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Higher Contribution Limits Will Apply for FSAs and HSAs in 2022
Many taxpayers will be able to contribute more money to workplace cafeteria plans and other tax-advantaged accounts in 2022. Accounts that will have higher contribution limits in 2022 include medical flexible spending arrangements (FSAs) and health savings accounts (HSAs). For FSAs, the annual contribution limit for most employees will be $2,850 in 2022, a $100 increase over the 2021 limit. The 2022 contribution limit for HSAs will be $3,650 (up from $3,600) for individuals, and $7,300 (up from $7,200) for families.
The IRS also reminds taxpayers that FSAs are generally subject to a “use it or lose it” rule, meaning that the taxpayer forfeits any funds remaining in the account at the end of the year. HSAs typically do not have this restriction, so funds in the account carry over from year to year.
In many cases, employers may allow either a grace period (until March 15) to use up FSA funds from the previous year, or a partial carryover of funds to the next year. The maximum carryover amount from 2022 to 2023 will be $570, up from $550 for 2021-2022. However, under COVID relief legislation enacted by Congress in February 2021, employers may offer their employees a higher 2021-2022 FSA carryover limit, or an extended grace period of up to 12 months.
If you have money remaining in your 2021 FSA, check with your employer’s benefits department about whether you have a carryover or grace period option.
A tax professional can help you determine how to use the increased contribution limits for 2022, and the special 2021 COVID relief rules, to get the most out of your FSA or HSA.
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FASCISM, RESISTANCE AND REVOLUTION, WORLD
Flattening the Curve or Flattening the Global Poor? How Covid Lockdowns Obliterate Human Rights and Crush the Most Vulnerable
Posted by Internationalist 360° on December 3, 2021 December 13, 2021
Stavroula Pabst and Max Blumenthal
Marketed as life-saving public health measures, lockdowns triggered death and economic devastation on a global scale while doing little to slow the spread of Covid-19. Now, they’re back with a vengeance.
In October 2021, it seemed as though the lockdowns that still paralyzed societies from Australia to New Zealand and Singapore were coming to an end, as these countries threw in the “Zero-COVID” towel following a year and a half of rolling restrictions and closures.
But with COVID-19 cases rising in Europe, several countries are implementing lockdowns all over again, often with clearly punitive motivations.
This November, Austria’s government announced that police would enforce a lockdown exclusively against unvaccinated citizens. Following days of massive protests, the policy was extended to everyone, with steep fines and even prison sentences to be imposed on those who refuse to comply, and a compulsory vaccination requirement tacked on for good measure.
Next door in Germany, where a new lockdown was announced this December for unvaccinated people, barring them from almost all public places except for pharmacies and supermarkets, Berlin is also weighing a vaccination mandate for all. One German constitutional lawyer has even proposed that refusers of the jab “be brought before the vaccinator by the police.”
Though statewide lockdowns have eased in Australia, the country is constructing internment camps for those who test positive for Covid, along with their Covid-negative “close contacts.” Harley Hodgson, an Australian held for 14 days in one such camp despite repeatedly testing negative for Covid, said of her experience: “You feel like you’re in prison. You feel like you’ve done something wrong. It’s inhumane what they’re doing.”
Initially marketed to the public as a means to “flatten the curve” and “slow the spread,” lockdowns now represent one of the most draconian aspects of the perverse New Normal that has metastasized amid an atmosphere of seemingly endless emergency.
While much of the public accepted such restrictions during the early days of the pandemic, they are now met with increasing resistance by citizens around the world who have suffered from economic devastation, homelessness, suicidal ideation, social isolation, domestic violence, addiction and the cancellation of routine medical procedures as a result of lockdowns.
The German police chase down anti-mandate and lockdown protestors for the “public health”. pic.twitter.com/mP15RJJc4P
— Aaron Ginn (@aginnt) November 30, 2021
The public health justification for these non-pharmaceutical interventions has not only been discredited in the eyes of millions across the globe, but by an array of scientific studies and data demonstrating that they likely caused more deaths than they prevented.
The lethal impact of lockdowns was particularly pernicious in the Global South, where hundreds of millions of the world’s most vulnerable people were driven into a cascading humanitarian crisis. As the World Food Program warned in 2020, “135 million people on earth are marching towards the brink of starvation” as a result of their economies shutting down to supposedly inhibit the spread of COVID-19.
In his book, The Covid Consensus, professor of African history at King’s College Toby Green chronicled the misery, migration outflow and mass death spawned by lockdowns imposed on populations from Africa to Latin America.
“Lockdowns were not a policy that made any sense in societies where many people live largely outside, and SARS-CoV-2 is a virus that circulates inside,” Green told The Grayzone. “Moreover, they made no sense in regions such as Africa where the population is much younger than in rich countries – they merely saw a massive shift of health burden from the global rich to the global young and poor.”
For most people on the planet, the economic and psychological harm experienced during the past 19 months was not the result of the pandemic per se, but of emergency-order restrictions governments imposed on them and justified as public health measures. In the Global North, such costly efforts did little more than delay the inevitable spread of COVID-19 while transferring wealth into the hands of Big Tech oligarchs who constitute the pandemic’s real “winners.”
Though public health scholars and some officials warned that lockdowns would do possibly irreparable damage to the global economy while only deepening the public health crisis, the politics of the Trump era enabled supporters of harsh restrictions to caricature critics as dangerous right-wing extremists.
“Discussion of the inevitable harm of lockdowns has been almost totally forbidden by most of the mainstream media and academia, while the left followed the lead of the Democratic Party, doing all it could to marginalize any discussion of the collateral damage of these measures,” Christian Parenti, professor of economics at the City University of New York and author of several books about policing and mass surveillance, commented to The Grayzone. “Any questioning of lockdown measures was cast as right wing, even fascist. But mostly the left just ignored the emerging facts, particularly regarding the carnage caused in the Global South.”
One of the most outspoken among the public health scholars sounding the alarm about the social cost of sweeping restrictions was Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University. As a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated a strategy of focused protection instead of hard lockdown, Bhattacharya and his colleagues were subjected to social media censorship and mainstream media attacks.
“Lockdowns provided the illusion of control over a virus that was present in parts of the world and spreading far earlier than most officials believed,” Bhattacharya told The Grayzone. He added, “Much of the evidence that people have developed to argue that lockdowns work come from modelling studies that have proved incredibly inaccurate.”
Indeed, the initial inspiration for locking down the UK and parts of the US derived from a bunk model of projected fatalities that has since been discredited.
Lockdowns were inspired by bogus modelling by unqualified academics
On March 16, 2020, as the global consensus formed around implementing restrictions in some form, a professor from London’s Imperial College delivered a presentation to the British government that would prove pivotal. That academic, Neil Ferguson, introduced a model asserting that if the UK did not impose a harsh lockdown, 500,000 citizens would die of Covid-19 that year; and if it took only moderate steps to restrict public life, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson planned, 260,000 would die.
In either case, Ferguson insisted, the national healthcare system would be overwhelmed and the economy irreparably damaged. Within a week, Johnson’s government accepted Ferguson’s fatalistic model and locked down hard.
Around the same time, the Trump White House received a paper from Ferguson that envisioned a catastrophic death toll. His model predicted fatalities at a 25% higher rate than the CDC’s already stark projection: 2.2 million dead in the first year unless the US instituted lockdowns.
“What had the biggest impact in the model is social distancing, small groups, not going in public in large groups,” Dr. Deborah Birx, a leader of Trump’s coronavirus task force, referring to the Imperial College projection. The New York Times reported on March 16, the day the Trump administration received Ferguson’s paper: “White House Takes New Line After Dire Report On Death Toll.”
While Ferguson’s modelling succeeded in inspiring harsh lockdowns, it ultimately brought him public embarrassment. First, the professor was caught breaking the quarantine he personally inspired to enjoy a tryst with his lover – a married woman who complained that the lockdown “strained” her relationship with the professor. Then, as time went on, it became clear that Ferguson’s models had exaggerated the Covid-19 fatality rate by a factor of at least four.
“Yes, my prediction was off,” he admitted to the Times of London in August 2021. But by then, the damage was done.
This was not the first time Ferguson’s numbers had proven to be wildly off the mark. Back in 2001, Ferguson projected that as many as 50,000 could die from Mad Cow Disease. After a panicked government slaughter of some 6.5 million cattle, the mass death failed to come to fruition. (Only about 2,800 have died from Mad Cow in three decades).
