what they were doing together.
But Stephen M. Walt, who is a colleague of Ricks at the journal Foreign Policy, has countered by noting the obvious: “In the world of intelligence, extramarital dalliances are dangerous because they create the obvious potential for blackmail. If some foreign intel service found out that a mid-level intelligence analyst or operative was cheating, they might be able to extract sensitive information by threatening to disclose the indiscretion.”
This is why the media must get to the bottom of the scandal in terms of whether Petraeus was blackmailed or pressured by someone in the Obama Administration or a foreign intelligence service.
The Ricks appearance on CNN was notable for his failure to explain why Petraeus changed his testimony regarding terrorist involvement in the attack on 9/11 that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Before his affair became public, when he was under pressure from Attorney General Eric Holder and the FBI, he had insisted that al-Qaeda was not involved. This was consistent with the Obama Administration line. After the scandal emerged and he was apparently free to speak the truth, he insisted that he knew it was al-Qaeda all along.
Ignoring all of this, Ricks was invited on Fox News on Monday, where he used the opportunity not to urge more reporting on the matter but to attack the channel as a “wing of the Republican Party” for trying to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi. Ricks called the murders of the four Americans, including the American Ambassador, a “small firefight” and complained that the killings of American security contractors in Iraq had not received adequate attention from the media.
Host Jon Scott was so taken aback that he abruptly ended the interview. He should have asked why on earth Ricks thinks an attack from an international terrorist organization amounts to a “small firefight.”
Ricks has made it plain that he believes the Obama Administration’s Benghazi cover-up is not a scandal, but that the media have gone too far in their coverage of the Petraeus scandal and should back off.
In fact, Ricks told CNN’s “Reliable Sources” program that Petraeus should have remained on the job rather than quit under pressure. “These were consenting adults engaged in private acts,” he said. “The lack of decency, I think, is kind of appalling to me. I mean, also the consequences of what’s happened to these people.”
Ricks was saying that the lack of decency was not on the part of Petraeus or his lover Paula Broadwell, both of whom are married and have children, but in the FBI uncovering this relationship and then the media covering it as a news story with national security implications.
He explained that Petraeus “was in a relationship with a consenting adult who was not in his chain of command. He’s hardly, I think, probably the first CIA director to have had an affair.”
Despite his sensational suggestion, Ricks didn’t name any other CIA director with a scandalous personal life who had an affair.
Fortunately, members of the public are not buying the effort to whitewash Petraeus.
In a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, John M. Dowd noted that Petraeus “violated his fidelity to his wife, breached his oath of office to his country, and was unfaithful to the West Point motto of ‘duty, honor, country.’ The general should have exited years ago when he lost control of himself and hubris took hold of him.”
Another letter writer, Ed Karkut, noted, “Why did the chief spy of the U.S., with all his schooling, training and exposure to the craft of spying, choose to use emails as a form of communication with his lover? Everyone knows that emails can be compromised. Yet Mr. Petraeus exposed his frailty as a human being, and this unfortunately led to his downfall.”
These letter writers displayed far more intelligence than Ricks, who told CNN’s “Reliable Sources” program host Howard Kurtz, “It’s a matter that should have remained private, first of all. It’s not a criminal act. There’s no allegation that he’s committed a crime here, as far as I know. You know, it could always change, more information could come out.”
As we noted in a recent column, the Post, which is Ricks’s and Kurtz’s old paper, has already documented that classified information was found in Broadwell’s possession and there is evidence that Petraeus ordered that she be given access to it. Ricks seemed unfamiliar with the facts of the case and Kurtz did not bother to point this out.
Kurtz, now with The Daily Beast, asked Ricks if he is an admirer of Petraeus. “Yes, and I remain so,” he said.
Ricks went on, “…I’m glad I’m no longer in ‘The Washington Post’ because I would have been pressured to cover this. I would have had to cover this.”
But he has covered it in his new job, as a blogger for Foreign Policy magazine, where he has complained about the coverage. He also says that he fears that the military brass will come to a number of questionable conclusions from the scandal, including that “You can be mediocre as long as you keep your pants on.”
He never explains why a good general like Petraeus could not keep his pants on.
Perhaps Ricks is embarrassed that he gave such a glowing review of Broadwell’s book. He wrote, “It is written with an insider’s lively understanding of the workings of today’s Army.” Indeed, Broadwell was a true insider.
Ricks added that the book, All In, about how Petraeus functioned as a military commander, “feels at times like we are sitting at his side in Afghanistan, reading his e-mails over his shoulder.”
Those emails in fact are what led to the Petraeus’ resignation.
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.
Filed Under: *Articles of the Bound*, *In the Searchlights*, *Solutions*, A War - Win It, Barack Obama, Collectivist Philosophies, Homegrown Enemies of Free America, How We Got Here, Investigations, Marxist Spotting, Militarily Weakening of America, Neo-Marxism Planned Mayhem Tagged With: Barack Hussein Obama II, Benghazi, Democrat, Marxism, Marxstream media, Military
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Clear to partly cloudy. Low 74F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph..
Clear to partly cloudy. Low 74F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph.
NEW MANAGEMENT: Canyon hires former UTSA coach Jim Blair
By Tucker Stephenson The Herald-Zeitung
Coming off its winningest season in more than a decade and loaded with talent due back in 2020, the Canyon baseball program entered the offseason looking like a powder keg of potential.
But an unforeseen question arose — who would guide the Cougars following the departure of Reagan Moczygemba?
That answer came recently when it was announced that Canyon had hired former UTSA associate head coach Jim Blair to take over the program. Blair just wrapped up his 11th full season with the Roadrunners and has spent the past two years as UTSA’s pitching coach and recruiting director.
In 2018, Blair’s pitching staff with the Roadrunners ranked at the top of Conference USA in earned runs allowed (193), opposing batting average (.236), runners picked off (16), extra-base hits (114), doubles (73) and home runs allowed (31). Those numbers were even more impressive when taken into consideration that the Roadrunners’ home park is known to be hitter-friendly.
Blair coached UTSA’s offense from 2013 to 2017. During the 2015 campaign, the Roadrunners led the conference in home runs (52) and stolen bases (68) while also finishing second in total runs scored (362) and doubles (118).
Blair began his coaching career with UTSA in 2002 and worked there until 2006. He returned to the Roadrunners in 2012 to join John Marshall’s staff.
Blair has also spent time at Dallas Baptist University and Sam Houston State University.
During his playing days, Blair was an outfielder for Baylor under head coach Steve Smith. He still holds the program record with a 31-game hitting streak and was an All-Big 12 performer prior to being signed to a free agent contract by the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Blair graduated from Sam Houston in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in education and later received his master’s degree in sport management in 2013 from SHSU.
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Canyon is set to welcome back three all-district selections next season — shortstop Austin Stracener, catcher Chance Reisdorph and pitcher Ethan Garcia.
CHS is hosting a meet and greet for Blair and his family from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. tonight in the Cougar Den.
Schlitterbahn celebrates 40th birthday, readies for new chapter (1)
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History of Parliament Online
Home Research > Members > 1790-1820 > SCOTT, John (1747-1819)
SCOTT, John (1747-1819), of Kinton, Salop and Bromley, Kent.
Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820, ed. R. Thorne, 1986
Available from Boydell and Brewer
Biography Detail
Offices Held
1790-1820 Members
1790-1820 Constituencies
1790-1820 Parliaments
1790-1820 Surveys
WEST LOOE
1790 - 22 Feb. 1793
b. 24 Oct. 1747, 1st s. of Jonathan Scott of Shrewsbury, Salop by Mary, da. of Humphrey Sandford of the Isle of Rossal, Salop. m. (1) 22 June 1772, Elizabeth (d. 26 Oct. 1796), da. of Alexander Blackrie of Bromley, 2s. 2da.; (2) 1796, Mary da. of Samuel Hughes of Seskin, co. Tipperary, 1s. 1da.; (3) 15 Oct. 1812, Harriet Pye née Bennett, wid. of one Esten, s.p. suc. cos. Richard Hill Waring and took additional name of Waring 17 Nov. 1798.
Cadet, E.I. Co. (Bombay) 1766; transferred to Bengal army, ensign 1767, lt. 1769; adj. 1 Bengal Eur. regt. 1774, capt. 1778; a.d.c. to Warren Hastings, Sept. 1778; res. 1781.
Sheriff, Cheshire 1801-2.
Scott had entered Parliament in 1784 as agent to Warren Hastings and had undertaken to present his patron’s case to the House of Commons and the public. In 1790 he paid John Cator* £4,000 for what was supposed to be a ‘quiet seat’ for Stockbridge, but lamented afterwards: ‘Had he any idea of having so much trouble he would have come in for the borough of Looe, rather than have connected himself with Mr Cator, who he found was so very obnoxious to many people’.1 He had himself been reprimanded by the Speaker, 28 May 1790, for publishing an article in Hastings’s favour disrespectful of the House of Commons.
Scott remained Hastings’s spokesman in the Parliament of 1790, until he was ousted from his seat in 1793. On 14 Feb. 1791 he rose to protest against the renewal of the impeachment, and for the benefit of new Members outlined the case for Hastings and, as a corollary, emphasized the flourishing state of Bengal under his administration. Frustrated, he joined other Members of the ‘Bengal squad’ in voting against Pitt on the Oczakov question, 12 Apr. 1791, and again on 1 Mar. 1792. He was listed ‘doubtful’ on the Test Act repeal question in 1791, and even went so far as to join the Friends of the People. But apart from a few words in opposition to the abolition of the slave trade, 19 Apr. 1791, he spoke only on Hastings and India. On 24 May 1791, unsuccessfully moving for Indian information, he claimed that Cornwallis had broken treaties with two nawabs, while Hastings was charged with the breach of only one: it was a point he laboured thereafter. On 27 May he advocated a speedy termination of Hastings’s trial in view of the cost to the public. He opposed compensation for Joseph Fowke, an East India Company officer whose cause was espoused by Edmund Burke, Hastings’s chief accuser, who made a point of ignoring Scott, 7 June.2 On 9 Feb. 1792 he opposed Francis’s motion for investigation of Cornwallis’s campaigns in India while war continued there. On 7 Mar. he secured an account of the expenses of Hastings’s trial but, as he anticipated, was snubbed by Pitt when he moved a scrutiny of them, 5 Apr., and found no support. He denied that Cornwallis’s Indian campaigns were expensive, 15 Mar. 1792, and, 5 June, remarked upon Henry Dundas’s repeatedly bringing in Indian budgets which showed the prosperity of a province Hastings was supposed to have plundered. Hastings was the subject of his last speech before he was unseated, 11 Feb. 1793.
When Hastings was finally acquitted in 1795 and the time came for a financial settlement, Scott gave the heads of his expenditure as: sums to authors, printers, newspapers, booksellers, India House clerks and the House of Commons (this last not enlarged upon, but presumably referring to clerical work undertaken by officials of the House). In addition there was the cost of his election for Stockbridge, of the subsequent petition and what he described as his own extra expenses. By these he meant the cost of supporting himself in London since Hastings’s return from India in 1785, which he reckoned at £1,400 a year. Altogether his bill came to £21,840, of which Hastings had already paid £4,700. The remainder Scott had either met out of his own resources or with money borrowed on his personal credit. When this had been repaid him, Scott calculated that his own fortune would be restored to the £19,540 with which he had returned from India. Though Hastings was evidently taken aback by the size of Scott’s bill, he seems to have paid it in full.
Scott’s expectations did not end there. After Hastings’s acquittal and his acceptance of a handsome grant from the East India Company, he took the view that as he had been prepared to share Hastings’s ruin so also he might expect to profit from his vindication. The reasonableness of this claim was reinforced, he felt, by the fact that Mrs Hastings’s fortune was much larger than was generally believed, larger even than Hastings himself had given Pitt and Dundas to understand. Scott was in a good position to know this, for he had been entrusted by Mrs Hastings with £12,000 of her own fortune and was aware that an even larger sum was held by another trustee. Would it not, he now suggested, save trouble and embarrassment all round if he were simply to retain this £12,000 as his own remuneration? The correspondence does not indicate whether this suggestion was accepted by Hastings, but it may be inferred from the continuing cordiality of their relationship that the final settlement was not unsatisfactory to Scott.3
With the conclusion of the trial the need of a seat in Parliament for Scott disappeared and he was not interested in remaining in the House on his own account, though he was thought to be a candidate for Stafford in 1795. He maintained an interest in Indian affairs and published occasional pamphlets, notably on the question of sending missionaries to India which was eagerly canvassed by the evangelicals in 1812-13 and which Scott strongly opposed. He died 5 May 1819.
Ref Volumes: 1790-1820
Author: Brian Murphy
1. PP, xxxviii. 779; see STOCKBRIDGE.
2. Add. 39882, f. 54; Morning Chron. 31 Mar. 1791; Burke Corresp. vi. 276; vii. 109.
3. Add. 29174, f. 137; 29194, ff. 7, 58.
© Crown copyright and The History of Parliament Trust 1964-2019
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The ART of Getting Pregnant: Benefits vs Risks of Artificial Reproductive Therapy
Assistive (Artificial) Reproductive Technology (Therapy) (ART) is the modern way for women who desire children but are unable to become pregnant can have their wish fulfilled. But as Annie Janvier, BSc, MD, PhD writes in her article “Jumping to Premature Conclusions” in the October 2008 issue of Virtual Mentor there are both financial and human health risks to the way ART is practiced in the United States and Canada. It is all related to the incidence of multiple births and premature births associated with ART leading to the need for neonatal intensive care management and incidence of complications and permanent disabilities of the premature infants. The risks are also related to the tendency for women to wait to their later years to try to become pregnant because of the need for job income and difficulty in managing both a profession and becoming a mother. It is then in these later years that women turn to ART to become pregnant and because of their older age, multiple births and the tendency toward premature deliveries complications arise for both the mother and the babies. Dr. Janvier writes “When a woman decides to have children in early adulthood, does the government provide generous maternity leave, social and economic support for their education, and subsidized, universal childcare services when the child is young? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Society rewards performance, work, and wealth, creating an incentive to delay childbearing. The same women who would receive very limited financial incentives were they to become pregnant at an earlier age when the risks of prematurity were lower end up paying for expensive ART services years later and increasing their risks.”
One of the issues that Dr. Janvier points out is that there is a tendency for multiple embryo transfer in invitro fertilization (IVF) procedures in order to increase the possibility of at least one live birth more promptly so as to avoid the expense (related in part to physician financial self-interests) and physical burdens of repeated attempts. She writes that she “calculated that 17 percent of [neonatal intensive care unit] admissions were multiple gestations following ART. Most of these could have been avoided by rigorously controlling the clinical practices relating to the treatment of infertility. It's easy to envision a public policy to decrease multiple births. Unlike Canada and the United States, some countries—Sweden, Belgium, Finland, and Denmark, for example—regulate and reimburse ART services. In these countries, single-embryo transfer during IVF is the norm. Where financial conflicts of interest related to ART are avoided, patients and physicians seem far less willing to take the unnecessary risk of multiple births in order to become pregnant as quickly as possible. Having children with the least risk for the mother and infant seems to be the morally responsible position.”
Please go to Virtual Mentor and read the entire article and express your opinions here as to the merits of women postponing pregnancy until later years at which time they may need ART to become pregnant. I would also like to read about your views of societal demands on women and the need for change in the way ART is performed and paid for in the United States and Canada as examples. ..Maurice.
Choosing Doctors: Older vs Younger: Who Will Treat You Better?
If you have the chance to pick your own doctor and not many of us have such a chance in this HMO world, who would you pick to manage your health? Who would treat you better, an older doctor or the younger one who is a few years out from final training? And what does “treat” mean? Does that mean more humanistic and sensitive to your concerns or does that mean able to make the diagnosis and begin the treatment more promptly and effectively---or both? Does the additional years of experience which the older doctor includes in his or her medical armamentarium make up for any of the more recent formal medical education which the younger doctor carries?
Researchers have studied this issue and a summary review of the studies was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine 15 February 2005 Volume 142 Issue 4 Pages 260-273. The article titled “Systematic Review: The Relationship between Clinical Experience and Quality of Health Care” by Niteesh K. Choudhry, MD; Robert H. Fletcher, MD, MSc; and Stephen B. Soumerai, ScD. Go to the above link to read the full article, however here is the abstract:
Background: Physicians with more experience are generally believed to have accumulated knowledge and skills during years in practice and therefore to deliver high-quality care. However, evidence suggests that there is an inverse relationship between the number of years that a physician has been in practice and the quality of care that the physician provides.
Purpose: To systematically review studies relating medical knowledge and health care quality to years in practice and physician age.
Data Sources: English-language articles in MEDLINE from 1966 to June 2004 and reference lists of retrieved articles.
Study Selection: Studies that provided empirical results about knowledge or a quality-of-care outcome and included years since graduation or physician age as explanatory variables.
Data Extraction: We categorized studies on the basis of the nature of the association between years in practice or age and performance.
Data Synthesis: Overall, 32 of the 62 (52%) evaluations reported decreasing performance with increasing years in practice for all outcomes assessed; 13 (21%) reported decreasing performance with increasing experience for some outcomes but no association for others; 2 (3%) reported that performance initially increased with increasing experience, peaked, and then decreased (concave relationship); 13 (21%) reported no association; 1 (2%) reported increasing performance with increasing years in practice for some outcomes but no association for others; and 1 (2%) reported increasing performance with increasing years in practice for all outcomes. Results did not change substantially when the analysis was restricted to studies that used the most objective outcome measures.
Limitations: Because of the lack of reliable search terms for physician experience, reports that provided relevant data may have been missed.
Conclusions: Physicians who have been in practice longer may be at risk for providing lower-quality care. Therefore, this subgroup of physicians may need quality improvement interventions.
Worrisome is the following extract from the full article:
Seven studies present data on the relationship between number of years in practice and actual health outcomes. The strongest of these was conducted by Norcini and colleagues, who analyzed mortality for 39 007 hospitalized patients with acute myocardial infarction managed by 4546 cardiologists, internists, and family practitioners. After controlling for a patient's probability of death, hospital location and practice environment, physician specialty, board certification, and the volume of patients seen, these researchers observed a 0.5% (SE, 0.27%) increase in mortality for every year since the treating physician had graduated from medical school.
So there you are with either taking what you get or having a chance to choose. And if you had that chance to choose, what criteria, to you, would be most important? Would the doctor’s age be most important or if not, what? Write about your own experiences in this regard but please don’t name names. ..Maurice.
Graphic: Classic illustrations of physicians, cropped by me for this thread.
Ethical Dilemmas about Economic Aid, Kidney Transplant and Attempted Suicide
Here are some additional ethical dilemmas that I would hope my visitors would take as a challenge to find the best decision. ..Maurice.
1) A first-world nation offers to give a third-world nation equivalent of millions of dollars to provide services and medication to HIV/AIDS victims but with the proviso that 50% of the money is to be used solely for sexual abstinence education programs. That 50% could currently be readily used to enlarge the service and medication programs to cover a greater area and population of the HIV/AIDS patients. What is the ethical conflict here and should the third-world country accept the humanitarian economic aid as stated?
2) Two brothers each have a congenital kidney disease and they are both in the end-stage kidney failure. Both are critically ill at the same time and both need the one donated kidney which is currently available. One brother is rich and can readily pay for the transplant but has a long history of criminal activity including fraud. The other brother is poor, dependent upon the State to pay for his medical care but has never engaged in criminal activity. To which brother should the transplant surgeons provide that kidney?
3) A man has hung himself in his jail cell in an apparent suicide attempt. He was rescued in time to transfer him to a hospital and the intensive care unit. The lack of oxygen has caused what the neurologists say is irreversible severe brain damage but the patient can still breathe on his own and therefore is not “brain dead”. However the patient may never regain consciousness. The family tells the hospital doctors that if he can’t regain consciousness, he should not be given medications to keep him alive and that if his heart stops, the hospital staff should not try to resuscitate him. However, the hospital has religious directives which dictate that the hospital should never aid and abet a suicide. The hospital’s administration tells the family that if the hospital followed the family’s request, the hospital would be going against that religious directive. A hospital ethics committee meeting was held with the family, physicians and administration representatives. What should the ethics committee advise?
GRAPHIC: My ArtRage painting modified with Picasa (Google)
Hope: “Nothing but the Paint on the Face of Existence”
Lord Byron wrote: “But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.”
Not all hope is that grim. Hope is a complex mental process which affects our interpretation of the evidence about ourselves or others. Hope leads us in the direction of some decision. Without hope, there would be no basis to make certain decisions which might change an outcome to our benefit or those of others. But hope has to arise from and be based on evidence-based information to be of value.
False hope, created by misinterpretation of the facts or by receiving information which is without basis in reality, though initially may be supportive to the individual eventually becomes destructive by delaying or preventing the individual to consider all the options still available or the taking of other essential supportive actions.
Though hope is something that can affect our decisions and our feelings about control and accomplishment in various aspects of our lives, hope is an important element in disease and the patient’s management of their disease. Hope plays an important role in most any disease for which treatments are inconsistent in outcome and the consequences are disabling or fatal. Of course, such a disease can be cancer.
Hope, as may be present in a cancer patient, can continue throughout the illness until the patient recognizes that a hoped for cure has become hopeless. Hopelessness may not be accepted by the patient if the patient is awaiting a miracle.
Miracles in the practice of medicine represent clinical responses to hope which are fully unexpected by professional experience or by scientific explanation. When they do occur, they can be explained by scientifically unknown factors in the progression of the disease or occasionally by a misdiagnosis. Unfortunately, waiting for miracles, especially with cancer patients, can lead to making wrong decisions, undergoing unnecessary procedures and treatments, and unnecessarily prolonging the period of suffering before finally accepting hospice management with attention to maintaining palliative comfort care rather than further attempts at a cure.
Recognition of hopelessness at some point must be made for the patient to have the opportunity to finally accept and act on that prognosis both for practical reasons but also to attempt to establish emotional peace.
I would be most interested reading my visitors’ experiences regarding the matter of hope in medical illness, miracles, false hope and hopelessness as experienced by themselves or by family members or friends. ..Maurice.
Graphic: Photograph taken by myself and digitally modified.
Ethical Analysis:Sperm and the Pregnant Dead vs The Politics of Healthcare
Clinical ethicists have discussed issues such as who owns the sperm taken from a deceased husband or what should be done about the fetus of a woman who is pregnant but also brain dead. Some feel that these earnest and analytical discussions about rare events are a waste of intellectual activity by these professionals and that there are far greater social issues that demand the attention of their reasoning. Others may feel that these social issues framed by political viewpoints are purely political and is a discipline separate from ethics.
On the other hand, some like Randy Cohen writing in the March 21 2002 issue of The Nation with the title “The Politics of Ethics” finds ethics and politics related as he writes:
“…the difference between ethics and politics seems to me artificial, if there is a significant difference at all. Sometimes the distinction is a matter of scale. If one guy robs you, it's ethics, but when 435 people rob you, it's politics--or the House of Representatives is in session. But surely the deliberations of that body are subject to ethical analysis. What's more, politics can be a necessary expression of ethics. Often the only way to achieve an individual ethical goal is through group endeavor--i.e., politics.”
In these current days, within the United States, of political discourse within the media and on “Main street”, it may be wise for clinical ethicists not to remain publicly silent with regard to their views of the propositions presented by the political candidates and their parties of important social issues such as the provision of healthcare but to dissect and explain their understanding of the ethics related to them. In the long run, such critical analysis may be of greater import to us all than fretting about sperm or the pregnant dead. What do you think? ..Maurice.
Your Wisdom vs Conventional Wisdom in Medical Ethics: Speak Up!
I have repeatedly stated on this blog that I felt that those who visit here and even those who don't all have views of medical ethics which when expressed are as valuable to consider as those presented by bioethicists. With that in mind, I am eager to present on my blog an exercise to discover what my visitors think about a number of "settled" issues in medical ethics which represent the "norms" or "conventional wisdom" and which physicians use as the guideposts for the management of their patients. There is also "conventional wisdom" markers for medical researchers and the overseeing Institutional Review Boards (IRB).
Franklin C. Miller and Robert D. Truog, writing in the July 2008 issue of the American Journal of Bioethics "An Apology for Socratic Bioethics" discuss the issue whether bioethicists should always go along with the "conventional wisdom" guideposts, often bearing practical values in medical ethics, but instead challenge the norms with a more philosophic analysis of the issues. The authors do suggest that this sort of challenge might end up degrading those practical benefits to the patients.
Here is the exercise. I have extracted from the article a list of examples of medical ethics "conventional wisdom" statements which are recognized and considered by physicians and researchers. Take one or more of them and let us know whether you approve of this medical ethical norm or whether your wisdom suggests something different. I look forward toward your responses. ..Maurice.
About Death and Dying
A. There is no valid ethical distinction between withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.
B. Intentionally causing death (killing) is wrong; letting patients die is permissible.
C. It is unethical to deliberately hasten death but permissible to provide palliative treatment that risks hastening death under the doctrine of "double effect".
D. Brain death equals death.
E. The removal of vital organs should never be the proximate cause of death of an organ donor. ("Dead Donor Rule")
F. No patient should be randomized to a treatment known to be inferior (clinical equipoise)
G. Financial payments to research participants are morally suspect because they may be "coercive" or consitute "undue inducement."
H. Financial payment to research subjects is not a benefit to be counted in risk-benefit assessment by IRBs.
Four Elements in Statistics and Their Importance in Ethics of Medical Care
You may wonder why any patient should concern themselves with the statistical terms of specificity, sensitivity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value. I would say to become educated in these four statistical elements can be more meaningful and useful to the patient than the education provided by direct to consumer drug advertising. Drug companies might disagree with me but then educating the public in order to think about, even by those who don't need it, and perhaps get prescribed their new drug is the drug company's primary goal. Educating the public about these statistical elements has no associated conflict of interest and is of importance to all the public.
Back to the statistical elements: Patients are frequently being ordered and submitting to tests and procedures which are designed to help make a diagnosis or provide some scientific basis for appropriate therapy. And this is where the need for not only understanding but finding the data to support these tests is essential for the ordering physician but also should be essential for the patient on the receiving end to be aware. After all, tests and procedures are often expensive but also may take up the patient’s time. Tests and procedures may be invasive to the patient and there occasionally may be a unwanted reaction. Tests and procedures may unexpectedly turn up results that suggest some abnormality not initially considered but later after more tests, more cost, more risk that abnormality was a mistaken impression,not related to the disorder under investigation and was never present in the first place. And finally, with regard to that disorder under investigation, the test or procedure may provide the wrong answer. The disease will be determined as confirmed as present but it really is not present but is a false positive. The disease can also be confirmed as absent but it really is not absent but just missed by the testing and becomes a false negative.
Before the doctor ordering and the patient accepting most tests, both have to understand the significance of the test in the four different statistical elements:
Sensitivity-how sensitive is the test to correctly detect the disease if the disease is actually present?
Specificity-how specific is the test to correctly determine that the disease is absent when it is actually absent.
Positive predictive value- Considering how common the disease is in the population, what are the chances that a positive test result will be correct for a specific patient.
Negative predictive value-Considering how common the disease is in the population, what are the chances that a negative test result will be correct for a specific patient.
What does this all have to do with medical ethics? These days, patients are endowed with the ethical principle of autonomy. They should have the opportunity through information provided by the physician and elsewhere to make their own final medical decisions including the acceptance of tests or procedures for diagnosis. Yes, the physician should be aware of the statistical value of the tests or procedures, he or she advises and should provide some education to the patient regarding the basis and value of such tests. Of course, it is not expected that the patient will have the same education and background experience of the doctor to evaluate any particular test. On the other hand, patients should be aware of the factors that the physician should be considering before giving advice which should include the statistical value of the test (as delineated above) which is part of the benefit but also the risks and burdens involved for the patient such as including side-effects and financial costs and the errors of the test. If a patient is educated about these four statistical factors, the patient can then have some understanding as to what to ask the doctor about the tests if the benefit and risks are still not fully understood by the patient in making their autonomous decision. It’s all about ethics and there is even more.
Beyond autonomy involved in decisions about tests is justice and the use of scarce resources and one of the scarce resources is the cost of medical care in the United States as an example. The statistical elements I have described play an even more important role in this regard when considering screening tests and exams where there are large numbers of the public being screened who do not have the disease being screened or when the significance of the disease with regard to life span or symptoms is trivial in certain segments of the population to be tested. Is there real benefit to the population for screening? Or do the statistical elements and the nature of the disease make for waste of health care dollars, time, physical risks and discovery of disorders which are not present but require additional testing to find that they are false positives?
All patients who are interested in making truly informed consent or dissent, should go to the British Medical Journal Sept. 27 2003 and read the article “Understanding sensitivity and specificity with the right side of the brain” by Tze-Wey Loong where with graphics, Loong helps the reader understand all four statistical elements.
I hope I have shown the importance of some knowledge of simple statistical analysis for all patients and suggest, with that knowledge, patients should consider challenging their physicians if the there is some question about the advised tests or procedures. If you disagree, write your comments here. ..Maurice.
Graphic: Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), Print Collection, Reynolds Historical Library.
Patient Modesty: Volume 6
AS OF DECEMBER 17 2008 THIS THREAD WILL BE CLOSED FOR ALL COMMENTS. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WRITE ANY FURTHER COMMENTS HERE. PLEASE GO TO "PATIENT MODESTY: VOLUME7" TO CONTINUE COMMENTS. ..Maurice.
Graphic: Photograph of a statue in the statue garden of the Getty Museum, Los Angeles June 2007 and modified by me with ArtRage.
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New Maps created by BITS Summer 09 Participants
BITS Summer Intensive Program focused on helping high school students from Philadelphia to examine local environmental and economic concerns. One technology task that students engaged was to create maps to represent places they visited, described and depicted with photographs, reports, podcasts, and projects. Below are a collection of maps created by BITS participants throughout the summer.
The Next Generation of Bikes group created two maps. The first, shown to the left, illustrates the setting and specific locations of bike racks throughout Temple University's main campus. The second, shown below, depicts the locations of bike repair shops throughout Philadelphia. The project was part of an internship with Temple University's new Bike Temple program that aims to provide Temple students and staff with low cost bikes, resources to repair bikes, and information about safe bike commuting. A highlight of the summer program was participating in group rides to make assess locations and paths that foster safe commuting throughout campus.
Bike Repair Shops in Philadelphia
The Ebony Past to Present group worked in Temple University's Blockson Collection all summer reviewing and reporting from Ebony Magazine archives. The students focused on innovators and artists featured in the series. Students created a map that showed locations where innovations featured in Ebony first appeared. The markers are noted with information about the key figures related to the innovations; and the markers are color coded to reflect the type of innovation featured on the map.
The Environmental Research Forum group created this map depicting locations on Temple University's Main Campus where the BITS Program was held throughout the summer. Locations featured on the map have photographs taken by students, along with brief notes about environmental themes in those settings. This group reported on all of the green internship and program initiatives throughout the summer.
We're pretty excited here at the corner of Broad and Oxford Streets. Over the last few weeks, we've watched the final demo of the old strip mall Progress Plaza to make way for the new and LONG promised grocery store in North Philadelphia.
Progress Plaza has a long and storied history on North Broad Street. Progress Plaza, the brain child of Leon Sullivan, a Baptist minster, civil right leader and social activist, was the nation's first black-owned and developed shopping center.
It has served as a field trip for the students involved in ITSRG's BITS program as they explore and document their community. One of the students favorite stories about Progress Plaza has been how the Leon Sullivan got the project started in the 1960s.
Sullivan suggested the development of the strip mall to address two major needs he saw in the community. First, the need for black-owned businesses and the need for jobs.
The story goes that when Sullivan approached the chairman of the bank to request a construction loan. He was told that Sullivan needed some equity and to, "think about it," and come back in two, three of four years. Sullivan then presented the chairman with $400,000 in cash raised from the community.
The shocked bank chairman quickly changed his story and told Sullivan he could work with him. The strip mall opened to the community in 1968 and has been home to a variety of stores and community services since its opening.
The story always brings a smile and a laugh to the students faces and a new appreciation for the plaza and the sometimes hidden treasures found in North Philadelphia.
Today, Progress Plaza is currently undergoing a 16-million dollar renovation. The plaza is soon to be anchored by a 42-thousand square foot Fresh Grocer. Earlier this year, it served as a campaign stop for President Obama.
ITSRG - Temple
The Park(ing) Day Geographies Conversation Continues
In his Stuff White People Like blog, humorist and cultural critic (to use both terms rather loosely) Christian Lander sarcastically sings the praises of 'raising awareness.’ Tongue held firmly in cheek, Lander defines ‘awareness’ as ‘the process of making other people aware of problems, and then magically someone else like the government will fix it.’
Now, awareness isn’t all bad; in fact, it really is an important thing, an essential component to any kind of major movement for change. Lander’s point, and my own, is that awareness in isolation is pretty useless. A nice gesture, sure, but so was that 'Mission Accomplished’ banner we had flying over in the Persian Gulf a few years ago—and we all know how well that worked out.
National PARK(ing) Day, as it currently exists, is all about raising awareness. It’s a powerful communication tool, taking advantage of the high visibility of its PARKs to help engender a re-imagination of the urban landscape. And to that extent, it’s fantastic. The way a message is communicated is often as valuable as the message itself (as any post-Inconvenient Truth convert to climate change activism will no doubt confirm for you), and a PARK is a pretty memorable medium.
The problem, however, is that communication—even especially effective communication—can only get you so far. The message matters, obviously, but so do the various uses to which that message is put.
Ostensibly, PARK(ing) Day is supposed to be about making our cities greener, and thereby more livable. For a number of the participants in Philadelphia’s PARK(ing) Day, however, making our cities greener means making them more money. Of approximately 35 “official” participants in PARK(ing) Philly, more than fifteen were architecture, landscape architecture, design or engineering firms for whom “the greening of Philadelphia” also means the greening of their wallets. While it’s not my place to say whether the various national and international firms that participated in Philadelphia’s PARK(ing) Day truly did so altruistically, it’s also impossible to deny that for such firms, a purely monetary interest in greener cities most definitely does exist.
Whether or not much of Philadelphia’s “official” PARK(ing) Day event (organized, it must be noted, by the American Institute of Architects) violated the philosophical spirit of PARK(ing) Day, numerous aesthetic violations most definitely did occur, as “official” participants dispensed with possibly the most poetic aspect of a real PARK(ing) Day celebration—the meter itself.
Talking the Parking Authority into extending the two-hour time limit on a space is one thing; talking the Parking Authority into actually bagging off the meters is entirely another. As if the corporatization of Philadelphia’s PARK(ing) Day hadn’t done enough to kill off the anarchic spirit of the initial event, the AIA and PPA felt it was necessary to deliver this coup de grace. Working within the law to perform an act the legal establishment might not necessarily love (but can’t legally do anything about) is different from asking the same legal establishment to allow you, just this once, to “break” the law—with official sanction. It’s like shoplifting something you’ve already paid for: for all intents and purpose, an empty gesture.
Later in his entry on ‘awareness,’ Lander makes another interesting point: ‘Raising awareness is also awesome because once you raise awareness to an acceptable, arbitrary level, you can just back off and say, “Bam! did my part. Now it’s your turn. Fix it.”’ The humor in Lander’s statement, unfortunately, stems from its truth. For many of its participants, PARK(ing) Day 2008 is likely to be an isolated event; awareness raised, they can now go back to living their lives, and perhaps expecting a little more business to trickle in as a result of their “involvment.”
For the Temple students involved in this event, however, September 19th was just the beginning of a process about more than just “awareness.” It’s about investment, it’s about involvement, it’s about imagining our future.
And we’re not poised to make a cent out of the whole thing.
Peter A. Chomko
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Justice Everywhere
a blog about justice in public affairs
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Brazil’s Elections & The Defeat of Political Liberalism
By Murilo Gaspardo (Guest Author)
On 22 October, 2018
In Democracy
The outcome of the October 7th Brazil elections meant a wide defeat of the Workers’ Party (PT), of the Brazilian Social Democracy’s Party (PSDB) and of many traditional political leaders. Jair Bolsonaro and other candidates who presented themselves as outsiders were the winners. However, politics is not only made by people, but also by ideas. Which of them were defeated?
Certainly it was not Socialism or Bolivarianism, for they were not in dispute. Neither were the culture of tolerance with corruption or the physiologism: there is more evidence that a shift will take place on this phenomenon in Brazil rather than disappear – no longer the political parties, but interest groups (agribusiness, Evangelical Christian Churches, financial elites, weapons industry etc.) will have the leading role. In fact, the great ideas that were defeated are those of political liberalism.
Built over the Enlightenment ideals of individuals’ dignity and reason, as well as freedom and equality, through the writings of Locke, Kant, Tocqueville, and others, political liberalism consists in the submission of State power to the law, the supremacy of Human Rights, the mediation of social conflicts through institutions (political representation, Judicial Power etc.).
It is true that such ideas were never fully materialized in Brazil, due to our colonial past, the heritage of slavery, the patrimonialism (for more detail see Bonavides, 2004, Faoro, 2000, Holanda, 1956) and the persistence of deep inequality (on which see Souza, 2009), but there was an improvement process in progress (despite corruption) since the 1988 Constitution. Nevertheless, in these elections we observe: the empire of fake news; the ruling of passions and religious fundamentalism; the belief in the resolution of national issues through violence; the denial of reason, Science and public policy proposals based on evidence; the relativization of Human Rights; the personalities prevailing over the institutions.
To understand what is happening in Brazil, it is necessary to initially consider the context of worldwide challenge to political liberalism and the global crisis of liberal democracy. The Brexit in the UK, the election and the government of Donald Trump in the US and the rise of radical right-wing parties in Italy, Sweden and Austria elections are strong examples of this phenomenon (for more on this see Held, 2016, Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018). Three common elements must be highlighted:
(1) the inability of the political elites (both from right and left-wing) to address the economic issues, especially the unemployment, the decrease of household income, the growing inequality, and other threats, particularly the terrorism in Europe and in the US and the urban violence in Brazil (where there is a growing support by the public opinion of the radicalization of mass incarceration, the “war on drugs” policy and the unrestricted possession of weapons by citizens);
(2) the protagonism of social medias (WhatsApp, Facebook etc.) in the political debate. If, on one hand, these medias increase the access to diverse sources of information and expand the possibilities for people to express themselves and mobilize others in public spaces; on the other hand, they facilitate exponentially the spread of fake news, discourage in-depth reflection, encapsulate individuals in their own beliefs, restrict opportunities for contradiction (domain of memes and algorithms) and reduce the power of opinions grounded on scientific data and rational arguments;
(3) the disengagement of neoliberalism and of financial elites with democracy – for them, the important is the free capital flow, as they consider insignificant if in order to do so, it would require an authoritarian leader who will adopt austerity policies to protect the interests of financial capital to the detriment of the poorest people. In Brazil, for example, Jair Bolsonaro is receiving a broad majority support from bankers and financial investors.
On the other hand, Brazilian defeat of political liberalism has three particular features:
(1) the vast corruption and the side effects of “Car Wash” operation delegitimize the whole political system, which opens the door for a populist and authoritarian outsider – who, in fact, is not a typical outsider (Bolsonaro has been a Congressman for 27 years). PT and PSDB were not able to carry out their self-criticism and to offer satisfactory answers to address people’s demands. In addition, they were more concerned with protecting their leaders (especially the former President Lula and the former candidate to Presidency Aécio Neves) than to reach an agreement to preserve the democratic order.
(2) there is a middle-class discontent with the governments around the World. But if in Europe and in the US, the immigrants are blamed for the economic problems by the radical right-wing leaders, in Brazil, we observe a nuisance created in sectors of the middle class with the insufficient (but important) reduction of inequality during PT’s governments – people from poorer social classes started to gain ground in the universities, qualified labor market, leisure opportunities etc.;
(3) there is a great growth of Evangelical Christian Churches in progress, which are presenting a large influence in the electoral debate with their moral guidelines (for example, the defense of “traditional family” and “traditional values”) and political power over their faithful and the whole society;
From a superficial point of view, it seems that Brazil’s elections are entailing the defeat of the corrupt political elites. However, what is truly taking place is the defeat of important normative values and of a governance structure that is owed to all members of society: the political liberalism. It is a worldwide phenomenon that Brazil is not immune to, albeit with its peculiarities.
A final warning: crowds may even overthrow governments and elect populist leaders, but the exercise of government and the democratic mediation of social conflicts depend on institutions anchored in the values of political liberalism.
In-text references
Bonavides, P. (2004). História Constitucional do Brasil. Brasília: OAB.
Faoro, R. (2000). Os donos do poder: formação do patronato político brasileiro. 10a. ed.. São Paulo: Globo.
Held, D.(2016). Global Politics After 9/11. Durham: Global Policy Journal.
Holanda, S. B. (1956). Raízes do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: J. Olympio.
Levitsky, S. & Ziblatt, D. (2018). Como as democracias morrem. Trad. Renado Aguiar. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.
Souza, J. (2009). Ralé Brasileira – Quem é e como Vive. Belo Horizonte: UFMG.
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Professor Andrew Walton (Newcastle University) for him preview comments, as well as Ana Clara Tristão (UNESP Postgraduate Student) for the review of this piece. Naturally, all opinions and possible mistakes are the sole responsibility of the author.
Murilo Gaspardo (Guest Author)
Brazilian, 35 years. Dean of the School of Human and Social Sciences of São Paulo State University (UNESP) – Campus of Franca – SP – Brazil. Professor of State Theory and Political Science. PhD in Law by University of São Paulo (USP).
Lectureships at Newcastle Politics Department: Information & Applications
Conference Announcement: ASPP Annual Conference 2019
Pierre-Etienne Vandamme
Thank you for this analysis of this worrying defeat.
What seems new, from an EU perspective, is this strange alliance of populism and overt neoliberalism. In Europe, it seems to me that populism is usually associated with protectionism, but it doesn’t seem to be the case with Bolsonaro, right? Does it mean that Brazilian voters don’t blame globalization for their fate? That they are not that afraid of free markets?
murilo gaspardo
Yes, in my opinion you are right. Brazilian voters don’t blame globalization and free markets, but corruption.
This blog explores issues of justice and injustice in all areas of public, political, social, economic, and personal life. It is run by a cooperative of political theorists and philosophers with a diverse array of interests.
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The road to peace in Afghanistan goes through Kashmir
Washington, D.C. June 8, 2014. “The freedom struggle in Jammu & Kashmir has passed through its transformation from armed struggle to a non-violent mass movement. This non-violent, indigenous and peaceful struggle needs to be recognized and strengthened by the world powers.” This was stated by Barrister Sultan Mahmood Choudhary, former Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir and Senior Leader of Pakistan Peoples Party – Azad Kashmir while addressing the press and community leaders in Springfield, Virginia.
Barrister added that the international community has maintained silence at the unending atrocities, which the people of Kashmir are facing on daily basis. The international community seems to forget about Kashmir in the midst of everything that happens in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The world powers should know that there would be no peace in Afghanistan until there is a solution of the Kashmir conflict. The road to peace in Afghanistan goes through Kashmir.
Barrister Sultan urged India to positively respond to Pakistan’s sincere efforts and willingness for a peaceful settlement on all issues through composite dialogue, including the Kashmir dispute. He added that Kashmiris are the real sufferers and unless they are taken on board no such process can make any headway. He underlined it was imperative that self-determination be granted to the people of Jammu and Kashmir to maintain peace and stability in the region.
Barrister believed that the leadership of Jammu and Kashmir should be associated with the India-Pakistan dialogue, adding that only Kashmiris had the right to decide the future of their territory. He said that the people of Occupied Kashmir should know that they are not alone in their struggle. The people and leadership of Azad Kashmir stand by them.
Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Secretary General, World Kashmir Awareness said that the resolution of the Kashmir issue was essential to create an environment of peace and security in the region of South Asia. He added that the willingness of Pakistan and India to intensify their efforts to settle the Kashmir dispute would prove fruitless unless the two governments directly involved the Kashmiri leadership in the negotiations to peacefully resolve the dispute over Kashmir.
He added that a sincere and serious effort towards a just settlement of the Kashmir dispute must squarely take into account the ground realities and fully respond to the people’s rights involved in it. India and Pakistan need to know that any peace process that ignores the wishes of the people of Kashmir will not only prove to be an exercise in futility but can also cause incalculable human and political damage. Fai underscored that the Kashmiri American community is prepared to help in the initiation of a credible negotiating process between all parties concerned, i.e., Governments of India & Pakistan and the leadership of the people of Kashmir.
The host committee included, Sardar Zarif Khan, Sardar Zulfiqar Khan and Sardar Zubair Khan.
Significance of Kashmiri Martyrs’ Day
articles • Culture • Editorial • Events • Featured • History • History Of Conflict • History Of Kashmir • Human Rights • Info Page • Kashmir Conflict • Lastest News • Latest News
KASHMIR’S PRESS UNDER THREAT
Re-designing JK Nomenclature & article 370
Why Iran's intriguing silence on Kashmir?
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Rusty & Bob Erlam at a Yukon Foundation Dinner 1980.
Bob Erlam
Bob Erlam belongs in the Yukon’s colourful five percent. As one time owner of the Whitehorse Star, he has to be. With Bob Erlam, the ideas just kept coming. More often than not, they were offbeat stories with a strange twist. More on that in a moment.
Bob and his wife Rusty arrived in the Yukon in 1947. He had been in the Canadian Army overseas during the Second World War. On a whim, he and Rusty decided to move to the Yukon. Whitehorse was a real frontier town then, and they shared a two-bedroom shack with two other couples in downtown Whitehorse. No running water, of course.
Bob got odd jobs - mainly as a handyman and electrician. The couple left the Yukon in 1957, but returned in the early 60s. Bob’s newspaper career began when he drew a cartoon featuring a dispute between a local resident and Yukon Electric and left it tacked to the door of the newspaper. The Star owner, Harry Boyle ran the cartoon on the front page. Bob became hooked on newspapers though his wife Rusty was the real writer in the family. Both were employed by Boyle at the Star.
In 1963, Bob arrived at work one day to find a note from Boyle saying he was now in charge since Harry was going back to school to study law. Bob became the publisher and then in 1967, the Erlam’s bought the Star.
Bob always carried his camera and shot many scenes of Yukon life during his 35 years as publisher of the paper.
In 1965, he was contracted by Time Magazine to take photos of Senator Robert Kennedy’s climb of the Yukon's Mount Kennedy,named for his brother, the late U.S. president. He was also a jack of all trades - fixing the printing presses and keeping the spartan offices of the Star on Main Street operational - often with duct tape. The one thing he didn’t do, though, was a lot of writing. He said he couldn’t spell so anything attributed to him as a writer had been checked by Rusty.
Bob always thought of the Star as the opposition to the government. He said it was the job of the newspaper to criticize and expose wrongdoing, and Bob was a champion of independent thinking.
Once, as the debate raged over whether parking meters should be located on Main Street, the City hired a meter maid to police the system and hand out tickets. Bob hired an anti-meter maid to feed nearly expired meters. That story made international headlines.
The Erlams sold the Whitehorse Star to Jackie Pierce in 2002. Bob Erlam, a true Yukon pioneer, passed away on March 26, 2009 at the age of 92.
Left to right: Howard Ryder, Lloyd Ryder, Gordon Ryder.
Lloyd Ryder
There’s something about long time Yukon families that remind me of that pleasant old song from the late forties. It was called Dear Hearts and Gentle People.
The Ryder family of Whitehorse were dear hearts - important members of Yukon society who contributed much to the vibrant life people enjoy in the territory today.
Lloyd Ryder was such a man. Born into a family of three boys and one girl, he lived a good life in the Yukon. His father George served with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces in Europe during the first world war where he managed to keep his sense of humour.
In a letter to his father sent from somewhere in France in February 1917, George Ryder wrote that he and his mates had been over the top of the trenches, through fields of frozen mud and into German trenches. George said they were quote - playing tag with Fritz with bayonets and bombs and - to quote George "we paid off a few debts we owed to Fritz."
In the same letter he thanked the ladies of the Yukon IODE for taking good care of the boys overseas with special parcels.
Back in the Yukon after the war, George started a family which included three sons - Lloyd, Howard and Gordon and a daughter Audrey. George also started an essential business called Ryder’s Fuel Service. The fuel was cord wood cut in the bushes near town and delivered first by horse drawn wagon and then by truck to houses like ours on Strickland Street that relied on wood for winter warmth.
I recall with mixed emotions, the arrival of the Ryder’s Wood truck. It meant the house would be warm, but it also meant I had a lot of chopping to do. Split cord wood was more expensive than uncut logs and money being tight - we bought logs.
George Ryder also served as Alderman on the first city council when Whitehorse became the capital of the Yukon in 1953. Meanwhile, his son Lloyd was making a name for himself in the flying business.
He began flying commercially in 1962 with Whitehorse Flying Service. It later became Yukon Flying Service, a bush plane operation which specialised in going places in the Yukon that were hard to get to.
Lloyd Ryder flew many a mining prospector to remote camps and made sure they were well supplied and safe in their isolated environment. You could count on Lloyd Ryder and his ski and float equipped aircraft.
US Senator Robert Kennedy counted on Lloyd Ryder to deliver him to the ten thousand foot level of a St. Elias Mountain he was about to climb. That was in March of 1965 when Lloyd made sure the world famous expedition to honour the late US President John F. Kennedy was safe and sound and had all the supplies they needed for the amazing mountain climbing feat.
He also took part in the miraculous air search for Ralph Flores and Helen Klaben who survived for 49 winter days after their plane crashed near Watson Lake in 1963. In 2007, Lloyd was awarded the 'Order of Polaris' Aviation Award for his significant contribution to northern aviation.
Lloyd Ryder served as President and of the Yukon Order of Pioneers. He also spent a lot of time and energy in helping raise the standard of living for Yukon seniors. Lloyd Ryder passed away at the age of 87.
Lloyd & Marny Ryder, Commissioners Ball 1995.
Lloyd Ryder - Wigwam Harry - Rendezvous 1969.
The original Ryder Whitehorse business.
Lloyd Ryder - 2
The Ryder family began their Yukon saga in 1900 when Roland Ryder left his home in Chilliwack, B.C. and headed for Dawson City, where he hoped to make his fortune since he had a wife and eleven children to support back home. When he reached Whitehorse, Roland had travelled far enough and so he stayed. He began a water delivery service in the town of three hundred people.
His wife decided to stay in Chilliwack, but three of Roland’s boys followed him. In 1923, his son George carried on with the business, adding stove wood to the water delivery business. Through the years, George was an undertaker, fire chief, and on the city of Whitehorse’s first elected city council.
George married his wife Edith in 1919 and had three sons, Lloyd, Gordon and Howard, and a daughter, Audrey. The eldest, Lloyd, who was born in 1922, helped his father with the delivery services. Lloyd recalled feeding the family’s horses every morning where they were pastured near Main Street.
After graduating from high school, he trained as an aviation mechanic in Vancouver. In the early 1940s, he worked for White Pass Airways and took part in surveying the Aishihik road. He spent a brief period with the Canadian military in Holland, at the end of WWII.
When his father George died unexpectedly at age 59, Lloyd took over the fuel delivery business and ran it until it was sold to Les Murdoch in 1965.
Meanwhile, Lloyd had retained his keen interest in aviation which he had developed as a teenager. He began flying commercially in 1965 and continued in this career until he retired in 1994 at age 72. When Lloyd and several partners bought out Yukon Airways, he began flying full-time under the new company called Great Northern Airways. When this company folded in 1971, he spent the bulk of his flying career with Elvin’s Equipment in Whitehorse.
In 1969, on one of his many medivac trips, Lloyd met a young nurse from Ontario, Marny Prentice, and they were married later that year. They had two children, John, born in 1971, and Jennifer, born in 1974.
The family loved the outdoors, and spent as much time as possible, camping out at the various Yukon lakes in their trailer and at their beloved cabin at McClintock Bay.
In 1995, Lloyd and Marny were honoured as Mr. and Mrs. Yukon. Lloyd was also active as a community volunteer for more than sixty years. He devoted countless hours to the Whitehorse Lions Club, CPR Yukon, Yukon Order of Pioneers, Yukon Transportation Museum, and the Boy Scouts of Canada. He received the Whitehorse Volunteer of the Year award in 2001.
Lloyd was a pioneer member of the Canadian Owner’s and Pilot’s Association and an inaugural member of the Yukon Flying Club. He was inducted into the Yukon Transportation Hall of Fame in 1997 and in 2007, he was honored with the presentation of the Order of Polaris Award.
Lloyd Ryder passed away peacefully, surrounded by family, at his home in Whitehorse on December 7, 2009, at the age of 87.
A new biography of Pierre Berton
On October 14 th, 2008 in Ottawa, a Carleton University historian is releasing his new book called" Pierre Berton, a Biography." The book is a massive 681 pages and is the subject of this Yukon Nugget.
Ontario author, Brian McKillop, thinks Pierre Berton is a Canadian icon and he set about to prove it in this sweeping biography. During his research, McKillop discovered a family secret that even Pierre didn’t know. Pierre’s father Frank, who trekked to the Klondike in 1898, grew up in New Brunswick. However, Pierre was unaware, until just months before he died in 2004, that his father had lived much of his young life in an orphanage.
In 1878, Pierre’s grandmother, then a widow, had two boys and was unable to raise them both. So she kept five-year-old Jack and left Frank at Wiggins Male Orphan Institution, where he lived for 10 years. He then graduated from the University of New Brunswick and headed off to the Klondike to seek his fortune and start a family in Dawson City.
Pierre Berton was born in Whitehorse on July 12, 1920 and raised in Dawson City. His mother, Laura Beatrice Berton (née Thomson) was a school teacher in Dawson City, where she had met Frank Berton.
The book details Pierre’s rise to fame, from his days as a young newspaper reporter in Vancouver to national prominence with Maclean's magazine, TV shows, including Front Page Challenge, and best-selling books.
Behind the scenes, there is a more notorious story. For many years, says the author, Berton led a racy private life and sought to keep the details private.
During the Second World War, while a soldier serving in Britain, his girlfriend, named Frances, announced she was pregnant by him. The two went their separate ways and Mr. Berton, according to McKillop, never made inquiries to determine whether he had a son or daughter in England.
In the 1960s in Toronto, Berton was known to his close friends as an habitual skirt-chaser and a member of the Sordsmen's Club, an organization of Toronto men dedicated to good food, lively discussion, beautiful women and more. A young Adrienne Clarkson, later to become Governor General, was one of the women invited to dine and cavort with the Sordsmen.
Author McKillop calls Berton Canada's first modern celebrity and its most iconic figure because he spent a lifetime researching Canada's history and writing renowned books, including The National Dream, The Last Spike, Klondike, and The Comfortable Pew.
See also: Pierre Berton
Mount Churchill
It was so remote that no one had ever heard of it. Even today, Mount Churchill is seldom seen and rarely explored. But this giant mountain in the St. Elias has certainly left its mark on the Yukon. Located 25km west of the Alaska-Yukon border in the Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Mount Churchill is more than 15,000 feet high, and permanently covered with ice and snow. The first explosion that blew the top off the mountain occurred about 1900 years ago, when volcanic ash was sent flying over northwest Alaska, landing as far away as Eagle. Then, 1250 years ago, Mount Churchill erupted again in a much larger explosion, which blew the lid off the mountain, and carried the ash into the southwest Yukon. It’s known as the White River Ash, and covers almost 600,000 square kilometers in Alaska, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. Along roadways it appears as a thin white line close to the surface. However, closer to the volcano, the ash can be 60cm thick. The ancient ash is well preserved, leading scientists to believe that the explosion occurred in the winter because it was immediately frozen and protected by a layer of snow. People and wildlife living in the southwest Yukon at the time would have been well aware of the eruption, and may even have heard it, but they would have no idea of its source. The ash would have killed vegetation in the area, making it difficult for people living on the land, and would have darkened the skies for weeks, if not months. So massive was the explosion that anthropologists think it could have caused the migrations from the north that eventually led to the formation of Athabascan cultures, such as the Apache and Navajo in the southwestern United States.
Mount Churchill, the source of all the misery, has been inactive for a long time because it has a thick magma, and takes a while to build up pressure before exploding again. Volcanoes of this type tend to erupt in 100 to 1000 year cycles, so it’s an open question as to when the mountain may blow its top again. But it will, and when it does it will have a significant economic impact on Canada. It could obstruct air travel, trigger mudslides and floods in the region, and cover a large area with more white ash. Although southwestern British Columbia and the Yukon have not experienced a major volcanic eruption in a long time, the potential for future activity remains. A volcano can be dormant for many centuries while gas pressure slowly builds up in its subterranean chambers. Mount Churchill in the St. Elias is certainly a candidate for a future catastrophic event.
Bill Reid, left, with a group at the 2005 Vancouver Island Yukoners picnic.
Bill Reid
In the days before there was a TV set in every room and the constant blare of Much Music tormented the ear drums with another pseudo song, those of us lucky enough to live in the Yukon, were entertained by Bill and Rusty Reid and their fancy swing band appropriately called The Northernaires.
With the passing of Bill Reid, a truly important member of the Yukon music scene is gone. But his memory will linger long in the hearts and minds of those of us fortunate enough to swing the sixties away dancing up a storm to the creative melodies of this celebrated Yukon band.
Bill was born in Wallace, Nova Scotia - the last of 12 children in a muscial family. Bill played in his first band when he was 14. Growing up in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Rusty began playing the fiddle at the age of 11.
In 1949, when he was 18, Bill said farewell to Nova Scotia and ended up in Vancouver, where he met Rusty. It was the beginning of a life long love. The pair headed to Whitehorse in 1951 and were married in the old that May.
Soon word got around that Bill could play a mean piano and he was asked to get a band together for a dance at the Elks Hall. He agreed, but only if Rusty would accompany the band with her fiddle. It was the beginning of more than a half-century of entertaining in every corner of the territory. Unique with The Northernaires was their manner and dress. Professional is one way to describe an event staged by Bill and Rusty Reid with The Northernaires.
On time, dressed to kill, short breaks and a musical repertoire to satisfy every dancer's taste. These were the hallmarks of The Northernaires in a musical career that spanned more than 50 Yukon years.
Wayne Smyth joined the band as a 13-year-old high school drummer. His memories of band leader Bill are filled with delightful stories of dedication to the craft and of travels to every Yukon community under often dicey travel conditions to entertain. Never late or unprepared is the way Wayne Smiyth remembers his years with The Northernaires.
Smyth recalls that as the band leader, Bill never talked down to him even though he was just a kid, but rather treated him as an equal with other member of The Northernaires. Smyth said the reliability of The Northernaires fostered by Bill was a big part of the band's success.
But there was more than music that kept Bill Reid busy. The list is long. He was a member of the Whitehorse fire department. With Rusty, he formed and kept the Whitehorse Women's softball league up and running.
Together, they helped form the Yukon Sports Federation. Both were inducted into the Yukon Sports Hall of Fame. The couple was instrumental in organizing the Yukon's branch of the Civilian Aircraft Search and Rescue Association. Bill was the president of the Yukon Flying Club for seven years and sat on the executive for another three years. He was instrumental in getting the DC3 weather vane aircraft placed on a pedestal at the Whitehorse airport. Rusty and Bill flew their own plane, joined air searched and often put on training searches.
Fittingly, their son Dave became an Air Canada pilot.
Bill and Rusty were involved in the Sourdough Rendezvous Fiddle Contest and competed in and judged the contests on many occasions.
In 2003, Bill and Rusty Reid received the Commissioner's Award for public service, one they justly deserved. With his passing, Bill Reid has left a substantial legacy of community involvement that has made the Yukon a better place.
Carcross Desert
The Carcross Desert isn’t. A desert, that is. Rather, it’s a remnant of the last Ice Age; this ‘desert’ is really a sand dune. The sand accumulated during the Pleistocene age when large glacial lakes filled the valleys in the southern Yukon. The Pleistocene period, which lasted almost 2 million years, ended about 10,000 years ago. A good thing too, or most of the Southern Yukon would still be covered with vast glaciers. As the ice receded, it left a huge glacial lake in the region now occupied by Lake Bennett. As the glacial lake dried up, sand from the bottom was exposed. Today active sand dunes like Carcross are rare in the North, many that survived the drying up of glaciers have become overgrown with forests.
Not so with the Carcross dunes, which have a readymade supply of sand from around Lake Bennett. The Carcross desert is a haven for amateur botanists. Most, if not all, of the plants at the dunes would never survive in a real desert, though several of them that do survive are rare species for this part of the world. One of the most interesting species is the Baikal Sedge, a flashy Asian species found only in 4 other locations in North America. It’s also found in the sand dunes near Kusawa Lake. The Yukon Lupin, distinguished by a silvery appearance caused by hairs on the upper surface of the leaves is more common here than any location in the world. Other interesting plants because they are rare or of limited distribution are the Blue-Eyed Mary, Button Grass, and Nelson’s Needlegrass, showy Jacob’s Ladder, common Juniper, and kinnicknick grow on the more stabilized or sheltered areas of the dunes.
Formal protection of the dunes has been the subject of some discussion either as a territorial park, or some other designation. But so far nothing has come of it. Still, the area is a major tourist destination, and a fine spot for local photographers. With just the right lighting and by keeping all those tall trees out of the shots, creative photojournalists can certainly makes the dunes look like the Sahara desert of the far North.
Buzzsaw Jimmy
His real name was Jimmy Richards but I never knew anyone who called him anything but Buzzsaw Jimmy.
It’s a nickname he earned for the unsafe but effective contraption he used to cut cord wood.
By looking at Jimmy, you could tell the machine got the best of him – more than once. He had hundreds of stitches on his body, a missing finger, and a missing leg that he lost – twice.
Jim Richards left home in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1898, bound for the Klondike Gold Fields.
The wonder is that he ever made it to the Yukon at all. First, the train he was riding derailed on the Prairies killing two of his fellow passengers. Then, the backup train derailed near Canmore, Alberta and the car he was riding in left the tracks.
When he reached Vancouver, he hired on as a deck-hand for passage on a steamer heading for Alaska. During the voyage, the rickety ship was damaged in a storm.
He finally arrived in St. Michael, Alaska, near the mouth of the Yukon River, and boarded the paddlewheeler James Domville for the journey up the Yukon River to Dawson City.
Like others who arrived in 1898, he found all the gold-bearing claims taken so got back on the James Domville and worked for passage to Whitehorse by chopping wood along the way.
He still had gold fever when he arrived in Whitehorse in October, so he built a sleigh and headed for Atlin, where he spent the winter working for wages on small claims.
Thus, he began a career of doing odd jobs. He worked on the Yukon River as a jack-of-all-trades, and then settled in Whitehorse where he built his strange, but effective, mobile woodcutting machine with parts salvaged from an old tractor and Model T Ford.
Wood cutting in a land of almost perpetual winter could be profitable. With his homemade gizmo, Buzzsaw Jimmy could cut ten cords an hour.
He had regular contracts to cut wood for businesses like the Whitehorse Inn. But it was dangerous work. In 1911, he almost lost his right arm to the open buzzsaw.
Things got worse when, a few years later, he fell off the seat, caught his leg in the gears, and made a beeline for the hospital where the doctor amputated his leg.
Photo: Buzzsaw Jimmy with his unique wood cutting machine.
1942 photo by Odin Hougen,
Fitted with a wooden replacement, the irrepressible Buzzsaw Jimmy was quickly back on the job. But accidents continued. During his cutting career, he cut his arm, back and leg… again. Buzzsaw was becoming a regular guest at the tiny Whitehorse hospital.
Then came his most famous accident when again he fell into the rotating saw blade and severed his right leg.
But this time, he picked up the leg, shook it at the wood sawing contraption and said: “Fooled you.” He had severed his wooden leg.
Sometimes, if someone new happened to be watching him cut wood, Jimmy would deliberately pretend to cut through his wooden leg. The ploy never failed to evoke gasps or worse… a fainting spell from the onlooker.
How much wood could a woodcutter cut with a wood-cutting machine like Buzzsaw Jimmy’s? Good question.
Countless cords, I am sure, in a wood-cutting-career that lasted fifty years.
Sometime in the 1950s, he retired and his machine was dragged away to the dump. Buzzsaw Jimmy left Whitehorse and his colourful career in 1963 when he moved to Vancouver, where he died at age 94.
Ralph "Buzz" Hudson and Jan Hudson at their daughter Lori's weddding August 1992.
Buzz Hudson
Ralph Hudson was at home on two courts. The basketball court and the court of law. Born and raised in Victoria, he was better known to his many friends as Buzz. On the basketball court, he played for the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds, where he did his law degree and graduated in 1959.
Buzz moved to the Yukon in 1960 when he took his first job as a lawyer with Eric Nielsen's firm, where he practiced criminal, corporate and mining law. Hudson moved back to Vancouver in 1974 and joined a friend's law firm. However, he returned to the Yukon from time to time as a judge after he was appointed to the territorial court in 1976.
He was appointed to the B.C. provincial court in 1982 and sat as a judge in Vancouver and Victoria until he became the senior judge of the Supreme Court of the Yukon in 1993.
But Buzz always enjoyed sports. He was on the team that represented the Yukon in the first ever Canada Winter Games in 1967. Yukon athletes were badly outclassed by the more numerous contingents from the provinces and the Territory decided to stage a games of its own at home. These are now called the Arctic Winter Games.
During his Yukon basketball days, Hudson often travelled to Alaska for games. The Yukon teams travelled to Skagway by train to play the American game. Often on these trips, friends in Haines would pick up the team in a fishing boat and take them to parties. A great life, said Buzz.
In 1970, Hudson ran for the Whitehorse East seat on the Yukon territorial council, finishing third behind Norm Chamberlist and Don Branigan and ending a promising political career.
Throughout his legal career, Hudson was an active volunteer as the president of the Law Society of the Yukon and a director of the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce. He also organized a number of continuing legal education seminars for Yukon lawyers.
Buzz Hudson loved jury trials because, he said, it was an opportunity for the public to be involved in the judicial process. He retired from law in 2003, after ten years as the Yukon's supreme court justice. He and his wife Jan moved to Salt Spring Island, a beautiful property with a magnificient view of the Pacific Ocean.
When Buzz Hudson passed away in January 2005, he was remembered as a fair-minded, active Yukoner who loved the quiet serenity of nature and made a valuable contribution to life in today's Yukon.
3 of the 4 Nordic Tugs.
18 grandchildren age 5 to 16 all of whom landed a halibut.
Southeast Alaska Hougen Family Adventure 2004
One June 17, 2004 our entire family of thirty-two, including grandparents Rolf and Marg Hougen, six families, and eighteen grand-children drove to Skagway to begin our Southeast Alaska ocean adventure. We took the brand-new fast-ferry, the “Fairweather” to Juneau in about two hours. Al and Linnea Castagner, along with Linnea’s mother Swanie (Rolf’s sister) had gone down to Juneau a few days earlier in Krafty II, which was to be our mother ship for the week’s adventure. Al was the undisputed “Admiral of the Fleet” due to his extensive experience in Southeast Alaska and his experience in fishing these waters.
The vessels for our trip were four Nordic Tug boats – two 42’ models, a 37’ and a 32’ and of course Al’s 28’ GlasPly. We spent the next day buying groceries and other supplies for the boats. Later in the day, we received our “operational course” and check-out for the Nordic Tugs. We took possession of the boats later that evening.
We were up at 6am the next day and on out way to Al’s Secret Cove in Icy Straight. Some boats went out halibut fishing; others just relaxed and took in the breath-taking scenery. We set out several crab pots that evening. The next morning, we checked the pots and had caught plenty of Dungeness crabs – all of the grandchildren participated in the cleaning of crabs and halibut. After another great (and successful) day fishing, we had a wonderful seafood feast that lasted until well after midnight!
The next day we were off to Hoonah, a picturesque Tlingit village situated about 40 miles west of Juneau on Chichagof Island. This is the largest Tlingit village in Alaska with a population of about 900 with the economy based on commercial fishing and lodging, and more recently cruiseships. We spent a few hours there getting a few needed items and we set course to Glacier Bay National Park. It is mandatory to pre-register in order to be allowed entry into this park. We cruised into the Park Warden Centre and registered, stopped by the amazing Glacier Bay Lodge and then headed north and set anchor in a sheltered bay.
We had the most amazingly hot weather, with mostly calm seas and no rain for the entire trip. That’s pretty good for Southeast Alaska. Day 4 was no exception: we were up early and went to Marble Island which is well known for the many sea lions and puffins that inhabit there. We saw hundreds of sea lions but few puffins. From there we were off for the 3 hour trip to Elfin Cove – a small town of about 50 people. It’s a fish-buying and supply center for fishermen. Residents participate in commercial fishing, sport fishing and charter services. We took the South Inian route to this town, which was quite rough with a lot of tidal action. The people there treated us like family and even opened up the gym that evening so the 18 grandkids (and a few adults) could let off a little steam after being on the boats for the better part of 4 days.
After a foggy morning, Day 5 saw us fishing our way back to Hoonah. We paused for an hour to watch the whales put on a show and then did some serious halibut fishing. All 18 grandchildren could claim that they had landed a halibut by the end of the day! Le Grand Fromage (Rolf) caught the biggest one of the day at 73 pounds. We spent the night in the Hoonah harbour.
After a relaxing morning we fished our way back to Al’s Secret Cove for our final night of the boat trip. We got some more halibut and a few salmon, and spent the evening cleaning, cutting and packaging fish. Of course, we had another great seafood dinner.
On Day 7, we reluctantly headed back for Juneau. We had a great family trip in a very special part of the world. Southeast Alaska is so close to home, yet it’s such a different environment on the ocean – so dynamic and alive. It makes one wonder what the heck the Canadian negotiators were thinking when they were negotiating the borders of the Alaskan Panhandle in the late 1800’s. That’s another story…
Recollections by Kelly Hougen
Pierre Berton, right, at the 1962 Dawson City Festival seen here talking to the Minister of Northern Development, Walter Dinsdale.
In the tiny clapboard hospital in downtown Whitehorse, on July 12, 1920, a future Canadian icon came into the world. His mother, the now-famous Yukon school teacher, Laura Berton, delivered a healthy eight-pound boy and named him Pierre.
His childhood years were spent roaming the dilapidated streets and alleys of Dawson, where memories of the explosive Klondike Gold Rush still lingered like a fresh, though fading, flower.
He unknowingly soaked up the atmosphere of this defining moment in Canadian history. His teen years were spent working the diggings on Dominion Creek, where the mere sight of legendary Klondike gold would inspire his first and most important book of Canadian history.
Klondike - published in 1958 - was his first epic volume and would remain, until his death on November 20, 2004, at age 84, the most significant in a series of fifty important historical volumes.
The Berton family moved to Vancouver when Pierre was old enough to attend the University of British Columbia. He was a moderate scholar and said later he went to university only because they had a campus newspaper.
He became editor of that paper - The Ubbessy - and began a journalistic career which would lead to the editor's desk of the prestigious McLean's magazine in 1947, at the tender age of 27.
Moving to Ontario, he wrote a daily 1500-word column for the Toronto Star for four long years. His enterprising Star stories formed the basis of his coming books including the Comportable Pew, a tome attacking the Anglican church, and the Smug Minority in 1968, which railed against the cronyism between politics and big business. It gained him few friends on Bay Street, but many readers outside the corporate headquarters in Toronto.
In the 1970s, he continued work as a popular historian. The building of the CPR was told in the National Dream in 1970 and the Last Spike the following year. His wonderful tome, Hollywood's Canada in 1975 examines the way American films misrepresent Canada. The Dionne Years, published in 1977, showed he was versatile enough to write a real social history of the country.
He chronicled the country's early-day troubles with the United States in The Invasion of Canada in 1980 and Flames Across the Border, written in 1981.
Drifting Home, written in 1973, is an unexpected autobiography in the form of an account of a northern rafting trip with his family. It was during his publicity tour for this book that I met Berton for the first time in Montreal.
I was moderately in awe since he was not only by now a radio, television and book-writing icon, but a huge man whose size dwarfed mine. He barely fit in the front seat of my aging Chevelle as I drove him, in a torrential downpour, to his next studio interview.
During the 1980s, Berton continued writing popular history, with The Promised Land in 1984, a history of the settling of the Canadian West, and Vimy, an examination of the WW I battle in which tough Canadian troops took VIMY RIDGE in April, 1917.
His lasting contributions to the Yukon are many. Though often thought of as pompous - even unconcerned about the average person - his commitment to Berton House, for writers in Dawson, and his constant references to the Yukon, in almost every public setting, show that the man truly did care about his home and native land.
And for those who were certain he lacked any sense of humour, his final public appearance on CBC Television, teaching Canadians how to properly roll a joint of weed, should dispel that myth.
Pierre Berton, a Yukon and Canadian Idol had kept the good name of his birthplace in the public spotlight. For that alone, in the Yukon, he will be sorely missed.
Miles Canyon before the 1958 hydro dam.
Shooting Whitehorse Rapids.
The Yukon River
Where does the Yukon River start? Where does it go? How does it get there? So many questions. Many answered only in the eye or mind of the beholder.
Some say the source is the Llewellyn Glacier at the southern end of Atlin Lake while others say it is Lake Lindeman which empties into Lake Bennett.
Either way, Atlin Lake flows into Tagish Lake as does Lake Lindeman after flowing into Bennett Lake. Tagish Lake then flows into Marsh Lake via the Tagish River. The Yukon River proper starts at the northern end of Marsh Lake, just south of Whitehorse.
The upper end of the Yukon River at Whitehorse was originally known as the Lewes River. Then past Lebarge it became the Thirty Mile and finally it was known as the Yukon at Hootalinqa where the Teslin River joins up.
But then again, some argue that the source of the Yukon River should really be Teslin Lake and the Teslin River, which has a larger flow when it reaches the Yukon at Hootalinqua. So the definitive answer is somewhat of a mystery.
We do know that many large lakes and rivers are part of the Yukon River system including Kusawa Lake which flows into the Takhini River and Kluane Lake which flows into the Kluane and then White Rivers.
Merrily along flows the Yukon, joined by the Pelly and the Stewart before the White and then the Klondike river at Dawson and the Forty Mile further downstream. When the Yukon finally reaches Alaska the mighty river has taken a lot of water from the Yukon Territory.
The river is 3,185 km long and empties into the Bering Sea at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The total drainage area is a massive 832,700 km of which a third is in Canada. And bigger than Texas.
For all that length it is surprising to learn that there are only four bridges across the Yukon River that can carry vehicles.
They are the Lewes Bridge, north of Marsh Lake on the Alaska Highway, the Robert Campbell Bridge, which connects Whitehorse proper with Riverdale, the Yukon River Bridge at Carmacks on the Klondike Highway; and The E. L. Patton Yukon River Bridge, north of Fairbanks on the Dalton Highway.
Plans to build a permanent bridge in Dawson were announced in 2004, but they are currently on hold because it was going to cost a lot more than first estimated.
There is also one pedestrian-only bridge in Whitehorse. And of course, the Whitehorse Rapids dam which we used to be able to drive across.
The Yukon River, a sense of wonder and mystery right on our doorsteps.
See also: The Yukon River (1945)
Margaret Hougen in front of the Dawson plaque located on the dike along the Yukon River.
Dawson Tribute
By Dan Davidson
Klondike Sun
George Mercer Dawson
There have been many plaques erected around Dawson City of the last 30 years, but it has taken until this June for there to finally be a plaque in honour of Dawson’s namesake, George Mercer Dawson.
This oversight was finally corrected through a generous donation by the Hougen family of Whitehorse and the efforts of the Klondyke Centennial Society, which laid the groundwork for this memorial when it established the Joseph Ladue plaque in 2002.
According to Jon Magnusson of the KCS, Rolf Hougen came to him with a proposal to erect a $10,000 bronze bust of Dawson.
As Hougen tells it, Magnusson had a counter proposal, a substantially cheaper memorial which would be a match for the Ladue plaque already erected on a large rock atop the dyke, at the high end of the flowered walkway known locally as Norm’s Hump (after the superintendent of public works who commissioned it).
“I agreed with them,” Hougen said in a telephone interview some weeks later. “I thought it was a great idea.” It also cost a bit less, probably around $4,000 when all the bills are in, though that was not an issue.
The monument reads that it is placed in memory of Berent Hougen, one of the legions of gold seekers who lived in Dawson in the early years of the 20th century, but Rolf Hougen says there’s more to it than that.
“That’s true, yes, but we’ve had an association with Dawson for 50 some years. We’ve often gone to Dawson City and I’ve always loved it there.
“It’s the reason the Yukon exists, you might say. I’ve always had a special place for Dawson in my heart.”
What of Berent Hougen?
“My father, as a young sailor, ended up in Dawson City. Not at the gold rush, but in 1906. He spent three years there before migrating on to Alaska.”
Rolf Hougen himself recalls many of the colourful characters, such as Black Mike, who used to enchant visitors to the Klondike. He recalls being on the dredges himself when they were in operation.
George Mercer Dawson was a most unusual man. Stricken with Pott’s disease when just a boy, he scarcely grew taller after that and was left with a humpback created by a deformed spine. For some time after the illness he was confined to a wheelchair, but he refused to accept that fate, and set himself a tough life. He studied geology at McGill University and in England and was, by age 24, a member of the North America Boundary Commission, traipsing the woods to help define the line between Canada and the USA along the 49th parallel.
In 1875 he joined the Geological Survey of Canada and in 1887 he led a seven month reconnaissance of the land around all the Yukon’s major rivers, including in his studies the Stikine, Dease, Liard, Frances, Pelly and, of course, the Yukon.
Dawson’s report on the Yukon, in particular, was much in demand during the 1890’s and on into the Gold Rush years. In “The Little Giant”, biographer Joyce Barkhouse writes that he was often called “Klondyke Dawson”.
“Oddly enough, he was then sitting in his office in Ottawa, but it became known to the thousands of prospectors that his were the only maps available for the region. To possess a copy was thought to be the magic charm for ‘hitting it rich’.” (Barkhouse, foreword)
Dawson lived only to the age of 51, but by then his name was splattered all over western Canada.
When Joe Ladue was trying to establish the townsite that would become Dawson City, he needed a surveyor. That man was William Ogilvie, who had accompanied Dawson as his surveyor in 1887. His fee for doing Ladue’s survey was simple; he asked that the town be named after his boss, George Dawson. If Barkhouse has it right, it would have been Dawson himself who added the little dot with its name to the official maps of the Territory a few weeks later.
A Klondike Sun article by Dan Davidson
Sam Johnson of Teslin in full Tlingit regalia.
Marg Hougen with Sam at the Canada Games in Whitehorse in February 2007.
In the sixties and seventies, they were like rock stars. They attracted public attention and adulation wherever they went. They were the "out of town" dog racers who mushed into Whitehorse in colourful clothes, with happy dogs - tails wagging - as they arrived for the show.
The show was the Sourdough Rendezvous dog races. The mushers and their malamutes were kings of the trail. Among them each year was a smallish, smiling man from Teslin named Sam Johnson.
Sam was often an also-ran in the company of Stephen Frost, Paul Ben Kassi and Wilfred Charlie. But he was no less a competitor. Win or lose, Sam Johnson was a happy musher.
Sam was born and raised in Teslin and has dedicated his life to working with and coaching people of all ages. He has always been involved in sports and spent countless hours teaching young people how to run and care for race dogs.
He also teaches Yukon kids the traditional game of stick gambling and this passion branched into coaching Dene Games teams in the Arctic Winter Games. Hand games involve guessing and deceiving and is played to a chorus of drums. He believes that what is important is not so much the opportunity to compete as it is the chance to become proud of your efforts.
Sam's other passion is the sport of Archery, where he has been both an athlete and a coach at the North American Indigenous Games.
He spends a lot of time visiting schools all over the Territory encouraging students to take part in the sport. He tries to instill leadership qualities that include honor, trust, respect and integrity.
Sam has also had a long political career in the Yukon. He was Chief of the Teslin Tlingit Council for fourteen years. He was a Member of the Yukon Legislative Assembly and holds the honor of being the first First Nation Speaker of the Legislative Assembly for the Yukon Government.
Sam is an active Tlingit dancer who passed on the values of the Tlingit dance and heritage to both young and old and has travelled the world performing and sharing these values.
Sam Johnson was named Chancellor of Yukon College in 2004 and, in 2003, he was presented with the Yukon's Commissioner's award.
Fireweed at a log cabin on the "Marge of Lake Lebarge".
Yukon Fireweed
The Yukon’s official flower doesn’t have a very romantic name. But this tall, elegant symbol of the territory is much more than a pretty picture on a travel brochure.
Fireweed comes by its name honestly. It’s among the first plants to bloom after a forest fire. Its seeds are survivors and its growth is prolific once a raging forest fire has past by. But consider the value of this colorful symbol you see all over the Yukon. It contains a sugary gel that can be obtained by splitting young stalks and scooping it out.
Fireweed has quite a few different names, depending on where it grows. French Canadian voyageurs called it l’herbe fret. They cooked the leaves and ate them as a substitute for greens. In Russia, fireweed leaves are boiled and the resulting liquid, called Kapor tea, is a refreshing and nourishing beverage. Try pouring hot water over young tender leaves. It makes a fine brew, but be sure it’s fireweed you are brewing. The tea is light green and quite sweet.
Fireweed is also known as great willow herb, blooming Sally, French willow and rosebay, again depending on where you are. Some people call it mooseweed, with good reason. Elk, moose and deer consider a stand of fireweed their field of dreams as they feast on the sweet stalks and tender leaves. In many places, beekeepers try and to grow fireweed near their beehives. You see, it makes a dark, sweet honey, which is superior in taste to that of almost every other flower.
The scientific word for fireweed is Epilobium angustifolium. Quite a mouthful. No wonder most people call it fireweed. That strange name simply means “ on the pod” and describes the way the flower sits on top of a long ovary, which becomes a seed pod or capsule. In mid-summer, fireweed sends out an airborne flotilla of silky seeds looking for a recent burned-out clearing.
So, the next time you spot an exquisite field of fireweed waving in a soft summer breeze, consider the fact that this colorful symbol of the Yukon is more that just 'another pretty face'.
Moe Grant
Moe Grant wasn’t born in the Yukon, but he arrived with his parents from Saskatchewan in 1929, when he was six months old. The family lived in Carcross and it was here that Moe developed his lifelong love of flying.
From the single-bay garage where he got his first job as a mechanic, Moe watched the busy gravel airstrip from which there seemed an endless parade of airplanes. Moe was hooked. In 1947, the teenager earned his pilot’s license.
He flew mostly for fun for the following fifty years. But, in 1950, his flying days nearly ended when he crashed his single-engine plane on an isolated mountain between Atlin and Carcross. Only the determined searching by Herman Peterson saved Moe from certain death.
He survived on the snow-covered mountain for five days before he was rescued. But his feet were frozen and he lost both legs in the ordeal. However, that did not stop him from flying well into his seventies. He didn’t officially retire until last year, when he was inducted as a pioneer aviator into the Yukon Transportation Museum’s Hall of Fame.
Moe married wife Cora in 1953 and the couple had two children, George and David.
In 1969, Moe became a partner in the Ford dealership when Rolf Hougen purchased the company from the Northern Commercial Co. He was already managing the car business, then located on Main Street, which was relocated to its current location on Fourth Avenue.
Moe gave much to the Yukon as a musician, and as a member of the Yukon Order of Pioneers. He is also fondly remembered for driving his Model "T" Ford in the Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous parade.
He was the man with a mandolin and he liked to share the music. In 1975, he began visiting Macaulay Lodge to play for senior residents. Eventually, other musicians joined the group and their performances became a meaningful part of activities at the lodge. Recently, a group of musicians celebrated the 32nd anniversary of the weekly performances begun by Moe Grant.
In 2002, Moe was honoured with the Commissioner’s Award "for his tireless dedication to bringing music into the lives of Yukon ’s senior citizens."
Commissioner Jack Cable presenting the Commissioner's (Yukon) Award to "A Community Icon", Flo Whyard - 2001 at the Yukon Transportation Museum.
Florence Whyard at Herschel Island. Yukon Archives. Richard Harrington fonds, #445.
Flo Whyard
Flo Whyard is a journalist - always has been - and a good one at that. She comes by the trade honestly. One of her first memories is the sound of an old typewriter banging away on the other side of the wall beside her crib, in the London, Ontario home of her father.
W.E. Elliott was then a reporter with The London Free Press.
At home, there were always books to read with a newsman's point of view on the world. In her teens, the public library, an excellent resource for Flo, was just across the street from her family's home.
In the Thirties, Flo Elliott went to the University of Western Ontario as a general arts student. But the depression made paying for college impossible so she left Western and signed up for credit courses by correspondence, and worked three jobs, graduating from Western with a Bachelor of Arts in 1938.
When World War II began, Flo's father moved to Ottawa to help run the newsroom in the Information Branch of The Wartime Prices and Trade Board.
Flo followed and learned there was an opening for an information officer with the navy. So she enlisted in the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service and wrote about Canadian Wrens serving in Canada.
In Ottawa she met, and in 1944, married, James Whyard, a graduate engineer who had worked on surveys in the north and taught map-reading to his reserve army unit.
A year later, he was transferred to Yellowknife to help create order out of the staking boom in the Northwest Territories. It was an exciting time to be in the settlement on the rocks, as Flo discovered after her discharge in 1945 to join him there.
Ten years later, they were off to Whitehorse, where James was to provide mapping and claim services.
In 1955, the Whitehorse Star editor, Harry Boyle, hired Flo to write about social items, women's organizations, church activities, and, when her three kids were in school, police court, city and territorial council.
Later, Flo became the editor of the Star and in the mid-sixties provided daily news copy for the fledgling news service of CBC Radio. I clearly recall reading the nightly news that Flo hand-delivered to the station on yellow news copy sheets, neatly typed and ready to be mangled by this rookie radio news reader.
In 1974, politics beckoned. Flo won the Whitehorse West seat on Yukon Territorial Council, and assumed cabinet posts for Health, Welfare and Corrections.
After a four-year term, she went back into journalism and community life, but politics soon called again, and she became Mayor of The City of Whitehorse in 1981.
Shortly after putting on chain of office, Flo was faced with a major flood, the closure of the largest producing mine, and the shutdown of The White Pass Railroad. It wasn't a happy time.
But Flo was gaining recognition for her years of service. In 1979, she received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Western Ontario, where she had graduated forty years earlier.
In 1984, she was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada.
Of all her accomplishments, she is perhaps proudest of her role in promoting Martha Louise Black's Yukon legacy. Flo authored an updated version of Martha's biography called My Ninety Years, and is tireless in promoting her role in Yukon history.
Flo continues to write, and participate in community life as well as being an active volunteer with the Transportation Museum - all the while researching the Yukon's colourful history of which she has become a very integral part.
Photo1: Rolf with statue of Jack London.
Photo2: in Oakland, California.
Photo3: Rolf with London Cabin, Marg took the picture.
Jack London Square, Oakland California
Marg and Rolf Hougen visited Oakland, California, in 2000 to see the Jack London Square. The Oakland area was London’s home. Thanks to the dedication and hard work of Dick North, the Jack London cabin on a creek in the Klondike was carefully disassembled and some of the logs were transported to Dawson City and assembled as a complete cabin and others were donated to Oakland where the city created Jack London Square. His favourite bar has also been preserved. More than any other individual, London’s works have made the Yukon famous throughout the world.
JACK LONDON, AUTHOR
He was a high-school dropout who roamed the seas as a sailor, a hobo who – like others of his day - rode the rails in boxcars and walked the land in search of ideas. He needed ideas because he was primarily a story teller like few others of his time. The Klondike Gold Rush saw to that. Though he became world famous for his stories crafted in the Klondike, he also wrote on subjects ranging from boxing to romance, from survival in the Arctic to the strange, exotic beauty of Hawaii.
Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney on Market Street in San Francisco, California, on January 12, 1876. As a lad he was a labourer, factory worker, oyster pirate sailor, and, mostly, a railroad hobo. During his cross-country travels, he came to know socialism, which became his holy grail. For a time, he was known as the “Boy Socialist of Oakland” because of his fiery street-corner oratory. As a mere lad – 21 years old – he heeded the call of the wild – the Yukon wild.
Like others during the great depression, he caught “Klondike Fever.” London sailed from the San Francisco wharf on the SS Umatilla on July 25, 1897. In Skagway, with a load of desperate men seeking wealth and escape, he teamed up with four other Klondikers and scaled the cruel Chilkoot Pass. Like others, they built a boat at Bennett and sailed down the river. Like others in 1897, they made it only to the mouth of the Stewart River. Then, freeze up. The long Yukon winter of Jack London had begun.
He moved into a cabin and staked a claim on Henderson Creek, a tributary of the Stewart River in early November of 1897. In the days and weeks to come, he became well known to his fellow prospectors for his storytelling ability. There was little else to do but stay warm, stay healthy and tell stories.
However, he could not stay healthy. In May 1898, he developed a severe case of scurvy. Desperately needing medical attention and in pain, he watched the melting ice on the Yukon River. Then he headed for Dawson and a brief stay at St. Mary’s hospital. Here, they told young Jack to go home. On June 28, he arrived in St. Michael, after making his way in a hand-hewn raft down the river. From St. Michael, he sailed home. Jack London’s career in the Klondike lasted less than a year.
Back in Oakland, California, he could not find steady work. In desperation, he pawned his stuff and began writing. As with most authors, his first manuscripts were rejected. Nevertheless, he carried on and the Jack London the world knows today began to take shape.
The scenes in his stories of the Klondike were developed from what he saw and heard during his one winter in the Stewart River district. While he wintered there, gold seekers were still uncertain whether or not the Klondike valley was a better bet for the prospector. Partners argued endlessly while trying to decide where to head come break up in the spring of 1898.
Thus, London’s gold rush ideas came from rumours, barroom tales, and his personal experiences. It is left to the imagination what he might have accomplished if he had stayed a full year, or a decade for that matter. But London’s brief exposure to the Yukon resulted in stories so captivating that they live today as though they were just printed. The classic tales Call of the Wild, White Fang and To Build a Fire represent storytelling at its brilliant best. Throughout his narratives, London never forgot the little guy. To him, Buck, the Yukon sled dog in Call of the Wild, represented the struggle of the working-class to maintain dignity.
Though Call of the Wild is steeped in seething adventure, London was even more masterful in describing the physical sensations experienced in the Yukon during that winter at the mouth of the Stewart River.
In “The White Silence” he wrote of winter:
“All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice.”
In the Call of the Wild, the death-cry of the rabbit is described as “the cry of life plunging down from life’s apex in the grip of Death.”
There are some who say the dog Buck in Call of the Wild is modeled after Belinda Mulroney’s Dawson City sled dog. Perhaps. Whether or not that is true, Call of the Wild brought the image of remote Canada to the world. It has been published in more than 400 editions in eleven languages. And Jack London, that writer of dog stories who lived in the Yukon in a small log cabin in the bush became the highest paid and best known North American fiction writer of his day.
In 1905, he bought the first piece of what would become, in 1914, a fifteen hundred-acre ranch in the Valley of the Moon near Glen Ellen, California. The ranch became the foundation of his life, and his passion. He raised prized cattle, operated modern barns, practiced soil reclamation and water conservation. Ahead of his time, many would say.
In 1907, with his second wife, Charmain, Jack sailed the Pacific to the South Seas in the sailing ship Snark, which became the basis for a book. He fell in love with the South Pacific.
During his final journey to Hawaii, in 1915, he came to know and admire the Hawaiian people, a part of his character that shows in the short story On the Makaloa Mat. When he died in 1916 at age forty, London’s admiration of the Hawaiians was recognized in a declaration from the Royal Family: “By the point of his pen, his genius conquered all prejudice and gave out, to the world at large, true facts concerning the Hawaiian people.”
Conventional wisdom says that Jack London died of a combination of drug overdose and alcohol abuse, resulting in kidney failure. However, others believe that he died of systemic lupus, a disease that resembles scurvy. In fact, he may have had the disease during his Yukon winter on the creeks. Still, in his short life, he produced 200 short stories, over 400 non-fiction articles and twenty novels. His life was far too short.
Whatever the cause, his early death did nothing to relinquish his place as a literary genius who was inspired by events around him – inspired as few others – by the last great gold rush.
This 1965 photo is of Jim Brooks as a boy at his mothers home located at the entrance of Graham Inlet, south of theTagish Lake.
Yukon Meteorite
Fragments of a meteor, that stunned viewers when it exploded in a giant fireball over the Yukon in January of 2000, could help explain the formation of solar system and life on Earth.
A tall order for the Tagish meteorite. It's the space rock that streaked across the early morning Yukon sky producing sonic booms, sizzling sounds, green flashes, a foul odor and a huge explosion.
As many as seventy people were watching as the meteor started its historic descent. The rock, about the size of a small truck before entering the atmosphere, triggered Defense satellites into recording its fiery explosion and landing on the Taku Arm of Tagish Lake.
Captured on film an hour before sunrise, the space rock exploded with the force of nearly one quarter the blast power of the Hiroshima atom bomb. That's pretty powerful stuff for the brightest fireball in years.
The black, porous rock fragments look like used charcoal briquettes, but they are actually examples of carbonaceous chondrite, a rare meteorite type that holds the basic ingredients from which life arose.
The Tagish meteor is in rare company. Only about two percent of meteorites that reach the Earth are carbonaceous chondrites. And to find one in good condition is special since they deteriorate when they enter the atmosphere or during weathering on the ground.
Fortunately for the scientific community, one week after the event, on January 25th, Jim Brook found the first meteorite fragments while driving home on the frozen surface of the Taku Arm.
Just as darkness was setting in, he spotted some small, black rocks several hundred meters from the shore.
He covered his fingers, picked up the pieces and put them in plastic bags. In a few hours of searching, Brook found seventeen meteorites weighing almost one kilogram. Five were the size of small oranges, and twelve the size of walnuts.
What Brook had found was a relic from the early solar system.
Research teams analyzing the Tagish specimen say it came from a D-type asteroid, possibly a piece of asteroid 368 Haidae, that roams the cold, outer region of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Space geologists believe the pristine pieces of the space rock make it the most important meteorite found in more than thirty years. In fact, a NASA spokesman said that no one had ever recovered a meteor and kept it so pure. It may never happen again.
The meteor was old...very old...four and a half billion years in fact. The fragments offer a glimpse into the original composition of the solar system before the planets formed.
As they studied pieces, NASA scientists say the find was so significant for them, it was the next best thing to sending a collection mission to an asteroid.
A major scientific research mission in the spring of 2000, recovered two hundred additional specimens weighing between five and ten kilograms.
In the years since its explosive landing on the scientific scene, the Tagish Lake meteor has become world famous as the most pristine, the largest tracked by satellites, the most fragile, and one of the oldest.
Because it is so primitive, scientists studying the space visitor say it's a little like being given a picture of the solar system as a baby, and being able to understand what it was like when it was young!
On the silver anniversary of the incorporation of Whitehorse, June 1975: The 5 mayors are (from L to R): Paul Lucier, with Bert Wybrew, Ed Jacobs, Gordon Armstrong, Howard Firth.
Paul Lucier
When the young man arrived in Whitehorse in 1949, he was looking for adventure – or maybe just a job. Over the years, he found both - and more.