In 2005, Ferguson was at it again, predicting up to 200 million global deaths from the bird flu. In the end, only a few hundred people died. Then in 2009, Ferguson warned that 65,000 could die from the swine flu in the UK alone. But when the dust cleared, he and his team were off by a factor of over 1000.
So why did governments across the Atlantic trust a serial exaggerator who appeared to have no formal training in epidemiology or computer modelling, and whose codes were buggier than a locust infestation?
Before briefings from Ferguson, leaders from Whitehall to Washington were already in a panic over the onset of the novel coronavirus. A haze of reporting in early 2020 made the coronavirus appear more deadly than it turned out to be, with some reports suggesting the fatality rate could rise to as high as seven percent.
Although it is now known that COVID-19 does not kill the vast majority of people it infects, with Infection Fatality Rates (IFR) of .15 percent overall and .05 percent for persons under 70, the confusion and uncertainty led many public health officials to act quickly. In reality, the coronavirus is a less lethal disease that spreads easily, making it harder to contain with human interventions.
Further, according to Toby Green of King’s College in London, British public health officials were easily seduced by the tech-centric presentation of academics like Ferguson.
“Let’s remember that in the UK, where Ferguson’s model first had its influence, Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s advisor on Covid-19, had already written about the importance of a data-driven approach to policy,” Green explained. “Matt Hancock, the health minister, was also highly integrated into the tech sector through his family, which runs a tech business. So a computer-driven model [like Ferguson’s] was appealing.”
Somehow, the technocrats placed in charge of Covid-19 policy across the Atlantic demonstrated little concern for how the lockdowns they suddenly imposed would impact the economic and social wellbeing of the citizens they were supposed to protect.
A bonanza for tech oligarchs, “the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day” for the less fortunate
In the United States, lockdowns and various rolling restrictions triggered an economic catastrophe for working and poor people across the country, pushing those already on the financial precipice over the brink.
In the US in 2020, 40 percent of people making under $40,000 annually lost work, and almost three million women were driven out of the workforce due to an inability to balance work and caregiving and virtual learning obligations for children who could no longer attend in-person school or daycare. Dozens of airlines failed, and at least 200,000 small-businesses were shuttered.
Increased unemployment benefits and stimulus checks had a salutary effect on the economic well-being of average Americans, seeing personal savings rise 8 percent between 2019 and summer of 2021. But even if American poverty did not immediately surge, it may yet do so, now that stimulus checks, generous unemployment benefits, and the eviction moratorium have all been terminated by the administration of President Joe Biden.
As lockdowns drove inequality in the US, millions skipped routine medical care such as childhood vaccinations and cancer screenings, because the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommended that hospitals suspend non-essential and elective procedures. In May 2021, almost ten million routine screenings were missed in the United States, while other preventative health visits declined on a mass scale due to elective procedure suspensions, which may also lead to worsening public health problems in the long-term.
Due to the CDC’s recommendations, 1.4 million medical workers lost their jobs in April 2020. One medical record company estimated that screening for breast, colorectal, and cervical cancers dropped by 80% to 90% during March and April of 2020 compared to the same months in 2019. Now, the US is struggling with a surge of cancers and other ailments that went undetected because of overzealous and overly broad lockdowns.
While average Americans paid a heavy price for the restrictions, Big Tech oligarchs quickly emerged as the pandemic’s winners. In 2020, billionaires increased their wealth by 54 percent. In fact, the top 1% of U.S. households now officially control more money than the entire middle class, or the middle 60 percent of households by income, in the US.
While the pandemic response has adversely affected working people and small businesses worldwide, lifting restrictions is in fact against major corporate interests: Amazon’s stock even fell seven percent in July as re-openings stalled pandemic-related online buying.
As lockdowns took their psychological toll on the US population, opioid-related deaths surged to record levels – up 30% from the previous year across the country and up 40% in 10 states. The sharpest rise in deaths occurred in Black Americans, along with those aged 35 to 44.
Lockdowns and excessive closures have also contributed to an international rise in domestic violence.
Despair rose in a significant way with the crisis: according to the CDC, 25.5 percent of survey respondents aged 18-24 reported seriously considering suicide within the previous 30 days by the end of June 2020. The same study indicated adults were more than twice as likely to report considering suicide when compared to those surveyed before the onset of coronavirus.
Professor Stephen Reicher, a behavioral scientist who advised the UK government on Covid policy, commented: “The problem with lockdown is isolation; being cut off from people is bad for you psychologically and physically. It is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”
The impact of restrictions on young people, adolescents and babies who are at very little risk of illness with serious COVID-19, with a one in 50,000 chance of hospitalization and a two in one million chance of death for children, cannot be overstated. Babies and young infants, after all, require regular socialization and interaction for healthy development. Many of them, however, were only able to visit their closest family members over the past year and a half. Ultimately, extended periods of social isolation or loneliness can negatively impact a young individual’s health even decades later.
The overall outlook for young people, as suggested by the 2020 CDC study referenced above, is and remains grim. In Las Vegas, Nevada, schools opened in December of 2020 after an unprecedented 18 adolescent suicides were recorded in the district since March of the same year. And in the state of Victoria, Australia, about 340 teenagers each week were hospitalized due to mental health emergencies as of August 2021.
For many among the urban laptop class, including a large swath of the hyper-online Western left which still clamors for national school closures and demands lockdowns in the face of a handful of new cases (while crudely painting critics of official Covid policy as Nazis), quarantine orders merely enforced an already sedentary lifestyle that revolves around Zoom meetings, ordered food and Amazon deliveries. The restrictions further eliminated tedious commutes to work while providing those able to work remotely with the satisfying sense that staying home was a bold act of social solidarity.
Under this spectacular arrangement, which assumed individual behavior could slow down or contribute to the spread of a virus, isolation was framed as a moral choice that led many of those willingly confined to their homes to fear or vilify a working class that frequently provided them with vital services. And while non-pharmaceutical interventions have generally proven futile against COVID-19, the stentorian demands to socially distance and attendant shaming of those who fail to obey has done little more than generate hostility between friends, families, and communities.
“Lockdowns are a luxury of the rich,” Bhattacharya said, “and affect a certain class of people at the expense of others. A lockdown doesn’t mean all of society stops and we all sit in cages alone while we wait for the fires to go away. The poor and working class, many of them vulnerable and older, are asked to risk themselves, while another class of people stays at home protected.”
This was particularly true in the Global South, where class divisions are clearly drawn and most people live dangerously close to the poverty line.
Lockdowns drive debt, dependency and death across the Global South
The legacy of colonialism and imperialism has split the world economy into a “core” of wealthy economies and a periphery of poor economies that are largely dependent on exporting cheap raw materials and low-value added manufactured goods. When the wealthy core economies locked down in 2020, international trade contracted, triggering a violent economic whiplash in developing countries as their earnings from exports and tourism suddenly collapsed.
As a result, developing country debt has risen from an average of about 40 percent of overall GDP to over 60 percent. Throughout 2020, developing economies were forced to pay out 194 billion to their creditors, even as their economies contracted dramatically. This forced poor countries to cut deeply into social spending to maintain debt servicing from institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, the IMF has doled out “Covid funds” to 85 countries around the world. An analysis by Oxfam found that 85% of the 107 loans provided to these countries require them to impose austerity until well into the future to pay them back. Now, devastating impacts on future health and social spending in poor countries is practically inevitable.
With surging unemployment, reduced incomes, and fewer social services, the populations of poor countries in the Global South have experienced massive increases in hunger.
As early as July 2020, the Associated Press reported that an additional 10,000 children were dying of hunger every month “due to the virus.” In fact, the deaths were the result of governments’ choice to lock down. Indeed, the coronavirus has had very little effect on the health of children, except indirectly through bad policy. Thus, millions of children across the Global South who were not hungry in 2019 are hungry today because of the lockdowns.
In all, about 2.37 billion people – or about 30 percent of the world population and 320 million more people than in the previous year – did not have access to adequate food at some point during 2020.
As Nash Landesman reported for The Grayzone, extensive lockdowns with little social support by the US-backed government of Colombia led to mass unemployment, evictions, and widespread hunger throughout 2020, especially in working class neighborhoods of Bogotá, where residents placed red flags outside their homes to signal their sense of despair.