Paul Lucier was nineteen when he made his way from Windsor to Whitehorse. His first job was as a deck hand on the SS Klondike, the riverboat that still provided a vital transportation link between Whitehorse and Dawson City.
In the mid-fifties, he became a driver with the Army Service Corp. and had by then become a close friend of our family. Sunday dinner on Strickland Street was often graced with the presence of this delightful, humble young man.
When I was a volunteer at the community-operated CFWH, Paul was often the driver sent by Service Corp. to deliver me to my job at the radio station, then located in a Quonset hut roughly where the Airport Chalet is today. Thank goodness for Service Corp. since most of the volunteers, like me, lived downtown and had no means of getting to work - except on foot.
I got to know Paul well from his days as a driver, and later as a man who was deeply involved in the Whitehorse sports scene. He coached the Town Merchants team during my last year as a senior men’s hockey player. I know it pained him to tell me that my days as a useful forward had somehow past even though I was still young, but somewhat out of shape.
His job with Service Corp. ended when the Army left the Yukon. Then he became a Whitehorse firefighter, and his involvement in community affairs began to get noticed.
In 1964, he successfully ran for Alderman and was re-elected in 1965. In 1966, he ran for mayor but was defeated by Howard Firth. That interrupted his political career until 1970, when he was again elected as an Alderman, a position he held until 1974 when he was elected Mayor of Whitehorse.
In the fall of 1975, he was getting ready to campaign for a second term as Mayor, but in October he received a phone call from the Prime Minister that changed his life. Pierre Trudeau was on the phone to offer him the job as the Yukon’s first Senator.
It was a task he took seriously. Not always did he toe the Liberal party line. He opposed gun control legislation because he said it would adversely affect Yukon native people who relied on hunting for their subsistence. He vigorously opposed the implementation of the GST tax and successfully helped hold legislation up with an effective, but finally losing filibuster on the Senate floor.
Paul was also a tireless worker for Yukon land claims and opened many doors for negotiators through the 1990s, when land claims talks were in danger of falling apart.
The turbulent 1990s were a time of political upheaval. He conducted an effective lobby during this time of proposed constitutional change, including ensuring the north had a say in changes that could come about if they had passed the Meech Lake Accord. He was also a supporter of an elected Senate.
The turbulence of the nineties was also a time of personal turbulence for Paul Lucier. He was diagnosed with cancer. But he kept up with his Senate duties for ten years until he finally succumbed to the disease in the summer of 1999, just days before his 69th birthday.
Amy Sloan
A time long ago and far away, I produced a series of radio programs for kids called The Adventurers of Ookpik, the arctic owl. The stories of Ookpik’s adventurers were brought to life through a variety of arctic animals who were given voice by young actors from the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal.
I have always had great respect for that school. The youngster, who portrayed whales, polar bears and foxes were on a steep learning curve. Greg Wanless, who played Ookpik, went on to become artistic director at the famed Gananoque Playhouse in Ontario. Dianne D’Quallia, who was terrific as the voice of whales and other arctic creatures, starred in a one woman show, Elizabeth Rex, at Stratford. One of the narrators, David Ferry, excelled as a character actor on many television and movie dramas.
So it was with great interest that I learned that a Yukon-raised actress had graduated from the National Theatre school in 1999. Her name is Amy Sloan. Many of you may know Amy, her father, Dave Sloan, who was once the Yukon’s Minister of Health, and her mother Mary who was also an actress.
Amy lives near Hollywood these days, but her roots are in theatre in the Yukon.
She was born in Manitoba where she spent her first year. The family moved to Pelly Crossing and then to Watson Lake, where they lived for twelve years.
In 1992, they settled in Whitehorse where Amy attended the Porter Creek Junior Secondary School, where she’ll be remembered as President of the student council. After graduating from F H Collins, Amy’s first professional acting job was in the Gaslight Follies at the Palace Grande Theatre in Dawson City.
Then she attended the National Theatre School in Montreal, and graduated in 1999. Within a month, she was booked for two national commercials and a lead role in a television film. She also earned rave reviews for her role as Mary Warren in the Centaur Theatre’s production of "The Crucible" in Montreal.
In Whitehorse, Amy played the role of Catherine in the Guild Hall Theatre’s production of Dave Auburn's play "Proof."
Catherine is a young woman who has spent years caring for her unstable father, Robert. Robert was a brilliant mathematician in his younger years, but later became unable to function without the help of his daughter. His death brings Hal, a former student of Robert, into Catherine's life. She ends up falling in love with him, but in the process gravely misses her deceased father while resenting the great sacrifices she made for him.
In the past few years in the United States, Amy has worked with such notable actors as Halle Berry, Alan Alda, Ben Stiller, and Penelope Cruz. She has also worked with prominent directors like Richard Donner, Martin Scorsese and The Farrelly Brothers. After a North American search, Martin Scorsese cast her in the Academy Award winning film "The Aviator" in which she played the mother of young Howard Hughes. Some of her recent television credits include "Without a Trace," "Cold Case, "Gilmore Girls" and "C.S.I." Amy Sloan of Whitehorse has done well.
Too bad she wasn’t at the Theatre school when I was casting Ookpik animal voices. I’ll bet Amy Sloan would have had fun playing a Yukon salmon.
The Whitehorse Waterfront Trolley
A Yukon video by Les McLaughlin
Let George do it. That’s a motto that seems to symbolize the history of fastball in Whitehorse. When I was playing the sport back in sixties, we counted on George -Kolkind, that is. The elderly gentleman was always there for the players and the fans. George Kolkind made sure the fastball diamond on Fourth Avenue, where the Sport Yukon office now stands, was ready for the cry ‘play ball’. The field had been covered with crushed granite delivered from somewhere on the Fish Lake road.
To make sure the field was smooth, Kolkind invented a unique system that involved dragging an old bed spring, attached to ropes, around the infield. Pulling the contraption, he looked like a harnessed plough horse, but it worked. He also invented a chalk dispenser that consisted of a single wheel and a funnel to mark the foul lines and the on-deck circle. On the few occasions when we had tournament play with out-of-town teams, George Kolkind set up a primitive but workable PA system. He was our go-to guy and fastball was never the same without him.
Fast forward forty years and the go-to guy is still George, as in George Arcand. The longtime player and member of Softball Yukon has helped organize softball tournaments of all kinds since the late seventies. He was instrumental in the creation of the Pepsi Softball Centre 25 years ago. Arcand has played a major role as the executive Director of Softball Yukon for the past fifteen years.
He was inducted to the Sport Yukon Hall of Fame in 1998 and continues to be involved with various committees. Born in New Westminister, George’s Yukon softball career started in 1975 when he was first elected President of Softball Yukon. He was named Sport Yukon Administrator of the year in both 1983 and 1984. In 1989, he coached the Yukon Senior Men’s Fast-Pitch team to a Silver Medal at the Canadian Championships.
This week George Arcand’s dream of putting Whitehorse and the Yukon on the international fastball stage has been emphasized by the ISF Junior Men’s World Fastball Championships. The tournament features the largest number of teams since it was first held thirteen years ago.
George Arcand deserves much of the credit and that has been recognized as he was just named to the Canadian Softball Hall of Fame.
George Arcand is a passionate advocate for sport in the Yukon just as George Kolkind was four decades ago. I guess the only difference is that today’s George doesn’t have to drag a bedspring across the infield at the Pepsi centre to smooth the surface, but he’d probably do it if he had to.
The Ladies of Hougen's Department Store Dressed for the Rendezvous 1970.
Flour Packing on the Yukon River - 1970.
Erik Nielsen, Member of Parliament for the Yukon Greets Bon Homme from Quebec City - 1971.
The Sourdough Rendezvous
There hadn't been a mid-winter carnival since 1950. So when the Board of Trade met in October of 1961, Rolf Hougen, acting as chairman for the 30-member organization, convinced everyone it was high time to get growing Whitehorse community back into a mid-winter party mood. The Sourdough Rendezvous was born.
No-one is sure why mid-winter carnival celebrations weren't staged during the 1950s, but in the early 60s the business community was determined to re-establish the spirit of what we now know as the Rendezvous. The first Sourdough Rendezvous opened on February 16th, 1962. There was no shortage of carnival experience among the organizers. As a teenager back in 1946, Rolf Hougen had been a member of the ski tourney committee, while Bob Campbell had been the general manager in '46 and '47.
The dog races were the focal point of the first Sourdough Rendezvous although the Queen contest and the beard judging were key to community involvement. Belle Desroiser organized the dog races and the mushers included Park Southwick, Sylvester Jack, Fred Stretch, Fred Chamber, Father Rigaud and 50-year-old Andy Smith of Teslin, who had finished second back in 1945 in the first Whitehorse winter carnival. Andy seemed determined to avenge his narrow defeat of 17 years earlier. And avenge he did ... winning the three-day event in a total time of 89 minutes 57 seconds. Father Rigaud was second, trailing Andy by a mere 9 seconds over three days. There were 10 Rendezvous Queen contestants - the event won by Alice Martin, who was born in Moosehide. The weather back in '62 was described as warm and slushy ... but not too warm for Bud Fisher to grow a big bushy white beard and take the best-beard title. That beard grown that year became Bud's trade mark as he went on to represent the Yukon around the world as Yukon Bud Fisher. When my young daughter met Bud in the early 70s, she was convinced he was Santa Claus. I'm sure kids all over North America thought the same of the Yukon's travelling ambassador.
Over the years, the Sourdough Rendezvous grew in stature and size and the outside world came to know how Yukoners got rid of the mid-winter blues. Television, radio and newspaper reporters covering the event helped put Whitehorse on the international stage. The publisher of the Edmonton Journal was a visitor in 1965, when tragedy struck the Rendezvous. Musher Babe Southwick died of a heart attack after running her dogs in the first day of racing. The mushers met to decide whether the races should continue.
When the decision was made to carry on, Babe Southwick's number 8 was retired and Andrew Snaddon of the Journal sponsored the Babe Southwick throphy for the fastest lap.
And the spirit continues today, 35 years after that first Sourdough Rendezvous back in 1962.
83 oz. 5 dwt. 15 grs. Nugget found on #126 Spruce Creek, B.C. (Atlin Mining District). The largest gold nugget ever discovered in British Columbia. Date: 1899. Yukon Archives. Anton Vogee fonds, #119.
Miners standing in front of sluice displaying gold nuggets. Date: 1899. Yukon Archives. Anton Vogee fonds, #151.
A miner holding a gold nugget over a rocker. Date: July 1938. Yukon Archives. Claude & Mary Tidd fonds, #8062.
Gold Figures
"Just the facts, ma'am". That's a line Joe Friday frequently used in the 1950s radio drama, Dragnet. But when it comes to gold in the Yukon, sometimes "just the figures" tell a more interesting story.
Figures for gold production in the Klondike date back to at least 1885. That year, just over 4800 ounces were declared, fetching $100,000. Not bad considering a dollar would buy a lot of grub back then ... at least in the city.
The amount of gold found in the next twelve years fluctuated, reaching 12,000 ounces in 1897, a year after the big strike on Bonanza Creek. Then came the deluge. By the end of 1898, the year of the big rush, over 48 thousand ounces were declared, carrying a total value of 10 million dollars.
But the best was yet to come. In 1899, as big companies bought up large tracks of paying ground, 77 thousand ounces were found for a total of 16 million dollars. But it was in 1900, the turn of a new century, that the motherlode was declared. That year, over one million 70 thousand (1,070,000) ounces turned up in the pans and dredges working the Klondike valley...the largest single year of gold production, yielding over 22 million dollars at a time when gold was $16.00 an ounce.
Production dwindled from then on until 1972, when just over 4,000 ounces were found with a value of $254,000 dollars. After that, there was a steady rise in production as placer miners began going over the old ground with new methods making significant cleanups.
The biggest dollar value in Klondike gold occurred in 1988 when nearly 130,000 ounces resulted in a payout of 68 million dollars.
In the 110 years between 1886 and 1996, over 12 million ounces have been officially declared for a total dollar value of just over one billion. Just the figures, ma'am, just the figures.
Les McLaughlin today.
Les McLaughlin, Age 7, in the alley behind the McLaughlin home on Strickland Street.
Les McLaughlin
Born in Valleyview, Alberta, Les McLaughlin was just three years old when he arrived in Whitehorse. His youth included playing midget, juvenile for the Hougens team, and senior hockey, along with volunteering at the military-run radio station CFWH in the late Fifties. It was just the beginning of a long broadcasting career.
Les has spent countless hours helping to preserve the history of the Yukon with his recordings of special people and events over many years for CBC Radio.
More than two hundred hours of audio selections are housed in the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre in Yellowknife and the Yukon Archives in Whitehorse.
The founding producer of the True North Concert series broadcast across Canada, Les also produced a unique and innovative series of broadcast recordings featuring Northern musical talent from across the north. The series includes over one thousand musical selections.
Another musical offering is "The Songs of Robert Service", a CD featuring ten poems by the famous poet, set to contemporary music.
Robert Service was the subject again in one of a series of hour-long recordings created for the Yukon tourist market, including "Colourful Characters of the Klondike", "North to Alaska on the Trail of ’42," "The Northwest Mounted Police in the Klondike;" and "The Robert Service Story."
Les was also the author of "High Flyers", the story of the improbable quest for Olympic gold in 1948 by the RCAF Flyers hockey team, which ran in the national publication AirForce Magazine and in the Globe and Mail.
In 1996, he was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Yukon Historical and Museums Association, who wrote that it was "to recognize the contribution of Les McLaughlin to the preservation of the Yukon’s heritage".
With his efforts to record and highlight the history of the North, Les McLaughlin himself has left his own mark in the more recent history of Whitehorse.
You may know him best as the author and host of CKRW’s "Yukon Nuggets".
A CKRW Yukon Nugget by Ron McFadyen
Les McLaughlin passed away on January 08, 2011.
Friends of Les McLaughlin have established a "Les McLaughlin Fund" in his honour to be administered by the Yukon Foundation. The family directed that the annual proceeds of the fund be used to assist students who wish to pursue a career in journalism or history. Contributions can be made to "The Yukon Foundation" P.O. Box 31622, Whitehorse, Yukon, Y1A 6L2 or by dropping it off at the CKRW Studios, 4th & Elliott St.
Flashback: The remains of the Columbian, 1906.
View of the 'Columbian' travelling down the river. Date: ca. 1903. Yukon Archives. H.C. Barley fonds, #5192.
Flashback: The Remains of the Columbian – 1906
Riverboats were the life-blood of the Yukon at the turn of the century. One day - Tuesday, September 25th, in 1906 - one of them was the scene of a disaster which led to the death of six young men.
A photograph tells much of the story. The smoldering ruins show only the paddlewheel, some pieces of engine and other metal gear, and a few boards from her main deck. The Columbian had left Whitehorse, bound for Dawson with 150 tons, of cargo, including potatoes, hams, bacon, apples and canned vegetables. She also carried 21 head of live cattle - and three tons of blasting powder, covered and stored on the foredeck.
The Columbian was built in Victoria in the spring of 1898. It was sailed to Dawson by way of St. Michael and had performed excellent service on the Yukon, plying the river between Whitehorse and Dawson.
On that fateful day in September of 1906, she was five miles below the mouth of the Little Salmon River and 20 miles above Tantalus Butte (now Carmacks). Here, a young deckhand Phil Murray noticed a flock of ducks on the river. Murray had a loaded rifle on board although this was against company rules. The ship’s fireman, Edward Morgan, asked for the gun.
What happened next is uncertain. Some accounts say the gun went off by accident. Others say the flock of ducks flew over the ship and Morgan fired over the bow. What is certain is that there was a massive explosion on board the Columbian. The resulting fireball was carried the full length of the ship. Purser Lionel Cowper, Mate Joe Welsh, deckhands John Woods, Carl Christianson and Phil Murray, and fireman Ed Morgan, all died in the incident.
Passenger, EE Winstanley, a miner from Dawson was severely burned, but recovered. If there were any heroics in this sad affair, it was likely the actions of the ships Captain J.O. Williamson, who steered the stricken riverboat to shore where it smashed into the bank while the fire raged. His actions allowed the uninjured crew members, and what few passengers were on board, to jump clear.
The only body never recovered was that of fireman Ed Morgan, who was supposedly holding the gun when the blast occurred.
Apart from the tragic deaths of the six riverboat men and the loss of the steamboat, the biggest losers were the Barton Brothers whose consignment of 21 cattle died in the blast.
A CKRW Yukon Nugget by Les McLaughlin.
Marg and Rolf donated a bust of Sam Steele during the 100th anniversary of the Mounties in the Yukon.
Canadians in the Klondike
Samuel Benfield Steele (1849-1919)
There is a street in Whitehorse and a mountain in the St. Elias Range named for him. I suppose that's the least that could be done to honour someone who dedicated a significant chapter of his illustrous life to ensuring that law, order and good government thrived during the height of the gold rush, where otherwise there may have been none.
Samuel Benfield Steele was born near Orillia, Ontario on January 5, 1849. He joined the newly formed Canadian Militia in 1866 during the Fenian troubles in western Canada and was a private during the Red River Expedition of 1870. In 1873, Steele enlisted as a Sergeant Major in the North West Mounted Police, becoming one of the first to join the newly created force. His inital command as a Mountie was at Ft. Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan in 1879, during construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
It was no easy task to maintain law and order here. In 1885, as disenchanted workers gathered in the town of Beavermouth to examine grievances against the CPR, Sam Steele, Winchester rifle in one hand and the Riot Act in the other, told the rebellious men that if he saw more than a dozen gathered together he would open fire on them. Figuring Steele to be a man of his word, the crowd dispersed.
Later that same year, he became a NWMP Superintendent. On February 3rd, 1898, Superintendent Steele was on board an old ship called the Thistle, sailing up the Inside Passage to Skagway. He was under direct orders from Clifford Sifton, the powerful Minister of the Canadian Interior, to establish a border post on top of the most inhospitable land in the Canadian dominion, the Chilkoot Pass.
When he arrived, Skagway had at least two things going against it. First, the thermometer registered -30F with a bitter coastal wind, and second, gangs of lawless men led by Soapy Smith were making the place what Sam Steele called "a hell on earth".
Steele's first job, as commander of the Mounties on the gold rush trail, was to prevent the same lawlessness from occurring in the Klondike. His second, and more important job, was to convince Americans, either by verbal argument or by Gatling gun, that the country beyond the height of land at the Chilkoot was Canadian territory.
In the appalling weather conditions of mid-February, he and a small contingent of men climbed the pass on February 25th. In a raging blizzard, the Mounties hoisted the Canadian flag and declared themselves open for business. That business was to ensure everyone entering Canadian territory carried a thousand pounds of supplies, paid duties on stuff taken across the border and remitted royalties on any gold taken out of the Klondike.
The Mounties would also ensure that the turmoil men and women encountered on the American side of the border would not happen in Canada. It was a defining moment in Yukon history and essentially ensured that Dawson and the gold fields would be as peaceful as possible under the onslaught of tens of thousands of foreign - mostly American - gold seekers.
Steele's first headquarters in the Yukon was at Lake Bennett. Miles Canyon and the Whitehorse Rapids were the most treacherous obstacles for the thousands of ill-equipped stampeders drifting down the Yukon River to Dawson. By June of 1898, a huge boat bottleneck had developed just above the rapids at Canyon City. Far too many boats had been wrecked and at least five people had drowned. The only surprise for Steele was the small number of deaths.
"Why more casualties have not occurred is a mystery to me", he wrote years later in his memoirs. In June, Steele issued an order that only skilled river pilots were permitted to take the boats through. The boats had to be registered and numbered at the Tagish Post and were required to report to the Mountie checkpoint at Canyon City, just above Miles Canyon. Those who tried to avoid the twenty-five dollar fee, charged by licensed river pilots, would have their outfits seized.
In the later summer of 1898, Steele moved his headquarters to Dawson City, where he was shocked to find "deposits of unimaginable kinds of filth". The town was a cesspool, an open sewer waiting to explode in the misery of disease and death. Typhoid raged and by the end of 1898, almost one hundred people would die, far more deaths than were caused by the austere land, the raging rapids and the icy blast of winter.
As well as heading up law enforcement, Steele assumed another duty when he named himself chairman of the Klondike Board of Health. His first order was to bartenders. "Make sure all the water served in drinks is boiled", he wrote.
He also constructed a substantial jail beside the Mounted Police barracks and ensured that the large building was kept warm all winter through the labour of convicts. Judge Sam Steele may not have been classed as a "hanging judge", but poor souls who appeared before his court were fined a significant sum before sentences to spend their days in the bush cutting wood, sawing it in the compound and piling it in neat cords. No Klondike crook escaped in the woodpile under Steele's command.
When the Yukon Field Force arrived to bolster the small contingent of Mounties, Steele immediately placed a number of the newcomers "under cover" since they were not known to the local criminals. He also put them on guard duty. There was a lot to guard since gold was flowing into the two local banks faster than booze was flowing out of the saloons. Steele's strategy was to make life very unattractive to gangsters who tried to relieve honest miners of their pokes. It worked so well that the hardened crooks usually left for greener pastures. Those who did not soon learned first-hand what it meant to receive a "blue ticket". Anyone issued a blue ticket by the Mounties was compelled to leave the Territories, never to return.
Sam Steele's memories of the early days in the Klondike tell a tale of governance "by the seats of the pants". "...my working hours were at least nineteen. I retired to rest about 2 am or later, rose at six, was out of doors at seven, walked five miles up the Klondike on the ice and back over the mountain, visited every institution under me each day, sat on boards and committees until midnight, attended to the routine of the Yukon command without an adjutant, saw every prisoner daily, and was in the town station at midnight to see how things were going." It's a good thing that the word "overtime" had not been in vogue during Steele's tenure as the boss of just about everything during the first year of the gold rush.
But it couldn't last forever, and Steele moved on as things calmed down in Dawson and the newly appointed Commissioner, William Ogilvie, was less inclined to give him free rein. It was not, however, the kind of departure the proud Mountie had hoped for. Steele, Conservative, had become embroiled in a series of messy controversies involving Liberal-appointed officials in Dawson. The man ultimately in charge of everything, and Sam Steele's boss, was Liberal Minister of the Interior, Clifford Sifton.
Sifton heeded the calls for the removal of Sam Steele. All three Dawson newspapers came to his defense and urged the government to reconsider. It was not to be. When the man now called "the Lion of the Frontier" left the Yukon, thousands of Dawson citizens lined the wharves to bid him farewell. He was presented with a purse of gold nuggets, in appreciation for his services, by Big Alex McDonald. The speech by the Nova Scotia - born, Klondike gold millionaire was succinct: "Here Sam - here's a poke. Poke for you. Goodbye." Big Alex McDonald, the Klondike King, was a man of few words.
In October, 1899 Sam Steele signed up to join the Canadians sent to the South African War, and was given command of Lord Strathcona's Horse, a mounted regiment. The unit saw plenty of action in the brutal guerrilla war and Steele won favourable attention from the British high command. After returing to Canada early in 1901, Steele went back to South Africa that same year to command a division of the South African Constabulary, a position held until 1906.
By 1907 he was back in Canada, but he was ill-prepared for the quiet life. The old warhorse was commanding Canada's military district No. 10 in Winnipeg in 1914 when World War I broke out. Steele signed on for active duty though he was sixty-four years old. He was given the rank of Major-General and put in charge of training all Canadian land forces from the Great Lakes to the Pacific. He served in Europe but again became involved in a bitter, political struggle over who should command the Canadian forces overseas.
He was now on the 'outs' with the Canadian government and he was overlooked for the British Empire's highest honour in 1918. Canada did not include him on a short list of names for knighthood. Instead, it was the British Home Forces Command that put his name foreward.
Sir Sam Steele wasn't a knight for long however. Shortly after receiving his title, he became another victim of a silent killer. The Spanish flu, which was devastating London, snuffed the life from a man who seemed larger than life itself.
The Lion of the Frontier, who could easily have died during the blizzards of a Chilkoot winter, succumbed instead in a small house in Putney, England in 1919. The troop ships returning from the First World War had no space for a corpse so it took six months before his body was returned to his old home in Winnipeg.
Strangely, the body of Sam Steele arrived in the middle of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. Riots were raging along Main Street but, the following day, there was a lull in the ongoing violence when the largest funeral procession Western Canada had ever seen made its way through the city streets.
Rioters, who hours earlier had pelted the Mounties with rocks and bottles, stood heads bowed, caps in hand and watched as Mounted Police officers in full uniform followed behind a riderless black horse with Sam Steele's boots reversed in the stirrups. Not a single voice was raised in anger. At his funeral, as in his colourful career, Sam Steele was bringing order to the Canadian West.
Note: Mount Steele, located in Kluane National Park, is Canada's fifth highest mountain at 16,664 feet above sea level. Steele Street in downtown Whitehorse, is also named for the famous Mountie.
Pika.
Yukon Collared Pika
I once owned a hamster. Well, actually it was my kids’ hamster. A family pet. He lived to the ripe old age of five years - a long time, I am told, for a hamster. The little guy had his share of adventures, like the time he escaped, and was found two days later walking down the sidewalk near our house.
There is no doubt he was happy to come home - being a house hamster. I thought of that little rodent when I was doing some research about the Yukon pika. They look alike and are about the same size. About the size of a tennis ball, and cute. But the similarity ends there. The Yukon Collared Pika is one tough animal. Truly a special breed.
These tiny creatures live on isolated islands of rock rising out of the glaciers in the St. Elias Mountains. Their favourite foods – like willows and grasses -- are scarce, so they have adapted to life on the edge. They not only eat plants, but also dead birds.
Strange as it may seem, storms blow migrating songbirds onto the icefield glaciers, where they often die. The little pikas scurry out from the rocks and onto the glaciers to collect the dead birds, just as they collect alpine plants for drying. They are the only North American pikas known to eat meat.
The amazing creatures pile the dead birds like cordwood in their haystacks. Pikas build "haystacks" of dried grass in preparation for the winter. These so-called haystacks can be quite large. Building haystacks is essential to pika survival because they don’t hibernate and therefore need food for winter.
Since most rocky outcrops can support only one pair, pika juveniles are kicked out of the family home. Then, amazingly, the little creatures set off across the glacier to find another high mountain meadow and rocky outcrop.
It is hard to imagine an animal living in a more extreme environment. Food includes leaves of mountain avens, lupines, dwarf huckleberry, kinnikinnik, and grass. So if you are ever lucky enough to travel across the Kluane icefields, look and listen for the chattering call of the pika – a welcome sound in the often quiet landscape - the sound of an incredibly adapted Yukon wild creature.
Click here to listen to this story
Emerald Lake
In the old days, as we old timers like to succinctly say, things were different. Yep, when we used to make a rare trip to Carcross on the winding, narrow dirt road, we rarely stopped to take pictures at Rainbow Lake.
That’s what we used to call this most photographed of all Yukon scenes. There weren’t many tourists around in the fifties and we had precious little interest in taking pictures anyway. Getting to Carcross - fast - was the main goal. I forget why!
Today, of course, that most photographed location is called Emerald Lake. I don’t know when the name changed from Rainbow to Emerald. Anyway, it is a favourite photo-op because of the gorgeous blue-green colour. Why does Emerald Lake look like that? Well, scientists who study such things explain it this way.
The colour is created by sunlight reflecting off a white layer of "marl" on the lake bed. Marl is calcium carbonate clay that forms in the water and then settles onto the lake bottom. It forms when the carbonate from dissolving limestone reacts with calcium in the water.
The limestone, in the surrounding hills, was created about 200 million years ago in a shallow sea. Imagine what it was like around here two hundred million years ago.
The valley of Emerald and Spirit lakes - now known as the Watson River Valley - was at one time covered by a glacier during the last ice age. These lakes formed when the glaciers retreated about 14,000 years ago.
Retreating ice deposited limestone gravel, eroded from the surrounding hills, onto the valley floor. The carbonate rich gravel eventually led to the formation of marl in the lake. Thus, the colour of Emerald Lake.
Got that? Good! So the next time you stop to take a picture on your way to Carcross, impress your travelling companions with the story of why the beautiful Emerald Lake looks the way it does.
Ted Harrison in his studio.
Ted Harrison and first nations student drawing at Vocational School. Whitehorse 1972/1973. Yukon Archives. Richard Harrington fonds, #391.
Ted Harrison instruction pottery class, Whitehorse. Yukon Archives. Richard Harrington fonds, #558.
TED HARRISON
He was trained as a classical painter in England. He served with the British army in the 40s. He came to the Yukon to teach school in the late 60s. Here, the scenery changed the way he looked as things, and turned him into one of Canada’s most recognizable and loved artists.
Ted Harrison headed for Carcross in the summer of 1968. At the time, his mind was on his new job as a school teacher, but it wasn't long before the Yukon landscape took on almost mystical proportions for him. In later years he would call the territory his Shangri-La.
Ted threw out all the classical painting knowledge he had been taught. He saw the Yukon as a land of vibrant colours and strange shapes. His skies became awash in golds, yellows, purples, reds and pinks. His tilted houses were equally colourful. The ravens were slightly out of kilter. People wore brightly coloured clothes. His hills, valleys and mountains curved hither and yon under the vivid sky.
Ted Harrison had developed a style so distinctive that I remember looking at a particularly stunning Yukon scene, and my sister saying… it looks just like a Ted Harrison painting. In the early days of this style, many critics called his work naïve and child-like.
Many of those detractors would now be hard pressed to afford a Ted Harrison original. Outside the Yukon, his works are contained in the best of collections. To have a Harrison in the art world is to have a Yukon gem.
Ted received international acclaim with the publication of his first book “Children of the Yukon.” Subsequent books include two hard-covered art illustrations featuring the Cremation of Sam McGee and the Shooting of Dan McGrew.
He’s had numerous showings outside the Yukon and the National Film Board made a feature film called “Harrison’s Yukon.” I’ve enjoyed many a pleasant time with Ted and his wife Nicki, both gentle souls, who though they no longer live in the Yukon. Yukoners were saddened to learn of the depature of artist Ted Harrison with his wife Nicky for Victoria, B.C. Their move was necessitated by the deteriorating health of Nicky. They have left a legacy of art which has changed the way many people see the Yukon landscape.
Yukon has received international fame with poet Robert Service, writer Jack London and, now, artist Ted Harrison.
A CKRW Yukon Nugget of Les McLaughlin
Yukon Horse
Most of us love horses, and why not. They have worked for and played with us for centuries. They are generally friendly and sometimes downright loyal, and in the Yukon, they have a history that may pre-date man.
Horses originated in North America about fifty million years ago. They were then the size of a terrier. Through time, they increased in size, and grew larger teeth with better grinding surfaces.
In the north, scientists call the early ancestors of today's horse, the Yukon horse. It lived on grasslands of Eastern Beringia, areas of the Yukon that remain unglaciated. The Yukon horse was one of the commonest Ice Age animals. Indeed, horses evolved in North America and spread out to the Old World via the Bering Land Bridge. Yukon horses probably arose in Beringia two hundred thousand years ago.
We know what the Yukon horse looks like, partly because of an exceptional carcass found in 1993 by placer miners at Last Chance Creek near Dawson City. Backhoe work had exposed the foreleg and a large part of the hide in a mining trench. Archaelogists collected tail hairs and a small portion of the lower intestine.
It had died about twenty thousand years ago. The horse, about four feet tall, had lived in a parkland environment. While one of the best specimens, there have been many other partial carcasses found over the years. Many excellent specimens were found near Fairbanks, Alaska and the Dawson City area.
Fossils have been found as far north and east as Baillie Islands, Northwest Territories, and as far south as Ketza River and Scottie Creek in the Yukon.
Yukon horses seem to have died out about twelve thousand years ago in Eastern Beringia, mabye because of quick climatic change about the time of the last glaciation. It is also possible that human hunting hastened its demise.
Mammoth Tusk.
Dawson YT. Mastodon Head (Skull) uncovered at a depth of 42 feet on #5 below A. Mack's discovery. Yukon Archives. Walter R. Hamilton fonds, #17.
Mammoths and Mastodons
Once upon a time, the world grew cold. Got your attention? Beats another story about global warming eh! Well, about a million or more years ago, the earth began to cool. That lasted until just ten thousand years ago.
Great sheets of ice, sometimes a thousand feet thick, moved from the north, gouging out the land. It was the ice age. Somehow, these harsh conditions encouraged the development of giant mammals. Among them were the Mastodon and the Mammoth.
Both Mastodons and Mammoths were closely related to today's elephants. The Mastodon was shorter than an elephant, but more heavily built, with upward curving tusks. Mammoths ranged from six to 14 feet high at the shoulder.
Both were covered in thick reddish-brown hair. Both were vegetarians.
Mastodons originated about thirty-five million years ago in North Africa, spreading to Eurasia about twenty million years ago, and then came to North America via the Bering land bridge about fifteen million years ago.
They were followed by the Wooly Mammoth. We know what they looked like because of an amazing number of skeletons and sometimes, full animal carcasses were trapped in ice and kept frozen over the last thirty thousand years. The woolly mammoth, which was about the size of present-day Asiatic elephants, had a shaggy coat and large, curved ivory tusks.
Unlike most of the Yukon Territory, the Klondike was not glaciated in the last ice age. Thus gold nuggets, mammoth tusks and the bones of long-extinct, prehistoric animals settled to the bottom of the creeks and remained there, frozen in permafrost. In 1903, the New York Times featured an article about an amazing mammoth tusk more than ten feet long that had been found by a miner in the Klondike and brought to his Chicago home.
Hundreds of these ancient tusks have been found in the Klondike, along with the frozen remains of other primeval animals and artifacts from prehistoric peoples. The Yukon has become one of the world's major sources of fossilized woolly mammoths.
But these creatures could not cope with the rapidly changing environment and increasing human hunting toward the close of the last glaciation, and most became extinct about 11,000 years ago.
However, in 1993 came the startling discovery that dwarf woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island in the Bering Sea only about 4,000 years ago.
Randy Hahn
It’s a long way from describing the Sourdough Rendezvous dog races on radio to doing the play-by-play broadcasts for the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League. However, it’s a journey Randy Hahn made with relative ease.
He was born in Edmonton and took his schooling at F.H. Collins in Whitehorse. In 1974, at age fifteen, Hahn impressed the folks at CKRW with his pleasant youthful voice and easy-going manner. He was hired for a weekend shift as a disc jockey.
Nearly a year later, that job would lead Hahn to his first play-by-play assignment -- calling the dog sled races at the Sourdough Rendezvous. He refers to it as "paw by paw" coverage.
A move to CBC and a series of summer relief jobs followed. When he graduated from F.H. Collins, Randy attended the University of British Columbia and got a job offer from a Vancouver radio station working broadcasts of NHL and Canadian Football League teams. That eventually led to a play-by-play job with the Edmonton Drillers soccer team.
In 1988, Hahn was hired as studio host of Los Angeles Kings hockey games on the Prime Ticket cable network. However, his broadcast career would continue to revolve around soccer. He was the play-by-play announcer at the 1990 World Cup in Italy and called action for the USA National Team soccer games on SportsChannel.
In 1990, Hahn was living in San Jose and helped bring the NHL to the area when he served as vice president of Pro Hockey San Jose - a grassroots corporation formed to attract an NHL franchise.
Hahn worked ten games as the Sharks' play-by-play man during their inaugural 1991-1992 season, and twelve during their second season. Then in 1993, he was hired as the full-time play-by-play announcer for the San Jose Sharks, and has held the job ever since.
Randy is looking forward to the day when he calls the games for the San Jose Sharks in the Stanley Cup final.
Bonnet Plume and Pinquit Lake. Yukon Archives. Ernie Barz fonds, #6.
The Bonnet Plume River
The Bonnet Plume is a beautiful Yukon river named for a Gwitchin Indian Chief, who all of his life, helped white trappers, traders and gold seekers, teaching them the ways of the land and, in some cases, saving their lives.
The Loucheaux or Gwitchin people called this river the Black Sands River because of the extensive deposits of magnetite-rich sand found on its bed. Andrew Flett, whose native name translated by French explorers as Bonnet Plume, was a chief of the band which used this region as traditional hunting and trapping grounds. He worked for the Hudson Bay Company when they began setting up posts in this remote region, the streams of which feed into the mighty Peel River.
Bonnet Plume also assisted Klondike gold-seekers who made their way over the so-called easy interior route to the Klondike. It was anything but easy, and many would-be prospectors had the good fortune to stumble upon his hunting camps. Otherwise, death was assured in this unforgiving land.
The Bonnet Plume is home to large, healthy populations of grizzly bears, wolves, moose, gyrfalcons and woodland caribou. It was also the site of the largest Peregrine Falcon study undertaken in the Territory. The falcon is the fastest bird in the world, reaching diving speeds of nearly 300 kilometers an hour. A stable population lives in the region.
The entire Bonnet Plume watershed was nominated as a Canadian Heritage River in 1992. It covers 12,000 square kilometers and extends almost 350 kilometers, from the river's headwaters along the Yukon - Northwest Territories border, to a point where it enters the Peel River.
The Canadian Heritage River System was established in 1984, as a cooperative program between federal, provincial and territorial governments. The objectives are to give national recognition to Canada's outstanding rivers and to ensure long-term management and conservation of their natural, cultural, historical, and recreational values. Three of the 28 designated rivers are in the Yukon - the Bonnet Plume, the Alsek, and the "Thirty Mile" section of the Yukon River.
A monument to the many prospectors who have tramped the hills and valleys of the Yukon.
View of two men standing next to their three dogs carrying packs. Yukon Archives. H.C. Barley fonds, #5133.
The Prospector Statue
Welcome to the Yukon - Canada games participants. Hope you enjoy your stay and take in the sights when you are not swept up in the search for ulus.
There's a lot to see in my hometown, so maybe you'll need to come back in the spring or summer. Ah summer, when the prospectors head for the hills, hoping against hope that another Vangorda Creek or even an Eldorado might magically appear and help put their names in the prospectors honour role of lucky hunches.
But right now, if you want to see a larger-than-life prospector who represents all the men and women who have trudged the trails in search of a motherlode, you have only to walk down Main Street, where there stands a bronze figure at the corner of Third Avenue.
He is decently dressed, this marvellous facsimile of the McCoy. With high-top boots, a feather in his hat, a poke of gold hanging at the hip, he looks ready to take the mineral world by storm. His faithful malemute looks quite convincing, too.
The project to bring the prospector sculpture to life took four years from concept to construction, beginning in 1988, and would not have happened had it not been for Chuck Buchanan and Bruce Patnode.
In 1986, Patnode was president of the Yukon Prospectors' Association and served seven years as a director of the Yukon Chamber of Mines. He and Buchanan, founder of the Yukon Museum of Natural History and Frontierland Theme Park near Carcross, had ideas. The larger-than-life bronze goldseeker statue was the most ambitious.
As project co-ordinator, Patnode called the project "a good idea", but at one point, the project was destined to die on the drafting table. Patnode pressed on. Only he knows how he managed to pull the money together and find such a prominent place for the landmark in record time.
First, with a miniature clay prospector-dog model, known as maquette, Patnode promoted the "good idea" while circulating among the delegates attending the Geoscience Forum at the Westmark Hotel in November, 1991.
Once they accepted the plan and a cost-sharing agreement was set up with federal and territorial governments, Buchanan started the clay work in June 1992. They then sent the casting to a Montana foundry for bronzing, and shipping back to Whitehorse in record time and on schedule.
It was just then months from the day Buchanan cast the miniature image until the three-metre-tall prospector and his malamute companion magically appeared for the unveiling as part of the Mines Ministers' Conference in Whitehorse in September 1992.
When the conference delegates began their morning meetings, there was no sign of a statue. By lunch time, it was bolted down and covered with plastic. The area was clean and the heavy equipment gone. The prospector and his dog were unveiled to thunderous applause.
Attached to the base of the sculpture is an Honour Roll that pays tribute to individuals, companies and organizations who have walked the prospector's rocky road to fame.
View of 'City of Seattle' in Glacier Bay with Muir Glacier in the background. Date: 1899. Yukon Archives. H.C. Barley fonds, #5138.
Glacier Bay is aptly named because it is home to many northern glaciers. Icebergs, that calve off the glaciers, float elegantly but dangerously in the frigid crystal blue water.
Many Yukon boat owners have used the ports of Skagway and Haines to sail into and around Glacier Bay. They marvel at the breathtaking mountain backdrop where the snows, that are older than history, add to the glacier’s ice cover before being dumped into the sea.
Here, along the 60-mile stretch of narrow fjords at the northern end of the Inside Passage, there are six tidewater glaciers.
Glacier Bay was first surveyed in detail in 1794 by a team from the H.M.S. Discovery, captained by George Vancouver. At the time, the survey showed a mere indentation in the shoreline. The largest glacier, the Grand Pacific, was more than 4,000 feet thick in places, up to 20 miles wide, and extended more than 100 miles to the St. Elias mountain range.
By 1879, American naturalist John Muir discovered that the ice had retreated more than 30 miles, forming an actual bay. By 1916, the Grand Pacific Glacier – the main glacier credited with carving the bay – had melted back 60 miles to the head of what is now Tarr Inlet. The most rapid glacial retreat ever recorded had occurred by 1916, when it was discovered that the ice had retreated 65 miles.
And that’s where the Yukon comes into play. In the mid-'60s, prospector and developer Leo Proctor, on behalf of the Yukon Research and Development Institute, flew over the area taking pictures of Tarr Inlet. He then boldly declared that the glacier had receded so far that Tarr inlet was now in Canadian territory and that a Canadian port could and should be built there.
He showed that building a road, from the port along the Tatshenshini valley to the Haines Road, would be easy. The economic implications for Canada, and the Yukon having its own seaport, were enormous, said Proctor. Well, nothing much came of the idea, and while the head of Tarr Inlet is sometimes in Canadian territory depending on what the glaciers are doing, it is unlikely a port will be built anytime soon.
In 1992 Glacier Bay became part of an international World Heritage Site, along with Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Kluane National Park. The park features snow-capped mountain ranges rising more than 15,000 feet, coastal beaches with protected coves, deep fjords, twelve tidewater glaciers, fresh-water lakes, and many plant species.
But for now, it does not feature a Canadian deep water coastal port.
Cassiar
The future of a mining town is usually guaranteed. It will become a ghost town. So it was with Cassiar, a company-owned asbestos mining town in Northern British Columbia. After 40 years of operation the mine closed in 1992.
Early prospectors had seen asbestos in McDane Mountain in the Cassiars as far back as the early 1870s. Native people told goldseekers about the wooly hill to the north. They talked of birds that built their nests of white fluff that could withstand the heat of fire.
Famed Yukon prospector Anton Money visited the remote region in 1923 and saw veins of asbestos. He wrote that although transportation seemed far away from this isolated corner of the wilderness, this could be an important discovery. He was right.
In 1950, two prospectors, Victor Sitler and Hyrum Nelson and two equipment operators from Lower Post, BC staked the first claims on McDane Mountain. Then the renowned Alec Berry a Conwest Mining man in Whitehorse heard about it. Pretty soon his company Conwest Exploration sent a geologist from Toronto to Watson Lake with instructions to “get up there and buy it”. This event led to the formation of Cassiar Asbestos Corporation.
In 1952 Conwest decided that a mine was feasible. A tent town was built to accommodate Cassiar’s first 250 pioneer miners and construction workers. In 1953 the company’s first production mill was in operation, eventually producing more than 4000 tons of ore a day. It was shipped by truck over the grueling Cassiar highway to Watson Lake, then to Whitehorse for loading on to the White Pass railway. A Cassiar transport division with headquarters in Whitehorse was established and a fleet of trucks carried 24 tons of bagged fiber the 350 miles to the railway.
It was a heady time, but it came to an end in 1992. The shutdown was driven by diminished demand for asbestos and huge costs after converting from an open-pit mine to an underground mine. Cassiar which once had a population of 1500 is gone. A few houses were sold off and trucked away, but many were bulldozed and burned to the ground. Today the ghosts walk the land were once a thriving mining town existed.
This 1989 photo shows the restored No.4 dredge.
This photo shows the beauty of the tailings left by the gold dredges.
A side view of dredge Canadian No. 4. Date: 1916. Yukon Archives. Claude & Mary Tidd fonds, #8396.
Gold Dredge No. 4
When she was built in 1912 on Bonanza Creek, she entered the record books as the largest dredge in the world. For almost 50 years, this magnificent structure helped turn the Klondike valley upside down and produced millions in gold for her owners.
They didn't give personalized names to dredges as they did riverboats back in the old days. If they had, dredge no. 4 would have been called King of the Klondike. She was built in the summer and winter of 1912, on claim number 112 below discovery on Bonanza Creek, by the Canadian Klondike Gold Mining company. Looking like a huge floating hotel, she was eight storeys high and two-thirds the length of a football field. Massive. That's the only way to really describe her.
The dredge, with huge 16-cubic-foot buckets, could dig down almost 50 feet to bedrock where millions of dollars in gold lay waiting to be dragged to the surface. When she started work in the spring of 1913, it took 300 men to keep the dredge operational from April till November. She slowly, but surely, dug her way upstream into what was then known as the Boyle concession, ground owned by Big Joe Boyle. There, in 1924, she sunk and was out of service for three years. In 1927, dredge no. 4 was refloated and dug her way down the Klondike valley and over to the rich ground on Hunker creek. Here it's said, she dug up 800 ounces of gold in a single day on claim 67 below discovery.
In 1941, she was dismantled and rebuilt by the Yukon Consolidated Gold Corporation on lower Bonanza, where she operated until 1959. The end came because the gold just wasn't enough to maintain the operating costs. But in her day, old dredge no. 4 had produced almost nine million dollars in gold when the yellow metal was no more than $35 an ounce.
The dredge sat in her final pond for more than 30 years. In 1991, she was excavated, refloated and moved to her present location on high ground near the world famous Bonanza Creek, an impressive reminder of how gold and the Klondike made Yukon history.
Elijah Smith
It was an historic day for native people in the Yukon. In February, 1973, representatives for the Yukon Native Brotherhood were in Ottawa to present their Yukon land claim.
Led by Chief Elijah Smith, they delivered a document called 'Together Today for Our Children Tomorrow' to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. The meeting is often heralded as the turning point for settlements of aboriginal rights in Canada. I was there that day, and well recall that they impressed the Prime Minister with the presentation, and with the ad-libbed words of wisdom from Elijah Smith.
Later that year, the Yukon Native Brotherhood and the Yukon Association of Non-Status Indians joined forces to form the Council for Yukon Indians to further the land claim process that had just begun.
Edward Elijah Smith, the son of Annie Ned, had a lot to do with that. He was born on July 12, 1912, in Champagne, and lived in the Yukon all his life except the six years he spent with the Canadian Army overseas during WW II. However, it was in the Yukon that Elijah Smith became a fighter.
By the mid-1960s the Yukon First Nations, fearful of losing their cultural identity, began to organize. During hearings on the federal white paper at Whitehorse in 1968, Smith spoke of being treated like squatters in their own country. He said that Yukon Indians wanted the government of Canada to see that we get a fair settlement for the use of the land.
Elijah Smith was the founding president of the Yukon Native Brotherhood and was also a founding Chairperson of the Council for Yukon Indians, since renamed the Council of Yukon First Nations. He encouraged Yukon native people to stay in school. Many of these students would eventually play instrumental roles in land claims and self-government negotations.
He served as Chief of the Kwanlin Band, Founding President of the Yukon Native Brotherhood, Founding Chairman of the Council for Yukon Indians, and Yukon representatives to the National Indian Brotherhood.
He spoke persuasively of the need for unity among First Nations people long before his vision was widely accepted. Twenty years after Elijah Smith led a group of Yukon native people to Ottawa, they signed the umbrella final land claim agreement, setting the stage for the completion of modern-day treaties for each of the Yukon's fourteen First Nations.
Smith held an honourary degree of Doctor of Laws and was named to the Order of Canada. He remained a prominent figure throughout the land claims process until his death in a tragic accident in October, 1991. To honour his memory, the federal building in Whitehorse is named for him, as well is the Elijah Smith elementary school in Whitehorse opened on September 8, 1992.
Hootalinqua junction at Carmacks with Lewis River. Yukon Archives. Frank Foster fonds, #158.
The Thirty Mile River
The Yukon River is one of the grandest in the world. It flows almost two thousand miles from Marsh Lake to the Bering Sea. One of the gems in the entire Yukon River system - a section only thirty miles long - is now Canadian Heritage river.
More than half of the territory is drained by the Yukon River. That's a lot of fresh water heading into the salt-laden Bering Sea. The Yukon is fed by tributaries from the great mountain areas...the St. Elias, Cassiar, Pelly, Selwyn, and Ogilvie Mountains.
It might be surprising to some, but the Yukon River originates in the southern lakes, just 25 kilometers from the Pacific Ocean. Then it meanders northwest for 1140 km through the boreal forest of Yukon's central lowlands to the Alaska border. From here it flows westward for another 2,060 km through central Alaska and empties into the Bering Sea. A long river by any standards.
The Thirty Mile section is a relatively narrow channel. It begins at the northern end of Lake Laberge, and ends at the Teslin River, at a place called Hootaliqua. And the river has a special place in Canadian history.
At its peak in 1898, the Klondike Gold Rush saw more than 30,000 gold seekers, in at least 7,000 boats, travel the Thirty Mile sailing from Lake Bennett to the goldfields. Although Hootalinqua already existed as a stopping place for Teslin River miners, both it and Lower Laberge became very important during and after the gold rush. At Lower Laberge, there was a telegraph station, a North West Mounted Police post, supply depots, and a roadhouse. At Hootalinqua there was a telegraph station and police post, and later, on nearby Shipyard Island, slipways and a winter storage yard for paddle-wheelers. 17-Mile Wood Camp, as it was called, was one of many along the river.
At Lower Laberge, Hootalinqua and the 17-Mile Wood Camp you can still see the remains of the log buildings in varying states of repair. Of particular interest are the remains of the slipways and winter storage facility on Shipyard Island. Built in 1913 by the British Yukon Navigation Company, it is the last such site in the Yukon.
Here the 360-ton S.S. Evelyn, built in 1908, lies as a rustic reminder of those riverboat days. It was hauled to shore at the close of the 1913 shipping season. Sadly, the hull is slowly disintegrating.
The swift, narrow channel of the Thirty Mile was the most difficult part of the stern-wheelers' run between Whitehorse and Dawson City. Its strong current, shifting shoals and treacherous rocks claimed more ships than any other stretch of the Yukon River. Simply marked grave sites are found along the Thirty Mile, and some locations are named after the boats wrecked there - Domville Creek, Casca Reef, La France Creek and Tanana Reef. The Thirty Mile was designated a Canadian Heritage river in 1991.
Yukon Flying Squirrel
My Dad used to say that this or that would happen when pigs fly. Pigs can't fly, I'd tell him. "It's just an old expression," he would say, frowning at my naiveté.
But squirrels can. Really? Yep, some can, and today we'll explore the lifestyle of a tiny creature whom you will seldom see. Just like flying pigs.
On the limb of a tall spruce tree in the dense Yukon forest, a tiny rodent - not much bigger than a mouse - prepares for a 50-metre journey through the air to a landing spot on another chosen tree. As it leaps into space, its four limbs spread wide, withloose fur-covered skin stretched out to create a parachute, the Northern Flying Squirrel glides along, twisting and turning through the trees.
The squirrel steers by adjusting the tightness of the skin flap and position of its front legs. The tail acts as a stabilizer, like the tail of a kite.
As the long journey nears its finale, the squirrel swoops up at the last moment, reducing its speed with air brakes - like a just-landed 737 - and settles gently on the branch.
It turns out this miracle of squirrel flying is not really flying. Instead, the Yukon Flying Squirrel is an accomplished glider. The tiny mammal is common in Yukon forests, but because it's a nocturnal owl, few Yukoners have ever seen one.
Because biologists have not studied the flying squirrel much in the Yukon, its distribution is not well known. Still, they say there are plenty of them around.
You've all seen red squirrels. Well, the flying guy is about half that size, weighing in at about 100 grams, the size of a big chocolate bar. Brown-grey fur on the top of its body contrasts sharply with the pale, cream-coloured underparts.
The loose skin that runs from the wrist to ankle means the little guy is not very agile on the ground, but a thing of beauty in the air. With the help of its flattened tail, the flying squirrel can bank and turn in mid-glide. The large bright eyes help give the flying squirrel a unique appearance.
Like all squirrels, the young are born in a tree in spring. Sometimes a mother will glide while holding one of the young in her mouth.
Unlike red squirrels, flying squirrels are very sociable. As many as twenty flying squirrels have been found sleeping in a single communal winter nest.
So you ask, how can I see this tiny creature that only comes out at night. Well, usually you don't, but some observers have reported seeing flying squirrels as they land softly on a bird feeder.
I saw one in the small forest above the clay cliffs many years ago. What kind of bird looks like a mouse, I later asked my Dad.
Dunno know, he said, but if you think you saw such a creature, the next thing you'll be telling me is that pigs can fly.
See also: Ground Squirrels
Source: National Geographic.
Spring has sprung, the grass has riz, I wonder where the ground squirrel is? Well, by mid-April or early May, these indicators of Yukon spring will be everywhere - along the roadsides, standing straight up watching and talking. Most people call them gophers and that's OK, but they really are squirrels.
You'll be happy to see them too, because they have been well hidden in their burrows under the deep snow since mid-September. Ground squirrels live all over the Yukon, from southern meadows to the Arctic coastal plain and from sea level to above 2000 meters - or 6000 feet. They like ground that has sandy soil because it makes digging easy and quickly drains spring flood waters and the heavy summer rain.
The ground squirrel is built for life close to the land, with stubby legs and powerful claws which makes them natural diggers. These digs or burrows are their colonies, where the dominant male controls the territory.
A colony's burrow may have fifty entrances and a maze of tunnels that are used year after year. In winter, arctic ground squirrels go into deep hibernation and their body temperature falls to near 0°C.
They are the only mammals known to allow their body temperatures to drop below freezing. By super cooling in hibernation, they save lots of energy needed for the long winter snooze and early spring romps when food is scarce.
In the spring mating season, encounters between males gets downright nasty and can turn into a boundary brawl. The fighters roll around in a ball and sometimes can be hurt quite badly. The winner earns the right to mate with the females residing in their hard-won space. Females come out one to two weeks after males do, and are ready to mate within a few days.
The young are tiny, but grow up fast. At twenty days, their eyes are open. Soon after, the young squirrels make their outside debut.
Female Arctic ground squirrels produce a single litter of five to ten young each year. To protect their offspring, mothers move them to different burrows and forcefully defend them from marauding predators, including strange squirrels. A Yukon study proved that male intruders from other colonies sometimes kill the young.
If a coyote comes by, the ground squirrel exhibits its native name by chattering "sik-sik-sik".
They often sit on rocks or brush piles, always on the lookout. So keep an eye out for them, and take some time to enjoy their antics. They are a hoot to watch as one of the Yukon's natural summer treasures.
See also: Yukon Flying Squirrel
Elsa & Keno
Elsa, Keno, and Calumet are sometimes the forgotten communities in the grand scheme of Yukon history. They are, however, no less important to the history of the land. They are - or were - communities along the so-called Silver Trail.
Miners had prospected the area between Mayo and Keno City since the 1880s. Elsa was established in 1914. In 1918, large deposits of silver were discovered and large-scale mining began. In 1920, Keno Hill Limited, a subsidiary of the Yukon Gold Company of Dawson, staked six hundred silver claims on Keno Hill alone. A few years later, discoveries were made on nearby Galena Hill. At one time Keno City had five hotels. In the 1920s, the area's silver mines were famous around the world.
By 1932, deposits on Keno Hill were thought to be depleted. However, prospects on Galena Hill looked good so the company moved the mill from Keno to Elsa during the winter of 1932-33. Elsa gained importance in 1935 when the Treadwell Yukon Company moved its mill from Wernecke to Elsa because of the discovery of the Calumet mineral deposits.
By 1938, Elsa had a school, a hockey rink, stores, churches and a community hall. The mine employed almost two hundred workers on a year-round basis. Then, with the outbreak of World War II, the U.S. Government decided it would no longer buy foreign silver. Treadwell Mines closed their Mayo District operation.
In November 1945, the Keno Hill Mining Company was formed around the old Treadwell properties, financed by the Frobisher Exploration company and Conwest Exploration Ltd.
In 1947, the Treadwell Yukon Company reorganized under the name United Keno Hill Mines Limited, and revived the mines and town of Elsa. A tram line delivered ore from Calumet to the mill in Elsa whose population grew rapidly between 1950 and the mid-'60s, in part because the Calumet workers moved to Elsa so that services could be consolidated. By 1953, United Keno Hill had become Canada's second largest silver operation, and perhaps the fourth largest in the world.
Whitehorse was a busy place partly because of the endless truck loads of ore from the Keno Hill region to the waiting White Pass trains. However, in 1989, after years of losses and low silver prices, United Keno Hill Mines closed down its operations.
The residents of Elsa moved away and most of the houses and buildings have been dismantled. No one remains except for caretakers. But Keno City, population 20, still thrives, nestled in the mountains at the end of the Silver Trail.
Lilias Farley
One of the delights in attending the Whitehorse Elementary High School on Fourth Avenue, back in the fifties, was taking art class. Strangely, as I recall, art was a mandatory subject until about grade ten. I can’t imagine why because I doubt there many students that would decline to take art class.
After all, the art teacher was one of the Yukon’s great treasurers, Miss Farley. Oh, how we all loved Miss Farley. Now there was a teacher who cared if we cared. And in the spring, she made sure the arts classes were held outside the classroom. What a delight to spend part of the school day down by the river under the watchful eye of Miss Farley, as we tried to capture on paper the Yukon’s flora and fauna.
Lilias Farley’s background in art was something we never knew until we were long graduated and gone. She was born in Ottawa in 1907. She moved to Vancouver with her family in 1924, when she was seventeen, and attended the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied arts. In her own right, Miss Farley was an accomplished painter and sculptor who studied with the best in Vancouver and counted among her friends, famed Group of Seven artists Fred Varley and J.W. MacDonald.
In the mid-1930s, she taught at the BC College of Art, which was founded by these two men. She also worked in theatrical design. It is said that in 1937 she designed the first uniforms for stewardesses for Trans-Canada Airlines (now Air Canada). During WWII she worked for Neon Electric Co., which was manufacturing depth sounders for the British navy.
She moved to the Yukon in 1948 and taught school until her retirement in 1972, while continuing to exhibit her sculpture in Vancouver. In 1967 she was awarded the Centennial Medal for service in the arts.
When she passed away in 1989, many a Yukon student of an earlier time fondly recalled the impact Miss Farley had on their careers even if they did not become artists of renown. The memories of outdoor art excursions were enough.
Johnnie Johns.
Ken McKinnon presenting the Commissioners Award to Johnnie Johns 1987.
Johnnie Johns was born at Tagish on July 10, 1898.
Johnnie Johns was born at Tagish on July 10, 1898. He was the eldest son of Maria and Tagish Johns and was a member of the Crow clan of the Deishheetaan tribe. His Tlingit name was Yeil Shaan, which means Old Crow.
During his lifetime, his contributions towards the development of the Yukon have been numerous. At the age of 19, he started his own guiding outfit. During his time as an outfitter he was known as one of the top ten guides in the world. As a life-long trapper and fisherman, these talents were second to none. He helped blaze the way for the construction of the Alaska Highway.
He was one of Yukon's best gems and most widely respected elders, who generated warmth and kindness. His domain was the outdoors and all it had to offer. He sang, drummed and danced the stars to bed.
JOHNNIE JOHNS
The Klondike Gold Rush was in full swing. The tiny village of Caribou Crossing was witnessing first-hand the largest mass movement of humanity in North American history. Johnnie Johns was born that year. One time, in the '50s, the Duke of Edinburgh asked him where he was born. In typical Johnnie humour he answered, “Under a spruce tree.” Not quite, but the village, later known as Carcross, was his life-long home.
Young Johnnie grew up with the greats of the gold rush all around him. Skookum Jim, Patsy Henderson, Tagish Charlie: they were all there in Johnnie’s formative years.
By the time he turned 17, Johnnie Johns had become a full-fledged big-game guide. In 1918, years ahead of his time, he placed an ad in Outdoor Life magazine. Soon, the young man had more rich American hunters knocking at his door than he could handle. He quickly became known throughout North America as the guide who could guarantee a trophy.
By the 1930s, he was guiding as many as a dozen hunters at a time - each paying 100 dollars a day. Huge money back then. He loved to say that as a guide he provided everything needed for a hunt, except “liquor and women - bring your own, ” Johnnie told his guests.
Hunts with Johnnie often yielded Boone and Crockett records of Dall Sheep, woodland caribou and southern lakes moose. One photo shows Johnnie dwarfed by a massive moose rack. He recalled that photo was taken in the Wheaton River valley on the last day of a hunt in 1942. He remembered that he let loose his patented call over a moose pasture and 12 moose stood up to have a look.
When Alaska Highway construction brought another wave of newcomers to the Yukon in the form of the American Army, Johnnie was hired as a guide to help survey the route between Carcross and Teslin. The US government paid him 26 dollars a day plus two dollars for each of his eight horses. Forty-two dollars a day was big money then. With his guiding and other work, Johnnie Johns was rarely short of that necessary commodity, but he was also generous to a fault.
He had three children, including Art Johns, who learned the big-game trade working with his dad, and many grandchildren who in his later years gave Johnnie great pleasure when they would show up en masse and unannounced at his home.
In the early 80s, he finally gave up his life-long career of big-game outfitting, though he still took visitors to his favourite fishing holes in the southern lakes that he loved.
The last time I saw Johnnie Johns in 1986, he was singing and telling stories at the kitchen table of our mutual friend Willard in Carcross. Willard asked Johnnie to recite a poem he had written while on a hunt with a long-time American friend, William Buchan. Johnnie said that he and Buchan decided to sit around the camp instead of hunting, and they composed the poem that sums up his attitude to life.
I remember a tear in Johnnie’s eye as he recited the poem; the last verse of which goes:
I’ll tell the piper what to play
Until the fates my threads have spun
Death never takes a holiday
It’s time to get some living done.
Johnnie Johns did some living.
Cover of a booklet written by McQuesten.
Leroy Napoleon “Jack” McQuesten (1836-1909) FATHER OF THE YUKON
He was in the Yukon long before almost anyone knew where the territory was, long before it was a territory, for that matter. Leroy "Jack" McQuesten rightly earned the nickname, Father of the Yukon.
He was born in New Hampshire in 1836. He worked on a Puget Sound-based schooner owned by his older brother. That’s where he got the nickname, "Jack", which was later prefixed with the title "Captain." And why not - when he entered the Yukon district, McQuesten skippered one of the first steamboats that plied the Yukon River.
In 1874, McQuesten established Fort Reliance, six miles down the Yukon river from what would later become Dawson City. He used Reliance as his trading post for about a decade. While there, he made the first recording of Yukon weather in 1880-81. In 1879, McQuesten was hired by the Hudson's Bay Company to manage their trading posts. In 1893, he founded Circle City, Alaska.
McQuesten was one of the first white men to marry a native Athabascan woman in the Yukon Alaska district – Katherine McQuesten. He proudly told his relatives in the southern United States how much he loved his dark-skinned children. McQuesten came into the country with his partners, Arthur Harper and Al Mayo. They established trading posts at Stewart City, Fort Reliance, Forty Mile, Eagle, Circle City, and Fort Yukon, and McQuesten’s patience with native trappers became legendary. The trading posts also served as meeting places.
Before the Mounties arrived in the Yukon, McQuesten, Harper or Mayo presided over miners’ meetings. This is where the law was established and enforced in the mining camps. At the post in Forty Mile in 1894, the Alaskan and Yukon Order of Pioneers were formed, with Captain Jack McQuesten as the first President.
As a businessman, McQuesten did well. His philosophy was that if everyone is digging for gold, someone has to sell them the shovels. After twenty-five years in the North, he could afford to move his family into a palatial Victorian home at Berkeley, California, and educate his children in the best schools. Leroy Jack McQueston died in 1909 and his wife Katherine in 1921.
A tributary of the Yukon River is named the McQuesten River. The area also features the McQuesten Mineral Belt. Yukon Jack, the 100-proof Canadian whiskey is said to be named after McQuesten. Leroy “Jack” McQuesten was also inducted into the Yukon Prospectors’ Association’s Hall of Fame in1988. His name is engraved on the goldseeker statue in Whitehorse.
Audrey McLaughlin
When Audrey McLaughlin loaded her pickup truck and headed west from Ontario in 1979, she could not have imagined the roller-coaster ride that in ten years would take her into Canadian history book.
Ontario-born Audrey Brown married a mink rancher, Don McLaughlin, when she was just 18. Soon she found herself living in an old farm house with two kids and hundreds of mink to look after. She left the relationship in 1972 and moved to Toronto to become the executive director of the city's Canadian Mental Health Association.
By 1979, she was once again ready for change. The call of the mountains beckoned and she drove the Alaska Highway in her new maroon half-ton pickup. In Whitehorse, she started a consulting business - working on projects such as child welfare legislation and conducting research on land claims and aboriginal self-government.
By 1987, the political landscape in the Yukon was undergoing dramatic change as Erik Nielsen's 30-year career, as the Conservative member of parliament, ended.
The door was now open to new faces with new ideas. Audrey was recruited to run for the NDP nomination in the coming by-election.
On the third ballot at the NDP's Yukon party convention, McLaughlin surprised everyone with a victory over favourite son, Maurice Byblow.
Until then, her only political experience, apart from 17 years of working behind the scenes for the NDP, was to run for Whitehorse city council. She lost.
In the federal by-election of 1987, she beat the Liberal candidate, former Mayor Don Branigan, by 332 votes and was on her way to Ottawa.
During her first two years in office, McLaughlin served as the NDP critic for Northern Development, Tourism, the Constitution and Revenue Canada. In 1988, she became chair of the party caucus.
Then, after just two years as a federal MP, she ran for the leadership of the party, after Ed Broadbent resigned. To everyone's surprise, she beat Dave Barrett, the former Premier of B.C., on the fourth ballot. Audrey McLaughlin entered the history books on that day in December of 1989, as the first female leader of a national political party.
Some views she held strongly, and she was not afraid to go against her party's official position. She opposed the proposed Meech Lake constitutional accord because - she said - it would forever prevent the Yukon from becoming a province. The Meech Lake accord died.
In the 1993 federal election, she retained the Yukon riding, but the NDP lost its official party status in the House of Commons. In April 1994, she stepped down as party leader, but remained interim leader until her successor, Alexa McDonough, was chosen at the NDP convention in Ottawa in 1995.
McLaughlin remained a member of parliament until 1997. After her retirement, she served as President of the Socialist International Women and was appointed special representive for the Government of Yukon on circumpolar affairs.
From her office in the country's only log skyscraper, the Ontario native, who chose the Yukon as her home, has made a significant mark on the Canadian political landscape.
Erik and Shelley Nielsen in Whitehorse 1984.
Letter dated August 30, 1979 when Erik Nielsen became acting Prime Minister.
Erik and friends on a goose hunting trop to Nisutlin Bay near Teslin.
Erik on a swing at Army Beach, Marsh Lake 1954. - P.J. Nielsen and Marg Hougen looking on.
The Nielsen Family 1961 - Erik, Roxanne, Rick, P.J. and Lee.
C. Supt Harry Nixon congratulating Roxanne on joining the RCMP - proud father looks on.
Leader of the opposition, Brian Mulroney, addressing the crowd in Whitehorse at Erik's 25th anniversary in the H of C.
Marg and Rolf Hougen joined Erik and Shelley for dinner at their home in Kelowna 2006.
Chief Charlie Abel, Erik Nielsen, Joe Netro in Old Crow.
P.J. and Erik prior to a RCAF Mess Hall dinner 1954.
Erik talking to George Bush Senior, then U.S. Vice President.
Erik with brother Leslie in Ottawa during his swearing in as Deputy Prime Minister of Canada.
Erik Nielsen
From June of 1957 until April of 1958, he ran in three federal elections. In less than a year, this Yukoner lost and won more elections than most politicians do in a lifetime.
Erik Nielsen's life as a politician is the stuff legend, except most of it is true. The young lawyer came to the Yukon in 1952, and he brought with him a distinguished war record. As a pilot in the RCAF during World War II, he flew 23 missions with a Lancaster bomber squadron. Then, as a commissioned pilot/officer, he flew 33 bombing missions over Europe, including the epic D-Day invasion in 1944. Nielsen was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, but that was just the beginning.
In 1957, he won the Progressive Conservative nomination and headed into the June federal election against long time Liberal incumbent, Aubrey Simmons. When the vote was counted in the Yukon, Erik had a 52-vote lead. At the time, however, members of the Armed Forces overseas could designate their voting riding. One hundred and 77 voted in the Yukon riding. When that vote was counted, Simmons won the election, by 70 votes. Nationally, under John Diefenbaker, the Conservatives formed a minority government.
But it wasn't over in the Yukon. The local conservatives filed a petition claiming numerous voting irregularities, including that of seven people having voted twice. Even the winning Liberals agreed that the election was flawed. In December of 1957, a by-election was held in the Yukon. This time, Nielsen won by a slim 128-vote margin. He was now a member of the minority federal government.
Having toured the Yukon in his private plane during the previous two elections, Nielsen kept his engines running. Good thing. In April of 1958, Diefenbaker called yet another federal election. Erik Nielsen and Aubrey Simmons were again on the hustings, for the third time in 10 months.
This time, Nielsen won the Yukon seat by a margin of nearly 700 votes. The Progressive Conservatives won a huge majority nationally, and Erik Nielsen began a thirty-year career which took him further, politically, than any Yukoner had gone before.
As a member of the largest majority government in Canadian history, he became known in Ottawa as Yukon Erik. Slowly but surely, he was making a name for both himself and the territory he presented.
In May of 1958, after the Conservative landslide victory in the federal election, Erik Nielsen was selected by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker to address the reply to the Speech from the Throne. It was a small, but important gesture. Nielsen would become a confidant of the Prime Minister, a supporter and friend for the rest of Dief's days.
It would stand the Yukon in good stead, as federal eyes turned northward for the first time since the gold rush. A 'roads to resources' program was established, which eventually included the building of the Dempster Highway, the Skagway road, and upgrades to the Alaska and Haines highways. Dawson City became a national historic site. Nielsen also made the first federal proposal to allow the Yukon and NWT a seat each in the senate. It was a heady time for the young lawyer-turned-politician from the Yukon.
In 1962, after four years with the largest majority in Canadian history, the conservatives were hammered in the federal election. They were barely able to form a minority government. Nielsen easily won the Yukon seat, but he knew yet another federal election was not far off. A year later, in 1963, Nielsen fought his fifth election in six years, certainly some sort of parliamentary record. Again, Yukon Erik won handily, but the Diefenbaker government was defeated. As the Liberals under Lester Pearson assumed power, Nielsen became a member of the opposition. It's a role the feisty lawyer seemed to enjoy and would earn him yet another nickname...Hawk of the House.
The mid-60s heralded a tumultous time in Canadian politics, and the member of parliament for the Yukon would be at the centre of it all.
By 1964, Erik Nielsen was considered a veteran on Parliament Hill. He'd been there for seven years. The Liberals were in power. As a member of the official opposition, Nielsen thought it his duty to challenge the government at every turn. And to embarrass if if he could.
But never in his wildest dreams did the Yukon MP think he'd be the spark that kindled a wild-fire of scandal in the Liberal party. Nielsen had developed a select group of sources. This paid off when he learned that Liberal political aides in Quebec were receiving kickbacks in exchange for political favours.
His revelations rocked Ottawa. Then, when he discovered that a notorious Montreal drug dealer, Lucien Rivard, had been allowed to water a skating rink outside the confines of his prison cell and escaped to the US, the scandal resulted in a judicial inquiry. The Liberal justice minster Guy Favreau was forced to resign. The Liberals were in disarray. Nielsen was dubbed by the media...Hawk of the House.
The result was yet another federal election, in November of 1965. Nielsen fought and won his sixth election in eight years. But, the Conservatives, under Diefenbaker, lost and Nielsen was again a member of the official opposition. Not until 1979 would he be a member of the governing party. That year, under leader Joe Clarke, the Tories held power for a mere nine months. Nielsen joined the cabinet as Minister of Public Works. In 1980, the Liberals were returned to office. It would be four more years before Yukon Erik would again taste the fruits of power.
It seems a distant memory now, but it was only fourteen years ago that the Conservatives, under Brian Mulroney, were swept into office with the largest majority government in history. Along with it, the political fortunes of the member for the Yukon rose and fell in three short years.
Pierre Trudeau had taken a long walk in the snow. John Turner took a short stroll to lead the Liberal party into the federal election of 1984. Both were political veterans with political baggage. On the other hand, Brian Mulroney was a fresh face on the national scene, and he led the Progressive Conservatives to a stunning landslide victory.
When it came to politics, Mulroney's closest advisor was Erik Nielsen. In September of that year, the member of parliament for the Yukon achieved his highest office. Yukon Erik was appointed Deputy Prime Minister. He was also given the job of re-organizing all aspects of the way federal departments operated. For a time, he also held the post of defense minister when Bob Coates was forced to resign. He was also fisheries minister for a short time when John Fraser was forced to resign.
Nielsen, backed by Mulroney, was arguably the most powerful politician in the country. But the hodge-podge collection of conservatives, including separatists from Quebec, long time political hacks from Ontario, and alienated liberals from the west, proved an unwieldy bunch. As Nielsen had revealed Liberal scandals in the 60s and 70s, now the Liberals were doing the same to the Conservatives. Cabinet ministers were forced to resign. Back-benchers were caught using their political power to personal advantage.
As Deputy Prime Minister, Nielsen was forced to defend Sinclair Stevens in the House of Commons as the opposition accused the cabinet minister of using his ministerial office for personal benefit. It's likely Nielsen knew he was defending the indefensible. What became known as the 'Stevens affair' in 1986, got Nielsen to thinking about his political future.
Then the press revealed excerpts a from private interview Nielsen gave in 1973. They charged that Nielsen received much of his information about Liberal scandals back in the '60s by installing listening devises in the Liberal caucus rooms. Nielsen vehemently denied the charge, but the resulting furor in the House of Commons prompted Brian Mulroney to force Nielson to offer an apology. Reluctantly, Yukon Erik stood in the House of Commons and, looking at the Prime Minister, he apologized.
Shortly thereafter, Nielsen announced that he would be leaving federal politics before the next federal election. His friendship with Mulroney was shattered. His love of the House of Commons turned to disgust. After he resigned on January 19th, 1987, he wrote a book whose title reveals the thoughts of this 30-year veteran of the political wars in Ottawa. It was called "The House is Not a Home".
See also: Leslie Nielsen
Richard Finnie
When I first met him in the late 1960s, he liked to be called Klondike Dick. Richard Finnie had a soft spot for Dawson City where he was born in 1906. His father O.C.S. Finnie was a mining recorder at the time. His maternal grandfather Richard Roediger was founder of the Dawson Daily News in 1899.
But Klondike Dick didn’t spend that much time in the Klondike. The family moved to Ottawa in 1909 when his father became inspecting engineer for the Department of the Interior and later served as director of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon until his retirement in 1931.
From there Richard began his beat, which was the entire North. He carried both still and motion picture cameras. He served as an assistant radio operator under Captain Bernier on board the Canadian government ship “Arctic” first in 1925.
Then in 1928 he took the first official motion picture of the Arctic’s expedition. It was the first in a long line of professional films by Richard Finnie. One photo shows a comical Richard Finnie, dressed in only a bathing suit diving off the wooden ship into an open lead in the ice-covered waters, probably the first Polar Bear swim.
In 1939 he produced a film in Fort Rae entitled “Dogrib Treaty”. Then in 1942 he produced two films which have contributed a great deal to Northern history about the Canol pipeline and the Alaska Highway, both of which gained much acclaim.
His book “Canada Moves North” was described by Stefansson as "the best general book about northern Canada". Finnie retired as official historian and film producer for Bechtel Corporation in 1968 after 25 years covering in word and picture Bechtel’s international construction projects. During Finnie’s 25 years with the company he produced more than 60 films often being his own cameraman as well as writer, director and narrator. His subjects included the first major Athabasca oilsands development in Northern Alberta.
Klondike Dick Finnie was a fellow of the Artic Institute of North America and a honorary member of the Yukon Order of Pioneers. Richard Sterling Finnie, a resident of Belvedere, California since 1951, died at his home on February 2, 1987, at the age of 80.
Alsek River, as seen from summit of Mt. Kelvin 5000 ft. above it, July 3 1898. Yukon Archives. Joseph B. Tyrrell fonds, #27.
The Alsek River
The Alsek is a mighty river, and not one to be challenged by the faint of heart. It's fed by the massive glaciers of the St. Elias Mountains in Kluane National Park. Here lies an incredible landscape of towering mountains, active glaciers and broad valleys. The Alsek is one of the park's most precious jewels. Like a lot of places in the Yukon, it had many names. Its native name was first reported by Russian explorers in 1825. As early as 1786, a French explorer, LaPerouse, called it the Riviere du Behring. In 1886, Frederick Schwatka named it the Jones River after one of his expedition's sponsors. Schwatka had a habit of honoring those who paid his way and seldom cared if a geographical feature had another name. At one time, the U.S. geographical survey called it the Harrison River after a U.S. president. The Canadian government finally got its act together and officially restored the original name, Alsek, in 1891.
From its origin as a meandering stream at the confluence of the Kaskawulsh, Dust and Dezadeash rivers, the Alsek flows for 250 km across the Yukon, the northern top of British Columbia and the Alaskan panhandle, emptying into the Pacific Ocean at Dry Bay in Alaska. This is a region of big-water rapids, canyons, glaciers and floating icebergs. On its way through the park, the river passes through a remote wilderness area, an undisturbed natural habitat for species of both Pacific Coast and Arctic plant life. The largest population of Grizzly bears in the world lives here.
The Alsek River contains many significant natural features which have resulted from the action of water, wind and glaciers on the landscape. Many areas of exceptional natural beauty and some of Canada's most important northern ecosystems are found here. The Lowell Glacier, one of the largest in the world, forms a large section of the Alsek Valley wall and calves, with tremendous force, into the Alsek below.
Small numbers of native people have inhabited the Kluane region for perhaps 10,000 years. Ancestors of the Southern Tutchone arrived in the vicinity about 4,500 years ago.
Some of the traditional hunting, fishing and trading camps, such as the village of Klukshu, just outside the park, have been used for more than 1,000 years. In the 1890's, during the Klondike Gold Rush, the first white men came into the area from the south, travelling over the Dalton Trail to Dalton Post and other points north. Some stayed to prospect and mine the Kluane Ranges for a period at the beginning of the century.
In 1986, a 90-kilometer section of the Alsek River was designated a Canadian Heritage River. A plaque commemorating the dedication is located in Haines Junction.
Expo ‘86
It was a magical time - a time during the endless Vancouver summer to showcase the sights, sounds and pleasures of the Yukon. They called it Expo '86, a six-month world fair about transportation and communications. It featured exhibits from fifty-four countries and countless corporations.
Expo '86 was opened by Prince Charles, Princess Diana, and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on May 2, 1986. The largest single-day attendance was a whopping 341,806 on Sunday, October 12.
As someone lucky enough to spend time on the False Creek fair grounds, I can say the Yukon Pavilion was among the most colourful and accessible. The front of the dramatic Yukon Pavilion formed an open-air theatre with a brilliant 3-D northern sky backdrop designed by famed Yukon artist Ted Harrison and looking every bit like a colourful Harrison painting.
Mirrored panels helped capture the magical qualities of the Northern Lights. Surrounded by artefacts from the Klondike Gold Rush, the entranceway also served as a stage for entertainers.
Overhead hung a replica of the sister plane to Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis. The bush plane "Queen of the Yukon", owned by aviation pioneer Clyde Wann, was a striking symbol of the role played by aircraft in opening up the Yukon.
Inside, the Yukon's transportation story unfolded. The Klondike Gold Rush of 1898 came alive with the tales of the men and women who laboured to locate the gold in the valley of Bonanza and Eldorado Creeks. Visitors could pan for gold nuggets and, as I did, obtain a passport to take part in the Great Yukon Treasure hunt of 1986. Nope, I did not find the treasure, but that's another story.
Exhibits also showed the awesome story of building the Alaska Highway. The pavilion's main attraction was a stunning eighteen projector audio-visual show. From the ice-covered peaks of Kluane National Park to the wilderness of Dempster Highway, the Yukon's history and natural splendours unfolded to the delight of countless thousands of potential Yukon visitors.
The Yukon's native culture and history was highlighted through ancient artefacts from Old Crow. Also on display were traditional and modern dog sleds, including high-tech, long-distance racing sleds.
Galloping glaciers
News that glaciers in Greenland are surging from their landlocked base to the sea brings to mind a similar phenomenon that has shaped the ice fields in the St. Elias Mountains. The Steele, Hubbard and Grand Pacific are glaciers known for erratic behavior.
From its source at Mount Logan in the Yukon, the Hubbard Glacier extends 76 miles to the sea, at Yukutat Bay in Alaska. In 1986 it advanced so rapidly that it trapped seals, porpoises, and other marine animals when a new lake was formed by the blockage of the bay. Hubbard’s surge was unprecedented in modern times, and is still underway. The glacier had been moving slowly for years. Now scientists say its current surge pattern was set off by the movement of other nearby glaciers. The Steele glacier is located on the north side of Mount Steele in the Yukon. It galloped for several months in 1966, and moved more than 1.5 billion tonnes of ice at about 50 feet a day. The Lowell is another surging glacier which usually ends at the edge of the Alsek river. Ice burgs calving off the glacier tumble into a wide spot in the river called Lowell lake. But every so often this glacier rushes forward dramatically. In the distant past it completely blocked the Alsek River, creating a massive glacial lake. In 1852 Lake Alsek was 100km long and about 100 metres deep, making it bigger than Lake Kluane. When the ice dam finally broke, it sent a wall of water down the Alsek River. Native stories tell of a group of people camped at the confluence of the Alsek and Tatshenshini Rivers who were drowned in the flood. If the town of Haines Junction had existed back then, it would have been either under water, or people living there would have had lakefront property. About 15km of the Alaska Highway would also have been submerged.
Studies have shown that surging glaciers seem to go for regular gallops regardless of whether the climate is cooling or warming. Surging, or for that matter receding, glaciers may also have geopolitical repercussions. For example, in the 1960s, the 25 mile long Grand Pacific Glacier, which flows into tar inlet just 70 miles from Skagway, began receding almost far enough to put its nose in British Columbia. I recall a local bush pilot and entrepreneur Leo Proctor stirring up a lot of excitement in the local business community by pointing out that if the glacier receded into B.C., Canada would then be able to claim a freshwater port in the Alaskan panhandle. At the moment the Grand Pacific still ends in Alaskan territory, but who knows what the future holds…
Pierre Berton on the Klondike River Boat with George Dawson, 1985.
He’s written books on every Canadian subject you can imagine. Railways, churches, the west, the Arctic, and so much more. But it was the Yukon which made him a household name across Canada and around the world.
Pierre Berton was the son of a Klondike stampeder. Francis George Berton was trained as a civil engineer in St. John, New Brunswick. He, like a surprising number of men from eastern Canada, caught the goldbug early on, and headed to the Yukon via the Chilkoot Pass in 1898. Francis staked one claim which proved worthless, but he stayed in Dawson City for the next 34 years, working jobs both in the town and out in the gold fields. In 1912, he married Laura Berton, a school teacher who had come to Dawson in 1907.
Pierre Berton was born in Whitehorse in 1920. His first 12 years were spent in Dawson City, where the family lived in a small but pleasant little house across the street from Robert Service. Berton recalled living among the relics of that glorious age. Everything, it seemed, was rusty and old, yet he had no idea he was living in a ghost town of old saloons, and gambling halls and houses filled with the decaying riches of the Klondike Gold Rush.
The family moved to Victoria in 1932. Pierre attended Graigdorroch College here before enrolling in the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He joined the student staff of the Ubyssey newspaper and became a member of the University’s radio society. It was here that his interest in journalism flourished. For three summer seasons, beginning in 1938, Pierre Berton returned to the Klondike to work as a labourer with the Yukon Consolidated Gold Corporation on Dominion Creek.
He joined the army in 1942 and contributed to military newspapers. He eventually worked for the Vancouver Sun and began writing radio scripts on the gold rush days. This work led to some serious research on the Klondike and resulted, in 1957, in his first major novel called, simply 'Klondike'. It was this book which catapulted him to national acclaim, and astounded both he and his publisher by selling ten thousand copies in the first three months after it was published.
With the publishing of 'Klondike', Pierre Berton began to realize this period was a large part of a much larger story. It led him to research and write about the epic Canadian story which began long before Canadian confederation in 1867, and has not ended yet. What might Pierre Berton have written about or done had he not been raised in the Klondike? It’s likely the Yukon story would be less well known and Dawson City might still be a decaying ghost town instead of a vital destination to many visitors from around the world.
See also: A new biography of Pierre Berton
The Yukon's official bird is certainly not only found in the Yukon. It's found all across the circumpolar world and ranges as far south as the mountains of central America. Still, if you're going to choose a emblematic bird, it might as well be the smartest, funniest, coolest bird in the land.
Know anyone who doesn't have a raven story to tell? I don't. We had a German Shepherd in Whitehorse a long time ago. We tied him to the clothes line so he could range at will around the back yard without heading down the street or into the bush. How ravens would torment poor Rockey, who never came to realize that his chain would let him run only so far. But the ravens knew how far the chain would go, and would croak as they ate his stolen dog food just out of range. More than once he nearly choked to death as he came to a shuddering stop while the ravens, if they could show glee, did so.
Smart. These birds are smart. And gregarious. They know humans are good providers of nutrients - garbage cans, grocery bags left unattended in pickups, dog mash left in the backyard. Ravens know how to find this stuff, and that's why they hang around. Ravens are the largest of all songbirds. They are members of the crow family and thus related to magpies, jays and nutcrackers. As with much bird life, not a lot is known about their communication systems. But some researchers say they have the most complex vocalizations of all birds.
While most birds breed in the spring, the Raven breeds in winter. The young are hatched in winter, often in communal roosts. Most bird watchers say they have never seen a baby Raven. That's because when they leave the nest, the three-week-old chicks look as big as, if not bigger than, the adult. A lot of feathers on a tiny body.
Ravens are likely monogamous. They take one partner for life. Or so bird biologists believe. But then, anything about a bird as smart as the Raven is open for debate. For example, do birds play? Like kids? When you watch Ravens in groups of ten or more soaring and diving with the wind currents over some Yukon sidehill, it's hard to imagine anything at work but play. Nor, as one lucky photographer found out when he took a series of startling pictures, can it be anything but play.
The series of photographs show a solitary Raven on a snow-covered sidehill. At the top, it curled into a ball and rolled twenty or more feet down the hill. This happened six times before the playful bird quit - perhaps dizzy from all that rolling down the hill. The photos are proof that this is not another urban raven legend.
So it seems the Yukon's official bird is a gifted creature with a complex lifestyle suitable for the large range of options available in the Yukon. Now, if we could only find one complaining about the weather. Nah, they like the weather.
Interior view of the tent Commissary at the White Pass Summit showing piles of milk (and currants and onions) in front of the counter. Date: June 1899. Yukon Archives. H.C. Barley fonds, #5531.
Carnation Evaporated Milk
You gotta hand it to the Klondike Gold Rush. It was much more than a rush to find the precious metal in the obscure hills around Rabbit Creek in the unknown Yukon. It helped propel Seattle into a world-class city. It had a huge impact on the early motion picture industry in Hollywood. And it saved a milk company from bankruptcy.
Today, Nestlé Foods own that milk company and is worth billions. Back in 1899, however, it was a fledgling business that had trouble selling its product.
The product was evaporated milk. A Seattle grocer named E.A. Stuart had a dream of making wholesome, good-tasting milk as available to consumers as sugar and salt. So in 1899, he co-founded the Pacific Coast Condensed Milk Company and spent $25,000 to buy the rights to a new process for producing canned evaporated milk.
At first, poorly sealed cans were spoiled, by the wagon load, after leaving Stuart's farm near Seattle. Even worse, local customers weren't convinced they needed his product because fresh milk flowed freely.
Nevertheless, Stuart perfected his milk evaporation process and improved canning procedures. The process was extraordinary because it took about 60% of the water content out of dairy milk, thus making it easy to transport and store without refrigeration. But buyers remained wary.
Then luck struck in the form of the Klondike Gold Rush. Demand for evaporated milk skyrocketed as Yukon-bound gold-seekers poured through Seattle. Prospectors bought evaporated milk as fast as Stuart could make it. Soon, the sale of cans of evaporated milk had grown from nothing to more than four million dollars a year.
As sales soared, Stuart searched for the perfect name for his product and stumbled across the answer while walking in downtown Seattle. As he passed a tobacconist's window with cigars on display, he saw a sign proclaiming their name — CARNATION.
Stuart thought it was a curious name for a cigar, but perfect for his new milk product. He also believed that quality milk came only from contented cows and eventually established his own breeding farm known as Carnation Farms.
In 1907, Stuart introduced the promotional phrase, "Carnation condensed milk, the milk from contented cows." Carnation used the slogan for decades on a radio variety program called "The Contented Hour," with entertainers like Dinah Shore and Burns and Allen.
In 1985, the descendants of E.A. Stuart hit pay dirt when the international food giant Nestlé bought Carnation for about $3 billion in cash. Today, Carnation Farms is just forty-five minutes outside Seattle and is still home to contented cows and the riches the Klondike Gold Rush brought.
My first encounter of the close kind with Hollywood’s funniest man occurred in 1984. His brother Erik Nielsen had just been sworn in as Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister. Yukon Erik was, against all odds, the number two man on the Canadian political scene, a heartbeat away from the Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. On a September day outside the Governor General’s residence in 1984, I waited eagerly to hear who would be in the newly elected Conservative Government cabinet. We knew Yukon Erik, who had baited Liberals all his political life, was in for something. At the formal swearing in Erik, to the surprise of most reporters, was given the job of Deputy Prime Minister. I couldn’t wait to interview him. After all, I was reporting for Yukon radio, and had interviewed the hawk of the house many times. When the new cabinet ministers emerged from Rideau Hall, most headed straight for the microphones, for lesser lights, or the reporters they knew. Not Erik, he headed straight for his waiting limo. I yelled his name (Mr. Nielsen to be polite) as loud as I could at the black oversized car. Low and behold, out from the limo leaped Leslie Nielsen, the Naked Gun himself. This son of an RCMP constable who was born in Regina, and had grown up in Fort Norman in the NWT and in Edmonton had an obvious gift for public relations. He walked over to me, and I sheepishly told him I wanted an interview with his brother Erik. “Meet us at the National Arts Centre tonight” said the Naked Gun, “you’ll do it there”. No he wouldn’t.
At the tory celebration party that night, I rubbed shoulders with Erik, his wife Shelley, and the Naked Gun Leslie Nielsen. But no amount of sweet-talk could entice Yukon Erik into giving me an interview. His excuse: he wanted to take some time to learn his new job. I wasn’t happy, and I expressed my displeasure to Leslie. He looked at me, and with a twinkle I will not forget he said “well, you need a Nielsen interview, don’t you? How about me?” As my tape recorder rolled outside the front door of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Leslie Nielsen gave an interview worthy of the humble Hollywood star that he is. He reminisced about growing up in the North, about how he became an actor while his brother took the long and winding road through the political landscape. He expressed a genuine brotherly fondness for the many accomplishments of his famous Yukon brother Erik. He never once talked about himself, or his many acting successes. He could have, since we all know and love him as the bumbling Lieutenant Frank Drebin, the silver haired patsy of the magnificent string of Naked Gun movies.
But there is much more to Leslie Nielsen, and his life history reflects a remarkably diverse career spanning six decades, nearly 100 movies, and more than 1500 television appearances. The first time I ever saw him, it was in the Capitol Theatre in Whitehorse in 1954. He was the young star of a movie called Forbidden Planet. Years later, that movie and the central character, then played by Leslie Nielsen, would morph into Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner as commander of the spaceship Enterprise, boldly going where no man had gone before in a TV series called Star Trek. As a kid in 1954 I thought Leslie Nielsen was great in Forbidden Planet, and as a reporter in 1984 I thought he was a great gentleman for giving me a Nielsen interview I badly needed.
See also: Erik Nielsen
In this 1946 photo, Clyde Wann is seated next to Aubrey Simmons to his left. From L to R: York Wilson (foreground), Bob Campbell, Charlie Taylor, Bill Hamilton, Wann, Simmons, Jack Elliott.
Andrew Cruikshank on snowshoes. Cruikshank was an RCMP officer in Dawson and Mayo from 1923 to 1927, then became one of Yukon's early aviators and pilots of the Queen of the Yukon.Date: Nov. 1924. Yukon Archives. Claude & Mary Tidd fonds, #7838.
Clyde Wann
On the morning of October 25, 1927, residents of Whitehorse heard a sound which would set the stage for a revolution in northern travel. High over-head, a single-engine monoplane, carrying five aviation pioneers, headed for a clearing in Cyr's wood lot above the clay bluffs overlooking the town. The Queen of the Yukon had arrived.
Clyde Wann was a visionary, a Yukoner whose many business endeavours were geared to the future - none more-so than in 1927, when he established the Yukon Airways and Exploration company. He and pilot Andy Cruikshank had travelled to San Diego that year to take delivery of Ryan Brougham 1, a 5-seater aircraft. While in San Diego waiting for their plane to come off the busy assembly line, they met Charles Lindbergh who was there to buy the sister ship he called the Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh would fly his Spirit to Paris. Clyde and Andy would fly their 'Queen to Vancouver, dismantle the wings, ship it to Skagway - then fly it to Whitehorse.
When they took off from the beaches at Skagway, the weather was overcast. They had to circle upward through the cloud banks while trying to avoid the mountains all around them. They finally reached clear skies at 12,000 feet. The flight to Whitehorse took one hour and ten minutes. The next day, Wednesday October 26, Clyde and Andy left for Mayo and Keno, a trip which took two hours, and became the first commercial aircraft flight in the Yukon. The Queen of the Yukon operated for two years, carrying mail and passengers from Whitehorse to Mayo and Dawson, and to Carcross.
In 1929, the plane crash-landed at the Whitehorse airport and was damaged beyond repair. The Queen of the Yukon No. 2, a Ryan Brougham 5 monoplane was ordered to replace the first Queen. However, it had a more deadly fate, crashing in Mayo in 1932 with the death of the pilot and the end of the Yukon Airways. But, Clyde Wann had proven that air passenger and freight service would be an integral part of the Yukon's transportation system.
Click for larger view.
Roy Reber
Back in 1959, my last year in high school, I and three of my school chums played in the Whitehorse Senior men’s hockey league. We were all fresh out of Juvenile hockey, barely old enough to drive and had the good fortune of playing for one of the best hockey coaches ever to hit the Yukon.
Roy Reber was from the old time hockey school of hard knocks. He scheduled so many practices that our school work began to suffer, but the late night practices in the cold Civic Centre (later Jim Light) arena were making men out of us boys in a hurry.