Colombians wave a red banner outside their home to signal hunger and distress in protest of the country’s 2020 lockdown (photo by Nash Landesman)
Mexicans similarly protested lockdown measures, with one vendor affixing a sign to her stall reading: “Mexico is NOT Europe. If you don’t work, you don’t eat.”
Mexico is not Europe, in Mexico if you don’t work you don’t eat, reads sign in entrance to the Coyoacán market. The government has ordered everyone to stay home to prevent #COVID19, but 60 million people work in informal economy and have no income if they don’t work. 📷by me. pic.twitter.com/Ux62ifVFBY
— 𝓐𝓷𝓭𝓪𝓵𝓪𝓵𝓾𝓬𝓱𝓪 (@Andalalucha) April 8, 2020
And in Honduras, which has been ruled for over a decade by a corrupt US-backed government installed through a military coup, citizens facing food and water shortages due to lockdown took to the streets in protest in March 2020, encountering heavy police repression. The protests continued into September, with drivers blocking roads to demand compensation for wages lost during the forced quarantine.
Road blocks & protests continue in different parts of #Honduras. In #Tegucigalpa & Taulabé (just north of central city of Siguatepeque), ppl are blocking roads demanding food & water during #COVID19 lockdown In Taulabé, security forces just tear gassed & evicted protesters pic.twitter.com/o3bahQD63A
— Honduras Solidarity (@hondurassol) March 27, 2020
In India, meanwhile, where GDP shrank a record 7.3 percent from March 2020 to March 2021, a study of Uttar Pradesh state households found incomes contracting about 75 percent. Anthropologist Dr. Chandana Mathur of Maynooth University reported that the strict, yet poorly planned lockdowns in India kept millions of migrant workers away from income sources, forcing them into homes that were thousands of kilometers away from work or simply non-existent.
Just two days before the March 2020 lockdown, many transportation services in India ground to a halt, stranding and starving thousands of people at a time when strict stay-at-home rules were declared. To enforce the orders, police brutally beat those considered insufficiently compliant. One estimate found that about 1,000 people died from March to July 2020 due to the displacement.
In fact, mass suffering was anticipated by some governments and experts when the restrictions began. In March 2020, a cost-benefit analysis by the Dutch government’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy concluded health damage from lockdown would be six times greater than the benefit. Similarly, a 2020 Actuarial Society of South Africa model posited that a lockdown in the country may lead to 29 times more deaths than the restrictions can prevent.
And indeed, when lockdowns and other stringent interventions were applied in South Africa, many suffered enormously. Researchers estimate that 47 percent of South Africans ran out of money for food in April 2020. While rates of deprivation have decreased, estimates of hunger in the country remained steady at 17 percent of households throughout April and May 2021.
South Africans also faced a decrease in overall life expectancy due to other restriction-perpetuated factors, such as an increase in HIV and tuberculosis related health issues thanks to treatment stoppages, outbreaks of other infectious diseases especially associated with malnutrition, poverty and suspension of relevant vaccination programs, and interruptions in maternal and infant care.
Despite such excessive restrictions in the country, which previously included a curfew, a ban on gatherings and even on alcohol sales, some estimates found that 80 percent of South Africans were still infected with COVID-19.
A recently published study by researchers at the University of Johannesburg and the University of the Free State, COVID-19 in South Africa, found that “no changes in the shape of the [epidemiological] curve can be attributed to the introduction or easing of any regulation at [the current time].”
Instead of flattening the proverbial curve, restrictions induced economic and social deterioration which killed millions in the name of public health, while depriving an entire generation of the global poor of the right to education.
Lockdowns brutalized the world’s poor while depriving generations of education
For governments across the world, Covid provided an opportunity to pummel their most vulnerable residents, as well as those who dissented from the official order. As Amnesty International’s European bureau stated in a detailed but under-acknowledged June 2020 report, “The police enforcement of lockdowns disproportionately impacted poorer areas, which often have a higher proportion of residents from minority ethnic groups.”
Among Amnesty’s most disturbing findings was that police searches of Black Britons rose by a full third in the first month of the pandemic; Roma populations across Eastern Europe were placed under militarized quarantines and cut off from food supplies, causing deprivation on a mass scale; homelessness surged across the continent, and refugees and minority residents were subjected to police brutality on a regular basis.
Throughout 2020 in New York City, Black and Latino residents received a whopping 80% of police summonses for supposedly violating social distancing measures, leading civil rights groups including a local chapter of Black Lives Matter to complain that Covid restrictions were being exploited to bring back dreaded “stop and frisk” policies.
In Greece, such measures have been exploited to target refugees, migrants, and others living on the margins of society. Greek authorities have even fined refugees arriving by boat to Chios island 5000 euros each for not providing proof of negative coronavirus tests in late August 2021.
Many refugees that I, Stavroula, am personally acquainted with in Greece avoided spending time outside during the country’s six month lockdown from November 2020 to May 2021 out of fear of arrest and deportation. The lockdowns, which often confined people to a few miles from their home, and which imposed curfews as early as 6pm, required everyone to possess a government-issued identification and a text message or written note explaining their reason for being in public.
Penalties for violating the restrictions could mean fines of 300 euros, about half a monthly salary in the country, which could financially ruin many Greeks. For those in the country without papers, not having the required documentation during an encounter with police could even lead to deportation.
Across the globe, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor and working class, have been arrested for violating quarantine and been locked up in crowded unsanitary jails where Covid infections run rampant.
In Washington DC’s municipal jail, 1500 inmates were held in de facto solitary confinement for over 400 days without basic services throughout 2020 and early 2021. Though most inmates had already contracted COVID-19, developing durable natural immunity to the virus, the lockdown was justified on the grounds of “slowing the spread.”
“An overwhelming majority of the jail’s inmates are Black, and many have not yet been found guilty of the crimes for which they were arrested,” the Washington Post noted.
St Louis jail has had four prisoner uprisings since December, with inmates forced into de facto solitary confinement for over a year with no trials.
“People currently incarcerated…are tired of living in fear of COVID-19 and not being brought to trial” https://t.co/IiAUanXPCd
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) April 23, 2021
Similarly, St Louis city jail was the site of four prisoner uprisings since December 2020, with inmates forced into de facto solitary confinement for over a year with no trials. “People currently incarcerated…are tired of living in fear of COVID-19 and not being brought to trial,” one prisoner stated.
School-aged children and students around the world also suffered enormously under the weight of closures, particularly those in impoverished communities. In Uganda, citizens have spent large parts of the past two year under various forms of lockdown, with schools and recreation centers closed under orders of the US-backed leader Gen. Yoweri Museveni.
“An entire generation of our children is being plunged into the bottomless abyss of illiteracy and ignorance. I saw a docile wasted generation of young defenseless victims of Gen. Museveni’s warped COVID-19 directives loitering about and dwindling in hopelessness,” wrote dissident Kakwenza Bashaija after a visit to eastern Uganda.
The New York Times reported this November that Uganda’s ongoing school closures have consigned the county’s youth to possibly lifelong poverty. With educational institutions still off limits, the Times wrote, “young women, abandoning hopes of going to school, are getting married and starting families instead. School buildings are being converted into businesses or health clinics. Teachers are quitting, and disillusioned students are taking menial jobs like selling fruit or mining for gold.”
Poor and working class youth across the United States experienced similar educational setbacks as closures forced them out of the classroom. In the state of Virginia, for example, math achievement scores in 2021 were down by over 40% for eighth graders in comparison to 2018-19. Less than half of Black students from third to sixth grade were able to pass reading tests, while the math scores of disabled youth declined precipitously.
Glen Youngkin, a Republican who ran for governor in Virginia this year, highlighted these dismaying figures and slammed school closures in his closing campaign message. By capitalizing on the pent-up anger of parents in the state’s swing districts, Youngkin scored a surprise victory against a seasoned and well-funded opponent in a heavily Democratic state.
Meanwhile, in the Democratic bastion of New Jersey, incumbent Governor Phil Murphy nearly lost to a lesser known Republican challenger who hammered him over his support for some of the most stringent lockdown measures in the country. Murphy was walloped in Atlantic County, home of the Atlantic City resort and casino city where lockdowns pushed one third of small businesses into permanent collapse.