He was yelling "hurry-hard" long before Russ Howard made the admonition famous at various curling championships. He taught us to keep our heads up and watch out for the other guy. For Roy, in hockey, defense was everything. Any player who didn’t like to back check would spend a lot of time on the bench. What kind of men did Roy Reber make out of us teenagers?
Well, the town Merchants team that year beat the older, tougher Army, Air force and Dawson&Hall teams to win the Whitehorse Senior men’s hockey title. Final score in the final game was 6-2, Merchants over Dawson&Hall. I still have the boisterous team photo to prove it.
Roy Reber was born in Lethbridge, Alberta in 1923. He moved to Whitehorse in 1948 and became very active in the sporting community. Sports were Roy’s life. He played hockey, basketball, fastball, badminton, golf. In 1967 he coached the men’s hockey team at the first Canada Games in Quebec City. In 1971 he coached the women's team at the Canada Games in Saskatoon.
Roy was an invaluable worker during the early years of the Arctic Winter Games. He attended the first games in 1970 as a basketball player. In 1972, he was the General Manager when the games were held in Whitehorse. In 1974 the Arctic Winter Games Corporation appointed him to the Steering Committee. He remained a member of the Board of Directors until 1978.
He served on the National Advisory Council for Fitness and Amateur Sports. In 1983, Roy Reber was inducted into the Sport Yukon Hall of Fame for his life-long commitment to coaching and promoting many sports.
I can still hear the sound of his voice echoing through the crisp air of the Civic Centre arena on any given cold winter night.
"Hurry-hard and keep your head up."
One thing is certain about Yukon Quest mushers: they respect their dogs. We all love our dogs, of course, but respect in a race like the Quest is key to success. When this respect is returned, the team of musher and dogs is complete. A sage once said that money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won’t buy the wag of his tail. If American humourist of the 1930s Will Rogers had been covering the Yukon Quest, he would quickly notice the bond between musher and dog. Rogers once accurately observed that if you are thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering someone else’s dog around.
The Yukon quest is as much about human-animal teamwork as it is about winning. Mark Twain, a colourblind humanitarian who wrote so eloquently about people of different racial backgrounds, was wise enough to note that if you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, his will not bite you. That is the principal difference between a dog and a man. Yes, the Yukon Quest is really a dog show. It began in 1983, as a dream of mushers and a Fairbanks saloon called The Bulllseye, and was dedicated to the vision of gold seekers, mail carriers, trappers and traders, all who knew the value of a good dog team. In the early days of the far off land good dogs were the difference between a life fulfilled, and a wasted youth. In the early days, Northerners learned quickly that dogs were their best friends – they learned it, or they failed. American President Woodrow Wilson said with much wisdom if a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.
The first Yukon Quest in 1984 tested both race, logistics and talent, as 26 teams left Fairbanks. At the races end, 1600km later, 20 teams crossed the finish line in Whitehorse. Sonny Linder became the first Quest champion, completing the race in 12 days and 5 minutes, and winning the $15,000 prize money. The purse soon grew to $25,000, as the race began to attract big-name sponsors and worldwide attention. Today, $30,000 goes to the winner, but most mushers will tell you they’re not in it for the money. The first Canadian to win the race was Bruce Johnson of Atlin in 1986. In 1984 Lorrina Mitchell was the first woman to finish the race. The fastest race was run in 1995 with Frank Turner’s winning time of 10 days, 16 hours, and 18 minutes. The longest time to finish and win was Bruce Johnson’s run of 14 days, 9 hours, and 17 minutes. But in a race of this magnitude records don’t mean much because conditions differ greatly from year to year. What doesn’t change is one the Quest’s main objectives, and that is commemorate the historic dependence of man and sled dog for mutual survival in extreme conditions, and to perpetrate mankind’s concern for his canine companion’s continued health, welfare, and development.
Commissioner Doug Bell presents to Allen Innes-Taylor the Commissioners Award, 1982.
Alan Innes-Taylor speaks of gold rush days to students at Whitehorse Elementary school. 1970. Yukon Archives. Richard Harrington fonds, #391.
Alan Innes-Taylor during reconstruction of Palace Grand Theatre at Dawson. Yukon Archives. Richard Harrington fonds, #420.
At the home of Marg & Rolf Hougen 1983.
ALAN INNES-TAYLOR
Alan Innes-Taylor was a real gentleman. And for me, as a young radio reporter in the '60s, he was an invaluable source of historical knowledge about the Yukon.
Whenever I wanted to know something about the river boats, or dog teams, or Mounties or wilderness survival, I turned to Innes-Taylor for the answers.
He was born in England in 1900 and emigrated, with his family, to the United States in 1906. A few years later, the family moved to Ontario. Young Alan served as a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps during World War I.
In 1919, at age 19, he moved to the Yukon and, in 1920, he joined the RCMP. He once told me that during his five-year stint with the Mounties, he never arrested anyone. Crime, he said, didn’t happen very often.
In his late twenties he began a long association with Yukon River boats, first serving as a purser on the sternwheeler Whitehorse.
He once estimated that he had logged almost 26 thousand miles on Yukon river boats. He knew their captains well and often told funny stories about how various locations on the river got unofficial names, such as “Scatterass Bat.” I’ll let you use your imagination on that one.
In 1929, he worked with the Treadwell Yukon Mining Company at Keno. In 1930, Innes-Taylor’s northern knowledge would serve him well, half a world away from the Yukon.
He was invited to be the dog driver on an American expedition to the South Pole led by Admiral Richard Byrd. It was a journey of exploration to a largely unknown land, on foot, by dog team and by aircraft, as Byrd would become the first to fly over the South Pole.
On a second expedition in 1933, Innes-Taylor was promoted to chief of field operations.
He spent the next two years in the Antarctic and became renowned for his knowledge of the little-known continent. When it was over, he was invited on lecture tours throughout North America.
During World War II, he worked for the United States War Shipping Administration and was commissioned as a Captain in the United States Army Air Corps stationed in Greenland, where he taught Arctic survival.
From 1950 to 1953, Alan was recalled to the United States Army as a Lieutenant Colonel and commanded the Military Air Transport Command Survival School in Idaho.
Such was his world stature in things northern, that he also trained international commercial airline flight crews of Air France, KLM and SAS in Arctic survival.
For Scandinavian Airlines he wrote the highly acclaimed survival manual “This is the Arctic.” He also introduced special survival gear such as exposure suits and multi-person sleeping bags.
After the 1960’s, he spent most of his time in the Yukon where he made important contributions in recording the Yukon’s history, while working to set up the Yukon Archives.
He also wrote and recorded a radio series called “The Rivers of the Yukon”, describing his fascinating trips to Yukon historic sites.
Yet, whenever I met or talked with Alan Innes-Taylor, he was modest about his incredible lifetime of achievements which earned him two American Congressional Medals for his work on the Byrd Antarctic expedition, a Carnegie life-saving medal, and a member of the Order of Canada.
For all his world travels, his home was the Yukon, where he died in 1983.
Arthur Thornthwaite sitting on a rock at the top of Tantalus Butte near Carmacks. The Yukon River is in the background. Date: ca. 1920. Yukon Archives. Claude & Mary Tidd fonds, #7714.
One of the old Tantalus Mines on Yukon River. Yukon Archives. Finnie Family fonds, #219.
Tantalus Coal Mine, Y.T. Yukon Archives. John Patrick Kingscote fonds, #37.
Tantalus Coal Mine
When Lt. Frederick Schwatka, of the US army, made his famous journey of discovery down the Yukon River in 1883, he was baffled by the many bends in the river around what is now Carmacks.
He kept expecting to reach a bald hill - or butte - but again and again, the river took him away from his elusive geographic feature.
He wrote: " a conspicuous bald butte could be seen directly in front of our raft no less than seven times. I called it a Tantalus Butte, and was glad enough to see it disappear from sight".
Tantalus was a son of the Greek God, Zeus.
The Northern Tutchone people had a less heavenly name for the hill. To them, it was known as Gun Tthi, or worm hill.
Legend has it that a giant worm lived in the hill. If people made too much noise while travelling on the river, the worm would cause a bid wind that would swamp their boats.
In 1887, the famous Canadian geographer, George Dawson, reported that coal outcrops in the area provided a source of fuel for prospectors and trappers.
At the turn of the century, Captain Miller, who operated the steamer Reindeer, discovered a coal deposit six miles from the Five Finger rapids.
A Dawson City newspaper reported that: "The mine is located right beside the river and Captain Miller has already built a wharf 115 feet long. The quality of the coal is very good and fit for general use. He will soon be able to get out about twenty tons a day. He certainly has a bonanza as coal, in that section of the Yukon, will be a godsend to steamers and railroads".
However, it turned out that the coal was of poor quality, with a high ash content. The White Pass railway, which was expected to become a major buyer, brought its coal from Vancouver by ship instead.
In 1903, Captain Miller sold the mine to the Fiver Fingers Coal Company and then opened the Hidden Treasure coal mine just above Carmacks.
By 1906, the mine, now called the Tantalus Coal Mine, produced just over five thousand tons. In 1907, production rose to ten thousand tons per year.
Although the quality was better here than at the Five Fingers deposit, the few steamboats that tried to use it soon resumed burning wood.
After 1918, production at the Tantalus mine dropped to a few hundred tons per year, primarily for use by homes and businesses in Dawson City.
In 1922, the mine was closed and thus began a series of openings and closings from 1938 to 1967, including mining coal for heating the plant at the United Keno Hill mines in the Mayo area.
In 1970, the Anvil Mining Corporation re-opened the Tantalus mine, using the coal at their Faro lead-zinc mine for heating.
In the mid-1970s, production peaked at about eighteen thousand tons per year. The Tantalus Coal Mine shut down for the final time in 1982, when the mine at Faro closed.
Tantalus Butte is an important part of Yukon history. George Carmack built a trading post at the foot of the Butte in 1893, with the idea of developing the coal seam. Three years later he and his two partners discovered gold on Bonanza Creek, and his dream of a coal mine obviously lost its glitter.
His flirtation with coal mining is commemorated today, however, in the community named Carmacks, the town that grew up near his trading post and the Tantalus Butte coal deposit.
In July 1987, Consul General of France, René Delille, presented the Order of National Merit to Father Mouchet.
Father Jean Mouchet
The lot in life for Oblate Priests who made the long journey from France to the Canadian north was to provide spiritual guidance in very isolated communities. It was no different for Father Jean Mouchet who arrived in Canada from France in 1946 to serve at Telegraph Creek.
Ten years later, he was posted to Old Crow. By 1982, when he left the community, he had become the driving force in a special program that made world class skiers out of an unlikely group of people.
Father Mouchet had developed a love for cross-country skiing while serving with the French Ski Corps during the Second World War.
In Old Crow, the physical fitness of the people astonished him. He realized that breaking trail on snowshoes all day with a dog team is an activity that develops strength and endurance.
In 1959, a team of Norwegian physiologists visited Old Crow and discovered what Mouchet already knew. Many people in Old Crow had the physique and endurance of Olympic athletes. Throughout the 1960s, however, the lifestyle changed. Snow mobiles replaced the dog sled and modern amenities meant they spent less time on the trap lines.
Because of these changes, he could see their self-esteem drop, and so he decided to use cross-country skiing to see if he could reverse the trend among the young people.
By 1967, with the support of the Yukon Territorial Government, he founded something called T.E.S.T., the Territorial experimental ski training program.
He later travelled to Whitehorse and Inuvik to set up the same program. The benefits of the T.E.S.T. program were quick and dramatic. Two skiers from Old Crow, and two from Inuvik, qualified for the Canadian National Cross Country Ski Team.
Maurice Haycock, former head of the Geological Survey of Canada, painter, musician, 1981.
Dr. Maurice Haycock
Dr. Maurice Haycock wasn’t a Yukoner, but he could have been. I first met him in 1964 when he accompanied his friend A.Y. Jackson to Whitehorse on one of their many northern painting expeditions together.
At the time, Mr. Jackson, the most famous Group of Seven painter, was approaching his 80th year. He needed the help of his friend and fellow artist, Maurice Haycock, who was 18 years younger. I met Jackson and Haycock in the Stratford Motel as they were preparing for a trip to Lake Lebarge to do, as Haycock always said, “some sketching.”
I was interviewing Jackson for local radio, and recall that I didn’t ask many questions. The famous artist was well prepared to discuss his life-long painting association with the north. He talked for about an hour.
Maurice Haycock, I learned when I accompanied him to Lake Laberge with A.Y. Jackson, was a trained geologist who fell in love with the north when he spent a year in Pangnirtung on Baffin Island in 1926.
He had gone there to assist in mapping the interior of the arctic island for the Geological Survey of Canada.
He lived with the Inuit, learned the language, journeyed by dog team and, when he returned south, he earned a Ph.D. in Economic Geology at Princeton University.
The inspiration for Haycock’s painting career came from the Arctic landscapes, and through a chance meeting with A.Y. Jackson, who was painting the north in 1927 while travelling on the government ship, the Beothic.
Following a visit to Great Bear Lake in 1949 with Jackson, he travelled and painted extensively across the north, virtually every year until his death in 1988.
To many in the art world, he became the eighth member of the Group of Seven. His paintings tell a story of geological vastness and beauty, of peace, challenge and exploration.
Dr. Maurice Haycock was more than a painter. He was a trained mineralogist, geologist, photographer, musician, and historian. He was, when I knew him in Ottawa in the 1980s, a virtual encyclopedia of both northern science and folklore.
I had many occasions to talk with him and glean his knowledge about the north that he so willingly gave for radio programs. One day at his home, he showed me sketches that he had recently made in the Yukon.
At the time, he was turning the sketches into full-blown oil paintings. Though the sketches were crude and quickly done, I could identify many of the Yukon scenes.
A few years previous, Rolf and Margaret Hougen had invited him to come to the Yukon to paint whatever he wanted. Haycock’s work had come to the attention of Marg Hougen, who had bought one of his paintings during the trip with A.Y. Jackson in 1964.
This time, Rolf wanted Dr. Haycock to paint the rest of the Yukon and provided a motor home in Inuvik so that he could drive down the Dempster Highway, painting and sketching. The Haycocks spent several days in Dawson City, Carmacks and Fort Selkirk.
They drove the Canol Road painting all the way. Rolf Hougen remembers that Dr. Haycock did about one hundred paintings, one of which appeared on the cover of the NorthwesTel phone book in 1986.
It is called “The Peel River Valley and the Ogilvie Range from the Dempster Highway.”
Maurice Haycock died on December 23, 1988, at the age of 88 years, in Ottawa, where he is remembered as the Artist of the Arctic.
DC3 Weather Vane
My first airplane flight came in 1954 when I flew from Whitehorse to Dawson City where I would spend the summer holidays with my brother who was the Canadian Pacific airlines agent in the gold rush city.
Was the aircraft used on that flight the DC3 which now serves as the most unique weather vane in the world? Maybe. I’ll bet Bob Cameron knows!
Locals may be so used to the Canadian Pacific aircraft which sits on a pedestal at the airport that they barely notice it anymore. But next time you drive by, have a closer look at history.
On December 17th 1935, the first DC 3 took its maiden flight and marked the first time that airline operators could make money simply by carrying passengers. Between 1935 and 1947 the Douglas Aircraft Company built over ten thousand DC3. Today there are still almost a 1,000 in flying condition.
The Douglas aircraft at the Whitehorse airport was built in 1942 and spent the rest of World War two in the camouflage colours of the US air force flying in India as part of the India-China Wing of Air Transport Command.
Back then it was called a C47, but when the war ended, the plane was sold to Grant McConachie’s newly established Canadian Pacific Airlines. The plane was converted to a civilian DC 3 and issued the Canadian registration number CF-CPY.
The plane flew southern routes in Canada until CPA upgraded their mainliners to bigger aircraft in the mid ‘50s. Then it came to the Yukon for service on the Dawson-Mayo-Whitehorse route. In 1960 the plane was sold to Connelly Dawson Airways and for the next six years she hauled supplies into the northern Yukon including oil exploration camps in Eagle Plains.
In 1966, the plane was purchased by Great Northern Airways based in Whitehorse and did a lot of bush flying until her last flight in November 1970. Finally, it was donated to the Yukon Flying club which in 1977 came up with an eye-catching idea.
The plane would be restored to its original Canadian Pacific Airline colours for permanent display at the Whitehorse Airport. The unveiling took place in 1981 after four years of meticulous work by volunteers.
Pivoting on its base, the aircraft always points into the wind. And it is so precise that it will rotate with only a minor breeze.
In 1998, after nearly eighteen years on the stand, the plane was removed for a second restoration. It took three years and almost fifteen hundred hours of volunteer labour before CF-CPY was ready to be reinstalled on the original pedestal on September 16, 2001.
It is likely to be flying on the pedestal for the next twenty years or so with her brilliant white, black and red colour scheme of Canadian Pacific Airlines - 1950s vintage.
Left to right : Marg Hougen, Rolf Hougen, chairman, Ione Christiansen, vice-chair, Chuck Halliday, treasurer, Marylin Halliday, and (missing) James Smith, secretary, 1980.
Roy Minter presenting a cheque to Rolf Hougen, Chairman, to establish the "Minter Fund".
The Yukon Foundation
After a conversation with Howard Firth in the late 1970's, Rolf Hougen realized there was no organization that existed in the Yukon that could accept the proceeds of an estate for the benefit of the people of the Yukon. Rolf Hougen invited several long time Yukoners to participate in creating a body that could accept donations from wills or in honour of relatives or friends. In December 1980, seventeen Yukon men and women agreed to contribute their names and $100.00 to establish the Yukon Foundation, using the Vancouver Foundation (established in 1950) as a model.
The founding members of the Yukon Foundation are:
Ione Christensen, Laurent Cyr, Belle Desrosier, William L Drury, Robert Erlam, Thomas Firth, Charles Halliday, Rolf Hougen, Lorraine Joe, Roy Minter, Hon. Erik Nielsen, Willard Phelps, Gordon Ryder, James Smith, Aubrey Tanner, Charlie Taylor, Flo Whyard The Yukon Foundation is registered under the Societies Ordinance of the Yukon Territory and it's objectives are based on time honoured standards:
"The objects of the Foundation are to promote educational advancement and scientific or medical research for the enhancement of human knowledge; to support, which may be in the discretion of the Board, contribute to the mental, cultural and physical well-being of the residents of the Yukon Territory. In order to attain these objectives, the Yukon Foundation is empowered: to receive bequests, devices and donations of every kind and description whatsoever, and hold, control, administer and deal with property of every kind and description, whether real or personal, and whatsoever situate."
An aerial view of the Gold Fields of the Klondike, 1980.
A 1958 photo of a dredge in operation.
Dredge Canadian No. 2 at work near Dawson. Date: ca. 1920-1930. Yukon Archives. Claude & Mary Tidd fonds, #8394.
Klondike Gold Dredges
It was the summer of 1966. It was the year they shutdown the Yukon Consolidated Gold Corporation – YCGC. This conglomerate had dredged the Klondike creeks near Dawson City since the turn of the century. Now those great squealing hotel-like hulks would dig for gold no more.
In 1966, just one gold dredge worked the creeks of the Klondike. They had been an incredibly efficient means of getting gold out of the ground. Consider that, in 1904, YCGC operated seven dredges and took more than 24 million dollars worth of gold from the creeks. That’s when gold was 16 dollars an ounce and the entire Canadian federal budget was 64 million dollars.
I spent part of that summer of ’66 in Dawson, talking with people who had been with the company all of their working lives. YCGC was Dawson City. There wasn’t much else. With the company going, the economy of this once booming town would no doubt suffer badly.
It was quite a sight to see one of those dredges – like great grey monsters, floating in a small lake created by the dredge itself. They looked like rustic old floating hotels. Huge buckets dug down to bedrock at the front of the dredge, then dumped the ground into the bowels of the dredge where the sand and rock were sifted through a mesh screen system.
The gold stayed on the shakers and was cleaned up by hand. The dredges literally turned the ground upside down digging to bedrock, sometimes as deep as 60 feet, then depositing the excess gravel out the back of the dredge. Thus, the creeks and riverbeds around Dawson City were turned upside down.
The dredges picked up more than sand, gravel and gold. Walter Troberg told me about the amount of mastodon ivory they used to collect. It was considered a nuisance and often disposed of by throwing it back into the pond or carting the stuff away to the bush. These great mastodons, which looked like huge hairy elephants, had roamed the region thousands of years before.
The tusks were pure ivory and worth a fortune today. Who knows how much ivory ended up in the dredge ponds or the bushes? Walter said they often picked up old whiskey bottles, sometimes intact, with whiskey still in them. He also found many old coins from the mid-19th century, lost in this gold-bearing country long before the Klondike rush of 1898.
Dredgemaster Johnny Hoggan told me how the dredge worked as we watched old No. 7 doing her final clean up that summer of 1966. I can still hear the screeching, grinding sound of the buckets on their huge chained pulleys, being pulled through the dredge and depositing this treasure inside the contraption.
The dredge which was the last to operate on the Klondike creeks that summer of ’66 now stands as a museum… a monument to ingenuity of an early time when gold in the Klondike made Yukon history.
A 1980 Photo of the Carnegie Library.
A front view of the Masonic Lodge/ Carnegie Library on the south side of Queen Street in Dawson. Date: ca. 1920s-1930s. Yukon Archives. Claude & Mary Tidd fonds, #8363.
Carnegie Library
In 1898, Dawson was fast becoming the largest city west of Winnipeg. It was an upstart place with hotels and fancy bars featuring gambling rooms, dancing ladies and boxing matches for money.
A boomtown if there ever was one. But as the prospectors left for golder pastures, the town settled down and a sense of permanency developed.
By 1902, Dawson was a modern city. It had running water, three hospitals, three churches, daily newspapers, electric lights, and a telegraph system. The town with a colourful past now looked to a secure future. Schools and libraries would be part of that.
Dawson had what was called a "Free Library", supported by public funds and by the Standard Library Restaurant and Hotel. Books could be taken out for 3¢ a day. However, residents wanted a more formal library.
Enter Andrew Carnegie. He was born in Scotland in 1835. His parents emigrated to America when he was a boy. Young Andrew developed a good business sense and built the Carnegie Steel Corporation.
When he sold out in 1901, he was worth half a billion dollars. Carnegie then became a philanthropist with libraries as the basis of his good work, contributing money for the construction of library buildings around the world.
One hundred and twenty-five libraries were built in Canada alone with donations from the Carnegie fund. His endowment was well known in Dawson and the Free Library was not about to miss out on the money. In 1902, they made a funding request to the Carnegie Foundation.
Carnegie replied with an offer of $25,000, provided the town would spend $2500 dollars a year on upkeep. The town council sent a letter of acceptance on January 1, 1903.
In March, Council agreed to buy a lot at Fourth and Queen Street from Joe Ladue, Dawson's founder, for $2600 and accepted a design from architect, Robert Montcrieff, who had designed the Bank of Commerce building. Work began at breakup, but the finishing materials didn't arrive in Whitehorse from the "outside" until the fall of that year, so the building was not finished until June of 1904.
The Carnegie Library was officially opened on August 16th, 1904, with gleaming gold letters on the front, making no mistake as to who financed the project. It was yet another architectural wonder in an isolated town that was becoming famous for fine buildings such as the post office, the Commissioner's residence and the Bank of Commerce building.
Dawsonites could choose from almost seven thousand books and magazines and relax on ornate chairs and sofas inside the beautiful building. But, alas, it did not last.
As the population dwindled, it became impossible for taxpayers to continue funding the upkeep on such an elaborate building. By 1920, with a population of less than a thousand people, the Carnegie library was sold to the Masonic Lodge.
Today, the Carnegie Libray and the Bank of Commerce designed by architect Robert Montcrieff stand as a fitting reminder of the days of Dawson's glorious past.
The Reconstructed Post Office - 1980.
Outside view of new Post Office Dawson. [original photo caption] Yukon Archives. Walter R. Hamilton fonds, #106.
Thomas Fuller, Klondike Architect
His dad has been the architect who designed the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, among other great Canadian buildings. So there was good lineage for the man who designed the Yukon's first official post office. The first post office in Dawson City was operated by the Northwest Mounted Police from a tent on Front Street. When the newly built NWMP compound called Fort Herchmer opened, the Mounties moved the post office into a small log building beside the guard room.
With the first delivery in the spring of 1898, lineups were so long they filled the soggy streets for endless blocks. Miners on the creeks did not dare leave their precious mining claims and, instead, hired men to stand in line for them to get their much cherished mail.
During the summer, the Dawson post office was moved into a building owned by big Alec McDonald, one of the few wealthy Klondike Kings. However, on October 14th, 1898 a huge fire engulfed McDonald's building and the post office disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Twenty-six buildings were destroyed, but by now, saloons were everywhere, so the Mounties leased a place called the Brewery and set up semipermanent postal headquarters. They were not permanent for long.
Politicians and the public in the Klondike complained bitterly, but the federal government remained unmoved, refusing to set up a real postal service. Soon, a growing city emerged with churches, schools, hospitals, a fire hall and an elected municipal government.
While residents could buy just about anything in the shops, they were still forced to line up for hours, if not days, outside the makeshift post office to get their mail. People complained that men with money could jump the queue, slip the sorters some gold and get their mail quickly. It was known as the "five dollar window", a side door where a bribe would hasten the process. Frustration continued to grow and threatend to become the key issue in the local elections.
In the late fall of 1898, the Canadian Post Office finally agreed to take over the mail service from the Mounties and, in January 1899, the federal Post Master General urged that money be included in the budget to establish a real postal service in Dawson. The Department of Public Works wasted no time in appointing Ottawa architect Thomas W. Fuller to design the building.
He was a good choice. His father, Thomas Fuller Senior had been Canada's chief architect from 1881 to 1896. Walking in his father's fairly large shoes, Thomas Fuller Jr. took seriously his task of building the Yukon's first post office. The land presented its peculiar problems, as architect Fuller quickly observed the delights of building on permafrost.
When the top layer of earth was scraped away, Fuller discovered to his dismay that the ground melted into an oozing mass of mud. One novel idea he had was to dig holes in the muck and position two large metal boxes in the holes to provide a foundation for the heavy wood-fired furnaces in the building's basement.
Except for lumber from the local sawmill, most of the building materials had to be imported from "the outside" at outrageous prices, and carpenters skilled in fabricating anything more than a clapboard saloon were rare in Dawson. Specialized workers were hired from as far away as Montreal and young Fuller himself was often seen swinging a hammer while keeping a close eye on his unique design.
When the post office opened in November 1900, the Dawson Daily News heralded it as "...a thing of beauty and a monument to the architectural skill of the man who designed it,"high praise, indeed, from a generally cantankerous northern press. However, the official opening did not mean that Fuller's Yukon work was finished. He designed other important buildings including the Territorial court house and Administration Building, the Comissioner's residence, and the Telegraph office. Today, all are National Historic Sites.
While the post office was not in the architectural league with his father's Parliament Buildings, Thomas Jr. no doubt made a good impression with his Klondike construction efforts since he, like his father before him, was appointed the Chief Architect of Canada.
Yukon Gold Potato
This nugget is about Yukon gold – the Yukon gold that sells for about fifty cents a pound. It’s the kind you can eat. And it is good for you too! Yep, the Yukon Gold potato. It took years of research to come up with a variety of potato that would eventually feature this famous name. Today, Yukon Gold is one of the most well known potato varieties in North America. How did it happen?
Yukon Gold is the work of the late Dr. Gary Johnston, a scientist at the University of Guelph, Ontario. During the 1960s, he headed a research team that was trying to develop a hardy potato with yellow flesh that would grow almost anywhere in Canada and be relatively disease free. It took thirteen years of work by Johnston and his team of scientists but it was worth it since the Yukon Gold is prized by chefs and homemakers around the world.
Why was the research done? Well, yellow-fleshed potatoes are common in Europe and South America and immigrants to North America preferred them. This untapped market required an enhanced, disease-resistant golden variety that could be easily grown in North America. The result was the Yukon Gold, the first Canadian-bred potato to be marketed and promoted by name. It received a Canadian license in 1980 and was soon being exported to the United States. Yep, potato varieties are licensed.
The job of a scientific potato researcher like Gary Johnston is complex. How does the potato taste? Is it resistant to diseases? Where will it grow? What is the yield? These are only a few of the many questions that must be answered. When the research is done and the potato is ready for market, the scientist who developed the new variety, gets the right to name it. Gary Johnston chose the name – Yukon Gold.
There are other gold-fleshed potatoes on the market, including Yellow Finn, Michigold, Banana, and Saginaw Gold, but none have the name recognition of Yukon Gold. Ever wonder how much this name recognition appeals to potential visitors to the land of gold?
The McPherson RCMP Patrol which travelled from Dawson to McPherson and back again. Left to right: Indian Peter [Semple], Constable Pasley, Staff Sergeant Dempster, Indian Jimmy [Simon], and Constable Tyack. Date: March 19, 1920. Yukon Archives. Claude & M
Portrait of Inspector Dempster of the RCMP. Date: ca. 1930. Yukon Archives. Claude & Mary Tidd fonds, #7469.
The most northerly highway in North America, the Dempster, roughly follows a route taken by early North West Mounted Police patrols between Dawson City and Fort McPherson. It is named for Corporal Jack Dempster, because he led the expedition to find the Lost Patrol.
In 1905, the NWMP began a yearly winter patrol of some 550 miles over some of the toughest, coldest terrain in Canada. These patrols, though very tough on men and dogs, went without incident until 1911. The patrol that year was led by Inspector Fitzgerald, with Constables Kinney, Taylor and ex-Constable Sam Carter. They began the return journey from Fort McPherson to Dawson on December 21, 1910. They had three dog-teams, totalling 15 dogs and provisions to last about 25 days.
Somewhere around the Little Wind and Hart rivers, they lost their way. The winter conditions were severe and their rations were getting low. So it was decided on January 18 to return to Fort McPherson, a distance of about 250 miles. Soon, the provisions had run out. They began to kill the dogs one by one for food. With all the dogs dead, they began to boil their buckskin thongs and dog harnesses.
Within 35 miles of Fort McPherson, Kinney and Taylor could go no further. Fitzgerald and Carter carried on. Within 25 miles of the village, Carter, unable to continue, died. Fitzgerald laid his body in the snow and covered his face with a handkerchief. Fitzgerald made it only a few hundred yards more before he too lay down and waited for death. He had time to scratch his will on a crude piece of paper.
In February, when the party failed to arrive in Dawson, Corporal Dempster, along with three Constables and an Indian guide, were ordered to begin a search. They left Dawson on February 28th, 1911. On the 12th of March, they found a snow-covered trail on the Little Wind River and followed it finding the bodies of the four policemen.
Jack Dempster went on to become an Inspector and served the force in the Yukon for 37 years. He retired in 1934 and died in Vancouver in 1965. The highway named for him, running from the Klondike Highway at mile 26 to Fort McPherson and beyond, was opened by Public Works minister Erik Nielsen on August 18th, 1979.
A group from Ft. McPherson attend the official opening of the Dempster Highway. Erik Nielsen, centre, G.I. and Martha Cameron with Ch/Supt. Harry Nixon RCMP in the back row., 1979,
The Dawson Flood of ‘79
In the spring of 1979, ice jams in the Yukon, Indian, and Klondike rivers caused the build-up of water to over-flow the make-shift sand-bag dykes on the riverfront in Dawson. Around midnight, in spite of efforts to shore up the dykes, the water poured over the banks, enveloping the town and causing extreme damage.
In the morning, as people paddled around town in canoes and small boats, the real extent of damage became clear. Houses floated off their foundations. The water smelled of diesel and sewage. Parks Canada artifacts bobbed down the streets. Trailers were turned upside down by the silty, ice-choked waters. Propane tanks littered the streets.
The waters subsided later in the day. A hole was cut in the dyke to let the waters return to the Yukon river. Then the cleanup began. Parks Canada had 20 properties in the flood plain. Some emerged intact while others floated off their foundations. Over $ 200,000 dollars in damage was recorded by Parks Canada alone.
A dozen homes were written off. Some priceless artifacts from both public and private collections disappeared forever. The Yukon government created a disaster assistance program, flying in over 20,000 pounds of food and equipment the day after the flood. About 270 damage claims were filed, totalling over 2 million dollars. It took most of the summer to restore the town to some semblance of order. But for Parks Canada, restoration projects lasted for years.
It wasn't the first flood in Dawson City's history. Since 1898, 22 floods were recorded, but the one in the spring of 1979 went down in history as one of the worst.
Roy Minter
When he was transferred to Whitehorse in 1955, the 37-year-old Canadian Army Captain was sure he had arrived in the right place at the right time. Thus, Roy Minter began his lifelong career as a publicist and a public relations man such as the Yukon had seldom seen.
Roy was born in London, England in 1917. As a kid, he moved with his parents to Vancouver. When he was old enough, he joined the Army. He spent some years with the Army in Whitehorse and then left the service to join the White Pass and Yukon Route as a special assistant to the President. He spent the rest of his life promoting the company and the territory.
In 1960, he was a member of the board of directors when the Dawson City festival foundation was formed to stage the rebirth of Dawson as a tourist destination. Roy had played a key role in getting the federal government to invest a large amount of time and money into the project.
Roy became an author, historian, photographer and film producer. He won international awards for two films, "Brave New North" and "Take Four Giant Steps. He also produced the 1967 centennial film called "It’s the Land, Have You Seen It?" as one of the White Pass company’s contributions to Canada’s centennial year.
Roy Minter rarely took a back seat when the Yukon’s name and honour were at stake. In 1966, he helped spearhead the movement called the Klondike Defense Force. It was formed to do battle with the city of Edmonton when they decided to use the Klondike as the theme for their annual city celebrations. It was Roy who convinced Yukon politicians that Edmonton was stealing the Yukon ’s birthright and should be stopped.
In 1965, an attempt by Crown Assets to sell the riverboats’, the Casca and Whitehorse was stopped, largely through the efforts of Roy Minter. In 1974, when those same boats went up in flames, he cried as he watched the raging inferno and said that the Yukon had just lost part of its soul.
Roy was as much attached to the White Pass company as he was to the Yukon. So it is no surprize that he is the author of the most authoritative book on the historic railroad. Published in 1987, "Gateway to the Klondike" is the title of his award-winning tome.
The Roy Minter Fund within the Yukon Foundation, is dedicated to fund those who write about Yukon history.
He was a founding member of the Yukon Foundation and a one hundred thousand-dollar donation is dedicated to recipients who write about the Yukon ’s history.
When he was awarded the Order of Canada in 1991, the citation read, in part:
"He has dedicated himself, since the 1950s, to promoting an appreciation of the Yukon. He has contributed to heritage preservation and tourism in the territory through his involvement in the rail industry, the development of Klondike International Park, the recovery of archival material and the recording of pioneer stories."
Roy Minter died in 1996 at the age of 79.
The Epp Letter
The long and winding road toward greater political control for elected politicians in the Yukon was often battered by storm clouds. Since the first wholly elected council back in 1909, Yukoner politicians had been demanding more political clout. But the demands always fell on deaf ears in Ottawa and the Yukon’s federally appointed Commissioner continued to run the day-to-day affairs of the Territory. The commish was the boss, the elected councillors mere window dressing.
But that changed in May of 1979 when the federal election brought in the short-lived government of Joe Clark. Jake Epp, a Mennonite from Manitoba, was appointed Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs and became the defacto political boss of the Yukon. But there was no doubt that the real power now lay in the hands of the Yukon’s member of Parliament Erik Nielsen, who was also appointed to the Clark cabinet. Nielsen had long advocated provincial status for the Yukon.
Things began to happen in a hurry and the role of Nielsen was not well hidden. In June of 1979, Yukon Government Leader Chris Pearson wrote to Epp outlining his government's position on responsible government for the territory. He demanded that the commissioner be removed from the executive committee, which ran the day–to-day political affairs of the Yukon. Epp agreed and the die was cast.
Yukon Commissioner Ione Christensen said that, while she did not oppose the changes, she did feel that they would be implemented far too fast. She hinted broadly that she might have to resign. On October 9th, 1979 Epp wrote the now famous Epp letter to Commissioner Christensen.
Epp told Christensen to remove herself from the policy-making process and not participate in day-to-day affairs of the Executive Council. Epp said as commissioner, she must to accept the advice of the Territorial Council in all matters of the Yukon Act which are delegated to the Commissioner.
Epp had fired the Commissioner and on that day, the commissioner became the Lieutenant Governor for the Yukon. But it would not be Christensen. She resigned. The Epp letter also authorized the Yukon government leader to refer to himself as "Premier" and to his cabinet members as "Ministers" if they so wished.
The changes brought the Yukon into line with provincial governments. Elected polticians were now responsible for the policies and expenditures of the Yukon government. The Yukon was fast becoming a province in all but name.
There was always a lot of action at Clarke Stadium in Edmonton when the Eskimos faced their opponents in the CFL. Not surprisingly, the action on the field reflected that of the stadium's namesake, Joe Clarke.
Joe Clarke was born and educated in Ontario. He was not the Joe who at one time was Canada's Prime Minister. No, the Joe Clarke I speak of was a much wilder guy, but no less a politician. Clarke left Ontario in 1892 to join the Northwest Mounted Police in Regina.
He didn't last long as a Mountie, deserting the force and high-tailing it back to Ontario a few months after his initation. The force charged him with desertion and only the fact that his uncle was the magistrate hearing his desertion case prevented jail time. He was fined 100 dollars.
From that episode, it seems Clarke got a quick lesson in law and enrolled at the Osgood Hall law school in Toronto. On graduation, he joined the Klondike Gold Rush. In June 1898, the Yukon was created as a district separate from the Northwest Territories, and politics immediately became a favourite sport of locals - after boxing and hockey, of course.
In 1902, the first election for the Yukon's member of parliament took place. Joe Clarke ran as a Conservative against the Liberal, James Ross, who had been the Yukon's Commissioner.
In his first election attempt, Clarke was supported by a local lawyer, George Black, who would go on in later years to glory in the House of Commons as the Yukon MP, for 22 years. He was not supported, however, by the Whitehorse Star. The paper vilified Clarke for announcing in Whitehorse that he supported a smelter near the town, only to say back in Dawson City that a smelter near Whitehorse was impractical and more likely to succeed "on the moon". In a headline, the Star claimed there were three kinds of liars, and Joe Clarke is the greatest.
Clarke lost the federal election but he was far from finished on the Yukon's political scene. The following year - 1903 - he ran for and won a seat on the first elected Territorial council, and was also admitted to the Yukon bar as a practicing lawyer.
By 1908, Clarke was finished in the Yukon. The Star even hinted that he had been run out of the Territory. His running stopped in Edmonton, where his colourful Yukon past had not changed his political outlook very much.
In 1912, Clarke became an Edmonton City Alderman and quickly earned the title "Fightin' Joe Clarke" because of his quick temper. Always one to fight for the underdog, he was not above using his fists to make a point. On August 6, 1914, he and the Mayor Billy McNamara, rolled down the city hall steps and out onto the street, and eventually battled to a draw.
Fighting didn't seem to deter Joe's electoral chances. He was elected alderman eight times and mayor five. In 1930, Joe was instrumental in getting his long-time friend Prime Minister MacKenzie King to lease the city an old federal penitentiary site for ninety-nine years at a dollar a year, to be used as an athletic park.
In 1937, when a 3000-seat stadium was built on the site, the city called it Clarke Stadium.
The stadium eventually gained Canada-wide renown as home of the Edmonton Eskimos, and when the original Clarke Stadium was torn down and replaced with the ultra-modern Commonwealth Stadium in 1978, the entire area was called Clarke Park.
A fitting memorial to a politician who survived Yukon political woes, at the turn of the century, to enter the history books as one of Edmonton's most popular mayors.
Chris Pearson
Christopher William Pearson arrived in the Yukon in 1957. He worked for the Territorial government until 1973, and then went into private business. In 1978, Chris became a politician and was elected to the Yukon Legislature. For the first time, the election was run along party lines, fielding candidates from the three major political parties. The Yukon Conservative party won the general election with eleven of 16 seats.
Party leader Hilda Watson, however, lost her seat, and Chris Pearson was then chosen to lead the party. Thus, in his first attempt in Territorial politics, he became Yukon government leader and took the reigns on the road to Yukon self-government.
On October 9, 1979, Jake Epp, Minister of Indian Affairs, answered Chris Pearson's letter of June 18th by issuing new instructions to Commissioner Ione Christensen. The famous Epp letter effectively removed the office of Commissioner from day to day governing of the Yukon, and allowed the government leader to call him- or herself, Premier.
The long and winding road to full Yukon autonomy got a little smoother that day. Under Chris Pearson, the Yukon government successfully obtained the transfer of many powers from the federally appointed commissioner to the Territorial government.
The Pearson government also battled for more responsible government and more control over resources. They also argued for the Yukon’s place as a full participant in federal-provincial conferences rather than just an observer.
In 1982, Pearson’s government was re-elected with a majority. But it now had to deal with an economic recession, which was worsened by the collapse of the mining industry and the closure of the Faro Mine.
Pearson left politics in 1985, but his successor, Willard Phelps, was not able to turn the government's fortunes around, and the New Democratic Party won that year's election.
During his years in the Yukon, Chris Pearson served as the President of the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce and was actively involved in the Rotary Club, as well as in many sports organizations.
After elective politics, he entered the Canadian diplomatic service and served in the Canadian Consulate in Dallas, Texas, for a number of years. Chris Pearson is now retired and lives in Radford, Virginia.
Clinton Creek
The Clinton Creek asbestos mine, near the junction of the Yukon and Fortymile Rivers, was operated by the Cassiar Asbestos Corporation from 1967 until 1978. Asbestos was hauled from the mine site down the top of the world highway, across the Yukon River at Dawson City by ferry in summer, ice road in winter, and by a tram system in the spring and fall. At its peak, 500 people called Clinton Creek home.
During the life of the mine, Art Anderson was renowned as the #1 employee on the payroll. For good reason. Art's father, Pete, a Dane, had boated down the Pelly River to the Klondike in July 1898. Too late to stake good gold-bearing ground in the Klondike, he prospected around the Fortymile district. Pete Anderson married Mary Charles, who died giving birth to Art, on March 27, 1912.
Growing up in the remote corner of the Yukon, young Art Anderson intimately knew the Clinton Creek terrain. He made regular dog team trips from Fortymile to Dawson City to sell furs and buy supplies.
Art was twenty-one when he and his father left Fortymile in 1933 to farm the fertile Clinton Creek Valley soil. It provided a bounty of vegetables.
He and his father also found piles of fluffy fibres. Twenty years later, this fibrous matter, known as asbestos, was a coveted product. About 1955, Conwest Exploration, which owned the Cassiar Asbestos Corporation in northern British Columbia, was attracted to the Yukon asbestos find.
It is sometimes called the Caley deposit because Dawson City resident, Fred Caley, had funded Art Anderson in his search to locate the asbestos deposit.
In 1965, Conwest decided to go into production at Clinton Creek. During the mine's lifetime, an annual 100,000 tons of industrial-grade asbestos fibres were produced in the round-the-clock operation.
Transportation was a complicated affair. The skyline at Dawson required a lot of loading and unloading time, along with the maintenance of two-truck fleets on either side of the river. Six weeks were required to build an ice bridge. In the spring, when warm temperatures threatened to decay the bridge, drivers crossed with truck doors open - always ready to jump if the ice collapsed.
The mine's limited lifespan prevented the Yukon government from building a permanent bridge. However, now that the mine no longer exists, there is talk again about building a bridge across the Yukon River at Dawson.
Art Anderson, discoverer of the Clinton Creek asbestos find, died at age eighty-four, on October 4, 1996.
Flashback: Mayor Gorden Armstrong with daughter Pat and wife Peggy, 1950.
Mayor Gordon Armstrong – 1950
When Whitehorse was incorporated as a city in 1950, the first Mayor was a jovial character with an infectious smile and impeccable work ethic. Gordon Armstrong needed those qualities and more. The tiny town was a disorganized hodgepodge of many temporary residential shacks, and businesses that counted on the largess of an elected, but largely impotent Territorial Council, for the few funds it could muster.
Gordon was born in Whitehead, the district of Saskatchewan, in 1905. He arrived in Whitehorse in 1929 to work as a butcher for the Burns Meat Packing store, operated by the venerable T.C. Richards, owner of the Whitehorse Inn.
By 1950, with four newly elected Aldermen, Mayor Armstrong had much civic work to do. There was no city hall, so the five men met at various locations to conduct business for a town that was about to grow from a place filled with ramshackle shacks and, broken wooden sidewalks, and no sewer and water system. For the first two years, they held council meetings on the second floor of the Northern Commercial Building next to Taylor and Drury’s on First Avenue.
Then they moved to Humme’s Insurance offices on the corner of 3rd and Main. When the Canadian Army Signal Corps vacated its premises in a two-story building located on the site of the present-day city hall, the Mayor and Councilors moved in.
Whitehorse was maturing both in size and importance. It was the busy centre of navigation on the Yukon River where the White Pass still ran river boats, while the newly opened Alaska Highway was bringing both businesses and tourists.
The city’s economic base had diversified to include mining, prospecting, transportation, government and tourism.
At their first meeting, Mayor Armstrong and the aldermen wondered how they would manage. The city had no tax base. Instead, it relied on meager Territorial Council grants. The legislative body met in far off Dawson City, still the Yukon’s capital. In 1950, the Territorial Council handed over many functions carried out by the Territorial Government to the city, but federal funds dedicated to Whitehorse were limited, to say the least. That would soon change.
The first order of business for the first city council was to plan for a sewer and water system. Private wells and the honey bucket brigade required urgent attention, but where would the money come from?
In 1951, news flashed from Ottawa, from the Yukon’s Member of Parliament, Aubrey Simmons, that the federal government had decided to move the capital to Whitehorse. As black as that day was for Dawsonites, it was the start of a new era in Whitehorse. The federal government amended the Yukon Act, increasing members on the Yukon Council, two of them to represent Whitehorse.
The federal government would immediately move the National Employment Service to Whitehorse. The federal government was now paying attention to the growing city under Mayor Armstrong. On August 15, 1952, the new Whitehorse Elementary High School was officially opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the main entrance of the school on Fourth Avenue.
On April 1, 1953, Whitehorse officially became the Capital of the Yukon Territory, the most westerly capital city in Canada. On April 2, 1954, the Mayor told residents that the cost of the proposed sewer and water installations in Whitehorse, to the individual homeowner, would be about $10.00 a month. After a city-wide plebiscite voting in favour, they would start work that summer with completion targeted for 1955.
In 1954, Gordon left the Burns Company and, with his nephew Bob Armstrong, started Yukon Sales, a wholesale distribution outfit. The company was a Walmart on wheels. With a converted panel truck, they delivered orders from Dawson City to Cassiar, and all points between. They sold anything that would sell. Gordon always claimed that he was the first to introduce Peak Frean biscuits, Blue Ribbon Tea and Willard’s Chocolates to the Yukon.
The pair carried out much of the work from Gordon’s historic home on Wood Street. The Armstrongs, with their only daughter Pat, lived in a three-room log house that was first owned by Dr. Frederick Cane, the Whitehorse postmaster in 1906. The house was originally a small three room log cabin, to which they attached a frame addition.
In the 1920s, the house was occupied by Captain Campbell, a pilot on the river boats, for whom it is now named. It is a wonder the Armstrong family ever got any rest, since the house is believed to be haunted by the ghost of a young boy who drowned in the 1940s. The ghost only appeared in one room, one of the early additions to the three room log house. There was a constant feeling of being watched, while the ghost often played “peek-a-boo”.
At home, Gordon never forgot his first craft as a butcher, and was often called upon by friends to prepare the results of a successful moose hunt. He did this work in a garage in the back of his yard at 406 Wood.
In June 1954, the Federal Government announced plans to build a 120-bed hospital in Whitehorse. The old hospital, on Second and Hanson, no longer provided adequate health services for the developing city.
That summer, Mayor Armstrong entertained royalty. In August, the Duke of Edinburgh became the first “Royal” to visit the land of the Midnight Sun. They treated him to fine wine and a fun time on board the SS Klondike. It’s a good thing Gordie was up on his local history because the Duke had many questions for the Mayor, especially about the portrait of the Can Can dancers that graced the walls of the Klondike’s dining room.
On November 5, 1954, the modern Federal Building at the corner of Fourth and Main opened its doors to the public. Local athletes were none too happy because the building occupied their former ball diamond, but a new arena, curling rink and ball diamond, near the south end of Fourth Avenue, more that made up for the loss.
The Federal Building contained 60,000 square feet of office space, and housed the growing number of government departments. The Whitehorse Post Office moved out of its turn-of-the-century building at First Avenue & Lambert, and into the new streamlined quarters in the Federal Building.
1955 was a busy year for the Mayor and his four-member council. By September, the downtown core was piled with dirt. Deep, muddy trenches left gaping holes in the streets and the roar of heavy equipment filled the air. Sewer and water construction was underway. Nevertheless, residents were not duty-bound to install the system into their homes. In fact, residents had to apply if they wanted to reap the benefits of the multimillion-dollar project.
Also, in September, work on the Yukon River’s first real bridge was underway. A 300-foot, three-span structure was going to reach the area that would become the city’s new subdivision.
The following spring, Governor-General Vincent Massey officially opened the span and revealed its name. The Robert Campbell Bridge connected old Whitehorse to the new subdivision called Riverdale. It was an important day for us school kids too. The Governor-General, on his first visit to the Yukon, proclaimed a school holiday. Mr. Massey, like the Mayor, was a popular fellow.
Many improvements during the '50s, including a few paved streetsand concrete sidewalks, were carried out under the Mayor’s tenure.
However, it wasn’t all business for Mayor Gordon Armstrong, although he and his small council were obviously busy making their mark on the future of Whitehorse. He loved to fish and, according to his son-in-law, Graham George, there was scarcely a river in the Yukon that avoided his rod and reel. Frequent fishing trips were always, said Graham, accompanied by a bottle of good Scotch whiskey.
In 1958, after eight hectic years, Gordon Cameron succeeded Gordon Armstrong as Mayor. But he had left his mark in the city’s history. He had helped the town rise from a frontier northern village to a modern city, with amenities of which the early pioneers could only dream.
In 1962, the Armstrongs moved to Vancouver, but Gordon frequently returned to the Territory while still operating his Yukon Sales Company. Gordon Armstrong, the first Mayor of Whitehorse, passed away in Vancouver in 1993, and was laid to rest in Kelowna, British Columbia.
Al Kulan
Canada's centennial year, 1967, was an exciting time in the Yukon. There were all kinds of celebrations and projects. Unnamed mountains were being climbed. The Yukon River flotilla saw boats of every description heading from Whitehorse to Dawson. Most of the events were huge successes. However, I recall, that one expensive project didn't seem to take hold.
Al Kulan, who had arrived in the Yukon as a broke prospector in the late forties, finally struck it rich in the lead-zinc region of Ross River.
In 1967, he was trying to give someting back to the community. He donated $25,000, a lot of money then, to plant trees on Lewis Boulevard.
Try as they might, the organizers could never get the trees to grow. Today, maybe, but back then, nope!
If he had trouble with trees, the legendary mining man had better luck with hardrock mines.
Al was born in Toronto in 1921 and joined the Canadian Army Tank Corps in 1939. After the war, he vowed he'd never work for anyone again. So he began the sometimes lonely life of a prospector.
In July 1953, Kulan found a heavy concentration of rust close to Vangorda Creek, near Ross River, which led to major lead-zinc discoveries.
In 1964, Kulan helped form Dynasty Explorations to search for marketable ore bodies in the Vangorda area. The word Dynasty was on everyone's lips. A Klondike-like bonanza, everyone agreed.
But a project of this size required money, so Dynasty joined with Cyprus Mines Corp. to form Anvil Mining, which developed the Faro deposit. The Faro mine became Canada's leading lead-zinc producer and started the biggest mining action since the gold rush. It operated for more than 20 years and established Yukon as a major supplier of base metals.
However, Kulan was not content to rest on his success or his wealth. In the seventies, while looking for iron ore deposits, Kulan rediscovered a deposit of the gemstone, lazulite, which turned out to contain the world's best specimens. He also discovered a group of new phosphate minerals found nowhere else in the world.
Well-formed crystals of lazulite occur in only a few places, including the Yukon where the colour and crystalline qualities are among the finest in the world.
In February 1976, the azure-blue rock was proclaimed the Yukon's official gemstone. The discovery of Yukon gemstones led to the formation of the Alan Kulan Memorial lectures sponsored by the University of Toronto, the Yukon Chamber of Mines and the Yukon Geoscience Foundation.
September 12th, 1977. On that fateful day, Al Kulan was holding a business meeting in the Ross River lounge. A local resident, John Rolls, walked over to the table and, without warning, fired a shot from a .357 Magnum revolver. Al Kulan, the Yukon's most famous prospector, was dead. Shock waves reverberated through the mining community and beyond.
The Yukon's Prospectors' Association inducted Kulan into the Yukon Hall of Fame in 1988. His name is engraved in the bronze three-metre-tall prospectors' statue on Main Street and Third Avenue.
In January 2005, Alan Kulan was inducted into the Canadian Mining hall of fame in Toronto.
Lionel Stokes
Here at home, I have a beat-up old curling broom. A real broom. Not the kind of shot-enhancing devices that curlers use these days to control the speed and curl of the rocks. Nope, this one is a real corn broom. The kind that used to make such a racket in the hands of good sweepers that even Russ Howard had a hard time being heard over the smack of corn broom on ice.
The broom I have is well used. Well worn. Almost worn out, in fact. But you can still read the name written, by felt marker, on the cloth covering. One word. Stokes. He's the guy who gave me the broom, back in 1977, at the Macdonald's Brier in Montreal. Lionel was shooting second stones for skip Don Twa's Yukon foresome that year.
At the end of round-robin play, the Yukon finished with a respectable record of five wins and six loses, much better than northern teams usually fare in men's national competition these days. But not nearly as good as this team did the first time the north was directly entered in the Brier. That came two years earlier, in 1975, when skip Don Twa, third Chuck Haines, second Kip Boyd and lead Lionel Stokes nearly won the Brier.
Staged in Fredericton, New Brunswick, the north, for the first time, had a direct entry into the Brier and Don Twa's team from Whitehorse was it. How well did they do? you ask. Well, the winner, Northern Ontario, had to make an almost impossible last rock shot in their last game to finish with a record of 9 wins and 2 losses - there were no playoffs then - while the boys from the Yukon finished with 8 wins and 3 losses. Never again has the Territories team come that close, and maybe they never will.
Lionel Stokes had a lot to do with that fantastic result. Two years later, in 1977, the Twa rink was back in Brier final. Lionel was now throwing second stones and, even though the final placing was not like the 1975 showing, Lionel was named the All-Star Second. The best second in Canada. He was that good.
Through it all, he became a renowned team player and dedicated curling organizer. In 1973 and 1974, Lionel and his team toured Europe on a goodwill curling marathon that gained the Yukon and Canada recognition worldwide.
In addition to his athletic ability, Lionel spent many years serving on Yukon curling committees, organizing curling events, and initiated the Bert Boyd Memorial Trophy.
So while you are in Whitehorse, take a moment and visit the Edgewater Hotel and dining room. The food is great, but more important - especially for curlers - is the chance to meet Lionel Stokes, a member of the Yukon Sports hall of fame, and oh so close to being Brier champ. Oh yes, please tell him Les McLaughlin still has his 1977 Brier broom.
In 1968 Marg and Rolf Hougen commissioned Jim Robb to do a painting of the Anglican Old Log Church (above).
Jim Robb
I met Jim Robb when he came to Whitehorse in the late fifties. Our first encounter was at the end of a shovel. We were both labourers with the Canadian army, moving dirt piles from point A to point B in Camp Takhini.
Neither of us knew why. It was a summertime job for me while I was going to school, and an introduction for Jim to a Yukon make-work project.
He was a quiet guy. At least I can’t remember any lasting conversations. Our focus was on moving dirt. He showed no hint of his later brilliance for capturing Yukon scenes and characters. Our paths rarely crossed after that. To me, he became this strange guy who carried art supplies and a camera under his arm as he strolled the back alleys of Yukon communities. Who knew why!
Years later, we all knew why. He had captured the Yukon as it had never been seen before. His work took time to catch on. Great art and artistic interpretations usually do. Picasso’s strange faces and lopsided caricatures were not an instant hit around the world.
Neither were Jim’s scenes of Wigwam’s table dance, or shacks at Moccasin Flats, that seemed to tilt far more than science would allow. Mining camps no one had seen for years became grist for the ceaseless pen and ink sketches of Jim Robb. Faces of characters long since gone took on new life and meaning.
For whatever reason, and no one knows the reason for the acceptance of artistic endeavour, Jim’s work came into vogue. Pretty soon everyone wanted a Jim Robb. Everyone ! Today, the entire Yukon looks like a Jim Robb sketch.
Our conversations today are more focused than they were in the fifties. The last time I saw him, he greeted me with the observation that I must now be older than all the rocks on Grey Mountain.
My comeback was that he had been in the Yukon longer than the Tintina Trench. He drew a sketch of me. I looked like Mr. Magoo. He said it was an accurate portrait. I drew a sketch of him. He looked like a hobo. An accurate portrait, I said.
He showed me his collection of Yukon artifacts - things that long since would have ended up in some dirt pile had he not picked them up. Jim’s persistence in sketching and collecting and picture-taking finally paid off when Canada recognized his immense contributions by awarding him the nation’s highest honour, the Order of Canada.
I’ll bet that when the Governor General fastened the pin on his suit, he must have recalled those days with a shovel on a Takhini dirt pile and recognized that the Yukon really does hold out the promise that with persistence and dedication, a person can be what they want to be.
A portrait of Percy DeWolfe, taken at Fortymile, in fur parka and moccasins. DeWolfe was the mail-carrier between Dawson and Eagle, Alaska, for 35 years. Date: 1938. Yukon Archives. Claude & Mary Tidd fonds, #7098.
Percy DeWolfe handing a sack of mail to RCMP Constable Joe Kessler at Fortymile. Date: ca. 1930. Yukon Archives. Claude & Mary Tidd fonds, #8370.
Portrait of Percy DeWolfe. Date: 1932. Yukon Archives. Claude & Mary Tidd fonds, #7124.
Percy De Wolfe
It's hard to imagine a life filled with more adventure than that of Percy De Wolfe. Like many young men from eastern Canada, when he heard about the Klondike Gold Rush he and his partner, Peter Anderson, headed for the Klondike.
They arrived in Dawson City in June, 1898, but, as it was for other late comers, the pair could not find any ground worth staking.
Both had done some fishing on the east coast, and decided to try their luck with a fishing business on the Yukon River. With a net bought on credit, they set up camp ten miles down the river from Dawson and brought back the first fresh salmon to the booming town.
The fishing business in the summer time was good. In the winter, the pair did freighting to the Fortymile mining camp. During this time, they built the 16-mile Road House and Halfway House on the Yukon river.
In 1920, De Wolfe and Anderson ended their partnership and Percy got a contract to carry the mail from Dawson to Eagle, Alaska. It was the beginnning of a remarkable career, at times risking his life to get the mail through.
On one trip, his horses broke through the river ice. Percy was able to throw the twenty bags of mail off the sleigh before the three horses and sleigh went under the ice.
In 1935, Percy De Wolfe received a silver medal from King George, in recognition of his public service.
Percy De Wolfe carried the mail between Dawson-Fortymile and Eagle, Alaska, from 1910 to 1949, when they finally ended the mail contract to Eagle. His last contract was to Fortymile.
The post office at Fortymile was closed in 1951. Percy De Wolfe died in St. Mary's hospital in February, 1951, after several months of illness. He had carried the mail for forty years in all kinds of weather and conditions, travelling more than 100,000 miles by dog team.
In 1976, to commemorate the contributions of Percy De Wolfe, the KVA sponsored the Percy De Wolfe Memorial Mail Dog Sled Race.
Still going strong, the route follows the Yukon River trail, from Dawson City to Eagle, Alaska, and returns on the same trail to finish.
Bonanza Creek
Territories at Brier
As the country prepares for the Tim Hortons Brier, emblematic of men’s curling supremacy in Canada, we are all applauding the NWT-Yukon Representative, from the Yellowknife curling club. The hope is this team can proudly carry the territories banner to victory, but it’s a longshot, just as it was when the territories first entered the national men’s championship in 1975. Back then it was the MacDonald Brier, but today tobacco is out of favour. Thus, the coffee giant Tim Horton’s is the main sponsor.
For years prior to 1975, curling enthusiasts in the North had been clamouring for a direct entry into the national play-downs, but to no avail. The competition was not good enough in the North, said the masters who ran the show. Finally, in 1975 they relented, and for the first time the Northern Territories had their own entry to be decided in a pan-northern play-down. Don Twa and his rink from Whitehorse emerged as the first direct northern entry. Not to worry said the powers that be, the northerners will fail, and then maybe we’ll just go back to our original plan of provincial representation only at the Brier. Don Twa and his rink made up of third Chuck Haines, second Kip Boyd, and lead Lionel Stokes had other ideas. That year the briar was held in Fredericton New Brunswick, and I was lucky enough to be sent to cover this historic event for radio, along with my pal Terry Delaney.
No one gave the Yukon rink a chance against the best in Canada, but on the day of the final draw the nation had taken notice. Don Twa had curled with grace and skill as never before. His rink, not only the oldest foursome at the event but also the most gracious, needed to win their final game to make their overall record 8 wins and 3 losses, and then hope that Bob Cole and his rink from Newfoundland would defeat Alberta. Cole did just that with a spectacular shot for a deuce in the 12th end. I recall more excitement on that shot than when Cole was calling the Stanley Cup Playoffs. With Alberta and the Yukon now tied at 8 and 3, Northern Ontario still led the pack with an 8 and 2 record. They had to lose their final game in the round robin to force a three way tie. Alas Bill Tetley and his Northern Ontario rink won their last game on an almost impossible draw through a post of the button to win the Macdonald Brier Tankard. In those days there were no playoffs, so the team with the best winning record over the entire week was declared the winner. However the Yukon entry led by Don Twa came ever so close to winning the Briar that year, but more importantly they showed that the north belonged in the national final. As icing on the cake, Don Twa was elected by sports reporters, including Terry Delaney and me, as the all-star skip. It was indeed a memorable week for sports in the Yukon.
Burning riverboats, 1974.
The Riverboats Burn
The Yukon lost a little bit of its soul. That's the way a noted Yukon historian described the reaction on that Friday back in 1974, when the Whitehorse and the Casca were reduced to ashes.
Two grand old veterans of the riverboat days stood side by side where they were built in the shipyards overlooking the Yukon River. They had stood their since the early '50s, when their days as the workhorses of the Yukon came to an end. The Whitehorse was built here in 1901.
For years, local historians had called for action to ensure the safety of the wooden boats. A committee headed by Rolf Hougen was able to get government support to repaint the boats, put new decking in place and install a fence to keep out intruders. But trespassers were still able to dig under the fence and use the cabins on the boats as a temporary shelter.
At 10pm on Friday, June 21, 1974, smoke was seen billowing from one of the boats. The fire department raced the three blocks to the scene. But the dry wooden ships were now engulfed in flames. Smoke rose 100 feet into the air within minutes. The heat in the area was intense.
The fire-fighters sprayed thousands of gallons onto the burning pyre, but they knew it was far to late to save these priceless relics of a glorious past. Within hours, the Whitehorse and the Casca were reduced to a pile of crumpled steel. Barely a trace of the wooden slats and beams were left.
Hundreds of city residents stood by watching the devastation. Many held back tears. Many more could not.
What caused the tragedy? Well, shortly after the fire call went out, the police helped three young men from Ontario off the Casca where they had been living for a week. They were taken into custody and questioned before being released. No charges were laid.
The deaths of the Whitehorse and Casca meant that only three of those wonderful sternwheelers were still standing in decent shape in the Yukon. The Klondike in Whitehorse, the Keno in Dawson and the Tutshi in Carcross. In 1991, the Tutshi, which had been partially restored but had no sprinkler system on board, was set ablaze in Carcross. Its fate mirrored that of the Whitehorse and the Casca. Now only two boats from the remarkable fleet of 25 remain. Their value cannot be calculated in dollars.
It’s more than 110 miles across some of the toughest country in the world. It zigs and zags past snow clad mountains, frozen rivers, tundra, and wind swept coast from Anchorage to Nome. It is the Iditarod dog race. The Iditarod trail began as a mail and supply route from the Alaskan coast to the interior mining camps. Mail and supplies went in, and eventually, gold came out. On a Christmas Day in 1908, prospectors discovered gold on a tributary of the Iditarod River. The news spread, and in the summer of 1909, miners arrived in the goldfields. Iditarod boomed with hotels, cafes, three newspapers, banks, telephones, and even automobiles. In 1925, the trail became a life-saving highway for the people of Nome when a diphtheria epidemic threatened the community. Serum had to be delivered by dog team. By the 1930s, the gold was gone. Iditarod became a ghost town.
Then, renewal when the Iditarod trail sled dog race first ran to Nome in 1973. Over the years there have been many memories. Twenty-two mushers finished in 1973, and since then there have been more than four hundred finishers from Canada, the United States, and around the rest of the world. Rick Swenson of Two Rivers Alaska, the only five-time winner, and the only musher to have entered twenty Iditarod races. He has never finished out of the top ten. The most improbable winner was Dick Mackey from Nenana, who in 1978 beat Rick Swenson by one second after two weeks on the trail. Then there was Norman Vaughan, who at the age of eighty-eight has finished the race four times. And there is Libby Riddles, the first woman to win the Iditarod in 1985. The Iditarod, which became known as The Last Great Race, fittingly features competitors from around the world.
Mrs. Lucille Hunter in her home, Whitehorse 1960. Yukon Archives. Richard Harrington fonds, #277.
Lucille Hunter
When I was a school kid growing up on Strickland Street, colourful characters were the norm. It was not unusual to find my Dad and Wigwam Harry sharing a story or two at our kitchen table.
Andy Hooper could be seen hauling another old building to some new lot with this American army lift truck. BuzzSaw Jimmy was always around cutting trees with his homemade wood sawing contraption.
Tuffy Cyr roamed the back alleys collecting the contents of the ubiquitous honey buckets and dumping them into a home-built container made of 45-gallon drums. Characters were...well, to me they were normal. Nothing out of the ordinary.
And at the end of Strickland, near the hill leading to the airport, in a tiny shack, lived an old lady I seldom saw.
Her name was Lucille Hunter. Born in Michigan, she married Charles Hunter when she was just 16. In 1897, when she was 19, the couple joined the Klondike Gold Rush, travelling to the Yukon via the Stikine Trail.
The journey was remarkable for two reasons: she and her husband were among a handful of African-American stampeders who came to the Klondike, and Lucille was nine months pregnant at the time. In Teslin, Mrs. Hunter gave birth to a baby girl whom she named...Teslin.
For the local Native people, the hoard of white prospectors in their midst was an unusual sight, but never before had they seen a black person. Not quite sure what to call the Hunters, they simply described them as "just another kind of white person".
Charles and Lucille travelled by dog team to the Klondike. To undertake this journey in winter, Charles may have had experience as a trapper or miner.
Without survival skills, the young couple would have perished in the -60° temperatures over hundreds of miles of wilderness. They arrived in Bonanza Creek in February 1898, well before the main throng of stampeders arrived. Here they staked three claims. Lucille worked alongside her husband digging for gold, while raising daughter Teslin in extremely primitive conditions.
A few years later, the Hunters moved to Mayo where Charles staked and worked some silver claims. In June 1939, Charles died at age 65, leaving Lucille alone with her grandson, Buster, to carry on mining. Her daughter Teslin had died earlier, leaving Lucille to raiseBuster.
In 1942, when Alaska Highway construction began, Lucille and Buster moved to Whitehorse. Lucille set up a laundry business while Buster made the deliveries around town.
A few years later, Lucille moved to the tiny clapboard house on 8th Avenue, where she lived alone. As kids, we used to ride our toboggans down the nearby hill and we could hear the sound of the radio coming from inside as we slid silently past her home.
Mrs. Hunter had gone blind, but kept up with the world and local affairs through the constant playing of her radio.
The small home, her many visitors said, was filled with stacks of newspapers, magazines, and other flammable stuff stored dangerously close to her wood stove, and friends worried about the danger of fire.
One fateful night the house caught fire. Firefighters had a difficult job breaking through the security locks to rescue Lucille whose clothes were ablaze when she was rescued.
She recovered from minor burns, but her little house on Strickland Street was gone so she moved to a small basement apartment downtown, where she continued to entertain guests with her fascinating stories and, of course, listened to the radio until her death in 1972 at the age of 93.
This 1972 photo by Bob Erlam is of Joanne Schrioch - on the job.
The year was 1967. Everyone in the country was celebrating a big birthday. Canada was 100 years old. It seemed a fine time for giving, and sharing the bounties of the big land. In Whitehorse, City council was not so much in the mood for sharing as for taking. It seems that parking was becoming a problem in the growing frontier town of about ten thousand. Taking a page from really big cities, the city council decided to install parking meters on Main Street. What would they think of next? Traffic lights, no doubt.
By the spring of 1968, the meters were ready to accept a nickel for a half-hour stay. The meters did not produce much revenue until 1972, when Whitehorse hired an energetic local woman, Valerie Matechuk, to patrol the meters and hand out two-dollar tickets to overtime parkers.
Hot-footing it around her circuit at least twice an hour, Valerie issued thousands of dollar's worth of citations. Soon downtown merchants were crying foul - that the meters would drive business to the boondocks, wherever they were. The dreaded meters were here to stay, and the complaints rolled in.
The meter controversy seemed as endless as ice fog at fifty below. So in 1972, Bob Erlam, publisher of the Whitehorse Star, whose storefront was on Main Street, decided to take matters into his own hands.
He said the city's meter maid was being over-zealous. Erlam claimed that the meters had already paid for themselves, were driving away business and were no longer needed to solve over-parking and traffic problems. Maybe he was right. City income from the meters during the first nine months of 1972 was more than $ 40,000.
Bob took an ad out in his paper. It was for a job. Twelve people applied for the position of "anti-meter maid", who would make the same circuit as Valerie, the meter maid, and feed the "almost expired meters" with nickels, instead of issuing tickets. The salary of $ 90 per week, plus expenses, would be paid by Erlam, and Hougen's Ltd., along with contributions from grateful non-ticketed motorists.
Twenty-year-old Joanne Schrioch got the job and soon became the town's newest heroine. She started work on November 8, 1972, armed with a supply of nickels and leaflets explaining her job to vehicle owners, and suggesting donations. At one point in her career, she had put coins in 900 nearly-expired meters. To avoid any conflict with the law, she didn't touch the fully expired ones, leaving those to Valerie's mercy.
Joanne's anti-meter activity got a warm reception in frosty Whitehorse. She even got along well with Meter Maid Matechuk. Often the meter and anti-meter maids were seen having lunch together.
How much was accomplished in this meter stage may never be known, but Whitehorse did get a lot of outside publicity, including a lengthy story in Time Magazine in the summer of 1973.
Polly Parrot
No one is quite sure when he arrived in the Yukon, or how he got here for that matter. Some say he came over the Chilkoot Pass at the beginning of the Klondike rush. What is certain is that he got no further than Carcross, and there he lived out his days. He also spent some time at Conrad City on Tagish Lake with Captain James Alexander, who owned the Engineer Mine. But poor Captain Alexander was a victim of bad timing when he chose to leave the Yukon on the last boat of the year in October 1918. That boat out of Skagway was the S.S. Sophia, the CPR liner that hit a rock and sank in the Lynn Canal, carrying all 353 people to their deaths.
Luckily, Captain Alexander had left Polly at the Caribou Hotel in Carcross before embarking on his fateful final voyage. Alexander called him Polly, no one know why, or how old Polly was when he arrived at the Caribou hotel, but some guessed as old as fifty years. Now Polly isn’t much of a name for a male, kind of like a boy named Sue. But like the song, Alexander had prepared a boy named Polly for the rough life to come. From 1918 to 1972, Polly lived at the Caribou, the most famous hotel in the Yukon. There he survived blizzards, fires, drunks and insults for almost fifty-five years. In the hotel, Polly sang opera, spewed profanity, and bummed drinks for half a century. That wasn’t hard to do since he usually stayed in the restaurant, which was just outside the tavern door. He liked Scotch, but would take a beer if that was going around. Lord knows he never paid for a drink, and would spout some pretty foul language if a tavern patron passed him by.
When I knew Polly in the 1960s he showed no signs of his age, nor of his unhealthy habits. By then he had come to dislike alcohol, and even the smell of beer coming from the nearby tavern would sometimes result in a flow of foul language. That’s why Polly was a major attraction at the old Caribou. He was even featured in major national Canadian Press news story, which resulted in hoards of journalists arriving at the Caribou to see if Polly really existed. They found, to their delight, that he did. And so when Polly died at the hotel in November of 1972 it became a story of international significance. A funeral train from Whitehorse to Carcross carried many Yukon dignitaries, while carloads of Polly fans arrived from all over the territory. Johnnie Johns, the famous hunting guide from Carcross performed the eulogy, and sang ‘I love you truly’. Then, with special dispensation from the territorial government, Polly was laid to rest in the Pioneer Carcross Cemetery where Skookum Jim, Dawson Charlie, and others are buried. You see, Polly needed special permission because it’s not usual for a parrot to be considered a Yukon Pioneer.
The Taylor & Drury Store. Photo by Rolf Hougen when he, Marg and family with the Tanners went down river to Dawson City – 14 in all., 1971.
A sign on one building., 1971.
Fort Selkirk 1958. Photo of the Anglican Church, Taylor and Drury Store on the left. Photo taken on a 1958 Hougen and Tanner trip from Whitehorse to Dawson City.
A 1982 Painting of the confluence of the Yukon and Pelly Rivers. Fort Selkirk located to the left.
Fort Selkirk
An exceptionally beautiful part of the Yukon River system is found at the mouth of the Pelly River. Here, in 1848, Robert Campbell built the first Fort Selkirk. It didn’t take long for this Hudson Bay trading post to become embroiled in a trade war.
Robert Campbell, an explorer and trader for Hudson Bay, knew the Yukon interior pretty well by 1848. He’d explored the entire Pelly River system and decided the best place to control the fur trade in the central Yukon was on the east bank of the Yukon and Pelly rivers. In June of that year, he built the first post and called it Fort Selkirk, after Thomas Douglas, the fifth Earl of Selkirk, who was a major shareholder in the Bay. But the land on the east bank was frequently flooded and the Fort was moved to its present location.
Campbell was right in thinking this spot would be the place to control trade with the Wood Indians of the interior. However, the Chilkat people from the Alaskan coast considered the whole region as their trading area. For the next few years, the Fort was visited by parties of Chilkats determined to oust Campbell, the Bay, and their growing trade monopoly.
In August of 1852, a Chilkat raiding party, of perhaps 27 men, arrived at Fort Selkirk determined to shut it down. Following a pitched battle, the Bay traders and Wood Indians were routed and the Fort was burned down. Campbell described the battle in his diary as fierce, and marvelled that no-one was killed. Campbell left Fort Selkirk in the fall, bound for Fort Simpson, a 1200-mile journey. Here, he demanded permission to hunt down the Chilkats and get revenge. Permission refused, he made an incredible snow-shoe trip to Fort Garry, Manitoba, headquarters of the Hudson Bay Company. Here, he again demanded the Chilkats be hunted down. Again he was refused.
Robert Campbell never returned to the Yukon, and the Hudson Bay Company didn’t return to Fort Selkirk until 1938. In the intervening years, there were many posts built here, including one by Arthur Harper in 1889. In 1898, Fort Selkirk was home to the Yukon Field Force sent by the federal government to guard the Klondike goldfields.
From the '20s to the late '40s, it was a thriving community with stores, churches, a post office, and a mounted police post. It was a major supply spot for riverboats operating between Whitehorse and Dawson. With the coming of the roads, however, riverboat traffic ceased, and Fort Selkirk was virtually abandoned by 1950.
The fire destroyed the Windsor Hotel, the Whitney and Pedlar Store, the Whitehorse Hotel and many more businesses of Front Street. The Post Office and Court house far left.
Whitney & Pedlar store on Front Street near Elliot with proprietors on the front porch. The White Horse Tribune had their office in the building. Date: Dec.1900/Jan. 1901 Yukon Archives. H.C. Barley fonds, #5557.
The Windsor Hotel on the corner of Front Street and Main Street. Date: April 1901 Yukon Archives. H.C. Barley fonds, #5558.
The Big Fire of White Horse May the Twenty Third. 1905. Photo by J. Doody. Yukon Archives. James Albert Johnson fonds, #57.
Whitehorse in Flames.
The White Pass station which now stands on the waterfront at the end of Main Street in Whitehorse is not the original building. It was lost to a fire which destroyed most of the commercial buildings in the new town.
Whitehorse was a new and growing town back in the spring of 1905. From Front Street to Second Avenue, and between Elliott and Steele, stood the hub of a fairly prosperous place. There were at least five hotels, hardware, jewellery and grocery stores, cafes and restaurants, a confectionary, a drug store, a bank - why you could get almost everything you needed in downtown Whitehorse back then.
But on May 23, 1905, all that changed. At about 4 am, a small fire started in the barber shop in the back of the Windsor Hotel on the corner of first and Main. The firehall was just across the street. The single fire engine in town answered the call and seemed to have contained the blaze to the Barber Shop.
Then, as the fire was nearly out, the fire truck ran out of water. The fire in the barber shop flared and soon engulfed the Windsor Hotel. The raging flames leapt across the street and began to consume the Whitney and Peddlar department store. The flames then leapt across First Avenue, and the original White Pass station was set ablaze. The fire roared down First Avenue to Steele Street toward the Post Office on Elliott, and up Main Street to Second Avenue.
The single fire engine sat idle, out of water. Townspeople rushed to the scene carrying small buckets of water. It was a hopeless battle. One of the impromptu firefighters was Robert Service, who, along with many others, managed to save the Bank of Commerce building at Second and Main. The Post Office was spared, as was the Telegraph Office at First and Steele.
When the fire was finally contained, dozens of business establishments were reduced to ashes. The smouldering town was a grim scene to those who had worked so hard to build a business district for a growing town.
Damage totalled more than 300 thousand dollars, which by today's standards, would be in the millions. But the townsfolk were determined to re-build, led by the White Pass, which started construction of a new train station the next day.
See also: Dawson City Fire 1899
Air Rescue
On a cool morning of November 7th, 1971, a Cessna 172 aircraft took off from the Whitehorse airport. Four young people on board were going on a sight-seeing tour of Carcross and Tagish. That tour took on dramatic proportions when a snowstorm moved in, covering the entire region with heavy cloud.
Pilot Doug Phillips was at the controls that day back in 1971. With him were passengers Red and Shirley Lewis and Doug Young. Cruising over Carcross, the weather socked in. Phillips could see only the Big Thing mountain sticking up through the cloud bank. He was lost. He radioed the Whitehorse tower, and though able to communicate with the plane, air traffic control could not help him find the airport.
Phillips was told to continue circling the area around Carcross using the mountain as a point of reference. He was also told how to prepare for the worst - a crash landing. Hoping that the weather would clear, Phillips and his three passengers circled, while watching the fuel gage slowly move toward empty.
It was getting dark. Meanwhile, the regular CPAir flight from Vancouver was approaching Whitehorse. Captain Ron Wood began picking up the communication between Phillips and the tower. On the radio, Wood told Phillips to keep circling. When the 737 landed and the passengers deplaned, Wood asked the Vancouver office if he could try an unusual rescue mission. He and first officer, Brian McMahon then took off in search of the tiny Cessna.
They spotted the plane and asked Phillips how fast he could fly. About 100 miles an hour was the reply. The slowest the jet could travel was 140 miles an hour. The Cessna got behind the jet and followed its lights. When he got too far ahead, Wood circled around, overtook the Cessna and continued leading it toward Whitehorse. This was done four times. Finally, the big jet dipped beneath the clouds as Phillips followed.
Down through the snowstorm they plunged. The jet could be of no more assistance. As they came through the snowstorm, a glorious sight greeted the four in the Cessna. The Whitehorse airport lay dead ahead. When they touched down, more than five hours after taking off, the fuel gage read ... zero.
Truly a remarkable bit of luck, and a lot of courage on behalf of the Cessna pilot, Doug Phillips, and Captain Ron Wood of CPAir.
Cal Miller, right, with Bert Wybrew at the Arctic Winter Games in Whitehorse 1986.
Cal Miller
Though I never saw him catch a softball or deliver a curling stone, the Yukon sports scene would not be what it is today had it not been for Cal Miller. While athletes get most of the attention, and rightly so, but without builders like Cal, the sports scene would be a lesser place.
Cal arrived in Whitehorse in 1951. Maybe he was an athlete back then. But in later years, when I got to know him, he was the gregarious owner of the Capital Hotel. Cal held court behind the bar of the famed watering hole, where he'd delight customers with his home-spun philosophy on subjects ranging from the latest mining strike to political shenanigans of the Territorial Government.
His eyes would really light up when the topic turned to sports. In those early days, Yukon recreation teams could count on Cal for support. The Old Crow dog mushers needed financial assistance. Cal could and did help.
When the newly formed Yukon soccer league needed a trophy in the 1960s, Cal and his connections with Carling Brewery made sure the new five-team league played for a classy soccer trophy.
Midget and juvenile hockey teams needed a sponsor? Enter Cal Miller. It seems the first place any sporting association went looking for help was to the Capital Hotel bar.
And so it is no surprise that Cal has a connection with the Canada Winter Games that goes far beyond support of Yukon athletes and their participation in the early years of the games.
He was there as an executive with the Yukon team at the first Canada Winter Games in Quebec city in 1967. What he witnessed dismayed him. The Yukon team was trounced at every turn. Because of the small population base and the general lack of facilities and training, the Yukoners were outnumbered and out-classed. Needless to say, there were no medals that year.
As Cal watched the debacle, he had an idea. The time had come, he said to have northerners compete against each other. From Quebec City, Cal got on the phone to Yukon Commissioner, Jimmy Smith, and asked for his support.. We need our own games where our athletes have a fighting chance to win something, said Cal. Smith agreed. The Commissioner of the NWT, Stuart Hodgson was also representing his Territories at the Games in Quebec City . Hodgson agreed with the assessment of the problems faced by Northern athletes and phoned Alaskan Governor, Walter Hickel with an idea which would see Northerners develop their own set of Games.
The Arctic Winter Games were born. In 1970, the first northern winter games were held in Yellowknife . Since then, the Arctic games have grown in stature and support. They have created a base from which northern athletic associations can draw players to take part in national events like the Canada Winter Games. The games gave northern athletes a pride of place. Cal Miller once said that the Arctic Winter Games were the best idea since the invention of 7-up - high praise from a man who holds a rightful place in the Yukon Sports Hall of Fame and who would be proud of the Yukon contingent taking part in the 2007 Canada Winter Games in Whitehorse.
Morel Mushrooms
Forest fires are nature's way of clearing old growth, which allows organic matter to decompose rapidly into minerals which - in turn - supply fuel for speedy plant growth.
Some trees cannot survive without forest fires. Lodgepole and jack pines, seeds germinate after they have been exposed to fire. Both have resin-sealed cones that stay on the trees for many years.
The heat of a fire melts the resin and the cones pop open. Thousands of seeds scatter onto the ground and some grow into sturdy stands of pine. Aspen vigorously sprouts from underground roots after a fire - good news for moose and elk that feed on the new growth.
In the blackened woods, the Yukon's beautiful official flower, the fireweed appears in a splurge of abundant colour.
Many plants and animals are adapted to fires and the conditions they create. After a fire, birds such as the woodpecker may actually increase their population many times over as they feast on bark beetles and other insects that colonize the newly burned trees.
Predators like the lynx benefit from fires that maintain the forest mosaic. They use mature conifers for cover and hunt in recently burned areas that support large populations of its favourite prey - the snowshoe hare.
Parks Canada says that forest fires seldom trap large mammals, although they do kill some small animals and birds. However, over the long term, most species benefit from the habitats created by fire.
The type of fire and how quickly the vegetation comes back determines how fast the animals come back.
Many areas regenerate quickly as grasses sprout within two or three weeks after a fire, to the delight of Yukon gophers.
Then, there is a rapid re-colonization by small mammals like snowshoe hares and birds such as the sharp-tailed grouse. These are quickly followed by predators like foxes, marten, and owls.
Yukon forest fires also trigger a type of fungus to burst into full bloom, thus producing a bumper crop of highly-prized mushrooms. Precious, expensive morel mushrooms make their mysterious debut.
Dried morels can sell for more than $100 dollars per pound, and mushroom pickers can be seen at the road sides searching for these treasured fungi.
Mycologists, scientists who spend their careers studying mushrooms, are not sure why morels are produced in such abundance after forest fires. It could be that the rich nutrients released by forest fires somehow trigger the crops.
Still, at the peak of the season, high quality morel mushrooms are flown out of the Yukon. Thus forest fires help ensure that a tasty bit of the Yukon ends up on dinner plates in expensive restaurants around the world.
CKRW
40 years ago, if you wanted to hear private radio in the Yukon you had to tune in radio stations from big cities in Southern Canada or the U.S. That usually took an expensive receiver, a copper wire antenna and some luck on a crisp cold night. But all that changed on November 17, 1969 when radio station CKRW hit the Yukon airwaves. Imagine that:40 years ago.
In December of 1968, Klondike Broadcasting was awarded a broadcast license beating out a bid by another local group headed by Vic Wylie. That spring in 1969, Rolf Hougen, president of Klondike Broadcasting, announced that “Comfall” the most northerly private radio station would be serving the public. He also described plans for a new building on Main Street to accommodate the state-of-the-art radio operation. Al Jensen would be the station’s first manager. For forty years, CKRW radio has reported on, participated in and added to Yukon culture. By keeping favourite features since the station’s beginning and adding hits of yesterday, today and tomorrow, online contests and cutting edge features, CKRW has always combined a modern flare with small-town charme. Through both the on-air programming and the website, CKRW continues to sponsor many local events, from music festivals to the longest sled-dog in the world, in keeping with the slogan “Your community radio station”.
Through the years there have been changes. On May 10, 2004, Klondike Broadcasting added an FM transmitter at Whitehorse to provide an FM stereo service to the city and surrounding area while continuing to provide service on the AM band to residents who weren’t able to receive the new FM signal. CKRW officially launched “The Rush 96.1 FM” on September 14, 2004. Today CKRW transmits to listeners in Watson Lake, Teslin, Haines Junction, Faro, Mayo, Carmacks and Dawson City and reaches outside the Yukon boundaries with transmitters in Atlin, British Columbia and Inuvik, Northwest Territories.
So, a big happy birthday RW and may you celebrate many more in the years to come.
Eskimo schooners from Banks Island and Mackenzie Delta at Pauline Cove, Herschel Island, Yukon. One of early whalers' warehouses in distance. 1930. Yukon Archives. Finnie Family fonds, #390.
Old buildings at Herschel Island, Arctic Coast, Y.T., 1930. Yukon Archives. Finnie Family fonds, #392. (Photo cropped).
Mission House - Herschel Island - 1925 - [Rev. Arthur Creighton McCullum's] first mission. Yukon Archives. Rev. Arthur Creighton McCullum fonds, #3.
Herschel Island
Herschel Island was named, in 1826, by the British Arctic explorer, Sir John Franklin, after the famous English astronomer William Herschel, who studied the planets and the stars in the 17th century. He was the first to spot the far-off gas giant Uranus, which had been predicted to exist, but had not been seen until Herschel pointed his telescope in the right direction. The island was the only safe haven for ships operating between Point Barrow, Alaska and the Mackenzie delta. As the riches of the Beaufort Sea became known, whalers arrived in droves from the United States.
The crew of the US navy ship, the Thetis, surveyed the island in 1899 and named many of its features. The same year, the first of many whaling ships over-wintered here. The island was almost unknown to Canadian authorities, and its population of Inuit was subjected to untold debauchery by the American whalers.
As many as 100 ships were anchored at Herschel Island at one time. In 1896, the Canadian Church Missionary Society found out about the awful conditions faced by the native people. Isaac Stringer, later to become Bishop of the Yukon, was sent to the island to build a mission.
Stringer insisted that Ottawa do something to help, but it wasn't until 1903 that a NWMP detachment was set up. By that time, the whalers had pretty much depleted the stocks and moved out. The island continued to be a trading centre and, in 1925, a post office was established.
As trade decreased, the population dwindled and in 1938, the post office was closed. By 1968, no permanent residents were left, but it remained a favourite summertime visiting and whaling ground for the native people of the Mackenzie delta.
Mining and prospecting have always been a gamble. When the gamble pays off, good things happen. Still, in the mining business, nothing lasts forever.
Since the 1880's, small amounts of gold had been taken from the creeks and sandbars along the Pelly River, but most were pretty small operations. However, the area is rich in minerals.
In 1953, prospector Al Kulan and seven Kaska prospectors staked the claim that would eventually become the Faro mine. The discovery had been first made by a prospector named Jack Sterriah while hunting in the VanGorder Creek area several years earlier.
In 1960, Kulan and Dr. Aaro Aho formed Dynasty Explorations to work the claims. It didn’t take long to realize they had hit upon a world-class deposit of lead-zinc.
By 1965, one hundred men were working in the area. Dynasty joined with Cypress Mining of California to form the Cyprus Anvil Mining Corporation. The mine officially opened in 1969 and, by the mid 1970's, it was largest lead-zinc mine in Canada .
Construction of the town of Faro, named for the card game, started in 1968. By 1969, with a number of houses built, disaster struck. On Friday, June 13th, a forest fire swept through the newly built town destroying most of the homes.
Cyprus Anvil cleaned up the mess and rebuilt the town. In 1979, the population of Faro was about 800 people, but grew over the years as the mine expanded, until 1981, when nearly two thousand people called Faro home.
But mining is a tenuous business. With ever-changing world metal prices, the population fluctuated. Then in 1984, Cyprus Anvil shutdown, and by 1985, there were only ninety-seven people living in Faro.
In 1986, Curragh Resources was formed and resumed mining operations until the mid-1990s. Due to low world metal prices and the Westray mine disaster, however, Curragh was forced to declare bankruptcy.
The mine again closed, and reopened under the name Anvil Range Mining, operating until 1997. Today the mine is closed permanently and reclamation of the mine site is in progress. The town of Faro has about four hundred people who love the land and the lifestyle in a Yukon region that has much to offer, and the future looks bright.
The Yukon flag adopted, 1967.
The Yukon Flag
It flies proudly throughout this land - a symbol of the rich heritage of the Yukon. Yet what do its parts mean? The Yukon’s flag came into being as the result of a contest sponsored by the Royal Canadian Legion back in the '60s. Yukon students were asked to submit designs for what would become the official Yukon flag.
When the contest ended, a design by Lynn Lambert of Destruction Bay was chosen. Some modifications were made for heraldic purposes, since things as official as a flag must follow certain rigid specifications. There are, for example, very specific colour code numbers for the green and blue panels on either side of the flag. But the basic elements remain. So the next time you see the Yukon flag flying in a stiff summer breeze, consider the following:
The green panel adjacent to the mast stands for the forests, the white centre panel for the snow and the blue outer panel for water. The centre white panel has the Yukon crest above a symbolic representation of fireweed, the Yukon’s flower.
The shield symbolizes the history of the territory. The wavy white and blue stripe represents all the rivers of the Yukon. The red triangles are for the mountains, while the gold-coloured discs inside the triangles depict mineral resources.
The red cross on the shield is the Cross of St. George and refers to early explorers. On the top of the shield, stands a proud-looking malamute husky, the animal whose stamina and loyalty was vital to all Yukoners in the early days.
The Yukon flag was officially adopted by the Council of the Yukon Territory on December 1st, 1967.
The Centennial Range
The Yukon has always been a special place for mountain climbers. The vast landscape of the St. Elias has provided challenges for mountaineers around the world. In 1967, Canada was involved in all manner of special projects to celebrate 100 years of confederation.
David Fisher of the Alpine Club of Canada, Monty Alford with the Yukon Water Resource board and David Judd of the Yukon Territorial government administration presented a plan to climb peaks in the St. Elias Range. The Yukon Alpine Centennial Expedition was born.
The idea was to have 13 teams, of four climbers each, scale 13 unnamed peaks and name them after each of the 10 provinces and two territories. 1967 also marked 100 years since the American purchase of Alaska from Russia. It was decided to have a team of four Canadians and four Americans climb the highest unnamed mountain, and call it Good Neighbour Peak.
The Canadian climbers were led by Monty Alford while the American leader was Vin Hoeman. Good Neighbour Peak, rising 15,700 feet, was conquered on June 25. The second part of the project, the climb of provincial and territorial mountains was scheduled to begin on July 8th. None of the mountains had been climbed before. A support staff of more than 250 people assisted in this massive operation.
The actual ascents took place between July 13 and July 25. Nine of the peaks were conquered. Climbers attempting the other four were unable to reach the summits. The event captured the imagination of Canadians during that special year back in 1967.
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Achaogen
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Achaogen Announces Pricing of $15 Million Underwritten Public Offering
February 15, 2019 at 6:11 AM EST
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Feb. 15, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Achaogen, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKAO), a biopharmaceutical company discovering, developing and commercializing innovative antibacterial agents to address multi-drug resistant (MDR) gram-negative infections, today announced the pricing of an underwritten public offering of 15,000,000 shares of its common stock and accompanying short-term warrants to purchase up to 15,000,000 shares of its common stock and long-term warrants to purchase up to 15,000,000 shares of its common stock (collectively, the “warrants”). Each share of common stock is being sold together with one short-term warrant to purchase one share of common stock and one long-term warrant to purchase one share of common stock, at a combined price to the public of $1.00 per share of common stock and accompanying warrants, for gross proceeds of $15 million, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and offering expenses payable by Achaogen.
H.C. Wainwright & Co. is acting as the sole book-running manager for the offering.
In addition, Achaogen has granted the underwriter of the offering a 30-day option to purchase up to 2,250,000 additional shares of common stock and/or short-term warrants to purchase up to 2,250,000 shares of common stock and long-term warrants to purchase up to 2,250,000 shares of common stock, at the public offering price per share of common stock and accompanying warrants, less underwriting discounts and commissions. All of the securities are being offered by Achaogen.
Achaogen currently expects to use the net proceeds from this offering to fund commercialization of ZEMDRI® in the United States, the regulatory approval process for plazomicin in Europe and the development of its product candidate C-Scape, and any remaining proceeds for working capital and general corporate purposes, including its review of strategic alternatives and search for additional non-dilutive funding opportunities.
The short-term warrants have an exercise price of $1.00 per share, are immediately exercisable and will expire one year from the date of issuance. The long-term warrants have an exercise price of $1.15 per share, are immediately exercisable and will expire five years from the date of issuance. The shares of common stock and the accompanying warrants can only be purchased together in this offering but will be issued separately. The offering is expected to close on or about February 20, 2019, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with, and declared effective by, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This offering is being made solely by means of such registration statement, including a prospectus supplement and the accompanying prospectus forming a part of the registration statement. A preliminary prospectus supplement and the accompanying prospectus relating to and describing the terms of the offering have been filed with the SEC. Copies of the preliminary prospectus supplement and the accompanying prospectus and, when available, the final prospectus supplement and the accompanying prospectus may be obtained by visiting the SEC's website at www.sec.gov or from H.C. Wainwright & Co., LLC, 430 Park Avenue, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10022, by calling (646) 975-6996 or by emailing placements@hcwco.com.