What’s not to like about the “Murphy lockdown”? https://t.co/29kSDvSym8 pic.twitter.com/8QniT8Yg5y
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) November 3, 2021
As the Biden administration considers new restrictions for US travelers, including placing the unvaccinated on a domestic no-fly list, the impact of lockdown policies has helped disrupt the international supply chain, driving inflation and shortages in supplies, gasoline, and even certain food items.
With the US government collaborating desperately with major corporations and retailers to repair the existing supply bottlenecks, some in the media class have urged convenience-accustomed Americans to simply lower their expectations.
While these lockdowns were implemented to supposedly blunt the impact of a public health danger, mainstream media have generally avoided a discussion of how well they mitigated the perceived crisis or of the severe social and economic harm they did to working people.
Despite the mass job loss, economic destruction, and increased hunger that non-pharmaceutical interventions have inflicted on the global population, the effectiveness of efforts such as lockdowns, curfews, school closures, and the constant PCR testing of healthy people are dubious at best.
Unpacking the misconception lockdowns work against COVID-19
Many credited lockdowns in China, Greece, Vietnam, and Australia with early COVID successes, contributing to a widespread perception that lockdowns are vital to saving lives, and, therefore, a compassionate choice. Such reasoning has led governments internationally to proceed with lengthy closures of daily life.
According to Dr. Bhattacharya, these policies might be appropriate to halt the spread of a given virus depending on its profile and status. “There are diseases that are incredibly deadly, but not particularly infectious, where quarantining and sharp lockdowns locally can be quite effective,” Bhattacharya explained. “For instance, we limited the Ebola [virus] outbreaks in this way.”
Could COVID-19 have been addressed through sharp interventions as Ebola was? The answer depends in part on the properties of the virus, such as how deadly it is and how and how easily it spreads. Oftentimes, more lethal diseases spread less easily than their weaker counterparts, and that’s because the host will either die or know what they have and isolate themselves accordingly, thus halting transmission. Despite significantly higher fatality rates (25-90%, depending on the outbreak) in relation to COVID-19, Ebola is less infectious than other diseases and does not spread through the air: in fact, it typically dies within thirty seconds outside bodily fluids.
In contrast, COVID-19 is a respiratory virus that likely spreads through aerosol transmission. Echoing the now-discredited modelling from the Imperial College of London, media coverage from early 2020 made the coronavirus appear more deadly than it turned out to be, with some reports suggesting the fatality rate could rise to as high as seven percent. In reality, the coronavirus is a less lethal disease that spreads easily, making it harder to contain with human interventions.
Because COVID-19 is a seasonal virus that tends to flourish in winter, much like the flu, early COVID “victors” like New Zealand and Australia were fortunate to get hit with it during their respective summers. They also are geographically isolated. The rest of the world was not so lucky.
Drawing on studies of virus prevalence in California urban areas in March 2020, for example, Bhattacharya concluded it was “too late” for the coronavirus measures that state officials issued to help eliminate the virus, with about 3-4% of survey respondents reporting they already had COVID-19 antibodies.
Such numbers suggest that the virus was present much earlier in many parts of the world than originally believed, rendering subsequent preventive pandemic measures futile in eliminating or slowing the virus despite their stringency. In other words, based on the nature of its spread and its widespread establishment in many communities, the virus had already taken root in an irreversible way.
“You don’t get up to 2 to 4 percent disease spread [of COVID-19] unless you’ve had it spreading for a while,” Bhattacharya said in reference to the California seroprevalence study. “That means 96 percent of the population [at the time was] still susceptible to the virus, and far from endemic. But way too far gone to actually have hope that any lockdowns will stop the disease.”
Despite the tendency to resort to them when cases rise, the evidence of lockdowns’ effectiveness in inhibiting the spread of coronavirus is threadbare.
Peru, which boasts the world’s highest COVID-19 death rate despite imposing hard lockdowns, was a case in point. Meanwhile, Greece locked down in November 2020 at around 2,500-3,000 cases daily, only to open again for tourism six months later with similar case numbers. Then there was Belarus, a country of over 9 million which did not lock down or introduce a mask mandate, and boasted one of Europe’s lowest COVID death rates all the way up to the Delta surge in Eastern Europe.
The International Monetary Fund, or IMF, reportedly offered Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko $940 million in COVID assistance on the condition that he imposed harsh pandemic restrictions. Lukashenko said he refused, proclaiming, “the IMF continues to demand from us quarantine measures, isolation, and a curfew. This is nonsense. We will not dance to anyone’s tune.”
By June 2021, only a minority of Belarusian citizens told pollsters they favored more COVID-19 restrictions.
Despite their widespread utilization as a non-pharmaceutical intervention against COVID-19, the shaky evidence for lockdowns does not end with anecdotes and country-specific strategies: dozens of academic and scientific studies call into question their efficacy or otherwise argue that the social, economic, and health related harms they pose significantly outweigh the risks. Their conclusions include the following (thread compiled by twitter user @the_brumby):
In Did Lockdown Work? An Economist’s Cross-Country Comparison, Aarhus University Economics Professor Christian Bjørnskov writes that after “[u]sing two indices from the Blavatnik Centre’s Covid 19 policy measures and comparing weekly mortality rates from 24 European countries in the first halves of 2017-2020, and addressing policy endogeneity in two different ways, I find no clear association between lockdown policies and mortality development.”
In Assessing mandatory stay-at-home and business closure effects on the spread of COVID-19, Eran Bendavid, Christopher Oh, Jay Bhattacharya, and John P. A. Ioannidis, a team of Stanford University academics and research data scientists, conclude that “there is no evidence that more restrictive nonpharmaceutical interventions (“lockdowns”) contributed substantially to bending the curve of new cases in England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, or the United States in early 2020.”
Medical researchers and doctors Rabail Chaudhry, MD, Justyna Bartoszko, MD and Sheila Riazi, MD (University of Toronto Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine), George Dranitsaris, MD (University of Ioannina Department of Hematology) and Talha Mubashir, MD (previously University of Toronto Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, now at the University of Texas McGovern Medical School Department of Anesthesiology) write in A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes that “government actions such as border closures, full lockdowns, and a high rate of COVID-19 testing were not associated with statistically significant reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality.”
In Stay-at-home policy is a case of exception fallacy: an internet-based ecological study, academics and researchers at Brazil-based institutions, including the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, R. F. Savaris, G. Pumi, J. Dalzochio & R. Kunst address early data favoring lockdowns and stay-at-home policies through an analysis of mathematical models and data from 87 regions worldwide. In “yielding 3,741 pairwise comparisons for linear regression analysis…[they] were not able to explain if COVID-19 mortality is reduced by staying at home in ~ 98% of the comparisons.”
In Covid-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation, French medical researchers Quentin De Larochelambert, Andy Marc, Juliana Antero, Eric Le Bourg and University of Paris Professor of Physiology Jean-François Toussaint write that the “[s]tringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate.” Instead, they conclude that nations with stagnating life expectancies and high rates of income and non-communicable disease —in other words, existing characteristics of a nation’s demographics— faced higher mortality rates regardless of government interventions.
And in Government mandated lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths: implications for evaluating the stringent New Zealand response, University of Waikato Economics Professor John Gibson concludes that “Lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths…[t]he apparent ineffectiveness of lockdowns suggests that New Zealand suffered large economic costs for little benefit in terms of lives saved.”
These dozens of studies are consistent with pre-COVID-19 pandemic literature emphasizing the ineffectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions like lockdowns.
“Almost all [pre-pandemic planning guides before the coronavirus] emphasized respect for civil rights, disrupting societies as little as possible, protecting the vulnerable, and not spreading panic,” said Dr. Bhattacharya. “The lockdowns and the media narrative and the public health narrative of March 2020 violated all those principles.”
In a 2006 paper, Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza, academics at the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (now known as the John Hopkins Center for Health Security) in Baltimore, Maryland, wrote: “Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.”
Documents as recent as the 2019 World Health Organization (WHO) guide, Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza, furthermore, state that the “evidence base on the effectiveness of [Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions] in community settings is limited, and the overall quality of evidence was very low for most interventions.”
While already-existing pandemic literature naturally could not make COVID-19 specific recommendations, a well-established understanding of the general ineffectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions for respiratory viruses largely went unheeded as media and government-driven fear gripped the population in early 2020. Everyday people paid and continue to pay the price.
“Making poor people a lot poorer” and shortening life spans
While they may not be effective at limiting the spread of coronavirus, lockdowns are effective at destroying the economy, people’s livelihoods, and perhaps the social fabric itself as individuals grow used to remaining distant from friends, coworkers, family and community.