This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.
About Achaogen
Achaogen is a biopharmaceutical company passionately committed to the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative antibacterial treatments for MDR gram-negative infections. Achaogen's first commercial product is ZEMDRI, for the treatment of adults with complicated urinary tract infections, including pyelonephritis. The Achaogen ZEMDRI program was funded in part with federal funds from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). The Company is currently developing C-Scape, an orally-administered beta-lactam/beta-lactamase inhibitor combination, which is also supported by BARDA. C-Scape is investigational, has not been determined to be safe or efficacious, and has not been approved for commercialization.
This press release contains forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained herein are forward-looking statements reflecting the current beliefs and expectations of management made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, but not limited to, Achaogen's statements regarding the completion and use of proceeds of the public offering. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other important factors that may cause Achaogen's actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, among others, market conditions and the satisfaction of closing conditions related to the public offering, the uncertainties inherent in the preclinical and clinical development process; the risks and uncertainties of the regulatory approval process; the risks and uncertainties of product sales and effectiveness; the risk of when bacteria will evolve resistance to ZEMDRI; Achaogen's reliance on third-party contract manufacturing organizations for manufacture and supply, including sources of certain raw materials; risk of third party claims alleging infringement of patents and proprietary rights or seeking to invalidate Achaogen's patents or proprietary rights; and the risk that Achaogen's proprietary rights may be insufficient to protect its technologies and product candidates. For a further description of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those expressed in these forward-looking statements, as well as risks relating to the Achaogen business in general, see Achaogen's preliminary prospectus supplement filed with the SEC on February 15, 2019, including the documents incorporated by reference therein, which includes Achaogen's current and future reports filed with the SEC, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on February 27, 2018, and its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed on November 8, 2018. Achaogen does not plan to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements contained in this press release, whether as a result of any new information, future events, changed circumstances or otherwise.
Investor and Media Contact:
Denise Powell
denise@redhousecomms.com
Source: Achaogen, Inc.
© Achaogen, Inc. 2004-present. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use
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TherapeuticsMD Announces Participation in Two Upcoming Investor Conferences
BOCA RATON, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 28, 2019-- TherapeuticsMD, Inc. (NASDAQ: TXMD), an innovative, leading women’s healthcare company, today announced that the company will participate in two upcoming healthcare conferences. Chief Executive Officer Robert G. Finizio will provide an overview of the company at the conferences.
Details for the presentations include:
Conference Cowen Healthcare Conference in Boston
Date Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Time 11:20 a.m. ET
Conference Oppenheimer Healthcare Conference in New York
1:00 p.m. ET
A live webcast and replay of each presentation can be accessed on the company’s website, www.therapeuticsmd.com, on the Home Page or under the “Investors & Media” section.
This press release by TherapeuticsMD, Inc. may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may include, but are not limited to, statements relating to TherapeuticsMD’s objectives, plans and strategies as well as statements, other than historical facts, that address activities, events or developments that the company intends, expects, projects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future. These statements are often characterized by terminology such as “believes,” “hopes,” “may,” “anticipates,” “should,” “intends,” “plans,” “will,” “expects,” “estimates,” “projects,” “positioned,” “strategy” and similar expressions and are based on assumptions and assessments made in light of management’s experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors believed to be appropriate. Forward-looking statements in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and the company undertakes no duty to update or revise any such statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties, many of which are outside of the company’s control. Important factors that could cause actual results, developments and business decisions to differ materially from forward-looking statements are described in the sections titled “Risk Factors” in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, as well as reports on Form 8-K, and include the following: the company’s ability to maintain or increase sales of its products; the company’s ability to develop and commercialize IMVEXXY®, ANNOVERATM, BIJUVATM and its hormone therapy drug candidates and obtain additional financing necessary therefor; whether the company will be able to comply with the covenants and conditions under its term loan agreement; the potential of adverse side effects or other safety risks that could adversely affect the commercialization of the company’s current or future approved products or preclude the approval of the company’s future drug candidates; the length, cost and uncertain results of future clinical trials; the company’s reliance on third parties to conduct its manufacturing, research and development and clinical trials; the availability of reimbursement from government authorities and health insurance companies for the company’s products; the impact of product liability lawsuits; the influence of extensive and costly government regulation; the volatility of the trading price of the company’s common stock and the concentration of power in its stock ownership. PDF copies of the company’s historical press releases and financial tables can be viewed and downloaded at its website: www.therapeuticsmd.com/pressreleases.aspx.
Vice President Investor Relations
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NOBEL PEACE PRIZE FOR CHINESE DISSIDENT COULD BE COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE
The award of the Nobel Peace Prize on October 8,2010, to the imprisoned Chinese political dissident Liu Xiaobo, the co- author of Charter 08, a pro-democracy manifesto signed by more than 300 prominent Chinese scholars, writers, and activists and published online on Dec. 10, 2008—the 60th anniversary of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights---- could be counter-productive.
2.The Charter, emulating Charter 77 issued by dissidents in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia, calls for the implementation of the guarantees of China’s Constitution and for institutions in China upholding democratic reforms, human rights, and the rule of law. It warns of national disaster in the absence of political change and makes 19 recommendations to improve human rights in China, including the establishment of an independent judiciary, freedom of association and an end to one-party rule.
3. Istead of embarrassing the Chinese political leadership, the award has made it defiant as could be seen from the writings in the Chinese media condemning the award, which is seen as politically motivated. The Communist Party-controlled "Global Times" wrote in an editorial on October 9: "The controversy in the West over Liu Xiaobo's sentence is not based on legal concerns. They are trying to impose Western values on China. Obviously, the Nobel Peace Prize this year is meant to irritate China, but it will not succeed. On the contrary, the committee disgraced itself. The award however makes it clearer that it is difficult for China to win applause from the West during China's development, and China needs to be more determined and confident in choosing its own development path, which is different from Western approach.
The Nobel committee made an unwise choice, but it and the political force it represents cannot dictate China's future growth.
China's success story speaks louder than the Nobel Peace Prize."
4. The award is also seen as another attempt to humiliate China similar to the attempt made before the Beijing Olympics of August,2008, to organise a boycott of the opening ceremony of the Games as a mark of Western disapproval of alleged human rights violations in China. The boycott move failed partly because the then US President George Bush was opposed to any boycott which could be seen as a Western-inspired humiliation of China and partly because the indignant Chinese people called for a boycott of Western goods and Western departmental stores in China.
5. In an article, the same issue of the "Global Times" quotes Shi Yinhong, a Professor in the School of International Studies at the Renmin University of China, as saying as follows: "The Nobel committee claims to be independent, but its decision to award the peace prize to Liu strategically caters to anti-China forces.The decision is aimed at humiliating China.Such a decision will not only draw the ire of the Chinese public, but also damage the reputation of the prize. "
6. The award is badly timed because it has come in the midst of a debate in China on the need for political re-structuring as a follow-up to the economic re-structuring which the country has undergone with great benefit since Deng Xiao-ping opened up the Chinese economy in 1978. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has been in the forefront of this debate and has been increasingly articulate in calling for greater transparency in governance and greater freedom of speech which would allow constructive criticism of the way China is governed. Advocates of political re-structuring have been pointing out that ultimately the economic re-structuring would have to be followed up by political re-structuring at an opportune time when the political opening-up would not lead to political and economic instability.
7. The confidence gained by the political leadership as a result of the successful handling of the economic crisis, which had led to the closure of a large number of export industries and consequent loss of millions of jobs, has encouraged the debate on the need for taking up the task of political re-structuring envisaged by Deng himself. An article carried by the "Global Times" on August 23 pointed out: "Wen's remarks about political reform (at Shenzhen) came 30 years after the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping first raised the issue during an important speech on August 18, 1980, which was regarded as "the programmatic document for China's political restructuring."
8. Thus, the current debate on the need for political reforms is seen as nothing but the beginning of the implementation of a promise made by Deng himself in 1980. When Wen and others speak of the need for political reforms, they do not mean the winding-up of the one-party rule as fondly hoped for by human rights activists in the West, but the identification and eradication of the negative aspects of the one-party rule. When Wen talks of the need for freedom of speech , he means freedom to constructively criticise Government policies and working instead of having to implicitly support them. How to have public accountability under a one-party rule? That is one of the questions being posed during this debate.
9. It would have been in the interest of the West to let this debate develop and result in a genuine re-structuring of the political set-up in China. Instead, by giving the award to a dissident who has only limited following inside China and calling for political reforms, the Nobel Committee and those supporting its award would only strengthen the hands of those who are opposing any political restructuring of the Chinese set-up.
10. The Chinese leadership and people are fearful of any instability which could wipe out the considerable economic gains made by the country since 1978. The decision of the Nobel Committee to honour the dissident at a time of transition in China from economic to political re-structuring could rekindle fears of an externally-inspired attempt to destabilise the country. The ultimate losers will be the advocates of political re-structuring. ( 9-10-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Is Pakistan falling apart?
It has suffered disaster after disaster. Its people have lived through crisis upon crisis. Its leaders are unwilling or unable to act. But is it really the failed state that many believe?
By Patrick Cockburn
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/is-pakistan-falling-apart-2100865.html
Is Pakistan disintegrating? Are the state and society coming apart under the impact of successive political and natural disasters? The country swirls with rumours about the fall of the civilian government or even a military coup. The great Indus flood has disappeared from the headlines at home and abroad, though millions of farmers are squatting in the ruins of their villages. The US is launching its heaviest-ever drone attacks on targets in the west of the country, and Pakistan closed the main US and Nato supply route through the Khyber Pass after US helicopters crossed the border and killed Pakistani soldiers.
Pakistan is undoubtedly in a bad way, but it is also a country with more than 170 million people, a population greater than Russia's, and is capable of absorbing a lot of punishment. It is a place of lop-sided development. It possesses nuclear weapons but children were suffering from malnutrition even before the floods. Electricity supply is intermittent so industrialists owning textile mills in Punjab complain that they have to use their own generators to stay in business. Highways linking cities are impressive, but the driver who turns off the road may soon find himself bumping along a farmer's track. The 617,000-strong army is one of the strongest in the world, but the government has failed to eliminate polio or malaria. Everybody agrees that higher education must be improved if Pakistan is to compete in the modern world, but the universities have been on strike because their budgets had been cut and they could not pay their staff.
The problem for Pakistan is not that the country is going to implode or sink into anarchy, but that successive crises do not produce revolutionary or radical change. A dysfunctional and corrupt state, part-controlled by the army, staggers on and continues to misgovern the country. The merry-go-round of open or veiled military rule alternates with feeble civilian governments. But power stays in the hands of an English-speaking élite that inherited from the British rulers of the Raj a sense of superiority over the rest of the population.
The present government might just squeak through the post-flood crisis because of its weakness rather than its strength. The military has no reason to replace it formally since the generals already control security policy at home and abroad, as well as foreign policy and anything else they deem important to their interests. The ambition of the Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, in the next few weeks is to try to fight off the demand by the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, that the legal immunity of President Asif Ali Zardari should be lifted. Mr Zardari, who owes his position to having been the husband of Benazir Bhutto, assassinated in 2007, has a well-established (though unproven) reputation for corruption during his pre-presidential days. Whatever the outcome of the struggle with the Supreme Court, Mr Zardari is scarcely in a position to stand up to the military leaders who may find it convenient to have such a discredited civilian leader nominally in power.
The military have ruled Pakistan for more than half the time since independence in 1947, but their control has never been quite absolute. The soldiers have never managed to put the politicians and the political parties permanently out of business, so the balance between military and non-military still counts. But there is no doubt about which way the struggle is going. A decisive moment came on 24 July this year when General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief of staff, was reappointed for another three-year term. The US embassy in Islamabad is said by foreign diplomats and Pakistani officials to have protested vigorously but unavailingly to Washington. It said that keeping General Kayani in place would inflict a fatal wound on democracy and demonstrate that the civilian government could not get rid of its own army commander. In the event, Washington, always a crucial influence in Islamabad, decided that it would prefer to deal with a single powerful figure able to deliver in negotiations over Afghanistan. This was in keeping with US policy towards Pakistan since the 1950s. "We were put under intense pressure to keep Kayani," said an aide of President Zardari's. "We were left with no choice."
In one sense, the army never really left power after the fall of General Pervez Musharraf in 2008. It has continued to allocate to itself an extraordinarily high proportion of Pakistan's limited resources. Military bases all over the country look spruce and well cared-for, while just outside their razor-wire defences are broken roads and slum housing. At the entrance of a base just west of Islamabad last week was an elderly but effective-looking tank as a monument, the ground around it parade-ground clean. A few hundred yards away, a yellow bulldozer was driving through thick mud to make a flood-damaged road passable two months after the deluge, while a side street nearby was closed by a pool of stagnant grey-coloured water. At the other end of the country in northern Sindh, a local leader, who like many critics of the Pakistani military did not want his name published, pointed to a wide canal. He said: "This canal is not meant to be taking water from the Indus, but it is allowed to operate because it irrigates land owned by army officers."
The army projects a messianic image of itself in which it selflessly takes power to save the nation. It likes to contrast its soldierly virtues of incorruptibility and efficiency with the crookedness and ineptitude of civilians. "The army is very good at claiming to be the solution to problems which it has itself created," complained a local politician in Punjab. "It is also good at ascribing all failures to civilian governments, which cannot act because the army monopolises resources." He added caustically that in his area, the floods had arrived on 6 August and the first army assistance on 26 August.
Politicians and journalists criticising the army often employ code words where more is implied than stated. But last month, a government minister made a pungent attack on the army that astonished listening journalists. The minister for defence production, Abdul Qayyum Jatoi, directly accused the army of being behind the killing of the opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, in 2007, and the revered Baluchi leader Nawab Bugti, a year earlier.
"We did not provide the army with uniforms and boots to kill their own countrymen," Mr Jatoi said bluntly, suggesting that the army leaders do their duty by going to defend Pakistan's frontiers and end rumours of a coup. He added: "Not only politicians should be blamed for corruption, rather [army] generals and judges should be held responsible."
Mr Jatoi's words reflect what Pakistanis say about the army in private, but seldom dare do so in public. He paid a price for his forthrightness, since Mr Gilani promptly sacked him and he is being accused of high treason in a petition before the courts. He says he does not miss his job very much because all the important decisions in his ministry were in any case taken by the military. Pakistanis are unhappy because every week seems to bring another piece of bad news. The country is highly politicised with millions of people observing with acute interest the struggles for power at the central and local level. Taxi drivers discuss the make-up of the Supreme Court and its future composition. When it comes to open and lively political disputes, Pakistan is more like Lebanon, with its tradition of weak government but free expression of opinion, than Russia or Egypt with their supine and intimidated populations. Political parties in Pakistan are powerful and, given an ineffectual and corrupt administrative apparatus, everybody believes he or she needs somebody of influence to protect their interests. The army likes to denigrate civilian politicians as "feudalists", but in practice, big landowners have limited political power. Politicians gain influence through helping "clients" who need their support and that of their parties. "All politics here is really about jobs," says National Assembly member Mir Dost Muhammad Mazari.
Pakistan may not be falling apart, but the floods and the economic crisis – the government is bankrupt and inflation is at 18-20 per cent – means that every Pakistani I meet, be they small farmers, generals, industrialists or tribal leaders, is gloomy about the future. Each negative incident is interpreted as a sign of Pakistan's decline and a menacing omen of worse to come. Two recent scandals, both filmed as they happened and shown on as many as 26 cable television news channels, appear to confirm that the country is saturated with corruption and violence. This explosion of news channels has happened only in the past few years and makes it far more difficult to censor information.
One scandal was the notorious allegation of match-fixing in return for bribes made against Pakistani cricketers touring England. Commentators noted acidly that it was typical of the political system that the highly unpopular head of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Ijaz Butt, could not be dismissed by the defence minister, Ahmad Mukhtar, because he is the latter's brother-in-law. The scandal was peculiarly damaging because it broke in August just as the government was trying to persuade the world to give it large sums of money for flood relief.
A second scandal, which may have horrified Pakistanis even more than the bribery case in England, took place a few days earlier. News out of Pakistan at the time was all about the devastating floods and it received little international attention, but the gory events were again played endlessly on television. They took place on 15 August in the city of Sialkot, north of Lahore, where two wholly innocent teenagers called Hafiz Sajjad, 18, and Mohammed Muneeb Sajjad, 15, were misidentified as robbers and lynched by a crowd in the middle of a city street. Uniformed police stood nonchalantly by as men with iron rods and sticks took turns over a period of hours to beat the boys to death. Their mangled bodies were finally hung upside down in the market and the case only became know because a courageous television reporter had accidentally witnessed and secretly filmed what happened.
The Sialkot lynching shows Pakistani society at its worst. It also illustrates what happens when there is a breakdown in the administration of justice. In this case, the local police are reported to have routinely killed alleged criminals or handed them over to lynch mobs. This breakdown in the administration of justice is general. I asked Pashtun tribal elders in a town near Lakki Marwat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province what they most needed. They all said governance: some form of effective local government administration. In south Punjab I went to a tribal court where 100 tough-looking Baluchi tribesmen had submitted a land dispute to a respected leader of their tribe. It was a complicated case involving a grandfather's will written in 1985 that left 12 acres of land unequally to the sons of his two marriages. The will was not very precise but nobody cared at first because the land was in the desert. But then one member of the family started to irrigate it and made it productive, leading to a rancorous dispute about ownership. The claimants to the land had chosen binding arbitration by a respected local leader, because a decision would be swift and free. They said that if they went through the state courts, the case could take years and the judges and police could be bribed.
But incidents such as the Sialkot lynching do not mean that the country is slipping into primal anarchy like Somalia. The Western world looks at Pakistan primarily in relation to Afghanistan, the Taliban, extreme jihadi Islam and the "war on terror". In a country of 170 million people there are always episodes that can be used as evidence to illustrate any trend, such as the belief that Pakistan is filled with bloodthirsty Islamic militants bent on holy war. Earlier this year, Foreign Policy magazine in Washington, which compiles an annual list of failed states, placed Pakistan 10th on the list, claiming that it showed more signs of state failure than Haiti and Yemen, and is only slightly more stable than Somalia and Yemen.
The country's high ranking in the survey tells one more about the paranoid state of mind of Washington post-9/11 than what is actually happening. There is no incentive to play down the "Islamic threat to Pakistan" on the part of any journalist who wants his or her story to be published, think-tankers who need a grant, or diplomats who seek promotion. The influence and prospects for growth of small jihadi organisations are systematically exaggerated. Over-attentive reading of the Koran is seen as the first step on the road to Islamic terrorism. Overstated claims about their activities by fundamentalist Islamic groups are happily lapped up and repeated.
Stories acquire a life of their own, regardless of their factual basis. During the recent floods, the foreign media reported on how militant Islamic groups were prominent and energetic in distributing aid to victims, the suggestion being that they will use their enhanced status to recruit more young men for holy war. This is supposedly what they did during the Kashmir earthquake of 2005, which killed 75,000 people whom it was difficult to reach because they lived high in the mountains. Christine Fair, an expert on Pakistan at Georgetown University in Washington, eloquently demolishes this and other spurious stories about the growth of militant Islam in Pakistan. She cites a survey of 28,000 households in 126 villages in Kashmir in which one-quarter of the inhabitants said they had received aid from international agencies, 7 per cent from non-militant Islamic charities, and just 1 per cent from the Islamic militant groups. Of course, the militantly religious of all kinds are likely to be to the front in helping survivors of any disaster, because most faiths adjure their adherents to help others in a crisis. The only person I met during a visit to flooded areas who could in any way be described as a religious militant engaged in relief work was an amiable German Pentecostalist waiting for a flight in Lahore airport.
Another hardy-perennial story about Pakistan claims that because of the undoubted inadequacy of the Pakistani public education system, madrasahs, or religious schools, provide free education to the needy. Once enrolled, the children are supposedly brainwashed to turn them into the future foot soldiers of jihadi Islam. In reality, Pakistani educational specialists say that just 1.3 per cent of children in school go the madrasahs, 65 per cent to public schools, and 34 per cent to non-religious private schools. In recent years, it is the small and affordable private schools that have expanded fastest, mainly because jobs in them are open to educated women prepared to accept low pay. Most jihadis turn out to have been educated at public schools.
Extreme Islamists have seldom done well in elections in Pakistan. Widespread popular support for the Afghan Taliban stems primarily from the conviction that they are essentially a Pashtun national liberation movement fighting a foreign occupation. The Pakistani Taliban was once said to be "60 miles from Islamabad", but such scaremongering ignored the fact that there were three mountain ranges and one of the world's most powerful armies in between the Taliban's rag-tag fighters and the capital. The Pakistani state may not function very well but it is not failing, and – a pity – current crises may not even change it very much.
The center of Asia's divide
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/eo20101001bc.html
By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
NEW DELHI — Japan may have created the impression of having buckled under China's pressure by releasing the Chinese fishing trawler captain. But the Japanese action helps move the spotlight back to China, whose rapid accumulation of power has emboldened it to aggressively assert territorial and maritime claims against its neighbors, from Japan to India.
Having earlier preached the gospel of its "peaceful rise," China is no longer shy about showcasing its military capabilities and asserting itself on multiple fronts. While the Chinese leadership may gloat after forcing Tokyo to climb down and release the captain, the episode — far from shifting the Asian balance of power in Beijing's favor — has only shown that China is at the center of Asia's political divides.
China's new stridency in its territorial and maritime disputes with its neighbors has helped highlight Asia's central challenge to come to terms with existing boundaries by getting rid of the baggage of history that weighs down a number of interstate relationships. Even as Asia is becoming more interdependent economically, it is becoming more divided politically.
While the bloody wars in the first half of the 20th century have made war unthinkable today in Europe, wars in Asia during the second half of the 20th century did not resolve matters and have only accentuated bitter rivalries. A number of interstate wars have been fought in Asia since 1950, the year both the Korean War and the annexation of Tibet started. Those wars, far from settling or ending disputes, have only kept disputes lingering.
China, significantly, has been involved in the largest number of military conflicts. A recent Pentagon report has cited examples of how China carried out military preemption in 1950, 1962, 1969 and 1979 in the name of strategic defense. The report states: "The history of modern Chinese warfare provides numerous case studies in which China's leaders have claimed military preemption as a strategically defensive act.
For example, China refers to its intervention in the Korean War (1950-1953) as the "War to Resist the United States and Aid Korea." Similarly, authoritative texts refer to border conflicts against India (1962), the Soviet Union (1969) and Vietnam (1979) as "self-defense counterattacks." The seizure of Paracel Islands from Vietnam in 1974 by Chinese forces was another example of offense as defense.
All these cases of preemption occurred when China was weak, poor and internally torn. So today, China's growing power naturally raises legitimate concerns. A stronger, more prosperous China is already beginning to pursue a more muscular foreign policy vis-a-vis its neighbors, as underscored by several developments this year alone — from its inclusion of the South China Sea in its "core" national interests, an action that makes its claims to the disputed Spratly Islands nonnegotiable, to its reference to the Yellow Sea as a sort of exclusive Chinese military-operations zone where the U.S. and South Korea should discontinue holding joint naval exercises.
China also has become more insistent in pressing its territorial claims to the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, with Chinese warships making more frequent forays into Japanese waters.
As if to signal that it is acquiring the military power to enforce its claims, China has since April conducted large-scale naval exercises, first near Japan's Ryukyu Islands chain — with a Chinese helicopter buzzing a Japanese destroyer — then in the East China Sea and, most recently, in the Yellow Sea.
In Tibet, the official PLA (People's Liberation Army) Daily has reported several new significant military developments in recent months, including the first-ever major parachute exercise to demonstrate a capability to rapidly insert troops on the world's highest plateau and an exercise involving "third generation" fighter-jets carrying live ammunition.
In addition, the railroad to Tibet, the world's highest elevated railway, has now started being used to supply "combat readiness materials for the air force" there. These military developments have to be seen in the context of China's resurrection since 2006 of its long-dormant claim to India's northeastern Arunachal Pradesh state and its recent attempts to question Indian sovereignty over the state of Jammu and Kashmir, one-fifth of which it occupies.
Against that background, China's increasingly assertive territorial and maritime claims threaten Asian peace and stability. In fact, the largest real estate China covets is not in the South or East China Seas but in India: Arunachal Pradesh is almost three times larger than Taiwan. Respect for boundaries is a prerequisite to peace and stability on any continent. Europe has built its peace on that principle, with a number of European states learning to live with boundaries they do not like.
Efforts to redraw territorial and maritime frontiers are an invitation to endemic conflicts in Asia. Through its overt refusal to accept the territorial status quo, Beijing only highlights the futility of political negotiations.
After all, a major redrawing of frontiers has never happened at the negotiating table in world history. Such redrawing can only be achieved on the battlefield, as Beijing has done in the past.
Today, whether it is Arunachal Pradesh or Taiwan or the Senkaku Islands, or even the Spratlys, China is dangling the threat to use force to assert its claims. In doing so, China has helped reinforce the specter of a China threat. By picking territorial fights with its neighbors, China also is threatening Asia's continued economic renaissance. More significantly, China is showing that it is not a credible candidate to lead Asia.
It is important for other Asian states and the rest of the international community to convey a clear message to Beijing: After six long decades, China's redrawing of frontiers must now come to an end.
Brahma Chellaney is the author, most recently, of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan" (HarperCollins, 2010).
The Japan Times: Friday, Oct. 1, 2010
The great game pantomime
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article804951.ece
Instead of crying over the amazing pace of development of Chinese territories across our borders, ask Chinese companies to come forward and invest in our border roads.
The latest contribution to the discourse on China comes from Jaswant Singh, former External Affairs and Finance Minister. His opinion piece in the American media enjoins our strategic community's current discourse on the power dynamics in Asia. He is convinced that India has a “great game” on its hands and seems to imply that the outcome of this game will critically depend on its military prowess and its strategic alliance with the United States, whereas expanding Sino-Indian economic cooperation ultimately becomes inconsequential. Mr. Singh has articulated these views at an interesting point in the U.S.-India strategic partnership. To be sure, President Barack Obama's forthcoming visit to India gives them a sense of immediacy.
However, is there a great game in our region, and if so, is it as one-dimensional as Mr. Singh suggests? He says: “Rudyard Kipling's old ‘Great Game' now has new contestants. Instead of an expansionist Russian empire confronting Imperial Britain, it is now China hungry for land, water, and raw materials that is flexing its muscles, encroaching on Himalayan redoubts and directly challenging India.”
It may seem an esoteric historical detail in current polemics, but thanks to able historiography in the West, we now know that Imperial Britain exaggerated the “perception of threat” from Czarist Russia with the purpose of expanding its own influence in India and in the regions to the southwest in a wide arc that stretches from Cairo to China's Xinjiang — Greater Middle East. There is a spellbinding book by David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, which Jawaharlal Nehru would have acquired for our Parliament library had been alive today. Unlike Kipling's fiction, Fromkin provides calm, meticulously researched conclusions on Imperial Britain's strategy leading to the great Middle East settlement of 1921 — and the immense vistas of decades of history that provided its backdrop.
What makes Fromkin's world of yesterday absolutely fascinating is that the world of today bears striking similarities. Then too, as the decline of the Ottoman Empire began accelerating, there was a furious struggle for geopolitical space (and resources) among the established and emerging powers in Europe. There were great anxieties as a revolution was erupting with an obscure ideology amid convulsions of social unrest that were threatening to breach the dam in the established powers and which had no easy solutions.
The great game today, too, is a pantomime. The U.S. moves into Middle Asia to get embedded in a region which it historically never accessed — and couldn't access so long as the Soviet Union existed. These U.S. moves are, like Kipling's fiction, easy to dissimulate but the geo-strategic thrust is barely disguised: get embedded in a region that holds multitrillion dollars worth of mineral resources, and which overlooks 4 nuclear powers (potentially 5), three of which are emerging powers that may at some point, inevitably, see the raison d'etre of getting together in a post-Bretton Woods world order. Mr. Singh loses the plot.
He asserts: “The Chinese urge is to break from the confines of their country's history, and thus China's own geography. An assertive and relatively stable China, it seems, must expand, lest pent-up internal pressures tear it apart.” This is taking a walk fearlessly into terrains where Sinologists fear to tread. The point is China is a neighbour and even if a neighbour is not tailor-made for us, we have to live with it. And that can commence only by knowing our neighbour without pride and prejudice. The well-known American historian and author, Jeffrey Wasserstrom (who edits The Journal of Asian Studies), also happened to amble across these tricky terrains last week. Whereas Mr. Singh is self-confident, Prof. Wasserstrom is unsure about the great ambivalences in the Chinese story. I need to quote him at some length:
“One way to interpret China' elevated rhetoric … is as another indication that Chinese leaders have grown supremely self-confident and are eager to throw their weight around. The reality, though, is more complex … words and deeds are often shaped by a mixture of insecurity and cockiness … Of course, there are moments when China's leaders do seem like people who know that they are succeeding and want others to acknowledge it.
“And yet, when news broke last month that China had officially replaced Japan as the world's second-largest economy, instead of crowing about surpassing a long-time rival and having the top spot, held by the U.S. in its sights, the government issued statements emphasising that theirs remains a “poor, developing” country… Why, then, do China's rulers continue to backslide into doubt and fear, why do they seek to avoid having China labelled a superpower?
“China really is still a “poor” country in terms of per capita income. And parts of the country are more similar to sections of troubled “developing” countries than to China's showplace cities … Outsiders are increasingly convinced that China is a superpower, and that it needs to show that it can be a responsible one. But China's rulers only sometimes embrace the designation — and the [Chinese Communist] Party still sometimes behaves as if it had only a tenuous hold on power.”
Of course, it is an extraordinary intellectual challenge facing Indians to comprehend China. To compound it, we base opinions on dogmas and beliefs. Don't trade and investment constitute “constructive engagement” and become “CBMs”? There is a Chinese proposal today that they desire to build nuclear power plants in India — yes, maybe even bigger than the ones in Pakistan — having been India's “strategic partner” historically in the nuclear field. Somehow, our gurus are missing out on the quintessence of history and diplomacy, something our Chief Ministers in Karnataka and Gujarat who frequent China seem to grasp better — that good politics is about creating wealth.
If we are savvy, instead of sitting on the ground and crying about the amazing pace of development of Chinese territories across our borders, ask Chinese companies to come forward and invest in our border roads, too. According to Kamal Nath, China is prepared to increase threefold its present investments in our infrastructure sector. Why can't China build a world-class container terminal near Thiruvananthapuram so that we won't end up depending on the Colombo port, which China is expanding? The Sri Lankans seem to anticipate better the acute infrastructural problems of the Indian economy as it moves into a dazzling trajectory of growth.
The recent U.S. Senate testimony by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on China following his consultations with the Chinese leadership, including President Hu Jintao, provides a fascinating essay in realpolitik. Mr. Geithner said: “We [U.S.] have very significant economic interests in our relationship with China… [China's] efforts to encourage growth led by domestic demand ultimately mean more demand for American goods and services… [U.S. investment] in China provides a major channel through which U.S. exports flow, and as a result contributes to creating jobs here at home at our exporting firms … China has a very substantial economic stake in access to the U.S. market … And we have a very strong interest … in the Chinese market, so that U.S. businesses and U.S. workers do not face unfair trading practices. I want to be clear: a strong and growing China benefits the United States.”
Mr. Geithner, a personal friend of Mr. Obama, is pondering how China makes butter and how they can make butter together. There can be differences of opinion over what should be our appropriate and principled response to the Chinese way of making butter. Yet, today, there is so much for Indians to know: how, for a start, China is beginning to climb from low-end assembly lines and sweatshops to green technology and wind turbines and solar panels and electric cars. As Orville Schell, director of Asia Society's Centre on U.S.-China Relations, put it recently: “The first priority is to get our own house in order, so we're not filled with so much anxiety that is easily transferred on to the rise of another country.”
The pity is, just the wrong people could exploit Mr. Singh's plain thesis: middlemen for American arms manufacturers. India has a need to modernise its armed forces for meeting the new security challenges and “asymmetrical” wars that we may (or may not) fight. But we don't want to be hustled into things. Look at the contemporary politics of power. Saudi Arabia is embarking on a $60-billion dollar arms deal with the U.S. The Obama administration admits that the deal will generate thousands of new jobs in America.
In the run-up to the arms deal, the arms manufacturers and their middlemen whipped up nerve-wracking xenophobia regarding a growing “Iranian threat.” Meanwhile, the U.S. is inching towards normalisation with Iran. China is a serious challenge to the U.S. and the challenge is increasingly how to tap into China's growth. Mr. Obama's ultimate focus is on butter, how to make more butter in America — with the Chinese brought into that enterprise.
(The writer is a former diplomat.)
Turmoil in Kashmir – Root-cause & Remedies
(A Registered Society with No. 614 of 2003)
Forum for Integrated National Security (FINS)
Cordially invite you and your friends to a Seminar on
Sri K. Ajit Doval*
Former Director, Intelligence Bureau (IB), New Delhi
will be the Principal Speaker.
Sri Ashok Pandit**
Filmmaker & Social Activist, Mumbai
will be the Chief Guest
Sri K. Ramachandra Murthy
Managing Director, HMTV
will be the Guest of Honour.
Maj. Gen. (retd.) A.B. Gorthi, AVSM, VSM
Chairman, FINS, AP
will Preside.
10th October, 2010 (Sunday) at 10.00 a.m.
Myadam Anjaiah Memorial Hall, Munnuru Kapu Vidyarthi Vasathi Gruham
Opp. Venkata Ramana – Padmavathi Theatres, Kachiguda, Hyderabad
Dr. Somaraju Suseela
President, Social Cause
Col. Prof. Datla Raju
General Secretary, FINS, AP
*Sri K. Ajit Doval joined the Indian Police Service (IPS) in 1968 and retired as Director of the IB in 2005. He is the first police officer to get the Kirthi Chakra, the second highest gallantry award. He is also a recipient of the President's Police Medal for distinguished service, and the Indian Police Medal for meritorious service. He has got outstanding credentials as an operations man. He is an expert on national and global security issues ranging from counter-terrorism to India's strategic challenges.
** Sri Ashok Pandit is fiercely passionate about his first movie ‘Meri Zameen’, which is set in the backdrop of the Kashmir problem and brings to light the plight of the Kashmiri Pandit community to which he belongs. He made documentaries like "Sharnarthi Apne Desh Mein', which won RAPA award for being the best documentary in the year 2000 and also 'And the world remained silent." Kashmiri is very much part of sensibilities of this talented filmmaker.
May we solicit the favour of circulating this invitation to your friends in Hyderabad?
If you are on Facebook, you may kindly confirm your participation at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=135853829795238
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Our Foes Cannot Destroy This Nation
By Brian Michael Jenkins
Senior Advisor to the President of the RAND Corporation
http://security.nationaljournal.com/2010/09/will-jihad-adopt-an-american-f.php#1652435
I am traveling in India now where concerns are high about the possibility that foreign or homegrown terrorists may attack the country during next week’s Commonwealth Games. Such concerns are understandable where in the past decade, jihadist fanatics have attacked India’s Parliament, blown up trains, and, less than two years ago, launched a three-day suicide assault on Mumbai, in all, killing hundreds and injuring thousands. Added to this is an unfortunate history of communal violence between India’s Hindu and Muslim communities that has, since 2001, produced riots and other clashes that, according to official statistics, have left 2,234 dead and 21,460 injured. This is considered an improvement over the even bloodier 1990s. Tensions are high as people await a high court’s final decision on Ayodha, a holy site claimed by both Hindus and Muslims, and the cause of past bloodshed.
With three shooting wars between mostly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan since the 1947 partition, several military confrontations between the two nuclear powers, plus an undulant guerrilla war in Kashmir, the threat to security is real. It is from this temporary perspective that I look back upon the current jihadist terrorist threat in the United States.
The global terrorist enterprise inspired by al Qaeda’s and similar ideologies has its own geographies. A map of jihadist terrorist attacks since 9/11 will show that its center lies along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, spreading to Northwest India. Subsidiary and allied movements carry on terrorist campaigns that stain the map in Iraq, Algeria, Yemen, Somalia. Beyond these, dark patches appear in the Caucasus, across sub-Saharan Africa, the rest of the Indian subcontinent, Indonesia and the Philippines. Beyond these are outlying spots indicating isolated attacks in Europe. The U.S. gets a few dots.
Concentration does not mean central direction. The situation on the ground is more complex. Parasitic jihadists do better where they can attach themselves to more deeply-rooted local conflicts as in Iraq, Afghanistan—where they ride on the back of the Taliban, where they exploited resistance to the American invasion, in Chechnya where they have exploited Chechen’s historic resistance to Russia, in Yemen, Algeria, Somalia, and the Southern Philippines, but not so well in Palestine where rival extremists see them as competitors.
Al Qaeda’s historic center has been weakened although not wiped out. It inspires a global struggle through the Internet, in recent months espousing a do-it-yourself ethic, exhorting on-line followers to do whatever they can wherever they are. The growth of the Internet, where many jihad terrorists begin their journey, the proliferation of jihadist websites since 9/11, the increase in the number of English-language jihadist websites, the increased volume and sophistication of al Qaeda’s communications, the jihadist sales pitches made by native-born Americans like Adam Gadahn, Anwar al-Awlaki, and Omar Hamami facilitate the message to an American audience. And it has gained some traction among disappointed young men, restless souls, people in personal crisis, those seeking violent adventure. These are one-off responses, not yet an underground movement.
Quantifying terrorism is slippery business. The recent Congressional report indicates that 63 individuals were arrested or convicted of jihadist terrorism this year, but that combines different categories. Some of those convicted were the subjects of investigation and arrests in previous years. Nonetheless, my own analysis of jihadist radicalization in the United States since September 11, 2001, which was issued earlier this year by the RAND Corporation asWould-Be Warriors indicates a marked increase in both the number of cases and the number of individuals involved in 2009. Authorities have discovered additional plots and made further arrests in 2010.
The good news is that the numbers continue to be small—I counted 125 out of an American Muslim population of approximately 3 million, evidence of veins of resentment and handfuls of hotheads, but no terrorist underground, which based upon the impressive record of federal and local law enforcement, would be quickly rolled up. Half of the 46 cases uncovered since 9/11 involved a single individual. Only three actually succeeded in getting as far as an attempt, and only two succeeded in causing fatalities, both lone gunmen: Carlos Bledsoe who killed one soldier and wounded another at an Army recruiting station in Arkansas and Major Nidal Hasan, who opened fire on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 and wounding 31.
Terrorist recruiting is also affected by events. The American-led invasion of Iraq and American involvement in Afghanistan were portrayed by al Qaeda’s propagandists as evidence of American hostility toward Islam and inspired some. The American-supported Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006 facilitated the recruiting of Somali-Americans. James Elshafoy, one of those arrested in 2004 for plotting to blow up New York’s subway said he was angered by friends who went to school within Staten Island displaying signs that said “God Bless America” on the front and “Kill Arab Babies” on the back. America’s current wave of Islamo-phobia will likely produce new recruits who are unable to distinguish between media-magnified manifestations of anti-Islamic hostility and America’s tradition of religious freedom and tolerance for diversity of beliefs.
It is highly likely that the United States will be the target of further terrorist attacks, abroad and at home. It is not an underestimation of this threat or evidence of substandard zeal in addressing it to say that these attacks will not bring down the republic. We have come through wars, depressions, natural and man-made disasters, indeed higher levels of domestic terrorist violence than that we face today. Our foes cannot destroy this nation. That capability is ours alone.
Rebuilding Kyrgyzstan
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/ISN-Insights/Detail?lng=en&id=122140&contextid734=122140&contextid735=122133&tabid=122133
The recent Uzbek-Kyrgyz clashes following the second overthrow of the government in five years have not only highlighted the authoritarian state's ineffectiveness in providing enduring stability but also undermined its integrity and sovereignty. Only earnest democratization and nation-building will ensure a stable future.
By Roman Muzalevsky
When the Uzbek-Kyrgyz clashes this June threatened to undermine the regional security system, neither the regional security organizations (OSCE, CSTO, SCO) nor regional actors (Russia, the US, China, etc.) intervened militarily in Kyrgyzstan to restore stability. This, despite requests by the Kyrgyz Interim Government, which came to power following the government's overthrow in April, and dismal security conditions that left hundreds dead and led to the displacement of up to 400,000 people. Some2,500 homes, more than 100 commercial buildings and 10 government structures were either destroyed or severely damaged, with the overall financial damage estimated at $71 million.
The rehabilitation of infrastructure and housing may well take years. Inter-ethnic healing and trust-building will take decades. Fresh memories of the 1990 bloodshed between the Uzbeks and Kyrgyz – when the Soviet Union was nearing its demise – are a testament to the difficulties that lie ahead. Currently, thousands of people of all ethnic affiliations are leaving either temporarily or permanently to settle in other countries.
Dealing effectively with the humanitarian catastrophe is therefore of paramount importance, not least because deteriorating living conditions will invite more instability, subverting the already weak national security system. Miroslav Niyazov, the former secretary of the Kyrgyz National Security Council, has emphasized the utterinadequacy of the national security system in Kyrgyzstan, where authorities still struggle to exercise full control.
Meanwhile, weak government institutions and daunting sociopolitical problems might yet enable regional terrorist and extremist organizations, including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Hizb-ut-Tahrir, to vigorously promote their radical agenda amidst ongoing uncertainty. About one-third of the population in the country now lives below the poverty line. The already pronounced unemployment in the south is risingfurther following the global economic crisis and the Uzbek-Kyrgyz clashes, expanding the pool of potential recruits.
Defining the Future
In these conditions the people of Kyrgyzstan should answer three questions when pondering the country’s future: how Kyrgyzstan wants to organize itself internally; in what regional environment it wants to live; and what it needs to do to achieve the first two. Failure to do so will put the country’s sovereignty at risk. As Kyrgyzstan seeks to pursue enduring stability, it should concentrate on the following short and long-term tasks.
The alleviation of the humanitarian catastrophe is indispensable, just as rehabilitation of infrastructure and reconstruction of the cities of Osh and Jalalabad is vital, with costs estimated at $230 and $245 million respectively. Ensuring food and energy security, with price tags of $50 and $170 million respectively, represent additional challenges in light of the projected budget deficit of $619 million, external debt of $145million in the next two years and a 30-48 percent reduction of the GDP in the country’s southern areas by the end of this year.
The $1.1 billion in donor’s assistance for humanitarian support and long-term development is therefore timely. Such aid, while tailored to local conditions, should come with strict oversight, to avoid widespread corruption. In 2009, Transparency International placed all Central Asian countries high on their corruption index, including Kyrgyzstan with a rank of 162, close to Somalia – the world’s most corrupt country with the rank of 180.
Ethnic reconciliation should be pursued vigorously as well. Engaging Kyrgyz and Uzbek community leaders, clamping down on abuses of power, relying on the OSCE police advisory group and cooperating with the recently formed international inquiry commission will promote a sense of justice and trust between the ethnic groups on the one hand, and the population and government institutions on the other.
Yet, all these efforts are ultimately for naught without a long-term national development plan and a commitment to democratization. Here, Kyrgyzstan must pursue military and educational reforms, as well as robust national ideology and economic integration programs.
Building the nation-state
Military institutions should not only be made more transparent and accountable to civilian control, they should also be freed from corruption, which leads to under-recruitment of minorities and ethnic Kyrgyz alike. The latter now constitute 95 percentof all military servicemen. The Uzbeks' distrust of military and law-enforcement institutions in general, and during the June clashes in particular, has partially stemmed from the proportionally low presence of Uzbeks within these structures. Yet, the military has traditionally served as a vehicle for promoting state loyalties everywhere. And so has education.
While educational policy is designed to serve the purposes of national development, in Kyrgyzstan it does not do so effectively. Financial constrains, lack of strategic vision and corruption have stood in the way. School textbooks printed in the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan and Russia are still used in many schools, while the ethnic Kyrgyz living in the north and south speak varying dialects of the Kyrgyz language.
Kyrgyz tribalism and weak state loyalties of ethnic minorities have further undermined national cohesion. The former creates north-south tensions both among the Kyrgyz clans struggling for power and the common people, while the latter makes any vision of a modern nation-state a fiction. The Uzbeks, who mostly live in the south and comprise about 14.3 percent, represent the largest minority group, followed by Russians who number around 7.8 percent. Some Uzbeks are even known to adhere to Uzbekistan’s time zone; the one hour time difference might seem a minor issue, but it signals a significant distinction in perceived reality.
People in the south also tend to appeal to Islam as their source of identity, unlike the people in the north who tend to exhibit secular orientations. All of these identity splits further exacerbate and feed on the country’s geographical and economic divisions. The relatively well-off north and poor south have been turned into frameworks distinguishing the advantaged from the disadvantaged.
Pursuing a visionary and constructive national ideology centered on the titular ethnic group and effective educational policy is therefore necessary to ensure national integrity.
Economic integration programs – focusing on trade, infrastructure investments and transportation – should also be utilized to facilitate nation-building. Some of the $1.1 billion in assistance should be used for this purpose where possible. Ironically, despite calls for Central Asian economic integration, no adequate progress has been made, even within Kyrgyzstan’s own borders. Currently, there are only 424.6 km of railways, with separate networks running in the north and south. The overall rail network is one of the smallest in the region and the least dense as well. Plans already exist to expand it, thereby connecting the north and south and opening an additional transit and trade corridor for Eurasian rail traffic. It is time to implement them.
The road system is no better, partly because of the mountainous terrain that extends over 90 percent of the country’s territory, and partly because of corruption, lack of vision and funding. Roads cover merely 34,000 km, with unpaved ones constituting nine percent. Four major roads occupy almost half of all roadways, with transport contributing just two-to-three percent to the country’s GDP.
The north and south are not sufficiently integrated. There is also only one usable yet poorly maintained highway linking the two regions, limiting trade and inter-regional interaction. This makes the country less successful in terms of internal development as a whole, and also highly vulnerable to potential secession. It is no coincidence that Uzbek calls for autonomy have resurfaced from time to time in the south. Yet, roads and economic integration programs – just as military and educational policy – can facilitate much needed national development and cohesion.
The Uzbek-Kyrgyz clashes and recent political instability have underlined the imperative of rebuilding Kyrgyzstan. But such urgency is not confined solely to the rehabilitation of damaged infrastructure. Nor does it exclusively entail ethnic reconciliation. The task of rebuilding is much bigger, and so are the stakes – the integrity and sovereignty of the Kyrgyz state. Only democratization, the fight against corruption, reforms in the military and educational sectors and strategic initiatives promoting internal economic integration and national cohesion hold the key to Kyrgyzstan’s lasting future.
Roman Muzalevsky is Program Manager of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center’s office in Washington, DC. His publications have appeared in the Yale Journal of International Affairs, Review of International Law and Politics, Journal of Central Asian and Caucasian Studies, Eurasia Daily Monitor andCentral Asia-Caucasus Analyst.
He holds a Master's in Security and Strategy Studies from Yale University and a Diploma in International Affairs from the International Ataturk Ala-Too University in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
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AFGHANISTAN: THE LOOMING LOGISTICS DILEMMA
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INDIA-PAKISTAN-UK
The following are my answers yo E-mailed questions on the above-mentioned subject received from a UK-based analyst:
1) In your view, what is Pakistan's goal in Afghanistan? Do they want their interests to be respected in any peace settlement or do they want their interests to be the settlement? What is the view of the Indian government, officially and unofficially?
PAKISTAN'S GOAL IN AFGHANISTAN IS A GOVERNMENT WHICH
WOULD NOT CREATE PROBLEMS FOR ISLAMABAD IN THE PASHTUN BELT,
WHICH WOULD NOT TAKE SIDES WITH INDIA IN ANY INDO-PAKISTAN MILITARY CONFLICT,
WOULD PROTECT PAKISTAN'S ECONOMIC LINKS WITH THE CENTRAL ASIAN REPUBLICS AND
WOULD KEEP INDIA AT A DISTANCE.PAKISTAN REGARDS AFGHANISTAN AS WITHIN ITS SPHERE OF INFLUENCE AND WANTS A GOVERNMENT IN KABUL
WOULD KEEP AFGHANISTAN THAT WAY.
2) In your view, what are India's strategic objectives in Afghanistan? How does it differ from its stated policy, if at all?
INDIA'S STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES IN AFGHANISTAN ARE A MULTI-ETHNIC,PLURALISTIC,MODERN,DEMOCRATIC AFGHANISTAN
WHICH WOULD PLAY ITS DUE ROLE IN THE SOUTH ASIAN REGION WITHOUT COMING UNDER THE MALIGN INFLUENCE OF THE PAKISTANI ARMY AND ITS ISI AND
WHICH WOULD REMAIN IMMUNISED FROM PAKISTAN'S JIHADI VIRUS.
INDIA WOULD ALSO HAVE A KEY INTEREST IN CONTRIBUTING TO A PREVENTION OF A RE-TALIBANISATION OF AFGHANISTAN AND THE RETURN OF AL QAEDA TO ITS OLD SANCTUARIES IN THE AFGHAN TERRITORY.THE STATED POLICY AND THE GENUINE OBJECTIVES ARE IDENTICAL.
3) How do you rate the MI6-ISI intelligence relationship? What is the view of the Indian government? Is there a similarly strong relationship with RAW?
I DON'T KNOW THE VIEWS OF THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT.BASED ON OPEN SOURCE INFORMATION, MY ASSESSMENT IS THAT THE ISI'S CO-OPERATION WITH THE MI-5 AND THE MI-6 HAS BEEN AS UNSATISFACTORY AS ITS CO-OPERATION WITH THE CIA AND THE FBI. WE SAW A GOOD EXAMPLE OF ISI FOOT-DRAGGING IN THE CASE OF RASHID RAUF, A MIRPURI FROM BIRMINGHAM WHO WAS WANTED IN A CRIMINAL CASE IN THE UK AND WHO HAD LINKS WITH THE JAISH-E-MOHAMMAD AND SUSPECTED LINKS WITH AL QAEDA.
4) Given David Cameron wants to build a "special relationship" with India, what would the UK need to do vis-a-vis Afghanistan and Pakistan to help build such a relationship?
BOTH INDIA AND THE UK HAVE A COMMON INTEREST IN ENSURING THAT PAKISTAN WINDS UP THE JIHADI TERRORIST INFRASTRUCTURE IN ITS TERRITORY AND ACTS AGAINST THE LEADERS OF THE TERRORIST ORGANISATIONS SUCH AS THE LASHKAR-E-TOIBA AND THE JEM WHICH POSE A THREAT TO THE NATIONALS AND INTERESTS OF INDIA AND THE UK. IN AFGHANISTAN, THEY HAVE A COMMON INTEREST IN PREVENTING THE RETURN OF THE TALIBAN TO POWER IN KABUL AND OF AL QAEDA TO ITS SANCTUARIES IN AFGHAN TERRITORY. INDIA AND THE UK SHOULD WORK JOINTLY FOR PROMOTING THESE COMMON INTERESTS.
5) What could India offer the UK to make such a relationship reciprocal? Could RAW fill the vacuum of an ISI break from MI6?
THE RELATIONSHIP IS PROGRESSING. THERE IS NOW A GREATER APPRECIATION IN LONDON OF THE ROLE OF PAKISTAN IN FOMENTING TERRORISM IN INDIAN TERRITORY. SIMILARLY, THERE IS A GREATER APPRECIATION IN LONDON OF INDIA'S LEGITIMATE INTERESTS IN AFGHANISTAN. BUT THE PROGRESS HAS NOT BEEN AS SATISFACTORY AS INDIA WOULD HAVE WISHED BECAUSE THE UK IS NOT PREPARED TO USE THE STICK AGAINST PAKISTAN DESPITE ITS UNHAPPINESS OVER PAKISTAN'S FOOT-DRAGGING AGAINST TERRORISM ORIGINATING FROM ITS TERRITORY. THE CONVERGENCE OF INDIAN AND BRITISH INTERESTS IN RELATION TO PAKISTAN CONTINUES TO HAVE LIMITS. THIS COMES IN THE WAY OF A STRONGER RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE UK AND INDIA ON STRATEGIC ISSUES.
6) What is your view of Cameron's remarks last year about Pakistan "exporting terror"?
TOTALLY JUSTIFIED AND FACTUALLY CORRECT.
7) How do you rate the idea of a UK-India "special relationship"?
THE IDEA IS GOOD, BUT THE PROBLEM IS IN IMPLEMENTATION. ANY SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP, TO BE WORTHWHILE, HAS TO BE BASED ON A QUID PRO QUO. THERE IS NO QUID PRO QUO IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDIA AND THE UK.
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com . Twitter : @SORBONNE75 )
Labels: Affganistan, Pakistan
Musharraf hires US lobbyist for $25,000 a month
"A monthly payment in the amount of twenty thousand US dollars ($25,000.00) will be paid to Advantage (the lobbying firm) for a period of seven months beginning on September 1,2011 and ending on March 30, 2012. All monthly payments must be made on the first of each month. However, for the last two months and the first month, seventy five thousand US dollars ($75,000.00) will be paid upon the signing of this agreement,"
Daily News Report
WASHINGTON, Oct 8: Former President Pervez Musharraf has hired a US lobbyist at 25,000 dollars per month, official US record on lobbyists reveals. According to the official documents of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the firm would approach US officials, senators and congressmen to lobby for Gen Musharraf.
The document registered as 6062 with the Justice Department, Gen Musharraf remains a political and public figure in Pakistan and throughout the world. The agreement was signed on Sept 1, 2011 and will be good until March 2012, amounting to $175,000 for services provided by the firm.
Gen Musharraf's representative who signed the agreement with the firm is named Raza Bokhari, according to the Justice Department record. Raza Bokhari has a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Punjab. He was elected as the national president for the Pakistani American Public Affairs Committee (PAKPAC) for the years 2006-07.
http://www.dailynews.net.pk/oct2011/08-10-2011/mushhire.asp
By Our Correspondent | From the Newspaper Yesterday
Former president Pervez Musharraf speaks to the press in Hong Kong on September 15, 2010.—AFP
WASHINGTON: Former chief of the army staff Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf, currently visiting North America, has hired a firm for $25,000 a month to lobby for him in the US capital.
A copy of the contract obtained by Dawn shows that a formal agreement between Mr Musharraf and the Advantage Associates International Ltd. was signed on Sept 1.
The contract letter identifies the firm as a specialist in “helping clients with governmental, political and international matters.” Raza Bokhari, a prominent member of Mr Musharraf’s party in the US, will work as “point of contact”.
“For purposes of this agreement, Mr Bokhari and the office of Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf shall retain joint rights,” the letter says.
The Advantage Ltd will work with Mr Bokhari to “develop a strategy to represent the interest of Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf in the US” and the firm will assist Mr Bokhari “in any other area that would be of benefit to Gen (retd) Musharraf”.
The agreement, which began on Sept 1, 2011, ends on March 30, 2012.
The parties “acknowledge awareness and stated preference that this is an agreement for services as an independent contractor. The parties will exert all manner of good faith and take all reasonable efforts to ensure performance and prevent repudiation by other parties connected with its activities which could affect its performance under this agreement”.
The total fee for the services to be provided to by Advantage is $175,000.00. A monthly payment in the amount of $25,000.00 will be made to Advantage for a period of seven months beginning on Sept 1, 2011. All monthly payments must be made on the first of each month. However, for the last two months and the first month, $75,000.00 was paid upon the signing of this agreement.
Mr Bokhari also agreed to reimburse Advantage for all reasonable expenses arising out of this agreement, with any expenses over $250.00 approved in advance.
Meanwhile, Mr Musharraf’s office in the US issued a statement on Friday, noting that the relationship between Pakistan and the US was on a declining trend due to many reasons.
To explain Pakistan’s position, Mr Musharraf met a number of senior US lawmakers in Washington, the statement said.
“As a member of diaspora community, we all feel compelled to play our roles in improving the bilateral relationship between the two countries,” the statement said.
He was scheduled to meet the former speaker, and a senior member of the US Congress, Nancy Pelosi, on Friday.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/08/musharraf-hires-us-lobbyist-for-25000-a-month.html
Musharraf paying $25,000 per month to lobbyist to promote interests in US
ANI | Oct 8, 2011, 12.09PM IST
WASHINGTON: Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has hired a US lobbyist at $25,000 per month, according to an official US record on lobbyists.
According to the official documents of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the lobbying firm would approach US officials, Senators and Congressmen to promote the interests of Musharraf in the United States.
The document, having registration number 6062, says that Musharraf "remains a political and public figure in Pakistan and throughout the world."
Musharraf's representative who signed the agreement with the firm is named Raza Bokhari, according to the justice department record.
The agreement was made on Sept 1, 2011 and will end on March 30, 2012, unless the parties agree to extend the term.
The total fee for the services to be provided to the lobbying firm is one hundred and seventy five thousand ($175,000.00) US dollars.
"A monthly payment in the amount of twenty thousand US dollars ($25,000.00) will be paid to Advantage (the lobbying firm) for a period of seven months beginning on September 1,2011 and ending on March 30, 2012. All monthly payments must be made on the first of each month. However, for the last two months and the first month, seventy five thousand US dollars ($75,000.00) will be paid upon the signing of this agreement," the agreement said.
"Bokhari agrees to reimburse Advantage for all reasonable expenses arising out of this Agreement, with any expenses over $250.00 preapproved in advance. Source of payment for funds under this agreement may come from Bokhari or General Musharraf," it added.
The lobbying firm, Advantage Associates International is owned by former congressman Bill Sarpalius from Texas, The News reported.
It is known that almost everyone in this firm is an ex-congressman, it added.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Musharraf-paying-25000-per-month-to-lobbyist-to-promote-interests-in-US/articleshow/10276881.cms
http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=71458&Cat=2
http://gulftoday.ae/portal/09f25692-8674-4608-8744-302fa64198ea.aspx
http://www.gopusa.com/news/2011/07/20/fbi-pakistani-spies-spent-millions-lobbying-the-white-house-and-congress/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/05/us-binladen-pakistan-lobbying-idUSTRE7445GK20110505
http://www.lockelord.com/msiegel/
Pakistan Hires Stephen_Payne_(lobbyist)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_lobby
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4322719.ece
Pearls of Wisdom: US Economist On Indian Education
The silliest India commentary comes from Indians in the West. Usually. Exceptions apart.
http://quicktake.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/pearls-of-wisdom-us-economist-on-indian-education/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=stptbarnum
Indian education system has been a matter of interest for the last 10 years at least. (Cartoon by Stuart Carlson, 2005).
The failure of the Indian education system must count as the Indian government’s greatest failure. Over 90 per cent of students drop out of school by the 12th grade; only 6 per cent go on to tertiary education, to cite just one dismal statistic. (via Swiping without reading – Indian Express).
Cut your nose, to spite your face.
A product of Indian education system, at least partially, Atanu Dey lacks the grace to admit his debt. Even if he lacks the grace, he must be honest to admit his ignorance and /or expertise. Atanu Dey, by implication, is implying that other State education systems are better.
For instance, that of the USA.
Which is simply not a fact. At least from 1983, during the time President Reagan, the state of the US education system has been a matter of great concern. And if he not implying that, he must state how things are equally bad in the rest of the world.
Why just pick on India.
This may not quite be the State of US Education - but only an anecdote.
Numbers talk
Another angle.
Remember the US is dealing with around 50 million children in the US school system.
And India?
Dealing with 500 million of chidren, is the task that the Indian education system has to handle.
US is the largest economy of the world. India is 10% of the US economy (in nominal terms). Little more actually.
So, we are talking of a 1000% bigger task with 10% of the GDP. Roughly. Exact numbers will be somewhat different.
Size matters – in case Atanu Dey forgets.
Interestingly, there are some 500 Indian teacher’s in Japan, teaching children, using methods that the Japanese want to learn.
From Indian teachers.
What Atanu Dey does not know or forgets
The issues with Indian education are really the use of English language in higher education. English language closes doors to higher education, for all native language users – which is roughly 90% of India.
The other related question is how long will the dominance of English language last? What after that. Now, these are questions that Atanu Dey should ask and answer.
Being an economist?
US education is 'blinkered' seems to be the popular opinion. (Cartoonist - David Horsey; 2008 cartoon). Click for larger image.
I am not forgetting
The real issue is the delivery model for education that the world must adopt.
The answer, my friend (figure of speech!) is what Shri (Sir) Philip Hartog, Vice Chancellor of Dhaka University (then Dacca) learnt from Gandhiji.
Something that research by Dharampal confirmed – and of late, a British researcher discovered again.
Indian private sector education model is the best.
“Transforming India” by Atanu
INDIA: Swiping without reading
New York Times Posted online: Sat Oct 08 2011, 01:42 hrs
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/857206/
In the information technology sector, the two well-known categories of goods are hardware — the stuff you can hold in your hands — and software — the bits that have no weight. The third category is termed vapourware: hardware that exists only in the fevered imagination of their promoters, and which will never hit the stores.
The government of India recently unveiled a tablet computer that they claim will revolutionise education. Perhaps vapour does not translate well into Hindi, and therefore they settled on the word for sky, or Aakash, for the tablet.
Vapourware does not condense into hardware because it fails the pitiless test of the marketplace: that the product’s benefits exceed its costs. That constraint does not apply to the government-sponsored Aakash, because they can choose to ignore inconvenient costs through the simple expedient of spending other people’s money. The Aakash can be priced at any arbitrarily low number but that does not change the cost. The difference will be paid for not by Kapil Sibal but by the average citizen of India. And for what? To eliminate digital illiteracy, an entirely artificial malady, conjured out of thin, blue air.
The failure of the Indian education system must count as the Indian government’s greatest failure. Over 90 per cent of students drop out of school by the 12th grade; only 6 per cent go on to tertiary education, to cite just one dismal statistic. We have to understand that the failure is primarily due to flawed policies that the government has consistently imposed on the education sector. Aakash, like its predecessor, the “$10 laptop”, is just another distraction — but a very costly distraction.
It is costly in many ways. First, the government should not be subsidising consumer electronics. Electronics is the most competitive industry in the world, and huge, extremely competent corporations are constantly innovating — with the result that costs move downwards monotonically. Governments are incapable of choosing winners in technology, and the Indian government has demonstrated particular ineptitude in that regard.
Second, the lack of real commitment to fix primary education is especially hard on the poorest sections of society. Promoting digital gizmos at immense public cost only widens the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Where 100 million suffer illiteracy, attempting to promote digital literacy cannot but be a cynical exercise in self-promotion and aggrandisement.
A press conference saying that India has invested in providing blackboards and teachers in 100,000 schools that lack them would not be as headline-grabbing as one which parades a me-too device hyped as an “iPad killer.” A policy of funding toilets in schools (needed to alleviate the suffering of girl children especially) does not have the sex appeal of a policy of handing out digital gizmos. But the production and distribution of hi-tech gadgets offer immense opportunities to profit for the producers and the government — never mind at what cost to the public.
Press releases that repeat the claim by the government that the Aakash tablet will be sold in tens of millions of units fail to do basic arithmetic. The subsidy costs could run into billions of dollars. Like so many other government schemes, the Aakash tablet, in the unlikely event that it is actually produced, will ultimately be funded by the poor through increased inflation. Unlike Sibal, the poor suffer when the government runs the printing presses at the mint overtime.
Our focus has to be on the urgent and important matter of education. The government has a critical role to play, which is to provide the regulatory environment for needed massive investment by the private sector. That role is as a facilitator and not as a competitor to the Apples and the HPs of the world.
Perhaps digital illiteracy should be a cause for concern, but I doubt it. Like tens of billions of others, I too was a digital illiterate but that did not interfere with my education in the least. However, basic illiteracy is a critical concern, the weakest link in the chain. Strengthening any other link will not make the chain stronger. A government that has failed to achieve universal literacy cannot be trusted to eliminate digital illiteracy.
When entrepreneurs and start-ups peddle vapourware to get funding, the losers are private investors that are taken in. The rough and tumble of the marketplace eliminates the incompetent or the simply greedy, and rewards true innovators. But when the government gets into the game of funding vapourware at massive public costs, it adds one more chain around the citizens, already imprisoned by the shackles of inflation and government control.
Atanu Dey is an economist at the University of California, Berkeley
New phase in India-Afghan ties: Pakistan feeling uncomfortable
by Harsh V. Pant
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2011/20111008/edit.htm#4
THE Af-Pak story takes another turn with the visit of the Afghan President, Mr Hamid Karzai, to Delhi earlier this week. In Afghanistan’s first strategic pact with any country, Kabul and New Delhi signed a landmark strategic partnership agreement during Mr Karzai’s visit. As part of the new pact, bilateral dialogue at the level of National Security Adviser has been institutionalised to focus on enhancing cooperation on security issues. New Delhi is hoping that Kabul will take the lead in defining the exact terms of this engagement.
Along with this strategic pact, two other agreements on India-Afghan cooperation in developing hydrocarbons and mineral resources were signed further underlining India’s role in the evolution of Afghanistan as a viable economic unit. The two nations agreed to enhance political cooperation and institutionalise regular bilateral political and foreign office consultations.
The strategic pact that commits India to “training, equipping and capacity building” of the Afghan National Security Services will certainly raise eye-brows, especially in Pakistan. Not surprisingly, Islamabad was quick to remind the Karzai government that it should behave responsibly. For a long time, India had been rather cautious in taking a leap into this realm so as not to offend so-called Pakistani sensitivities. The West further supported this posture by encouraging India to be a player in Afghan reconstruction efforts but actively discouraged India from taking on a more forceful security role.
But Pakistan’s machinations continued with or without Indian provocation. Its proxies kept on targeting Indian interests in Afghanistan. As NATO forces leave Afghanistan over the course of next few years, no one expects the Afghan security forces to be able to face the challenge of the Taliban and other extremists without any outside help, and Indian training would be very influential in this regard. And India cannot be expected to ignore its genuine interests in Afghanistan just to keep Pakistan in good humour. So, the plan to train Afghan forces that was first mooted six years back by Kabul has become a reality now.
Meanwhile, as Pakistan decides to up the ante in Afghanistan, the Afghan government is seeking international support in tackling Rawalpindi’s growing sense of adventure. The pact with India is Afghanistan’s way of trying to deal with an increasingly menacing Pakistan. During his visit to New Delhi, Mr Karzai was categorical in suggesting that South Asia faced “dangers from terrorism and extremism, used as an instrument of policy against innocent civilians.” He is seeking strategic pacts with the US and the NATO as well to ward off the challenge from Pakistan.
Mr Karzai’s position has changed significantly in recent months. After calling the Taliban “brothers” and encouraging the insurgents to reconcile with the Afghanistan government, he has become more hardnosed in his appraisal of the Taliban and its sponsors in Pakistan. The Afghan President has now suggested that peace talks with the Taliban are futile unless they involve the Pakistani authorities who are the real masters behind the shenanigans of the insurgent groups. Mr Karzai’s attitude has been particularly affected by the killing last month of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Afghan government’s chief peace negotiator, by the Taliban. Kabul has been categorical that this assassination was plotted in the Pakistani city of Quetta with the active support from the ISI. The reconciliation effort, as a result, is in tatters.
Ever since the death of Osama bin Laden in May, the US-Pakistan ties too have been in disarray. The security establishment in Pakistan wants to retain its central role in the negotiations with the Taliban and to prevent the US from having any long-term military presence in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Washington has been signalling that it would not tolerate the continuing use of terrorist groups, aided and betted by the ISI, to kill Americans and their allies in Afghanistan. In a radical departure from the long-standing US policy of publicly playing down Pakistan’s official support for insurgents operating from havens within Pakistan, Admiral Mike Mullen, the just-departed chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the Haqqani network as a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s ISI.
Much of the blame for the current turmoil in the Af-Pak area lies with the Obama Administration that made it clear that it wanted to exit Afghanistan as soon as it could without any concessions to the rapidly changing ground realities Pakistan’s sponsorship of the Haqqani network has been an open secret for quite some time as has been the fact that the Haqqanis have been responsible for some of the most murderous assaults on Indian and Western presence in Afghanistan. The US was reluctant to take on Pakistan on this issue till such time as their interests did not come under direct attack.
As the Western forces prepare for a pullout, New Delhi is right in strengthening its partnership with Kabul. Strengthening the security dimension of the India-Afghanistan ties is extremely important for India as it is in New Delhi’s interest to help Kabul preserve its strategic autonomy at a time when Pakistan has made it clear that it would like the Haqqani network and the Taliban to be at the centre of the post-American political dispensation in Kabul. It is true that given the logic of geography and demography, Pakistan cannot be ignored in the future viability of Afghanistan.
Mr Karzai was assuaging Pakistani anxieties when he suggested that “Pakistan is a twin brother” while “India is a great friend.” But India and Afghanistan can certainly change the conditions on the ground, forcing Pakistan to acknowledge that its policy towards its neighbours has not only brought instability in the region but has also pushed the very existence of Pakistan into question.
The writer teaches at King’s College, London
Indian Gold Reserves. Forgotten History! New Opportunity?
Quiet Progress
http://2ndlook.wordpress.com/2007/11/10/india-the-worlds-richest-economy/
For the last 20 years, World Gold Council has shown India’s annual gold consumption fluctuating from 400 tons to 800tons. Estimated Indian gold reserves at 25,000-30,000 are double of the next largest country – the USA with 14,000 tons. India has 20% of the world population and also 20% of the world’s above-the-ground gold.
Which is quite unlike China!
India and the World
For much of the last 2000 years of recorded history, India has been the largest buyer of gold. Roman historian,Pliny, lamented some 1800 years ago, how India, the sink of precious metals, was draining Rome of gold – an appellation that resonates even today.
In the Indian North West (modern Afghanistan), Greco-Bactrian coins were made (seemingly) from the “Roman gold coins, which poured into India.” To “manage” this drain of gold, Romans reduced the gold content in coins.Septimuis Severus, (193 AD-211) further debased the currency. Roman coins after Septimius Severus are rarely found in India leading to the belief that Indians just stopped accepting the debased coin – and Roman coins were melted to make payments in pure gold.
In mid 17th century, a Superior of the Capuchin Mission at Isfahan, friar Raphael du Mans wrote (in 1660), an authoritative paper, Estat de la Perse, which was used by the French Minister Jean Baptiste Colbert, to form the French East India company (1664) – and in modern times, as a source book for tobacco habits in medieval Iran. This Christian missionary in Iran, Raphael du Mans thought that India is “where all the money in the Universe is unloaded as if into an abyss.” Central Asian invaders, looking for slaves and gold, aimed at सोने कि चिडिया (loosely, the ‘golden goose’). Their partly successful raids, were deemed as invasions by colonial historians.
The Byzantine Empire, successor to the Assyrian-Achmaenid-Macedonian-Roman lineage, similarly found that their reserves of precious metals were ‘again, leaked away to India.’ A significant part of Indian royal treasuries, when these hoards “fell a prey to European invaders, it was found that the gold coins of the Byzantineemperors formed no small part of their treasures”
In 1748, Baron de Montesquieu, warned Europeans that …
Every nation, that ever traded to the Indies, has constantly carried bullion, and brought merchandises in return. … commerce of the Romans to the Indies was very considerable … this commerce was carried on entirely with bullion … They want, therefore, nothing but our bullion, to serve as the medium of value, and for this they give us merchandises in return … that bullion was always carried to the Indies, and never any brought from thence. (ellipsis mine).
The Ottomans put restrictions of export gold to Iran, from where gold exports to India were made. Safavid Iran, in turn, put restrictions on gold exports from Iran to India. No help at all.
Even modern writers resent the fact that despite the “absence of indigenous sources of gold and silver” the “very favourable export-import balance” resulted in “inherent strenghth of the Indian economy”.
Further, it has been correctly observed that in “our period the subcontinent drew vast amounts of gold and silver, exceeding previous periods and exceeding all other parts of the contemporary world so far.”
A French visitor to India Francois Bernier enviously wrote how
It should not escape notice that gold and silver, after circulating in every other quarter of the globe, come atlength to be absorbed in Hindostan. (from Travels in the Mogul Empire By François Bernier, Irving Brock)
Another current day writer describes how
“in exchange for textiles, spices and other Indian agricultural and industrial products, merchants from across Europe and Asia flooded India’s bazaar’s with dinars, tangas, ducats, guilders, reals, francs, rixdollars (reichthalers) and countless other varieties of coins, all of which were minted into rupees.(from The Indian diaspora in Central Asia and its trade, 1550-1900 By Scott Cameron Levi)
Moving away from Central Asia, the general European economy, was simple -
Europe had a net balance in the difference between the arrivals of precious metals (mostly from the New World after the sixteenth century) and export of the same (mostly to the Far East for the purchase of luxury commodities).(from Economic systems and state finance By Richard Bonney, European Science Foundation)
It was not surprising to find that Ian Fleming, pitted Western fiction’s best secret agent, James Bond against Auric Goldfinger – who was smuggling gold out of a declining, post-war Britain to India.
And Indian exports were not only textiles, spices and indigo. Students came from all over the world – and paid largesums of money to Indian teachers for education!
The Pre-WW2 Currency Crisis
During various collapses of temporary gold standards in history, Indian gold reserves (usually unwillingly)stabilised world economies. In recent history, Indian gold reserves went out to stabilise the American currency during the Great Depression and the German currency during the post-Wiemar drift. Indian silver reserves broke the Hunt Brothers’ back and their silver gambit in the 1980′s.
After (colonial) India’s accession to the world gold standard in 1898, India, especially during WWI, rapidly built up a export surplus. British reserves of gold started drying up – in spite of gold export restrictions to India by the USA, Britain and much of the Western world. There was hysteria in popular press and politicians on the subject of India and its appetite for gold.
Crash in silver prices
Between 1800-1900, new mines and increased silver production saw a crash in silver prices. Abundant silver discoveries and mining had flooded the world with silver, depressing prices. Germany’s move to the gold standard in 1873, released even more silver in the world markets. The Opium trade further released vast amounts of silver from China – which was opened to ‘free trade’, giving rise to some of the biggest Western fortunes (of the Roosevelts, for instance).
With increased silver supplies, US silver coinage was depreciating.
On the other side, Britain had a large debt due to WWI – principally to the US of A and India. Groaning under the weight of WWI debt, Britain took the easy way out to assuage the impatient creditor – US of A. Britain and America stuck a deal at the cost of the Indian subjects of the British Raj. They paid the US in gold – sourced from South Africa, Ghana, Australia and Canada – and instead bought silver from the US at inflated prices, to settle Indian debts.
Britain decided to settle Indian debts with silver. Large US silver reserves were released when the US passed the Pittman Act which mandated silver sales at more than a dollar per ounce – double the 50c per ounce prevailing price of silver. The resulting payment crisis was averted, and it was decided to pay India in silver released by the Pittman Act. Silver prices which were ruling at o.50p an ounce in the London market, was sold to the Indian colonial Government for more than US$1.0 under the Pittman Act.
Gold prices were deflated. Interest rates in India were increased. Restrictions on gold (and even silver) imports on were placed and gold demand in India was ‘normalized’. Subsequently, even payments in silver became difficult. India then started getting paid by Bank Of England credit notes.
So, finally, it was the Indian native, who was forced to finance the WWI!
But of course, the Indian native was ungrateful to the Congress of the US of A who, “by passing the Pittman Act, … gave India an opportunity to obtain silver” (from Our silver saved India from crisis - New York Times, Published, August 23, 1918; ellipsis mine).
Modern restrictions on gold exports to India
Between WWI end and the start of the WWII, it was clear that India would not stay a colony for long. Indian independence would happen sooner than later. Between 1920-40, in a series of measures, policy decisions were taken, which made Indian interests subsidiary and inferior to Western interests. Central bankers from the USA, Britain, France and Germany had many meetings to “coordinate monetary policy.” The agenda – gold flow management between themselves and an obvious understanding - don’t let Indians get the gold.
Indians were paid, with inflated and abundant silver stock, instead of gold. This silver was the same silver released by the Pittman Act – a “buffer to protect Western gold reserves against the Indian drain …” Of course, later the British Raj decided to settle Indian debts with promissory notes – and not even silver. It was this Indian ‘sacrifice’ which enabled the recovery of the West.
They (Hjalmar Schacht, Governor, Reichsbank, Charles Rist, Deputy Governor, Banque de France, Benjamin Strong, USA Federal Reserve, Montagu Norman, Bank Of England) agreed that Indian demand for gold had a “…deflationary effect on global liquidity,” therefore Indian demand for gold had to be regulated.”
in the spring of 1926, when Norman induced Strong to support him in fiercely opposing a plan of Sir Basil Blackett’s to establish a full gold-coin standard in India. Strong went to the length of traveling to England to testify against the measure, and was backed up by Andrew Mellon and aided by economists Professor Oliver M.W. Sprague of Harvard, Jacob Hollander of Johns Hopkins, and W. Randolph Burgess and Robert Warren of the New York Reserve Bank. The American experts warned that the ensuing gold drain to India would cause deflation in other countries (i.e., reveal their existing over-inflation) (from America’s Great Depression By Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 5, The Development of the Inflation; Ludwig von Mises Institute)
The New York Times wrote how “it was most important for the Allies to agree on a policy that would prevent the Huns from capturing the very valuable raw materials which can be obtained in India, and sometimes in India alone.” Further, The New York Times went on and stated “how without Indian products there would be greater difficulty in winning the war.”
So, as the West traded, profited and consumed Indian production and goods, when it came to paying for the goods, they caviled – and ‘regulated’ Indian demand for gold – and even silver!!
How millions of Indians died
Like much of Western history, the British Colonial administration (Lord Willingdon, Montagu Norman, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer) executed a scorched earth policy in India. (After all what is brown life worth?)
They implemented a series of economic and administrative measures, (significantly, under Churchill’s baleful influence) that killed millions in the Bengal Famine, would impoverish India – and sustain the empire. The result –Bengal Famine of 1943 which killed 40 lakh Indians. The Bengal Famine of 1943, of course had may other layers to it – but nett, nett, as Gideon Polya has pointed out, Australian sheep have lower mortality rates.
The Bengal-Burma link of the ages was broken. After being demonized, the Chettiar money lenders were thrown out of Burma, the role of Chettiars (for e.g. in Singapore) was wiped clean. From being a granary of Asia, Burma started declining – and there was no rice for exports. Result – The Bengal Famine of 1943. Tally – 40-50 lakh deaths.
Cabinet ministers, August 1931. Back row (left to right): C Lister, J Thomas, Rufus Isaacs, (Lord Reading), Neville Chamberlain and S Hoare (Viscount Templewood). Front row (left to right): Philip Snowdon, Stanley Baldwin, prime minister Ramsay MacDonald, H Samuel and Lord Stanley. Photograph: Getty
After the fall of Singapore, and the rapid Japanese advance, with Subhash Chandra Bose in the vicinity, a revolt by Bengal would have had catastrophic effect on the colonial administration. Howard Fast, in his novel ‘The Pledge’ believes that the Bengal Famine was a deliberate creation – possibly to weaken the local population and deter support for Subhash Chandra Bose.
Crisis in Britain
Britain in the meantime, returned to the gold standard under Montagu Norman and Winston Churchill (then the Chancellor of the Exchequer) – with the famous prediction by Keynes that this action would result in a world-wide recession – of which, much came to pass.Churchill confessed “I’m lost and reduced to groping” but went along with Montagu Norman, united by their racism.
On October 27th, 1931, the Ramsey Macdonald led “National” Government (Conservatives and Liberals coalition, fearful of the rising Labour Party) in Britain won a huge majority of 554 MPs of 615. The economic crisis of September (misnamed as the Indian Currency Crisis), ensuing Depression era problems in the US, the Weimar Republic problems – and other issues pushed this ‘National’ government to ram through a series of measures (page 130-131) that depressed silver and gold prices and raised interest rates in India.
Done over the protests by Gandhiji, trade bodies and merchants and threats of resignation by the Viceroy and his Executive Council, the resulting ‘money famine’ (page 155) had the Lord Willingdon ecstatically say ‘Indians are disgorging gold.’ Indians have a different reason to revile Neville Chamberlain, who with great satisfaction said “…The astonishing gold mine that we have discovered in India’s hordes has put us in clover …” after impoverishment of the Indian serf.
More currency and less gold
The Nixon Chop
On August 15th, 1971, President Nixon after a two-day huddle with 15 advisers at Camp David, delivered the Nixon Chop to the world.
The Nixon chop (my name for this event),one month after his China breakthrough, cut the convertibility peg of US$35 to gold as US gold reserves were severely depleted. The French had been regularlyredeeming gold for their dollar earnings – and for this ‘perfidy’ the US had not forgiven France. This was much like the pre-WWII French methodology of devaluation, new peg, old debt for new gold routine which got the US hacklesup. Many decades have passed since these redemptions by France, and the new French President, Sarkozy believes it is now possible to renew US-French relations again.
On the opposite side of the world, a beleaguered Indian Prime Minister was celebrating 24 years of Independence with a “ship-to-mouth” economy, dependent on PL-480 grain. Private gold reserves in the Indian economy after nearly 25 years of post-colonial rule, were steadily rising. Over the next 10 years, the Western world (and most of the rest) blamed OPEC for post-1971 inflation, gold scaled US$800 an ounce; the Hunt Brothers launched their bid to corner the silver market; stagflation made an entry and Soviet power grew. Nixon Chop, itself the result of many years of gold reserves erosion, was one in many steps that brought the US$ to its knees – only to be saved by the Oil-dollar tango.
The Greatest Crime Wave … Ever?
From the 1960-1990, the Big Issue for people across large parts of the world was Big Crime. The 1960-1990 peak in organized crime, globally, is interesting due to the synchronized time frames – across USA, Europe and India.
In India, the rise of the underworld was delayed by a decade – as was its decline. India’s underworld, centred in Mumbai, at its peak, intruded into trade unions, films and entertainment, gambling, real estate, extortion and smuggling. The specter of Dawood Ibrahim haunts India-Pakistan Governmental relations – even today.
Roosevelt had earlier in 1933, during his New Deal years, nationalized all American gold. This restriction was finally eased only on December 31st, 1974, with Executive Order 11825 by Gerald Ford. It was Roosevelt’s gold nationalization which allowed the US to wage WWII and create the Bretton Woods system.
From 1939, (the start of WWII), gold imports into India, the world’s largest market and also the largest private reserve of gold, were controlled or banned. Not only the largest, but Indian reserves of gold, are also the only significant reserve in the world without a history of war, genocide, slavery or loot, (unlike US, UK, Canada, Australia) or due to nature’s bounty (unlike South Africa, China, Peru, Ghana, etc.).
The first effect of restrictions on gold imports in India was on prices. Indian gold prices, on an average, were 30%-40% higher than international prices. The other thing that happened was that gold imports went underground. Gold imports (illegal), called smuggling, spawned the biggest criminals that India has seen.
The common threads in this were, of course, America, drugs, underworld, war, corruption, warlords – but what made all this possible was Indian appetite for gold.
All this was made possible by the Indian hawala system of money exchange. Hawala made money transfers safe, instantaneous, at a low-cost. Traditional Indian ships from a thousand ports in Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat sailed with this contraband and brought back gold.
Golden Triange & Golden Crescent
The countries comprising these Golden Triangle /Crescent are India’s neighbours. The Indian underworld transported drugs through India. These drug shipments originated, were acquired, grown and traded from the Golden Crescent and the Golden Triangle.
The US eliminated gold ownership restrictions in 1975. India followed. In 1992, India started its first hesitant steps towards legalizing gold imports. By 1995, these import control laws had been diluted to near non-existence. With the dilution of restrictions on gold imports came the abatement in the biggest crime wave in modern history.
Today, the abatement in organized crime is ascribed to vigourous efforts by the police and legal systems. The earlier lack of success is conveniently forgotten. Many ‘encounter’ specialists claimed credit for the reduction in the power of the India’s underworld. Much like the fading away of the mafia in the US and Italy, in India too, after the gold trade was legalized, the mafia’s source of power, liquidity, earnings, profit were taken away. With it came the underworld’s loss of power and influence. And that coincided with the reduction and control of organized crime from the US and Europe and India. And an end to the greatest crime wave in the modern history.
So, why this desperate poverty
With global monetary system in a flux and the decline of the dollar (especially after the Plaza Accord), the perceived utility of gold and the price outlook of gold has been positive. After the Nixon chop, at an estimated 15,000-18,000 tons, India was in a position to create instruments, obtain leverage and create wealth from the world’s largest gold reserves.
It is the failure of the Indian economic minds – that they have not found any instruments and means. Some 35 years after the Nixon Chop, and with Indian gold reserves approaching 30,000 tons mark. Some other countries triedfeebly, and failed. Japan and ASEAN tried setting up the Asian Monetary Fund – after 1997, currency crisis – and were arm twisted by the US to drop the idea.
Is the US likely to give up the central role?
Unlikely! Let me correct myself! Pretty damn unlikely!!
Will the Western world share its pre-eminence with Japan, China and India. Bet your bottom yuan, yen, rupee or gold – they wont. Especially since the Anglo Saxon Bloc control nearly 80% of world gold production.
What are they likely to do! Some of the older measures by which gold was transferred from the old (and the new) world to Western world are no longer possible.
But if any central bank (or monetary authority) were to: -
Mask purchases
Build up gold positions
Take physical possession of gold (Avoid Czech Gold, Montagu Norman & BIS Scam)
Look at a positive outcome to a war scenario
then that country will be able to bolster their gold reserves position by: -
About 10,000-15,000 tons
Limit the cost of purchase
Make it economically unviable for anyone else to match them
The only country that can (currently) match these criteria is the USA – and China.
The US GATA Committee has been running a low profile campaign on gold price manipulation. This attempt, if successful, at increasing gold prices will possibly make it difficult for Indians to buy gold in larger quantities. The Indian Central Bank, preoccupied with a developmental agenda, is in no position to take up this challenge.
From an Indian standpoint
While the silver lining is private reserves, we have a blinkered RBI & GOI response. India has one of the lowest monetary reserves of gold in the world. Against a global average of 10.5% RBI holds only 3.4% of its reserves as gold. The EU holds 40% of its reserves in gold and USA – 70%.
And while the RBI and GOI gently sleep, the Chinese have grown their gold purchases. China has become world’s 3rd largest consumer of gold – up from a 100 tons to 350 tons. Shanghai Gold Exchange has made it easier for individuals to invest in gold by reducing the transaction size from 1 kg to 100 gm.
Importantly: -
Is India in a position to militarily defend these reserves
Does the GOI and the RBI have any strategic intent vis-a-vis gold
Making the job easier for the GOI and the RBI are Indian economic habits of the centuries that have allowed this build up of gold reserves. India stands at a historical cross-road. Are Indian economic and political minds at work toexploit this window of opportunity. Or will it be a wasted chance.
Gold and War
Alexander’s campaign started with the gold reserves that his father had built from the mining operations at Mount Pangeus. The Macedonians were the first in the Hellenistic world to keep standing army – a luxury and a big expense, in Greece, at that time. The Roman empire was similarly funded by gold mining and loot. Julius Caesar’sEuropean conquests were funded by Gaellic loot. The Punic Wars with Carthage were fought over Spanish Gold. Roman conquest and love affair with Egypt was motivated by grain and Nubian gold.
Carolus Magnus, Karel de Grote, Karl der Grosse, Carlomagno, Charles the Great – or more commonly known as Charlemagne (ruled between 768-814) waged war for 30 years, spread over more than 50 battles. Charlemagne’sconquests were funded by gold and silver from the Saxony mines, the Haartz mountains, etc. During Charlemagne’s rule, gold and silver mines (S-Chemnitz, Kremnitz etc.), were also re-opened for mining. His victory over Avars, (modern Hungary) gave him treasures which needed 15 carts, pulled by grey steppe oxen for transport.
The British loot from Canada, Australia, South Africa – and India, gave the world, numerous wars andbrought humanity “under the heel by means that will not bear scrutiny.” It is these very same Gold reserves whichgave birth to the Bretton Woods – and we know what happened after that! Roosevelt gave a New Deal to the Americans. He took away all their gold. WWII followed soon after.
This short look at Western history makes the linkage plain. The main cause is the pattern of gold ownership by Governments and war becomes a fait accompli.
Gold Reserves - Global (2ndlook estimates)
What Should We Do With Gold
Just sell it to people. From all the countries of the world.
The world financial organization should limit control of global gold output by any mining organization to 10% or a single mine – which ever is lower. Gold holding should be widely dispersed, as widely as possible, among individuals – like the Indian gold possession model. No national government, in the new financial architecture should be allowed to have more than 250 tons of gold – to progressively reduce to 50 tons.
What this will do, is disperse gold holdings among the citizens of the world – and dilute the ability of nations to wage war! National Governments (like the US), have used gold looted from their own citizens (and others) to deprive other peoples of the world of gold – and wage war.
What we should not do?
Good Ole’ Gold Standard
In the last few decades between the Nixon Chop and the Bush Whack, the Western academic world, has floatedanother ‘hot air’ balloon. It is the revival of the ‘pure,’ Gold Standard. The story goes that in the ‘olden’ days of 19th century, in the golden age of Western civilization, there once reigned the Gold Standard.
The simplistic logic of this theory is that the world should ‘go back’ to the Gold Standard - or as some put it, improve the ‘corrupted Gold Standard’ of the 19th century, and then everything will be fine. All currencies of the World, should be indexed to gold, currency can be redeemed against gold – and gold reserves equal to currency should be kept as reserves. This will kill inflation, stop war, make politicians honest, make tax payers honest, citizens hard-working and business efficient.
In short a magic bullet.
The last time, we saw this, it was called the Bretton Woods. The US and the Anglo-Saxon Bloc came together and said we will administer the new world currency system. The world agreed – once again. And we know what happened.
Two years ago …
This post had estimated that the Chinese could possibly (and they have) increase their monetary gold reserves. On April 24th, 2009, Bloomberg reported that China had increased
its (gold) reserves by 454 tons to 1,054 tons through domestic purchases and refining scrap metal, Hu Xiaolian, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said in an interview with the Xinhua News Agency today. China, the world’s biggest gold producer, has increased its holdings before, Hu said in the interview carried on the administration Web Site. They rose from 394 tons to 500 tons in 2001 and to 600 tons in 2003. The U.S. has the world’s biggest gold holdings at 8,134 tons, followed by Germany with 3,413 tons, World Gold Council data show. France has 2,487 tons and Italy 2,452 tons, while the IMF has 3,217 tons, according to the council.
Another report, from Market Watch, a WSJ web publication added,
The increase makes China the world’s fifth-largest holder of gold, just ahead of Switzerland, and among the six nations plus the International Monetary Fund that have reserves of more than 1,000 metric tons. Although Hu did not elaborate on where China had sourced the additional bullion, her comments were interpreted as meaning they came from domestic sources and may included refining of scrap metal. Traders also say the gold was accumulated systematically over a number of years. Last year China ranked as the world’s largest gold producer with 12.2% of world output, equivalent to 288 metric tons. The U.S. ranked second with a 9.9% share, or 234 metric tons.
What are the future plans of the Chinese? A report quotes an analyst
China should increase its gold reserve from 600 tons to about 2,500 tons in a short term and to 3,000 tons in a long term to cope with the versatile exchange rate risks, said Teng Tai, an economist of China Galaxy Securities Company.
Of course, this really does not mean much – except that it may keep gold prices on boil. Whether a currency is backed by a 5% or a 10% gold reserve may not mean much, in this era of rampant use of (not just by the US of A) “atechnology, called a printing press” as an economic tool. For long term economic stability, gold needs to be in the hands of individuals – and not Governments
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We’re all in this together
The unified Korean women’s basketball team’s Ro Suk-yong, left, and Park Ji-su, right, attempt to block Peng Szuchin of Taiwan during the semifinal game at the 2018 Asian Games at Istora Gelora Bung Karno in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Thursday. The unified team won 89-66 to advance to the final. South Korea’s WNBA center Park led the unified team with a double-double, with 10 points and 11 rebounds, while three players - Park Hye-jin, Lim Yung-hui and Ro - scored 17 points each. The unified team will now compete against China for the gold medal on Saturday. Whether the team wins or loses, taking home a medal of any color will be a historical achievement for the unified team, as it will be the first medal won by the unified team in a ball sport at an international multisport competition. At the 2018 Asian Games, the unified team has already won a gold and two bronze medals in dragon boat racing and canoeing. [YONHAP]
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Gyeongnam FC demands apology from LKP
Korean pro football club Gyeongnam on Monday demanded an apology from the county’s main opposition party over improper campaigning inside their home stadium, saying it will need to be held morally and legally responsible if the club receives a punishment.
Gyeongnam released the statement after officials from the conservative Liberty Korea Party (LKP), including chairman Hwang Kyo-ahn and by-election candidate Kang Ki-yoon, campaigned inside Changwon Football Center in Changwon, South Gyeongsang, for the April 3 by-elections ahead of the K League 1 match against Daegu FC on Saturday.
“We will try to receive an apology from the LKP for forcing us to face a dishonorable situation,” Gyeongnam said. “If we receive a punishment, the LKP election camp that violated the league rules must bear responsibility legally and morally for our fans and people of South Gyeongsang.”
Under Korea Football Association (KFA) and K League laws, election candidates and party officials can enter the stadium after purchasing a ticket at their own cost. But they cannot wear any clothing displaying a candidate’s number and name, as well as a party’s name and emblem. The rules also prohibit them from distributing any kind of pamphlets or cards containing political messages and showing their slogans and banners.
The violation of such rules can result in a team slapped with a 10-point deduction, playing a home match behind closed doors and a fine of more than 20 million won ($17,580).
Gyeongnam, last year’s K League 1 runners-up, said their staff members were fully aware of the rules on campaigning after receiving notification from the K League, the operator of Korea’s football leagues.
“Our security staff told Hwang and Kang’s camp members that they could not enter the stadium with outfits printed with the party’s name, the candidate’s number and name,” the club said. “But some officials shoved their way into the stadium, ignoring ticket inspectors and didn’t take off their jackets.”
After the LKP camp members and security guards engaged in a quarrel, the Gyeongnam staff told the party officials that they were in violation of the rules, but they ignored them and campaigned inside the stadium.
The K League said it will hold a meeting later Monday to decide whether the case should be reviewed by its discipline committee.
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Many Housewives Deeply Involved in Gambling.