And while income and education losses, extensive isolation, and other COVID-related disruptions are devastating in the short-term, they also can inflict long-term adverse impacts on the length and quality of life, even decades later.
Childhood years are vital to shaping an adult’s overall well being, and adverse events that elicit extended stress responses throughout one’s youth can have significant impacts on lifespan, and risk of mental health issues and chronic physical health issues in the long term.
Long-term unemployment, a common phenomenon during COVID-19, can also shorten life expectancy, with Daniel Sullivan and Till von Wachter concluding in 2009 that mortality rates are 50 to 100 percent higher for individuals the year after involuntary income loss, and 10 to 15 percent higher overall for the next 20 years of life.
Consistent stress itself, certainly exacerbated by ongoing coronavirus restrictions, can also trigger or exacerbate long-term health problems. Highlighting such issues in detail in COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink, University of Alberta Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics Dr. Ari Joffe concluded that aggressive interventions such as lockdowns will cost society far more WELLBY, or Well-Being-Years, than foregoing them over time.
Generally, extreme restrictions hit marginalized populations and working class people the hardest, especially in places where many were employed informally, and must therefore leave their homes illegally to work during stay-at-home orders. Fines for breaking restrictions and curfews are often prohibitive, moreover, and fail to address that many people are inadequately housed and cannot consistently follow such rules.
Even the WHO has appealed against lockdowns, acknowledging the strain lockdowns place on the disadvantaged. “We really do appeal to all world leaders, stop using lockdown as your primary method of control,” WHO COVID-19 envoy Dr. David Nabarro told British broadcaster Andrew Neil. “Lockdowns have just one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.”
As the logic behind “stopping the spread” through indefinite lockdowns is questioned even by top public health authorities, the policy has reappeared with a vengeance in Europe, where it has been weaponized against non-compliant populations and to intimidate citizens into line with government policy. A winter of lockdowns, coercion and threats begins
The government of Austria triggered waves of national protest this November when it became the first in the world to announce a lockdown exclusively imposed on unvaccinated people. Just days before resigning, then-Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said he aimed to establish a “threatening backdrop” for those who refused to take the jab, promising that “Christmas will be uncomfortable” for them.
Days later, Schallenberg extended the lockdown to all citizens, imposing fines of up to $1660 for anyone who violates the restriction, per violation, and announced a policy of compulsory vaccination for all. For those unable to pay fines for remaining unvaccinated, their refusal “can be converted into a prison sentence,” as The Guardian reported. Those who did not take the jab by December 12 would remain under lockdown, underscoring the punitive agenda behind the policy.
Slovakia followed Austria’s lead, imposing a lockdown on unvaccinated citizens on November 18 before it expanded the policy to the entire population. The next country to impose an unvaccinated-only lockdown is Germany, where public health officials blame a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” for the fourth wave of COVID-19 cases. “Probably by the end of this winter, as is sometimes cynically said, pretty much everyone in Germany will be vaccinated, cured or dead,” remarked German Minister of Health Jens Spahn.
However, in Portugal, which has run out of people to vaccinate due to the country’s near-total uptake, infections are also surging, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency and impose a new bevy of restrictions. And in Gibraltar, officially the most jabbed place on the planet, with a 99% vaccination rate, authorities cancelled official Christmas festivities following a surge of COVID-19 cases. The news confirmed a November 2021 study from the US CDC that found that vaccinated people are “no less infectious” than those who are unvaccinated.
Just as the failure of vaccines to prevent the spread of COVID-19 became apparent, international media began filling up with panicked headlines about a terrifying new variant. Labeled “Omicron” by the World Health Organization on November 26, 2021, the variant reportedly originated in southern Africa. The doctor who discovered the variant has said all cases tend to be mild so far. According to the government of Botswana, it arrived thanks to four fully vaccinated travelers.
Among the first prominent public health pundits to hype the supposed danger of Omicron was Tom Peacock, a virologist from the Imperial College of London’s department of infectious diseases – a wing of the same Bill Gates-sponsored institution responsible for the discredited models that influenced the UK and US government’s first lockdowns by grossly overestimating the death toll from COVID-19.
Just spotted: very small cluster of variant associated with Southern Africa with very long branch length and really awful Spike mutation profile including RBD – K417N, N440K, G446S, S477N, T478K, E484A, Q493K, G496S, Q498R, N501Y, Y505Hhttps://t.co/kgA9c1hKDa
— Tom Peacock (@PeacockFlu) November 23, 2021
Even before the threat from the so-called Omicron variant is known, the US and EU have enacted new restrictions which are certain to ravage the already weathered economies of southern Africa. On November 26, the Biden administration issued a ban on flights from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Malawi. (At the time of publication, several of these countries have yet to register a single Omicron case).
“We are now entering a world where borders close for every variant,” Toby Green, author of The Covid Consensus, commented to The Grayzone. “It’s quite clear that Western governments and media don’t care at all about lives and livelihoods in poor countries. Tour guides, hotel porters, restaurateurs, those who depend on international conferences and study abroad visits – a large proportion of service industries in the Global South – will be devastated. And who benefits? Service industries in rich countries, where the profiteering of the last 20 months will get spent.”
For millions at the mercy of the new wave of restrictions, a dark winter has just begun.
Stavroula Pabst is a writer, comedian, and PhD student based in Athens, Greece. Her writing has appeared in AthensLive, Reductress, Passage and the Harvard Business Review.
The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
Featured Image: Protesters in Rome take part in a rally last week against the latest government restrictions to stem the rise in coronavirus cases. Photograph: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images
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Vermont (VT) Lottery Results & Winning Numbers
Home » Vermont
Megabucks Plus
USD 1,000 a day for life
All Vermont Games Details
Vermont Lottery Games Schedule
Vermont Advanced Draws
How to Buy Lottery Tickets in Vermont?
How to Claim a Prize in Vermont?
Lottery Rules in Vermont
Top 3 Interesting Vermont Winners Stories
FAQs About Vermont Lotteries
All the best Vermont lottery games that count with results on our website are summarized below.
Pick 3 Day Fixed Prize 3 from 0-9 1:00 p.m.
Gimme 5 Fixed Prize 5 from 1-39 6:45 p.m.
Lucky for Life Fixed Prize 5 from 1-48 + 1 from 1-18 9:30 p.m.
Tri-State Megabucks Jackpot 5 from 1-41 + 1 from 1-6 7:50 p.m.
Bookmark this page to know at what type to check the Vermont lottery results according to the schedule below and Vermont local time:
Pick 3 Day 1:10 p.m. 1:10 p.m. 1:10 p.m. 1:10 p.m. 1:10 p.m. 1:10 p.m. 1:10 p.m.
Gimme 5 7:00 p.m. 7:00 p.m. 7:00 p.m. 7:00 p.m. 7:00 p.m.
Tri-State Megabucks 7:59 p.m. 7:59 p.m.
Powerball 10:59 p.m. 10:59 p.m.
Lucky for Life 10:38 p.m. 10:38 p.m.
Advanced draws allow players to participate in several drawings with a single purchase. That way, the only thing left to do is to check the Vermont Lottery results once a day or every week, which saves a lot of time compared to making individual purchases. In addition, multi-state games with subscriptions or multi-draw options are also available on the best lottery websites.
Lucky for Life up to 20
Tri-State Megabucks up to 20
Pick 3 Day up to 21
Gimme 5 up to 30
The Vermont Lottery only allows the purchase of lottery tickets at local licensed retailers. Without an online, phone, or mail option, players can always choose to play multi-state games like Powerball on the recommended lottery websites.
Claiming a Vermont Lottery prize is a process that varies according to the winners’ preferences and the total prize. The simple guide below can lead any winner to the best alternative.
Prizes below $500 or Free Plays
Players can claim prizes up to and including $499 at the lottery headquarters or at any authorized lottery agent. The options are quite reduced when compared to other United States lotteries.
Prizes from $500 and up to $5,000
Claims of that value can be processed at a People’s United Bank in Vermont during the same business hours as the Lottery Headquarters or at the Vermont Lottery Headquarters. Players must possess proof of their SSN, their photo ID, a winning ticket, and the claim form.
Prizes Above $5,000
All the prizes above $5,000 must be claimed at the Vermont Lottery Headquarters. The winners should also take the claim form and proof of ID and SSN together with the winner’s claim form.
As for those who chose the online lotteries that we recommend, different rules might apply to each website. Some deposit the entire amount to the players’ account as soon as the Vermont Lottery results are out. On the other hand, some will require in-person claims, and that why it is important to be attentive to the terms.
Prize Claim Form and Vermont Lottery Headquarters Address
It is necessary to fill the Vermont Lottery Winners Claim Form, which can also be obtained at local retailers, and take it to the following address:
Vermont Lottery Headquarters
1311 US Route 302, Berlin, VT 05641
Phone Numbers: +1 (800) 322-8800 / (802) 479-5686
Mondays through Fridays – 7:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Lottery Tax Information in Vermont
The taxes on lottery prizes vary in Vermont according to the presented documents or the total prize amount. All the information there is to know on state and federal taxes is displayed below.
Tax Withholdings on Vermont Lottery – U.S. Citizens and Residents
Tax Withholdings on Vermont Lottery – Non-U.S. Citizens
$600+ State Tax 7.2%
Total 37.2%
Prizes lower than $500 can be claimed at local retailers.
All the prizes above $5,000 must be claimed at the Vermont Lottery Headquarters.
It is not possible to claim by mail.
Winners who do not present proof of their taxpayer identification number will have to pay taxes on prizes from $600.
It is necessary to be 18 years old or older to play any of the Vermont games.
Winnings above $5,000 are subject to both federal and state taxes.
Only people in the U.S.can play the exclusive Vermont Lottery games.
It is not possible to remain an anonymous winner in Vermont.
$300,000 – Penny Durant of Hardwick claimed over 110 prizes in 7 years. In total, she won more than $300,000.
$78,500 – Jullie Messer collected a total of $78,500 with 13 tickets in a bit more than a year and a half. Curiously, she worked at the Rinkers Interstate Services during that entire period, which raised doubts.
$56,000+ – Mark Kittell won something near a quarter of all the claims above $600 made at his own store from 2011 to 2016. Between 2014 and 2016, it is known that he claimed $56,000.
Can I purchase Vermont lottery tickets online?
No, but you can participate in multi-state games using the best lottery websites that we recommend.
What is the legal age to play in Vermont lottery games?
No, the name, city, and prize of all winners are disclosed in Vermont. However, winners can always decide to claim via a trust instead.
What happens if my ticket is damaged?
Damaged tickets are no better than lost tickets. Keep that in mind and manage to store your tickets somewhere safe until you claim them.
The funds from the sale of tickets go to several educational initiatives and programs.
Where can I find Vermont lottery results?
On this same page, we automatically update Vermont Lottery results after every draw.
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Now we know
August 31, 2011 | by Dale Keiger
…Biomedical engineers led by School of Medicine professor Jennifer Elisseeff report promising results from experiments with a new composite material that helps restore soft tissue. The material begins as a liquid injected under the skin, which then hardens into a more solid structure that might have use in facial reconstruction. The researchers’ report appeared in the July 27 issue of Science Translational Medicine.
…The July 20 issue of the same journal published news of a gene-based test to distinguish harmless cysts from precancerous pancreatic cysts. The test—developed by 16 researchers, including several from Johns Hopkins—could help avoid unnecessary surgery to remove benign cysts. Lead author was School of Medicine research fellow Jian Wu.
…Consent forms provided to volunteers for HIV/AIDS research are too long and laden with overly complicated language. Meanwhile, frequently misunderstood concepts like randomization and placebos are given insufficient explanation. Those were the findings of a detailed review of consent forms led by Nancy Kass, deputy director of public health at the Berman Institute of Bioethics. The Journal of General Internal Medicine published the study in its August issue.
…School of Nursing assistant professor Sarah L. Szanton was corresponding author on a study that found education level to be a good predictor of preclinical mobility disability (PCD) in older women. Someone diagnosed with PCD has begun to compensate for mobility problems—leaning on a grocery cart, for example—without acknowledging any difficulties. PCD predicts future disabilities that might be prevented by timely intervention, and the study found that women with fewer than nine years of education were more likely to have it.
…Johns Hopkins scientists studying a brain stem cell in adult mice found something unexpected: Not only can the stem cell produce specialized neurons and glial cells, it also can generate two additional stem cells. Co-author Hongjun Song, director of the Stem Cell Biology Program at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering, noted in a press release that researchers might be able to exploit the unexpected property to increase brain stem cells. The study appeared in the June 24 issue of Cell.
…Mathematical skill in young children correlates to an inborn primitive number sense, according to new research led by Melissa Libertus, a postdoctoral fellow in the Krieger School’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. A study of 200 4-year-olds found that the better they were at estimating the number of objects flashed on a computer monitor—a gauge of their innate feel for numbers—the higher their scores on a standardized test of rudimentary mathematics. The study appeared in the August online edition of Developmental Science.
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Research India Publications
Global Journal of Pure And Applied Mathematics (GJPAM)
Associate Editors :
Sunil Mathur, Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta University, 1120 15th Street, AE 1040, Augusta, GA 30912-4900 USA
M. Bohner, University of Missouri at Rolla, Department of Mathematics, 106 Rolla Building, Rolla, MO 65409-0020, USA
Editorial Board Members :
Dr Azizur Rahman, Senior Lecturer, School Of Computing And Mathematics, Charles Sturt University, Boorooma Street, Wagga Wagga, Australia.
Area of Interest : Theoretical And Applied Statistics, Small Area Estimation, Bayesian Statistical Modelling, Microsimulation Modelling, Biostatistics, Public Health, Applied Economics And Data Science.
Dr. Li MA, Lecturer, School of Mathematics, Hefei University of Technology, FeiCui Road 420, Hefei, Anhui, China.
Area of Interest : Reductions of fractional-order systems; Hadamard fractional calculus; Dynamics of fractional-order systems
Dr. Raed Ali Alkhasawneh, Assistant Professor, Department Of Statistics, Faculty of applied studies and community service at University of Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
Area of Interest : Applied mathematics, Numerical Analysis
Dr. Juan Manuel Peña, Professor of Applied Mathematics, Departamento de Matematica Aplicada, Edificio de Matemáticas, Universidad de Zaragoza, Pedro Cebruna, 12, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain.
Area of Interest : approximation theory, computer aided geometric design, numerical analysis, matrix theory
Dr. Ömer Küsmüş, Journal of Generalized Lie Theory and Applied, Van Yuzuncu Yil University / Turkey, Department of Math., Faculty of Science, Van Yuzuncu Yil University, Zeve Campus, 65080, Van, Turkey.
Area of Interest : Commutative Rings, Group Rings, Group Algebras, Module Theory, Lie Theory
Rosalio G. Artes, Jr, Department of Mathematics and Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, Mindanao State University, Tawi-Tawi College of Technology and Oceanography, Sanga-Sanga, 7500 Bongao, Tawi-Tawi, Philippines
Area of Interest: Approximation Theory, Fourier Analysis, Mathematical Biology, Crystallography.
G.M. N'Guerekata, Professor and Chair, Department of Mathematics , Morgan State University, 1700 E. Cold Spring Lane, Room CR 251, Baltimore, MD 21251 – USA
Areas of Interest: Abstract Differential Equations; Almost Automorphic and Almost Periodic Functions.
R. P. Agarwal, Prof. & Chair, Texas A & M University - Kingville, 700 University Blvd. MSC 172, Kingsville, Texas, USA
Areas of Interest: Differential Equations; Difference Equations; Fixed-Point Theorems; Inequalities; and Numerical Analysis.
N.U. Ahmed, SITE, 161 Louis Pasteur, University of Ottawa, Ontario, K1N6N5, Canada
Area of Interest: Nonlinear Analysis; Stochastic Control; Differential Inclusions; and Nonlinear Filtering.
G. A. Anastassiou, Department of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA
Areas of Interest: Approximation Theory; Inequalities; Moment Theory; Wavelet; and Fuzzy Mathematics.
D. Bugajewska, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Adam Mickiewicz University, Umultowska 87, 61-614 Poznañ, Poland
Areas of Interest: Ordinary Differential Equations; and Integral Equations.
E. Camouzis, Department of Mathematics, The American College of Greece, Deree College Gravias 6 Str., Aghia Paraskevi, Athens, Greece
Areas of Interest: Global Analysis of Nonlinear Difference Equations of Higher Order and its Applications; Dynamical Systems and its Applications.