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Summit Talks Between Korea and Egypt Bear Some Fruit
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Decision Frees Former President"s Son on a Technicality
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Seoul Residents Come Out on Top in Information Survey
Not surprisingly, a recent survey revealed that Seoul residents have the highest technological and informational level of all regions in Korea. According to the survey, Seoul residents' level of computer use for a variety of different tasks ranging from on-line banking to Internet use is higher than that of government officials including the Seoul local government. However, technology and computer use inside the governments is being kept at a…
Queen Will Ride in a "Chairman"
Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth the Second will be driven around in Daewoo Motor's top-of-the-line model, the 'Chairman', during her visit to Korea. Daewoo announced on April 8, 'Our Chairman was selected as the official car for the Queen and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, and we will be offering two sedans and two limousines of the Chairman model. Traditionally the royal family's official car was either a Rolls Royce or Mercedez Benz, so…
Ginseng Farming to Be Created Beside DMZ
A large agricultural complex for growing Korean ginseng is going to be created on a lot of land, which has been farrow for over 45 years, inside the Farming Restriction Line (FRL) that lies beside the Demilitarized Zone(DMZ). . The Agricutural Technology Institute of Kyunggi Province (ATIKP) announced on April 8 that it decided to push ahead to resolve the difficulties of operating within the FRL so as to ensure the establishment of an agricult…
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You are here: Home / Articles / Politics
Candidate of Big Tech
April 11, 2019 /in California, Politics /by Joel Kotkin
In the free-form, roller derby race for the Democratic presidential nomination, few candidates are better positioned than California’s Senator Kamala Harris. She is a fresh and attractive mid-fifties face, compared with septuagenarian frontrunners Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, or the aging progressive Elizabeth Warren. Part Asian-Indian, part Afro-Caribbean, and female, Harris seems the frontrunner in the intersectionality sweepstakes that currently largely defines Democratic politics. Yet the national obsession with ethnicity and novelty obscures the more important reality: Harris is also the favored candidate of the tech and media oligarchy now almost uniformly aligned with the Democratic Party. Read more
http://joelkotkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Kamala_Harris_April_21_Los_Angeles_Town_Hall.jpg 400 495 Joel Kotkin /wp-content/uploads/2017/01/jkotkin_logo.png Joel Kotkin2019-04-11 12:32:562019-04-11 12:32:56Candidate of Big Tech
The Opium of California
April 9, 2019 /in California, Politics, The Economy /by Joel Kotkin
The current frenzy of new IPOs — Uber, Lyft, Slack, Postmates, Pinterest and Airbnb — seems destined to reinforce progressive notions that California represents the future not just for the state, but the nation. It will certainly reinforce California’s fiscal dependency on tech-dominated elites — half of the state’s income taxes come from people making over $500,000 a year — and provide a huge potential multi-billion dollar windfall for the state treasury.
To be sure, the insiders — founders, with nearly half the voting shares in companies such as Lyft, a small “tech mafia” of venture firms, foreign investors such as Japan’s Softbank and Wall Street investors — will have reason to celebrate. But the lavish paydays will do little to relieve, and may even serve to worsen, the state’s gaping inequality and nation-leading poverty rates.
Most damaging of all, the IPO high will encourage supporters of the state’s policy agenda. If new companies crop up, and the handful of politically savvy investors thrive, California’s illuminati can fend off criticism of policies that undermine the middle and working class in everything from energy to housing.
The changing nature of California’s tech economy
“Science,” observed Daniel Coit Gilman, the second president of the University of California, ”is the mother of California.” With few navigable rivers, a persistent shortage of water, far from the then-dominant Eastern seaboard, California’s growth depended on engineering prowess. Not tied to the traditional industries, the state seized on emerging fields such as aviation, space and eventually semiconductors, laying the basis for an expanding middle class
In contrast, little of today’s tech growth produces tangible products, and those that remain, such as Space X, the semiconductor industry and Apple, are placing their production either abroad or in less expensive and less highly regulated states. This allows them to escape California’s high electrical rates, poor roads, collapsing bridges and lagging public education system. The digital future may remain in California but the action in chip-manufacturing, biomedical products or space exploration seems headed elsewhere.
The firms in the new “information peddling economy,” notes the University of Washington at Tacoma’s Ali Modarres, have a very different relationship with their employees than “first wave” companies such as Hewlett Packard and Intel. In the first wave a broad range of employees enjoyed rewards from corporate success and stock gains; drivers for Uber, as one analyst suggests, will get nothing but the privilege of seeing vast flows of cash used to replace them with automated vehicles.
The neo-feudal city
The new wave of IPOs will expand the ranks of what The New York Times aptly describes as “the elite caste who can afford to live comfortably in the Bay Area.” Tech senior managers will enjoy huge capital gains, greatly reducing their federal tax liability. In contrast, less well-placed working schmucks will pay upward of half their income in taxes while those who clean their offices will face potential new fees on everything from tires and soda to water.
Even in the Bay Area, home to four of California’s wealthiest ZIP codes, middle-wage jobs are disappearing and most new growth is tilted toward low-wage service work. Nearly half of all millennials are planning to leave and analysts suggest the area may face a severe shortage of skilled workers. Overall, notes a new Joint Venture Silicon Valley report, homelessness and inequality has expanded in the region, while the quality of life is perceived by most to be deteriorating.
One can appreciate the economic benefits that Uber, Lyft, Salesforce and others have brought to San Francisco, but there’s also a neo-Dickensian reality: sky-high housing prices, widespread homelessness, displaced minorities, few children and a rapidly shrinking middle class. There are now more drug addicts in the city of San Francisco than high school students and so much feces on the street that one website has created a “poop map.” More than half of the Bay Area’s lower-income communities, notes a recent UC Berkeley study, are in danger of mass displacement.
As for the rest of California
In previous tech-led economic booms — as recently as the last decade — growth extended to the rest of the state, particularly the more affordable interior. Tech firms expanded eastward, to Sacramento, south toward Salinas and throughout Southern California. The new tech economy, in contrast, has no real need for a periphery. It expands almost anywhere, whether to media-centric New York, less expensive places including suburban Austin, Nashville or Dallas or to China, India or the Philippines.
This has left much of Southern and interior California an economic dependency, hosting largely on low-wage jobs and increasingly dependent on an expansive welfare state. Worse yet, the tech boom serves as a narcotic, anesthetizing our political leaders from confronting the economic realities outside the venture capital-funded Bay Area bubble.
What is needed now is a focus on the middle- and working-class Californians, the vast majority of whom live far from the Bay Area.
California’s policy makers need to start by rolling back many of the regulations on energy and housing that are reducing opportunity by driving up costs and driving middle-class jobs out of the state. We also need to focus more on developing employment centers outside the ultra-expensive coastal areas, something that would allow people to live closer to where they work. This suggests a policy that focus on such things as good roads, decent schools and a variety of upwardly mobile jobs — things that may not matter much to oligarchs or the youthful staffs, but make all the difference to middle- and working-class families.
To be truly a sustainable society, California needs opportunities for carpenters, machinists, middle managers, not just for the current structure that relies on superstar coders and produces large numbers of low-paid service workers. We need a California boom that lifts most of our citizens and does not drive them toward a permanent semi-feudal state, servants and supplicants of a small, fantastically wealthy and preening technological elite.
This piece originally appeared in The Orange County Register.
Joel Kotkin is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. He authored The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, published in 2016 by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He is executive director of NewGeography.com and lives in Orange County, CA.
Photo Credit: Daniel L. Lu (user:dllu) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
http://joelkotkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/1200px-Aerial_view_of_Apple_Park_dllu.jpg 237 355 Joel Kotkin /wp-content/uploads/2017/01/jkotkin_logo.png Joel Kotkin2019-04-09 10:34:472019-04-09 10:34:47The Opium of California
A New Good Neighbor Policy
April 8, 2019 /in Politics, The Economy /by Joel Kotkin
Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump’s proposal to build a “beautiful wall,” it is unlikely to resolve the crisis sending ever more people—largely from Central America—to America’s borders. The problems that drive large numbers to leave their homes and trust their families to criminal gangs will not be solved by bigger fences but better thinking. Fundamentally, the United States should regard Mexico and Central America not as adversaries but as economic partners in a world increasingly defined by competition between the U.S. and an ever-more aggressive China determined to establish global hegemony—even in our hemisphere. In this context, a strong policy of investment and aid to our southern neighbors makes both economic and political sense.
The American relationship with Mexico and Central America is implicitly complementary. The U.S. and Mexico not only exchange products and services; they also produce them jointly. American manufacturing or value-added inputs represent 40 percent of every dollar Mexico exports to the United States. Chinese exports to the U.S. represent only one-tenth as much.
Mexico complements the U.S. in ways that promote regional competitiveness. Capital abundance and high-skilled labor in the U.S. are complemented by low-skilled labor abundance and capital scarcity in Mexico, factors that are, if anything, even more evident in Central America. The region’s weak human-capital accumulation has hobbled its integration with advanced trading partners like the United States. In Central America, more than half of youths between 15 and 24 are out of the educational system, and most work at poorly paid jobs. Only 38 percent of Central American youths aged 27 to 29 hold a high school degree, compared with 61 percent in the rest of Latin America.
The 1994 passage of NAFTA led to a period of unprecedented growth and optimism. Mexico enjoyed macroeconomic stability, during which inflation, exchange-rate volatility, and short-term interest rates converged with those of the U.S. Economic cycles in industrial production also converged in both countries. This emergence was derailed, first by China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization and then by the Great Recession.
The recession is now a bad memory, but China’s influence has only grown. By 2003, China had surpassed Mexico as the second-leading importer to the United States, behind Canada. By granting WTO membership and most-favored nation status to China, the U.S. opened the door for an expansion of Chinese-manufactured exports, to the detriment of traditional sources such as Mexico, which lost around 650,000 manufacturing jobs from 1995 to 2016. A big overlap exists in the kinds of products—clothing, automotive, and consumer electronics—in which both Mexico and China excelled; the two countries’ export mixes to the U.S. became similar just when China increased its manufacturing export capacity. Mexico specialized in industries and activities in which, in some cases, China would eventually develop a comparative advantage. In 2006, Mexico’s maquiladoras—mostly lower-tech factories requiring semi-skilled labor to do assembly and finishing work—generated more than $25 billion in foreign exchange and accounted for 44 percent of total Mexican manufacturing exports; 94 percent of maquiladora exports went to the U.S. As China’s access to U.S. markets grew, the maquiladora industry lost jobs, largely to China’s benefit.
The increase in Chinese exports to the U.S. hurt Mexican labor markets, which faced a negative demand shock after 2001. These shocks may have been disproportionately large in the case of manufacturing establishments that use unskilled labor, especially for maquiladoras in the border region. These factories’ production structures resembled those of Chinese firms, and they were thus more vulnerable to China’s enhanced presence in the U.S. import market.
The displacement of Mexican manufacturing products in the U.S. market led to a decrease in Mexican wages, and the negative effects spilled over to wages paid in non-manufacturing industries. The decline of manufacturing in Mexico has had a devastating impact on the country. As China’s dominance as a U.S. trading partner has grown, Mexico has seen a rapid rise of crime and corruption. The once-bright hope seen for the country, largely as a result of close cooperation with the United States, has faded, and led, most recently, to the election of its most aggressively left-wing president in 50 years—Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The results south of Mexico were even worse. In the pre-China era, Mexican manufacturers would move some their more labor-intensive operations to Central America, where costs were lower. But as the Mexican economy has failed to expand, such movement has decreased. Instead of new production, many of these countries simply import manufactured goods from China, rather than building industries for “liftoff” while they export commodities to Beijing. Chinese merchandise imports by Central American countries (Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) rose from $4.7 billion in 2011 to $8.5 billion in 2017, according to United Nations statistics.
What we now see at the border—the desperate movement of families—reflects this sad reality. As in Mexico, the nations of Central America are afflicted by high unemployment, slowing growth, and rising criminality. If prosperity never fully arrived in Mexico, it was only scarcely glimpsed farther south.
This situation, and mass migration, can be addressed only through a strategic repositioning by the region’s dominant economic power. This would include more incentives for American businesses that have already decided to move operations out of the country and shift them to Mexico—where they would at least benefit both countries—instead of to China. For President Trump, whose comments about Latin America are often both ill-conceived and poorly received, this initiative would deprive China of markets and allow our closest neighbors to share in a new North American prosperity. It’s an idea that has gained some support within the administration, and from both Republicans, such as Marco Rubio, and Democrats, like prospective presidential candidates Julian Castro and Joe Biden.
A bold program that steers American investment, and that of allies, to Mexico and Central America could be critical to bolstering our trade position and creating newly receptive customers. And it could reshape the immigration debate by slowing migration—a win both for America and those countries desperately in need of creating opportunity for their citizens.
It also would serve to address the historic gap between our neighbors and ourselves. There’s an old saying in Mexico, ascribed to the nineteenth-century dictator Porfirio Díaz : Pobre Me’xico, tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos, which means, “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the U.S.” A reimagined American-Mexican alliance would make both sides happy to be neighbors again.
This piece originally appeared on City Journal.
Photo Credit: Martin D, via Flickr, using CC License.
http://joelkotkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/mexico-flag.jpg 360 445 Joel Kotkin /wp-content/uploads/2017/01/jkotkin_logo.png Joel Kotkin2019-04-08 10:09:352019-04-08 10:09:35A New Good Neighbor Policy
Understanding the Appeal of Democratic Socialism Key to Defeating It
March 25, 2019 /in Politics /by Joel Kotkin
In their race to save an unpopular president and their lack of a positive agenda, many Republicans and conservatives increasingly identify the rise of “democratic socialism” as their ultimate, if you will, Trump card. Given the fact that most Americans, particularly older ones, still favor capitalism and are less than enthusiastic about expanding federal power, this approach might work.
But conservatives, in or out of the White House, underestimate the intrinsic appeal of the resurgence of neo-Marxism at their own peril. Already more Democrats have a favorable view of socialism than capitalism. Some millennials — soon to be the nation’s largest voting bloc — even see neo-Marxism as “hip” and even “sexy.”
These same urban hipsters, as opposed to working class ethnics, elected the left’s political stars like Alexandria Ocosio Cortez. Bizarrely, socialism even appeals among the educated young workers so coveted by tech firms. This rise of woke progressivism represents a threat both to the right as well as the super-affluent gentry left.
Ignore socialism’s appeal, at your own peril
I grew up in an atmosphere where socialist ideas were taken seriously. My paternal grandmother was a member of the Young People’s Socialist League, and a strong supporter of Norman Thomas (my paternal grandfather was a successful dress manufacturer and Republican). My maternal grandfather, a union window washer, spoke openly of the class struggle as if he was still in Russia.
Socialism’s appeal stemmed, as it does today, from the failures of capitalism. Until the 1950s, working class people in most industrial countries suffered harsh conditions, crowded into bleak city apartments or isolated in hardscrabble smaller communities. For them, what many conservatives deemed as “socialism” — social security, the GI bill, the New Deal infrastructure program — was seen as helping expand the middle class.
The experiences of the working class were very real. My mother was raised in the slums of Brownsville, Brooklyn, and my maternal mother, a seamstress, lived her last years in union housing in that fair borough. Even though most of us were from middle class families, we naturally embraced expanded social democracy, if not of the Norman Thomas variety, certainly that espoused by President Harry Truman, California’s Pat Brown and even President Lyndon Johnson.
A historical perspective
Conservatives often link today’s socialism with the massive failure of the Soviet Union and the Maoist regime in China. And to be sure, some of today’s firebrands have long demonstrated sympathy to dictatorships in Venezuela and Cuba, and for Rep. Ilhan Omar, even a soft spot for anti-Semitic radical Islamists like Hamas. But even the most addled firebrands know they can’t sell third world despotism, much less sharia law, to the average American.
Generally our new socialists pitch European welfare states as their model, with much higher taxes and greater regulation of private businesses. The shapers of modern democratic socialism, such as Michael Harrington, whose The Other America, exposed the vast extent of poverty in early 1960s America, favored a similar system but favored decentralization over of the oppressive Soviet regime. Remember this was a time when most northern European economies were stronger than ours. In recent decades, some of these countries, notably Sweden and Germany, have adopted a more free-market approach as a means of reviving their economies.
What’s the matter with the new socialists?
With rampant inequality and shrinking middle class, the case for socialism should be stronger than any time since the Depression; many, if not most Americans, certainly would not object to taxing the uber-wealthy much more. But socialism’s leading messengers, reared in the ideological hot-houses of elite universities, also constitute the wealthiest and whitest of America’s political tribes.
Not surprisingly the neo-socialists carry attitudes ill-suited for capitalizing, as did Donald Trump, on the mass middle and working class disaffection. All too often they adopt the intersectional, and sometimes openly anti-American, agenda incubated throughout our culture and educational system. Their obsessions with racial redress, including reparations and open borders, seemed ill-suited to winning over most working class voters, something that more seasoned socialists, like Bernie Sanders, recognize.
Worst of all, the much hyped Green New Deal would spell disaster for millions of blue collar workers, as the AFL-CIO recently pointed out, particularly those who work in the construction, energy, transportation, farming and manufacturing industries. The original New Deal, recently excoriated by Ocasio Cortez, was about improving the lives of ordinary Americans, not forcing them to downgrade their ambitions, give up meat, live in small apartments and perhaps not even have children.
Having never studied the history of the Soviet Union, the new democratic socialists seem oblivious, unlike Harrington, George Orwell and other 20th century social democrats, about the dangers implicit in the centralization of economic and political power.
But it’s not just the ditzy left-wingers who need a history lesson. Those on the right, with all their fulsome defense of capitalism, need to be reminded that free markets need to create increased opportunity as well as the better living conditions. Our increasingly hierarchal, and feudal, capitalism all too often fails this test. My fellow capitalists, please remember that only a broadly inclusive version of capitalism can exorcise the ghost of socialism.
This article first appeared at The Orange County Register.
Homepage photo credit: Office of Sen. Bernie Sanders [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
http://joelkotkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Sanders_Introduces_15_Minimum_Wage.jpg 400 495 Joel Kotkin /wp-content/uploads/2017/01/jkotkin_logo.png Joel Kotkin2019-03-25 08:38:542019-03-25 08:39:45Understanding the Appeal of Democratic Socialism Key to Defeating It
Chinese Sci-Fi Writers Give Us A Glimpse Into China’s Dystopian Present And Future
March 18, 2019 /in Demographics, Politics /by Joel Kotkin
A thoroughly scientific dictatorship will never be overthrown — Aldous Huxley
In contemporary China, it’s hard to know what people outside the party dictatorship think about the future. As in the former Soviet Union, often the best guide may be not in the controlled media or cowed academia, but in the speculative wanderings of writers.
Chinese science fiction began back in the last days of the Qing dynasty, and, as author Liu Cixin suggests, became identified with a science-based optimism that fit well with the Communist vision. This has now “almost completely vanished,” he notes, replaced by a far grimmer vision.
These writers implicitly reject the notion of inevitable social progress now celebrated by President Xi Jinping and Communist-controlled media. They reflect not party orthodoxy but the most likely future, much as novels such as Yevgeny Zamaytin’s “We,” or the works of the Polish Stanislaw Lem, which identified the underlying realities of the old Soviet Empire.
These writers largely express the angst of a millennial generation, which faces a troubling future. In Chen Quifan’s “Year of the Rat,” a surplus college graduate ends up stuck hunting genetically altered rats. “We are just like rats,” the protagonist suggests, “all of us only pawns, stones, worthless counters in the Great Game.”
These writers suggest that the Chinese surveillance state, with untrammeled access to personal data, will continue to expand. Plans are being made to implant workers’ brains with monitors and to bolster a system of “social ranking,” which includes everything from credit worthiness to political reliability.
In his short story “City of Silence,” about the internet in the near future, author Ma Boyong speaks of attempts of “appropriate authorities” to restrict speech to “healthy words”; at the end of the book so few words are left that the “capital of the state” itself becomes mute.
Ma’s story suggests an autocracy amplified by technology far more subtle than the Stalinist horror depicted by George Orwell. As one dissident in “City of Silence” suggests: “The author of ‘1984’ predicted the progress of totalitarianism, but could not predict the progress of technology.”
Hierarchy in a ‘classless’ society
Hao Jingfang’s “Folding Beijing” describes a future Beijing divided into closely delineated communities for the elite, the middle ranks and a vast poor population, living largely by recycling the waste generated by the city. Hao depicts a city that literally changes shape into three forms — a luxurious first space with 5 million people, a still comfortable second space accommodating 25 million and a third space, where the protagonist, Lao Dao, lives among 50 million people clustered in dreary conditions.
Han Song’s clever “The Passengers and the Creation” speaks of a world contained within an airplane, with strict designations between first, second and coach class. The velvet curtain that separates First Class, Han writes, is “soft” but “as impenetrable as iron.” In this world, the wealthy aged live in comfort and can call on the services of young flight attendants recruited from coach.
Writers also have confronted the dire situation in the country’s countryside, where many of the some 600 million rural Chinese still live in poverty. Liu Cixin’s “The Village Schoolteacher” describes a place “so poor that a bird wouldn’t poop on it.” Mao’s revolution may have been driven by the peasants, but President Xi ‘s “moderately prosperous society” may never reach them.
The demographic crisis
China’s historic problems with overpopulation are morphing into a dearth of babies and the prospect of a rapidly shrinking workforce. This is made worse by a huge unbalance, about 33 million, of marriage-age boys over girls. By one estimate, 37 million Chinese girls were lost by abortion or infanticide since the “one child” policy came into force in 1980. China’s current male generation is so socially disconnected that the Communist Party, and some private firms, now teach them how to date.
Maggie Shen’s remarkable novel “An Excess Male” describes a society where women are allowed to take more than one husband, all to encourage greater breeding and relieve social pressures. Shen’s heroine May-ling is married to two men, neither of whom is much interested in carnal relations with her, and is looking to marry a third, an “excess male,” in order to have more children.
Life is made more problematic by the fact that May-ling’s favorite husband, Hann, is gay. In the China of the future, people designated “willfully sterile” are persecuted for not procreating. The state, whose policies fostered a looming demographic disaster, persecutes innocent citizens who don’t care to solve the country’s demographic shortfall.
Ultimately, the science fiction writers tell us much you won’t hear from the official sources or that country’s admirers here or in Europe. China could well be evolving into an authoritarian dystopia. True heirs to Orwell, Huxley and Zamaytin, these brave artists portray not only a view of China’s future but offer a window to its already existing contemporary reality.
Homepage photo credit: The Erica Chang via Wikimedia Commons under CC 3.0 license,
http://joelkotkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Beijing_traffic_theericachange.jpg 600 800 Joel Kotkin /wp-content/uploads/2017/01/jkotkin_logo.png Joel Kotkin2019-03-18 08:50:042019-03-18 08:50:04Chinese Sci-Fi Writers Give Us A Glimpse Into China’s Dystopian Present And Future
The Imperial Presidency
March 5, 2019 /in Politics /by Joel Kotkin
President Trump’s attempted end-run to fund his “beautiful” wall has been widely, and properly, denounced as a naked power grab by both the left and even some on the right. Yet if Trump’s action is ham-handed and likely dangerous, it also sadly reinforces a long-standing trend that seems to be leading us, inexorably, toward an ever-more imperial presidency.
http://joelkotkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Donald_Trump_Greenville_South_Carolina_February_2016.jpg 400 495 Joel Kotkin /wp-content/uploads/2017/01/jkotkin_logo.png Joel Kotkin2019-03-05 08:54:092019-03-05 08:54:09The Imperial Presidency
America’s Oligarchs Face Left-Wing, Right-Wing Backlash
February 25, 2019 /in Politics, The Economy /by Joel Kotkin
When the late Steve Jobs died in 2011, even protesters from the left-wing Occupy Wall Street movement mourned his passing. Today, it is unlikely that the passing of tech giant would elicit much in the way of sympathy from progressives or, for that matter, almost anyone else.
As Amazon’s expulsion from New York suggests, the tech oligarchs are gradually morphing from great saviors to widely perceived threats to the republic. Rather than gutsy entrepreneurs, they are seen increasingly as greedy oligopolists whose goal is to place society firmly under their digital control. A majority, notes the Pew Research Center, already feel they need to be more tightly regulated.
The oligarchs have managed to unite both the progressive left and the conservative right against them. The left objects that the tech industry remains almost totally un-unionized and seems to seek to eliminate gainful work for all but a handful. The right sees a threat to their political expression as they strengthen their hold on the means of communications, generally wiping non-progressive views from the screens of their customers.
http://joelkotkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Jeff_Bezos_at_Amazon_Spheres_Grand_Opening_in_Seattle_2018.jpg 400 495 Joel Kotkin /wp-content/uploads/2017/01/jkotkin_logo.png Joel Kotkin2019-02-25 08:35:232019-02-25 08:36:17America’s Oligarchs Face Left-Wing, Right-Wing Backlash
Twilight of the Oligarchs?
February 19, 2019 /in Demographics, Politics, The Economy /by Joel Kotkin
Amazon’s decision to abandon New York City—leaving a $3 billion goodie bag of incentives on the table—represents a break in the progressive alliance between an increasingly radicalized Left and the new technocratic elite. Read more
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America’s Role Model Should Be America
President Trump may take blind patriotism too far, but his often nativist stance seems likely to prevail against Democrats whose policy prescriptions increasingly draw from “models” as China, Scandinavia or Germany. Such infatuations have been commonplace for a century among intellectuals inspired variously by Imperial Germany, fascist Italy, the Soviet Union or mercantilist Japan.
http://joelkotkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Liberty-statue-from-below.jpg 480 640 Joel Kotkin /wp-content/uploads/2017/01/jkotkin_logo.png Joel Kotkin2019-02-19 08:36:062019-02-19 08:53:06America's Role Model Should Be America
This Train Won’t Leave the Station
February 14, 2019 /in California, Politics /by Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox
Governor Gavin Newsom has canceled the bulk of the state’s long-proposed high-speed line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, leaving only a tail of the once-grand project—a connection between the Central Valley’s Merced and Bakersfield, not exactly major metropolitan areas. “Let’s be real,” Newsom said in his first State of the State address. “The project, as currently planned, would cost too much and take too long. There’s been too little oversight and not enough transparency.” The project’s cost, originally pegged at $33 billion, ballooned over the last decade to an estimated $77 billion (or maybe as high as $98 billion), with little reason to assume that the cost inflation would end there. Read more
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Wanted: Dissent in Cooper City
Reposted with permission from : http://coopercityinsider.blogspot.com/ on 3/22/2013
Dissent Is An American Necessity
Once again the principle of free speech and the right of citizens to question the actions of their government are being tested. The general feeling seems to be that dissent is dangerous, that critical commentary erodes our unity and diminishes our resolve, that debates over the loss of constitutional rights is somehow a negative to the betterment of the nation. Perhaps such feelings are natural.
The state of our economy. the tensions of unemployment as well as the outrageous larceny of some corporate leaders, indifference of political leaders and the stresses of high costs gas and other necessities can create levels of distress that can be unbearable. The tendency is to close down, circle the wagons, and lash out at all who may question. But real security doesn’t come from stifling debate or muting voices of dissent. In fact, dissent may be what we need most.
Dissent is the antidote for what social-psychologists call “group-think,” the tendency to rush to judgment. (Clearly demonstrated by the recent decisions disguised as thoughtful discussions). Group-think can become a kind of herd mentality. Dissent is a guard against this mentality, a check on the unbridled stampede toward the cliff.
For this reason, as President Eisenhower once reminded us, we should never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. A democratic society depends on dissent because, at its best, dissent is an act of courage, a real test of patriotism. The ancient Greeks understood this. They used the term, “parrhesia” to refer to speech based on moral principle, voiced by a speaker with the courage to speak the truth in the face of powerful opposition. Such dissent, they believed, represented one of the highest ideals toward which a citizen could aspire.
The American Founders also understood the importance of dissent, which is why they crafted the First Amendment. As the nation evolved, dissent became an important feature in all government institutions and processes, from Congress to the Supreme Court. Even in the executive branch -- the one most feared by the Founders because of its resemblance to monarchy and its tendency toward imperialism – even here our best presidents have welcomed and honored dissent.
Today we see government officials, powerful public figures, even our friends and neighbors asking us to be silent. Once again we are told that protest is bad, that dissent is divisive and un-American. That for the betterment and solidarity of the community we must become silent. But it is not. We must not be misled from a central truth: Free and passionate debate is essential to self-governance.
To dissent, to break from the herd, to question and offer in many cases an alternative position, is to celebrate American democracy with a ferocity that no one should attempt to suppress...unless we let them.
Cooper City Redistricting
In the previous election, voters approved redistricting utilizing total population, which included revisions to the Charter in order to create districts with resident counts being as close to twenty-five percent of the total city’s population as possible and no more than a ten percent population disparity between districts. This ‘apportionment’ clause has always been in our Charter but has been willfully ignored and politically manipulated by some on the commission for quite some time, and in my opinion the district disparity issue should have been resolved many years ago.
Of course, any attempts to adhere to the Charter mandates would have quite possibly exposed questionable practices and lack of adherence to the Charter by former commission members and city attorney. Although Monterra is expected to be complete by the Spring of 2014, the city will be estimating the projected population, adjusting the district maps accordingly based on current and future building Certificates of Occupancy (CO’s) rather than actual number of residents, in addition to using a district population average scheme. The contention is that this will reduce any future districting changes, but it also does not count everyone on a real time data basis.
An additional error using CO’s also becomes apparent when you take the total number of residents and do the math, which comes out to anywhere between 2.85 and 3.06 persons per household depending on which formula you use, an error of up to five hundred residents per district. In addition, the ‘district population average’ scheme was never discussed or approved at the Charter Review Board meetings or at the city commission meetings while implementing the enacting Ordinance.
The Charter states that no district shall have a population variance of greater than ten percent from any other district. The ‘Plain Language Rule’ in law dictates that laws must be interpreted using the ordinary and plain meaning of the words used unless a law defines specific terms. In other words, the law is to be read word for word and we should not divert from its ordinary, plain meaning. This rule applies to our city ordinances and our city Charter which is our Constitution that we have sworn an oath to uphold. To avoid ambiguity, legislatures often include definitions in the law which defines important terms used. Some laws omit definitions entirely or fail to define a particular term, such as our Charter and it’s implementing Ordinance. This is part of the problem that we face in the push to change the Charter, a push that was originally and possibly still politically motivated.
The Charter Review Board and city attorney failed to define key phrases and meanings within the Charter changes, therefore key provisions and clear mandates are open to interpretation by the city attorney whose participation has been questionable within the entire Charter review process. One very questionable issue is the Charter’s ‘ten percent rule’. If you utilize the current data set offered by the vendor who performed the population analysis, you’ll quickly see that no two city districts currently deviate by more than 9.1 percent. If you look at the same data utilizing statistical analysis, the deviation is only 8.62 percent using the same numbers.
This is part of the problem, in addition to FAU utilizing a ‘District Population Average’ formula, one which was never previously discussed. In fact, the vendor admitted their numbers presented in the presentation were “incorrect”. Also, the vendor does not include Estada as a part of Monterra and the residency numbers! The question becomes, should we redistrict? Yes, it’s required by the Charter. What do we want to do then? Change districts completely or simply bring districts into parity? If you change districts substantially you may be gerrymandering and may find yourself in a lawsuit. If we change them to bring them as equal as possible, we need to concentrate on districts three and four because of size and discontinuity.
I am very sure of no need for drastic redistricting based on the 2012 base map data. As far as I am concerned, it’s just a question of not dividing residential communities in order to make all four districts nearly equal without favoring or disfavoring any incumbent, which is against the law.
The city has an obligation to allow the residents to be fully involved in the redistricting process. As such, multiple Public Meetings will be held at City Hall on advertised dates so everyone who can attends will have an opportunity to be a part of the process. Also, you can view all of the redistricting material at www.coopercityfl.org and click on the box labeled ‘election redistricting project’ in addition to watching the commission meeting videos on the issue under the link entitled ‘Government’ at the top of the page. Simply click on ‘View Meeting Videos’ and select the meeting or workshop you wish to view. Now is the time to make your voice fully heard to ensure transparent, ethical, honest and open government in Cooper City.
Labels: bruce loucks, bso, city of cooper city, Cooper City Florida, david wolpin, debby eisinger, greg ross, james curran, jeff green, john sims, john sims cooper city, lisa mallozzi, weiss serota
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The eldest of 9 children growing up in the Brennan household Moya has been involved with music and entertaining from an early age. In fact she performed with her father Leo Brennan and his family band (Slieve Foy Dance Band) as a young girl. This set the foundations for a musical career spanning several decades.
Like most of her siblings, Moya’s childhood also involved singing on stage at Leos Tavern backed by her father Leo. After finishing school in Sligo, Moya was destined to be a music teacher, when the opportunity to sing lead vocals in Clannad presented itself. An opportunity Moya grasped with both hands, leading to Clannad releasing their first album in 1973.
Nearly 20 years later, Moya released her first solo album Maire in 1992 (with sisters Deidre, Olive and Bridin singing backing vocals) and went on to compile 8 solo albums whilst still being actively involved with Clannad.
For more information see www.moyabrennan.com
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university of north carolina at greensboro (6095)
university of north carolina at greensboro. school of music, theatre and dance (4535)
teachers (1074)
uncg (895)
college student newspapers and periodicals -- north carolina -- greensboro (778)
arts -- north carolina -- greensboro -- periodicals (750)
creative writing (higher education) -- north carolina -- greensboro -- periodicals (750)
student publications -- north carolina - (750)
mciver, charles duncan, 1860-1906 (360)
charles duncan mciver (345)
programs (4633)
periodicals (780)
scrapbooks (372)
application forms (252)
ua9.2 school of music performances -- programs and recordings, 1917-2007 (4535)
ua104 photographic prints collection (435)
state normal magazine / coraddi (428)
ua2.1 charles duncan mciver records, 1855-1906 (360)
alumnae news / alumni news / uncg magazine (322)
ua111 university archives scrapbook collection (242)
oh003 uncg centennial oral history project (189)
oh001 greensboro voices collection (127)
oh002 uncg institutional memory collection (108)
mciver, charles duncan (345)
byrd, clara booth (111)
the art shop (greensboro, n.c.) (78)
atkins, gertrude walton (72)
barkley, miriam holland (51)
martin, carol w. (46)
martha blakeney hodges special collections and university archives (34)
guilford college (31)
: Students
(15990 results)
Special milk program evaluation and national school lunch program survey /
School lunch eligible non-participants final report
The story of Team Nutrition pilot study outcome report : final report
Oral history interview with Jim M. Lancaster, 1990 [text/print transcript]
James M. Lancaster (1950- ) received his undergraduate degree in 1972, his master's degree in 1974 and his doctoral degree in 1985, all from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). He was hired as assistant dean of students in 1974...
Oral history interview with Mary Lou Merrell, 1990 [text/print transcript]
Mary Lou Merrell (1925- ) grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina and began working part time for Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina, now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and in 1965 became a full-time secretary in...
School nutrition dietary assessment study-II final report
Oral history interview with JoAnne Smart Drane, 2008 [text/print transcript]
JoAnne Smart Drane (1938- ) graduated in 1960 from Woman's College of the University of North Carolina, now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She was one of the first two African American students to be accepted and to attend the...
Oral history interview with Gail Hennis, 1990 [text/print transcript]
Gail Hennis (1921-2002) came to Woman's College of the University of North Carolina, now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), in 1950 as an instructor in the Department of Physical Education. She retired in 1986 as professor and...
The story of Team Nutrition case studies of the pilot implementation communities : final report
Oral history interview with Margaret Landon, 1990 [text/print transcript]
Margaret Landon (1926-1995) became an assistant professor of nursing in the School of Nursing at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in 1971. She served as the director of its baccalaureate program and retired in 1986. Landon...
Oral history interview with Evon Dean, 1990 [text/print transcript]
Evon Welch Dean (1924-2011) graduated from the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina, now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, in 1942 with a commercial degree. She became the administrative assistant to the alumni...
Eating breakfast effects of the school breakfast program
Oral history interview with James H. Allen, 1990 [text/print transcript]
James H. Allen (1931- ) served as Presbyterian campus minister from 1967-1976 and vice chancellor for student affairs from 1971-1996 at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Allen discusses his time on the UNCG campus as...
Oral history interview with Edith Mayfield Wiggins, 1991 [text/print transcript]
Edith Mayfield Wiggins (1942- ) was one of five black students admitted to Woman's College of the University of North Carolina, which later became The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in 1958, the third year blacks attended the...
Oral history interview with Marie Darr Scott, 2011 [text/print transcript]
Marie Darr Scott (1948- ) graduated in 1970 with a history degree from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). After college, she taught at the UNCG Residential College, worked at Cone Mills, and then worked for the Amalgamated...
James M. Lancaster (1950- ) received his undergraduate degree in 1972, his master's degree in 1974 and his doctoral degree in 1985, all from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro He was hired as assistant dean of students in 1974 and...
Oral history interview with Sarah "Sally" M. Robinson, 1990 [text/print transcript]
Sarah M. 'Sally' Robinson (1939- ) graduated in 1961 from Woman's College of the University of North Carolina, which later became The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), with a degree in physical education. She returned to teach in...
Oral history interview with Robert M. Calhoun, 2006 [text/print transcript]
OH013 UNCG in the 1960s Oral History Collection
Robert M. Calhoon (1935 - ) is a graduate of the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio and holds master's and doctoral degrees from Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He came to The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in...
Oral history interview with Ada Fisher, 2010 [text/print transcript]
Ada M. Fisher (1947- ) graduated from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in 1970. She received her medical degree from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in 1975. Before retiring to Salisbury, North...
Team Nutrition in action phase I, case study reports on the pilot implementation communities
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FC Torrevieja New Manager • Steve Hall
Casimiro Torres Ibáñez FC Torrevieja’s new manager
One of Torrevieja’s prodigal sons has returned to the fold, as former Real Madrid and Castilla player Casimiro Torres Ibáñez, has taken up the post as manager of FC Torrevieja, as of Wednesday October 19, 2011. After a superb start to the present league campaign, FC Torrevieja dropped from first to eighth and due to what could be termed a lack of confidence in the team’s third manager in 2011, José Manuel García Payá has been replaced at an early stage to allow Torres time to mount a new promotion challenge this season. Most recently Torres has been managing Cartagena’s ‘B’ team La Union, however due to financial cutbacks, found himself out of a coaching position, although he has continued to be involved with overseeing the development of Torrevieja’s youth squads for a number of years.
The 52 year old had an illustrious playing career, which started as a juvenile with Torrevieja C. F. (1977-1978 before being scouted and turning professional at 19. Always known by his first name, Casimiro, he played for six professional clubs, starting with Real Madrid’s B team, Castilla C. F. (and one game for Real Madrid during 1978-1983), Cartagena F. C (1983-1985), Celta de Vigo (1985-1986), C. D. Logroñés (1986-1988) and Elche C. F. (1988-1990) before hanging up his playing boots at the relatively early age of 30 and moving into coaching and management.
Casimiro Torres Ibáñez, was born in Torrevieja (Alicante), the June 18, 1959 and played in the famous King’s Cup final between Real Madrid and Castilla, which they lost 6-1, on June 4, 1980, a game which was to change the structure of leagues in Spain immediately afterwards, to avoid the possibility of today’s La Liga teams coming up against their own ‘B’ teams in competitions!
Castilla, as Real Madrid’s junior ‘B’ team played in the ‘second’ division, as it then was and beat a number of first division teams to reach the final, which they subsequently lost to their ‘owners’! However, due to Real Madrid participating in the European Cup, as runners up, the following year Castilla played in the Cup Winners Cup, only to lose in the first round against West Ham United, winning in the Bernabeu by 3:1 but losing at Upton Park 5:1 after extra time. That West Ham United team also featured former Torrevieja FC Director of Football Tommy Taylor; small world that it is!
A year and a half after his European debut, at age 22 he played just one game in the Spanish first division with Real Madrid on April 11, 1982, in Castellon, before being transferred to Cartagena where he spent two seasons before moving to Celta de Vigo, just before the 1984-85 season. He debuted with Celta de Vigo on August 31, 1985 in San Sebastian, against Real Sociedad, which ended in a 1:1 tie. He played just 15 matches in the first division in what would be his only season in Vigo, which was a disastrous season for the team and saw them relegated with only fourteen points from 34 games, finishing as the bottom club!
At the end of the season he withdraw his contract with Celta de Vigo and took the opportunity to return to play in first division, with the CD Logroñes (where he played a leading role) and then moved closer to his home to play in Elche. On returning to his hometown and played one season with Torrevieja in the Segunda B but had to retire at a relatively early age of just 30. In 1993 he was the head coach of Torrevieja CF, when they were playing in the Third Division before financial obligations brought their downfall and ended his first spell as manager of the club.
Local football ‘knowledgetorian’ Steve Hall noted “For 5 seasons Torrevieja CF competed in the 2B Division before the financial obligations of competing at this level began to take their toll. Heavily in debt, unable to pay their players or creditors, the club were relegated at the end of the 1993/94 season back to Division 3. Worse was to come as the Spanish FA relegated them a further division (back to Regional Preferente) for failing to meet their financial commitments. At the same time (1993), a new football club was set up in the town, Club Deportivo Torrevieja. The club played in 2nd Regional. It is this new club which began to climb the football “ladder” and reached Regional Preferente Division in 1996 at the same time that Torrevieja CF dropped down to 2nd Regional Division. Also in 1996 the new club adopted its current name FC Torrevieja and it is this team that today represents the town.”
A well respected left side defender, he is known for his no nonsense approach and discipline, and although he only scored five goals in career, over his 320 games he only received 16 yellow and two Red Cards over 12 seasons as a professional footballer. He has been involved as a coach since entering management with Club de Fútbol Gandía (2000-2001) before moving closer to home with Elche CF (2001-2003), CD Eldense (2006-2007), Novelda CF (2007-2008) and Club Deportivo La Union, which he managed from 2008 until the end of last season. At the end of the 2010/2011 season, La Union where third in their league and reached the promotion playoffs, however they were eliminated in the first round against Montañesa CF. At the end of the season, the subsidiary agreement between the club and FC Cartagena was not renewed and unfortunately for La Union but fortunately for Torrevieja, Torres found himself out of a job but being in the right place at the right time, he now finds himself back in the driving seat and looking to drive his home town team to promotion to 2B.
Information provided by Keith Nicol. Please contact him for further information. © Keith Nicol 2011
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WELCOME TO RAMSTEIN // 52' - IN PRODUCTION - 2019
An immersive journey into the largest American military base in Europe.
In Germany, 60 kilometers from Forbach, Moselle, there is a stretch of America: the Ramstein Air Base. It is the most colossal of the 174 American bases that have popped up across Germany since the Cold War. 57,000 American Citizens live in the vicinity of the base. According to the Pentagon, these soldiers and families make up the largest overseas community of military expatriates. Compared to the 7,500 habitants of...
OPEX, BEHIND THE SCENES OF WAR // 77' - 2018
Their names are Jeremiah, Amelie, Josselin, Didier and Yohan. Soldiers and civilians, they work almost independently in the Malian desert as chefs, bakers, mechanics, nurses, first-aid workers, maintenance managers and in support services. Who are these men and women on the ground, who choose to live away from their families for months at a time? How does the army handle logistics 4,000 kilometres from France?
THE PRICE OF INNOCENCE: HOW JUSTICE COMPENSATES THE WRONGLY ACCUSED // 46' - 2018
In this documentary, for the first time, our cameras have been given permission to film hearings the public has previously never known were taking place. Over a period of several months, a small room nestled in the heart of the Palais de Justice is the setting for a series of rare and poignant moments, as judges face men and women who have been detained for days, months or years but then cleared of any suspicion. All tell of their suffering and are claiming compensation.
Nicknamed "The...
GILETS JAUNES (YELLOW VESTS): WHEN FRANCE CATCHES FIRE // 84' - 2018
Since the 18th October 2018, the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests), an unprecedented movement created on social media to protest against rising fuel prices, have been stirring up France. On 17 November, this "France of the forgotten" decided to be heard by organizing a day of roadblocks. And so, a revolt has been shaking the state. France hasn’t experienced such violence for decades... On Saturday 1st and December 8th, 2018, this violence reached an unprecedented level. But who is behind the Yellow...
ILLEGAL TRAFFICKING, ANIMALS IN DANGER // 90' - 2018
An investigation into animal trafficking.
When buying an animal, how can we be sure of its pedigree? Can we trust the breeders who abound on the net? What are the consequences of animal trafficking?
Dogs are the biggest victims of this trade. Every year, 100,000 arrive illegally in France. Abused animals, sometimes sick, with false papers and expired vaccines. To fight this crime, a specialized unit of the SPA investigates smugglers all year round, with the aim of dismantling...
CANADAIR, ON EARTH AS IN THE HEAVENS // 51' - 2018
Canadair pilots are true heroes, but also untouchable knights, whom we respect from a distance, being unable to get to know them close up.
But who are the men behind these protective figures? How do they prepare themselves on the ground to fight fire from the sky?
This documentary shed some light on these grey areas under the sun of Corsica, where, each summer, a Canadair detachment takes up residence on the Ajaccio base.
ACCIDENTS, SPEED LIMITS, TRAFFIC: HIGHWAY HAZARDS ON THE A62 // 87' - 2017
The A62 connects the cities of Bordeaux and Toulouse. To ensure the safety of the highway and track down reckless drivers, 112 police officers are on alert…
RACE TO THE STARS: THE EXCLUSIVE PALACES AND RESTAURANTS OF PARIS // 86' - 2017
In Paris, only nine hotels have snatched the title of “Palace,” the holy grail for five star hotels. Le Meurice, Le Bristol, Le George V and La Réserve have been the last five hotels to enter this exclusive circle. These hotels symbolise the French way of life for their wealthy, international clientele. One night in a single room costs 600 euros and a suite can cost up to 25,000 euros.
Over the last 10 years, the number of luxury rooms in Paris has nearly doubled. The competition...
THE GREAT MELTING POT: WHAT MAKES FRANCE SUCCEED? // 87' - 2017
In France, sacrifice is sometimes part of the journey. However, some young people have been able to break into careers that are far removed from their social origins. Full of ambition, these young people dreamt of breaking the glass ceiling and creating a destiny different from that of their parents. We followed some of these young people at their jobs as stylists and restaurant managers, where they prove that determination is the key to success.
MY LIFE AT BOARDING SCHOOL // 91' - 2017
Each year, more than 250,000 children attend boarding schools. Who are these children, and what do their daily lives look like? Are they at boarding school to succeed, or to find freedom?
FOLKLORE AND TRADITIONS: DIVING INTO THE HEART OF WEDDINGS // 92' - 2017
We follow the path of an engaged couple and their families as they prepare for their wedding ceremony and do their best to honor the rites and customs of their community.
UNMARRIED: THE BUSINESS OF LOVE // 90' - 2017
There are 18 million single people in France. This number is a blessing for the “merchants of the heart” who compete to create imaginative new ways of helping people meet and fall in love.
THIRTEEN YEARS OLD AND ALREADY A DELINQUENT: WHEN OUR TEENS DEFY THE LAW // 72' - 2017
Every year, about 200,000 minors are involved in crimes. These crimes are often theft, but minors have also been charged for drug trafficking and violence. 80 percent of these crimes are committed by boys, even though the number of girls involved in crimes has increased significantly over the past ten years. Contrary to popular belief, 9 out of 10 offenses committed by minors are punished by the courts, and in 2017, over 3,000 minors were placed in detention. Some minors seem unafraid of the...
GLUTEN FREE, SUGAR FREE, AND VEGAN: THE REVOLUTION ON OUR PLATES // 88' - 2017
Today, the French seem more and more preoccupied by the content of their plates. Eating healthy is their new credo. For some years now, we have been witnessing changes in eating habits. This “eating revolution” has created a new food market.
Vegans, disgusted by the conditions in which animals are raised and slaughtered, have sworn off of all animal products, from meat, to milk, to leather. The choice to avoid animal products has a large impact on daily life, and may be dangerous for...
TORNADO HUNTERS 2: AMERICA IN THE FACE OF DANGER // 70' - 2015
This documentary follows the scientific journey of 4 French hunters who travelled Tornado Alley for a month between the 8th of May and June 6th, 2015. Their aim was not only to chase tornadoes, but, first and foremost, to meet the scientists and the many people who, in the heart of America, are trying to predict these events and protect the population from the force and suddenness of the most violent weather phenomenon on the planet.
A genuine tornado hunt, it enables the team to bring...
THE PARANORMAL FILES // 8 x 52' - 2014
« I won’t tell you my name. You'll never see my face. You'll cross paths with me but won't see me. My past was glorious. I was considered the best in my sector. The best, until this damned day. Until the investigation that shouldn’t have been done … ».
This is the way this new series of special investigation documentaries is introduced, opening a door that few investigators dare to open... Mysteries of alchimy, near death experiences, UFOS, ghosts, many subjects tackled with a...
COSMETIC SURGERY: YOUNG AT ANY PRICE // 90’ - 2014
Reshaped lips, bigger breasts, rounded buttocks… These days, no part of the body escapes the plastic surgeon’s knife. However, this type of operation is very expensive and sometimes dangerous: the quest for stereotypical beauty poses health risks and some have paid the price. Dr. Maria Pecorelli, a plastic surgeon at the Elysée Montaigne Clinic, reveals the secrets of her profession and the reality behind of an often-criticised practice.
SAFETY SPECIAL 2 // 4X80' + 1X52' - 2014
- BURGLARY ALERT (Kristel Naman ) – 2013 / 52’
Burglaries are on the increase in France. The big cities have been affected, but also rural areas and small towns. A new kind of criminal has emerged. Often very young and determined, these thieves do not hesitate to resort to violence, making the trauma even greater for the victims.
Faced with this problem, the gendarmes and police have organized themselves into specialized groups. Surveillance, tailing, phonetapping, arrests... We...
PARIS, THE MARAIS // 80' - 2014
The Marais: a village in the heart of Paris.... Just two square kilometres, in a golden triangle located within the centre of the capital between the Hotel de Ville, the Place de la République and the Bastille! A little jewel-box containing one of the most beautiful examples of France’s historical heritage.
A haven for the stars and the gay community, both transgressive and chic, the Marais is also home to the Orthodox Jewish community.
But behind the scenes, the falafel vendors...
CÔTE D’AZUR: SECRETS OF THE CASH MACHINE // 90' - 2014
With more than ten million visitors a year, the French Riviera is one of the most popular tourist destinations. Private beaches make almost all of their income in July and August. For the beach attendants and restaurateurs, the season has to be a success.
While building on the sea front is now prohibited in principle, some sumptuous buildings have still just seen the light of day...
FOOD: IS THERE POISON ON OUR PLATES? // 80' - 2014
France is a land of gastronomy, but for several years repeated scandals have tarnished the image of our daily diet. Is the food available in bulk on the supermarket shelves always good for our health?
Over the last 50 years, food has diversified and health campaigns are always encouraging us to eat more healthily. With purchasing power at half-mast, the French are looking for affordable foodstuffs. In order to produce industrial quantities of fruit, fish and meat at reduced prices,...
REALITY TV // 80' - 2014
During the 2000s, a mini-revolution hit the small screen with the emergence of reality TV. Today’s programmes are nothing like the original "Big Brother" and incredibly diverse. But what happens to all the candidates who feed the networks for weeks on end once the cameras stop rolling? Why do some manage to stay in the limelight, while others sink into oblivion? How do they cope with this fleeting notoriety? Who really benefits from their fame?
FROM THE STARS TO THE PRESIDENT: HAS THE TABLOID PRESS GONE TOO FAR? // 80' - 2014
The front page of a magazine revealing an alleged relationship between François Hollande and actress Julie Gayet was the talk of the town. Did the tabloids go too far in tackling the highest authority in the Republic? Whether it’s the President’s privacy or the romantic setbacks of Hollywood’s biggest stars, today some magazines will stop at nothing to get exclusives and increase their sales.
VETS: COMING TO THE AID OF ANIMALS // 80' - 2014
With over sixty million pets, The French lead the animal-loving field in Europe. But cats and dogs are not their only companions. In recent years, new species such as snakes, rats and lizards have grown in popularity, all requiring protection and care. This is the work of the veterinarians, who treat the animals who share our lives.
From the birth of calves to the vaccination of cats, we take part in the daily lives of these animal doctors and witness their most spectacular...
TORNADO HUNTERS // 80' - 2014
Braving the extremes to enrich science, such is the philosophy of 4 young Frenchmen who are anything but fainthearted!
Lovers of nature and extreme weather conditions, they have traveled tens of thousands of miles through a dozen American States in search of the ideal light, the ultimate storm, but above all the perfect tornado!
For these contemplative souls, what matters most is bringing back beautiful pictures, recording a special moment and sharing it, in order to advance our...
TAX EVASION: TAXPAYERS, THEY’VE GOT YOU SURROUNDED! // 80' - 2013
Individuals, company bosses, rich or poor, they all take risks to avoid paying taxes. Today the cost of tax evasion in France is estimated at between 29 and 40 billion Euros – a considerable hole in the state coffers!
So who are these people defying the tax authorities? What drives them to do so? What methods do they use to slip through the net? What are the risks?
The State uses every means at its disposal to hunt them down. Last year nearly sixty thousand thorough tax audits...
ROMA, TRAVELLING PEOPLE: WHY SO MUCH HATED? // 80' - 2013
Who are Travellers and how do they live? It’s a question often asked by French people, some curious, some suspicious. In search of answers, a journalist spent several weeks living within a travelling community.
First problem: where do you put several families and dozens of caravans? Arriving in a new town, our Travellers search for suitable places to make their temporary home. Distrust, contempt, rejection… Travellers are rarely welcome.
They have chosen this lifestyle to be free...
LA JONQUERA: TOWN OF EXCESS // 80' - 2013
Located just a few miles from the French border, La Jonquera in Spain is well-known to the French. For the last 10 years, tourists have come flocking to the town because of one particular attraction: the brothels. Prostitution is legal there, and girls come from all around the world to ply their trade. So what is this unique town like? And what is life like for its residents?
FRENCH GUIANA: HEAVEN OR HELL? // 80' - 2013
Focus on French Guiana, the largest French department with a land area of around 91,000km2. Most of the territory is covered in rainforest containing an incredible biodiversity.
Another advantage of Guiana is its cutting-edge industry, with the Ariane launch site in Kourou.
But behind the scenes lie crime and illegal gold prospecting, two sources of social and economic conflict that pose serious environmental problems.
LA REUNION: A VOLATILE ISLAND // 80' - 2013
Sunny beaches, like something from a movie set, La Réunion Island is a dream location. But behind this idyllic façade lies another reality. Prostitution, instability and poaching are ruining people’s lives. How can the police enforce the law within this context? What hope is there for La Réunion? Added to this, for the last few years the island has been the target of regular shark attacks: opinion is divided as to how to avoid any accidents from happening.
FIRE FIGHTERS: EVERYDAY HEROES // 80' - 2013
Fires, accidents or personal assistance: every seven seconds in France, fire fighters help their fellow citizens. But who are these men and women who risk their lives to save others? What happens in the course of their day? Over several weeks, we follow the fire fighters of the Yvelines region in France as they attend everything from animal rescue missions to spectacular fires.
ACTION WOMEN, EXCEPTIONAL WOMEN // 80' - 2013
More and more women are choosing careers previously reserved for men, such as those to offered by the army. Coming from a military family, Assia is extremely proud to be a paratrooper. Vérane Bonneuil is the first girl to join the Chamonix high-mountain police platoon (PGHM). While Nelly goes out on patrol every night with her colleagues from the BAC (Anti Crime Brigade)...
AT THE HEART OF A&E // 80' - 2013
Distress situations, life-threatening emergencies, childbirth... A&E doctors have to fight on all fronts. Nearly 16 million people in France are admitted annually to accident and emergency units - a figure that has doubled in the last 20 years. Today, the emergency services are often swamped and doctors overworked. But who are these men and women who dedicate their lives to helping patients? What does a normal day involve for them? What are their main tasks?
COSMETIC SURGERY: SCALPEL AHOLICS // 90’ - 2013
Cosmetic surgery has become a global phenomenon. More than one in ten Frenchwomen has already had recourse to surgery, and today it’s men and adolescents who are yielding to temptation. However, this type of intervention remains very expensive and can be dangerous: the pursuit of imagined beauty carries health risks and some people have paid the price.
FRENCH AIR FORCE: THE WARRIORS OF THE SKY // 80' - 2013
An elite arm of the French army, 56,000 men up the ranks of the highly secret Air Force. What are the operations that these soldiers are involved in?
Air defense and public service operations overseas: yesterday in the Côte d'Ivoire, they ensured the safety of residents during the crisis that divided the country. Today in Mali, they are an integral part of Operation Serval.
In this documentary we follow them for several months performing missions in particularly dangerous areas,...
EXTREME FIREFIGHTERS // 4 X 52' - 2012
This series immerses us in the world of the extreme fire fighter. Through accounts and exceptional footage of their interventions, we reveal the courage and strength that drives these men and women to risk their lives to save others. It’s a job that requires more specialised training and skill today than ever before.
We follow fire crews in 4 different environments, each as extreme as the other:
1/ Extreme Firefighters / Heights and depths (urban environment): PARIS ...
“SAFETY” SPECIAL // 4 x 80’ - 2012
Drink driving, speed, accidents: Paris under high surveillance – 83’ / SD (Director: Geoffroy Duval)
Different police departments work in synergy around the clock to keep the streets of Paris safe. The Ring Road Unit, the Service du Traitement Judiciaire des Accidents, motorcycle units… we followed these men and women, responding to emergencies under constant stress, who intervene and ensure the safety of road users.
Summer Cops: No break for delinquents – 81’ / SD ...
INFIDELITY // 90' - 2012
A film that endeavours to understand the motives for infidelity in all its forms: from hidden infidelity (double lives) to shared infidelity (couples who engage in partner swapping).
A whole business has grown up around infidelity. Accounts from a detective specialising in cheating spouses and a professional “honey-trap” shed new light on these extra-marital relationships.
ABSTINENCE AND TEMPTATION: LIFE WITHOUT SEX // 80' - 2012
On the television, on the Internet, on advertising hoardings... sex has invaded our lives and has never been more omnipresent than it is today.
To love someone without making love, practise abstinence rather than suffer again, take a vow of chastity in the name of a higher interest or remain a virgin until marriage... who are the men and women who make such difficult choices at a time when unbridled sexuality seems to have become the norm?
Is it possible to live without sex in...
I HATE THE WAY I LOOK, HOW CAN I LOVE MYSELF? // 88' - 2012
Thirty-six year-old Vincianne and twenty-five year old Delphine have decided to go to Tunisia for a week to have liposuction. Sandrine is obsessed with her imagined physical defects. Constantly dissatisfied with her appearance, this 46-year-old mother knows all there is to know about cosmetic surgery. She can’t bear to see herself grow old. Her doctor has advised her to see a psychologist. Mahmoud once weighed 127 kilos. At the age of 47 he’s already gone back down to 104, but he needs help to...
MYTHOMANIACS, USURPERS, IMPOSTERS: LIARS FOR A LIVING // 80' - 2012
Today, in our materialistic society focused on money and power in all its forms, duplicity has taken on a new guise. It has become a sophisticated strategy by which to win in every area of social and economic life. Lying has diversified and instilled itself pretty much everywhere. It’s become commonplace, a kind of parlour game.
In order to get a representative picture of lying today, we follow four people with very different profiles who lie on a daily basis: some through the rapid...
COUPLES IN CRISIS // 80' - 2012
At the beginning of a relationship we share everything: our tastes, our desires, our vision of life and of our future together… But over time, opportunities to surprise one other and collaborate on projects become less frequent. After a few years, we come to the sad realisation that, “we don’t have anything to say any more”, which is often synonymous with falling out of love. We meet some couples whose relationship problems are threatening to throw their lives out of balance. Love makes us...
SPECIAL “STARS AND CELEBRITIES” // 3 x 80’ - 2011 - 2012
Living in a star’s shadow – 88’ / SD (Director: Lila Place)
Is living with a celebrity a blessing or a curse? Is it hard to be a person in your own right? Can a famous name be used to benefit a cause? This documentary aims to get to the heart of these questions.
With Philippe Candeloro, Jean-Pierre Castaldi, Massimo Gargia and Patrick Sébastien.
What became of the stars of yesterday? – 84’ / HD (Director: Karima Hamzaoui)
Stars from the world of music, TV...
TOTAL IMMERSION IN A MATERNITY HOSPITAL // 4 x 65’ - 2011
Objective: to tell the inside story of a medical team in a large Parisian maternity hospital.
It’s a place laden with emotions, both happy and sad, that most of us think we know through having been there at least once in our lives. But how do the people working there view the most wonderful moments in other people’s lives? And in what conditions? Prenatal diagnosis, obstetric surgery, the fight against infertility, the care of premature babies, emergency deliveries 24/7, neo-natal...
SUMMER JOBS: BIG FUN OR TOTAL NIGHTMARE // 82' - 2011
The sun is shining over the beach resorts, but there’s no respite for the waiters, beach attendants, activity leaders and campsite reps. Young workers and students, it’s often their first job, a chance to earn their first pay cheque during the summer holidays. But a summer job can become a nightmare. Long hours, dodgy contracts and unpaid overtime, squalid accommodation... all kinds of abuses take place. There are the summer slaves, and there are the others. Some, more resourceful, people find...
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problem. In the U.S., the NSF has funded a project called CS10K, which set the goal of training 10,000 computer science teachers across the country. Launched last year, CS10K aims to build a consortium across academia, industry, government agencies, and private foundations, and is part of a larger NSF-sponsored project called Computing Education for the 21st Century, or CE21, which will also fund projects in computing education research and broadening student participation. CSTA, meanwhile, runs a variety of professional development initiatives, including an annual conference and workshops. It also maintains an online repository of research and resources.
“You have maybe one computer science teacher per school,” says CSTA’s Cooper. “At best they have to go to other schools in their district or to other districts to find other teachers who look like them. Offering them the ability to network and build a community is incredibly important.” Israel’s Machshava takes a similar approach, with an annual conference, courses, and summer seminars aimed at fostering professional leadership. In England, a grass-roots group called Computing at School (CAS) has formed a partnership with the British Computer Society to sponsor workshops and coordinate advocacy efforts.
“Everybody’s picked up this sense
that change is in the air, and that teach-
ers who want to stay on top of this have
got to be proactive,” says Furber. “The
good news is CAS membership went
up from 300 to 600 or 700” after the
publication of Shut Down or Restart.
“The bad news is that’s still only one
teacher for every 10 secondary schools
A variety of university-led programs
have begun to appear, as well. Purdue
University’s CS4EDU is a joint effort be-
tween computer science faculty and the
school’s College of Education to create
a teaching licensure program that pre-
pares education majors to teach com-
puter science in secondary schools.
Carnegie Mellon’s CS4HS reaches out
to current high school teachers through
workshops aimed to help them teach
computer science principles; it has
since received funding from Google’s
Education Group. Finally, there are re-
gional initiatives like Jane Margolis’s
managing the way
CS is taught can
be a challenge even
for countries that
have a standard
national curriculum.
Exploring Computer Science—an NSF-supported program that has helped bring computer science courses to more than 25 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District—which will also inspire work in other cities.
CSTA’s Cooper is optimistic. “We’re making progress. Ten years ago, you couldn’t talk about major school systems in CS, and now there’s work being done in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Jose. It starts to slowly add up.”
Brandes, O., Vilner, T., and Zur, E. Software design course for leading CS in-service teachers, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Informatics in Secondary Schools, Zurich, Switzerland, Jan. 13–16, 2010. CSTA Teacher Certification Task Force Ensuring Exemplary Teaching in an Essential Discipline: Addressing the Crisis in Computer Science Teacher Certification, Computer Science Teachers Association, new York, n Y, Sept. 2008.
Shut Down or Restart? The Way For ward for Computing in UK Schools, The Royal Society, London, U.K., Jan. 2012.
Schmidt, E.
“The James Mac Taggart Lecture,” MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival 2011, Edinburgh, Scotland, http://www.edinburghguide.com/video/ deregulateandgoglobalgooglechieftellstvfest, August 26, 2011.
Wilson, C., Sudol, L.A., Stephenson, C., and Stehlik, M. Running on Empty: The Failure to Teach K– 12 Computer Science in the Digital Age, Association for Computing Machinery, new York, n Y, 2010.
Leah hoffmann is a technology writer based in brooklyn, ny.
© 2012 aCM 0001-0782/12/10 $15.00
the royal society and national center for Women & information technology (nc Wit) recently honored five leading computer scientists.
miLnER AWARD
the newly created royal
society Milner Award is given
for outstanding achievement
in computer science by a
european researcher. the
inaugural recipient is Gordon D.
Plotkin, professor of theoretical
computer science, University of
edinburgh, who was selected
for “his fundamental research
into programming semantics
with lasting impact on both
the principles and design of
programming languages.”
nCWit unDERGRADuAtE RESEARCh mEntoRinG AWARD
nc Wit recently announced the inaugural recipients of its Undergraduate research Mentoring Award. four computer scientists were selected “for their outstanding mentorship, creation of high-quality research opportunities, recruitment of women and minority students, and efforts to encourage and advance undergraduate students in computing-related fields.” the 2012 recipients are:
˲ Diana Franklin, tenure-equiv-alent teaching faculty, University of california, santa Barbara. franklin has developed a retention pipeline by recruiting students during their freshman year and has mentored 18 students, half of whom are female or from other underrepresented groups. ˲ Juan Gilbert, ideas professor and chair of the Human-cen-tered computing division, clem-son University. gilbert’s lab is home to nearly 8% of the nation’s African-American computer science ph.d. students.
˲ Scott McCrickard, associate professor, Virginia tech. Mccrickard conducted specific, targeted outreach to undergraduate women by partnering with local women’s colleges.
˲ Mingrui Zhang, professor, Winona state University. though his computer science department’s student body is only 4% female, Zhang actively recruits women to his research programs and seeks funding to support them.
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Ray Routhier
Portland Press Herald staff writer Ray Routhier will try anything. Once. During 20 years at the Press Herald he’s been equally attracted to stories that are unusually quirky and seemingly mundane. He’s taken rides on garbage trucks, sought out the mother of two rock stars, dug clams, raked blueberries, and spent time with the family of bedridden man who finds strength in music. Nothing too dangerous mind you, just adventurous enough to find the stories of real Mainers doing real cool things.
Send an email | Read more from Ray
See major stars in Maine locales in one-time-only showing of ‘Buttons’
Written by: Ray Routhier
Jane Seymour, Devlin Stark and Charles Shughnessy in a scene from “Buttons,” a new film that was shot at several Maine locations, including in York, Kennebunkport and Victoria Mansion in Portland. It will be in theaters one day only, Saturday.
Photos courtesy of Tim Janis
Tim Janis is sending a Christmas card from Maine to the rest of the country on Saturday.
Janis’ holiday greeting actually takes the form of a motion picture called “Buttons,” about a mill town orphan girl with a guardian angel, scheduled to screen at more than 500 theaters for one day only. And he’s had a little help from some big names, including Dick Van Dyke, Angela Lansbury, Jane Seymour, Kate Winslet and Robert Redford.
Parts of the independent film were shot over five years at Victoria Mansion in Portland, St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Kennebunkport, The Old Gaol historic jail in York and several other Maine locations, plus in Hollywood.
“Maine is always in my heart, so it was special and unique for me to be able to film there,” said Janis, 51, who lived in York for more than 20 years before relocating to Los Angeles a few years ago. “The locations are perfect.”
Some of the other Maine scenes include shots of fields around York and at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport. Lots of local people were used as extras, Janis said.
“If you’re from Maine, you’ll probably recognize some people and places in this movie,” Janis said.
Katie McGrath in a scene from “Buttons.”
Janis, a nationally-known composer and pianist, began the project more than five years ago when he pitched a song called “Keep A Smile On Your Face” to Van Dyke’s agent, in hopes that Van Dyke would record it. Van Dyke, a legendary song and dance man known for classic films like “Mary Poppins” and “Bye Bye Birdie,” said he indeed liked the song.
Janis decided to use the song to try to flesh out an idea he’d had, for a story with musical numbers about orphan girls in a New England mill town and their guardian angels. Van Dyke and Lansbury, Mrs. Fletcher from the CBS drama “Murder, She Wrote”, play the guardian angels. Jane Seymour (“Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman”), Charles Shaughnessy (“The Nanny”) and Katie McGrath (“Supergirl”) are among the other TV and film stars Janis landed for the project.
Robert Picardo in a scene from “Buttons.”
The story of hardship and hope is narrated by Kate Winslet (“Titanic”) and Robert Redford. Janis, who has performed on his own PBS TV specials and at Carnegie Hall, has worked with many Hollywood stars over the years, so he had an in when trying to land famous actors. He’s worked especially closely with Winslet, organizing a yearly concert at Carnegie Hall for her Golden Hat Foundation, which benefits autistic children.
The main orphan girl in the film is played by Alivia Clark, who has also had roles on TVs “Royal Pains” and “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.”
The film’s story focuses on one young girl, Annabelle, whose parents die suddenly, around 1910. The girl had always been taught by her mother to believe in angels. So when she’s left an orphan, her guardian angel appears. The movie follows her and other orphans, plus the angels, over a 20-year period. Not to give away the ending, but Janis says it’s “triumphant and inspiring.”
When it came time for Janis to look for locations in the film, locations that could be imagined as the home of the rich and poor of a New England mill town circa 1910, he looked to Maine. Janis directed the film and wrote the score and several songs. Most of the Maine scenes were spread out over about five years, with some filming sessions lasting just a day or so. Van Dyke filmed his scenes and musical numbers at a Disney backlot in California and did not come to Maine.
“He was 89 at the time, and he was jumping all around the set,” said Janis.
Alivia Clark and Dick Van Dyke in a scene from “Buttons.”
In one scene, Van Dyke sings and dances with a penguin puppet. In “Mary Poppins,” he did a very memorable dance number with animated penguins.
Some of the film’s stars did come to Maine for the scenes shot here. Seymour and Shaughnessy came in 2015 to film at Victoria Mansion. Filming took place overnight, while the mansion was closed to visitors, said Thomas Johnson, the museum’s executive director. The cast and crew filmed at the bottom of the mansion’s great staircase and in the “red” bedroom. Johnson is hoping the mansion’s appearance in a movie that will play theaters around the country will increase awareness of the historic landmark.
“To have Victoria Mansion featured in some (of the movie’s) settings, well, that’s pretty heady stuff for us,” said Johnson.
Johnson said many staff and trustees of the museum have already reserved seats at local cinemas. When he reserved his seat at Cinemagic Westbrook online, he found only seven seats remaining.
Though it’s showing at theaters nationwide, it’s only showing one day and one time: Saturday at 12:55 p.m. The film is not distributed by a major studio, which would usually put a film in theaters for weeks and months at a time. Instead the film showings are being promoted by Fathom Events, which also arranges showings of concerts and opera in theaters.
Janis hopes that Fathom Events will decide to show the film one day each year, during Christmas season.
“If it’s successful, we’re hoping it can be annual holiday event,” said Janis.
To see a trailer of the film “Buttons” go to this story at MaineToday.com
‘BUTTONS’
WHEN: 12:55 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: Theaters around the country, including: Cinemagic Westbrook, 183 County Road, Westbrook; Cinemagic Saco, 779 Portland Road, Saco; Regal Brunswick 10, 19 Gurnet Road, Brunswick.
HOW MUCH: Prices vary from theater to theater.
INFO: FathomEvents.com
WHAT ELSE: The film, with a cast including Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury, was directed by long-time Maine resident Tim Janis and filmed at several Maine locations, including Victoria Mansion in Portland, St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Kennebunkport and The Old Gaol in York.
Up Next: Hit the club with fellow grown-up Harry Potter fans
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Home General News LI Politics: Insider’s View
Manhasset News
LI Politics: Insider’s View
Reach Out America presents Joye Brown, columnist for Newsday as its guest speaker on Wednesday, Oct. 8 at 2 p.m. Brown has covered Long Island for the paper since 2006 and has worked as a reporter, an editor, newsroom administrator and editorial writer at Newsday since 1983. “She knows Long Island Inside and Out, from Politics to Potatoes and Everything in Between” has been written about Brown. Her timely presentation will focus on the coming elections in November and what to expect on Long Island. She will bring a real insider’s view to the subject.
Her talk will follow Reach Out America’s regular meeting with its important committee reports and ongoing activities at 12:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, 48 Shelter Rock Road in Manhasset.
All are invited. For information call 516-487-8783.
Reach Out America is a grassroots not for profit organization whose purpose is to work with others in social and political action to safeguard our Constitutional rights. Further we work to find peaceful solutions to world problems while strengthening democracy at home.
Previous articleAttilio Casella
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Elizabeth Johnson is former editor of Manhasset Press and Manhasset Press Magazine. Growing up in nearby Garden City and attending New York University, she is well-versed in the locale and knowledgeable about the beat she covers. Her community involvement is extensive and includes the Manhasset SCA, Kiwanis International, Manhasset Chamber of Commerce, St. Mary’s Church, and various civic and local charitable organizations. Curious by nature, her travels, community service, love of the arts as well as local sports give her the inside view to unique content. During her time at Anton, she has received several awards from the New York Press Association and the Press Club of LI, including the coveted "Best Community Newspaper" several years in a row.
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Korea to face Netherlands in WBSC round one on Aug. 30
Host Korea will open the top youth baseball tournament on Aug. 30 against the Netherlands.
The World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) on Tuesday unveiled the schedule for the 29th WBSC U-18 Baseball World Cup, set to run from Aug. 30 to Sept. 8 in Gijang County in Busan, 450 kilometers (280 miles) southeast of Seoul.
Korea has been paired in Group A with Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, Nicaragua and China. The host country’s first game begins at 7 p.m. on the opening day of the event against the Netherlands, followed by Australia (6 p.m. on Aug. 31), Canada (noon on Sept. 1), Nicaragua (6 p.m. on Sept. 2) and China (noon on Sept. 3).
Group B teams are Japan, the United States, Chinese Taipei, Panama, South Africa and Spain.
After round-robin action, the top three teams from Group A will play the top three teams from Group B in the Super Round from Sept. 5 to 7. Then the top two teams from that stage will meet in the championship final at 6 p.m. on Sept. 8.
All games will be played at Gijang-Hyundai Dream Ballpark.
Korea will host the tournament for the second time. It’s a five-time champion and finished second to the United States at the most recent competition in 2017. Korea’s last title came in 2008.
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Meredith Completes Acquisition Of Phoenix TV Stations KTVK & KASW; Announces Agreement To Purchase WGGB-TV In Springfield, Mass.
DES MOINES, Iowa, June 19, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Meredith Corporation (NYSE:MDP; www.meredith.com) today announced completion of the acquisition of the broadcast assets of two television stations in Phoenix – the nation's 12th-largest television market – from Gannett Co., Inc.(NYSE:GCI) and Sander Media LLC for $230 million. This transaction will not have a material effect on Meredith's fourth quarter or full year fiscal 2014 financial performance.
Included in the transaction are (1) KTVK-TV, one of the nation's most successful independent stations and (2) KASW-TV, a leading CW network affiliate. At closing, SagamoreHill of Phoenix, LLC simultaneously purchased certain assets of KASW. As part of Federal Communications Commission approval, Meredith and SagamoreHill have voluntarily agreed to divest KASW through a cash sale, swap transaction or combination thereof.
The closing of the Phoenix transaction completes Meredith's previously announced agreement (December 23, 2013) to purchase television assets in Phoenix and St. Louis from Gannett and Sander Media. Meredith closed on the acquisition of KMOV-TV, the CBS affiliate in St. Louis, on February 28, 2014.
Additionally, today Meredith said it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase the broadcast assets of WGGB-TV, the ABC affiliate in Springfield, Mass., from Gormally Broadcasting LLC for $53.8 million. Meredith currently owns WSHM-LD, the CBS affiliate in the Springfield market. Meredith expects this transaction to close in the third quarter of calendar 2014, subject to receipt of regulatory approval.
"These acquisitions are consistent with our successful Total Shareholder Return strategy and will be immediately accretive to earnings, excluding upfront transaction costs," said Meredith Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Stephen M. Lacy. "These are high performing stations and will add to our already strong cash flow. We will increase our presence in the large and growing Phoenix market, where we also own KPHO-TV, the CBS affiliate. In Springfield, we will significantly enhance our competitive position as we operate the CBS affiliate in the market as well."
Meredith continues to expect fiscal 2014 full year earnings per share to be approximately at the mid-point of the $2.60 to $2.95 range established at the beginning of fiscal 2014. Meredith expects fiscal 2014 fourth quarter earnings per share to range from $0.81 to $0.86, compared to $0.75 in the prior-year period. These estimates are before special items, and exclude operating results and transaction expenses related to the acquisition of the television stations in Phoenix. Meredith's fiscal 2014 ends on June 30, 2014.
This release contains certain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on management's current knowledge and estimates of factors affecting the Company and its operations. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated. Factors that could adversely affect future results include, but are not limited to, downturns in national and/or local economies; a softening of the domestic advertising market; world, national or local events that could disrupt broadcast television; increased consolidation among major advertisers or other events depressing the level of advertising spending; the unexpected loss or insolvency of one or more major clients; the integration of acquired businesses; changes in consumer reading, purchasing and/or television viewing patterns; increases syndicated programming or other costs; unauthorized persons accessing our websites or internal networks; changes in television network affiliation agreements; technological developments affecting products or methods of distribution; changes in government regulations affecting the Company's industries; increases in interest rates; and the consequences of acquisitions and/or dispositions. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Meredith Corporation (NYSE: MDP; www.meredith.com) is the leading media and marketing company serving American women. Meredith reaches 100 million American women every month through multiple well-known national brands – including Better Homes and Gardens, Parents, Family Circle, Allrecipes and Every Day with Rachael Ray – and local television brands in fast-growing markets.
Meredith owns or operates 15 television stations that reach more than 10 percent of U.S. television households:
WGCL-TV (CBS) and WPCH-TV (TBS), Atlanta, GA
KPHO-TV (CBS) and KTVK-TV (Ind.), Phoenix, AZ
KPTV (FOX) and KPDX-TV (MYN), Portland, OR
KMOV-TV (CBS), St. Louis, MO
WFSB-TV (CBS), Hartford/New Haven, CT
WSMV-TV (NBC), Nashville, TN
KCTV (CBS) and KSMO-TV (MYN), Kansas City, MO
WHNS-TV (FOX), Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson, SC/Asheville, NC
KVVU-TV (FOX), Las Vegas, NV
WNEM-TV (CBS), Flint/Saginaw, MI
WSHM-LD (CBS), Springfield, MA
A hallmark of Meredith's business model and financial profile is its ability to consistently generate substantial free cash flow by leveraging the strength of its multi-platform portfolio. Meredith is committed to increasing Total Shareholder Return through dividend payments, share repurchases and strategic business investments. Meredith has paid a dividend for 67 straight years and increased its dividend for 21 consecutive years. Meredith currently pays an annual dividend of $1.73 per share.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090810/CG58830LOGO
For further information: Media, Art Slusark, Chief Communications Officer, Phone: (515) 284-3404, E-mail: art.slusark@meredith.com or Shareholder/Financial Analyst Contact: Mike Lovell, Director of Investor Relations, Phone: (515) 284-3622, E-mail: Mike.Lovell@Meredith.com
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Home / Blogs / Nao's blog
The new strikes in China
An article by "friends of gongchao" describes the development of strikes in China in recent years as well as the strike at Yue Yuen shoe factories in Dongguan, South China, in April 2014.
Nao already published a short post on the Yue Yuen strike. A few days ago another strike hit Yue Yuen, this time in the city of Zhuhai. The gongchao-article puts the events at Yue Yuen into the context of the rising number and the changing quality of strikes in recent years.
by friends of gongchao
Direct action is an important mode of political participation in China.
– SCMP, April 28, 2014[1]
The number of migrant worker strikes in China has risen in the past few years. China is the second largest economic power in the world and a central node of global production chains, so its strikes have an effect on the social and political texture of the country and beyond. How have strikes in China developed in the past two decades, and what characterizes them today?
In their book, published in China in 2012 and based on interviews with striking workers in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), Hao Ren, et al. describe the development of worker militancy since the 1990s.[2] After the crushing of the Tian'anmen uprising in 1989 and the temporary suspension of market reforms thereafter, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime accelerated the restructuring of the Chinese economy again after 1992. Foreign investments increased, and millions of migrant workers moved to the PRD and other industrial centers to work in the new factories. The conditions were characterized by a high rate of accidents, low wages, frequent wage theft, long overtime and high work intensity. Bullying and abuse by managers was widespread, but migrant workers fought back, with violence or hidden forms of resistance. In 1993-1994 a first strike wave rolled over foreign factories, like the Japanese company Canon in Zhuhai. The state's migration regime (hukou), that divides the population into rural and urban dwellers, was asserted through controls, deportations and police violence against "illegals". In 1995, the Chinese Labor Law was implemented, and at that time, the official labor bureau regularly intervened in labor conflicts. According to Chris Chan, the state wanted to "absorb workers' radical actions into administration-managed legal channels."[3]
China's entry into the WTO in 2001 led to a further increase in foreign investment. Despite the loosening of the internal migration regime, new export-oriented industrial centers like the PRD experienced a shortage of labor power, since many (potential) migrants refused to accept the lousy, low-paying factory jobs. Between 2003 and 2007, the number of wildcat strikes in China increased sharply, and the PRD saw more strike waves, especially in foreign companies. Jay Chen sees this as a "turning point" in the development of mass protests in China.[4]
Since then, the conditions in the factories have gradually improved somewhat, the labor intensity has decreased slightly, overtime has declined, as has the usage of violence against workers. Nominal wages have risen substantially, as the regular increases in state minimum wage standards show. In the special economic zone of Shenzhen, for instance, it increased from 574 RMB per month in 2001 to 1,000 Yuan in 2008. However, prices increased sharply as well.
Hao Ren, et al. describe how strikes started with leaflets and mobile phones and how protests in other companies were taken up and imitated. According to Chris Chan, throughout the 2000s, migrant workers also learned to take the struggle beyond the company walls and onto the streets. They called the media, blocked highways and circulated reports on the internet. Apart from production workers, in many strike cases low-level managers and sometimes even office staff took part in the strikes. The authorities reacted repeatedly with the usage of police violence or even the arrest of strike activists.
The global crisis in 2008-2009 led to a wave of dismissals in China and, in particular, in the PRD. The CCP regime postponed the scheduled increase of minimum wages and modernized labor laws and mediation mechanisms in order to strengthen the state machinery for the channeling of struggles. Capital used the crisis to improve its coordination and organization, and it tried to pass on the costs of the crisis to workers – and to the state. In cases of company bankruptcy, the authorities repeatedly stepped in and paid for wage arrears. Workers reacted with defensive struggles against relocation, dismissals, closures, wage theft, and so on.
After the recovery of the economy in 2009-2010 and the return of the labor shortage, the tide changed again and the position of the workers strengthened. In 2010, a new strike wave occurred. The starting point was the strike of Honda workers in Foshan who won a 35 percent wage increase. According to Hao Ren, et al., subsequently workers were more determined, demonstrating solidarity and persistence. Offensive strikes won a general wage increase, and in some places, workers demanded that the unions be put under worker control.
The strikes continued unabated in the years 2011 to 2013, writes the China Labour Bulletin (CLB) in a recent report, and factory wages increased by a further 50 percent between 2010 and 2013.[5] Many companies tried to compensate for the higher wages by cutting overtime hours and bonuses, introducing working time accounts and higher wage reductions for food and accommodation. In addition, capital increased the usage of temporary agency work and limited work contracts to be able to react to fluctuations in production – and to divide the work forces. In 2011, 60 million were employed through temporary work agencies in China.[6]
An outstanding strike that took place in April 2014 illustrates the current class conflict in the PRD:
Strike at Yue Yuen shoe factories in Dongguan
Capitalists will always be capitalists.
– Yue-Yuen worker making Adidas shoes after the strike in Dongguan[7]
Up to 50,000 workers from all six Yue Yuen (裕元) shoe factories in Dongguan, South China,[8] went on strike in April 2014, the biggest migrant worker strike affecting one foreign-invested company so far. Yue Yuen, run by the Taiwan-based Pou Chen Group, is one of the world's biggest contract manufacturers for shoes, making over 300 million pairs in 2013 – 20 percent of global production of sports and casual-wear shoes.[9] More than 400,000 employees (2012) produce shoes for more than thirty brands such as Nike, Adidas and Reebok in factories in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam.[10]
In Dongguan, Yue Yuen employs 60,000 workers in six factories, producing mostly for Adidas and Nike. With overtime and bonuses, employees at Yue Yuen (including managerial staff) earn an average monthly wage of around 3,000 yuan (490 USD). However, assembly line workers' wages start at the local minimum wage of 1,310 yuan (210 USD), reaching 2,200 to 2,800 yuan (350 to 400 USD) once overtime as well as individual, group, seniority, and attendance bonus payments are included. When orders are low and production is slow, wages can be even lower.[11]
About 70 percent of production workers in the shoe plants are women. In the sole-making plants they make up 50 percent, whereas in the molding factory the majority are men. Over 70 percent of employees have been working for Yue Yuen for more than five years, with between 10 and 15 percent having worked there for more than ten years. Many of these experienced workers joined Yue Yuen at the age of 18 or 19 through relatives or other people from their hometowns. Some now have children who work in the factory, too. The experienced workers know each other well and constituted the backbone of the recent struggle.[12]
The relations between the Taiwanese top managers and the Chinese staff (line leaders, foremen) on one side and the workers on the other are tense (except in the molding plant where most workers are skilled men and labor relations are more relaxed). The staff (also often linked through family or hometown relations) measure work efficiency, scold workers and put them under pressure to work fast and increase output. For instance, what was done in ten working hours before has to be done in eight hours now. "Assembly line productivity is always measured with a stopwatch. Every move has its standard time. And the output is determined according to this standard. But people are not machines, so how can they keep up such speed and accuracy in a continuous eight-hour period? People get tired and go to the toilet, don't they? This method for determining output is unreasonable and inhumane." (Yue Yuen worker, April 2014)[13]
In the past few years, workers at Yue Yuen had already been involved in protests and small-scale strikes. In 2008, for instance, hundreds of workers at a molding plant were dissatisfied with their labor contracts and refused to sign them. The employer called the police, who sealed the factory gates so that nobody could clock in for work. Workers then gathered at the gate of the Dongguan government building.[14] In past struggles, even some of the Chinese shop floor managers mobilized workers if they did not like decisions made by the Taiwanese top management.[15]
The recent strike broke out after workers found out that the company had not been paying the full social insurance contributions required for retired workers to get full pensions.[16] Instead of paying the social insurance contributions according to the full monthly wage, the company had just paid it according to the local monthly minimum wage. The pension fund is especially important for workers, because – provided the full contributions are paid for many years – they are entitled to receive a pension or transfer of cash in their accumulated pension fund if they change companies or provinces.
The Chinese state introduced new social welfare systems based on contributions by both employees and employers after the dissolution of the people's communes in the countryside in the early 1980s and the restructuring and partial destruction of the old welfare system in the cities ("iron rice bowl") in the 1990s. However, not everyone is covered and the system is underfunded, suffers from corruption and non-compliance by employers, and does not function well. Most small companies simply do not pay their contributions, bigger companies like Yue Yuen pay only according to the legal minimum wage, not the actual wage. Both argue that otherwise their tight profit margins would be eaten up and they would loose their labor cost advantages.[17] The government turns a blind eye to companies failing to pay or underpaying their social insurance contributions.
"The factory has been tricking us for 10 years," said a female Yue Yuan worker. "The district government, labor bureau, social security bureau and the company were all tricking us together."[18] Another source of accumulated discontent behind the outbreak of the strike was the low wages and the fact that wages had not been raised for long. Each time Dongguan's minimum wage was increased, Yue Yuen reduced workers' bonus payments. Yue Yuen was once considered a relatively good factory, but that is no longer the case. There is a high turnover rate and, as one worker put it when commenting on the strike: "Workers just took this opportunity to vent their anger!"[19]
The confrontation began with hundreds of workers blocking a bridge in Dongguan on April 5, 2014.[20] When the company failed to respond, on April 14 workers in several plants went on strike, and more than 10,000 protested in the streets. Hundreds of riot cops attacked, beat up workers and arrested some who had held up banners.[21] Later the police stayed in the factory area, and the arrests continued throughout the strike. This included at least two activists from local labor NGOs.[22] The workers demanded new work contracts, improved working conditions, and full make-up payments to the insurance fund.
On April 15, the strike spread to all six Yue Yuen factories in Dongguan, and involved up to 50,000 workers, who swiped their cards at the beginning of their shift but did not work. On April 16, the company asked for negotiations. Workers volunteered as representatives, but when the company refused to make concessions the negotiations broke down and some of the worker representatives were arrested – allegedly with the help of state union ACFTU officials.[23] On April 17, the Yue Yuen management promised to pay the future social insurance contributions in full starting on May 1, on the condition that workers also pay their part of the contributions. Workers stated they would not return to work before the company agreed to pay make-up contributions at once – in cash, because they did not trust neither the company nor the government on this issue.
On April 18, the wives and children of arrested worker representatives demonstrated at the factories and in front of the district administration, demanding their release. On the same day, 2.000 workers from another Yue Yuen complex in Jiangxi province, producing mainly Adidas shoes, joined the strike.[24] On April 21, Yue Yuen promised to pay a monthly living allowance of 230 yuan starting on May 1. "Workers rejected this offer, expressing insult at the small concession and distrust of the company to carry through as promised. In response to pink union leaflets announcing the 230 yuan allowance, workers scoffed that they had already lost years of unpaid pension money and even if they received full pensions plus a 230 yuan allowance in the future, it would not make up for the money they had lost. Many workers had already worked at the factory for over ten years and were approaching retirement. They would not be working there long enough to accumulate much in future pensions and would not be able to enjoy the allowance for many years. Other workers suspected that after they returned to work the company would simply find a way to fire them, and they would have no chance to enjoy the future gains."[25]
In addition, there is a problem with the social insurance contributions: It was not just Yue Yuen which has not paid the full contributions but the workers did not do it either. "Now, most of the workers at Yue Yuen don't want to pay the social insurance in arrears, because they have to pay their employee contributions out of their own pockets and they can't afford it. Long-term employees need to take out social insurance worth tens of thousands of yuan! Where can they get that kind of money?"[26] Therefore, the workers demanded that Yue Yuen pays both, the portion of arrears the company owes and the portion of the workers, too.
On April 22, demonstrations in support of the Yue-Yuen-workers took place in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, and the USA, while in Dongguan the ACFTU intervened again to attempt to stop the strike. "I think they have coordinated this – the [union] federation, the cops and the employer. They stuck a combined blow against the workers."[27] At this point, police closed the factory gates so workers could not enter or exit and would be unable to swipe their factory cards at the beginning of shifts before returning to the dormitories. Later, the management removed the shift clocks altogether.[28]
On April 24 and 25, the local authorities brought in even more riot police and stationed them around and inside the factories, arresting workers who did not resume work – all to increase the pressure on the workers to accept a deal. Even plain clothes cops went inside and arrested workers who refused to go back to work. "Yue Yuen Shoe Factory became Yue Yuen Prison!", said one worker.[29] Another commented: "We have no choice but to go back to work. What can you do if a man with shield, baton and helmet is standing next to you?"[30] By April 28, about two thirds of the workers had returned to work, while workers in one plant continued the strike.[31]
The strike was self-organized, and workers used their smart-phones and internet chat rooms to mobilize for the protests. Shop-floor managers and in some cases experienced workers played a decisive role, but as in other strikes, they did not do it openly to avoid retaliation by the management. The organizational depth was not the same in every plant and department, though, with workers in some being prepared and relatively well organized, while in others they merely joined the strike without any internal organizational coherence.[32] There are also rumors that Yue Yuen bribed shop-floor managers who had either stayed passive or played a role in organizing the strike but, eventually, put a lot of pressure on workers and used kinship networks and violence to force them to return to work. Line leaders were not paid anything for this but, according to a worker, could not take the pressure anymore and forced the workers to resume work.[33]
"I have worked here for 15 years, and I am not going without a proper response," said a 46-year-old female worker from Hunan. "Many of my co-workers are women: They thought we would be easy to pick on, we are here to prove them wrong."[34] The striking Yue-Yuen-workers stayed firm for about two weeks and rejected settlement offers by the company that would have only partially solved the problems. They wanted to see cash in their hands before they give up or get sacked, and that explains their determination, since it is rare in China that strikes continue for so long.
"The strike has failed, we didn't get the result we wanted."[35] The main reasons for the failure are the government repression and the fact that some workers either stopped the struggle after the 230-yuan-concession or continued but with a pessimistic outlook since they did not expect a better outcome anymore and gave up in the end. The state intervened with force, sending riot cops and threatening the workers, but, despite the size of the strike and the fact that the workers took the streets, it did not repress the struggle immediately or altogether but waited some time. However, the late repression was successful.
"Although we returned to work, we still harbor resentment. We all feel aggrieved today. Outwardly, the strike has been resolved but the underlying problems are still there. All in all, we are frustrated. We feel especially dissatisfied because of the government’s suppression of workers. All of us feel very angry at being forced to work now." This anger led to some attacks on shop-floor managers.[36]
Yue Yuen announced that the strike had cost the company 27 million USD in direct costs, lost profits and additional airfreight costs and that the settlement will raise employee costs by 31 million USD this year.[37] Yue Yuen has been shifting production out of Dongguan to inland provinces as well as Vietnam and Indonesia for years, despite concerns about lack of infrastructure and lower productivity. The increasing demands and militancy of workers and the resulting higher wages encourage capital to move. Nike and Adidas began shifting production to inland areas or, for instance, to Vietnam where wages are even lower.
Even during the strike, Adidas reacted fast and moved orders: "In order to minimize the impact [of the strike] on our operations, we are currently relocating some of the future orders originally allocated to Yue Yuen Dongguan to other suppliers," an Adidas spokeswoman said by e-mail. The German sportswear maker "has a highly flexible supply chain in place."[38] During the strike, Adidas also moved equipment out of Yue Yuen plants and sent it to other shoe factories in Guangdong Province.[39]
In the early stages of the strike, workers even hoped the government could help mediate in the dispute but they saw the government's true colors when the union's intervention intensified the suppression. They are the hatchet men and running dogs of the employer. The fire was put out but the embers remain and it will ignite again. And in the next strike we will definitely be better organized and combat-ready!
– Yue-Yuen-worker after the strike in April 2014[40]
In terms of number of participants within a single company, the Yue Yuen strike was the biggest strike of migrant workers in China since the beginning of the boom in the 1990s. Usually, strikes are carried out by tens, hundreds, or a few thousand workers. This time up to 50,000 were involved. The strike spread to one other province, which is a promising sign, but no further. It lasted approximately two weeks, a lot longer than the usual few hours or days. However, it did not escalate beyond the limits we have seen so far: it included work stoppages, demonstrations, some clashes with police, but it did not lead to an overall uprising, and it ended with some concessions but no breakthrough for workers.[41]
The aims of protesting workers have changed and multiplied in the recent past. Their struggle is not just about wage increases or improved working conditions but job security (in the face of closures and relocation) and social insurance. The Yue Yuen strike also reflects a demographic change in the composition of workers and their migration patterns. The large wave of migration to industrial centers like Dongguan started in the 1990s, and although many migrants returned to their inland villages or towns, millions stayed in the cities. Some of them are now retiring (in China, generally at 60 years for men and 50 for women) and have no chance to go back to the village and farm, so they demand pensions which they are also entitled to get (as long as their employers have paid the social insurance contributions).