C. Cesarano, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Facoltà di Ingegneria, Via Emilio Longoni,83 00155 Roma, Italy
Areas of Interest: Special Functions; Orthogonal Polynomials and Related Applications to Differential Equations.
S. S. Cheng, Department of Mathematics, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan
Areas of Interest: Ordinary and Partial Difference Equations; Ordinary Differential Equations; Functional and Functional Differential Equations.
A. Dermoune, UMR-CNRS 8524, Laboratoire Paul Painleve, Universite des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, 59655-Villeneuve d'Ascq Cedex, France
Areas of Interest: Applications of Probability and Statistics; Macro-Economics; Micro-Economics; and Partial Differential Equations.
S. S. Dragomir, Chair in Mathematical Inequalities, School of Computer Science & Mathematics, Victoria University, PO Box 14428, Melbourne City, MC 8001, Australia
Areas of Interest: Classical Mathematical Analysis; Theory of Inequalities; Convex Functions; Best Approximation.
P. Eloe, Department of Mathematics, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH 45469-2316 USA
Area of Interest: Boundary Value Problems; Functional Differential Equations; and Computation.
A. Fiorenza, Universita' di Napoli "Federico II", Dipartimento di Architettura, via Monteoliveto, 3 80134 - NAPOLI (NA), Italy
Area of Interest: Variable Lebesgue Spaces; variable Sobolev spaces; Grand Lebesgue spaces; Small Lebesgue spaces.
D. Girela, Departamento de An\'alisis Matem\'atico, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de M\'alaga, 29071 M\'alaga, Spain
Areas of Interest: Complex Analysis and Operator Theory.
J. R. Graef, Department of Mathematics, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chattanooga, TN 37403 USA
Area of Interest: Differential Equations, Difference Equations, Dynamical Systems, Biological Modeling.
S. Hamadene, Université du Maine, Département de Mathématiques, Laboratoire de Statistique et Processus, 72085 Le Mans Cedex 9, France
Areas of Interests: Stochastic Optimal Control and Stochastic Differential Games; Backward and Backward-Forward Stochastic Differential Equations.
O. Hili, National Polytechnic Institute of Yamoussoukro, BP 1911, Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast
Areas of Interest: Statistics.
H. Th. Jongen, Department of Mathematics – C, RWTH Aachen University, D-52056 Aachen, Germany
Areas of Interest: Nonconvex Optimization; Parametric Optimization; Global Optimization; Semi-Infinite Optimization.
Il B. Jung, Department of Mathematics, College of Natural Sciences, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, 702-701 South Korea
Areas of Interest: Operator Theory and Moment Theory.
A. Kamal, Department of Mathematics & Statistics, S.Q. University, P.O. Box 36, Al Khoudh 123 Oman
Area of Interest: Abstract approximation Theory.
T. Kwembe, Department of Mathematics and Statistical Sciences, Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi 39217, USA
Areas of Interest: Differential Equations, Partial Differential Equations and Applications, Mathematical Biology.
T. Kusano, Department of Applied mathematics, Faculty of Science, Fukuoka University, 8-19-1 Nanakuma, Jonan-ku, Fukuoka, 814-0180 Japan
Areas of Interest: Qualitative Theory of Differential Equations.
D.R. Larson, Department of Mathematics, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-3368, USA
Research Interests: Functional Analysis; Applied Harmonic Analysis.
E.-B. Lin, Department of Mathematics, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606 USA
Areas of Interest: Wavelet Theory; Mathematical Physics; and Complex Geometry.
M.F. Mahmood, Department of Mathematics, Howard University, 2441 6th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20059, USA
Areas of Interest: Nonlinear partial differential equations; nonlinear waves in optics, plasmas and fluids; solitons; systems and signals.
T.M. Mills, Department of Mathematics, La Trobe University, PO Box 199, Bendigo 3552, Australia
Areas of Interest: Approximation Theory; History of Mathematics; Inequalities; Probability and Stochastic Process.
H. Ouerdiane, Department of Mathematics. Faculty of Sciences of Tunis. Campus universitaire. 1060 Tunis. Tunisia
Areas of Interest: Infinite dimensional Analysis, White Noise analysis, Stochastic Analysis, Stochastic differential equations.
Y. Ouknine, Département de Mathématiques, Faculté des Sciences Semlalia, Université Cadi Ayyad, B.P. 2390, Marrakech, 40000 Morocco
Areas of Interest: Probability; and Stochastic Analysis.
J. M. Rassias, Professor of Mathematics, National and Capodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Areas of Interest: Linear and Nonlinear Mathematical Analysis with Applications.
S. Reich, Department of Mathematics, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel
Areas of Interest: Nonlinear Operator Theory; Nonlinear Evolution Equations; and Infinite Dimensional Holomorphy.
Mohammad Z. Abu-Sbeih, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran
31261, Saudi Arabia
N. C. Sacheti, Department of Mathematics & Statistics, College of Science, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman
Areas of Interest: Fluid Mechanics - Non-Newtonian Flows; Hydromagnetic Flows; and Flow through Porous Media.
M. Sifi, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Sciences of Tunis, Campus Universitaire, 2092 Manar II, Tunis, Tunisia
Areas of Interest: Fourier analysis in one and Several Variables; Non-Trignometric Fourier Analysis; Integral Transforms; and Integral Equations.
H. M. Srivastava, Professor Emeritus, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 3R4, Canada
Areas of Interest: Real and Complex Analysis, Fractional Calculus and Its Applications, Integral Equations and Transforms.
A. Soufyane, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, United Arab Emirates University, P. O. Box 17551, Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates
Areas of Interest: Control Theory, Stability of Systems, Numerical Methods of PDE's.
F. Wagemann, Universite de Nantes, Faculte des Sciences et des Techniques, 2, rue de la Houssiniere, 44322 Nantes cedex 3, France
Areas of Interest: Mathematical Physics.
H.K. Xu, School of Mathematical Sciences, Unversity of KwaZulu-Natal, Private Bag X54001, Durban 4000, South Africa
Areas of Interest: Nonlinear functional analysis; Geometry of Banach spaces; and Mathematical finance.
A. A. Yakubu, Department of Mathematics, Howard University, 2441 6th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20059, USA
Areas of Interest: Differential Equations; Difference Equations; Dynamical Systems; and Mathematical Biology.
Mostafa Eslami, Assistant Professor Department of Mathematics University of Mazandaran Babolsar, Iran
Florance Matarise, Department of Statistics, Uiversity of Zimbabwe, PO Box MP167. Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe.
Areas of Interest: Statistics (Time Series Analysis).
Mohammad Mirzazadeh, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran
Cristina Flaut, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Ovidius University, Constanta, Romania
Rejeb Hadiji, Mathematics Department, UPEC, Univercity Paris Est Creteil, UFR Sciences, 61 Avenue du Generale De Gaulle, Creteil, cedex, France
Area of Interest: Nonlinear PDE - Micromagnetics- Ginzburg-Landau problems and problem with Sobolev exopnent.
Ratnasingham Shivaji, Dept of Mathematics and Statistics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27412, USA
Area of Research: Nonlinear Elliptic Boundary Value Problems.
Jyotindra Prajapati, Mathematical Sciences Department, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Charotar University of Science and Technology, Changa, Anand, Gujarat, India
Area of Interest: Special functions, Integral Transforms, Fractional calculus
O'Regan, Donal, Department of Mathematics, National University of Ireland at Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland
Areas of Interest: Nonlinear Analysis.
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Home Opinion Editorials Editorial: Facts Do Matter
Editorial: Facts Do Matter
Dave Gil de Rubio
Taron Egerton as Elton John in Rocketman
As one of the world’s best-selling musical artists, giving Elton John the biopic treatment is a slam dunk. With Rocketman, what could have been a chance to celebrate and share the legacy of an artist possessing a second-to-none combination of talent, charisma and It Factor wound up being a special kind of bad. Director Dexter Fletcher, who also helmed the Queen train wreck that is Bohemian Rhapsody after original director Bryan Singer was dismissed, was tapped to call the shots here. So the outcome shouldn’t be surprising.
The film’s subject was an executive producer on this project and while he and his creative collaborators apparently tried to get the word out that this wasn’t going to be a traditional biopic, turning this into a cinematic jukebox musical would have worked far better. Instead, Fletcher and screenwriter Lee Hall went for trying to be a musical and a biopic with a fantasy element thrown in for good measure. That said, the movie fails at being either.