In an increasingly volatile economic environment and amidst fears of the end of the boom, the labor shortage in China's industrial heartlands has continued, shifting the balance of power between capital and workers. Workers' ability to organize and struggle has increased in past years through the usage of social media. New hardware in the form of smart phones brought internet into the pockets of millions of workers, while new software such as the Chinese Twitter-like weibo and WeChat have enabled them to send reports, photos, and films. Both are used for organizing as well as public exposure of working conditions in order to put pressure on capital and the state. Meanwhile, the dominance of the state media has been undermined. An increasing number of strikes spreads and triggers more protests in other factories (sometimes of the same company). And the Yue Yuen strike is part of a series of worker protests that started in March and included Wal-Mart stores and several factories including at Samsung, Nokia, and IBM as well as teachers, street-cleaners, taxi and bus drivers.[42] Besides strikes, violent outbreaks of public anger continue in China. In one case, some urban management officials (chengguan) were beaten by a crowd in Cangnan, Zhejiang province, after they had harassed a street vendor and killed a man who took photographs of the incident.[43]
Still, it is not yet clear how important or exemplary the Yue Yuen strike and the strike wave in the spring of 2014 will be for the future development of class relations – for instance, compared to the strike wave in state owned enterprises (SOE) in the early 2000s or the strike wave in summer 2010, which both had long-term implications: the government changed its rhetoric and introduced social policies in the early 2000s, and the 2010 strike wave established the migrant working class as a recognized actor in Chinese society and politics.
In the past few years, the authorities have kept out of the protests and strikes as long as they were small, but when conflicts expanded or affected larger companies, they usually got involved. According to CLB, the police intervened in 20 percent of the strikes cases it investigated, mostly when workers "take to the streets" or "disrupt social order".[44] In mid-2012 and in the second half of 2013, the number of police interventions and arrests of strike activists increased drastically, and in 2012 the authorities took more action against NGOs supporting workers.
However, the reaction of the Chinese central state to the Yue-Yuen- and other recent strikes demonstrated again its dilemma: on one hand, it is interested in raising wages, a necessary condition for enlarging China's internal market and lessening the dependency on exports and the impact of the lower foreign demand. On the other hand, it fears the escalation of the class conflict that could have not just economic but political implications for the rule of the CCP and capital in general. In recent struggles, this has led to situations where strike activity was allowed within certain limits and for a certain time-span but was still repressed if it exceeded a certain time or lead to clashes on the street.[45] This partly reflects the different interest of the central state, which plays the role of a "collective capitalist" that tries to ensure social stability and the continuation of the system of capital accumulation, and the local state, which is directly connected to the exploitation process and profit accumulation through leases, ownership, etc.
Organized wildcats
Surprisingly, Hao Ren, et al. conclude in their book about strikes in the PRD that many work-stoppages, demonstrations and street blockades have still been "spontaneous" in the past few years.[46] Jay Chen, on the contrary, underlines that "individual resistance and collective protests were in many cases not spontaneous, intuitive actions but carefully planned and organized. The protest strategies were more and more optimized, too."[47] The strike cases in the book Hao Ren, et al. published also show the preparation, solidarity, circulation, and learning processes during the struggles. They give evidence of the daily contradictions workers face on the assembly lines, in the dormitories and canteens and illustrate how workers’ cooperation is not only a basis for production but also for rebellious organizing.
The importance of strikes and strike waves lies in the fact that they can give this rebellious organizing a push. Striking workers have the chance to recognize that their problems are the problems of many other workers as well. The experience of struggle can take them out of their isolation, competition, and social misery and offer them ways to take collective action. This process could be seen in China in the past few years. Strike experiences circulate, strike tactics are evaluated, collective strategies are tested, activists emerge and send out signals for solidarity actions. The realization that work stoppages can force concessions and enable workers to escape the rat race for hours or days spreads.
Struggles are usually about economic demands, but also the unfulfilled expectations, the daily drudgery, the injustice and degradation. Strikes and other forms of resistance have been more widely accepted, not just among migrant workers, since the strike wave in 2010. Some even start working in factories just to learn from workers and support their struggles.[48]
CLB writes that workers in China " increasingly realize that (…) they can certainly go it alone and get by without the trade union" but "they will have a much greater chance of creating a powerful, unified and sustainable presence in the workplace if they can reclaim the union for themselves."[49] But is the reform and takeover of the unions a precondition for a lasting improvement of the workers' conditions? CLB ignores the role unions have played in the separation of workers, the weakening of struggles, and even the worsening of exploitation, for instance, in South Africa, Brazil, or India, and how unions offer their service for the integration and pacification of struggles.
Wildcat strikes, more than anything, can be signs of the self-activity of a working class and help the participants to overcome divisions, get rid of the paternalization through union hierarchies and establish themselves as a movement beyond rituals of social partnership. Practically, the assimilation of struggles can be prevented if protesters follow the insights formulated by Hao Ren, et al.: "Strikes could be organized more easily when workers had made secret arrangements and done actions beforehand – most of all as hidden slow downs," and "it is a big advantage if there are cadres who can lead the strike from the background. That also applies when the strike is organized and a core of workers supports it. That way it is possible to prevent the repression of the strike by capitalist and to continue the struggle in an organized fashion."[50]
Especially in a region with such capital concentration as in the PRD it is important to form worker groups which prevent repression but also refuse to take part in constructing a capitalism-apt workers movement – and focus on the development of their ability to struggle, their disruptive potential, and their power to transform the social order, in every strike.
1 http://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1499178/china-cant-ignore-workers-we...
2 See the introductory article in HAO Ren u.a.: Streiks im Perlflussdelta. ArbeiterInnenwiderstand in Chinas Weltmarktfabriken (Vienna, 2014). Chinese: http://laborpoetry.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=492
3 CHAN, Chris King-chi: "Contesting Class Organization: Migrant Workers’ Strikes in China’s Pearl River Delta, 1978-2010," International Labor and Working-Class History, Nr. 83 (Frühjahr 2013): 112–36.
4 CHEN, Chih-Jou Jay: "Die Zunahme von Arbeitskonflikten in China: Ein Vergleich von ArbeiterInnenprotesten in verschiedenen Sektoren," in: Eggers, Georg, et al., Arbeitskämpfe in China. Berichte von der Werkbank der Welt (Vienna, 2013), 78–105.
5 CLB (China Labour Bulletin): "Searching for the Union. The Workers’ Movement in China 2011-13," Februar 2014: http://www.clb.org.hk/en/sites/default/files/File/research_reports/searc...
6 http://www.clb.org.hk/en/sites/default/files/File/research_reports/searc...
7 https://portside.org/2014-05-07/plying-social-media-chinese-workers-grow... (quoting a New York Times article)
8 Dongguan has become an industrial city of eight million in the past two decades. Sandwiched between Shenzhen and Guangzhou it is the center of the export-led economic structure of contract manufacturing, i.e. the production of components or the assembly of prefabricated elements into products for major international brands. Most of the workers are migrants from rural areas and other provinces.
9 http://www.4-traders.com/YUE-YUEN-INDUSTRIAL-HOLD-1412683/news/Yue-Yuen-...
10 http://www.yueyuen.com; http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-21/china-strike-at-nike-adidas-fac... http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/workers-strike-at-shoe-fa...
11 http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15947
12 http://blog.sina.cn/dpool/blog/s/blog_ed2baf420101wdoo.html (Chinese), http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/defeat-will-only-make-us-stronger-worke...
13 http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/defeat-will-only-make-us-stronger-worke...
16 Chinese companies have to pay contributions for pensions, medical care, and unemployment, which can amount to well over 10 percent of the employee's salary, see an English explanation at: http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2012/02/21/mandatory-social-welfare-b... and: http://www.chinalawblog.com/2013/11/china-employer-taxesemployee-taxes-a...
17 http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/news/new-482.html
18 http://revolution-news.com/china-thousand-yue-yuen-nike-adidas-factory-w...
20 A chronology of the struggle is available here: http://www.ilabour.org/Item/Show.asp?m=1&d=2957 (Chinese)
21 One banner said "Return Our Social Insurance, Return My Housing Fund", see the video on http://youtu.be/6Ca-hoozEGE and another one on http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27059434
22 For photos on the police presence and arrests see http://revolution-news.com/china-thousand-yue-yuen-nike-adidas-factory-w... and http://revolution-news.com/biggest-strike-chinas-history-enters-6th-day-...
23 http://www.ilabour.org/Item/Show.asp?m=1&d=2957
24 http://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1499178/china-cant-ignore-workers-we...
25 Notes after a visit in Dongguan and discussions with workers, April 2014.
27 http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/defeat-will-only-make-us-stronger-worke... [我怎么感觉他们好像是商量好了，工会，警察，资方，打一套组合拳，对象就是员工]
28 https://portside.org/2014-05-07/plying-social-media-chinese-workers-grow...
29 http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/defeat-will-only-make-us-stronger-worke.... The interviewee also stated that workers had talked to policemen who were, actually, sympathizing with the workers but said they had to obey orders.
31 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-25/china-tells-nike-shoemaker-to-r... http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/defeat-will-only-make-us-stronger-worke...
34 http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/pressure-local-authorities-forces-many-...
35 http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/614cdcb4-53e9-415b-a2bb-aebf5f1ee76...
37 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-25/china-tells-nike-shoemaker-to-r...
38 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-24/adidas-to-move-some-output-from...
39 https://www.chinalaborwatch.org/news/new-484.html
41 In that respect, the commentary (at http://wire.novaramedia.com/2014/04/5-reasons-the-strike-in-china-is-ter...) hat this strike was a "collective bargaining by riot" seems to be an exaggeration.
42 See an overview article under http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/worker-protests-china-surge-after-lunar... on the strike of Dongguan taxi drivers: http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1487693/dongguan-cabbies-launch-s... on the Foshan street clearners: http://www.ilabour.org/Item/Show.asp?m=1&d=2926; on the Shenzhen bus drivers strike: http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/thousands-bus-company-workers-strike-sh..., http://www.clb.org.hk/en/blogs/jiayi/nineteen-year-old-activist-plays-ke..., http://www.ilabour.org/Item/Show.asp?m=1&d=2924; on the Henan teachers strike: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-365467396.html, http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/teachers-strike-rural-henan-enters-tent... on Walmart: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/856685.shtml, http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/walmart-workers-changde-stand-firm-dead... at IBM: http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/workers-stand-firm-ibm-strike-enters-ni... at Nokia: http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/dismissed-nokia-workers-seek-reinstatem...
43http://www.refworld.org/docid/5358dafb4.html, http://revolution-news.com/china-violent-government-thugs-beaten-death-a...
44 See footnote 5.
45 http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/4/chinese-labor-reformdonggua...
48 See for instance the film "Die neue Generation – Fabrikarbeiter in Südchina" made by a film maker from a migrant worker family who went to work in a factory and documented the daily life there: http://de.labournet.tv/video/6554/die-neue-generation-fabrikarbeiter-sue...
wildcat strikes
Nao's blog
simiangene
Aug 3 2014 07:55
The Chinese workers are experiencing now what the Western workers have had to deal with in the 1920's and 30's, not to mention previous skirmishes during the Industrial Rev going back a couple of centuries.
Nào (闹) is unrest, noise, uproar. It stands for the proletarian troublemakers, for the revolts of peasants, workers and the unemployed against expropriation, exploitation and exclusion.
Chāi (拆) is the character of the regime. The state's demolition squads paint it on houses to tell the inhabitants to move out. It stands for the destruction not only of houses but of the preexisting social fabric.
This destruction and these revolts lead to the formation of a new social power. Investigations and analysis of this dual process will be the focus of this multilingual blog, Nào. We will irregularly post translations, reports and comments on China-related news, books, films, etc., along with reposts of sources we recommend.
For background on China, please see our lists of recommended articles, books, films, and websites here. (Updated October 21, 2014.)
Featured posts on Nào blog:
* The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)
* Twenty-five years since the Tiananmen protests: Legacies of the student-worker divide
* The new strikes in China
* New foundations for struggle and solidarity: The culmination of development and privatization on a Guangzhou Island
* Black vs. Yellow: Class Antagonism and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement
* The student parliament: reflections on the Sunflower movement
* Chinese peasant struggles from 1959 to 2013
naochina@gmx.com
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Sela Ward – Hall of Fame Profile
November 10, 2014 Max Communication Hall of Fame Videos 0
Sela Ward is an award-winning actress known for roles as Teddy Reed in the NBC drama “Sisters” and as Lily Manning on the ABC series “Once and Again,” plus roles in films like “The Fugitive” and “The Guardian.” She joined the cast of “CSI: NY” in 2010 and will appear in the 2014 film “Gone Girl,” based on the popular novel. She has won two Emmys and a Golden Globe award for “Best Actress in a Primetime Series.” She also founded Hope Village for Children, an alternative to the traditional foster-home system, in her hometown of Meridian, Mississippi. Her book, “Homesick,” was published in 2002 and appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.
Executive Producer: Amy Martin
Producer: Max Shores
Cinematography: Preston Sullivan
Editing: Michael Letcher
Narration: Mark Nelson
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Memorable Manitobans: William James “Bill” MacLeod (1914-2008)
Bagpiper.
Born at Winnipeg on 13 October 1914, son of Donald MacLeod and Catherine Urquhart, his mother passed away when he was only 18 months old. He was raised by his father and an Aunt Mary until he was seven and then other family friends, Donald and Kate Spears, played a central role in his upbringing until his father re-married and he moved back into the family home. His father began teaching him the Great Highland Bagpipe when he was 13 years of age. In 1932, he joined the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders as a cadet piper and then, four years later, progressed to being a piper in the 1st Battalion Regimental Pipe Band under his father who was then the Pipe-Major.
He joined the active armed services in September 1939 and served in Britain and northwestern Europe during the Second World War with the First Battalion Queens Own Cameron Highlanders of Winnipeg. He became the Pipe Major of the First Battalion regimental pipe band until his return to civilian life in 1946. During his overseas service, he received training at the famous Army School of Piping at Edinburgh Castle under Pipe Major William “Willie” Ross. Although some members of the Battalion participated in the Dieppe raid but he did not. His first action on the continent was in Normandy in June 1944. Pipe Band members were battlefield stretcher-bearers throughout the regiment’s time on the continent. The Camerons fought through France, Belgium, The Netherlands and into Germany until 5 May 1945. He was “mentioned in dispatches” for his distinguished service.
Once back in Winnipeg after returning from Europe, Bill pursued his pre-war love and married Islay Flora Beaton (1916-1975) of Brandon on 5 January 1946 and they subsequently had two children. After stints with the Winnipeg Electric Company and Trans Canada Airlines, in 1947 he accepted a position as an industrial electrician with the Manitoba Paper Company at Pine Falls. He worked for the company for 32 years until his retirement in 1979. Five years later, he married Mary Vickers Cook (1914-2014), a widowed Pine Falls Collegiate teacher.
He was perennially involved in community organizations throughout his years in Pine Falls. He found fertile ground in Pine Falls for his piping passion and began instructing young pipers in 1965. This attracted sufficient interest that the Pine Falls Pipe Band was formed under his leadership in 1968. The band grew in size and stature and became the Stirling Pipe Band in 1972. In 1979 Stirling amalgamated with the Centennial Pipe Band to become the Stirling and Centennial Pipe Band. He was Pipe-Major for all three of these bands. These bands were all successful in the competitive circuit on the Prairies. He instructed at and later became the Principal of the Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts piping program in Fort Qu’appelle, Saskatchewan, as well as instructing at the International Music Camp Summer School of the Arts at the International Peace Garden on the Manitoba / North Dakota border. He also served as the President of the Prairie Pipe Band Association. He was a long-time member and patron of the Clan MacLeod Society of Manitoba. He played regularly at Clan MacLeod events well into his late 80s. His participation was eagerly anticipated and his music honoured by society members.
In recognition of his community service, he received the Manitoba Good Citizenship Award (1979), East-Man Volunteer Award (1981), Manitoba Order of the Buffalo Hunt (1991), Prairie Pipe Band Association Lifetime Membership (1991), St. Andrew’s Society of Winnipeg Honorary Life Membership (2004), and St. Andrew’s Society of Winnipeg Lord Strathcona Award (2004).
He died at the Deer Lodge Centre on 22 June 2008. He is buried beside his first wife in the Chapel Lawn Memorial Gardens.
Obituary [Islay Flora MacLeod], Winnipeg Free Press, 6 February 1975, page 33.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 28 June 2008.
“Manitobans’ Legacy a Better Province,” Winnipeg Free Press, 4 January 2009, page B2.
Obituary [Mary Scobie Smith MacLeod], Winnipeg Free Press, 4 April 2014.
This page was prepared by Sheldon McLeod and Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 13 July 2019
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UK trade missions to discuss sustainable energy
The British Chamber of Commerce Myanmar announced yesterday the imminent arrival of a Trade Mission from the UK, state media reported.
The mission derives from the Energy Catalyst programme run by Innovate UK, funded though the Global Challenge Research Fund (GCRF), a £1.5 billion fund announced by the UK Government in late 2015 to support cutting-edge research that addresses the challenges faced by developing countries.
The Energy Catalyst programme was set up in 2013 to support UK-based businesses develop highly innovative, market focused, energy technologies.
In 2019 the Energy Catalyst programme was awarded £36.6m from the GCRF to develop new energy technologies and enable them to rapidly become viable sustainable energy solutions, adhering to three key pillars of; Low Cost, Low Carbon and Secure Supply, specifically working in two areas of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
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MPC Film’s Sheldon Stopsack opens CICLOPE Festival 2017
VFX Supervisor on a host of Hollywood features, Sheldon is set to take CICLOPE Festival's audience behind-the-scenes of the craft in Disney’s latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie
MPC Film's team of artists, led by VFX Supervisors Sheldon Stopsack and Patrick Ledda, worked with directors Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg, and Production VFX Supervisor Gary Brozenich, to craft effects including epic ship battles, Captain Salazar and his motley crew of sailors, ghost sharks and various environments in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. On Thursday 26 October from 10.45am – 11.15am, Sheldon Stopsack will reveal the creative challenges behind the visual effects of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, a colossal team effort that took more than two years and involved more than 700 artists and production crew.
CICLOPE Festival, the international event dedicated to the craft in moving image, kicks off next Thursday 26 October in Berlin. You can buy tickets here.
The CICLOPE finalists have been announced - and MPC landed eight nominations across four categories. We’re delighted to have partnered with adam&eveDDB, Leo Burnett Chicago, Publicis Italy, DDB Paris and JWT on the work that made the cut. Read the full breakdown below:
Branded Content: VFX
John Lewis - Buster the Boxer
Samsung – Ostrich
Heineken – The Trailblazers
Branded Content: Animation
John Lewis – Buster the Boxer
Berocca – Be More Berocca
Digital Craft: Live Experience
John Lewis – Buster's Garden VR - produced by MPC Creative
Digital Craft: Real-Time Rendered VR
Congratulations to all our creative friends and partners involved, and of course the teams of artists here at MPC – we are always proud to collaborate on such exceptional work.
About Sheldon
Sheldon began his career in 1999 studying Graphic Design at the University of Applied Science and Arts in Hannover, initially intending to become an illustrator. But after taking a course in new media he became interested in digital media and filmmaking, and worked on his first animated feature film Boo, Zino and the Snurks’ while still studying.
Sheldon joined MPC in 2007 as Lighting TD working on The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Proving himself as a key member of the Lighting department, Sheldon soon moved on to Lead Look Development TD for productions including Robin Hood, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treade, before taking on the role of Head of Department for Lighting. He became CG Supervisor in 2012 and led 3D teams on many well-known effects-heavy movies such as Dark Shadows, Total Recall, Skyfall, The Lone Ranger and X-Men: Days of Future Past. A recent standout project for Sheldon was Terminator Genisys when, as VFX Supervisor, he led the team’s pioneering work creating a digital double of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a younger man. Most recently, apart from Dead Men Tell No Tales, Sheldon has been working as VFX Supervisor on Transformers: The Last Knight.
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Home Explore Topics Planning State Environmental Policy Act
State Environmental Policy Act
This page provides a general overview of the Washington State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) , including relevant court decisions and examples of local code provisions.
The State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), Washington State's most fundamental environmental law, was enacted in 1971 as chapter 43.21C RCW.
SEPA's basic policy of maintaining and improving environmental quality is implemented primarily through extensive procedural requirements designed to ensure that governmental agencies give proper consideration of environmental matters in making decisions on actions, whether proposed by private parties or the governmental entities themselves, that may impact the environment. If initial governmental review of a proposed action indicates that the action will have probable and significant adverse environmental impacts, preparation of a detailed environmental impact statement (EIS) will be required. The procedural requirements governing this environmental review process are contained in detailed regulations enacted by the Department of Ecology (DOE) in chapter 197-11 WAC.
As the agency responsible for implementing state regulations, DOE maintains a wealth of information for local governments regarding SEPA on their website. MRSC recommends you review their online resources, especially their SEPA Handbook (2017), SEPA Guidance, and Frequently Asked Questions pages.
Statutes and Administrative Regulations
Ch. 43.21C RCW
Ch. 197-11 WAC
Recent legislative changes to SEPA
In the 2017-18 biennium, the following changes were made:
Laws of 2017, ch. 289 - Added language requiring that lead agencies “aspire” to prepare environmental impact statements within two years of issuing a threshold determination, and to “far outpace” this two-year timeframe for more straightforward actions. Requires report to legislature regarding EIS timeframes.
Laws of 2017, ch. 16 - Expands qualifying planned actions to those that have had their impacts addressed in a threshold determination (rather than an EIS) where the planned action includes mixed use or residential development and encompasses an area that is (or will be) within .5 miles of a major transit stop.
In 2012 and 2015, the Washington Legislature directed the Department of Ecology to amend state SEPA rules to update the categorical exemptions. Below is a link to the rule amendments in the DOE site:
SEPA rulemaking 2016
Examples of Codes, Policies, and Procedures
City Codes
Bainbridge Island Municipal Code Ch. 16.04
Bonney Lake Municipal Code Ch. 16.04
Bothell Municipal Code Ch. 14.02
Chelan Municipal Code Ch. 14.06
Federal Way Municipal Code Title 14
Kent Municipal Code Ch. 11.03
Sultan Municipal Code Ch. 17.04
Sumner Municipal Code Ch. 16.04
County Codes
Whatcom County Code Ch. 16.08
Clallam County Code Ch. 27.01
Special Purpose District Policies and Procedures
Port of Everett SEPA policies and procedures (2016)
Port of Olympia SEPA policies and procedures (2015)
The following list of case summaries highlights key court decisions on SEPA issues that might be of special interest to local governments. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of SEPA related court cases.
A city that has authority over (parts) of a proposal is an agency with jurisdiction for purposes of SEPA and, if an MDNS is issued, it may assume lead agency status.
Puyallup v. Pierce County, ___ Wn. App. 2d ___ (2019) – A developer sought to construct a warehouse, distribution and freight center in an area adjacent to the city of Puyallup (“City”) and within the city’s Urban Growth Area. The project would be served by city sewer and partially by city water. Due to the increased traffic the project would create, street improvements would be required to the city’s street system. The county, after SEPA review, issued an MDNS requiring, among other things, that street improvements be made to city streets. Thereafter, the City issued a “Notice of Assumption of Lead Agency Status” and made a Determination of Significance (DS) for the project. The county objected, stating it would not recognize the City’s action. A lawsuit was brought, and the trial court found in the county’s favor. The City appealed.
On appeal, the court of appeals reversed. The City can become an “agency with jurisdiction” if it can show that “it has authority to approve, veto, or finance parts of the proposal.” The City argued that, since it had authority over the required street improvements and must approve the sewer and water connections and service, it was an agency with jurisdiction. The county and developer disagreed, arguing that required work in the City was not part of the proposal and the City did not qualify as its role was that of a service provider. The court concluded that the City, based upon the plain meaning of WAC 197-11-948, was an agency with jurisdiction due to its responsibilities over the street improvements and provision of sewer and water. An agency with jurisdiction may assume lead agency status if a DNS is issued. Although the county disagreed, the court concluded that an MDNS is a type of DNS, thus allowing the City to assume lead agency status
Lease option to conduct feasibility studies was not a "project action" and therefore not subject to SEPA review.
City of Mukilteo v. Snohomish Cty., review denied, 188 Wn.2d 1019, 397 P.3d 119 (2017) – The court held that a lease option to conduct feasibility studies for commercial airline service at a portion of Paine Field was not a "project action" under WAC 197–11–704(2)(a)(ii). The option is not a decision to “[p]urchase, sell, lease, transfer, or exchange natural resources, including publicly owned land, whether or not the environment is directly modified.” Rather, the option granted a contractual right to enter the airport property to conduct feasibility studies and the right to exercise the option to lease the property at a later time. The county was therefore not required to complete a SEPA review before executing the option to lease because this option does not fall within this definition.
Lease did not bind the port so as to limit reasonable alternatives under SEPA.
Columbia Riverkeeper v. Port of Vancouver, 188 Wn.2d 80 (2017) – An environmental group brought a SEPA challenge against the Port of Vancouver, arguing that entering into a lease for a proposed petroleum facility prior to completion of an EIS violated the SEPA requirement that prohibits agency action that limits reasonable alternatives prior to completion of an EIS. Siting of the facility was subject to the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) approval. The lease included language stating that Tesoro could not occupy or develop the port property until Tesoro obtained “all necessary licenses, permits and approvals…for the Permitted Use.” The court held that the SEPA provision at issue did apply to the port, however the lease had sufficient escape clauses such that the port did not violate SEPA by entering into the agreement.
Developer did not need to show financial responsibility at SEPA stage.
Quinault Indian Nation v. Imperium Terminal Services, LLC, 190 Wn. App. 696 (2015) – A proposal was made to increase the number of oil tanks at a facility located on the Hoquiam waterfront. Oil would be transferred by ship to the tanks and then removed from the site by train cars. Initially, an MDNS was issued and the Quinault nation, as well as others, objected. Although the MDNS was eventually withdrawn, thus mooting some issues, the court considered whether the developer had to prove financial responsibility to be able to take care of oil spills at the SEPA review stage. The court concluded that it did not. There would need to be proof before the project could become operational, but it was not required when a SEPA evaluation was made. An argument that the developer had to comply with the Ocean Resources Management Act (ORMA) was also rejected by the court. ORMA would not apply unless the project involved “ocean uses” or transportation. This inland project did not involve ocean uses, and the “transportation” would need to be incidental to an ocean use to be covered (and there was no “ocean use” as defined by ORMA).
Open record hearing required on SEPA appeal
Ellensburg Cement Products, Inc. v. Kittitas County, 179 Wn.2d 737 (2014) – The county considered the appeal of a DNS for a conditional use permit application for rock crushing and related activities on agricultural-zoned property in a "closed record" hearing, and it then held an "open record" public hearing on the underlying permit application. The state supreme court held that the county, because it provided an administrative SEPA appeal process, was statutorily required to hold an "open record hearing" on the appeal of the SEPA DNS. The SEPA appeal hearing must be consolidated and simultaneous with the hearing on the underlying permit decision, and must provide for the preparation of a record, including testimony under oath, for use in subsequent proceedings.
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) required
Lands Council v. Wash. State Parks & Recreation Comm'n, 176 Wn. App. 787 (2013) – The commission issued a mitigated determination of nonsignificance (MDNS) for its classification of an area in the state park as “recreation,” allowing development of skiing facilities. The classification was conceptual in nature and subject to modification of specific locations of proposed facilities. The MDNS included a commitment to future EIS preparation when an actual detailed development proposal is made. The court held that an EIS is required before an agency makes an official classification of land if the classification would effectively approve a proposed development as described in a conceptual plan, subject only to specific siting decisions.
Douglass v. City of Spokane Valley, 154 Wn. App. 408 (2010) – The court upheld the hearing examiner's decision reversing the city planning department and requiring preparation of an EIS for a proposed housing development to address egress from the area of the proposed development (an area of high fire risk) in the event of a firestorm event that would require evacuation of the area.
Postponement of environmental analysis
Spokane County v. E. Wash. Growth Mgmt. Hearings Bd., 176 Wn. App. 555 (2013) – The court emphasized that, for a nonproject action such as a comprehensive plan amendment or rezone, the agency must address the probable impacts of any future project action the proposal would allow. Thus, the hearings board did not err in finding SEPA noncompliance because the County failed to fully disclose or carefully consider the comprehensive plan amendment's environmental impacts before adopting it and at the earliest possible stage under RCW 43.21C.030(2)(c) and WAC 197-11-330(1). The hearings board properly recognized that the SEPA checklist could not postpone environmental analysis to the project review stage because the comprehensive plan amendment approved the property's existing nonconforming use, thereby affecting the environment even if the property owners or their successors never pursue subsequent project action.
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) not an "action"
Int'l Longshore & Warehouse Union, Local 19 v. City of Seattle, 176 Wn. App. 511 (2013) – A memorandum of understanding (MOU) specifying city and county participation in the financing and operation of the proposed sports arena was not an "action" under SEPA because their commitments were expressly contingent on a future decision to proceed with their participation in the project after completion of an EIS. The MOU was not an “action” because, by itself, it had no environmental impact.
SEPA challenge to comprehensive plan and zoning code amendments
Davidson Serles & Assocs. v. City of Kirkland, 159 Wn. App. 616 (2011) – The Growth Management Hearings Board has exclusive jurisdiction to review challenges to comprehensive plans and development regulations that are based on SEPA. Also, no EIS is required for planned action projects because the environmental impacts of the individual planned action projects will have been addressed in an EIS prepared earlier in conjunction with one of the six activities listed in RCW 43.21C.031(2)(a)(ii).
Legal support for mitigation condition
Brinnon Group v. Jefferson County, 159 Wn. App. 446 (2011) – A single citation to an environmental policy in support of several mitigation conditions may be sufficient to satisfy the requirement in WAC 197-11-660(1) that the basis for a mitigation condition delineated in an environmental impact statement be supported by citation to an environmental protection policy. Nothing in RCW 43.21C.060, which authorizes mitigation conditions, or WAC 197-11-660(1), which establishes the citation requirement, requires a government agency to separately cite an environmental policy for each mitigation condition specified in an environmental impact statement. of the rule.
Fluoridation decision exempt from SEPA review
Clallam County Citizens for Safe Drinking Water v. City of Port Angeles, 137 Wn. App. 214 (2007) – A city council's decision to fluoridate the public water supply is categorically exempt from environmental review under SEPA. However, nothing in SEPA or the SEPA rules precludes an agency from issuing a DNS on a project determined to be categorically exempt.
Condemnation proceedings are not subject to SEPA
Regional Transit Authority v. Miller, 156 Wn.2d 403 (2006)
Hearing examiner jurisdiction
In re Jurisdiction of King County Hearing Examiner, 135 Wn. App. 312 (2006) – The court held that the hearing examiner lacked jurisdiction to hear a challenge to a supplemental EIS after having a decision upholding the adequacy of the final EIS. Also, RCW 43.21C.240 allows counties and cities to determine that a project's environmental impact will be mitigated through its own development regulations and existing environmental documents.
Review authority over plat mitigation
City of Olympia v. Thurston County Bd. of Comm'rs, 131 Wn. App. 85 (2005), review denied, 158 Wn.2d 1003 (2006) – Where a mitigation measure identified in a mitigated determination of nonsignificance is required as a condition of plat approval, review is according to procedures for review of the plat, not according to proceduress for seeking review of the threshold determination. A mitigation measure is not a threshold determination under SEPA rules.
SEPA EIS is not required when an adequate EIS has been previously prepared under NEPA
Boss v. Department of Transportation, 113 Wn. App. 543 (2002) – When an adequate environmental impact statement (EIS) has been previously prepared under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for the same project, a SEPA EIS is not required, under RCW 43.21C.150.
Supplemental EIS not required
Thornton Creek Legal Defense Fund v. Seattle, 113 Wn. App. 34 (2002), review denied, 149 Wn.2d 1013 (2003) – A proposed development's effect upon a hypothetical habitat restoration project is not an adverse environmental impact under SEPA. Also, the city's circulation of a "notice of availability" of an EIS addendum rather than a "notice of adoption" of the addendum, as required by law, was harmless error.
Cumulative impacts
Boehm v. City of Vancouver, 111 Wn. App. 711(2002) – An analysis of the cumulative impacts of a proposed project is not required under SEPA unless (1) there is some evidence that the project will facilitate future action that will result in additional impacts or (2) the project is dependent on subsequent proposed development. A project's cumulative impacts that are merely speculative need not be considered.
SEPA / GMA integration
Moss v. City of Bellingham, 109 Wn. App. 6 (2001), review denied, 146 Wn.2d 1017 (2002) – The city granted preliminary plat approval after issuing a determination of nonsignificance, thus obviating the need for preparation of an EIS. RCW 43.21C.240, as implemented by WAC 197-11-158, substantially streamlined the threshold determination process for cities and counties planning under the GMA by authorizing the SEPA official to rely on existing plans, laws, and regulations in meeting SEPA requirements.The preliminary plat approval included numerous conditions in mitigation of the environmental impacts of the proposed development. The court held that an environmental impact statement was not required where the requirements of the local comprehensive plan and regulations and conditions of plat approval mitigated all of the significant environmental impacts of the proposed development.
Supplemental EIS
Wells v. Water Dist. 10, 105 Wn. App. 143 (2001) – An agency is not required to supplement an existing final environmental impact statement (FEIS) where new information regarding a project's potential impacts does not establish that significant adverse impacts are probable, meaning reasonably likely to occur. The mere possibility of those impacts occurring is not sufficient to require a supplement to the FEIS. A claim that "new information" requires supplementation of an FEIS is subject to the 21-day limitation in RCW 43.21C.080(2)(a) for challenging a governmental action under SEPA. A challenge after that 21-day period is not allowed unless there has been a substantial change in the proposed action that would likely have new significant adverse impacts or an impact previously identified as needing further evaluation.
Mitigated DNS
West Coast, Inc. v. Snohomish County, 104 Wn. App. 735 (2000) – A developer granted preliminary plat approval for which a final and binding mitigated determination of nonsignificance (MDNS) has been issued may not undermine that determination by seeking revision of the preliminary plat in an attempt to remove an express condition of plat approval on which the MDNS is based.
Lead agency status
Bellevue Farm Owners Assoc. v. Shorelines Hearings Bd., 100 Wn. App. 341 (2000) – An agency has jurisdiction under SEPA if it must issue permits or approvals for the project. WAC 197-11-714(3). Another agency with SEPA jurisdiction cannot change a DNS unless it assumes lead agency status. WAC 197-11-390(2)(b). If another agency assumes lead status under WAC 197-11-948(1), the new lead agency can review the underlying materials and reverse the first lead agency's DNS. The new lead agency can then order preparation of an EIS. WAC 197-11-948(2). But the county's DNS for a proposed shoreline development did not preclude the Shorelines Hearings Board from later denying the permit for proposed development because of environmental impact.
Consideration of alternatives
King County v. Cent. Puget Sound Bd., 138 Wn.2d 161 (1999) – SEPA directs that "alternatives to the proposed action" be included in an EIS. Also, SEPA rules mandate consideration of "reasonable alternatives," which are defined as less environmentally costly action that could feasibly attain or approximate a proposal's objectives. An alternative considered for purposes of an EIS need not be legally certain or uncontested, it must only be reasonable. Thus, consideration of a one-acre lot subdivision as an alternative to the proposed urban planned development is permissible, even if the one-acre alternative may not legally be available as an option.
Availability of writ of review
Saldin Sec. v. Snohomish County, 134 Wn.2d 288 (1998) – Property owners who proposed to develop nearly 100 acres into separate residential subdivisions filed petitions for constitutional writs of certiorari seeking judicial review of the county council's decision requiring preparation of a limited EIS with respect to the issue of potential groundwater contamination. The county deferred action on the preliminary plat applications until completion of the EIS. SEPA, specifically RCW 43.21C.075(6)(c), requires that judicial review of any SEPA determination be coupled with an appeal of the final action on an application. The court held that SEPA did not provide effective review of the county council's requirement of an EIS, and that a constitutional writ of review is available if the project proponent alleges facts that, if verified, indicate that the council's decision was illegal or arbitrary and capricious. Here, the project proponent did not allege such facts.
Conclusory findings of adverse impacts
Hayes v. City of Seattle, 131 Wn.2d 706 (1997) – The city's decision to condition the grant of a master use permit on a reduction in the length of the proposed building was conclusory and, contrary to SEPA, did not specifically describe the adverse impact of the project or explain how reducing the size of the project would mitigate any such adverse impact.
EIS adequacy
Kiewit Construction v. Clark County, 83 Wn. App. 133 (1996) – Kiewit appealed the county's decision to require a supplemental EIS for a proposed asphalt manufacturing plant or, alternatively, to require Kiewit to construct a ramp from the site to a nearby freeway as a condition of granting the requested permit. The county required the supplemental EIS because it deemed the original EIS to be inadequate. The court, in upholding the county's decision, cited the rule that the legal adequacy of an EIS is tested under a rule of reason. Under this rule, an EIS is adequate if it provides a reasonably thorough discussion of the significant aspects of the probable environmental consequences of the proposed activity and presents sufficient information to allow the governmental decision maker to make a reasoned choice among alternatives. In addition to deciding that the requirement of the supplemental EIS satisfied this test, the court concluded that approval of the permit conditioned on the construction of a freeway ramp was a valid alternative to the supplemental EIS requirement.
EIS adequacy / phased review
Opal v. Adams County, 128 Wn.2d 869 (1996) – The plaintiff land preservation organization appealed the county's decision to grant a permit authorizing the use of a site in the county for a proposed regional solid waste landfill and recycling facility. Among other things, the plaintiff argued that the EIS should have included consideration of offsite alternatives. The court disagreed, concluding that this was a private project for which SEPA does not require consideration of alternatives. In looking at whether this was a public or private project, the court considered (1) which entity primarily sponsored or initiated the project and (2) whether the public entity is seeking to fulfill its responsibility to perform a traditional governmental function by way of a private project. The court also concluded that phased environmental review of this project was appropriate.
Banning Plastic Straws and Utensils
SEPA Rule Changes Take Effect on May 2014!
‘Moment of reckoning:’ U.S. cities burn recyclables after China bans imports
Utah lawmakers may overrule cities’ plastic bag bans
Can a school district act as a lead agency for SEPA compliance?
May a city require mitigation under its SEPA authority that would impose requirements beyond what the city's zoning code imposes?
Planned Action
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Showing posts with label Rockwell. Show all posts
Peeping Tom - Rockwell
Peeping Tom is a person who, in the legend of Lady Godiva, watched her during her ride and was struck blind or dead. The song 'Peeping Tom' was Rockwell's third single, taken from his album 'Captured'. It also featured on the soundtrack of the motion picture 'The last dragon', a Motown Productions picture. This martial arts film was a critical disappointment but a commercial success.
Although personally I think this is an accomplished song, it was not successful in any territory. I had the 12" single before I found this 7" single - and I do admit the remix is better than the single version.
Found: Record fair, Rotterdam, December 23, 1995
Cost: 1 guilder
Tracks: 'Peeping Tom' / 'Tokyo (instrumental)'
Labels: Eighties, Rockwell
Obcene phone caller - Rockwell
'Obscene phone caller' was Rockwell's second single and an attempt to follow up the highly successful debut 'Somebody's watching me' with an equally successful song. Where 'Somebody's watching me' could be construed as a song about voyeurs, this time around Rockwell sang about a heavy breather on the phone.
The audiences were not impressed. In the USA, where according to this sleeve the single was a 'Top hit', it peaked at number 35. In German, where this single was made, it only made number 53 and in the UK it stalled at number 79. It soon became obvious that Rockwell had gained a status as a one hit wonder.
Found: Record fair, Amsterdam, September 16, 1995
Tracks: 'Obscene phone caller' / 'Obscene phone caller (instrumental)'
Somebody's watching me - Rockwell
Rockwell is the son of Motown CEO Berry Gordy, Jr., Kennedy Gordy. He had himself signed to Motown without his father's knowledge. Dad did not find out until 'Somebody's watching me' and the accompanying debut album were released on his own Motown label.
Backing vocals on 'Somebody's watching me' were provided by Michael Jackson, who was not credited on the single for this. It may have contributed to the big success of the single, which peaked at number 6 in the UK and number 2 in the Netherlands.
Found: August 19, 1995
Tracks: 'Somebody's watching me' / 'Somebody's watching me (instrumental)'
Labels: Eighties, Michael Jackson, Rockwell
Rockwell is the son of Motown founder and CEO Berry Gordy. To avoid charges of nepotism, Rockwell secured his record deal without his father's knowledge. 'Peeping Tom' was Rockwell's third single, taken from the motion picture 'The last dragon'.
When I heard the 12" remix of this track, thanks to my sister who had bought the 12" single, I was really impressed. I liked the echoed vocals, the extra beats, the instrumental breaks and everything that the single version lacked. I only got the chance to buy this record three years after it was released - but I still remembered it. Good remixes can do that.
My collection: 12" single no. 70
Found: Free Record Shop, Den Haag, 1988
Tracks: 'Peeping Tom [remix]' / 'Tokyo (instrumental version)'
Labels: Eighties, Remixes, Rockwell
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Soup Kitchen Limits End in Gainesville
Written by NCH Staff on August 19, 2011 . Posted in Civil Rights, Criminalization
In March 2009, a city developer informed the Gainesville, Florida city Plan Board about an 18 year old ordinance that was regularly violated. The ordinance, located here in city code, limited soup kitchens to serving up to 130 meals within a 24 hour period. The Plan Board listened to the developer and voted for stricter enforcement of the limit. After two years of protests and activism, the 130 meal limit will now be replaced with a new policy that allows soup kitchens to serve as many people as they can within a three hour period each day.
The Coalition to End the Meal Limit NOW! lead a grass-roots effort to repeal the ordinance.
Due to exemptions in the original ordinance for churches and the Salvation Army, St. Francis House was the city’s only soup kitchen affected by the limit. Commissioner Jeanna Mastrodisca had stated that the limit was in place to keep soup kitchen patrons from being concentrated in the downtown area where many receive meals from the St. Francis House, saying “What we’re trying to do is spread [patrons] out. […] That’s our goal.” City Spokesman Bob Woods said in 2009 that Gainesville is currently developing a “one-stop” homeless center that will provide food, shelter, and services. Woods also said that Churches can hand out up to 20 meals without a permit.
But with the center still yet to break ground in August 2011, the hungry have limited options in Gainesville: according to the Coalition to End the Meal Limit NOW!, “the St. Francis House, in order to keep its license to operate, has had to turn away anyone after number 130 in line to be fed, despite lines approaching 300 people.” The meal limit was featured in the National Coalition for the Homeless’ (NCH) 2010 report on food sharing prohibitions and also helped garner Gainesville the fifth spot on NCH’s 2009 Ten Meanest Cities.
People began protesting the meal limit by picketing city hall and demanding that it be overturned in the summer of 2009. A petition to lift the limit on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and another holiday of St. Francis’ choosing quickly reached the city Plan Board later that year, and the unelected group of Gainesville residents recommended that the City Commission investigate overturning the limit all together. The Plan Board unanimously reaffirmed its position in 2011.
As the amount of time that the meal limit was enforced increased, so did its opposition. On December 1, 2010, the Coalition to End the Meal Limit NOW!formed with the mission of ending the need for their organization to exist as soon as possible.
The Coalition planned to post a billboard with this design to raise awareness and rally support against the limit.
The Coalition brought together a number of people and groups, including Food Not Bombs, Veterans for Peace, and the International Socialist Organization, acting as an umbrella to coordinate protests of the meal limit.
By August 2011, the Coalition had grown immensely. According to Sean Larson, the Coalition Convener, “we currently have 18 member organizations, with many of those sending regular delegates to our bi-weekly meetings. […] We [also] have had over 700 local residents sign the Coalition’s petition, and almost 15,000 supporters sign an online petition at Change.org.”
The petitions have brought attention to the issue, but not nearly as much as the Coalition’s pickets and protests. Larson says that their presence at city hall and downtown has drawn local, national, and even international attention to the meal limit, putting considerable pressure on the City Commission. According to Larson, their campaign gained even more momentum following a revelation that it was only a select group of land developers who pushed for the limit, allowing the Coalition to single out those responsible and hold boycotts and pickets. In October 2010, Gainesville Mayor Craig Lowe still defended the meal limit, saying that it was the best way to keep the downtown community safe until an alternative could be found. But less than a year later, on July 27, 2011, Lowe announced his support of ending the limit, endorsing a plan that allows soup kitchens to serve an unlimited amount of people within a three hour window each day.
Larson says that the Coalition’s protesting is what truly made a difference: “[Mayor Lowe’s] indefensible support of the meal limit became unsustainable in the face of the mounting pressure engendered by the Coalition’s public actions, which generated a large public outcry against the mayor in particular. He changed his position because he had to.” On August 18, 2011, a repeal of the 130 meal limit won its first City Commission vote, and in its place will likely be the “three hour window” plan that Lowe eventually backed.
*This marks the last post by our Civil Rights Summer Intern Daniel Honeycutt. Thank you Dan (and all of our summer interns) for your great work this summer!
Tags: Feeding Restrictions, Florida, Interns
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This Is the Most Wished-For Airbnb in Portugal
By Jennifer Calfas
Visitors to this villa in the hills of northern Portugal get the best of both worlds with nearby mountains and beaches in a quaint, green oasis.
Located in the Viana do Castelo municipality, this home is Portugal’s most-wished-for Airbnb listing — a measurement determined by the number of people using the travel service to save the property as a dream destination. More than 26,200 people using Airbnb saved this property on their wish-lists — besting other properties located in more popular tourist destinations like Lisbon and Porto, Portugal.
But the rustic and local feel of the villa is much of what Airbnb is about: finding ways to feel at home in a place that isn’t. At this property, guests pay between $79 and $91 a night, depending on the day and time of the year, for the entire villa, which houses up to four guests. The one-bedroom home has three beds and one-and-a-half bathrooms, and its walls are lined with stone.
Partner Offers by Compare Cards
Courtesy of Airbnb
What likely makes Casa do Rio so desirable for so many is its location. A trail near the house takes visitors to the mountains, and a river runs just outside. With a 30-minute walk, guests will reach waterfalls, and by car, they can get to the beach in 15 to 20 minutes, the owners of the property say in the listing on Airbnb.
Much like many of the most-wished-for destinations in each state in the United States, this spot in Portugal also touts its off-the-grid features. There’s no internet, television connection or radio — save for a few DVDs and CDs, the listing says.
“It’s a great place to stay if you want to relax and feel disconnected from the rest of the world,” one visitor wrote in a review.
Portugal shot up to the top of the list for some travelers recently, with the country setting records for its annual number of visits from foreign tourists for the last six years. according to data from the National Statistics Institute. The country has also received a number of accolades from MONEY. Lisbon, the country’s capital, was named the sixth-best European destination for your money this year, as well as one of the Best Places to Retire Abroad, due to its reasonable cost of living and discounted train tickets for people ages 65 and older.
In 2016, Travel + Leisure named Portugal its Destination of the Year for its economic growth over the last several years and stunning landscapes.
We’ve included affiliate links in this article. Click here to learn what those are.
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New UNHS program ready to begin
April 20, 2017 23c9u4e Leave a comment
Utah Navajo Health System’s new Family Spirit Program is now fully staffed, with the addition of a third Public Health Nurse, and the staff began seeing patients in early April.
Don Benally, RN, has accepted the final Public Health Nurse position and joins Darcy Chamberlain and Talisha Biakeddy on the staff of the Family Spirit Program, under the direction of UNHS Public Health Director Shawn Begay. Benally’s background includes experience as a combat engineer, journeyman electrician and seven years of schooling as a Certified Nursing Assistant, LPN, RN and a Bachelors Degree in Public Health Nursing, all from Weber State University.
Benally grew up in Forest Lake, Arizona, and attended high school at Monument Valley High School, in Kayenta, where he graduated in 1990. After graduation he joined the United States Army and trained as a combat engineer. He ser-ved in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom and left the Army in 2008.
In 2009 he began his nursing training at Weber State University, in Ogden, and received his CNA, LPN, RN and Bachelors in Nursing over the next seven years. He finished his schooling last December and learned of the UNHS Public Health Nurse position from family members living in Aneth, where his wife’s family lives.
He met his wife in 2000 and over the past seventeen years the couple has welcomed five children to their family. Their children range in age from 15 years to 16 months. His wife works with Navajo Nation Behavioral Health, in Shiprock, New Mexico and the family lives in Aneth.
Benally said he’s excited to join the Family Spirit Program and looks forward to reaching out, educating and working with young mothers and young families. The program focuses on mothers in their third trimester of pregnancy and works with the family until the babies reach their third year of age. The Public Health Nurses work to teach young families basic life skills to help care for their babies and their families so they are equipped to care for them after they leave the program.
Benally said he hasn’t had much time for hobbies over the years because he’s been busy with school and work and other responsibilities, but he does enjoy running and he enjoys spending time with his family.
We are happy to have Don as a part of the UNHS family and we look forward to getting to know him better. When you see him around say hello and welcome him aboard.
Don Benally was recently selected as one of the Top 10 Graduating Seniors at Weber State University, earning a 3.5 GPA or higher, and have demonstrated excellence in leadership, community service, teamwork, diversity and inclusion. He will be honored at WSU’s 8th Annual Ceremony of Excellence.
Category: UNHS, Volume Four, Number Ten, April 20, 2017 Tags: family spirit, unhs
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Rock power: Australia's future?
By Mike Pope - posted Wednesday, 5 August 2009 Sign Up for free e-mail updates!
Fundamental to Australia achieving significant reduction of CO2 emissions is our ability and willingness to replace electricity generated from fossil fuels with competitively priced, clean, base load electricity produced from renewables. At present, few generators do this, or can, and the political will to replace fossil fuels or even countenance a sharp reduction in their use is lacking, by both sides of politics.
Wind power (priced at about $56/MWh) is competitive with coal generated electricity ($55/MWh) but can not be relied on to produce continuous uninterrupted power 24 hours a day, every day - in other words, base load power. Hydro power ($60/MWh) does produce base load power but is limited in its availability and opportunities for expansion. Given the present state of technology solar-thermal electricity is almost base-load quality but is twice as expensive as coal power.
However, we can not ignore the elephants in the room: nuclear and geothermal.
Nuclear power stations can produce electricity at a similar price to geothermal, but to this has to be added the cost of storing waste. The current inability to treat nuclear waste or guarantee its safe storage are the reasons used by the ALP to justify its ideological position of refusing to countenance the use of nuclear power in Australia. A further problem with this source of energy is that a lead-time of 12-15 years is required for the building and commissioning of a nuclear power station.
Interestingly, the ALP is not critical of countries which use nuclear power stations to meet their energy needs, provided they are signatories to the Non Proliferation Treaty. France produces more than 80 per cent of its electricity in this way and is fast approaching the point where it will use no fossil fuels for this purpose.
At present, the only alternative to nuclear energy is electricity generated from geothermal steam at costs variously estimated to be $65-$70/MWh. “No!”, say industrial consumers, not if geothermal costs $10-$20/MWh more than coal. That rejection is understandable but is based on present day cost estimates, rather than those which should and are likely to apply after introduction of a carbon emissions licensing scheme.
Australia has the highest per-capita CO2 emissions in the world. The major source of those emissions is the burning of coal to generate electricity or provide heat for smelting and other tasks. There is a penalty to be paid by coal users. It is the cost of using technology to prevent or limit emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere or the cost of permits allowing coal users to make such emissions.
Clean coal technology is in the early stages of development and is unlikely to be tried, tested and commercially available for 10 years or more. Briefly, it involves retrofitting power stations with a system to capture CO2 at the point of emission, removal from the agent used to capture it, applying pressure to liquefy it, then transporting it to an often distant secure underground depository.
The energy required for these processes has been estimated to be 20-30 per cent of power station output plus other operating costs, adding an estimated $20-$25/MWh to the cost of electricity generated from coal. If this technology were not applied, power stations burning fossil fuels would have to pay for their emissions, increasing generating costs by a similar or higher amount or, if they had their way, continue polluting at no cost to them.
Either way, generating costs would increase to the point where electricity produced from burning coal becomes more expensive than electricity generated from geothermal steam. The only way of protecting coal and preventing geothermal electricity from being competitive is to issue coal producers and users with free permits, allowing them to continue their emissions free of any penalty. The Rudd Government proposes doing so.
But that defeats the central purpose of having an ETS which is to bring about a reduction not only in global CO2 emissions but those for which Australia is responsible. It is doubtful that governments of any political persuasion could persist with such a permit system for very long without attracting international and domestic condemnation and, ultimately, sanctions.
The cost of base load electricity generated from fossil fuels will become more expensive than that produced from geothermal steam because the latter is emission-free and subsidy-free. Removal of the subsidies currently paid by the Australian and state governments to coal producers and users would further increase the cost of electricity generated by burning coal.
Mike Pope trained as an economist (Cambridge and UPNG) worked as a business planner (1966-2006), prepared and maintained business plan for the Olympic Coordinating Authority 1997-2000. He is now semi-retired with an interest in ways of ameliorating and dealing with climate change.
» Trickle-down or trickle-up? - April 12, 2018
» National Party policies betray interests of supporters - February 5, 2018
» The need for renewable electricity - October 7, 2016
» It ain't necessarily so on sea rise - August 16, 2016
» Is direct action enough? - October 5, 2015
All articles by Mike Pope
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Rite Aid Corp (RAD): Stock to Follow
The number of shares that were traded during the day was 0.35 million, which corresponds to its 3-month volume average of 0.11 million shares a day. Fort Point Capital Partners Llc decreased its stake in Nxp Semiconductors N V (NXPI) by 71.63% based on its latest 2017Q3 regulatory filing with the SEC.
Williams Cos Inc/The (WMB) Holding Raised by Partners Group Holding Ag
Williams Companies, Inc. has P/S value of 3.36 while its P/B value stands at 3.31. It has outperformed by 23.50% the S&P500. The company has market cap of $451.26 million. Howard Weil downgraded the shares of WMB in report on Tuesday, September 29 to "Sector Perform" rating. 272,088 shares were sold by CHAPPEL DONALD R, worth $8.25M on Tuesday, September 26.
Reports say China may slow US Treasury purchases, trade tensions cited
Treasuries, according to people familiar with the matter. It isn't clear whether the recommendations of the officials have been adopted. Hitting the US bond market overnight was a Bloomberg story about Beijing reviewing its policy of buying USA government paper.
Berkshire adds 2 top executives as directors, fueling speculation about Buffett's successor
Gregory Abel and Ajit Jain can now probably be thought of as the official likely successor (s) to Warren Buffett , after Berkshire Hathaway ( BRK.A , BRK.B ) adds them to the board. Jain is being appointed vice chairman of insurance operations. While Berkshire remains best known for insurance and reinsurance, that sector now generates only about one-fourth of operating results as the company has diversified.
Carphone Warehouse fined GBP 400000 by ICO for data breach
The fine, one of the largest ever issued by the ICO and the same amount as the fine given to TalkTalk in 2016, came after a hacker managed to access the personal data of more than three million customers and 1,000 employees, including credit card details, names, addresses and phone numbers.
USA 10-year yields climbs further as bond market signal gets stronger
The breakout is surely under way at this point, and the next level to look at will be the 2017 high at the 2.627% level. Last year Gross said if ten-year yields were persistently above 2.4% this would signal a bear market , but added in an interview last week that in such an environment investors would be unlikely to lose a lot of money.
Apple ordered to pay £136 million tax bill following 'extensive' United Kingdom audit
A spokesperson for Apple pointed out that the company is regularly audited by tax authorities around the world and "pays all that we owe according to tax laws and local customs in the countries where we operate". "As a result of this adjustment the company's corporate income tax payments will increase going forward", the company added. "Last year alone, HMRC secured and protected over £8 billion in additional tax revenue from the largest and most complex businesses".
British manufacturing records strongest output since 2008
Industrial production has now increased for eight months in a row, the first time this has been achieved since 1994, according to Samuel Tombs, chief United Kingdom economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. Imports were up a mere 2.6 percent by comparison. The longest run of monthly expansion since 1997 means manufacturing output is now at levels close to the pre-financial crisis peak seen in February 2008 and is set to provide a fillip for the wider economy in the face of more hard consumer ...
Daily Mail banned on Virgin Trains cites LGBTQ rights, immigration and unemployment
Virgin trains operates the West Coast mainline with trains from London to Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Scotland. Virgin's memo went on to deem the newspaper "not at all compatible" with Mr. Stop Funding Hate, encourage people to write to brands and ask them to discontinue associations with the Daily Mail. He added: "It is equally rich that Virgin chose to launch this attack on free speech in the Aslef trade union journal".
Investors ditch spread-betters after FCA warning
There are "areas of serious concern" in Britain's contracts for differences (CFDs) market, the country's financial watchdog said on Wednesday following a review. Some firms were unable to offer any evidence of MI or KPIs, according to the regulator. Numis analyst James Hamilton said that while the FCA's letter could prove "very damaging" to many in the CFD sector, IG was likely to emerge unscathed.
Government helped make UK's biggest rail franchise the 'worst', major report finds
The National Audit Office has concluded that high levels of disruption for passengers mean that, to date, the Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern rail franchise has "not delivered value for money". "We expect service improvements to continue as the Thameslink programme is completed". "Some of the problems could have been avoided if the Department had taken more care to consider passengers in its design of the franchise".
Why Tesla Model 3 Deliveries Missed the Mark
Analysts had expected 4,100 Model 3 sedans to be delivered in the fourth quarter, according to financial data and analytics firm FactSet. This is the second time Tesla has punted on its 5,000-per-week milestone. "The company has now said it is focused on quality versus volume, which is the right focus". We're very grateful to everyone at Tesla who has poured their heart and soul into helping with the Model 3 ramp and creating the progress we are seeing.
Theresa May extends the 5p plastic bag charge to all shops
The Prime Minister said she wanted her Government to take a stand against the "profligate" use of natural resources as she briefed her Cabinet about the plan. The charge applies to every new plastic bag used at large stores in England - but only shops or chains with 250 or more full-time employees. Government sources have confirmed that it will consult on the extension 5p charge on single-use carrier bags, which has seen nearly a 90% fall in usage since its launch in 2015.
Disney World monorail travels with door open, guests inside
However, as the monorail rounded a curve outside the TTC, the door popped open. The monorail moves from 15 to 40 mph and covers a 14-miles span around the resort, according to the 2007 book "The Complete Guide to Walt Disney World ". Once the train came to a stop at the next station, the passengers alerted Disney employees. A spokeswoman said there is a phone in all of the cabins that connect passengers to the train pilot, but would not go as far as saying the park recommends passengers ...
Strike set to cause disruption for train users in South Yorkshire
Picket lines will be mounted outside railway stations affected by the strike, and passengers face delays, cancellations and replacement buses in some parts of the country. 'It is frankly ludicrous that we have been able to negotiate long-term arrangements in Scotland and Wales that protect the guards and passenger safety but we are being denied the same opportunities with rail companies in England.
Mgm Resorts International (MGM) Holder Hoplite Capital Management LP Has Lowered Stake
It has outperformed by 13.73% the S&P500. MGM Resorts has $41.0 highest and $22 lowest target. The company has market cap of $3.27 billion. Harris Associate Lp reported 1.16% in MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM). Twin Tree Management Lp accumulated 0.03% or 112,989 shares. Commonwealth Of Pennsylvania School Empls Retrmt System invested 0.02% in MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM).
Operations at JFK Airport slowly return to normal
As to the water pipe that burst, it feeds a sprinkler system in the privately operated terminal. Departures were not impacted. It's not yet clear what caused the water main to break, but the wet bags and resulting flight delays - including a shutdown of global flights to Terminal 4 - were just the latest misfortune to strike JFK passengers over the past three days.
Salesforce.com, inc. (CRM) Stake Lessened by Atalanta Sosnoff Capital LLC
Fred Alger Management Inc who had been investing in Salesforce.Com Inc for a number of months, seems to be bullish on the $78.08 billion market cap company. Oppenheimer maintained it with "Outperform" rating and $95 target in Thursday, May 19 report. RBC Capital Markets maintained it with "Buy" rating and $110.0 target in Wednesday, November 8 report.
What Analysts Have to Say About Synergy Pharma Cmn (SGYP)?
Amalgamated Bank boosted its holdings in shares of Synergy Pharmaceuticals by 16.9% during the 2nd quarter. HC Wainwright set a $7.00 price target on Synergy Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:SGYP) in a report released on Monday. BTIG Research maintained the stock with "Buy" rating in Tuesday, August 1 report. As per Friday, January 20, the company rating was maintained by Rodman & Renshaw.
Nike Reveals What USA's Olympic Athletes Will Wear On Medal Stand
With that in mind, Nike designed a super-insulated jacket for both male and female Olympians. Both the men's and women's trousers have a DWR (durable water repellent) coating that will help athletes stay dry on the podium. In response, the United States Olympic Committee has created a Medal Stand Kit in conjunction with Nike to keep American athletes warm as they proudly watch the rise of the Stars and Stripes and hear the National Anthem played.
Nuance Communications, Inc. (NUAN) EPS Estimated At $0.14
The price to earnings ratio for Nuance Communications, Inc. It has underperformed by 45.87% the S&P500. Quantitative Systematic Strategies LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Nuance Communications during the second quarter valued at about $164,000.
Regal Entertainment Group (RGC)
After having $0.07 EPS previously, Regal Entertainment Group's analysts see 457.14% EPS growth. Ltd.'s holdings in Regal Entertainment Group were worth $1,153,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
WealthTrust Axiom LLC Decreases Position in Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)
Interocean Capital Llc who had been investing in Johnson & Johnson for a number of months, seems to be bullish on the $388.65 billion market cap company. The company was downgraded on Monday, August 31 by Vetr . Goldman Sachs downgraded the shares of JNJ in report on Wednesday, September 20 to "Sell" rating.
Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc. (HRC) EPS Estimated At $0.78
Bokf Na accumulated 24,755 shares or 0.05% of the stock. About 171,185 shares traded. (NYSE: HRC ) news were published by: Nasdaq.com which released: "Hill-Rom Holdings Inc (HRC) Ex-Dividend Date Scheduled for December 14, 2017" on December 13, 2017, also Streetinsider.com with their article: "Hill-Rom Holdings (HRC) Prelim".
United Contl Hldgs INC (UAL) Holding Held by Par Capital Management Inc
It has underperformed by 12.06% the S&P500. Athena Capital Advisors Llc sold 108,650 shares as the company's stock rose 2.30% with the market. The hedge fund run by Paul Reeder held 19.93 million shares of the transportation company at the end of 2017Q3, valued at $1.21B, up from 16.29 million at the end of the previous reported quarter.
Are Analysts Bearish Penn National Gaming, Inc. (NASDAQ:PENN) After Last Week?
Swiss Bancshares has invested 0% in Penn National Gaming, Inc. About 718,541 shares traded. SunTrust maintained Penn National Gaming, Inc. The average 12 month price target among brokers that have updated their coverage on the stock in the a year ago is $18.28.
Analysts See $1.32 EPS for Wynn Resorts, Limited (WYNN)
The stock of Wynn Resorts, Limited (NASDAQ:WYNN) has "Neutral" rating given on Friday, January 27 by Instinet. It has outperformed by 48.54% the S&P500. After having $1.52 EPS previously, Wynn Resorts, Limited's analysts see -13.16 % EPS growth. Therefore 46% are positive. Analysts forecast that Wynn Resorts Ltd.
Xpo Logistics Incorporated (NYSE:XPO)'s Stock Is Sell After More Market Selling
U S Global Investors Inc who had been investing in Goodyear Tire & Rubr Co for a number of months, seems to be bullish on the $8.09 billion market cap company. 72 were reported by Cls Ltd Liability Corp. (NYSE:XPO) opened at 43.55 on Monday. Larry Foley increased its stake in Xpo Logistics Inc (XPO) by 46.88% based on its latest 2017Q3 regulatory filing with the SEC.
Analyst EPS Predictions Coverage: Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, LP (BWP)
Balyasny Asset Management LLC now owns 1,285,544 shares of the pipeline company's stock worth $23,153,000 after purchasing an additional 861,044 shares during the period. Cutter And Communications Brokerage has invested 0.19% in General Electric Company (NYSE:GE). Barclays Pcl stated it has 0% of its portfolio in Balchem Corporation (NASDAQ:BCPC).
Integral Derivatives LLC Holding In Nflx (Put) (NFLX) Was Has Lifted
The institutional investor held 176,800 shares of the consumer services company at the end of 2017Q3, valued at $32.06M, up from 114,300 at the end of the previous reported quarter. (NASDAQ:NFLX) news were published by: Investorplace.com which released: " Netflix, Inc ". Norinchukin Bancorp The holds 0.11% in Netflix, Inc . Maplelane Capital Ltd Llc holds 0.06% or 18,000 shares in its portfolio.
Crude oil shipments from Canada to U.S. to jump 60% in 2018
Energy Information Administration said Tuesday. Homes that use heating oil will spend an average of $215 or 17 percent more this year than last, and that's assuming a "normal" winter. The best grades of USA crude are now priced at almost $63 a barrel, high enough to convince shale oil producers to expand drilling and production. US oil prices rose $1.44 to $63.17 a barrel in NY on Tuesday, the highest level in three years, partly on expectations of further declines in the nation's oil ...
AstraZeneca plc (AZN) Short Interest Update
See The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. It has underperformed by 15.21% the S&P500. Thomas Steyer increased its stake in Astrazeneca Plc (AZN) by 453.04% based on its latest 2017Q3 regulatory filing with the SEC. Analysts await Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE:UNP) to report earnings on January, 18. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $1.03 EPS.
EPS for Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS) Expected At $0.75
The stock decreased 0.34% or $0.23 during the last trading session, reaching $67.92. About 2.73M shares traded or 25.14% up from the average. The lowest target is $44.0 while the high is $61.0. Millennium Management reported 0.14% in Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS) for 32,372 shares. Wells Fargo And Com Mn holds 394,820 shares. Advisors Asset Management Inc, which manages about $16.50B and $5.97 billion US Long portfolio, upped its stake in Mattel Inc (NASDAQ:MAT) by 30,880 shares to ...
Chinese Uber rival Didi Chuxing launches bike-sharing service
Didi's proprietary bike rental platform will connect with ofo, Bluegogo and a number of other service providers. The company has issued a statement regarding its next move. Bluegogo riders can continue to use the service through Didi's application, and new riders as well as existing ones will have security deposits waived.
FNY Partners Fund LP Takes Position in Anheuser Busch Inbev NV (BUD)
It has a 28.24 P/E ratio. The firm provides commercial loans, commercial real estate loans, and agricultural loans to businesses; and consumer loans, student loans, credit card loans, and single-family residential real estate loans to individuals, as well as equipment and SBA lending.
Cerner (CERN) Earns Buy Rating from Robert W. Baird
The stock increased 2.20% or $1.52 during the last trading session, reaching $70.53. About 670,722 shares traded. It is down 33.47% since January 7, 2017 and is uptrending. The stock has "Market Perform" rating by Wells Fargo on Friday, December 18. As per Friday, June 2, the company rating was maintained by Canaccord Genuity.
Regions Financial Corporation (RF) EPS Estimated At $0.26
Below is a list of First American Financial Corporation (NYSE: FAF ) latest ratings and price target changes. As per Friday, May 19, the company rating was upgraded by Vertical Research. The company reported $0.19 EPS for the quarter, beating the Thomson Reuters' consensus estimate of $0.17 by $0.02. Bessemer Securities Llc holds 63.05% of its portfolio in Green Plains Inc.
Research Report For Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (FCX)
Among active positions in the latest quarter, 322 holders increased their positions by a total of 90.7 million shares, 329 holders decreased the positions by a total of 91.08 million shares, and 113 holders held their positions. and Freeport ..." published on December 27, 2017 as well as Seekingalpha.com's news article titled: "Bloomberg: Freeport nears deal with Indonesia for Grasberg mine" with publication date: December 15, 2017.
Fed's Harker pushes for under two price hikes in 2018
Three out of 12 regional Federal Reserve banks were against an increase in the rate commercial banks are charged for emergency loans ahead of the US central bank's last policy meeting when it raised interest rates, minutes from the discussion of the discount rate showed on Tuesday.
FLIR Systems (FLIR) Raised to "Buy" at SunTrust Banks
Peoples Services Corp owns 75 shares or 0% of their USA portfolio. On Thursday, August 31 SURRAN THOMAS A sold $10.00M worth of FLIR Systems, Inc. Hussman Strategic Advisors Inc. Imperial Capital downgraded the shares of FLIR in report on Thursday, February 23 to "In-Line" rating. As per Thursday, October 5, the company rating was maintained by SunTrust.
Lookout for Price Target? Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM), Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK)
Arosa Capital Management Lp who had been investing in Exxon Mobil Corp for a number of months, seems to be bullish on the $367.82B market cap company. (NASDAQ:NFLX) or 3,622 shares. Jarislowsky Fraser Limited holds 1.53 million shares or 0.75% of its portfolio. 9,132 are owned by Mycio Wealth Limited Liability Co.
Hot Stock for Investors: Whiting Petroleum Corp. (WLL)
It has underperformed by 37.57% the S&P500. The 1 year EPS growth rate is -221.40%. Citigroup Inc holds 0.01% or 1.22 million shares. Us Concrete Inc now has $1.34B valuation. Among 52 analysts covering Apple Inc. Whereas they predicted High and Low Earnings Estimate as $0.11 and $-0.68 respectively. Zooming in closer, the stock has been recently recorded at -0.90% away from the 50 day high and 45.65% off of the 50 day low.
Cabot Oil & Gas Corp (COG) Holder Stelliam Investment Management LP Increased Position
Cabot-Wellington Llc who had been investing in Cabot Oil & Gas for a number of months, seems to be less bullish one the $13.30 billion market cap company. The firm has "Underperform" rating by Bank of America given on Friday, May 13. Cabot-Wellington Llc, which manages about $846.57 million and $172.13 million US Long portfolio, upped its stake in Ishares Core Msci Eafe (IEFA) by 20,414 shares to 458,080 shares, valued at $29.40 million in 2017Q3, according to the filing.
Could Zayo Group Holdings Incorporated (NYSE:ZAYO) Change Direction After Less Shorts?
The stock decreased 0.69% or $0.25 during the last trading session, reaching $36.05. About 925,098 shares traded. RBC Capital Markets maintained Zayo Group Holdings, Inc. Pnc Svcs Grp Inc stated it has 0% in Zayo Group Holdings, Inc . It also reduced its holding in Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) by 22,600 shares in the quarter, leaving it with 817,700 shares, and cut its stake in Target Corp.
Eastman Chemical Company (EMN) Analysts See $1.12 EPS
The stock increased 0.91% or $2.8291 during the last trading session, reaching $312.9791. About 260,980 shares traded. It has underperformed by 35.58% the S&P500. (NYSE:IPG). Bokf Na, Oklahoma-based fund reported 77,520 shares. Meeder Asset Mgmt holds 0.4% of its portfolio in Eastman Chemical Company (NYSE:EMN) for 40,765 shares.
Shares Of Simon Property Group, Inc. (SPG) sold By BROADWATER STEVEN K.
It has outperformed by 61.15% the S&P500. (SPG) by 6.18% based on its latest 2017Q3 regulatory filing with the SEC. The institutional investor held 1.82M shares of the consumer services company at the end of 2017Q3, valued at $293.55M, down from 2.38M at the end of the previous reported quarter.
Zoetis Inc. (ZTS) Surges to 52-Week High, Is Now Top Performer
Harfst & Associates Inc. now owns 1,878 shares of the company's stock valued at $117,000 after acquiring an additional 260 shares in the last quarter. The stock has "Buy" rating by Hilliard Lyons on Tuesday, June 20. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. reaffirmed a "hold" rating and issued a $53.00 target price on shares of Zoetis in a research report on Thursday, November 3rd.
EXACT Sciences (EXAS) Given a $67.00 Price Target at Bank of America
The stock increased 0.04% or $0.06 during the last trading session, reaching $154.71. Zurcher Kantonalbank Zurich Cantonalbank now owns 5,052 shares of the medical research company's stock valued at $179,000 after acquiring an additional 2,013 shares in the last quarter.
Celgene Corporation (CELG), Huntington Bancshares Incorporated (HBAN)
About 2.51 million shares traded. Huntington Bancshares Incorporated ( HBAN ) has risen 22.99% since January 9, 2017 and is uptrending. Ashmore Wealth Management Llc increased its stake in Msc Industrial Direct Co Inc (MSM) by 1054.73% based on its latest 2017Q3 regulatory filing with the SEC.
Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (ISRG) Given Consensus Recommendation of "Buy" by Brokerages
The institutional investor held 275 shares of the health care company at the end of 2017Q3, valued at $288,000, down from 1,100 at the end of the previous reported quarter. Parametric Port Assoc Ltd Liability Corp holds 0.04% in AerCap Holdings N.V. (NYSE:AER) or 736,009 shares. Cleararc Capital Inc.'s holdings in Intuitive Surgical were worth $601,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.
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All Blog PostsHome » Blog » Individual project · Movement and its limitation within an environment (2017) » Catalogue: Movement and its limitation within an environment
Catalogue: Movement and its limitation within an environment
Movement and its limitation within an environment is a visual-spatial presentation which responds to the vibrancy of partaking in an assemblage, and to the ambivalence of living in a borderland.
The movement of the city, and broader urban-rural relationships, viewed as an assemblage, is the becoming of human and non-human bodies: a material configuration that is constantly shifting along relationships of affect. While we may live our lives within these material-semiotic assemblages, our lives are constructed along different, but sometimes overlapping, borderlands. Movement is a normal part of human life, but it is not possible for everyone to move in the same ways. People, however, can dream to live another life, one with another set of thresholds, in the same urban-rural assemblage. This life can happen in a different relationship to the visible and invisible barriers and blockages present in their current lives.
It is seldom that the objects I make follow a direct route, or a highly planned sequence of steps to completion. A notion of sketching, being that of an observation which involves associations of informality and emergence through expressing, coding, and sensing, is useful to understand this contextually bound making-thinking process. Making-thinking, through sketching, involves the continuous reassessment to codifications, and adjustments to forms and relationships of aspects of assemblages.
I have found that I work in series because the meaning in painting arises in part in the relationship between paintings, and the way they come together in an environment. This broad idea has influenced my production over the last few years: from working in series of painting to working with series of painting as installations. When I started making installations I used my paintings to build structures. My conglomerations of paintings, however, have been moving towards a sculptural form for the last two years. While the arrangement of the sculpture in its relationship to other elements of an environment is important, a sculpture does not create an environment so much as create a presence within an environment. I am interested in what such a presence can do to influence my painting, and my printing. The interfacing of these different disciplines, painting, printing, and sculpture, offers a vast area to explore. What would the percept and affect be that is opened through this encounter? That is something I want to see and experience.
Sketches are sometimes considered to be a type of mediation that is not far removed from the original experience, but one entailing an expression, a coded message, or a sense that is still unworked into a final form. Linked to the ideas that sketches are unfinished or incomplete portrayals, there are the ideas that sketches are open to adjusting relationships, and are able to make visible previously unseen possibilities. Sketching, when understood metaphorically, can be considered a primary aspect of my image-object making process: I propose that my image-object making process could be characterised by the notions of informality, emergence, and possibility contained in the general understanding of the notion of sketching. This is a process of layering, and locking; of adjusting relationships; of coding details of the world. I am also starting to think that my paintings, sculpture, and prints are sketches for each other. I mean this in the sense that while there may be similarities in the forms made through painting, printing and sculpting, there are also material-conceptual properties in each form that can reveal, as a sketch, previously unseen opportunities for image-object making in one, or another form.
Movement and its limitation within an environment is a visual-spatial presentation on a hypothetical, or possible, configuration of bodies, interrupted in the world, and the borderlands in which they find themselves. It employs the notion of a sketching process through an interface between painting, sculpting and printing, and the affect these forms produce. The presentation offers a brief account, a tentative exploration, a provisional outline. The sketching process employed entails a movement between the painterly and the linear, and of opacities and translucencies. The sketches dwell on a sense of place, and an experience of place: they are speculative; they are arrangements of possible encounters; and they are expressions of the uncertainties entailed in a human relationship to place.
The becoming of people, and their intricate negotiations with people-place can sometimes entail as much profound contradiction as correspondence, and as much tension as solidarity: When do you have mobility in the world? What makes you a normalised person in the eyes of the state? What makes you a proper person in the eyes of a citizen? When do you belong to an African city? What is home? What are the clusters of influence in which people find themselves? How can people gain access to a humane life in an increasingly restricted world? How are these challenges different for people from different races and classes? I cannot answer these questions and I am not the first to pose them. These questions, however, are at the heart of our imaginaries of life in a city that is constructed along multiple borderlands. This city. A borderland for me, and for you.
Anzaldúa, G. (2012). Borderlands. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.
Carter, P. (2004). Material thinking. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press.
DeLanda, M. (2006). A new philosophy of society. London: Continuum.
Malpas, J. (2010). Place and experience. New York, NY [u.a.]: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Old House, The, (Rectory, Edrington)
You are here Home > Private Parks & Gardens > Old House, The, (Rectory, Edrington)
HCC Site ID: 1773 Parish: Silchester
Designations: CA, House LB II Area: 1.6 ha (4 acres)
Access: No Public Access Ownership: Private residence
The Old House, Silchester is situated on the north east edge of the village of Silchester. The village is close to the northern county boundary of Hampshire with Berkshire and it is about four miles north of Basingstoke. The centre of the village is a designated Conservation Area and the nearby Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. The grounds of The Old House are bounded on the north by a public footpath which leads to the old Roman settlement (Local View).
Edrington post 1935
A rectory for the church of St Mary was built around 1703; this house was extended considerably in the nineteenth century but the original core, a two storeyed house with attic rooms, is still distinguishable in the west wing. The house remained as a rectory until 1923 when a new rectory was built on a plot of land just to the north and the old rectory was sold. Since then it has had only four owners, each of which has taken more care of the grounds than had the earlier church owners. It was set in some 54 acres of land but the pleasure garden around the house extended to only three and a half acres (Pearce, 2008). There is little or no evidence of a designed landscape until the mid-twentieth century when the owners, Bramley-Firth, established a garden which was often opened to the public. Improvements were made by the next owner, Mrs Alec Waugh who remained there until her death in 1969 (Waugh, 2005). The house was sold to Michael Jurgens who, as Chairman of the Rhododendron, Camellia and Magnolia Group of the Royal Horticultural Society took a great pride in his collection of rare and beautiful rhododendrons (pers. com. Jurgens 2009).
Old House, Silchester
The house has an extensive formal garden newly installed around the house but with more informal areas leading down to the small lake on the south boundary of the property. The approach drive is still bordered by oak trees and the plantation of trees and shrubs on the northern boundary alongside the public footpath obscures the house completely from view. Satellite photographs (Google Earth) were last taken around 2007/8 and they show the new gardens under construction. A particular feature is the new swimming pool, described as an horizon pool, in full view of the garden house; there had been intentions to rebuild the garden room, which connects the main house to the old barn, with tall glazed windows overlooking the formal garden and pool but so far the permission has been denied on the grounds of inappropriate design (BDB 69906, January 2009).
The Old House, which dates from around 1703 but which was radically altered in the nineteenth century and now again in 2009, is listed Grade II. The grounds were at their height of landscape interest in the twentieth century when they achieved notoriety for the fine display of rhododendrons and azaleas. There is no evidence of an historically significant designed landscape. The chief historical interest in the house relates to its sometime occupation by Alec Waugh, the novelist and travel-writer of the mid-twentieth-century. While it occupies a site encircled by areas of national importance for archaeology, nature conservation and history it does not itself command significant importance.
HGT Research: March 2010
Hampshire Record Office (HRO)
HRO: 159M88/1163 Sale advertisement and extra photograph
Tithe map of Silchester: http://www.dutton.force9.co.uk/tithes/pdf/Silchester.PDF
Local View:http://mapping.basingstoke.gov.uk/LocalView/OnTheMap.aspx(no longer available online 3/3/19)
Boon, G.C. St Mary the Virgin – Silchester, nd.
Page, W. (ed.) 1911 Victoria History of the Counties of England Series: A History of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Constable, IV: 112-14
Thompson, J. The Book of Silchester London 1924
Waugh, Alexander Fathers and Sons, Headline 2005
Pearce, M. An Assessment of the Architectural and Historic Interest of the former Rectory, in Planning application BDBC 66820, 2007
Jurgens, Jorie, Personal Conversation, November 2009. The author is grateful to Mrs Jurgens for her memories and information.
http://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/gateway/advanced_search.aspx
Hampshire Treasures: http://www.hants.gov.uk/hampshiretreasures/(no longer available online 3/3/19)
Silchester No Public Access Click for Disclaimer & copyright
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Update: Re:Vision in the News – Our thoughts on Mexxy
Posted on May 2, 2012 by sarah.mcculloch
Mancunion Matters, 2nd May, 2012.
“Manchester drug experts and activists are warning people against the result of the government’s temporary ban of the legal high methoxetamine, or MXE.
The government invoked new banning powers and for the first time used a temporary class drug order (TCDO) to forbid the supply of the legal high.Methoxetamine, with street name mexxy, MXE, ROFLCOPTER, was banned at the end of March for up to 12 months after a recommendation from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), which assessed the drug in less than 20 working days.
Michael Linnell from Manchester-based drug and alcohol charity Lifeline expressed doubts about the new powers deployed to prohibit methoxetamine, a ketamine analogue.“It is almost the worst system in the world that you could possibly have”, he said.
Anyone caught making, supplying or importing the drug will face up to 14 years in prison and unlimited fine.During the period of 12 months, the ACMD will look into the risks associated with the drug and decide whether to permanently prohibit it.
“I think it highly unlikely that they are going to turn around after a year saying we can have that one, it can stay legal,” said Mr Linnell.
Mr Linnell says that 15 different types of new substances that are currently making it into the country are raising concerns about the risks associated with their use.“What will now happen is the ACMD will look at it for a year. In the meantime, it will be replaced by something far more dangerous.“You squeeze the bubble somewhere and it pops up somewhere else you don’t you,” he said.
Sarah McCulloch, chair of Re:Vision Drug Policy Network, said: “While the government announcing an intention to conduct proper research into the effects and potential harms of a drug is much more preferable to a reliance to knee-jerk reactions and hyperbole, no-one had really heard of mexxy before the government banned it.“
By banning mexxy, it suddenly has allured to people wanting to know why it was banned, and more people will now probably use it than would have done if the government had left it to the more obscure corners of the internet.”
The process started after mexxy was wrongly linked to the death of four people. The ACMD later said that there were no confirmed deaths related to methoxetamine in the UK.However, a referral letter from the Minister for Crime Prevention and Anti-Social Behaviour and a recommendation from the ACMD to Home Secretary Theresa May followed. This resulted in the temporary ban.
The Crime Prevention Minister Lord Henley said: “Making this drug illegal sends a clear message to users and those making and supplying it that we are stepping up our fight against substances which are dangerous and ruin lives of victims and their families.”
Prior to the ban, you could buy little methoxetamine pills from head shops or online from over 200 UK-based websites.“The head shops are no longer selling methoxetamine. If you as a person had a lot of methoxatamine for your personal use, you can quite happily go on and use it. It is the supply that this temporary class order is supposed to stop”, said Mr Linnell.
He said that MXE rose in popularity due to shortage of ketamine, the third most popular illegal drug in the country.“They changed the legislation in India and most of our supplies were coming from India where it was still legal.“
Methoxetamine became popular among already existing ketamine users because of shortage. Methoxetamine is similar and most people say it is longer acting and more intense than ketamine.”
In the UK, ketamine was legal until 2006 when in the included in the Misuse of Drugs Act as class C drug.
“Interestingly, since 2006 the use has doubled. Banning actually increased the use,” Mr Linnell said.“They are already ketamine analogues on the market that seem to be replacing it. The real danger is the development of an illicit market. There are so many different analogues that are potentially far more dangerous.”
According to the November 2011 Global Drug Survey, 4.2% of the 7,700 respondents in the UK reported using methoxetamine in the last year.About 2.4% reported using methoxetamine in the last month.
Ms McCulloch said: “Prohibiting production and supply likely means the purity of the drug will plummet, as did the purity of mephedrone after it was banned, endangering the safety of users.“While a temporary ban, which refrains from punishing users, is better than immediate criminalisation, what we”re still seeing is the effort to criminalise substances as they become popular is driving people to use far less well-known and researched ‘designer drugs’, for which no-one knows the risks. Only proper control and regulation is going to protect the public and the individual.”
In light of new government powers to temporary ban legal highs and experts’ concerns about users’ safety, MM sought the opinion of the user.
Two MXE users agreed to talk to MM. The interviews will follow later this week.”
This entry was posted in Re:Vision Updates by sarah.mcculloch. Bookmark the permalink.
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President Buhari Considering The Details Of Zaria Massacre Report
President Muhammadu Buhari is “studying the details” of the report on the judicial inquiry into the Zaria Massacre, according to a statement. According to Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Buhari “assures international and local human rights groups of appropriate response over the report” into the massacre of Shiite Muslim civilians.
by Sahara Reporters, New York Aug 16, 2016
It will be recalled that the Zaria Massacre was a three day pogrom by the military of unarmed Shiite Muslims in December 2015. The Shiite Muslims, affiliated with the peaceful group the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, and led by Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, were protesting and blocking streets in Zaria, Kaduna State when a military convoy with the Chief of Army Staff Tukur Buratai arrived.
According to unsubstantiated statements by the military the protesters allegedly tried to assassinate Mr. Buratai prompting the military to open fire on the unarmed civilians. This set in motion a three-day massacre resulting in the military stacking dead bodies of civilians in the streets and dumping them into a mass grave. The military also raided the personal properties of Sheikh Zakzaky and Shiite religious sites destroying or burning them down.
The military also killed all but one of Shiekh Zakzaky’s sons, shot his wife, and popped one of his eyes out. Shiekh Zakzaky has been in custody of the military since the December 2015 incident causing outrage among his Shiite followers.
According to Mr. Shehu’s statement on behalf of Mr. Buhari, the president will “announce appropriate response in due course.” He also stated that human rights remain “a cardinal component of democratic order.”
The report, which has said to be top secret, criticized some military officials involved in the massacre but did not mention Mr. Buratai as being responsible for the vicious three day assault on civilians.
Mr. Shehu's statement did not mention whether Sheikh Zakzaky would be released or why he is being held without charge.
President Muhammadu Buhari speaking in Paris State House Photos
Sahara Reporters, New York
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Marie-Rose Durocher
Feast day: October 6
Beatified: May 23, 1982
Venerated: July 13, 1979
Many of our greatest saints and holy people knew that they could raise others up by helping to educate them. Eulalie Durocher was one such person. Born on October 6, 1811, at Saint Antoine-sur-Richelieu in Quebec, Canada, she was the youngest of 10 children. Her parents valued education, and her mother, who had studied with the Ursuline Sisters in Quebec City, taught all of her children. Eventually young Eulalie attended a boarding school with the Notre Dame Sisters and began to dream of becoming a nun. She had always been a teenager who did not hesitate to visit the sick and poor in her village and spent much time in prayer at the local church. But poor health and the death of her mother when Eulalie was 18 seemed to mean that a vocation might not be possible. She stepped into her mother’s role, leading the household as best she could.
Her brother, who was a priest, asked Eulalie and their father to come live with him in his rectory so that Eulalie could be a housekeeper for the both of them. For 12 years she served in this role and also taught religion to the parish children while continuing to help the poor and organizing many volunteer activities in the parish. She saw how important education was for the people of Canada and finally, when the local bishop announced he was bringing a group of nuns over from France to live in their area, Eulalie made plans to join the congregation.
But the Sisters of Marseilles were unable to come to Canada. Knowing of her hopes, Montreal Bishop Ignace Bourget asked Eulalie Durocher to found a community of nuns herself in 1843. She and her friends, Melodie Dufresne and Henriette Cere, did so in Longueuil, beginning the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. Under the name Mother Marie-Rose, Eulalie recruited nearly a dozen women for their community in the first year. The group was committed to teaching, and they taught in both English and French so that students could speak both languages. They built four convents and boarding schools with a free day school attached so that all children could receive the same education, regardless of their families' income. By 1849, they had 44 nuns in their group.
Mother Marie-Rose worked hard to make the schools and the congregation a success. Her hard work made her already poor health even more precarious, and at the very young age of 38 she died. Her legacy lived on; by the 1960s, her congregation had more than 277 convents in Canada, the United States, Africa, and South America, where they continue to teach today. Mother Marie-Rose was declared Blessed by Pope John Paul II on May 23, 1982.
Chiara Luce Badano
In "October"
Louis and Zelie Martin
In "July"
André Bessette
TAGS: Blessed, Canada
← Francis Seelos
John Henry Newman →
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Sarah Airey Mackintosh
Sarah Airey
Mother of Robert Airey Mackintosh (02.03.1826-1842/5) and James Mackintosh Jr. (21.02.1825-?). Wife of James Mackintosh of Lamancha [55.757006N, 3.277107W] N.B. James Mackintosh was a builder/architect in Calcutta. James Mackintosh possibly established the famous Mackintosh Burn & Company in 1834. He came to India in the early 1820s and joined the firm Burn & Co. (established in 1871) as a partner. Shortly after retiring from this firm, he set up the Mackintosh & Burn Co. with James Mackintosh Jr. and William Mackintosh. After the death of Sarah Airey he married Ellen Louisa, by whom he had at least one daughter, Helen.
In memory of Sarah Airey the beloved wife of James Mackintosh of La Mancha N.B. Died 6th October 1846 Aged 60 years
Places mentioned 1:
La Mancha [An estate in Scotland. In fact, there is a Chivalric Order of La Mancha- OLM]
Tomb architecture:
Box tomb
James Mackintosh was a builder/architect in Calcutta. James Mackintosh possibly established the famous Mackintosh Burn & Company in 1834. He came to India in the early 1820s and joined the firm Burn & Co. (established in 1871) as a partner. Shortly after retiring from this firm, he set up the Mackintosh & Burn Co. with James Mackintosh Jr. and William Mackintosh. After the death of Sarah Airey he married Ellen Louisa, by whom he had at least one daughter, Helen.
Her son, Robert Airey Mackintosh, is also buried in this cemetery: http://goo.gl/ytecft
Any reason for importance:
Wife of James Mackintosh, the founder of Mackintosh Burn Ltd.
Featured Tomb
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Exhibition - A Garden & Three Houses
Richard Murphy is a Trustee of the Turn End Trust which is a Trust recently set up dedicated to the preservation of the three houses and garden built by Peter and Margaret Aldington in Haddenham in the mid 1960s and also dedicated to the promotion of the indivisibility of architecture and landscape design.
The houses and garden represent marvellous possibilities as to how contemporary housing could be developed in small towns and villages throughout the country and stands as a critique against the usual developer housing estate which has grown up to blight many a rural and urban landscape. The photographs of the Houses and Gardens by Richard Bryant are truly superb and we have a selection of photographs here as a taster for the remainder in the Exhibition.
The practice was delighted to be both the sponsor of the Exhibition and to be the chief organiser of its tour around the UK and Ireland.
Book: Jane Brown, "A Garden & Three Houses", photos by Richard Bryant, Garden Art Press/Antique Collector's Club.
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MotoGP 2015 Sachsenring Results
marco melandri sachsenring andrea iannone johann zarco maverick vinales danilo petrucci pol espargaro yonny hernandez xavier simeon alex rins
The duo of Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa were so fast this weekend they seemed to exit the space-time continuum, re-entering in 2014 amidst a rewind of last year's German Grand Prix. Marquez, loving himself the 2014 chassis he hauled out after Barcelona, comfortably led every practice session....
Source: www.motorcycle.com
As qualifying for the 2015 Grand Prix Monster Energy de Catalunya closed on Saturday, one got the sense that The Usual Suspects might not make it to Sunday's podium. The ascendant team had crashed the party, seizing the first two spots in Row 1 (for the first time since 1993), while Aliens...
Round 12 of the 2015 MotoGP season was shaping up as another Marquez-Lorenzo cage match, the two brightest lights of the sport hammering the grid during four free practice sessions. They qualified one-two, with Dani Pedrosa and Valentino Rossi, the other usual suspects, making up the top four....
reigning champion Marc Marquez extended his winning streak in the U.S. to six, taking an easy win at Circuit of the Americas by a country mile over Ducati #1 Andrea Dovizioso who had himself fought off several challenges from Yamaha former world champion Valentino Rossi. Confirming that Losail...
The second half of the season is waiting in the wings as MotoGP™ gets ready to return to the stage 2017 is already making history. After nine races, the second half of the season beckons at Brno with the top five riders in the Championship – Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda Team), Maverick Viñales...
The season opener at Losail went mostly according to expectations, which is to say it was crowded up front. At one point I counted nine bikes in the lead group, a sight normally seen in Moto3. French sophomore Johann Zarco led from pole most of the day, fueling a lot of premature trash talk....
Occasionally in this world, team sports produce individual accomplishments that stay etched in people's minds for years. We know that Marc Marquez qualified on pole at the Sachsenring for the seventh consecutive time. We know that he won at the Sachsenring for the seventh consecutive time. We...
Preseason testing is in full swing for all the MotoGP teams and this week, where they will all congregate in Thailand, at the newest stop of the Grand Prix racing tour, the Chang International Circuit. Below is an update on all the latest happenings, reports and results across the MotoGP field....
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The Census of 2000 provided that 735,343 people, 286,512 households, and 184,513 families reside in Monroe County.
The Census of 2000 provided that there were 219,773 people, 88,999 households, and 47,169 families residing in the City of Rochester, NY.
On the shores of three major bodies of water - Lake Ontario, the Genesee River, and the historic Erie Canal.
Recently named by Expansion Management as a "5 star business opportunity metro" which is a designation awarded to only 20% of the nation's metro areas.
Average daily commute is 19.1 minutes.
Among the top five cities in the nation known for its "concentration of medical device and equipment companies."
Among the best cost of living indexes based on affordability of homes and real estate.
Well known for its amount of renowned cultural attractions and robust artisan population.
Home to 7 sports teams and variety of athletic recreation - DETAILS
The site of nationally acclaimed events like the Rochester International Jazz Festival and the High Falls Film Festival
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Knife found at OJ's old home not consistent with murders: police sources
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Home Neom City News Saudi to invest $530m in Red Sea desalination plants
Saudi to invest $530m in Red Sea desalination plants
Neom City News
Plants will have capacity of 240,000 cubic meters of water per day
Saudi Arabia plans to build nine desalination plants for more than 2 billion riyals ($530 million) on the Red Sea coast, its environment minister said on Sunday.
The plants will have capacity of 240,000 cubic meters of water per day and will be completed in less than 18 months, Abdulrahman al-Fadhli wrote in a Twitter post.
The project, which the minister said was ordered by King Salman in a royal decree, will help government-owned Saudi Saline Water Conversion Corp (SWCC) raise production efficiency and cut operating and capital costs, Fadhli added.
He gave no details on funding.
Saudi Arabia said in 2016 it planned to use public-private partnerships (PPP) with local and foreign companies to fund infrastructure projects.
In August, it said it would develop resorts on about 50 Red Sea islands, completing the first phase of that project – which is backed by its Public Investment Fund (PIF) – in the fourth quarter of 2022. More
By REUTERS www.arabianbusiness.com
Public Investment Fund (PIF)
Red Sea coast
Previous articleTourism key to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plans
Next article‘White oil’: how Saudi Arabia is seeking place on tourism map
To tap into the $ 500 billion mega city projects, top 30 infra companies to visit Saudi Arabia later this month
NEOM will be the Mecca for technology and innovation, if the project can get off the ground.
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Why Not Allow Abortion Three Days After Birth?
172 posts • Page 6 of 6 • 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Re: Why Not Allow Abortion Three Days After Birth?
by TheVat on April 9th, 2019, 12:39 pm
Hi, Badger. I agree that vigilance for possible bogeymen has value. I was just pointing out that the legal situation should not be misrepresented in its present form. The laws, both state and federal, against actual infanticide may account for the fact that no one has cited one actual example of a healthy full-term newborn being euthanized by a licensed physician. (what happens in black market clinics, or on kitchen tables, will of course remain obscure and unregulated) It's kind of weird that Serpent has to point this out a dozen times, to no apparent effect on his interlocutors.
But, for sure, there are grim Stalinist scenarios and other dark futures that are analogous to the exampled possible threat of AI, and which require constant public awareness and engagement. The real answer to the thread title may be simply: we must not allow it because of what it would do to US. This is similar to arguments against the death penalty that speak of the adverse psychological effects it has on executioners and appointed witnesses. Taking another life is harmful to the killer's soul and to the overall spiritual state of a society.
by Serpent on April 9th, 2019, 3:35 pm
Question to which i do not expect an answer:
Does anyone here believe that men should draft all legislation relating to human reproduction?
Does anyone here think women should draft all such legislation?
Does anyone think all such legislation should be drafted a committee made up of equal numbers of each sex?
Note: I didn't ask who should/could vote on it; just who should write the words.
I've been having this increasingly uneasy feeling that some posters simply do not feel women can be trusted with the important task of gestation and birth. And that gives me a very queasy feeling about how this sentiment could mesh with all manner retrograde executive decisions and formal bills that have been enacted recently, as well as alarming rhetoric from several quarters.
by TheVat on April 10th, 2019, 10:22 am
I've been having this increasingly uneasy feeling that some posters simply do not feel women can be trusted with the important task of gestation and birth....
I've had that feeling about humans generally.
by Serpent on April 10th, 2019, 10:37 am
But the alternatives that have been tried are horrific, and some of the alternatives currently proposed would utterly halt human evolution.
by edy420 on April 10th, 2019, 6:57 pm
That depends if men are involved or not.
Pertaining to politics, the best persons for the job, should be involved with the legislation. How do you choose the right person? Sweden has chosen to make political parties 50% men and woman. The result is disastrous. Instead of the best person for the job, their politics are dictated by gender.
The only way you can have all woman, on the laws involved, is if you completely exclude men from all responsibility. I don't see that turning out the best for everyone.
In everyone of my child's creation, I was involved. I was also involved in every birth and now the raising of them. Should I be excluded from any of my wife's reproductive decisions (she doesn't think so). Clearly I am responsible for them? If not, then why.
edy420
Location: Fergusson st, Tokoroa, NZ
E-mail edy420
by Serpent on April 10th, 2019, 7:57 pm
edy420 » April 10th, 2019, 5:57 pm wrote:
What do you mean, involved? As far as I know, men are involved in every government on earth.
A proposed legislation has to be written up in the form of a bill, and in the draft stage, checked for congruence with the constitution and possible conflict with existing laws. Then its written up in the final form and presented to the legislative body - congress or house of parliament. Then the members all vote on it.
Nothing to do with your own personal reproductive activities: I'm asking about who should write the law.
by edy420 on April 11th, 2019, 2:02 am
All men, or all woman, or 50/50?
What's the point. The best people to write laws that reflect societies needs, will be a mix of gender.
by anc0de on April 27th, 2019, 3:02 am
157 Replies in and nobody has bothered to call out the source National Review for their far right bias, or the massive misinformation in both the article and the original post. It's like people have forgotten how to apply an ounce of common sense and do a little bit of research before jumping to conclusions.
From: https://www.factcheck.org/2019/02/addre ... rtion-law/
Addressing New York’s New Abortion Law
By Angelo Fichera
Posted on February 4, 2019 | Updated on February 11, 2019
Q: Does the new New York law allow full-term abortions?
A: The law permits abortions after 24 weeks if a health care professional determines the health or life of the mother is at risk, or the fetus is not viable.
FULL QUESTION
Does the new New York law allow full term abortions?
FULL ANSWER
New York’s Reproductive Health Act was signed by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Jan. 22, the anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion. It’s a measure that abortion-rights advocates in New York have long sought to pass but couldn’t previously get through a Republican-controlled state Senate. Democrats now control both chambers of the Legislature.
The new law codifies a woman’s right to access abortion in New York — and has also prompted speculation and claims.
Readers have sent us a number of questions, including: “Is it true that the NY state abortion law allows an aborted infant who is born alive to be killed?” and “What are the facts about the new abortion laws in New York state?”
We address those and more here.
What the law says
The RHA permits abortions when — according to a medical professional’s “reasonable and good faith professional judgment based on the facts of the patient’s case” — “the patient is within twenty-four weeks from the commencement of pregnancy, or there is an absence of fetal viability, or the abortion is necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.”
In other words, women may choose to have an abortion prior to 24 weeks; pregnancies typically range from 38 to 42 weeks. After 24 weeks, such decisions must be made with a determination that there is an “absence of fetal viability” or that the procedure is “necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.” That determination must be made by a “health care practitioner licensed, certified, or authorized” under state law, “acting within his or her lawful scope of practice.”
Previously, abortions after 24 weeks were justified only in cases where the mother’s life was at risk — which was inconsistent with a part of the Roe decision, as we explain later.
Change in criminal statutes
Under the old law, New York criminalized abortion unless it was a “justifiable abortional act” — meaning it was within 24 weeks of the commencement of pregnancy or necessary to “preserve” the mother’s life.
The RHA removes abortion from the state’s penal code altogether; the homicide statute still defines a “person” as “a human being who has been born and is alive.” Killing a baby once born was and is still considered a homicide.
Proponents of the bill argued that abortion should be treated as a health care matter, not as a criminal one. Some pointed to examples of women being forced to travel out of state to terminate pregnancies with fetuses that doctors said would not survive outside the womb. Opponents, on the other hand, said the change removes an important prosecutorial power — such as being able to fully charge a domestic abuser for ending a woman’s pregnancy.
Defining ‘health’ and ‘viability’
Roe v. Wade held that states may limit abortions after fetal viability, except in cases “necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother” (New York’s old law, which predated the decision, only allowed for late-term exceptions to protect the mother’s life.) Fetal viability was defined as being the point when a fetus was “potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid.”
New York’s new law does not explicitly define “health.”
In what is considered a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the U.S. Supreme Court held that “medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age — relevant to the wellbeing of the patient. All these factors may relate to health. This allows the attending physician the room he needs to make his best medical judgment.”
National data on ‘late-term’ abortions
“Late-term” abortions are defined in different ways; some states ban abortions after 20 weeks. National data indicate such abortions are relatively rare.
According to a 2018 report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on 2015 data, the majority of abortions in the country — 65 percent — were performed within the first eight weeks of pregnancy. Only about 1 percent were done after 21 weeks.
Those national statistics incorporate data provided by New York City, which accounted for about two-thirds of abortions reported by New York state in 2015, but do not include abortions outside of the city. In New York City, 2.3 percent of abortions were performed after 21 weeks. (Of note: New York counts pregnancy from fertilization, while the CDC’s measure includes the two weeks before.)
The CDC also noted that, between 2006 and 2015, less than 9 percent of abortions were performed after 13 weeks.
As of Jan. 1, 43 states prohibited “some abortions after a certain point in pregnancy,” according to the Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Change in public health code
New York’s RHA also repealed a section of the public health law that required the following: that abortions after 12 weeks be performed in a hospital; that an additional physician be present for abortions after 20 weeks to care for “any live birth that is the result of the abortion”; and that such babies be provided “immediate legal protection under the laws of the state of New York.”
There appears to be very little in the way of statistics about such scenarios.
A spokesperson for the Guttmacher Institute, for example, told us she was not aware of any data on the topic “because if it happens, it would be extremely rare.”
Asked about the rationale for removing the section from the law, Justin Flagg, a spokesman for New York State Sen. Liz Krueger, who sponsored the new law, said that “the requirement that a second physician be present … did not reflect medical realities of abortion later in pregnancy nor modern standards of medical care, and was legally redundant and unnecessary.”
“Modern abortion techniques do not result in live birth; however, in the great unlikelihood that a baby was born alive, the medical provider and team of medical support staff would provide all necessary medical care, as they would in the case of any live birth,” he wrote in an email. “The RHA does not change standard medical practices. To reiterate, any baby born alive in New York State would be treated like any other live birth, and given appropriate medical care. This was the case before the RHA, and it remains the case now.”
New York defines a live birth as “the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception, irrespective of the duration of pregnancy, which, after such separation, breathes or shows any other evidence of life such as beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, whether or not the umbilical cord has been cut or the placenta is attached; each product of such a birth is considered live born.”
The abortion debate continues to be waged on a number of fronts, including in state legislatures. In Virginia, for example, Democrats have moved to ease the requirements for late-term abortions by reducing the number of doctors required to certify such an abortion, from three to one.
Update, Feb. 11: We clarified that the CDC’s national statistics cited include data provided by New York City, where two-thirds of abortions reported by the state occurred, but not the rest of the state. We also added the percentage of New York City’s abortions that were performed after 21 weeks.
“Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2015.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 23 Nov 2018.
Doe v. Bolton. No.70-40. Supreme Court of the U.S. 22 Jan 1973.
Flagg, Justin. Spokesman, New York State Sen. Liz Krueger. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 4 Feb 2019.
“Governor Cuomo Signs Legislation Protecting Women’s Reproductive Rights.” Press release, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. 22 Jan 2019.
New York State Senate. “S. 240, Enacts the reproductive health act; repealer” (as signed by Governor 22 Jan 2019).
Roe v. Wade. No. 70-18. Supreme Court of the U.S. 22 Jan 1973.
“State Policies on Later Abortions.” Guttmacher Institute. Accessed 1 Feb 2019.
Wind, Rebecca. Spokeswoman, Guttmacher Institute. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 4 Feb 2019.
someguy1 » March 10th, 2019, 8:43 pm wrote: I never imagined that the underlying logic of my silly joke would become the rationale for legalizing post-birth abortion. A two-minute old baby isn't fully human yet, and the feelings of the mother are all that matters. Read the text of the laws.
You fell for the bait. Don't worry, you can sleep easy knowing we're not killing children over any one's feelings :)
anc0de
Location: United States of Israel former United States of America
E-mail anc0de
by edy420 on May 2nd, 2019, 2:00 pm
How long until we start killing them over feelings.
We live in a society where men break all the woman's world records, because they feel like they are a woman. I dont trust societies ability to make the right decisions.
by Serpent on May 2nd, 2019, 2:42 pm
edy420 » May 2nd, 2019, 1:00 pm wrote: I dont trust societies ability to make the right decisions.
You don't trust society, the legislature, the medical profession or women to make the right decision.
So, if decisions have to be made, that just leaves men to make them. Does that sound familiar?
by edy420 on May 3rd, 2019, 5:14 am
I dont trust any person or group of persons, to make decisions for another person/s based on a subset of values unrelated to the subjects values.
If a woman wants to have an abortion, I trust her family to help her make the right decision. To be more specific, I dont trust that I as a Male, have the ability nor authority to tell a woman what she can and can not do with her own body.
As a husband however, I feel I have the right to make decisions with my wife. As a Father, I have the right to raise my children in a way that reflects my views on abortion. Same as a Grandfather. But, as a next door neighbor to an unrelated family, it's none of my business.
Gender has nothing to do with it. I thought that would be clear by now. The right people to help make the right decision, are those closest to the situation. Ie, family. A group of male and female senators who live in another city, are the wrong people.
by TheVat on May 3rd, 2019, 9:31 am
If a woman wants to have an abortion, I trust her family to help her make the right decision....
I trust the woman. Many people have family members they can't trust.
by Nick_A on May 3rd, 2019, 11:47 am
edy420 » May 3rd, 2019, 5:14 am wrote: I dont trust any person or group of persons, to make decisions for another person/s based on a subset of values unrelated to the subjects values.
“When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.” ~ Simone Weil
IYO opinion whose life has value and how is it determined? A fetus has its own unique DNA as a living being but does it have value? Do you or I have value? Who should make the decision? Victims of a genocide were believed not to have value so nothing is easier than murder.
Laws concerning fetal homicide assumes the fetus has value. Why would a parasite have value. So in order to understand you better, how do you determine whose life has value?
Nick_A
E-mail Nick_A
by Serpent on May 3rd, 2019, 12:38 pm
edy420 » May 3rd, 2019, 4:14 am wrote: If a woman wants to have an abortion, I trust her family to help her make the right decision.
You don't trust anybody to make a law, but you trust every family to "help" a woman decide.
Even if they're fundamentalist Christian or Muslim?
Gender has everything to do with legal and social empowerment.
Okay, so nobody enforces their own preference as a Male....
only as a Husband, Father and Grandfather; as long as these guys are okay with it, the woman is free to do what she wants.
Gender has nothing to do with that.
(As a neighbour and senator, nobody asked you to do anything but mind your own business.)
by Nick_A on May 3rd, 2019, 3:22 pm
Serpent » May 3rd, 2019, 12:38 pm wrote:
So the value of a thing or a living being is determined by women and politicians. Sounds reasonable.
by Serpent on May 3rd, 2019, 4:32 pm
Nick_A » May 3rd, 2019, 2:22 pm wrote: So the value of a thing or a living being is determined by women and politicians. Sounds reasonable.
That would be reasonable. Not the politicians so much, but if it were up to women, we wouldn't waste nearly so many people on wars and crimes.
What Edy420 advocates is that this value be set by husbands, fathers and grandfathers.
by edy420 on May 3rd, 2019, 4:51 pm
Wrong. Woman are family members too. I was simply talking from my perspective, which happens to be Male. I dont see why my gender takes away my rights as a family member?
God determines whose life has value.
Quite simply, if I end a life, I have ended a life. If I kill a being, I have killed. When it comes to animals, I admit, I killed an animal. I wish people who kill unborn human beings had the same honesty.
But it seems they are being honest most of the time. Just a difference in opinion I guess?
by TheVat on May 3rd, 2019, 9:30 pm
A difference in how "human being" is defined, perhaps. I rather doubt anyone would have a third trimester abortion if they believed the fetus to be a citizen, possessed of sentience and humanity. Even in some progressive nations, like in Scandinavia, third trimester abortion is not legal because people mostly agree there is some possibility of sentience. Very few women, where the fetus is normal and viable, ever request a third trimester abortion, due in part to the powerful sense of moral doubt.
In confronting the moral implications, most people prefer to have their metaphysical beliefs about fetal status err on the side of caution. As someone who believes in the value and dignity of every life, I would not want to deny a third trimester baby the benefit of the doubt. It would be my wife's decision, and I would hope she would share my moral qualms about ending a late term pregnancy. This is something couples usually, one hopes, work out before such a fraught choice presented itself.
by Nick_A on May 5th, 2019, 11:17 am
TheVat » May 3rd, 2019, 9:30 pm wrote: A difference in how "human being" is defined, perhaps. I rather doubt anyone would have a third trimester abortion if they believed the fetus to be a citizen, possessed of sentience and humanity. Even in some progressive nations, like in Scandinavia, third trimester abortion is not legal because people mostly agree there is some possibility of sentience. Very few women, where the fetus is normal and viable, ever request a third trimester abortion, due in part to the powerful sense of moral doubt.
The great question: what is human being? Our species has so much knowledge and so many skills yet we do not know what we are sufficient to either intellectually grasp or feel the objective value of life. Visitors from another world would ask themselves how these earth people can live like this and without any concept of what they are. In this condition they are forced to seek immediate gratification or a belief in some sort of fantasy. How sad when we consider the suffering caused by this ignorance.
This raises the obvious question if we can grow in our collective understanding to know what "being" is and in particular "human being" sufficient to value life? If we can grow to understand what human being is, how can it be done? The sad truth is that if it is known it must remain hidden and available only for those who can profit from it rather than seek to ridicule and destroy it.
by TheVat on May 14th, 2019, 12:07 pm
I find this article interesting, as a window into a religious mindset that seems to take a very different view of a common method of contraception. It hinges on the particular religious belief (which sort of belief is not, in the U.S., constitutionally seen as what our laws should be based upon) that a zygote is instantaneously, by being a fertilized egg, a human being.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/anti-cho ... 5e64bf9590
It's amazing to me that this program reduced the rate of abortions in teens by 64% and yet those opposed to abortion are quite angry about it. For those who are concerned about 3rd trimester abortion, when there is genuine concern, with a basis in real physiological evidence, as to the sentience of the fetus, this great reduction in unwanted teen pregnancies would seem to be progress.
The Cult of Unreason is thriving in the USA.
by PaulN on May 16th, 2019, 1:18 pm
They're angry because the program admits a reality their tiny brains can't handle: teens are going to rebel and do things their parents told them not to do....like have sex. And, yes, they're angry because, in spite of Himalayan mountains of developmental evidence to the contrary, they think a newly-fertilized egg is a person. They're angry because the Middle Ages ended, we had the Enlightenment, and it's getting so much harder to shove medieval ideas down everyone's throat. There are all these crazy fucked-up people out there who actually want EVIDENCE for your supernatural beliefs about magic Sky Daddy dropping a soul down into every new zygote.
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Billie Mae Eder
Category: Obituaries
Created on Wednesday, 14 February 2018 15:03
Billie Mae Eder, the first woman to serve as a Kitsap County (Washington) commissioner and a pioneering force for environmental and land use regulation, died Feb. 4 from dementia. She was 90 years old.
She was born in Sitka, where her father, William Haynes, was serving in the U.S. Navy. Her mother, Mary, named her for actress “Billie” Burke, who played Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, in “The Wizard of Oz.”
Her father was transferred to a number of Navy postings, ultimately Seattle, where she went to work at the Puget Sound Navy Yard. She met Dan Eder, who also worked there, and they were married in 1954. They had two daughters, Darcie and Kathie.
Bremerton was their home for nearly 60 years, and they were longtime members of Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church there.
She got into politics when a track of trailer residences was built near her home at Kitsap Lake, without any planning for such density. After sewage began running down area streets, she got neighbors together for a march on city hall.
She held a seat on the planning commission, at first, then was appointed a county commissioner in 1988; two years later she was elected to a four-year term. Known as a centrist Democrat, she garnered respect from both sides of the political aisle.
The Eders lost their daughter, Kathie, in a tragic accident in the surf at Ocean Shores in 1972. Soon after, she ran successfully for county treasurer, and served for 10 years.
No matter what stage of life, Eder was happy to engage in political conversation, her daughter said.
“She didn’t have any problem sharing her political beliefs,” her daughter said. “She made no bones about how she felt.”
Following the death of her husband in 2005, she moved to Lone Tree, Colorado, to be with her daughter, Darcie, and grandchildren, and lived there the rest of her life.
Eder will be buried with her husband at Forest Lawn Cemetery in West Bremerton.
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POLICE MEMORIAL PARK
MEMORIAL HISTORY
BOARD OF COMMISSION
MEMORIAL BADGE
OFFICER TREVOR A. NETTLETON
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
End of Watch: Thursday, November 19, 2009
Biographical Information:
Tour of Duty: 3 years
Badge Number: Unknown
Incident Details:
Cause of Death: Gunfire
Date of Incident: Thursday, November 19, 2009
Weapon Used: Gun, unknown type
Suspect Info: N/A
Officer Trevor A. Nettleton joined the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on November 5, 2006 following nine years of service in the United States Marine Corps. During his distinguished military career he was part of the Presidential Guard Detail, serving President George W. Bush. On November 19, 2009, Officer Nettleton was in the garage of his residence when he was approached by numerous subjects, one of them armed with a handgun. When the suspects attempted to rob Officer Nettleton at gunpoint he fought back, wounding one of the suspects with gunfire before he was fatally shot. Officer Nettleton is survived by his wife, two young children, his parents and one brother.
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OFFICER DANIEL J. LEACH
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"Twelfth Night" opens tonight in Marquette Theatre
Colby Lemaster as Sir Toby Belch, Christopher Bohnstengel as Malvolio, Erin Slimak as Maria. Front: Branden Piper as Sir Andew Aguecheek, Luke Garcia as Feste the Clown
Shakespeare's excellent comedy, Twelfth Night, centers on mistaken identity, gender-bending disguises and the madness of love. Set in the Elizabethan era of the Ottoman Empire in Illyria (Albania), with colorful and elegant flair, Loyola's production offers a rare glimpse into the contrasting worlds of this fantastical story.
Viola is shipwrecked on the shores of Illyria. Believing her twin brother, Sebastian, has drowned, she masquerades as Cesario, a young male page for the nobleman Duke Orsino, tangling herself in a messy romantic triangle. Viola falls in love with Orsino, but cannot tell him as he thinks she is a man, while Olivia, the object of Orsino's affection, falls for Viola, believing her guise as a man.
Meanwhile, more miscommunication, jealousy and mischief ensue with a merry group of pranksters living in Olivia's household tricking the servant, Malvolio, into believing his mistress wishes to marry him.
Director Artemis Preeshl incorporates the Renaissance Italian style of commedia dell'arte into Twelfth Night. Loyola University New Orleans' production of Twelfth Night explores commedia dell'arte, including slapstick comedy and wordplay, to heighten Shakespeare's characters and intensify the comic story of Twelfth Night.
Twelfth Night will run in the Marquette Theatre on Loyola's main campus, 6363 St. Charles Avenue, on April 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12, at 8 p.m., and April 6, at 2 p.m.
Tickets are $12 for general admission and $8 for students and senior citizens. For group rates, call (504) 865-2074.
For more information, please call the Loyola University New Orleans Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at (504) 865-3840.
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What is Syriac?
Photo Credit: Decorative Arch, Resafa, Syria. Copyright, Daniel Schwartz.
Understanding the Syriaca.org Model
Syriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portal is a collaborative online research tool intended to serve a broad audience including Syriac specialists, scholars in all fields, cultural heritage communities, and the interested public. Its methodological approach is informed by the emerging field of digital humanities. As such, it differs in design from traditional print reference works. The primary purpose of Syriaca.org is to serve as an online hub which aids researchers by linking together print and online resources for the study of Syriac literature and culture. Syriaca.org does not intend to be an exhaustive reference document. Instead, the linked data structure of Syriaca.org is designed to facilitate the discovery of new connections between primary data and scholarship in the field.
Syriaca.org provides four basic services to its users:
an online search tool for discovering links between existing print and digital resources
new reference works for defining entities included in the Syriaca.org index of Syriac studies
common digital standards to enable scholars to publish their own Syriac scholarship online and link it to Syriaca.org
Because Syriaca.org relies on new ways to organize information, it differs in design from previous print reference works in the humanities. Namely the chief aim of Syriaca.org is to link together existing resources, rather than to be itself a comprehensive or canonical authority on factual data.
Why are certain important facts included or missing?
The new reference works developed by Syriaca.org (such as The Syriac Gazetteer) are intended to facilitate the linking design of the project by providing information for disambiguation and definition of the subject of each entry. These reference works were designed with extensible frameworks which allow the user community to collaboratively enrich the variety and quantity of data in the database, but the primary purpose of the entries is not a comprehensive or balanced overview of their subject. Instead, the goal is for users to be able to identify each entry’s subject precisely and see its relationship with other entities, whether within the Syriaca.org reference tools or in other datasets.
The Syriac Gazetteer creates a framework to allow the progressive growth of geographic information about places relevant to Syriac Studies, and is not intended to be a comprehensive summary of all the information (or the most important information) about each of these places. In light of limited initial time and resources, we adopted a "breadth-first" rather than a "depth-first" approach, consulting reference works which listed large numbers of places for the purpose of creating placeholders for as many places as possible. This enables The Syriac Gazetteer to give search results for more obscure places than any previous Syriac geographical reference work. The names, descriptions, events, and bibliographic entries for the initial release were derived exclusively from the reference works we consulted for a large number of places and from whatever additional works the editors were consulting at that time, but they are not to be taken as the final word. Instead, their presence demonstrates the framework which enables future users to add additional data with citations. If there is a particular fact missing which you would like added, it can be.
Why are most of the places not on the map?
The map includes only those places for which latitude and longitude data have been entered into the database. Places without those coordinates, which are therefore not displayed on the map, fall into two categories. Some places do not have latitude and longitude because their precise locations are unknown. For example, Ḥarqel is a place for which we have a vague prose description of its location “in Palestine,” but until new evidence is discovered which allows us to identify the location of this village, it cannot be placed on a map. Nevertheless, it was a place and has links to other entities within Syriaca.org, notably the author Tumo of Ḥarqel, and therefore it is included in The Syriac Gazetteer. Places relevant to Syriac Studies may thus be included in the database even if their precise locations are unknown. Other place records do not have latitude and longitude because, although their precise location is known by someone, the initial development of this reference work prioritized creating a structure with as many placeholder records as possible, rather than inserting more information about fewer records. For these places, users are very welcome to submit coordinates, which will cause them to appear on the map and improve the reference work for everyone.
How can I submit additions, corrections, links to my own research?
Any page on which you see an error should have a “Corrections?” link at the bottom, which will enable you to email the editors regarding the issue. Additions to our data are also very welcome and may be submitted via email to the editors (an online form to submit additions is in development but not yet available at this time). You are also invited to embed Syriaca.org URIs (identifiers for each place, person, etc. that begin with http://syriaca.org/, displayed prominently at the top of the entry) within any dataset or publication you create, which will allow links between your project and our reference work.
How is Syriaca.org different from Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is an excellent collaborative reference to general knowledge for the general public, while Syriaca.org aims to be an excellent collaborative reference work for the specific domain of Syriac Studies, with the dual goals of enabling the research of a specialist audience while remaining comprehensible to a general audience. While both reference works are collaborative, Syriaca.org is both narrower and deeper in scope, and because it describes topics of specialist knowledge, it uses a board of scholar-editors to vet submissions, in order to maintain the verifiability of its data for academic use. All users are encouraged to submit information about the persons, places, works, and other topics described by Syriaca.org with proper citation of academically trustworthy sources, but scholars with a specialist knowledge in the topic will review all submissions before approving them for publication. Nevertheless, Syriaca.org will never be able to compete with the volunteer workforce developing Wikipedia, and so we link to the relevant Wikipedia articles as a service to our users who wish to read a more developed article of general knowledge.
Is the term "settlement" too vague, or perhaps too small, to describe major cities as well as tiny villages?
There are two reasons The Syriac Gazetteer has adopted the place type "settlement" as a catch-all rather than distinguishing between various sizes of settlements, large and small. First, "settlement" already has a substantial usage among digital geography projects (for examples, Pleiades and Dbpedia.org). The Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations uses the category "Cities and Settlements" without distinguishing between subcategories, which is effectively the same solution. By adopting the category of "settlement" The Syriac Gazetteer is more easily interoperable with those other projects. Second, and particularly important when dealing with historical geography, population centers change over time, and what was once a small village may now be a major city and vice versa. Because place types are exclusive, were The Syriac Gazetteer to adopt size-differentiated types of settlement (e.g. metropolis, city, town, village, hamlet), then it would need to create distinct place records for the same place whenever it grew into a larger category or shrunk into a smaller category. Creating non-controversial ways to differentiate among these place types over two millennia would be a challenge matched only by our inability in almost every case to adduce evidence for precisely when a settlement crossed over the boundaries of these size-differentiated place types. It has been deemed sufficient and preferable, therefore, to retain a larger category of "settlement" without attempting to subdivide it.
Why don’t you have more historical maps like the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World or the Historical Atlas of Islam? What is a “gazetteer”?
In contrast to an atlas as a collection of maps, a gazetteer is a geographical dictionary or database of places. The distinction is significant in the status accorded to places which cannot be placed on a map. Some historical places certainly existed, but their location is presently unknown. Other places were thought to exist, and were cultural objects to which most of the properties of places applied, but they never existed in the sense that one might arrive there, and thus they too cannot be placed on a map. An atlas, if it refers to places of these two categories at all, does so only as an afterthought, since it is not able to place them on the maps, and in consequence such places are usually ignored by atlas users as well. A gazetteer, by contrast, can treat them as it treats all other places, collecting references to these places and the information (such as variant names, event information, and prose descriptions of location) which can be gleaned from those references. The Syriac Gazetteer recognizes the power of spatial reasoning and the “spatial turn” in several disciplines, and thus it provides maps as ways to browse and search for the place records which have latitude and longitude, as well as contexts in which to situate such places. But because it is a work of historical and cultural geography, an atlas model was felt to be too restrictive for the range of places, some unmappable, which are relevant to Syriac Studies.
How important are diacritics, the dots or lines above or below letters?
Diacritics are used in Syriaca.org to distinguish words spelled differently in the original script but otherwise spelled the same. There is at present no scholarly consensus on the transliteration of Syriac into English, so we accept a range of transliteration styles at Syriaca.org, though we prefer the style specified in the preface of GEDSH. Searching on Syriaca.org should ignore diacritics and return all results with the same Latin letters. For example, searching for "Hwita" will return place Ḥwīṯā. The Arabic prefix "al-" may also be omitted from a search term; for example, the search string "Qaryatayn" matches the name of al-Qaryatayn. The one exception to omitting diacritics is that the raised half-ring characters representing ʾOlaf and ʿE (U+0x02BE and U+0x02BF, respectively) must be included in a search term if it is present in the desired name. Instead of the left open half-ring U+0x02BF, typically representing ʿE, the reader may type U+0060 (the grave accent character `) instead. Thus searching for either "Reshʿayna" or "Resh`ayna" will return the city Reshʿayna, but searching for "Reshayna" or "Resh'ayna" will not.
About Syriaca.org
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Pompeo tours Lebanese historical sites in ancient city
BYBLOS, Lebanon — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife Susan spent much of the second and last day of their visit to Lebanon touring historical churches and a centuries-old citadel in this coastal city Saturday.
The tour in Byblos and a nearby village came a day after Pompeo blasted the militant Hezbollah group and called on the Lebanese people to stand up to its "criminality."
His visit came amid tight security as roads were closed before his motorcade drove through Byblos and Beirut while Lebanese army sharpshooters took positions on rooftops. Some of the sites he visited, including churches, were closed to the public during his hourslong tour.
Pompeo began his day by visiting the site where a new U.S. embassy compound is being built then drove to the village of Behdaidat northeast of Beirut where he visited the 13th century Mar Tadros, or St. Theodore church. The State Department awarded a $44,000 grant through the Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation to support the conservation of the church.
Later, he visited two other churches in this coastal city renowned for its ancient Phoenician, Roman, and Crusader ruins where he was greeted by priests who briefed about the history of each church.
The last site to be visited in the ancient city was the Byblos Citadel built by the Crusaders. Pompeo toured the citadel as Tania Zazen, director general of antiquities in Byblos, accompanied him recounting the city's history.
In 2011, the State Department awarded a grant $93,895 to support the conservation of the main tower of the 12th century citadel at the archaeological site of ancient Byblos, a World Heritage site.
The delegation afterward went to a restaurant by the Mediterranean where they had a meal of cold and hot authentic Lebanese dishes, known as Mezza, and grilled lamb chops and chicken.
Pompeo also met Lebanese Armed Forces commander Gen. Joseph Aoun and Beirut Metropolitan of Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elias Audi.
"Spoke about the importance of protecting and defending religious diversity and opportunity" with Bishop Audi and how they enrich every country," Pompeo tweeted after the meeting.
Around sunset, his plane took off back to the U.S. ending a Mideast tour that also included visits to Kuwait and Israel.
Pompeo renewed his attack on Hezbollah and its main backer Iran, blasting the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, saying their aim is to control Lebanon.
"They want to control this state. They want access to the Mediterranean. They want power and influence here," Pompeo said in an interview with Sky News. He added that "the people of Lebanon deserve better than that, they want something different from that, and America is prepared to help."
When told that the Lebanese president and prime minister are not on the same page, Pompeo responded: "Yeah, I don't think that's true. I think that's false."
Speaking on President Donald Trump's abrupt declaration that Washington will recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Pompeo told Sky News that "what the President did with the Golan Heights is recognize the reality on the ground and the security situation necessary for the protection of the Israeli state. It's that - it's that simple."
When told the Trump's decision comes in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions Pompeo, defended him saying: "No, this is - this is deeply consistent with the reality on the ground, the facts on the ground."
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Home Life Style The family of Cabu discovers the Duduchothèque : an opening in the...
The family of Cabu discovers the Duduchothèque : an opening in the form of a celebration of life
only 10°C in the thermometer, a grey sky and sad… At 10 o’clock in the morning, Saturday 1st December, the weather in Châlons-en-Champagne, does not first of all to the festivities. Yet it is in a time that took place the inauguration of the Duduchothèque, space dedicated to the cartoonist Jean Cabut, dit Cabu, in this city where it was born. That was too long cried, after his assassination, on January 7, 2015, with his comrades of the Charlie Hebdo , by terrorists, that freedom of expression was offensive.
The families of Cabu discovers the Duduchothèque on Saturday 1 December 2018 to Châlons-en-Champagne. Caroline coupat
Despite this painful memory, it is not the sadness but the joy that colour the voice of Véronique Cabut, the widow of the artist. There she is, elegant and smiling, even if at moments his gaze covers a fleeting veil of melancholy.”The loop is closed, ” she says in the lobby of the Duduchothèque still almost empty. Châlons, this is where it all started for him, he is 80 years old, the age he would have had this year. He absolutely had to make a living for his drawings, press here. Each day, I woke up thinking to perpetuate his memory. Today is a great day. I am very proud.”
” READ ALSO – Châlons-en-Champagne inaugurates its Duduchothèque in homage to Cabu
Nearly Véronique Cabut, Michel, the brother of the artist. This sweet little old man, whose features recall those of the artist of Charlie Hebdo and Canard enchaîné , tells the story of the difficult birth of the Duduchothèque. “We wanted to create something in memory of Jean, rewinds there, but what? It had to be something living. Not a museum, nor a single building to his name.”
Finally, it is the choice of a hybrid facility that has been selected. It “is at once a pedagogical place, with exhibition spaces and, ultimately, a centre of research and interpretation on his work,” says Benoist Appeared, mayor LR of Châlons. A solution that meets Michel, with a slight nuance: “He would have deserved it of her living,” says the brother of the mischievous artist. Yes, but Cabu was always denied of having a place to his name before his death…
“A great tribute to the man”
Franck Riester, the minister of Culture
The room gradually fills: parents, friends, they came in large numbers to discover the Duduchothèque and pay homage to the child in the country. For this inauguration, there are the officials and the journalists. Especially, there is the crowd of anonymous who enters the room to the sound of a brass band. We believe in a fair, festive and popular. This joyous crowd, would probably not have displeased the one we honor today. Quickly, Véronique Cabut made the visit. She “doesn’t like talking” and it feels. She climbed up the three floors of the exhibition K-Bu before Cabu, stopping just a few seconds, here and there, to evoke, emotion, souvenir that reminds him of such and such a drawing. In contrast, the emotion and the joy, they are there. Contagious, to the point that the widow smiled more widely, seeming to finally take the measure of the work done.
” READ ALSO – Two years after the attack on Charlie Hebdo , a “Space Cabu” is going to be inaugurated
Franck Riester, the minister of Culture at the exhibition of Cabu, Saturday 1 December 2018 to Châlons-en-Champagne. FRANCOIS NASCIMBENI/AFP
The ceremony of the three-step cutting of ribbon – by Véronique Cabut, but also the brother and sister of the artist – is in the same vein: a happy and optimistic celebration of life. We laugh so that the fabric is a little too scissors. The speech, bringing the calm in the audience. Véronique Cabut thanked his relatives, with a special mention to Jean-François Pitet, the archivist who accompanied him for over three years. Benoist Appeared to greet a “cultural object is not identified, which is dedicated to the transmission of the values of Cabu, but also to the facilitation of visits with the school and the students.” About Franck Riester, the minister of culture, who has made the trip, he mentions “this great tribute to the man, engaged citizen that was Cabu” that is the Duduchothèque. “A great place to see the light of day. Today, by the founding act, we reaffirm the freedom of expression dear to democracy”, he concluded, triggering a round of applause.
light exposure The duduchothèque exhibition of Cabu in Châlons-en-Champagne, its city of origin. Caroline Coupat / Figaro
While some linger at the buffet washed down with champagne, the drink of the cru, others are discovering more ample exposure. It is a real dive in the Chalons of the 1950s, whose inhabitants, tenderly chewed by a Cabu still a teenager, are the wacky characters. The line is already secure, the situations funny and well thought out, the precocious talent. The municipal councils covered by the draftsman as early as 15 years for the daily newspaper The Union , Jard (the public garden), passing by the father Gilbert, his barber, and by the ball of Gadzarts – students of the school of arts and crafts… Jean Cabut sign yet J-KBu, bite everything and everyone, with malice.
No, Cabu was really not to be ashamed of J-KBu. “My luck is being born at Châlons-sur-Marne”, he said years later, then it will become one of the signatures the more valuable of the parisian press. His city has returned the compliment by dedicating this bright and welcoming Duduchothèque, inaugurated of the most beautiful ways.
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April 10, 2019 By Philip Barton
Society evolved from tribalism. The process was simple, though unique to one place and time.
Basic trading between tribes had always occurred. It was the emergence of money, with its unique property of being a store of stable value over time, which took trading to a much more sophisticated and complex level by allowing for the accumulation of capital.
Money, with its incentive to produce surplus goods with which to trade and prosper created, for the first time, wealthy people. It was, visibly and obviously, a highly desirable state. The achievement of that state was greatly assisted by a situation of peace, not war. The wealth gained through the peaceful trade of surplus goods was far preferable to the wealth gained through war with all its attendant risks.
Thus was born the concept of tolerance for the culture and beliefs of another. Tolerance was a prerequisite for being a trader in a market composed of many different cultures – a free market. In that manner was birthed the first society.
The nature of trading, with its emphasis on trust and expanding markets, created an awareness of, and demand for, the virtues of not only tolerance, but honesty and decency. Trust had to be earned.
The newly accumulated wealth allowed for the previously unknown concept of leisure. From that sprang the arts and the need for a more sophisticated language. It was a rapidly increasing spiral of wealth, leisure, arts, peace, honesty – and IQ.
In 2019, just over one hundred years after governments removed money from circulation, that whole process is in reverse. Fiat is a distant cry from a store of stable value over time. Society is visibly breaking back down into its tribal roots with the collapse of tolerance, ethics and morals and the rapid rise of mass stupidity, e.g. global warming, veganism, sexual fluidity and equality.
From the absurd ‘progressive’ premise that all are equal has come undeserved respect and, from there, ambition. Why not? The result has been that utterly stupid and unprincipled people (just a few examples amongst many) have been elected to the highest level of government. At no other time in recorded history have people with a falling average IQ been led by people who are even less intelligent.
In that manner is civilization’s collapse speeding up. At the very moment when the West need leaders wise enough to reverse course, we have the opposite. They do not even know the course. They are oblivious to all history, let alone the history of money.
We live in a paradox whereby as the political class becomes ever-less intelligent and seizes ever-more power, the society that they insist on regulating, supervising and taxing becomes ever more complex. This inverse proportionality is dangerous, and fast becoming critical. It is not just the economic damage caused by this self-serving and malign oversight, though that is bad enough, it is the weapons systems that are under their control.
In the meantime, the gene pool is collapsing as the intelligent are reluctant to breed and moronic riff-raff double down on their efforts. Why not? They are subsidized by their governments for doing so. They are, after all, equal. With this decay of the gene pool comes the rise of poor immune systems and the prevalence of ‘super bugs’ and genetic abnormalities. Amongst other things, this has led to sexual allsorts and the daft insistence that there are more sexes than just male and female. Instead of an effort to try to identify and address the root of the problem, there is a concerted push to normalise such peculiarities.
Only the re-circulation of Gold can put societies back on course.
Time is running out.
Filed Under: Other News, Philip Barton Tagged With: arts, capital, culture, decency, equal, equality, expanding markets, falling average IQ, first society, free market, gene pool, genetic abnormalities, global warming, gold, governments, history of money, honesty, immune systems, intelligent, leisure, money, morons, peace, progressive, regulating, Sexual Allsorts, sexual fluidity, societies, sophisticated language, store of stable value over time, super bugs, surplus goods, taxing, tolerance, trade, trader, trading, tribal roots, tribalism, tribes, trust, veganism, war
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Walking to Broadway
Wolfer Productions
Timothy Wolfer
Documentary Filmmaker
Timothy Wolfer is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and owner of Wolfer Productions. He is constantly learning and communicating on topics such as humanitarian aid, international development, and human rights.
Wolfer's Passion for this work began in High school after traveling to New Orleans to film post- Katrina recovery efforts. His passion continued to grow as he established Wolfer Productions and continued producing films in places like Mozambique, South Sudan, and Bangladesh. The January 12, 2010, earthquake outside Porta-au-Prince, Haiti, inspired Wolfer to film the struggles of the local Maison des Enfants de Dieu orphanage. Hitchhiking into Port-au-Prince, and living solely off of what he could carry in his backpack, Wolfer documented the struggle and ultimate evacuation of 130 orphans from Haiti and their eventual resettlement in the United States. The resulting documentary "Adopting Haiti" was released January 2011 on Hulu.com.
He has worked extensively around issues of natural disaster, in places like Port-au-Prince Haiti days after the 2010 earthquake, Tacloban, the Philippines after typhoon Yolanda in 2013 and most recently the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Huston, Hurricane Irma from the British Virgin Islands where he also rode out Hurricane Maria.
In addition to experience around disasters, Wolfer has worked with Internally Displaced people and Refugees around the world. In South Sudan, he has produced several films for the UN Migration Agency on the logistics of keeping displaced people alive in the middle of a civil war, in camps as well as remote areas people are fleeing the war. These experiences have allowed him to follow people as they migrate by foot with everything they have to find a safer location so they can survive a civil war.
Last year one of the largest refugee crisis in modern history developed as the country of Myanmar committed a genocide against the Rohingya people. Wolfer spent seven weeks filming as people ran across the border with nothing but the clothes on their backs and then worked to survive depending on aid.
Wolfer has built his company around producing films in complicated locations both logistically and politically. Examples would be working in remote areas of South Sudan without power for two weeks, or Cuba as diplomatic relations eased, filming some of the first humanitarian projects and even Fidel Castros’ public funeral.
Wolfer did his film training at Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley and interned for Francis Ford Coppola's company, American Zoetrope.
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List Today!
Are you part of a business or organization that wants to reach out to the Transgender community or has resources we should be aware of?
Do you know of a resource that you found to be helpful and think others will benefit from it as well?
TransCentralPA is happy to list businesses, organizations and resources that cater to and support the Transgender community. Please send us an email with the organization's information, website and description to:
info@TransCentralPA.org
Pride Festival
Equality Fest
Transgender Advocacy Organizations
National Center for Transgender Equality
The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) is a 501(c)3 social justice organization dedicated to advancing the equality of transgendered people through advocacy, collaboration and empowerment.
1325 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Suite 700
Equality Pennsylvania
Because of social myths about gender, transgender people face many issues, from unemployment to homelessness to acts of violence. By educating ourselves and others, Equality Pennsylvania fights for the right to live openly without fear of abuse or discrimination. Equality Pennsylvania is devoted to ending discrimination and violence against transgender people through education and advocacy on state and local issues of importance to transgender people. By empowering transgender individuals and rallying our allies to educate and influence policymakers and others, Equality Pennsylvania offers a strong and clear voice for transgender equality.
Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund
Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund is committed to ending discrimination based upon gender identity and expression and to achieving equality for transgender people through public education, test-case litigation, direct legal services, community organizing and public policy efforts.
Pennsylvania Student Equality Coalition
Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape
Supporting and Partnering with all communities to end sexual violence
Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence
The World Professional Association for Transgendered Health
The World Professional Association for Transgendered Health (WPATH), formerly known as the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, Inc. (HBIGDA), is a professional organization devoted to the understanding and treatment of gender identity disorders.
Transgender Law Center
Focused on transgendered legal issues in the State of California. However, it does have a wealth of information that pertains to the country as a whole.
Transgender Law and Policy Institute
A non-profit organization dedicated to engaging in effective advocacy for transgendered people in our society. The TLPI brings experts and advocates together to work on law and policy initiatives designed to advance transgendered equality.
Transgender American Veterans Association
The Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) was formed to address the growing concerns of fair and equal treatment of transgendered veterans and active duty service members.
New York based outfit. SRLP works to guarantee that all people are free to self-determine gender identity and expression, regardless of income or race, and without facing harassment, discrimination or violence.
All the documents and information accessible from the links above are in the public domain and a matter of public record. Though we considered these resources to be helpful to the transgendered community when we posted the links, neither TransCentralPA nor its officers or members warrants or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or processes disclosed or provided on these sites, or for updated information or changes made to these sites. Various content on these sites may also be subject to copyright by authors, journals and publishers. Use of the copyrighted material is subject to the terms and conditions of use established by that author, journal or publisher.
Our Next Dinner & Meeting is Saturday, July 13th
MCC of the Spirit
Join us for our group meeting at 8:30 pm. Doors open at approximately 8:00 pm for those needing to change. For directions to the MCC of the Spirit or if you would like more information, about the group, please send us an email. For directions, use Google Maps.
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» travelinos.com » Sightseeing » Sightseeing Egypt » Siwa Oasis
Siwa Oasis
More Sightseeing
Porta Palatina in Turin
Krumovo Kale
Red City Hall in Berlin
Kasbah in Morocco
Roman Baths in Bath
Bixby Creek Bridge
Guilin in China
Stone bridge in Skopje
The area of the oasis Siwa is a rather small habitable area, located amidst the western Egyptian desert and is located 550 km away on the desert route from the capital Cairo. From the Libyan border the remote spot is only about 50 km away which is on route to the capital, Cairo.
Travel agencies offer this excursion as part of their packages. Another option is to rent a car, but it is risky if you are not familiar with the rules of the road in the country. Opportunities by taxi and bus are always secure.
Siwa, which is only 80 km long and 20 km wide is an isolated small oasis where the Zeitgeist and traditions have managed to be preserved to a large extent. Siwa is inhabited by nearly 23, 000 people of mostly ethnic Berbers who speak different dialects. For a small size Siwa has managed to become a relatively large tourist center. Alcohol is totally banned and women must be veiled with their traditional cloak. Foreign women here had better also be covered to avoid annoying the local population. The main thing to eat there are dates.
The town itself is built around Shalit which is an old place and was built of bricks in the 13th century and surrounded by walls that were designed to protect people from enemy attacks. With the increase in population over the years, people have decided instead to build retaining walls outside the city to build inside their higher buildings of which some of them reach up to 5 floors.
Within the town it has a colorful market, where you can find antique silverware and rare embroidered fabrics. This place is popular and is overwhelmed with plaited baskets and their ceramic vessels.
One of the tourist attractions in Siwa is a traditional museum, House of Siwa Museum. It was built by a former Canadian ambassador who wanted to preserve the distinctive culture of this place.
In 2007 this part of the Egyptian desert was marked as the oldest trace of the human foot whose age according to record estimates around 2 million years. It is perhaps the most important discovery ever made by Egyptian scientists.
Archaeologists found the footprint in the mud fossils, which were discovered with residues of plant origin. It may be that he is older than the famous fossil which partially preserved the skeleton of an ape-man aged at about 3 million years and was opened in 1974 in Ethiopia. The earliest evidence of human presence on the territory of Egypt found so far was 200, 000 years ago.
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New Ghostbusters 4K Steelbook, Fast & Furious 4K, Baa Baa Black Sheep on BD in France, Phantasm & more
April 10, 2019 - 4:05 pm | by Bill Hunt
All right, we’ve got a few items for you guys today here at The Bits...
First up, I know some of you guys are big fans of the Fast and Furious franchise, so you might be interested in this: Amazon is now taking pre-orders on Universal’s Fast & Furious and Fast Five on 4K Ultra HD. Each will feature DTS-X object based audio. Street date is 6/11. I’ve included cover artwork at below (and you’ll find the Amazon pre-order links down there too.
I’ve also posted the artwork for Universal’s The Scorpion King, which streets on 4K on 6/18 and is also available for pre-order.
Now then, the big news today is that Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has announced a new Ghostbusters & Ghostbusters II Steelbook 4K Ultra HD release on 6/11 that will include a new special features disc with more than two hours of “long-requested and rare archival elements—including never-before-seen deleted scenes from the first film—along with returning interviews, effects breakdowns, multi-angle explorations and much more! Both films also feature brand new commentaries, featuring the filmmakers on Ghostbusters II and passionate fans with deep-cut insights on Ghostbusters.” You can see the cover artwork to the left. [Read on here...]
Warner Bros. is going to be re-issuing Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla (2014) on Blu-ray in new packaging on 4/9 (this may be a Best Buy exclusive), obviously designed to promote the forthcoming theatrical release of Godzilla: King of the Monsters. There’s no word yet whether the film will arrive on 4K Ultra HD at some point, but it would make sense given the fact that Kong: Skull Island is on 4K and King of the Monsters certainly will be.
Speaking of Warner Bros., the studio is also bringing William Wyler’s original Ben-Hur (1959) back into theaters on 4/14 and 4/17 in honor of its 60th Anniversary. We don’t yet know of the film will be released in 4K Ultra HD later this year, but we certainly hope so. As you know, the film was a recent Retro Release Day title here at The Bits.
And while we’re talking 4K... here could be a surprise: The online anime retailer Right Stuff has posted a listing for a 4K Ultra HD version of Yimou Zhang’s Shadow, expected to be released by Well Go USA on 8/13. We’ve asked the studio for confirmation, but have been told not expect it for a while yet (as the film hasn’t even hit theaters). But I’ve been assured that I will be kept in the loop, so there’s that. More Yimou Zhang in 4K would be a BIG deal, so fingers crossed.
On the regular Blu-ray front, Eureka! has announced the release of German filmmaker Arnold Fanck’s The Holy Mountain on the format as part of their Masters of Cinema collection. Look for it to street on 17 June 2019.
Also on the international Blu-ray front, here’s a surprise: A French distributor called Elephant Films has released a classic Universal TV series known as Les Têtes brûlées on Blu-ray. You may know it better by its original American name: Baa Baa Black Sheep or The Black Sheep Squadron (its syndication name). Elephant released it as a complete series set late last year, with all 36 episodes scanned from film in full HD. Now, as some of you know, I’m a huge fan of this series. I’ve requested a BD review copy of the set and I’ll definitely review it here if they send it. It may be region locked, but we’ll see. Here’s a look at the cover art...
One last note today: Our friends over at Bloody Disgusting are reporting that Well Go USA Entertainment (speaking of) is releasing a Phantasm Sphere Collection box set on Blu-ray, featuring Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm, a new 4K restoration of Phantasm II, and Phantasm: Ravager, with the previous extras and new ones as well (including an Atmos mix on the original film). It will come with a replica of the iconic killer sphere prop. This is obviously part of the original film’s 40th anniversary celebration. The new set will be available in time for Halloween later this year. You can read more here.
Here’s that cover artwork we mentioned above (with Amazon.com pre-order links)...
And that’s all for now. Stay tuned...!
(You can follow Bill on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)
Fast and Furious 4K
Fast Five 4K
Fast & Furious 4K
The Scorpion King 4K
Ghostbusters 1 & 2 Steelbook 4K
Baa Baa Black Sheep: The Complete Series
Shadow 4K
The Holy Mountain
Elephant Films
Les Têtes brûlées
Phantasm Sphere Collection
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Bending Over Backwards
One of my favorite science bedtime stories (didn't you have those when you were a kid? or now, if you're still one?) involves the French physicist Prosper-René Blondlot (1849-1930), whose principal claim to fame, sadly, was a non-discovery.
In this particular case, Blondlot was working in his laboratory in the wake of a flush of discoveries concerning radioactivity and X-rays. Apparently, he was trying to polarize X-rays (a tricky task owing to their high frequency and short wavelength), and as part of his attempt he placed a spark gap in front of an X-ray beam. After a few experiments with this set-up, it seemed to him that the spark was brighter when the beam was on than when it was off.
He attributed this to a new form of radiation, which he called N-rays after his home town and university of Nancy. He may have been influenced by all the work on radioactivity and X-rays then going on, but at any rate, he set about immediately to investigate attributes of the new radiation. It appeared, he said, to be emanated by many objects, including the human body. It was refracted by prisms made from various metals, although these had to be specially treated in order to prevent them from radiating N-rays themselves.
It was all very interesting, and for some time, there was a burst of scientific activity on N-rays. The problem was, the N-rays themselves were very shy and retiring, and many physicists had trouble reproducing the results obtained by Blondlot and his staff. But Blondlot always maintained either that they had inferior equipment, or inferior perception.
You see, there was no objective recording of N-rays. All one had was a subtle brightening of a spark, which Blondlot and his colleagues were already prepared to see. To lend at least some notion of objectivity to the research, Blondlot took photographs of the sparks and other N-ray phenomena, but this merely replaced subjective judgment of a live spark with subjective judgment of a photograph. Means for measuring the light output were not sufficiently reliable or accurate yet to resolve the matter.
What did resolve the matter in the end was a visit to Nancy by the American physicist Robert Wood (1868-1955). Wood had tried himself to detect N-rays and had failed signally. Frustrated at his wasted efforts, and curious as to the differences between Blondlot's staff and equipment and his own, he travelled across the ocean to see for himself.
Wood had by this time in his career established himself as something of a debunker, a sort of turn-of-the-century James Randi. But Blondlot was no charlatan; on the contrary, he was firmly convinced of his own discovery. So he had no misgivings about demonstrating his N-rays before Wood and others. He darkened the laboratory (the better to see the increase in brightness). He set his aluminum prism on a platform to refract the N-rays, made some measurements, rotated the platform a bit, made some more measurements, and so on, all the while casually detecting the N-rays. For his own part, Wood could see nothing of what Blondlot was describing. But he kept quiet, waiting for the experiments to conclude.
When they did, and the lights were turned back on, there was general astonishment, for despite all the careful measurements on the refraction of N-rays, there was no aluminum prism sitting on the platform. Wood had, it turned out, pocketed the prism early on in the experiment. The entire time, Blondlot and his staff had been obtaining gradually changing measurements of an unchanging experimental set-up. That spelled the end, for all intents and purposes, of N-rays.
What happened? Intentional deception can be ruled out rather easily, since Blondlot would have known that careful experimentation would eventually disprove N-rays; it would have been a most temporary fame. Nor was he a shoddy scientist. Before the N-ray affair, he was known for having measured both the speed of light and the speed of electricity through wires, a task that had stymied others, and which established that the two were very close (though not quite the same).
Consensus today is that Blondlot had simply wanted to believe in N-rays, expected and wanted to see the predicted brightening, so much that he really did see it, sincerely. It has been suggested that he may have been motivated by nationalism; X-rays were discovered by the German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen, and Germany had recently taken a sizable chunk of France, so that Nancy was now uncomfortably close to the French-German border. But my own feeling is that it almost doesn't matter. At some point, the desire to see his discovery of N-rays vindicated became its own driving force.
The N-ray affair is often cited in support of what is, in my opinion, a central—perhaps even the central—insight of scientific discovery: The easiest person to fool is yourself. And fooling yourself is a necessary prelude to fooling others; charlatanry would have been easier to expose. Exhibit A in support of this position is the sad fact that although N-rays essentially died a hard death in 1904, Blondlot lived on for another quarter century, continued to be productive in science, and took his belief in the existence of N-rays to his death.
It is because it is so easy to fool oneself that science is, and must be, an essentially social activity. It is often said that in science, experimental data rules the day. That's overstating it a bit. Experimental data is indeed necessary for science to progress, but that data means little without scientific theory to organize it (and vice versa). It's not that the data is more important than the theory, but that it validates it, makes it less likely to fool yourself or anyone else. And there's a strong social pressure, within the scientific community, for one to bend over backwards in an attempt to subject one's theories to as much scrutiny as possible. It's that intense examination, which eliminates many theories but marks the ones that survive with an imprimatur of robustness, that distinguishes science from so many other human activities (ahem, politics?) and has made it one of the most successful endeavors of all.
Posted by Brian Tung at 4:28 PM No comments: Links to this post
Labels: history, physics, science
Back, Slash, Back!
Remember this post? Probably not, but now I have some company and/or vindication. Check out this xkcd comic, drawn by the redoubtable Randall Munroe.
Observe: Friends don't let friends say "backslash" in their URLs.
Posted by Brian Tung at 10:01 AM No comments: Links to this post
Labels: punctuation, questionable sanity
harmolodics
John DeFrancis
non-transitivity
Qian Zhongshu
questionable sanity
queueing theory
recreational mathematics
Robert Ramsey
series finale
travelling salesman problem
Brian Tung
I'm a probability and statistics weenie with an interest in sports, music, poetry, astronomy, people, and other picture postcards.
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Rhode Island Attorney
Crank or Obscene Telephone Calls
Domestic Assault and Battery
Domestic Cyberstalking
Domestic Disorderly Conduct
Domestic Trespassing
Domestic Vandalism
Obstructing A Police Officer
Possession of a Weapon
Receiving Stolen Property
Suspended Driver’s License
Rhode Island Cyberstalking Criminal Defense Lawyer
If you have been charged with the offense of Cyberstalking please call or email me as soon as possible. Like nearly every other type of criminal charge, it is critical to be proactive and take some action to defend yourself before your next court date.
What is Cyberstalking in Rhode Island?
Under Rhode Island law, Cyberstalking is defined by statute as the transmission of a communication by computer or other electronic device. The Cyberstalking communication has to be made to a person or to his or her family members for the sole purpose of harassing that person or that person’s family members.
Electronic communications is not defined in the Cyberstalking statute or in the Computer Crimes Act. However, common sense suggests that electronic communications would include, but would not be limited to, cell phone text messages, emails and social media postings.
But what does harassing mean?
According to the Cyberstalking statute the term harassment is defined as a knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a specific person which:
1. Seriously alarms, annoys, or bothers the person, and
2. Serves no legitimate purpose.
The course of conduct is further defined by the Cyberstalking statute as meaning a series of acts over a period of time which demonstrates a continuity of purpose.
As criminal statutes go, the Cyberstalking statute is actually well written in that it provides some guidance and term definitions. It even goes so far as to protect constitutionally protected activity under the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Statutory Analysis
The Cyberstalking statute is still so new to Rhode Island that the Rhode Island Supreme Court has not interpreted it. In other words, we have no case law for guidance to tell us what is Cyberstalking criminal conduct and what is not Cyberstalking criminal conduct.
Therefore, we are left to interpret the Cyberstalking statute according to the plain meaning of the words in the statute.
It appears to me, based on a plain reading of the Cyberstalking statute, that in order for the alleged Cyberstalking conduct to be criminal, a person would have to intentionally send:
1. More than one electronic communication to a person over a period of time that amounts to a course of conduct; and
2. That the multiple electronic communications have no legitimate purpose other than to harass, alarm, annoy or bother the person.
Is this Constitutional?
There is no question that the Cyberstalking statute criminalizes certain types of protected speech, or speech that would be otherwise not criminal, because the speech is transmitted electronically.
The constitutionality of other statutes similar to the Cyberstalking statute, like the Crank and Obscene Phone Calls statute, have been challenged on the basis that protected speech has been criminalized.
Courts have traditionally upheld these types of statutes, not to criminalize certain types of protected speech, but to criminalize the manner in which the otherwise perfectly legal speech is transmitted. If that sounds intellectually dishonest to you, well, I agree with you.
In my estimation, under Rhode Island law, if a Defendant makes one or possibly two communications by computer or other electronic device for the sole purpose of harassment, said Defendant should be found not guilty if charged.
However, once a Defendant makes three or more communications by computer or other electronic device for the sole purpose of harassment, then said Defendant runs the very real risk of being convicted if charged.
Cyberstalking Has a Risk of Abuse
A very troubling concern about the Cyberstalking statute is the proliferation of text messaging, especially in cases involving Domestic Violence.
A text message is, in the strictest sense, is a transmission of a communication by computer or other electronic device.
It is easy to imagine a case where Defendant has been charged with Domestic Disorderly Conduct. At the Defendant’s arraignment he may be released from custody, but ordered to have ‘No Contact’ with the alleged victim. This means that the Court, by operation of law, issues a Domestic Violence No Contact Order.
A Domestic Violence No Contact Order prohibits the Defendant from having any contact at all with the alleged victim. Any violation of the Domestic Violence No Contact Order results not only in a new criminal charge, but also in having the Defendant’s bail revoked. This means that the Defendant will be held without bail at the state prison pending the outcome of a Bail Violation Hearing.
It also means that the Defendant would then be charged with felony Domestic Cyberstalking.
Can’t you imagine a scenario where the alleged victim is furiously angry with the Defendant who has been charged with Domestic Disorderly Conduct?
If the alleged victim has the Defendant’s cell phone in his possession, he could send himself a series of harassing text messages from the Defendant’s cell phone.
Or worse yet, there are applications that can be downloaded where a person can send himself a text message but make it appear as if the text message is coming from another person’s cell phone.
That is pretty scary, especially for people who are on bail and are the subject of a Domestic Violence No Contact Order.
Cyberstalking Penalties
Cyberstalking is a misdemeanor under Rhode Island law. This means that the maximum penalty that can be imposed is one year in prison and/or a fine of not more than $500.00.
A second conviction under the Cybertsalking statute results in a felony conviction that could result in incarceration for up to two years and a fine of not more than $6,000.00.
These penalties change if there was a restraining order in effect at the time of the alleged Cyberstalking conduct. If a person violates a Court restraining Order, such as a Domestic Violence No Contact Order through Cyberstalking activity, the resulting charge is a felony punishable by up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $6,000.00 for a first offense and up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.00 for a second or subsequent offense.
24 Salt Pont Road · Unit C-3 · Wakefield, RI 02879 · ©2012 - 2016 RoboLaw. All Rights Reserved. ·
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Featured Netball News
Gauteng & North West To Meet In Final
August 28, 2015 August 28, 2015 @TheSportsEagle Spar National Netball Championships
After a hectic week of Netball, North West and Gauteng on Friday booked their places in the final of the Spar National Netball Championships at the Ugu Sports Centre near Margate, setting up a repeat of last year’s final. In 2014, Gauteng North beat Dr Kenneth Kaunda (North West South) 63-37 to claim the cup for the fourth time in five years. North West retained their unbeaten record at this year’s tournament with a comprehensive 37-15 thrashing of Western Cape A1.
The Cape team were outclassed, and it was only in the final quarter that they fought back. They scored just one goal in the first quarter, two in the second and three in the third before winning the last quarter by nine goals to six. North West coach Dorette Badenhorst says: ‘We set our goal to go in very hard in the first quarter, and we had an excellent first and second quarter. That made it easier throughout the game.’
Badenhorst says she was pleased the semifinal had not been too tough: ‘We’ve had a hard week, and you don’t want too tough a game before the final.’ She attributed the team’s success to hard work on and off the court, and said her team was mentally and physically well-prepared: ‘There’s a good spirit in the team, and we have some youngsters but we also have some experienced players, which makes for a good mix. We lost to Gauteng North in the final last year, after winning all our group matches, so we are going to go in one hundred percent tomorrow. We don’t want a repeat of last year’s result.’ Gauteng, playing Free State for the second time in two days, registered a solid 27-20 win. They led throughout and did not lose a single quarter, although the teams both scored five goals in the final quarter.
North West beat Gauteng in their round robin match, which was played on the opening day of the tournament, but coach Jenny Van Dyk says the team had improved with every game during the tournament and were much better than the team that lost on Monday: ‘I think we’ve peaked at the right time. North West are a very good team, and they’ve been playing as a unit for quite a while, so we will definitely not under-estimate them, but my players have really grown and shown a lot of character over the whole week, and I’m sure that they will have confidence going into the final. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.’
Free State and Western Cape A1 will meet in the play-off for third place on Saturday morning, ahead of the final. Eastern Cape finished fifth on the log, followed by Western Cape A2. KwaZulu-Natal A2 were the only team in the A section to lose all their games, finishing at the bottom of the log.
Photo credit: Reg Caldecott
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Wed 17 Jun, 2009
Comments (0) Filed under: Advertisements, Lipstick
Tags: 1920s, 1930s, alcoholism, Alice Prin, Art Deco, Dada, drug abuse, Elizabeth Lee Miller, Guerlain, Harper's Bazaar, Jacques Darcy, Kiki de Montparnasse, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Martin Heideggar, rene magritte, Sigmund Freud, Soren Kierkegaard, surrealism, Vanity Fair, Vogue
The Guerlain advertisement by Jacques Darcy is one that I adore, and one which I have noticed is very similar to the Man Ray photograph of Elizabeth “Lee” Miller from 1930.
Elizabeth "Lee Miller" by Man Ray (1930)
Both images are of a woman’s face — upside down, hair flowing, eyes shut. The images reveal women who appear to be sleeping peacefully. Because the advertisement has a caption, we know that the woman is dreaming. The father of modern psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, said that “wish-fulfillment is the meaning of each and every dream, and hence there can be no dreams besides wishful dreams”. Nothing like interjecting a bit of Freudian psychology into an advertisement for lipstick!
Man Ray may not have been probing the human psyche in the same ways as Freud, but he was exploring the landscape of the mind through his art. Ray was an American artist residing in New York in 1916 when he became acquainted with fellow artists, and recent arrivals from France, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. The three men were kindred spirits and they soon became active in the anti-art movement in the U.S. Anti-art didn’t mean that they rejected art per se but rather that they were rebelling against conventional “museum art”. The movement was known as Dada and was a protest against the nationalism, capitalism, and other “isms” which many people felt were the fundamental causes of World War I. Artist George Grosz characterized his Dadaist art as a protest “against this world of mutual destruction”.
Observatory - The Lovers by Man Ray (1934)
When Ray arrived in France in 1921 he was one of many expatriate artists and writers who would gravitate to Paris in the 1920s; and just as his predecessors had done he found his way to Montparnasse, sometimes referred to as the “Harlem of Paris”. Ray continued to pursue his art; however, Dadaism peaked by 1922 as many of his contemporaries embraced Surrealism.
La Magie Noire by Rene Magritte
There were several parallel, and very important, art, design, philosophical, and political movements gaining ground during the 1920s: Dada, Surrealism, Art Deco, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Existentialism (the term existentialism was not used in the 1920s; it was coined in 1943 by Gabriel Marcel, and it would be retroactively applied to philosophers such as Martin Heideggar and Soren Kierkegaard). I see subtle similarities between the Darcy ad and the painting La Magie Noire by Rene Magritte. Perhaps it is the coloration, or the peaceful expression on the face of the woman who seems to belong to both the earth and the clouds.
For most of the 1920s Ray’s muse was Alice Prin (aka Kiki de Montparnasse), the Queen of Montparnasse. Kiki had come up hard as the illegitimate child of a peasant girl, and was given over to her grandmother to be raised. The two struggled in extreme poverty (Kiki often stole food from local gardens) and so when at age 12 she had an opportunity to live with her mother in Paris, she took it. She was a headstrong girl and she and her mother frequently clashed. When Kiki finally left her mother’s home for the last time she was only 14 years old.
Kiki with vase by J. Mandel (c. 1928)
She was a lovely girl, and it wasn’t surprising that she was quickly discovered by local artists. Her relationship with the artists was often mutually beneficial — many times they produced their best work when using Kiki as a model. That was certainly true of Man Ray.
Kiki fled Paris in 1940 when the Germans began their occupation and she never returned as a resident. She died at age 51 — the likely result of alcoholism and drug abuse.
Le Violon d'Ingres by Man Ray (Kiki as model)
In 1929 Kiki was supplanted in Ray’s affections by Elizabeth “Lee” Miller. Lee arrived at Ray’s Paris studio and announced to him that she was his new student. He insisted that he didn’t accept apprentices, but Lee was extraordinary; she was gorgeous and talented. They became lovers as well as student and teacher. Lee had run to Paris after posing for a Kotex ad. The ad is famous for being the first feminine hygiene ad in which an actual photograph of a woman was used. At first Lee was mortified by the ad, apparently she hadn’t realized that she wasn’t to be a model for a drawing, but rather for a photograph.
Lee Miller in Kotex ad (1928)
Lee would stay with Man Ray for a few years, but eventually she grew restless and returned to New York where she opened her own studio. If her studio work was superlative, her work as a photojournalist for Vogue magazine during World War II was brilliant; however, witnessing scenes at liberated death camps, among other horrors, profoundly changed her.
She put away her camera in the 1950s and channeled her restless energy into gourmet cooking, at which she excelled. Lee succumbed to cancer in 1977; her ashes were scattered over her herb garden at her farm in Sussex, England.
Darcy ad for Guerlain's "Are You Her Type?" ad campaign
As for Jacques Darcy, the artist who created the distinctive advertisements for Guerlain, I have not been able to discover very much about him. I found conflicting information in various sources. The consensus seems to be that he was born on February 7, 1892 and died in 1963 in Michigan. His work appeared frequently during the 1920s and 1930s in such publications as Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. He is best known for the art he produced for Guerlain — in my opinion some of the best commercial art ever created.
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Hero in Our Midst – Lieutenant Colonel Muriel Katschker, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve
Valley Patriot of the Month
By: Ted Tripp – January, 2007
NORTH ANDOVER – Muriel Katschker remembers well where she was on December 7, 1941. She was with her parents listening to the radio when the regular programming was interrupted by an announcer’s voice saying the Japanese had just attacked and bombed Pearl Harbor. Instantly, the family knew this meant the country was at war.
At the time, however, Muriel was a young lady and had no idea that years later she would end up with a lifelong commitment to the Marine Corps.
Muriel Katschker was born and raised in Boston. She attended the city’s public schools and in high school became head cheerleader on the cheerleading squad. She was also active in the Girl Scouts where she eventually achieved the rank of Mariner. This gave her the delightful opportunity to sail on the Charles River.
In 1945, following high school graduation, Muriel entered Boston University to study nursing. After a year of medical instruction, however, she decided that she wanted to concentrate more on academics and transferred into the biology program. Muriel graduated in 1950 with a bachelor of arts in biology and subsequently went to work in the research department at the Boston University Medical School.
In June of 1952, as the Korean War continued, Muriel decided she wanted to serve her country by joining the armed forces. She chose theMarine Corps Reserve, she says, “because of its high standards.” She recalls that her mother cried at the enlistment news but her father, a former member of the Massachusetts National Guard, thought it was wonderful.
Muriel was sent to Quantico, Va. for 12 weeks of Officer Candidate School. Her training included the rigorous physical conditioning typical of the Marine Corps, but she recalls that the most important concept she learned was “the responsibility of being an officer.” After completing OCS, Muriel was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant and was given additional training in leadership. In late 1952 Muriel was selected to be a Marine Corps command officer.
From Quantico, Muriel was sent to Parris Island, S.C. and assigned to the Women Marine Battalion, Marine Corp Recruit Depot. Here she was the company officer in charge of training recruits how to march and work together, as well as educate them in the obligations and history of the Marine Corps. After eight months, Muriel received orders to become company commander of Women Marine Permanent Personnel Company, where she was responsible for the quality of work, health and living conditions of 100-150 women Marines. 1953 was also the year she was promoted to 1st lieutenant.
By 1954 Muriel’s two years of required active duty was complete. However, she asked for and was granted a three-year extension of service. She was subsequently given orders to become the inspector/instructor of the Women Marine Corps Reserve Platoon at the Wold-Chamberlain Naval Air Station in Minneapolis, Minn. Her platoon was part of the 4th Infantry Battalion Reserve and consisted of about 40 women.
These women were civilians who had signed up to train one weekend a month with a two-week summer camp, as Organized Marine Reservists. The women had the opportunity to work in most job functions except for combat related duties.
“Muriel’s platoon won “outstanding achievement award” for summer camp performance for two consecutive years.” Muriel Katschker was also the Women Marine Selection Officer, or recruiter, for Minnesota.
She traveled around the state talking with college women about careers in the Marine Corps, routinely made public appearances and was occasionally on the radio speaking about opportunities for women Marines.
In 1955 Muriel was promoted to captain.
By 1957 Muriel had completed her active duty tour and subsequently became an inactive reservist. In August she entered Harvard University/Radcliffe College to study business administration and the following year she graduated with a one-year graduate certificate.
While studying at Radcliffe, Muriel joined the Marine Corps Reserve 2nd Infantry Battalion in Boston. Here she was commander of the Women Marine Reserve Company.
In 1959 Muriel once again returned to inactive status and now began a civilian career in human resources management, working for high-tech manufacturing and consulting companies. Then, in 1961, Muriel was asked to serve as secretary to the chairman of the 1964 National Conference of the Marine Corps Reserve Officers Association. This involved a three-year planning effort for the first Boston hosting of this important national conference.
In 1962, Muriel also decided to join the Marine Corps Volunteer Training Unit 1-14 in Cambridge, Mass.; she was the unit’s administrative officer. The 1-14 met one evening a week to prepare and review reports or studies for the commandant.
By 1965 she was promoted to major and in 1969 to lieutenant colonel.
During the decade of the 1960s, Muriel was always on “mobilization notice orders.” In the event of a national emergency, the commandant could activate her and she would have nine days to report to Norfolk, Va. for assignment.
In 1975, 23 years after first joining the Marine Corps Reserve, Muriel Katschker requested that she be transferred to the Retired Marine Corps Reserve. Thirteen years after that, in 1988, Muriel officially retired from the military with a Commandant Certificate of Service.
Muriel Katschker is authorized to wear the National Defense Service Medal because of her military service during the Korean War years.
Muriel now volunteers her time to a number of local charities and organizations in the Merrimack Valley.
Muriel Katschker, we thank you for your years of service to our country.
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VAiFF
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KIRBY ASHLEY
Kirby Ashley, the epitome of an artist with a vision has a day job of being a certified public accountant with his own firm, but he continues to follow his dreams of being a storyteller and produces independent films over the past few years.
I aspire to be an audio engineer/mixer for music, film and television, a video editor, and a sound designer for film/television. I haven’t been at this long, but I am willing to learn my craft. I enjoy creating the mood for a story by adding the right sound, wether it be audio or f/x. The projects that George Lucas has done with his post-production offshoots is something I see as the high standard in mastering movies and audio.
Mike co-founded Paper Star Video in 2011 after having spent a year circumnavigating the globe with his wife. Mike’s production experience spans feature films, commercials, corporate videos, web series, and television, from preproduction to post. With over 15 years of production experience, Mike brings to the table a logical and exacting methodology behind video production.
Mike first studied at Emerson College in Boston, MA. He soon realized that the film program was unsuitable for his tastes and transferred to Columbia College in Chicago, IL. He finished his degree in film production winning awards in his classes and having his final films featured in the Take 1 Film Festival for back to back years. Mike spends most of his time involved in any area of production, but he does enjoy a long bike ride from time to time.
NIHAR BRAHMBHATT
Nihar Brahmbhatt, actor, producer, and filmmaker has been in the entertainment business for a little over five years. He and his business partner C.A. Smith strive to create films and showcase their work in a variety of genres aspiring to make it to the big screen.
DAVID E. BRIGHT
David E. Bright is an award winning writer and director. He was a semi-finalist in several contests, including the Austin Film Festival in 2013, has deep knowledge in all aspects of film production. His new feature, “Always Dies First” is receiving positive buzz, even in pre-production.
JOHN COFFEE
John is a student filmmaker living in Coppell, Texas USA. His first film, “The Return” placed 1st at a local film festival in Coppell. After a year of not making films John joined KCBY-TV, a local broadcast news and entertainment show. Soon after joining, John created his second short film titled “Here’s To Running.” So far, the film has been selected to screen at 3 film festivals, and has been nominated for Best Short Film, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Student Film. “Here’s To Running” recently won best film at the Rising Star Film Festival.
PAUL DAVISON II
Paul is a Film Communications Major at Olivet Nazarene University graduating in 2018. He’s looking for inspiration with his writing and he really loves working with others on projects. He plans to make more short films in the future with other people who enjoy film just as much as he does. His goal is to move to LA when he graduates and try to get his foot in the door any way he can.
ERIKA GILCHRIST
Assaulted as a little girl, sleeping in a van as a young adult, and living in a women’s shelter, Erika Gilchrist has earned the title of “The Unstoppable Woman.” Today, she is regarded as one of the most energizing, engaging, and captivating speakers in the industry. As a published author of 9 books, she provides compelling, solutions-based content to empower those who may struggle to identify and unleash their inner strengths unapologetically.
Ms. Gilchrist is also a content writer, and she has launched an online institute for industry coaches & speakers to license her award-winning content which serves to breathe life into women who need light shed into the dark spaces of their lives.
She’s been awarded “Highest Trainer Rating of the Year” from SkillPath Seminars, “Coordinator’s Award” from the National Friendship Movement, “Top Leadership Award” from SPAA (Speakers, Publisher’s & Authors Association) and has received a special dedication from the Texas Women in Business.
She is the Producer & Host of ‘WTF – Women Thriving Fearlessly!,’ an online television talk show created to inspire women to thrive [WomenThrivingFearlessly.com]. She’s been featured as one of the “15 Most Powerful Women on the South Side of Chicago,” CLTV, and Rolling Out Magazine.
JD GLASSCOCK
This amazing artist has already won several awards at film festivals with his shorts and is primed to win more very soon. From films to songs to poetics to game designs to kid’s books to graphic novels, you will find this multi talented artist is well versed. If you would like to hire this brilliant artist to direct your short film, music video or rent his prodigious writing skills to fulfill your aspirations, please send a message.
JD Glasscock started as a slam poet on national teams in 1990. 6 years later he moved onto being the singer/songwriter/front man of a blues rock band called Sofa King which lasted ten years. Though he still writes both lyrics and poetry in 2005 he moved onto studying film writing and directing with a special emphasis on lighting, specifically, Noir Lighting. He moved to Los Angeles in 2010 to finally pursue those aspirations.
He currently has 8 short films to his name and has won awards as a filmmaker at large festivals. He has in addition shot 2 music videos for local music artists. He’s also completed 13 self-published books. Those books include poetics, lyrics, video game designs, excerpts from his film scripts, graphic novels, kid’s books etc…He is currently working on his first feature film Blade and Blood, based on his award winning short film.
KENNY HAAS
Known to his legions of young fans as the ‘Mayor of Storyville’, he sings, writes songs and stories, draws, and does voice impersonations and ventriloquism. That might make him the most multi-faceted children’s performer in the Chicago area. Not bad for a guy who, in his day job as an advertising copywriter, won 80 awards in the last six years, and still managed to record a children’s album. “The trick is to figure out what your gifts are and use them,” says Haas, whose mother’s family hails from Casina di Buti in Tuscany. “I’ve never seen anyone bring a live audience to life the way I do. But I’m not there for me, I’m there for the children. I have many talents, but I’m about developing their talent.”
ZOHRA HASTA
Chicago-born film producer, director, and actor Zohra Hasta graduated with a B.S. in Engineering from Bradley University, Peoria, IL.
This multi-faceted Renaissance woman not only owns her own production company, but she is the President of TV & Film for yet another. Zhora loves to produce, consult, and program several different genres of films and subsequent film festivals across the country, including but not limited to the Chicago South Asian Film Festival and La Vie Theaters Rising Star Film Festival.
Endowed with an abundance of energy and an insatiable lust for learning, Zohra is always on the lookout for new and exciting creative endeavors to sink her teeth into. Her work schedule is happily hectic, but when she’s not studying lines or is immersed in a project, she can be seen tooling around town on her motorcycle or attending her favorite yoga class. And she never, ever, misses a Chicago Cubs game.
CHARLIE KENNEDY
My name is Charlie Kennedy and I studied at Columbia College Hollywood for my degree in Directing where I found that Suspense-Thriller stories are my favorite to create. I love stories that are fantastical and dark like Tim Burton and Henry Selick, whom are my inspirations. Music is a passion of mine as I am an artist in Pop and Rock genres, so creating music videos goes hand and hand with combining my two loves: Film & Music. I am 23 years old and from Richmond, Virginia and I moved here 5 years ago to pursue my dreams in music and filmmaking. I only hope to be able to make them come true so I can show you a land of stories that belong only in your dreams.
R. SUMADHUR KRISHNA
His passion for filmmaking started at the age of 16. He credits many films that inspired him to begin a career in the film industry. He officially started in 2009 in Telugu by taking a course and working as an AD (assistant director). He has since accumulated six years of experience in the Indian film industry. He has written several scripts ranging from comedy, crime dramas, suspense, action and love stories. He is very passionate about film and looking to work with likeminded film makers in the near future.
OMAR McCLINTON
Omar began his film career as an actor working in television commercials. Soon after he fell in love with writing screenplays. In 1996 he moved to Los Angeles to what he thought would be the start of his professional career. When his development deal ‘fell through’ he literally worked his way up from the mailroom of Universal Studios. Soon after he worked on various television series and eventually worked his way into visual effects where in 2000 he became co-owner of his own vfx company.
Since then, Omar returned to his first love and began producing radio, film and television projects across the country.
Omar uses the knowledge and experience he’s accumulated to form his own production company VariousArtistsTV. His goal is to attempt to better the career experience for the next generation by affording them an honest, better and easier path to success.
KEISHA NIKOLE
‘K’Nickole’ is a Chicago based producer / radio show host bringing her talent to Various ArtistsTV in the new form of webseries talk show.
Jackson Palmer was born and raised in Montana. After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting he performed in numerous stage productions around the country before moving to Los Angeles where he now pursues acting and writing as a member of Old Fashioned Productions.
ROBERT PARSONS II
Robert Parsons II was born in Delaware. He started his career in the Steel industry helping reconstruct the new World Trade Center before moving into the entertainment industry. Robert became an audio engineer for large concerts and special events on the east coast before moving into the independent film industry.
SAI PAWAR
Sai Pawar started his career as a filmmaker at the age of 16 later to receive a Masters of Fine Arts in Filmmaking from NY Film Academy. He has written and Directed commercials and short films which have played around the world in film festivals. Currently he is Directing commercials in Mumbai and is working on his next feature film project.
BAKE PHOUIKHAM
Bake Phouikham, a filmmaker from Chicago now currently living in Los Angeles, ha produced music videos, documentaries, and narrative films with artists like Twista and Lauren (The Joy Luck Club). ‘I want to be a revolutionary Asian-American filmmaker, who promotes and enriches Asian-American culture. – Bake
PAMELA PORTNOY
Pamela is an actor, producer, and writer. She is a graduate from the University of California, Irvine with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Film and Media Studies. Trained in classical theater, Pamela has performed in numerous stage productions and has been featured in various commercials, web series, and independent films.
BRANDON RHINESS
Bio: Brandon Rhiness is a comic book and screenplay writer from Edmonton, Canada. He writes and publishes comic books under his company Higher Universe Comics (www.thehigheruniverse.com). Brandon has also had many film optioned and produced.
KAYVAN SARVARI
Kayvan Sarvari was born in 1990 in Sanandaj Iran. He enrolled and passed Iranian cinema and filmmaker courses, made three short films and attend several International film festivals.
ZERNUL R. SHACKELFORD JR.
Few artists have created a body of work as rich, varied and vibrant as Zernul R. Shackelford. Zernul (pronounced Zer-nyal) started playing music at a young age. He has become a musical one-man tour de force, playing all of the instruments in his songs. He’s invested his talent into becoming an accomplished musician and film and television composer. Having been in several bands, he is now lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist and lyricist for Chicago based Heavy Metal band 3 Days From Dying.
Adding to his accomplishments Zernul joined Independent Production and Distribution Company VariousArtists.TV. This endeavor has given Zernul an opportunity to fulfill yet another talent he’s been nurturing, Writing and Producing.
But the addition of filmmaking has not diluted the drive that he has for his music. Zernul feels that his best composition work has yet to be heard. Having many other television and feature projects on his plate he strives to provide the best he can every time.
C.A. SMITH
Filmmaker & founder of BrainMashup Media, C. A. Smith, is committed to connecting the best ideas from the best minds to bring fresh, remarkable experiences to the screen.
YASER TALEB
Yaser Talebi was born in Sari, North of Iran, in 1982. Yaser Talebi is an Iranian film director, producer, screenwriter, Editor, and a documentary director. Yaser Talebi is known as a documentarian who makes poetic and social environmental films. He already teaches in movie training institutes and makes documentary series and telefilm for Iranian TV channels. He travels around his home town meeting its people and exploring the environment, history and culture of the different regions. He has been famous as an innovative and creative director and aesthetic expert. He has been the planner and advisor in many advertisement projects for big companies. Beside producing and directing advertisement trailers, he teaches directing and editing courses. He has also worked as cameraman and editor in many projects. Yaser Talebi is also an active member of Iranian Documentary Filmmakers Association (IRDFA).
JARON K. WILSON
Jaron Wilson is a native-born Chicagoan with a drive for filmmaking. He has a passion for narrative stories and enjoys films of all genres. From an early childhood, Jaron has been interested in film, television and web series as well as the techniques used to create them. His drive to succeed and passion for creating is only surpassed by his curiosity of what makes the world around him tick.
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Assisting stabilization and early recovery in liberated areas by mitigating explosive threats
Baghdad, 10 April 2018 – The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) in Iraq welcomes a renewed contribution of twenty five million (25,000,000) Danish Kroner (USD 3.7 million) from the Government of Denmark in support of UNMAS’ activities that are providing an explosive hazard management response in areas liberated from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The recent conflict in Iraq has resulted in complex explosive contamination that poses a significant threat to livelihoods and the safety of communities living in areas affected by the conflict. Humanitarian assistance has been hampered due to the presence of explosive hazards and people have been forced to abandon their homes due to unexploded ordnance. Water treatment plants and hospitals are also not being utilised as they are littered with explosive hazards. Explosive hazard management responses enable humanitarian actors and those living in conflict-affected areas to receive the urgent assistance that they so desperately need.
UNMAS teams have been facilitating humanitarian and stabilization activities in Mosul for over one year, starting in East Mosul in November 2016 and moving into West Mosul (Old City) in November 2017. During this period, UNMAS has supported over 100 United Nations missions into liberated areas to provide advice on the potential explosive hazard threat. To complement the work already carried out by the Iraqi Security Forces, UNMAS has removed about 45,000 explosive hazards including 748 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) since January 2017. In addition to this, UNMAS, in cooperation with its partner Danish Demining Group, provides risk education to families that are returning to liberated areas to make them aware of the risks posed by explosive hazards and ensure safe returns.
The Government of Denmark, has supported UNMAS for the past three years and has already provided ninety million (90,000,000) Danish Kroner (USD 11.7 million) towards these critical activities. The continued support from the Government of Denmark allows UNMAS to deliver further explosive hazard risk awareness and risk education; to conduct survey and clearance of explosive hazards and to actively coordinate a sustainable explosive hazard response in collaboration with the Government of Iraq, regional authorities, the international and humanitarian community and mine action organizations.
The Danish Ambassador to Iraq, Mr. Gert Meinecke, said “The Government of Denmark highly appreciates the work of UNMAS Iraq, and remains committed to assisting the Government of Iraq in its efforts to address the unprecedented contamination of explosive hazards left behind by Da’esh”.
“Through the continued support and close partnership with UNMAS, the Government of Denmark is greatly assisting to strengthen the response to the threat of unexploded ordnance and IEDs” stated Mr. Pehr Lodhammar, UNMAS Senior Programme Manager “thereby enhancing community safety and facilitating the return of displaced people to their homes.”
Pehr Lodhammar, UNMAS Iraq Programme, Senior Programme Manager: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Agency: UNMAS
More in this category: « UN Special Representative Condemns Cowardly Terrorist Attack in Heet, Urges Authorities to Ensure Security of Political Forces, Candidates and Voters During Election Campaign UNODC Launches New Counter-terrorism Programme in Iraq, To Open Baghdad Office »
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Text of Judicial Council decision reinstating Bishop Bledsoe
November 12, 2012 By Sam Hodges, Former Managing Editor, UMR Leave a Comment
Here’s a corrected text of Judicial Council Decision 1230, reinstating Bishop Earl Bledsoe to active status.
IN RE: Appeal of Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe Challenging the Action of the South Central Jurisdictional Committee on the Episcopacy and the 2012 South Central Jurisdictional Conference
Due to the numerous errors in violation of the principles of fair process and the inability to articulate what constitutes “best interests of the bishop and/or the Church” as provided in ¶ 408.3(a) of the 2008 Discipline, the Judicial Council overturns the action of the South Central Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy and the affirmation given by the 2012 South Central Jurisdictional Conference in placing Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe in involuntary retired relationship. These decisions are null, void, and of no effect.
Further, the Judicial Council orders that Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe be immediately reinstated to his rightful status as an active bishop of The United Methodist Church. The Judicial Council orders that Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe is entitled to an immediate assignment to an episcopal area within the South Central Jurisdiction with restoration of all status, salary, and benefits, retroactive to September 1, 2012, less any amounts for salary and benefits that may have already been paid pending the outcome of this decision.
The Judicial Council orders that Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe is entitled to be made whole for all sums, costs, and expenses incurred by him in defense of this action, including, but not limited to, salary, benefits, pension accruals, health, hospitalization, and major medical insurance for himself and his dependents, seniority and tenure of office, relocation expenses, travel and lodging expenses, fees, costs, and related expenses. This amount will be reduced by any funds already received by any contributions provided for the support of Bishop Bledsoe and his defense.
It is further requested that the Judicial Council specifically retain jurisdiction of this cause in order to monitor compliance with the terms of its decision and to ensure that the South Central Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy and the executive body of the South Central Jurisdiction perform and fulfill all acts necessary to effect the full intent of the Judicial Council’s decision and to ensure that such acts are completed in a prompt and timely manner. The Chair of the South Central Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy is directed to provide this information to the Secretary of the Judicial Council by February 17, 2013.
The South Central Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy, acting under its constitutional mandate in ¶ 50. Article VI that states in part:
The jurisdictional conference shall elect a standing committee on
episcopacy to consist of one clergy and one lay delegate from each annual
conference, on nomination of the annual conference delegation. The
committee shall review the work of the bishops, pass on their character
and official administration, and report to the jurisdictional conference its
findings for such action as the conference may deem appropriate within its
constitutional warrant of power. The committee shall recommend the
assignments of the bishops to their respective residences for final action
by the jurisdictional conference
and ¶ 412 of the 2008 Discipline which provides for the Review and Evaluation of Bishops, put in place a process to evaluate formally each active bishop of the jurisdiction. The process used a set of questionnaires and follow-up interviews with each bishop by committee representatives and with the full committee. Questionnaires were mailed to all members of annual conference committees on episcopacy along with selected annual conference core leaders and delegates to the General Conference and Jurisdictional Conference in September 2011 and were returned in November 2011. The questionnaires consisted of three parts: the Bishop’s Questionnaire including the self-evaluation questions; an overview of the episcopal area including demographics, and quadrennial profile including an assessment by persons affected by his/her general superintendency. This last part included both open-ended questions and a numerical assessment of the bishop’s gifts for ministry and leadership.
As a part of the evaluation of all active bishops in the jurisdiction, the Committee reviewed responses to these questionnaires. In addition, each active bishop was interviewed individually by the full Committee (February 6-7, 2012, and May 24, 2012, for Bishop Bledsoe who was out of the country in February) and by an assigned team of members.
As a result of Bishop Bledsoe’s lower scores in comparison with the other active bishops, the Committee conducted additional interviews. Selected committee members sought personal interviews and/or written statements from members of the North Texas Annual Conference delegation members, episcopacy committee members, pastors, local church lay leaders, and the annual conference lay leader.
Representatives of the Committee met with Bishop Bledsoe on March 28, 2012, to share the results of the questionnaire. To complete the evaluation of Bishop Bledsoe, the Committee met with him on May 24, 2012, as had been previously scheduled. As a result of these two meetings, members of the Committee again met with Bishop Bledsoe on May 29, 2012. At this time, the Committee members had been authorized by action of the Committee on May 24, 2012, to suggest the bishop take voluntary retirement or the Committee would schedule a hearing to take action for involuntary retirement as prescribed by ¶ 408.3(a).
As result of these conversations, Bishop Bledsoe announced via video on May 31, 2012, that he would retire on August 31, 2012. At the end of the Annual Conference Session of the North Texas Annual Conference on June 5, 2012, he made a statement saying he would not retire.
On June 8, the chair of the Committee sent a letter to the bishop announcing the hearing for involuntary retirement on July 10, 2012. A further letter was sent on June 15th delaying the hearing until July 16th. Neither letter contained written reasons for the hearing.
On July 16 and 17, 2012, the South Central Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy held a hearing to consider the involuntary retirement of Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe. The authority for consideration of involuntary retirement is provided by ¶ 408.3(a) in the 2008 Discipline as amended by the 2012 General Conference.
¶408.3. Involuntary Retirement—a) A bishop may be placed in the retired relation
regardless of age by a two-thirds vote of the jurisdictional or central conference
committee on episcopacy if, after not less than a thirty-day notice in writing is
given to the affected bishop and hearing held, such relationship is found by said
committee to be in the best interests of the bishop and/or the Church. This action
may or may not be taken because of the performance of the bishop, and the reason
for the action must be clearly stated in the report of the committee. Appeal from
this action may be made to the Judicial Council with the notice provisions being
applicable as set forth in ¶ 2716.
An elder, Zan Holmes, accompanied Bishop Bledsoe, had voice, and served as the bishop’s advocate. On July 17, 2012, the Committee voted for involuntary retirement with a vote of 24 for, 4 against, and 2 abstentions. All members of the Committee were present for the vote. On July 19, 2012, the South Central Jurisdictional Conference received and affirmed the report of the Committee that included the announcement of the vote for the involuntary retirement of Bishop Bledsoe under ¶ 408.3(a). The vote affirming the report carried by 82%.
On July 25, 2012, Bishop Bledsoe filed an appeal under ¶ 408.3(a) to the Judicial Council.
On October 27, 2012, the Judicial Council acted on a request for a declaratory decision from the South Central Jurisdictional College of Bishops as to the constitutionality, meaning, application and effect of the amended ¶ 408.3(a) of 2008 Discipline. This paragraph remains constitutional. See Memorandum 1229.
A special meeting of the Judicial Council was held in Phoenix, Arizona, on November 9-10, 2012, to hear the appeal. An oral hearing was held on November 9, 2012. Participating in the hearing were Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe, appellant, Jon R. Gray, counsel for Bishop Bledsoe, and Donald House, Chair of the South Central Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy.
The Judicial Council has jurisdiction under ¶¶ 408.3(a) and 2609.9 of the 2008 Discipline.
ANALYSIS AND RATIONALE
The appeal of Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe of the action of the South Central Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy and of the South Central Jurisdictional Conference, which affirmed the action of the Committee, is heard under the directives found in ¶ 408.3(a) of the 2008 Discipline as amended by the 2012 General Conference. The notice provisions of ¶ 2716 were adhered to. Within 30 days of the action of the South Central Jurisdictional Conference (¶ 2716.2), the appellant notified the president of the Judicial Council of his desire to appeal. The meeting on the appeal and oral hearing are occurring within the 180 days prescribed by ¶ 2716.3. For the purposes of this appeal, the provisions of ¶ 2715 shall not apply as they refer to an investigation and trial process. Likewise, the provisions of ¶ 413 do not apply as no formal complaint was filed. The appeal that is before us involves an “action” taken by the Jurisdictional Committee and affirmed by the South Central Jurisdictional Conference as part of the Committee report to the conference placing Bishop Bledsoe in retired status, involuntarily. This action does not involve a complaint, investigation, or trial. It only involves a process, a set of procedures, and an action taken by the jurisdictional committee and by the jurisdictional conference.
Further, since the Judicial Council has ruled that ¶ 408.3(a) “remains constitutional,” any arguments about whether the process was constitutional are now deemed to be irrelevant. We reviewed the process in light of fairness, equity, justice, legality, and timeliness of the process.
Fair Process and Timelines
It is a long-standing policy in The United Methodist Church to handle any administrative or judicial process within guidelines of fair process. Fair process can never be presumed, but it must be clearly demonstrated at all times. The concept of fair process is one that has been engrafted upon the constitutional standards of our Church. Fair process includes the right to receive notice of hearing that advises the respondent of the reason for the proposed action with sufficient detail to allow the respondent to prepare a response. This principle is in question in this instant situation.
Paragraph 408.3(a), regarding the involuntary retirement of a bishop, attempts to provide certain protections against arbitrary decisions by jurisdictional or central conference committees on episcopacy including (a) thirty day notice in writing to the affected bishop; (b) a hearing; (c) evidence for what is in the best interests of the bishop and/or Church; (d) a clear rationale of the committee’s decision; (e) a two-thirds vote required for committee action; and finally, (f) the right of appeal. This right of appeal and fair process is guaranteed under ¶ 20 of the Constitution. The Committee acknowledged this right of fair process as it attempted to establish its guidelines for the hearing scheduled for July 16, 2012. These guidelines for the hearing were articulated in the document presented to Bishop Bledsoe on June 27th, 20 days before the hearing. They are as follows:
We find no instructions in the Book of Discipline or in our review of Judicial Council Decisions regarding process required under the involuntary retirement provision.’
An important objective of the Committee is to extend to Bishop Bledsoe fairness in our process. In fulfilling this objective, the Committee seeks to accomplish the following:
1. Deliver to Bishop Bledsoe this statement at least 20 days prior to the scheduled hearing that offers selected evidence, testimonies, and other materials our Committee reviewed in preparation for the hearing. The statement is to contain the grounds for our decision to consider involuntary retirement and the support we have assembled-z
2. lnvite the bishop to fully respond to the statement in person before any vote on involuntary retirement is taken.3
3. Produce an accurate transcript of the proceedings of the hearing, making a copy for Bishop Bledsoe as soon as possible.
4. Respond, as possible, to the requests of legal counsel representing the bishop
a) Produce a summary of the development of the evaluation process administered by the Committee
b) Produce copies of Committee meeting minutes
c) Produce communications between and among members of the Committee related to the process of evaluation
1 The 2012 General Conference added the sentence in ¶ 408.3: “This action may or may not be taken because of the performance of the bishop, and the reason for the action must be stated in the record of the committee.”
2 This condition relates to the 2008 Book of Discipline ¶ 362.b(sic)
3 This condition relates to the 2008 Book of Discipline ¶ 362.a(sic)
As noted from the footnotes, the committee referenced two disciplinary paragraphs in developing its guidelines. Further guidelines for the hearing were presented to the bishop in a letter dated June 29, 2012. The Committee also agreed to receive video depositions and transcripts from persons selected by the bishop’s counsel and provided some of the material requested by the counsel including minutes of meetings during the quadrennium and the meetings surrounding the intended action of involuntary retirement. In review of the correspondence provided between the co-counsels and the chair of the committee, it was clear there were different understandings of what constituted “fair process” in this situation. The counsels appeared at points to treat this hearing as a trial format, asking for the opportunity for witnesses and items to be read into the formal record. The request for the delay of the hearing to adequately prepare a defense was denied by the chair of the Committee.
In reviewing the principles of fair process, the item noted above (the right to receive notice of hearing that advises the respondent of the reason for the proposed action with sufficient detail to allow the respondent to prepare a response) is in question. Part of the discussion of fair process centered on the timeliness of material presented to the bishop and counsel and a difference of understanding about what was to be provided in a timely way. Both parties seem to be choosing various parts of the Discipline to ensure “fair process.” It was not the understanding of the Committee that a written statement about reasons for the hearing needed to be presented at the time written notice of the hearing was conveyed to the bishop. This statement was only provided 20-days prior to the changed hearing date in conjunction with the statement of hearing procedures. In the brief presented on behalf of the South Central Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy, the following statement was made:
The announcements did not include detail concerning the reason for the hearing since such detail was discussed during the team interview on March 28, 2012 and the full committee meeting on May 24, 2012.
A 20-page statement detailing specific reasons for the scheduled hearing was delivered to Bishop Bledsoe on June 27, 2012—exactly 20 days before the scheduled hearing.
Verbal notification does not take the place of written notification. Paragraph 408.3(a) is clear that a 30-day written notification is required.
Paragraph 362.2 refers to an administrative complaint against a local pastor, associate member, provisional member or full member. It must be noted that the 20-day notice referenced in ¶ 362.2(b) has followed several other significant processes, including a written complaint, a supervisory response, the referral of an administrative complaint, and the setting of an administrative hearing. By the time the 20 day notice referenced in ¶ 362.2(b) becomes mandatory, a minimum of 165 days has elapsed during which time the supervisory response has unfolded.
Both parties used parts of the Discipline that are not appropriate in this instant situation. The Committee decided to use part of ¶ 362.2 that refers to annual conference processes that are invoked when an administrative complaint has been filed against an elder, et al. This is not the situation in this case. Counsel for the bishop has invoked ¶ 413, the process used in a complaint filed against a bishop. Further, the counsel for the bishop also invoked ¶¶ 2702ff which are the processes that are used in a trial process once a formal complaint has been referred as a judicial complaint. Requests for information made to the committee and for witnesses and/or depositions appear to fit in a trial procedure. Again, this is not the situation in this instant case. No complaint has been filed. No chargeable offense was named by the Committee.
It appears that the Committee was cognizant of trying to ensure fair process for the hearing. However, lacking the filing of a complaint or anticipating filing a complaint, the Committee established its own processes and timelines that are not specifically provided by the Discipline. It provided its own interpretation of the section of ¶ 408.3(a) indicating the 30-day written notice requirement as noted above was merely a notification of the hearing. The counsel for the Church held different expectations about timelines, production of documents and processes as related to the 30-day notice. Confusion and misunderstanding resulted from the lack of clarity of process and the confusion between using the mandated 30-day timeline in ¶ 408.3(a) with the expectation of what is normally understood regarding written notification including time, place and full reasons for the hearing and the Committee’s understanding of 20- day requirement cited in ¶ 362.2.
An essential element of fair process under church law is the timely delivery of an accurate statement of the reasons for the action proposed. Neither of the notice letters to the Bishop from the Committee contained a statement of reasons for its intended action. Fair process requires that the reasons be given at the time that the notice of the hearing is issued. The failure of the Committee to provide its Statement of Reasons at the time it gave notice of the hearing was a violation of the fair process mandate and of the required aspects of ¶ 408.3(a) that requires a 30-day notice.
A further failure of the principles of fair process is contained in the Chair’s Statement of Reasons. The Committee minutes of its meeting on May 24, 2012, recorded the decision of the Committee to begin the process for involuntary retirement. This action was affirmed in the Judicial Council oral hearing. Further, there is a discrepancy between the action of the Committee on May 24th and in 20 page Statement of Reasons presented to the Bishop on June 27, 2012. The Statement of Reasons does not bring forward or fairly mention the reasons that were actually adopted by the Committee. In fact, the Chair’s Statement of Reasons candidly admits the following: “This statement provides a set of opinions with support regarding the effectiveness of Bishop Bledsoe’s leadership. This statement does not necessarily reflect a consensus opinion among members of the committee.” The chair of the Committee further stated in the hearing that these were “evolving reasons” over time that were modified by further information gathered by the Committee. The principles of fair process require that the decisions of the Committee as recorded in its May 24, 2012, minutes be brought forward into its Statement of Reasons in order to afford the respondent a fair opportunity to address the Committee’s stated reasons for its action.
Fair process requires that a respondent be presented in a timely manner with copies of all relevant documents and all documents relied upon. The Committee chose to present the first of the required documents 20 days prior to the hearing. According to the material presented to the Judicial Council, other documents were presented in an unfolding basis at the request of counsel for the Bishop. The Committee’s own timeline violated principles of fair process that state that the production of written documents must accompany the notice of hearing. In this regard, the Committee’s effort failed. Documentation and oral hearing testimony show that the Chair did not provide some materials and did not believe that providing the materials was necessary for a fair process.
A jurisdictional or central conference committee on episcopacy does not have the power to pick and choose portions of the Discipline that it will follow and portions that it will ignore. The Discipline provides no ability for a committee on episcopacy to make use of “alternative” methods of disciplinary process to ensure fair process. Decisions 26 and 156 stand for the proposition that the definition of process is a legislative function reserved to the General Conference and that neither the committee nor a jurisdictional or central conference has license to innovate upon or supply other processes.
A violation of the separation of powers occurred when the South Central Jurisdictional College of Bishops issued a “decision of law” upon the request of the South Central Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy officers. Under the long-standing precedent set by Decision 799, a bishop, or in this case, a college of bishops, has no authority to comment on any administrative or judicial process. There is no disciplinary provision for the college to give direction to a jurisdictional committee or for a committee to turn to the College of Bishops in search of advice – to do so violates separation of powers. The College of Bishops lacks the authority to recommend procedural guidelines for the Committee on Episcopacy and the Jurisdictional Conference. See ¶ 16.5. The disciplinary role assigned to the College of Bishops is limited to its cooperation with the jurisdictional committee on episcopacy in the review and evaluation process, the assignment process (¶ 412), and to their presidential duty whereby bishops preside over sessions of the jurisdictional conference (¶ 52). It is inappropriate for the College of Bishops to provide advice, counsel, direction, or assistance to a committee on episcopacy that is considering any involuntary process against an active bishop.
Best Interests of the Church and/or Bishop
Paragraph 637 of the Discipline authorizes the annual conference committee on episcopacy to report and articulate the needs of the annual conference to the jurisdictional committee on episcopacy and to make recommendations to the appropriate bodies. The reports of the recommendations are to be made through the elected conference members of the annual conference committee on episcopacy. Under ¶ 412 the jurisdictional committee on episcopacy is required to establish and implement processes that provide for a full and formal evaluation of each active bishop. In its evaluation process, this committee may include other persons such as lay leadership, members of conference cabinets, episcopal peers, and other persons affected by the bishop’s leadership. However, ¶ 412 clearly emphasizes the importance of the role of the annual conference committee on episcopacy and mandates the inclusion of the annual conference committee on episcopacy in such evaluation processes. The report of the chair of the North Texas Annual Conference Committee of the Episcopacy indicates that no one had spoken to him about the dissatisfaction surrounding the bishop and the impending action for involuntary retirement. No statement from the North Texas Annual Conference regarding their episcopal needs was submitted to the Committee or as part of the record.
The brief and the additional material presented to the Judicial Council for consideration for both the hearing and this appeal describe the way in which the Committee developed its evaluation process and consultations with the active bishops of the Jurisdiction. The evaluation consisted of three parts: Part A, a personal profile submitted and signed by the bishop; Part B, a demographic and factual analysis filled out by someone in the annual conference and Part C; an evaluative questionnaire including a gifts analysis that was sent to each member of the episcopacy committee of the annual conference, the core leadership team of the annual conference and other lay and clergy leaders in the episcopal area. There was no specific soliciting of the annual conferences committees on episcopacy to generate the specific needs for episcopal leadership and to determine the “best interests of the church” in each episcopal area.
The Committee studied the demographics of each episcopal area and the perceived trends. They articulated a sense of urgency to do things differently in order to effect growth in this jurisdiction, especially noting the more careful evaluation of bishops. It was out of this analysis that the evaluation tools were developed for each bishop and episcopal area. From this analysis, the criteria for “best interests of the Church” focused on two areas of church growth: worship attendance and numbers of professions of faith.
Some interpretive data were presented in material from church growth and leadership consultants. However, in the Judicial Council’s review of the material presented, there seemed to be no one uniform statement of how the material would be interpreted for each bishop. There was no timely articulation of the “best interests for the church in the South Central Jurisdiction.” There was no documentation about what would be the acceptable scores for each of the categories listed. All that was presented in the documentation to this body was the comparison between the low scores of the bishop in question and the remaining 10 bishops’ composite score. Further it is noted that the material from one of the consultants was dated June 2012. This material was sought after the process to place the Bishop on involuntary retirement was substantially underway. It was not applied or shared in the evaluation of the other bishops of the jurisdiction.
A review of the transcript of the hearing did not reveal any standard of “best interest” that questioners were posing to the bishop. There was no discussion of church growth, worship attendance or numbers of profession of faith. There did not seem to be any place where “best interest” standards were articulated nor was there a statement presented that held up a vision or goals for ministry against which all bishops would be held accountable, let alone in this instant situation.
The documentation of the further interview questions that were asked of the leaders of the North Texas Annual Conference were not provided. There was no indication that similar questions were asked of all the participants in the questioning. The material presented by the Committee in their follow up questioning seemed to focus on those individuals and churches that had problems or issues with the bishop, and/or either the specific district superintendent and/or the bishop within the appointment process. The video depositions provided by counsel for the bishop presented more positive experiences of persons in their interactions with the bishop. These responses did not seem to be acknowledged by the committee members in formal questioning during the hearing. However, nowhere in the material that was presented were discernable underlying criteria used to judge what is best for the church or for the bishop involved.
In reviewing the material presented, there were no specific criteria upon which a decision was made. Further, the specific reasons for the recommended action of involuntary retirement of Bishop Bledsoe as mandated by amended ¶ 408.3(a) were not clearly presented in writing to the Judicial Council, nor was the statement of the Committee action in the report presented to the South Central Jurisdictional Conference included in the formal minutes of the Conference.
The Judicial Council finds this oversight in violation of ¶ 408.3(a) and calls into question the determination of what constitutes “best interests of the bishop and/or Church.”
In most instances the Discipline provides a set of rules and procedures that must be followed. However, as was confirmed by the South Central Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy, there are no instructions in the Discipline or in Judicial Council Decisions regarding process required under the involuntary retirement provision. Hence, said Committee proceeded as it deemed appropriate and expedient.
However, the ambiguities and lack of objective standards of the procedures of the SCJ Committee on Episcopacy were so great that all the parties in this instance case had a different understanding of the process. If the proceedings of the SCJ Committee on Episcopacy were validated it would create a multiplicity and variety of procedures among the several jurisdictions, establishing different standards for involuntary retirement of a bishop.
In accordance with Decision 312, although the legislative history of this old paragraph of the Discipline cannot be ascertained, procedures for the process of the involuntary retirement of a bishop is a matter appropriate for further General Conference action. It would not be appropriate for the Judicial Council to supply this legislation.
In order to avoid confusion and misunderstanding and ensure clarity to the process, the Judicial Council believes that the following guidelines should be adhered to in any process for the involuntary retirement of a bishop under ¶408.3(a): (a) inclusion of the annual conference committee on episcopacy in the evaluation process; (b) the jurisdictional committee on episcopacy’s written notice to the bishop of at least thirty days, with a clear statement of the reasons for such action attached to or placed in the body of the notice; (c) submission to the bishop, at least thirty days prior to the hearing of all records, documents, etc., relied upon by the jurisdictional committee on episcopacy in the statement of reasons; (d) a hearing; (e) finding by the Jurisdictional or Central Conference Committee on Episcopacy that involuntary retirement is in the best interest of the bishop and/or the Church, as clearly defined by the Jurisdictional or Central Committee of Episcopacy.
Due to the numerous errors in violation of the principles of fair process and the inability to articulate what constitutes “best interests of the bishop and/or the Church” as provided in ¶ 408.3(a), the Judicial Council overturns the action of the South Central Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy and the affirmation given by the 2012 South Central Jurisdictional Conference in placing Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe in involuntary retired relationship. These decisions are null, void, and of no effect.
Beth Capen was absent. Kurt Glassco, second lay alternate participated in this decision.
The Discipline has contained a provision for the involuntary retirement of a bishop since 1976. Although the provision may have been invoked or cited from time to time by some jurisdictional or central conference committee on the episcopacy, perhaps as a way of encouraging a bishop to consider voluntary retirement, there is no evidence that it has been used in a fully accomplished process to retire a bishop involuntarily. The action of the South Central Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy and the action of the South Central Jurisdictional Conference to retire Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe is, therefore, an unprecedented event in The United Methodist Church. Hence it poses questions that have no history of jurisprudence upon which the Judicial Council can draw for answers. It also poses challenges for any jurisdictional or central conference committee on episcopacy that might consider the possibility of implementing the legislation, as amended by the 2012 General Conference.
In this instant case, the record shows that the committee faced those challenges and that, at least in some significant ways, failed to meet all of the challenges. As a result, the process that led to the decision to retire Bishop Bledsoe involuntarily was flawed. The fact that the committee on episcopacy voted overwhelmingly to retire the bishop, and that the jurisdictional conference voted overwhelmingly to affirm the action, do not alter or mitigate the flaws in the process that the committee followed.
Any action under ¶ 408.3(a) must adhere closely and narrowly to the provisions of that paragraph. Those provisions are few, but they are clear. The committee’s vote has to have a two-thirds majority. Specific notice provisions are either provided or cited by reference to another paragraph in the Discipline. The reason for the committee’s action must be stated in its report to the jurisdictional conference. And placing a bishop in the retired relationship involuntarily must be “found by said committee to be in the best interests of the bishop and/or the Church.” Adherence to these provisions also prohibits resorting to other provisions of the Discipline that are not included in this paragraph. Even though the committee in this case adhered to the provisions of ¶ 408.3(a) and thereby was in compliance with the Discipline, it did not avoid importing irrelevant provisions into the process. In the end, it sabotaged its own efforts.
The authority to proceed toward the involuntary retirement of a bishop is granted to the jurisdictional committee on episcopacy as an administrative procedure. It does not involve a complaint. It is not part of the complaint process. Its steps do not invoke steps that are specified for the adjudication of a complaint. It specifically empowers a bishop who has been retired involuntarily to “appeal” directly to the Judicial Council, but that is not the same use of the term “appeal” as it applies elsewhere in the Discipline to judicial or other proceedings following a complaint.
Nevertheless, the South Central Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy chose to import into its proceedings some of the disciplinary provisions and actions that apply in complaint processes, investigations, and trials. None of these is relevant. Worse, these decisions led to disruptions in fair process by confusing the matters of who was required to do what, by when.
Further, the jurisdictional committee on episcopacy relied upon a definition of the “best interests of the bishop and/or the Church” that has no legislative warrant. Nor does the committee’s eventual working definition, namely to focus on professions of faith and worship attendance, have widespread ecclesiastical endorsement as a sufficient standard for determining “best interests.” Nor is it clear that the jurisdictional committee followed a clear path to establishing and applying that definition to all of the bishops in their areas. Nor is there any evidence that the working definition of “best interests” was constructed or applied contextually, based upon demographic or ethnographic profiles of districts or pastoral charges within the annual conferences of the episcopal areas.
In the end, these flaws were so serious as to be fatal to the process that led the committee to its decision and recommendation. The Judicial Council can only review the process—not the merits of the findings or conclusions—in determining the merits of the bishop’s appeal in this case.
On that basis, I concur with the majority in this matter.
William B. Lawrence
Katherine Austin Mahle and J. Kabamba Kiboko join this concurrence.
CONCURRENCE AND DISSENT
Justice to a bishop is justice to all bishops. Respect for the rights of one of them is respect for the rights of all of them.
I concur with the majority opinion that in the not-so-clear process that attended the decision to retire involuntarily the appellant bishop, there was a mix-up in protecting his rights which cast a shadow on the propriety of the procedure followed. As a case of first impression under the 2008 Discipline, we cannot afford to terminate a bishop with a cloud of doubt on the action taken.
But I respectfully dissent that there were numerous errors in violation of fair process and that there was inability to articulate the “best interests of the bishop and/or Church.” The South Central Jurisdiction Conference (SCJC) Committee on Episcopacy (COE) performed a herculean task, visibly beyond the call of duty. Ironically, their zeal in safeguarding the rights of the appellant, on one hand, and promoting the interest of the Church, on the other hand, led to some sort of confusion and misunderstanding.
Much of the confusion is owed to the failure to stick to the provisions of ¶ 4083(a) and the unnecessary added resort to ¶413 by borrowing from the procedure in ¶ 362.2. I hold that ¶ 408.3(a) is self-sufficient, with adequate safeguards for fair process.
True it is that ¶ 413 deals with complaints against bishops. It is not, however, an exclusive provision. It neither invalidates, supersedes, makes inoperative nor precludes the resort to ¶ 408.3 on involuntary retirement of a bishop. That the General Conference of 2012 amended ¶ 408.3 by adding or inserting a sentence stating “This action may or may not be taken because of the performance of the bishop and the reason for this action must be clearly stated in the report of the Committee” lends greater credence to the vitality of said paragraph.
There is no conflict between ¶ 408.3(a), as amended, and ¶ 413. While both relate to actions against bishops, the first refers to the remedy for involuntary retirement, while the second provides for the manner of processing a complaint. The first is administrative in nature and is initiated by the COE of a jurisdictional or central conference; the second may be either administrative or judicial, and the complaint may be triggered by any person, as the Discipline is silent on who may be the complainant. In this instance, there is no particular complaint but a move that started with the episcopacy committee authorized under ¶ 408.3(a) which requires no complaint. The Discipline provides, among others, these procedures that may lead to the termination of bishops under Section III of the 2008 Discipline. The COE had a choice and it opted to choose ¶ 408.3(a), which is a milder process for a bishop than ¶ 413
Did the Committee on Episcopacy follow fair process? While there is no direct mention of fair process in ¶ 408.3(a), it cannot be gainsaid that in all disciplinary, administrative or judicial proceedings, fair process is a mandatory standard. It is ingrained in our justice system. For the clergy orders, like deacons and elders, there is fair process in administrative hearings (¶¶ 358.3, 362.2) and fair process in judicial proceedings (¶ 2701). For the bishops, parallel but distinct procedures also exist. Fair process for them is expressly provided in ¶ 413 to apply the provisions of ¶ 362.2. Fair process is also afforded the bishops in ¶ 408.3(a). Basically, gleaned from all these provisions, the sine qua non requirements of fair process are sufficient written notice of the intended action and a fair hearing by a competent, authorized body.
¶ 408.3(a), as amended, reads in full:
Ҧ 408. Termination of office РAn elder who is serving as a bishop up to the time of retirement shall have the stature of a retired bishop.
“3. Involuntary Retirement – a) A bishop may be placed in the retired relation regardless of age by a two-thirds vote of the jurisdictional or central conference committee on episcopacy, if, after not less than a thirty-day notice in writing is given to the affected bishop and hearing, such relationship is found by said committee to be in the best interests of the bishop and/or the Church. This action may or may not be taken because of the performance of the bishop and the reason for this action must be clearly stated in the report of the committee. Appeal from this action may be made to the Judicial Council with the notice provisions being applicable as set forth in ¶ 2716.”
Thus, the safeguards of fair process in or before placing a bishop in involuntary retirement utilizing ¶ 408.3(a) are: (a) Committee on episcopacy’s written notice to the bishop of at least thirty days; (b) a hearing; (c) finding with proof by said committee that involuntary retirement is in the best interests of the bishop and/or the Church; (d) clear statement of the reason for such action in the committee report; (e) two-thirds vote required for the committee action and (f) availability of appeal to the Judicial Council.
Now to the actual procedure taken by the COE to determine if it has complied fully with the requirements of par 408.3(a). On the requisite notice, the committee sent appellant a written notice on June 8, 2012 for a July 10, 2012 hearing which was superseded by a June 15, 2012 written notice for the July 16, 2012 hearing. Both notices gave appellant 30 days or more to prepare.
The hearing at St. Luke’s UMC in Oklahoma City started at 2pm of July 16, 2012 and lasted until the following day, July 17. All the members of the Committee attended. Appellant appeared with an advocate, a retired elder in full connection from the North Texas Annual Conference. The advocate read a Statement of Objection to Jurisdiction, claiming that the reliance on par. 408.3(a) is misplaced, that the COE had committed serious and prejudicial errors of church law. (Appendix A of Appellant’s Brief). Appellant, through counsel, was duly heard.
Following the extensive review of documents and deliberations, with two observers from the General Commission on Religion and Race, the Committee voting came. Twenty-four members voted for appellant’s involuntary retirement, 4 voted against and 2 abstained.
A crucial point in the matter of fair process under par. 408.3(a) is the determination of what is “in the best interests of the bishop and/or the Church.” Appellant hardly dwelt on this, having devoted the bulk of his argument on errors of church law, preferring ¶ 413 over ¶ 408.3(a), which he insists, is unconstitutional. The Council was unable to agree with that proposition in our Memorandum 1229. We are left with the explanation of the Committee concerning best interests.
At the hearing of this appeal, the COE chair bared the view that involuntary retirement is a more graceful path for appellant. If they had followed the route of a complaint under ¶ 413, it could end in appellant’s surrender papers. Under ¶ 408.3(a), they considered the protection of the dignity of both appellant and the Church.
The said chairman also confirmed the submission in their Brief that throughout the Committee discussions, what was best for the Church surfaced as a prime objective. They understood that effective episcopal leadership is necessary for the Jurisdiction to arrest the decline in worship attendance and professions of faith. Appellant had come into disagreements with many church leaders, affecting also the morale of the clergy. The Committee did not believe that appellant’s leadership deficiencies could be corrected or improved with time and/or assistance. His gifts can be best used in some other way of service. The Committee cited and submitted substantial documents, transcripts and other evidence to back up their action.
Anent the 20-page Statement of Reasons, mailed to appellant on June 27, 2012, he does not disavow receiving them. No less than nine of these primary reasons are clearly spelled out in the COE Brief but they need not be reproduced here to safeguard his dignity.
Finally, did the SCJC COE fail to demonstrate that the articulation of episcopal needs for the North Texas Annual Conference was determined by said annual conference committee on episcopacy?
It is contended that under ¶ 637, the Annual Conference episcopacy committee is the body authorized to report and articulate the needs of that conference to the jurisdictional COE and to make recommendations to appropriate bodies. Further, under ¶ 412, the jurisdictional COE is required to establish and implement processes providing for full and formal evaluation of each active bishop. The flaw in this last contention is that, again, the chosen authorized process is under ¶ 408.3(a), not any other mode. It suffices that the COE has hewed closely to the procedures of ¶ 408.3(a) to pass muster the test of validity for episcopal involuntary retirement.
Ruben T. Reyes
I dissent from the majority opinion that reverses the decision of the South Central Jurisdiction Committee on Episcopacy in the involuntary retirement of the resident bishop of the North Texas Annual Conference.
The Committee properly exercised its authority to use the provisions of ¶ 408.3(a) 2008 Discipline. In the matter before the Council on appeal the record is clear and unambiguous that the bishop was afforded fair process. The bishop was provided written and oral notice of the proposed action at least thirty (30) days in advance; participated with supporting clergy in an extensive hearing before the entire Committee with the opportunity to present live and deposed testimony and exhibits in support of the respondng bishop’s position; findings were made in support of the decision that the bishop be involuntarily retired; and, such retirement was in the best interest of the church and/or the bishop. A clear statement of the reasons for such action was outlined in the Committee’s report to the Jurisdictional Conference.
The Committee voted 24 for, 4 against, and 2 abstentions to voluntarily retire the bishop. The report and findings of the Committee were sustained by the Jurisdictional Conference. The approval of the report was taken after the bishop was granted unprecedented privilege to present his defense in opposition to the involuntary retirement before the entire body of the Jurisdictional Conference.
In determining the best interest of the church and/or the bishop, the Committee should be permitted to draw such reasonable inferences from the testimony and exhibits as they feel are justified when considered with the aid of the knowledge which they possess in common with each other. They should be permitted to make deductions and reach conclusions which reason and common sense lead them to draw from the facts which they found to have been established by the testimony and evidence in the matter.
The “best interest” standard is appropriately left to their collective wisdom based on the facts and evidence.
Therefore, as the appeal is not a trial de novo, based upon the record before the Judicial Council, the authority submitted by the Appellant and the Appellee, the oral argument and extensive questioning by the members of the Council, I would AFFIRM the decision of the Episcopacy Committee and SUSTAIN the involuntary retirement of the bishop.
Accordingly, I dissent from the majority.
Kurt G. Glassco,
Sam Hodges was the managing editor of The United Methodist Reporter from 2011-2013. A formee reporter for the Dallas Morning News and the Charlotte Observer, Sam is a respected voice in United Methodist journalism.
Tagged With: Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe, episcopacy committee, judicial council
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STEVEN NEWCOMB: PAGANS IN THE PROMISED LAND
Chief Oren Lyons on the Doctrine of Discovery
United Nations E/C.19/2010/13
Economic and Social Council
Distr.: General 4 February 2010 Original: English
10-23102 (E) 020310 *1023102*
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
Ninth session
New York, 19-30 April 2010
Items 4 and 7 of the provisional agenda*
Future work of the Permanent Forum, including issues of the Economic and Social Council and emerging issues
Preliminary study of the impact on indigenous peoples of the international legal construct known as the Doctrine of Discovery
Submitted by the Special Rapporteur
At its eighth session in May 2009, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues decided to appoint as Special Rapporteur Tonya Gonnella Frichner, a member of the Permanent Forum, to conduct a preliminary study of the impact on indigenous peoples of the international legal construct known as the Doctrine of Discovery, which has served as the foundation of the violation of their human rights, and to report thereon to the Forum at its ninth session.
This preliminary study establishes that the Doctrine of Discovery has been institutionalized in law and policy, on national and international levels, and lies at the root of the violations of indigenous peoples’ human rights, both individual and collective. This has resulted in State claims to and the mass appropriation of the lands, territories and resources of indigenous peoples. Both the Doctrine of Discovery and a holistic structure that we term the Framework of Dominance have resulted in centuries of virtually unlimited resource extraction from the traditional territories of indigenous peoples. This, in turn, has resulted in the dispossession and impoverishment of indigenous peoples, and the host of problems that they face today on a daily basis.
Given that United States of America federal Indian law is most accessible to the Special Rapporteur, and because it serves as an ideal example of the application of the Doctrine of Discovery to indigenous peoples, this preliminary study provides a detailed examination of the premise of that system as found in the United States Supreme Court ruling Johnson’s Lessee v. McIntosh. Evidence is then provided demonstrating that the Doctrine of Discovery continues to be treated as valid by the United States Government.
The Special Rapporteur concludes by recommending that an international expert group meeting be convened to discuss in detail the findings and implications of this preliminary study of the Doctrine of Discovery, and present its findings to the Permanent Forum at its annual session. Further study and review will be needed to ascertain to what extent and how the Doctrine of Discovery and the Framework of Dominance are applied to indigenous peoples throughout the world.
I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
II. Future work on the global scope of the Doctrine of Discovery. . . 4
III. Global scope and history of the Doctrine of Discovery... . . . . . . 5
IV. The Framework of Dominance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
V. The Doctrine of Discovery and United States of America .. . . . 10
VI. Terra nullius, terra nullus and the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling .. 14
VII. The Doctrine of Discovery in contemporary times. . . . . . . . .. . 16
VIII. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
IX. Recommendation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
We maintain, that the principle declared in the fifteenth century as the law of Christendom, that discovery gave title to assume sovereignty over, and to govern the unconverted natives of Africa, Asia, and North and South America, has been recognized as a part of the national law [Law of Nations], for nearly four centuries, and that it is now so recognized by every Christian power, in its political department and its judicial.(1)
1. The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has a mandate to discuss issues related to indigenous economic and social development, culture, the environment, education, health and human rights. This preliminary study will examine the impact on indigenous peoples of the international legal construct known as the Doctrine of Discovery, which has served as the foundation of the violation of their human rights.
2. Part of the objective of this preliminary study is to draw attention to differences in world view between indigenous peoples and State actors, with the understanding that focusing on those differences will be conducive to further dialogue and clearer communication between them.
3. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (General Assembly resolution 61/295, annex) is the product of efforts spanning three decades. The Declaration addresses human rights grievances and other concerns that indigenous peoples’ representatives have brought to the international arena since the early 1900s, during the days of the League of Nations. The adoption of the Declaration presents the opportunity to clearly identify what lies at the root of those grievances and concerns, namely, the historic tendency of State actors to assert a sovereign dominant authority over indigenous peoples, based on claims to and assertions of ultimate or superior title to indigenous peoples’ lands, territories and resources. This paper demonstrates that the Doctrine of Discovery lies at the root of such claims and assertions of dominance by States.
II. Future work on the global scope of the Doctrine of Discovery
4. The extent to which the Doctrine of Discovery and the Framework of Dominance(2) have been applied in case law and policy in Africa, Asia, Central and South America will need to be thoroughly investigated and addressed as a follow-up to this preliminary study. As countries that emerged from the imperial and colonial history of the British crown, Australia, Canada and New Zealand will also need to be made part of any future study. We fully recognize and appreciate that our indigenous brothers and sisters are dealing with the impacts of the Doctrine of Discovery and the Framework of Dominance in their geographical regions. However, given the limited constraints of a preliminary study, our focus has been primarily on United States federal Indian law. This preliminary study is intended to serve as a model that sets forth a direction for future research in other regions of the world. Future study will be required to address the seven official regions identified by the Permanent Forum. United States federal Indian law, which has been referenced in case law in other countries of the world(3) is treated in this preliminary study as a prototypical example of the application of the Doctrine of Discovery and the dominance framework.
III. Global scope and history of the Doctrine of Discovery
5. What is now called “international law” was previously known as the Law of Nations.(4) In the late nineteenth century, for example, the international law scholar Thomas Erskine Holland referred to the law of nations as “the law of Christendom; as little applicable to infidels as was the ‘common law’ of the Greek cities … to societies of barbarians”.(5) In 1835, Judge John Catron (1786-1865), while seated on the Supreme Court of the State of Tennessee (United States),(6) officially identified “a principle” as part of “the law of Christendom”, specifically, “that discovery gave title to assume sovereignty over, and to govern the unconverted [non-Christian] peoples of Africa, Asia, and North and South America”. Catron declared that this principle had been recognized as a part of the Law of Nations “for nearly four centuries, and that it is now so recognized by every Christian power, in its political department and its judicial”.(7)
6. This preliminary study establishes that the terminology of early international law, such as “Christendom” and “every Christian power”,(8) is in keeping with terminology found in key documents from the fifteenth and later centuries. The Doctrine of Discovery is more accurately termed the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.
7. Judge Catron’s mention of “four centuries” prior to his era points back to the mid-fifteenth century, the time of numerous documents issued from the Vatican by the Holy See, notably the papal bulls Dum diversas and Romanus Pontifex. Those decrees are part of the record of the genesis of competing claims by Christian monarchies and States in Europe to a right of conquest, sovereignty and dominance over non-Christian peoples, along with their lands, territories and resources, during the so-called Age of Discovery. (9)
8. In 1917, the Carnegie Institution published Frances Gardiner Davenport’s European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and Its Dependencies to 1648, a work that provides insight into the semantics of so-called discovery, and an international Framework of Dominance to which indigenous peoples have been and are still being subjected, in violation of their individual and collective human rights. (10) As we shall demonstrate, the category “newly discovered lands” includes the lands of indigenous peoples categorized at that time by various Christian powers of Europe as non-Christians, for example, “heathens”, “pagans”, “gentiles” and “infidels”. (11)
9. The papal bull Romanus Pontifex, issued in 1455, serves as a starting point to understand the Doctrine of Discovery, specifically, the historic efforts by Christian monarchies and States of Europe in the fifteenth and later centuries to assume and exert rights of conquest and dominance over non-Christian indigenous peoples in order to take over and profit from their lands and territories. The overall purpose of these efforts was to accumulate wealth by engaging in unlimited resource extraction, particularly mining, within the traditional territories of indigenous nations and peoples. The text of Romanus Pontifex is illustrative of the doctrine or right of discovery. Centuries of destruction and ethnocide resulted from the application of the Doctrine of Discovery and framework of dominance to indigenous peoples and to their lands, territories and resources. (12)
10. Written by Pietro da Noceto, private secretary and confidant of Pope Nicolas V, the decree Romanus Pontifex begins by saying that the document was issued for “a perpetual remembrance”. It was to be remembered, in other words, in perpetuity.(13) The Roman pontiff was said to be empowered to ordain and dispose of “those things which he sees will be agreeable to the Divine Majesty and by which he may bring the sheep entrusted to him by God into the single divine fold, and may acquire for them the reward of eternal felicity, and obtain pardon for their souls”. This language is suggestive of religious conversion, and the document goes on to reveal the Framework of Dominance to be applied to non-Christian lands previously unknown to Western Christendom.
11. That Romanus Pontifex constituted and projected into the world a Framework of Dominance, conversion and violence is revealed by terms such as “vanquish”.
The objectives of the Holy See and the Portuguese monarch were more likely to come to pass, said Pope Nicholas, “if we bestow suitable favours and special graces on those Catholic kings and princes, who … restrain the excesses of the Saracens and of other infidel enemies of the Christian name [and] … vanquish … their kingdoms and habitations, though situated in the remotest parts unknown to us”. The document praises vanquishing actions that “subject” non-Christians to the Catholic kings’ and princes’ “own temporal dominion, sparing no labour or expense”. Thus, the Holy See decreed a vanquishing violence to achieve dominance and control, as lords, over non-Christian peoples, and possession of their lands, territories and resources.
12. Romanus Pontifex further demonstrates the Framework of Dominance with Pope Nicholas’s mention of Prince Henry of Portugal as a “true soldier of Christ” who “would best perform his duty to God” if he “might … be able … to subdue certain gentile or pagan peoples … and to preach and cause to be preached to them the unknown but most sacred name of Christ”.(14) To endeavour to use violence and religious conversion to “subject” non-Christian peoples is to work towards their dominance and subjugation.
13. Portuguese ships, said the papal bull, had explored and taken possession of very many harbours, islands and seas, eventually arriving at “the province of Guinuea [sic]”. As a result, the Portuguese had “taken possession of some islands and harbours and the sea adjacent to that province”. Eventually, the Portuguese voyagers “came to the mouth of a certain great river commonly supposed to be the Nile”. They then waged war “for some years against the [gentile or pagan] peoples of those parts in the name of the said King Alfonso and of the infante”.
14. Romanus Pontifex further explains that as a result of years of war other islands in western Africa “were subdued and peacefully possessed” along “with the adjacent sea”. King Alfonso and Prince Henry had explored, “acquired and possessed such harbours, islands, and seas … as the true lords of them …” and had “ordained that none … should presume to sail to the said provinces or to trade in their ports or to fish in the sea” without their licence, permission and payment of tribute. With the Holy See’s blessing and sanction, King Alfonso assumed a right of complete control as against “gentile or pagan” peoples, and over their lands, territories and resources. Such presumptions or claims by potentates, States, and their successors, of a right to “grant”, “discover”, “subdue”, “acquire” and “possess” and permanently control non-Christian indigenous peoples, along with their lands, territories and resources, is what this preliminary study refers to as the Framework of Dominance.
15. Pope Nicholas authorized King Alfonso to assume and take control over non-Christian lands because the Holy See “had formerly … [for example, in the bull Dum diversas of 1452] granted among other things free and ample faculty(15) to the aforesaid King Alfonso — to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and [the right] to convert them [those things] to his and their use and profit …”. This “faculty” granted by the Holy See to King Alfonso to “apply and appropriate to himself” the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods, is a papal licence for the forced taking of all indigenous lands and territories in the regions located, and to engage in unlimited resource extraction for the monarch’s “use and profit”. In this context, the secular meaning of “convert” is “to appropriate dishonestly or illegally” that which belongs to another”.(16) To make the forced appropriation seem “lawful” and “right”, Pope Nicholas declared that because the Apostolic See had previously issued the “faculty” to engage in such work, and because the king had thereby “secured the said faculty”, “the said King Alfonso … justly and lawfully has acquired and possessed, and doth possess, these islands, lands, harbours, and seas, and they do of right belong to … the said King Alfonso and his successors …”.
16. Thus, Romanus Pontifex clearly illustrates the pattern of contemporary claims by States to rights of conquest and dominance with regard to indigenous peoples, their lands, territories and natural resources. It is for this reason that the papal bull Romanus Pontifex serves as a powerful template illustrative of the Framework of Dominance that lies at the root of the violations of indigenous peoples’ human rights, both individual and collective.
17. As noted, the “right of conquest” granted by Pope Nicholas in Romanus Pontifex is made forever: “And by force of those and the present letters [papal bulls] of faculty the acquisitions already made, and what hereafter shall happen to be acquired … forever of right do belong and pertain, to the aforesaid king and his successors and to the infante, and that the right of conquest … has belonged and pertained, and forever of right belongs and pertains, to the said King Alfonso, his successors, and the infante, and not to any others”. Mention of King Alfonso’s “successors” refers to rights of conquest and dominance being transferable by treaty between the States of Europe, otherwise known as the “family of nations”. Many modern States of the world are the political successors of such claimed rights of conquest and dominance based on the Doctrine of Discovery.
IV. The Framework of Dominance
18. The bull Romanus Pontifex — along with all other such Vatican documents and royal charters — provides evidence of the Doctrine of Discovery used by the Christian States of Europe and their successors in the Americas and elsewhere to promote on a global scale a framework of dominance and the theft of indigenous peoples’ lands, territories, and resources, under the disguise of activities that are
deemed “just” and “lawful”. The dominance framework was acknowledged in a working definition of “indigenous peoples” set out in the early 1970s: Indigenous populations are composed of the existing descendants of the peoples who inhabited the present territory of a country wholly or partially at the time when persons or a different culture or ethnic origin arrived there from other parts of the world, overcame them and, by conquest, settlement or other means, reduced them to a non-dominant or colonial condition; who today live more in conformity with their particular social, economic and cultural customs and traditions than with the institutions of the country of which they now form part, under a State structure which incorporates mainly the national, social and cultural characteristics of other segments of the population which are predominant. (17)
19. Another example will further illustrate this point. In 1995, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a fact sheet, in the introduction to which we find: “Indigenous or aboriginal peoples are so called because they were living on their lands before settlers came from elsewhere”. (18) The phrase “before settlers came” is an acknowledgment that indigenous peoples were
originally living on their own lands when other people arrived and claimed to be “dominant through conquest, occupation, settlement, or other means”. The fact sheet also refers to the “settlers” as “the new arrivals” who became “dominant” through “conquest, occupation, settlement or other means”. This mention of “dominant” and “conquest” acknowledges a history of invasion and forced imposition.
20. Elsewhere, the fact sheet again recognizes claims of dominance and the taking of indigenous lands by force: “Throughout human history, whenever dominant neighbouring peoples have expanded their territories or settlers from far away have acquired new lands by force, the cultures and livelihoods — even the existence — of indigenous peoples have been endangered”. Referring to non-indigenous peoples being “dominant” over indigenous peoples, and to “settlers” acquiring indigenous lands “by force” pinpoints what has resulted in the cultures and livelihoods — even the existence of indigenous peoples being endangered. Issues of ethnocide (19) and linguicide (20) are included in the reference to the existence of indigenous peoples being endangered by those monarchies and States claiming “effective dominance” over them, their lands, and territories, in violation of indigenous peoples’ individual and collective human rights.
21. The Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, José Martínez Cobo, in his final report on the problem of discrimination against indigenous populations, employed key concepts that identify and acknowledge dominance as the context of indigenous peoples’ issues:
Indigenous communities, peoples, and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems. (21)
22. In the above working definition we find the same conceptual pattern mentioned previously. The term “pre-invasion” acknowledges the invasion of indigenous peoples’ territories. “Pre-colonial” acknowledges the patterns of colonialism and colonization that have had a negative impact on indigenous peoples, their lands, territories and resources. The statement “societies now prevailing on those [indigenous] territories” views non-indigenous societies as presuming to have a “superior force or influence” over indigenous peoples and their territories. Finally, referring to indigenous peoples as “non-dominant” acknowledges the fact that invading societies claim dominance over indigenous peoples in violation of their individual and collective human rights.
V. The Doctrine of Discovery and the United States of America
23. In this section we shall focus in detail on United States federal Indian law as a prototypical example of the application of the Doctrine of Discovery and the Framework of Dominance to indigenous nations and peoples. This information will illustrate the extent to which national laws, particularly property laws, regarding indigenous peoples, have rested and continue to rest on the Doctrine of Discovery and the Framework of Dominance. (22)
24. The United States federal Indian law system comprises thousands of statutes, a voluminous body of case law, hundreds of treaties, both ratified and unratified, and more than 200 years of federal Indian policy development.(23) This preliminary study of the Doctrine of Discovery, however, will remain narrowly focused on the conceptual starting point or premise of that overall system as embodied in the United States Supreme Court ruling Johnson v. McIntosh. (24)
25. The premise of the federal Indian law system has become even more problematic in recent years because of recently disclosed evidence of fraud in the Johnson case. The case was feigned; it was the result of an act of collusion between the two parties, “for effect”.(25) In 1774 and 1775, respectively, the Illinois and Wabash Land Companies purchased lands directly from the Illinois and Piankeshaw Indian nations in violation of a bar the British crown had placed on such land purchases by the Royal Proclamation of 1763. The two land purchases were made from the two free and independent Indian nations just prior to the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War between the newly declared United States and Great Britain. Nearly 50 years after those land purchases, two relatives and
heirs of Thomas Johnson, one of the original investors in the land purchases, filed suit in United States District Court for the District of Illinois. The attorneys for the plaintiffs had gone in search of a defendant, whom they found in the person of William McIntosh. The attorneys for the plaintiffs hired the attorneys for the defendant, Mr. McIntosh. (26)
26. In addition, Chief Justice John Marshall (1755-1835) had large real estate holdings (as did his family and friends) that would have been affected if the case had been decided contrary to those interests. (27) Rather than remove himself from the case, however, the Chief Justice wrote the decision for a unanimous United States Supreme Court. (28)
27. The newly formed United States needed to manufacture an American Indian political identity and concept of Indian land title that would open the way for the United States in its westward colonial expansion. The principle that the United States Supreme Court devised for this purpose in the Johnson ruling was “that discovery gave title to the government, by whose subjects, or by whose authority it
was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession”. (29) Based on the concept of “discovery”, the Supreme Court constructed an Indian title of “mere occupancy”. In keeping with this concept, it has often been argued that the Indian title of “occupancy” is merely a temporary right, inferior and subject to the absolute title and ultimate dominion of early Christian European powers, and later State actors such as the United States. (30)
28. To illustrate the origin of the “principle” of “discovery”, Marshall examined the language of the John Cabot charter and a number of other royal charters issued by the British crown:
No one of the powers of Europe gave its full assent to this principle, more unequivocally than England. The documents upon this subject are ample and complete. So early as the year 1496, her monarch granted a commission to the Cabots, to discover countries then unknown to Christian people, and to take possession of them in the name of the king of England. Two years afterwards, Cabot proceeded on this voyage, and discovered the continent of North America, along which he sailed as far south as Virginia. To this discovery the English trace their title. (29)
29. The above quoted language from King Henry VII’s charter to John Cabot and his sons traces directly back to the long tradition of the Vatican papal bulls mentioned above. With that language, the British crown was acting on the view that previous papal grants to Portugal and Spain could not rightfully bar the British crown from voyaging and appropriating lands of “the heathen and infidel” which before this time “have been unknown to all Christian people”. The Johnson ruling continues by saying that the Cabot charter constitutes “a complete recognition” of the “principle” or doctrine of discovery:
In this first effort made by the English government to acquire territory on this continent, we perceive a complete recognition of the principle [of discovery] which has been mentioned. The right of discovery given by this commission, is confined to countries “then unknown to all Christian people”; and of these countries Cabot was empowered to take possession in the name of the king of England. Thus asserting a right to take possession, notwithstanding the occupancy of the natives, who were heathens, and, at the same time, admitting the prior title of any Christian people who may have made a previous discovery. (29)
30. The Supreme Court’s language once again invokes the Framework of Dominance. Earlier in the Johnson decision Marshall also identified that same framework through his use of the concept “dominion”:
While the different nations of Europe respected the right of the natives, as occupants, they asserted the ultimate dominion to be in themselves; and claimed and exercised, as a consequence of this ultimate dominion, a power to grant the soil, while yet in possession of the natives. These grants have been
understood by all, to convey a title to the grantees, subject only to the Indian right of occupancy. (31)
31. As the United States Supreme Court viewed the matter in Johnson, the English royal charters expressed the doctrine that “Christian people”, on the basis of a claim of “discovery”, had asserted a right to take possession of any lands inhabited by “natives, who were heathens”, meaning non-Christians. The Political philosopher Thomas Hobbes stated that “the right of possession is called Dominion”.(32) Thus, asserting “a right to take possession” is simply another way of saying “asserting a right of dominion” or dominance.(33)
32. In the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling, the United States Supreme Court claimed that the original rights of American Indians “to complete sovereignty, as independent nations” had been “necessarily diminished” by the right of discovery. This “right” of “discovery”, said the Court, was confined to countries “unknown to Christian people”. The Supreme Court claimed, in other words, that Christian people locating lands in the Americas that until then had been “unknown to Christian people” had ended the right of American Indian nations to be free and independent. On the basis of the above language, the United States Supreme Court used the Doctrine of Discovery to prevent the application of the first principle of international law to American Indian nations and their traditional territories: “The authority of a nation within its own territory is absolute and exclusive”. (34) To give themselves unfettered access to the lands, territories and resources of indigenous peoples, the Christian States of Europe and later State actors considered this principle applicable only to themselves.
33. No one could sensibly argue against the idea that the existence of American Indian nations and peoples was originally free of the Doctrine of Discovery and Christian European claims and assertions of dominance. (35) Justice Joseph Story (1779-1845) revealed the argument against that original free existence when he wrote “As infidels, heathens, and savages”, the Indians “were not allowed to possess the prerogatives belonging to completely sovereign independent nations”.(36) Once the concepts of “discovery” and “ultimate dominion” (traced back to papal bulls such as Romanus Pontifex) were institutionalized in United States law and policy, this resulted in the imposition of a Framework of Dominance over indigenous nations and peoples. This enabled the United States Government to appropriate and grant away Indian lands, territories and resources, with impunity, in violation of indigenous peoples’ individual and collective human rights.
VI. Terra nullius, terra nullus and the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling
34. There are two terms that have been used against indigenous peoples historically, both of which mean “devoid of human beings”. The two terms have resulted in the dehumanization of indigenous peoples. The first of these terms is terra nullius, a category applied by Roman lawyers to enemy lands and places such as desert islands. (37) The second term is terra nullus, which, according to Francis Lieber, the first American political scientist, was based on the fact that the original indigenous inhabitants of a geographical area during the so-called Age of Discovery were not baptized as Christians.
35. Francis Lieber (1800-1872) was a German-American who emigrated to the United States in 1827 and became one of the foremost political scholars of the nineteenth century.38 Lieber identified the doctrine of terra nullus, which referred to a land inhabited by heathens, pagans, infidels or unbaptized persons, whom Christians treated in a fundamental sense as not existing. The concept of terra nullus
led to the view that lands inhabited by non-Christians were vacant or “unoccupied lands” and therefore open to a right of possession by Christians. “Paganism”, wrote Lieber, which meant being unbaptized, “deprived the individual [non-Christian] of those rights which a true … morality considers inherent in each human being”.
36. In an 1888 essay, Burke Aaron Hinsdale (1837-1900) documented that the Right of Discovery was founded “on the principle that what belongs to no one [may] be appropriated by the finder”. Following Lieber’s thinking, Hinsdale noted that the argument became effective only when supplemented by the Church definition of nullius. The Church definition, said Hinsdale, “supplied the necessary premise”. “Grant that res nullius is the property of the finder; that an infidel is nullius [non-existing]; that the American [Indian] savage is an infidel [nullius, or non-existing] and the argument is complete”. Hinsdale said that this argument, premised on the unbaptized status of the original inhabitants of “discovered” lands, was “the origin of the Right of Discovery, the criterion to which the nations that divided the New World appealed in territorial controversies, and the ultimate ground of title throughout the United States”. Here Hinsdale referenced the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling. Hinsdale said that the Right of Discovery formed “the ultimate ground of title throughout the United States”. (39)
37. United States Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story was a contemporary of Francis Lieber. For a time, the two men moved in the same intellectual circles, and Story contributed more than 120 pages to Lieber’s Encyclopaedia Americana. (40) Justice Joseph Story also helped to decide the 1823 Johnson v. McIntosh case. One decade after the Johnson decision, in 1833, Story published his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, in which he examined the “origin and title to the territory of the colonies”, and wrote the following regarding the origin of European title in the Americas and the Inter Caetera papal bull of the fifteenth century:
... The Indians were a savage race, sunk in the depths of ignorance and heathenism. If they might not be extirpated for their want of religion and just morals, they might be reclaimed from their errors. They were bound to yield to the superior genius of Europe, and in exchanging their wild and debasing habits for civilization and Christianity they were deemed to gain more than an equivalent for every sacrifice and suffering. The Papal authority, too, was brought in aid of these great designs; and for the purpose of overthrowing heathenism, and propagating the Catholic religion, Alexander the Sixth, by a Bull issued in 1493, granted to the crown of Castile the whole of the immense territory then discovered, or to be discovered, between the poles, so far as it was not then possessed by any Christian prince. (41)
6. The principle, then, that discovery gave title to the government, by whose subjects or by whose authority it was made, against all other European governments,(42) being once established, it followed almost as a matter of course, that every government within the limits of its discoveries excluded all
other persons from any right to acquire the soil by any grant whatsoever from the natives. (43) (emphasis added)
38. In the two paragraphs quoted above, Story made a direct connection between the Inter Caetera papal bull of 1493 and the right of discovery expressed in the Johnson decision. (44) Story thereby placed the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling — the starting point of United States federal Indian case law — not only in the context of the decree Inter Caetera, but in the larger context of the numerous Vatican
documents issued to the Portuguese and Spanish crowns during the so-called Age of Discovery, including the framework of dominance found in the papal bulls Dum diversas and Romanus Pontifex.
39. On the basis of terra nullus and the Doctrine of Discovery, the United States Supreme Court stated in the Johnson decision that the [British] crown, had made “no distinction ... between vacant lands and lands occupied by Indians”. (45) The Supreme Court claimed, in other words, that the British crown treated American Indian lands as if they were vacant lands. In The International Law of John Marshall, Benjamin Munn Ziegler explained the Court’s statement about vacant lands as follows: “[o]ne of the oldest means by which nations have acquired territory has been through the discovery of previously unoccupied lands”. In an explanatory note, Ziegler further said: “The term ‘unoccupied lands’ refers of course to lands in America which when discovered were ‘occupied by Indians’ but ‘unoccupied by Christians’”. (46)
40. George Grafton Wilson (1863-1951), a professor in the United States at Brown University, Harvard University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the United States Naval War College, expressed the same point. On the basis of the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling, Wilson stated that “England, France, Holland, Portugal, and Spain alike maintained that discovery of lands previously unknown to Christian people gave the Christian discoverer the right to take possession”. (47)
VII. The Doctrine of Discovery in contemporary times
41. In the mid-twentieth century, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed and embraced the Doctrine of Discovery. Five hundred years after the issuance of Romanus Pontifex, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. The United States. (48) The case had to do with the Tee-Hit-Ton people whose language is Tlingit, and whose “customs, laws, and traditions [are] similar to other Tlingit peoples” in what is now called Alaska. (49) In 1947, the United States Congress authorized the United States Secretary of Agriculture to sell the timber of the Tongass National Forest, a national forest that the Congress had established in an area that partly encompassed the traditional territory of the Tee- Hit-Ton and the Tlingit. On 20 August 1951, the United States Forest Service sold Ketchikan Pulp and Paper Company “the right to all harvestable in the Tongass National Forest, estimated at 1,500,000 cubic feet”. Shortly thereafter, the Tee-Hit- Ton sued, arguing that they “were the sole owners of the land and water in dispute; that they had never sold or conveyed the land to any other party; and they asked for a judgment for the losses and damages from the Tongass taking, plus interest”.(50)
42. Eventually, United States government attorneys filed a brief with the Supreme Court that was based in part on the Doctrine of Discovery and the era of the Vatican papal bulls; in it they argued that it was a well-recognized principle in international law that “the lands of heathens and infidels” were open to acquisition (taking) by “Christian nations”. (51) A few comments will place the United States legal argument about “Christian nations” in context: until 1856, there existed a collective international political identity, comprising different monarchies and States, called variously by such names as “Christendom”, “the Christian common wealth” and “the Family of Nations” (“the Christian nations of Europe and their offshoots in America”). In keeping with this history, the United States attorneys began their “summary of argument” with the Johnson decision: “It is a well established principle of international law that with respect to the lands of this continent discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession (Johnson v. McIntosh, 8 Wheat. 543, 573)”. The attorneys continued: “... the discovering nations asserted in themselves, by virtue of the principle of discovery, the complete and exclusive title to the land — subject only to a right of occupancy in the Indians, such right being retained by the Indians only by the grace of the sovereign”. (51)
43. Under the heading “Argument” the United States attorneys referred back to the centuries-long era of “the Christian nations of Europe.” They included a discussion of the era of the papal bull Romanus Pontifex: “Prior to the great era of discovery beginning in the latter part of the fifteenth century, the Christian nations of Europe acquired jurisdiction over newly discovered lands by virtue of grants from the Popes, who claimed the power to grant to Christian monarchs the right to acquire territory in the possession of heathens and infidels.” (52)
44. The attorneys continued with the following line of argument in Tee-Hit-Ton based on the Vatican papal bulls:
For example, in 1344, Clement VI had granted the Canary Islands to Louis of Spain upon his promise to lead the islanders to the worship of Christ, and, following the discovery of the New World by Columbus, Alexander VI in 1493 and 1494 issued bulls granting to Spain all lands not under Christian rule west of a line 100 leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands. ... The latter papal grant, because of the breaking down of the papal authority and the vastness of the territory covered, was not accepted by the other nations or even greatly relied upon by Spain, and it was necessary for the civilized, Christian nations of Europe to develop a new principle which all could acknowledge as the law by which they should regulate, as between themselves, the right of acquisition of territory in the New World, which they had found to be inhabited by Indians who were heathens and uncivilized according to European standards. (51)
45. Justice Stanley Forman Reed delivered the majority decision for the United States Supreme Court in Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. The United States. However, before explaining the Court’s ruling in Tee-Hit-Ton, it is necessary to first mention the 1946 Supreme Court case Alcea Band of Tillamooks v. The United States. (53) In the Alcea Band case, the majority of the Supreme Court decided that the Alcea Band of Tillamook Indians in Oregon were entitled to monetary compensation for a taking of their ancestral lands by the United States Government. However, Justice Reed, who wrote the minority opinion, disagreed. Justice Reed relied on the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling of 1823 to make his argument that the Alcea Band of Tillamook Indians were not entitled to monetary compensation for a taking of their ancestral lands by the United States Government.
46. As the main support for his argument in the Alcea Band case, Justice Reed characterized the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling as having advanced the theory that the “discovery” of Indian lands “by Christian nations gave them sovereignty over and title to the lands discovered”. This, of course, matches Judge Catron’s claim in State v. Foreman that it was “the law of Christendom that discovery gave title to assume sovereignty over, and to govern the unconverted natives”. (54)
47. When Justice Reed wrote the majority opinion for the United States Supreme Court in Tee-Hit-Ton, he concurred with the argument made by the United States attorneys. He also applied the same line of reasoning regarding the Doctrine of Discovery that he had previously expressed in Alcea Band of Tillamooks. He said that it was “well settled” that American Indians held claim to lands in North America “after the coming of the white man, under what is sometimes termed Indian
title or permission from the whites to occupy. That description means mere possession not specifically recognized as ownership by Congress. After conquest they were permitted to occupy portions of territory over which they had previously exercised ‘sovereignty,’ as we use that term. This is not a property right but amounts to a right of occupancy which the sovereign grants”. He further said that “this right of occupancy may be terminated and such lands fully disposed of by the sovereign itself without any legally enforceable obligation to compensate the Indians”. Mention of “conquest” references the Framework of Dominance, and Justice Reed went on to say: “This position of the Indians has long been rationalized under the theory that discovery and conquest give the conquerors sovereignty over and ownership of the lands thus obtained”. (55)
48. In his Elements of International Law, under “Rights of Property”, Henry Wheaton wrote the following which, based on Justice Reed’s citation, reveals the context of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Tee-Hit-Ton:
The Spaniards and the Portuguese took the lead among the nations of Europe, in the splendid maritime discoveries in the East and the West, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. According to the European ideas of that age, the heathen nations of the other quarters of the globe were the lawful spoil and prey of their civilized conquerors, and as between the Christian powers themselves, the Sovereign Pontiff was the supreme arbiter of conflicting claims … Thus the bull of Pope Alexander VI reserved from the grant to Spain all lands, which had been previously occupied by any other Christian [original emphasis] nation; and the patent granted by Henry VII of England to John Cabot and his sons, authorized them “to seek out and discover all islands, regions, and provinces whatsoever, that may belong to heathens and infidels’’; and “to subdue, occupy, and possess these territories, as his vassals and lieutenants”. In the same manner, the grant from Queen Elizabeth to Sir Humphrey Gilbert empowers him to “discover such remote and barbarous lands, countries, and territories, not actually possessed by any Christian prince or people, and to hold, occupy, and enjoy the same, with all their commodities, jurisdictions, and royalties”. It thus became a maxim of policy and of law, that the right of the native Indians was subordinate to that of the first Christian discoverers, whose paramount claim excluded that of every other civilized nation, and gradually extinguished that of the natives.(56)
49. That the Doctrine of Discovery is still being used as an active legal principle by the United States Supreme Court in the twentieth-first century is revealed in the case City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York (57) decided in March 2005, exactly 50 years after the Tee-Hit-Ton ruling. The case involved a dispute over taxation of ancestral lands of the Oneida Indian Nation. During oral arguments, it became clear that the case would hinge on whether, in the opinion of the Court, the Oneida Indian Nation “has sovereignty status” with regard to the ancestral lands the Oneida Nation had reacquired. To contextualize the Court’s decision and to decide the sovereign status of the Oneida Indian Nation, the Supreme Court relied upon the Doctrine of Discovery. This is revealed in footnote number one of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s decision for the Court majority: “Under the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’”, wrote Justice Ginsberg, “... fee title to the lands occupied by Indians when the colonists arrived became vested in the sovereign — first the discovering European nation and later the original states and the United States”. As documented by this preliminary study, the Supreme Court’s reference to the Doctrine of Discovery places the context for the Court’s decision in Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York within the Framework of Dominance, dating back to the era of the Vatican papal bulls.
VIII. Conclusion
50. This preliminary study has documented that for more than 500 years the Doctrine of Discovery has been global in scope and application. At least two Governments other than the United States, Canada and Australia, have cited the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling to enforce the Doctrine of Discovery. When they have done so they have cited the Doctrine of Discovery and the Framework of Dominance. Non-indigenous legal scholars and State actors have interwoven the Doctrine of Discovery into international and domestic law. Within the context of the United States, such persons include Chief Justice John Marshall, Justice Joseph Story, Henry Wheaton, Justice John Catron, Francis Lieber, B. A. Hinsdale, Alpheus Snow, George Grafton Wilson, Justice Stanley Reed, the United States attorneys who wrote the legal brief filed for Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. The United States, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. They all relied upon the Doctrine of Discovery that, as this preliminary study has demonstrated, is rooted in and perpetuates the Framework of Dominance passed down, from generation to generation, from the era of Christendom and the Vatican papal bulls. (58)
IX. Recommendation
51. The information and material presented in this preliminary study of the international construct known as the Doctrine of Discovery indicates the need for further study and review, and for a more comprehensive assessment and exploration of issues raised here on the violations of indigenous peoples’ inherent rights, particularly as recognized in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Therefore, we recommend that an international expert group meeting be convened to discuss in detail the findings and implications of this preliminary study of the Doctrine of Discovery and to present its findings to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at its annual session.
(1) Judge John Catron for the Supreme Court of Tennessee in the case State v. Foreman 16 Tenn. (8 Yerg.) 256, 277 (1835). For a further discussion of how Judge Catron’s ruling pertains to this preliminary study, see paras. 5-17 below.
(2) The Old World idea of property was well expressed by the Latin dominium: from dominus which derived from the Sanskrit domanus (he who subdues). Dominus in the Latin carries the same principal meaning (one who has subdued), extending naturally to signify “master, possessor, lord, proprietor, owner”. Dominium takes from dominus the sense of “absolute ownership” with a special legal meaning of property right of ownership (see Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary (1969 ed.)). Dominatio extends the word into “rule, dominium, and … with an odious secondary meaning, unrestricted power, absolute dominium, lordship, tyranny, despotism. Political power grown from property — dominium — was, in effect, domination” (William Brandon, New Worlds for Old (1986)). In this preliminary study, “Framework of Dominance” and “dominance framework” are both used in this latter sense. State claims and assertions of “dominion” and “sovereignty over” indigenous peoples and their lands, territories and resources trace to these dire meanings, handed down from the days of the Roman Empire, and to a history of the dehumanization of indigenous peoples. This is at the root of indigenous peoples’ human rights issues today.
(3) In Conquest by Law, Professor Lindsay Robertson states that the reach of the Johnson v. McIntosh decision “has been global”. He continues: “In its 1984 decision in Guerin v. The Queen, for example, the Supreme Court of Canada, after citing Johnson, held that ‘Indians have a legal right to occupy and possess certain lands, the ultimate fee to which is in the Crown’. Under Canadian law, as under U.S. law, the tribes lost ownership of their lands by virtue of discovery”. Robertson then mentions that the High Court of Australia cited Johnson in a remarkable opinion — Mabo v. Queensland — which, while recognizing for the first time land claims of indigenous Australians, nevertheless limited those claims under a variation of the doctrine of discovery. There too, the discovering European sovereign was recognized to be the owner of the underlying title to indigenous lands. Professor Robertson does not, however, appear to question or challenge the claim that “discovery” resulted in indigenous nations and peoples “losing” “ownership of their lands”. In the Canadian context, Thomas Issac’s book Aboriginal Law lists Johnson v. McIntosh under the heading “Aboriginal Title” in the table of contents. In fact, the Johnson ruling is the second document in his book, after the 1763 British Royal Proclamation.
(4) In an earlier era, “Law of Nations” was commonly used by international law commentators.
Vattel provides an example: “In cases of doubt arising upon what is the Law of Nations, it is now an admitted rule among all European nations, that our common religion, Christianity, pointing out the principles of natural justice, should be equally appealed to and observed by all as an unfailing rule of construction” (Emmerich Vattel, The Law of Nations). Henry Wheaton provides a second case in point. In the preface to the third edition of his Elements of International Law, Wheaton wrote in 1845: “During the Middle Ages the Christian States of Europe began to unite and to acknowledge the obligation of an international law common to all who professed the same religious faith” and “ … The origin of the law of nations in modern Europe may thus be traced to two principle sources — the canon law and the Roman civil law”.
This preliminary study uses phrases such as “the Christian States of Europe”, or “Christian nations of Europe” because they are in keeping with the actual terminology in use at the time of the development of the doctrine.
(5) Thomas Erskine Holland, Studies in International Law (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1898).
(6) President Andrew Jackson appointed Judge Catron to the United States Supreme Court in March 1837. Thus, Catron, along with his influence and mindset, was moved to the highest court in the United States system.
(7) See footnote 1. Catron further declared the global scope of the Doctrine of Discovery and the Framework of Dominance: “That, from Cape Horn to Hudson Bay, it is the only known rule of sovereign power, by which the native Indian is coerced. Our claim is based on the right to coerce obedience. The claim may be denounced by the moralist. We answer, it is the law of the land.”
(8) “Christian powers” refers to what were once known as the States members of the “family of nations”. International law scholar Thomas Erskine Holland is quoted in Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language as saying that the term family of nations “may be said to include the Christian nations of Europe and their offshoots in America, with the addition of the Ottoman Empire, which was declared by the treaty of Paris of 1856 to be admitted to the ‘concert Europeen’. Within this charmed circle, to which Japan also has now established her claim to be admitted, all states, according to the theory of international law are equal”. The same volume provides the following definition: “Family of nations. The aggregate of states (orig. the Christian nations of Europe) which, as a result of their historical antecedents, have inherited a common civilization, and are at a similar level of moral and political opinion, or have been recognized by those states as on that level.”
(9) See Francis Gardiner Davenport, European Treaties. Quotations in paras. 8-17 below are from Davenport.
(10) The Doctrine of Discovery emerged out of an era when non-Christian peoples were not considered to be human. As Henry Wheaton stated in his Elements of International Law, “the heathen nations of the other [non-Christian] quarters of the globe were the lawful spoil and prey of their civilized conquerors”.
(11) The terms “barbarians” and “savages” were also used. See also footnotes 3 and 7 above.
(12) For the purpose of this study, “ethnocide” includes the destructive consequences to peoples that follow from their removal from their traditional lands and territories, in violation of their human integrity and their human rights.
(13) The concept of “perpetual remembrance” coincides with the fact that Pope Nicholas V made his grant “forever”.
(14) That the term “subdue” invokes and carries the Framework of Dominance is revealed by its definition: “to conquer by force and by superior power and bring into subjection: vanquish, crush”. “Subdued” is “brought under control by or as if by military force” (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged, 1993). The one who subdues or who has subdued is the one who assumes a position of dominance. “Dominance” brings us to “dominant position in an order of forcefulness”. And, finally, “dominant” brings us to “commanding, controlling, or having supremacy or ascendancy over all others by reason of superior strength or power”. Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, declared that “Dominion acquired by conquest or victory in war, is that which some writers call despotical”. He traces this to the Greek word signifying “a lord or master”, and says despotic dominion is that “of the master over his servant”.
(15) In this context the word “faculty” means “ability to act or do”. Thus, Pope Nicholas said that the Holy See, by its previous authorization, had granted to King Alfonso the ability to “invade, search out [and] vanquish”.
(16) Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. To invade and purport to convert the lands of other peoples is to engage in an act or acts of “conversion”. Black’s Law Dictionary (Fifth ed.) provides the following definition of “conversion”: “An unauthorized assumption and exercise of the right of ownership over goods or personal chattels belonging to another, to the alteration of their condition or the exclusion of the owner’s rights. Any unauthorized act which deprives an owner of his property permanently or for an indefinite time. Unauthorized and wrongful exercise of dominion and control over another’s personal property, to the exclusion of or inconsistent with rights of owner”. From an indigenous peoples’ perspective the assumptions and acts of Christian European powers to “invade, capture, vanquish, and subdue them” and to take away all their goods “both movable and immovable” were unauthorized and wrongful under indigenous systems of law and inconsistent with the inherent and original rights of the owners.
(17) See Patrick Thornberry, Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples (Manchester University Press, 2002). See also the preliminary report of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, José Martínez Cobo, of 29 June 1972 (E/CN.4/Sub.2/L.566).
(18) Fact Sheet No. 9 (Rev. 1), entitled “The Rights of Indigenous Peoples”, relating to the Programme of Activities for the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People (1995-2004) (General Assembly resolution 50/157, annex).
(19) See footnote (12) above.
(20) As used in this preliminary study, “linguicide” refers to the history of laws and policies implemented in an effort to destroy the languages of indigenous peoples.
(21) “Study on the problem of discrimination against indigenous populations” (E/CN.4/Sub.2/476 and addenda; E/CN.4/Sub.2/1982/2 and addenda; E/CN.4/Sub.2/1983/21 and addenda; available from www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/spdaip.html).
(22) In United States federal Indian law the Framework of Dominance is commonly referred to as “the plenary power doctrine”. Within the United States Constitution, the regulation of Government relations with American Indians falls exclusively to the federal Government, and not to the state Governments. The authority of Congress to pass legislation dealing with American Indian affairs is often called “the plenary power of Congress”. This leads to the common expression “Congress has plenary power over Indian affairs”. The Framework of Dominance is expressed through the statement “Congress has plenary power over Indian nations or tribes” (see Wilkins, American Indian Sovereignty).
(23) See generally Felix Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law.
(24) The beginning of United States federal Indian case law is commonly known as the Marshall Trilogy, which consists of three Supreme Court rulings handed down under the leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall: Johnson’s Lessee v. McIntosh 8 Wheat. 543 (1823); Cherokee Nation v. Georgia 30 U.S. 1 (1831); and Worcester v. Georgia 31 U.S. 515 (1832). A discussion of all three cases is beyond the scope of this preliminary study. However, for now it is important to note that in Worcester v. Georgia, Chief Justice Marshall modified the view he had expressed in the Johnson ruling, as it applied to individual States of the United States. In Worcester, for instance, Marshall said that the Doctrine of Discovery could not “annul the previous rights of those who had not agreed to it”. In other words, “discovery” could not cause Indian rights to cease to exist. The principle of discovery, Marshall further declared, “could not affect the rights of those already in possession” of the land. Space does not permit a discussion of the implications of these statements. In any case it is the Johnson ruling rather than Worcester that has been repeatedly characterized as conceptually laying down the foundation of Indian title in the United States of America.
(25) Lindsay Robertson, Conquest by Law. The phrase “for effect” refers to an act of collusion by two parties to have a particular effect on a court. The two sides were only pretending to have a dispute in order to get the case before the United States court system.
(26) Robertson, Conquest by Law.
(27) Ibid.
(28) Peter d’Errico, “John Marshall: Indian Lover?”.
(29) Johnson v. McIntosh at 576.
(30) This concept was referenced in the United States legal brief in Tee-Hit-Ton when the United States attorneys argued that “a right of occupancy in the Indians” was “retained by the Indians only by the grace of the sovereign”. See paras. 41-49 below. (31) Johnson v. McIntosh at 574.
(32) Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. XVI.
(33) The United States usage of “ultimate dominion” and “right of possession” as property law concepts brings the discussion back to William Brandon’s etymology of dominium: “unrestricted power, absolute dominium, lordship, tyranny, despotism. Political power grown from property — dominium — was, in effect, domination” (see footnote 2 above).
(34) Francis Wharton, A Digest of International Law of the United States, vol. I.
(35) Spanish theologian Francisco Vitoria is considered by many to be the “father” of international law. During his lectures at the University of Salamanca he examined the issue of “title by discovery”. Not much needed to be said about that form of title, he concluded, because “the barbarians were the true owners [of their lands], both from the public and private standpoint”. The adherents and proponents of the Doctrine of Discovery and the Framework of Dominance have ignored Vitoria’s powerful analysis on this point. James Brown Scott, The Catholic Conception of International Law.
(36) Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States.
(37) Steven T. Newcomb, Pagans in the Promised Land. Quotations in paras. 35 and 36 are from Newcomb unless otherwise identified.
(38) Francis Lieber is credited with first conceiving the Institut de droit international. He became an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, and worked with the Union War Department and President Lincoln to draft legal guidelines for the Union Army. His code, known as the Lieber Code, was eventually adopted by other military organizations in the world and went on to become the basis of the laws of war.
(39) B. A. Hinsdale, “The Right of Discovery”.
(40) Story contributed unsigned works on natural law, American and English law to Lieber’s Encyclopaedia.
(41) In a footnote Story wrote: “‘Ut fides Catholica, et Christiana Religio nostris praesertim temporibus exaltetur, &c., ac barbarae nationes deprimantur, et ad fidem ipsam reducantur,’ is the language of the Bull. 1 Haz. Coll. 3”. The Latin translates: “Among other works well pleasing to the Divine Majesty and cherished of our heart, this assuredly ranks highest, that in our times especially the Catholic faith and Christian religion be exalted and everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself” (Davenport). The Latin deprimantur translates to both “overthrown” and “subjugated”, thereby invoking the Framework of Dominance.
(42) The highlighted words are taken, verbatim and without quotation marks, directly from Johnson v. McIntosh.
(43) Here Story cited volume 3 of Chief Justice John Marshall’s A History of the Colonies (3 Marshall, Hist. Col. 13, 14). Marshall’s History was published in 1824 within months of the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling.
(44) That Story’s citation of the 1493 papal bull was reflective of the framework of dominance is evident from the Latin text that he quoted from a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI. The pope, for example, called for non-Christian nations — “barbarous nations” — to be “subjugated” and for the “propagation of the Christian empire” (Davenport). Additionally, the Holy See declared in the Inter Caetera bull, “We trust in Him from whom empires, governments, and all good things proceed” (Ibid.). That this sentence is consistent with the framework of dominance is revealed by the Latin translation of “governments” which is “dominationes”.
(45) Johnson v. McIntosh at 596. The quotation from Story in para. 37 above links to the doctrine of terra nullius.
(46) Benjamin Munn Ziegler, The International Law of John Marshall.
(47) George Grafton Wilson, “International Law and the Constitution”, 13 B.U. L. Rev. 234 (1933). Wilson’s statement “that discovery of lands previously unknown to Christian people gave the Christian discoverer the right to take possession” is in keeping with Thomas Hobbes’s statement, already mentioned, that “the right of possession is called Dominion”. In other words, “dominance”.
(48) Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. The United States 348 U.S. 272 (1955).
(49) David Wilkins, American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court: “The area claimed by the Tee-Hit-Ton entailed approximately 357,802 acres of land and 150 square miles of water. They had inhabited the region for thousands of years, and the area in question was recognized as theirs by neighboring tribes”. The traditional territory of the Tlingit exists within the temperate rainforest of the south-east Alaska coast and the Alexander Archipelago. The Inland Tlingit inhabit the far north western part of what is now known as the province of British Columbia and the southern Yukon Territory of Canada.
(50) Wilkins, American Indian Sovereignty.
(51) Brief for the United States in Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. The United States.
(52) Here the United States attorneys cited Lindley, The Acquisition and Government of Backward Territory in International Law (1926).
(53) 329 U.S. 40 (1946).
(54) See footnote 1 above.
(55) Justice Reed referred to Johnson v. McIntosh and to Henry Wheaton’s Elements of International Law. Henry Wheaton (1785-1848) was an American lawyer and diplomat. He was the reporter of decisions for the United States Supreme Court when it made the Johnson v. McIntosh decision. He published the first edition of his Elements of International Law in 1836. Justice Stanleyn Reed, in the Tee-Hit-Ton decision, cited chapter V of Wheaton’s Elements. However, there is nothing in chapter V that would be of relevance to the issue in Tee-Hit-Ton. It is in chapter IV, section 5, of Elements that Wheaton dealt with historical information about rights of property in international law. In that discussion, Wheaton covered the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling, the papal bull of 1493, the royal charters of England, and the doctrine or right of discovery. He also italicized the word “Christian” in the same manner that Chief Justice Marshall had italicized “Christian people” in the Johnson ruling. See Newcomb, Pagans in the Promised Land.
(56) Wheaton, Elements of International Law, 3d ed.
(57) City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York, 125 S. Ct. 1478, 148384 (2005).
(58) Justice Joseph Story, in particular, was specific in his use of concepts that invoke the Framework of Dominance. He said, for example, that “the European discoverers claimed and exercised the right to grant the soil, while yet in possession of the natives, subject however to their right of occupancy; and the title so granted was universally admitted [by the European discoverers] to convey a sufficient title in the soil to the grantees in perfect dominion, or, as it is sometimes expressed in treatises of public law, it was a transfer of plenum et utile dominium”.
This, then, takes us back to the etymology of such terms as discussed in footnote 2 above. Story’s use of the secular term “European discoverers” is explained by Lindley in The Acquisition and Government of Backward Territories: “Later on the distinction was drawn between lands already occupied by Europeans and lands not so occupied, although in effect this was the same as the earlier distinction between Christian and non-Christian lands.”
Brandon, William. New Worlds for Old: Reports from the New World and Their
Effect on the Development of Social Thought in Europe, 1500-1800. Athens: Ohio
Cohen, Felix. Handbook of Federal Indian Law. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1942; reprint ed., Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1972.
Davenport, Francis Gardiner, ed. European Treaties Bearing on the History of the
United States and Its Dependencies to 1648. Washington, D.C: Carnegie Institution
of Washington, 1917.
Deloria, Vine. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of
Independence. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974.
Conquest Masquerading as Law. In Unlearning the Language of Conquest.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006.
d’Errico, Peter. John Marshall: Indian Lover? Journal of the West, vol. 39, No. 3
(Summer 2000).
Hinsdale, B. A. The Right of Discovery. Ohio Archaeological and Historical
Quarterly, vol. II (1888).
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: Or Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth,
Ecclesiastical and Civil. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1952.
Issac, Thomas. Aboriginal Law: Cases, Materials and Commentary. Saskatoon,
Canada: Purich Publishing, 1995.
Lindley, Mark F. The Acquisition and Government of Backward Territory in
International Law. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1926.
Lindqvist, Sven. Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One’s Land. The New Press,
Lyons, Oren, and John Mohawk, eds. Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy,
Indian Nations, and the U.S. Constitution. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Clear Light
Newcomb, Steven T. Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of
Christian Discovery. Fulcrum, 2008
Pagans in the Promised Land: A Primer on Religious Freedom. American
Indian Law Alliance. Available from www.ailanyc.org
The Evidence of Christian Nationalism in Federal Indian Law: The
Doctrine of Discovery, Johnson v. McIntosh, and Plenary Power. In New York
University Review of Law and Social Change, vol. 20, No. 2 (1993).
Robertson, Lindsay G. Conquest by Law: How the Discovery of America
Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of Their Lands. New York: Oxford University
Scott, James Brown. The Catholic Conception of International Law: Francisco de
Vitoria, Founder of the Modern Law of Nations; Francisco Suárez, Founder of the
Modern Philosophy of Law in General and In Particular of the Law of Nations.
Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1934.
Story, Joseph. Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States: With a
Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States Before
the Adoption of the Constitution, vol. I. De Capo Press, 1970. Unabridged
republication of the first edition published in Boston in 1833.
United Nations. State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. Sales No. 09.VI.13.
Vattel, Emmerich. The Law of Nations; or, Principles of the Law of Nature Applied
to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns. 1758. Joseph Chitty ed.,
Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson Co., Law Booksellers, 1859.
Wharton, Francis. A Digest of International Law of the United States, vol. I.
Washington, D.C: United States Government Printing Office, 1887.
Wheaton, Henry. Elements of International Law, 3rd ed. Philadelphia: Lea and
Blanchard, 1846.
Elements of International Law, 2d. annotated ed. (William Beach Lawrence
edition). London: Sampson Low, Son and Co.; Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
Wilkins, David E. American Indian Sovereignty and the United States Supreme
Court: The Masking of Justice. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.
Williamson, James A. The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962.
Wilson, George Grafton. International Law and the Constitution. 13 Boston
University Law Review (1933).
Ziegler, Benjamin Munn. The International Law of John Marshall: A Study of First
Principles. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1939.
Christian ‘doctrine’ fueled dehumanization: UNPFII report
American Indians, Featured — By Valerie Taliman on April 30, 2010 at 11:33
NEW YORK – A groundbreaking report examining the roots of Christian domination over indigenous peoples and their lands was released this week at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
North American Representative to the Permanent Forum Tonya Gonnella Frichner, an attorney and founder of the American Indian Law Alliance, presented a preliminary study on the “Doctrine of Discovery” and its historical impacts on indigenous peoples, with a focus on how it became part of United States laws.
“The first thing indigenous peoples share is the experience of having been invaded by those who treated us without compassion because they considered us to be less than human,” said Frichner, a citizen of the Onondaga Nation serving her first term on the 16-member UNPFII.
“Dehumanization leads to the second thing indigenous peoples share in common: Being treated on the basis of the belief that those who invaded our territories have a right of lordship or dominance over our existence and, therefore, have the right to take, grant, and dispose of our lands, territories, and resources without our permission or consent.”
Frichner said human rights violations faced by indigenous peoples can all be traced to the Doctrine of Discovery and its interpretive framework which has been used for five centuries to take Native lands.
It has also been cited in U.S. Supreme Court land claims cases decided against Indian nations, including the 1955 ruling Tee Hit Ton Indians v. United States, and the 2005 decision in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York.
The Doctrine of Discovery was among Vatican mandates dating back to the 15th century, called papal bulls, that declared Christian monarchs had the right to claim superior title over land and territories that they “discovered.”
The claimed right of “dominion” over Native peoples was based on the thinking that non-Christians were “heathens and uncivilized savages,” with no, or limited rights, to land.
The Vatican’s Doctrine of Discovery was based on the premise that all non-Christian land belonged to no one because no Christians were living there and no Christian monarch or lord had yet claimed dominion. Once Christian monarchies like Spain or France claimed the right of dominion, that claim was transferred to political successors over centuries.
“Indian land rights have been characterized in U.S. law as nothing more than a permissive right of occupancy or permission from the whites to occupy their own Indian lands,” Frichner said.
There were theologians who did not agree that Christian discovery could give dominion over and title to non-Christian lands. The issue was debated at length in the early 1550s in Spain with no input from indigenous peoples, she said.
It was a debate among Christian Europeans about whether the Indians of the Americas were human.
“Clearly, (we) have joined the debate by declaring definitively that we are human beings. However, for more than five centuries, the doctrines of discovery and dehumanization have been institutionalized, and this is the context of the work we are doing on the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” Frichner said.
The study focused on the history of the United States, and points out that the Doctrine of Discovery had been officially incorporated into U.S. Indian policies in the 1823 Supreme Court ruling Johnson v. M’Intosh.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall identified the royal charters of Great Britain pertaining to North America as the source of the argument that “discovery gave title” to the government by whose authority the “discovery” was made.
The royal charter issued to John Cabot in 1496 authorized Cabot and his sons to seek out “isles, countries, and regions of the heathen and infidel, which before this time have been unknown to all Christian people.”
This and similar language were cited as the basis for the ruling in Johnson v. M’Intosh that the United States had the ultimate dominion over Indian peoples and lands.
Frichner said the report is a first step in investigating the global scope of the Doctrine of Discovery as a key source of violations of human rights of Native peoples.
A comprehensive study will provide the opportunity to understand that all the struggles that indigenous peoples are engaged in are rooted in “the claim by one people of a right of dominance over another.”
Frichner said the discriminatory legal framework that exists today is directly tied to the Doctrine of Discovery which has resulted in the dispossession and impoverishment of indigenous peoples and unlimited resource extraction from their lands.
Kuriakose Bharanikulangara, observer for the Holy See, responded to Frichner’s report by saying that the papal bulls that paved the way for European expansion had been abrogated over centuries. He insisted the Church had upheld the rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands, regardless of whether the inhabitants were Christian or not.
Tags: American Indian Law Alliance, american indians, christians, doctrine of discovery, Indian country, indigenous people, land rights, native americans, Politics, Tonya Gonnella Frichner, UN permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, UNPFII
COLUMBUS IS NOT A DAY
Posted by chantlaca at 8:02 AM No comments:
A TREATY OF PEACE, FRIENDSHIP AND MUTUAL ASSISTANCE
ARTICLES OF A TREATY AND AGREEMENT MADE AT SANTA
FE, NEW MEXICO, ON THE SIXTH DAY OF DECEMBER, 1947,
BY AND FOR THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES,
REPRESENTED BY THEIR DELEGATES AND TRIBESMEN, WITNESS:
The Indian Tribes of the United States, signatory to this treaty, solemnly contract one with the other that all offences or acts of hostility by any one of the contracting parties against the other be mutually forgiven, and buried in the depth of oblivion, never more to be in remembrance.
That a perpetual peace and friendship shall from henceforth take place and subsist among the contracting parties, through all succeeding generations; and if any of the parties is engaged in a struggle for the protection of its rights, liberties, or property, the other parties shall come to its assistance in due proportion to their abilities, till their adversaries are brought to reasonable terms of accommodation; and that if any of them shall discover any hostile designs forming against the other, they shall give the earliest notice thereof, that timely measures may be taken to prevent their ill effect.
Whereas the enemies of the Indian have endeavored, by every artifice in their power, to spread abroad the opinion that Indians are incapable of, or uninterested in maintaining the institutions of self-government, therewith the more easily to destroy those tribal councils, courts and ordinances, whether surviving from ancient days or more newly established, that now protect Indians against exploitation, now, therefore, to obviate any such opinion and to counter any such attack, each of the contracting parties undertakes to assist, by any path that is open, including voluntary financial contribution, in the defeat of all encroachments upon the Indians’ rights of self-government.
Whereas the enemies of the Indian have likewise endeavored, for many generations, to spread abroad the opinion that Indians are shiftless wanderers incapable of wisely managing and developing, or uninterested in maintaining, their lands and resources, held, tribally or individually, under aboriginal tenure or under treaty, statute or executive order, the purpose of such propaganda being to render easier schemes for separating Indians from their possessions in the name of progress, now, therefore, to obviate and such opinion and to counter any such attack, each of the contracting parties undertakes to assist by any path that is open, in the defeat of all encroachments up the Indians’ right of property.
Whereas the enemies of the Indian have in all generations taken advantage of the differences among the Indian tribes and Nations to sow seeds of suspicion and discord and thereby to obstruct that unity which is a first requirement in the protection of Indian rights, now, therefore, to counter any such attack, the contracting parties agree that whenever any difference arises among them with respect to land boundaries, the treatment of the members or citizens of one party by the courts or councils of another, or any other matter of controversy, then measures shall be taken to resolve such differences in a council of the parties concerned, if such efforts fail or lag, any of the contracting parties not involved in the dispute shall, when called upon to do so, settle or assist in settling the said dispute, with justice and honor to all, so that all may abide by and hold fast the chain of friendship entered into.
That in all deliberation held pursuant to this treaty, the councilors shall be governed by the great binding law which has governed the deliberation of the Six Nations for more than four centuries which prescribes that in all councils of government self-interest shall be cast into oblivion and that the councilors shall look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground – the unborn of the future Nation.
In witness whereof, the parties have hereunto set their hands and seals, at the times and places hereunder set forth, through their duly appointed and duly authorized chiefs and delegates, whose credentials, along with the original of this treaty, shall be deposited with the archivist of the United States or other suitable place of safe keeping.
Posted by chantlaca at 11:41 PM No comments:
Framework of Dominance: UN Preliminary Study on th...
A TREATY OF PEACE, FRIENDSHIP AND MUTUAL ASSISTANC...
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Watch Lucha Underground 2/24/16 – February 24th 2016 – 24/2/16 This Week 2/24/16 | 24th February 2016 How to Watch Lucha Underground Season 2 Episode 5 Online Live Full Show Free on 2/24/2016, Live Broadcast comes at...
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Terms: Electricity
Terms: Circuits
Leeds & Northrup Company, Philadelphia (60)
Weston Electrical Instrument Corporation, Newark, NJ (18)
G. Masson, Éditeur, Paris (5)
Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, London (5)
Burndy Library, Norwalk, CT (3)
John Murray, London (3)
Leeds & Northrup, Philadelphia (3)
The Leeds & Northrup Company, Philadelphia (3)
Westinghouse Electric Corporation, East Pittsburgh, PA (3)
"The Electrician" Printing and Publishing Company, Ltd., London (2)
Baldwin and Cradock, London (2)
Johann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig, Germany (2)
Leeds & Northrup Co., Philadelphia (2)
Longman, London (2)
MacMillan and Co., London (2)
MacMillan and Co., London and New York (2)
Palmer House, Chicago (2)
Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, London (2)
Universal Scientific Company, Inc., Vincennes, IN (2)
Éditions du Journal Suisse d'Horlogerie et de Bijouterie, Neucha (2)
"The Electrician," London (1)
A. Lahure, Imprimeur-Éditeur, Paris (1)
Advance Electronics Company, Inc., Passaic, NJ (1)
Allen B. Du Mont Laboratories, Inc., Passaic, NJ (1)
Allen B. DuMont Laboratories, Inc., Passaic, NJ (1)
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA (1)
American Association for the Advancement of Science, Philadelphi (1)
American Electrician Company, New York (1)
American Telegraph and Telephone Company, New York (1)
American Telegraph and Telephone Company/ New York (1)
Apps, London (1)
Archibald Constable and Company, Ltd., London (1)
Aux Bureaux de la Revue 'La Lumiére Électrique', Paris (1)
Bachelier, Paris (1)
Benjamin Pike, Jr., New York (1)
Biggs & Co., London (1)
Boston Electric Co., Boston (1)
British Association for the Advancement of Science/London (1)
Bureau of Naval Personnel, Navy Dept., Washington D. C. (1)
Burk & McFetridge, Philadelphia (1)
Magnetism (51)
Electrical Instruments (31)
C3-H2 (22)
Galvanometers (18)
C5-C1 (15)
C3-F3 (14)
C5-B1 (14)
Potentiometers (13)
Leeds & Northrup (10)
C3-G1 (8)
Telegraphy (7)
Electromagnetism (6)
Subjects (3)
Engineering - Electrical (3)
Electro-Dynamics (3)
Abhandlungen zu der Lehre von der Reibungselektricität
An Account of Some Remarkable Applications of the Electric Fluid to the Useful Arts
Advanced Theory of Electricity and Magnetism: A Text-Book for Colleges and Technical Schools
The Age of Electricity: From Amber-Soul to Telephone
Alphabet of Electricity for the Use of Beginners
The Alternate Current Transformer in Theory and Practice
"Amber Forever!": Electricity on the Merrimack in New Hampshire
Analysis of Some Methods of Supplying a Three Phase Induction Motor From a Single Phase Line
André-Marie Ampère - Immortalized by a German
The Annals of Electricity, Magnetism, and Chemistry; and Guardian of Experimental Science
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Lawrence Gostin
Faculty director & founding chair, O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University
Lawrence O. Gostin, J.D., LL.D. (hon.) is an internationally distinguished scholar on global health. As University Professor, Gostin holds the highest academic rank conferred by Georgetown University’s president. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and Council of Foreign Relations, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health.
Gostin is director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law & Human Rights and he has served on major WHO committees including the Director-General’s advisory committee for reforming the WHO. He served on two global commissions investigating WHO’s response to the West Africa Ebola outbreak. In 2016, President Obama appointed Gostin to the National Cancer Advisory Board.
Gostin holds international academic professorial appointments at Oxford University, the University of Sydney, and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, among others, and has received numerous awards and honorary degrees. The National Consumer Council (UK) conferred the Rosemary Delbridge Memorial Award on Prof. Gostin for the person “who has most influenced Parliament and government to act for the welfare of society.” The American Public Health Association awarded Gostin its Distinguished Lifetime Service Award. He is JAMA’s Legal & Global Health Correspondent.
E3) Slow-Motion Epidemics: The Global Threat of Chronic Disease
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