Taron Egerton delivers a solid, but unspectacular portrayal of Reg Dwight. (Talk of this being an Oscar-worthy performance is also quite the head-scratcher.) Unquestionably, the most interesting thing about Elton John is the music. And while we get it thrown at us in a way that’s more about moving units in the Elton John canon versus serving the story (with the exception of the “Your Song” segment), Hall chose to throw every cliché about drug-addicted, alcoholic rock stars into the mix while folding in flat performances by Bryce Dallas Howard and Steve Mackintosh playing Elton’s shrewish mother and distant father.
Throw in a seemingly allergic treatment to facts and chronological history and, as one astute reviewer wrote, “It’s hard to say who will be more disappointed by Rocketman: people who know a lot about Elton John or people who know nothing.” The biggest casualties in Rocketman are facts. Everything from John blowing the roof off his breakout 1970 Troubadour gig by playing “Crocodile Rock,” a song that wouldn’t be written for another two years, to the origin of his name gets tossed to the wind. And while this movie is not a documentary, there is also a salient point that this is a biographical film about someone’s life. While artistic liberties are often taken, such as creating a fictional character as a composite of different real-life people, at the end of the day, you don’t get to make up your own facts. It’s a trend that seems to have crossed over from politics to art.
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In addition to being editor of Garden City Life and Syosset-Jericho Tribune, Dave Gil de Rubio is a regular contributor to Long Island Weekly, specializing in music and sports features. He has won several awards for writing from Press Club of Long Island (PCLI).
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Many sexually active US teens not tested for HIV, CDC reports
by Steven Reinberg, Healthday Reporter
Only 22 percent of those at risk get screened, and researchers think complacency may be why.
(HealthDay)—Only one in five sexually active U.S. teens has been tested for HIV, a new government report shows.
That percentage is concerning because teens make up a significant share of new HIV infections, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
"We know that one in four new HIV infections occur in young people ages 13 to 24, which is about 12,200 new infections per year in the United States," said lead researcher Laura Kann, chief of the CDC's school-based surveillance branch.
"We have too many kids in this country at risk of HIV infection and we have not enough kids tested for HIV, and we need to do more," Kann said.
The CDC report, which looked at data from 1991 to 2013, is to be presented July 23 at the 2014 International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia.
Given the number of teens infected each year, Kann is at a loss to explain why the HIV testing rate stays at 22 percent.
"It's unclear why we have not been able to increase testing more than we have," she said. "We do have evidence of increased complacency about HIV among teens."
Kann thinks that because HIV can now be treated and is no longer a death sentence, teens may not be worried about being infected.
"Young people today were not around in the early days of the epidemic and did not see the havoc that it wreaked. And there is just not the same emphasis in our society there was previously, so some amount of complacency is there," she said.
Kann said preventing HIV and making sure teens are tested isn't just the responsibility of the CDC, but of communities and parents.
"It's important that teens know about risks, know how to get tested and know how to prevent infection," she said.
Another infectious-disease expert agreed.
"This is very concerning, but not surprising," said Dr. Vivian Hernandez-Trujillo, an immunologist at Miami Children's Hospital. "One of the things I speak to my patients about is, are they sexually active and are they using protection all the time. Since the reality is that they aren't using protection all the time, it's even more concerning that they aren't getting tested."
Hernandez-Trujillo added that teens need to take responsibility for themselves. "If you are responsible enough to engage in sexual activity, you are responsible enough to take care of your own health," she said.
The CDC recommends that teens and adults aged 13 to 64 get tested for HIV at least once as part of routine medical care, Kann said.
The CDC researchers found that girls and black students were more likely to be tested than boys and other racial/ethnic groups. However, HIV testing remains too low among all teens, Kann added.
Although the number of black and Hispanic teens who have had sexual intercourse has dropped, that trend has stalled among whites and boys, the researchers noted.
In addition, there has been a consistent decline in the number of black and Hispanic teens who had multiple sexual partners, but this number increased among white teens since 2009.
And after years of increased condom use, that has dropped among sexually active girls and black teens, but is stable among boys and white and Hispanic teens, the researchers found.
Other highlights of the report include:
Girls were more likely than boys to be tested (27 percent vs. 18 percent).
Black teens (28 percent) were more likely to be tested than white (20 percent) or Hispanic (21 percent) teens.
The proportion of teens who have had sexual intercourse dropped from 54 percent in 1991 to 46 percent in 2001, and remained stable at 47 percent in 2013.
Since 1991, sexual intercourse among black teens declined from 82 percent to 61 percent, among Hispanic teens from 53 percent to 49 percent, and among white teens from 50 percent to 44 percent in 2013.
The proportion of teens who had sexual intercourse with four or more partners dropped from 19 percent in 1991 to 14 percent in 2003, and has been stable since, at 15 percent.
The proportion of sexually active teens using condoms increased from 46 percent in 1991 to 63 percent in 2003, but dropped to 59 percent in 2013.
The report is based on data from the CDC's National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which is a nationally representative survey done every two years among public and private school students in grades 9 to 12.
More information: Visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for more on HIV/AIDS.
Survey finds big drop in sexual activity among black teens
Hispanic teens more likely to abuse drugs, survey finds
Too many younger teens still getting pregnant, CDC reports
US teens' cardiorespiratory fitness has dropped in last decade: report
Doctors don't provide sexual health info to teens
Study finds teens often willing to accept free or low-cost rapid HIV testing
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What Labour’s 2015 Election Manifesto Won’t Be Saying
February 2, 2015 Ian 7 Comments
Seven years into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and just 3 months away from what could be the most crucial General Election since World War 2, and the Labour Party are in deep trouble – and all because of a Bacon Sandwich!
So what can be done? What could the Labour Party possibly say in its 2015 Election Manifesto to win the day?
Proposed Labour Election Manifesto 2015
The end of World War ll in Europe finally came with the unconditional surrender of German forces in Reims on 7 May 1945 – exactly 70 years to the day before the coming General Election of 7 May 2015.
The efforts of the Labour Party during World War 2 succeeded in “taking the profit out of war”. The 100% Excess Profits Tax, the controls over industry and transport, the fair rationing of food and control of prices all helped to win the war. With these measures the country came nearer to making “fair shares” the national rule than ever before in its history
Both World War 1 and 2 had been won by the British public. The gallant men and women in the Armed Services, Medical and Public Services , factories and offices were promised a happier future than the one that had faced so many of them after WW1.
Just two months after Germany’s surrender, a landslide victory for the first-ever majority Labour government, in the Khaki Election of 5 July 1945, ushered in a new post-war settlement of a happier future, with fair shares for all, by bringing many of the key means of production, distribution and exchange into public ownership and the creation of the National Health Service and the Welfare State,
The people made tremendous efforts to win both wars. But, after they won, they lacked a lively interest in the social and economic problems of peace, and accepted the election promises of the leaders of the major political parties at their face value.
So the “hard-faced men” who had done well out of both World Wars were able to get the kind of peace that suited them. The people lost that peace. And when we say “peace” we mean not only the Treaties, but the social and economic policy which followed the fighting.
In the years that followed WW2, the “hard-faced men” and their political friends slowly took back control of the Government. They now control the banks, the oil and gas fields, the big industries, the power companies, largely the press and the cinema. They control the means by which the people get their living. They control the ways by which most of the people learn about the world outside. This happened in all the big industrialised countries.
Great economic blizzards are now sweeping across the world. The great economic recessions and depressions are not acts of God or of blind forces. They are the sure and certain result of the concentration of too much economic power in the hands of too few men. These men have not only learned how to act in the interest of their own bureaucratically-run private monopolies which may be likened to totalitarian oligarchies within our democratic State. They have and they feel no responsibility to the nation. They live in Caribbean hideaways and cruise the globe in private jets and yachts.
Those forces now completely dominate today. The interests have been able to make even greater profits out of their ongoing War on Terror and their own private monopolies which control the Security State.
The wars in the East and Middle East are now set to last for generations. There are grand pickings to be had. A short boom period after a war, when savings, gratuities and post-war credits are there to be spent, can make a profiteer’s paradise. But Big Business knows that this will happen only if the people vote into power the party which promises to get rid of the controls and so let the profiteers and racketeers have that freedom for which they are pleading eloquently on every platform, , in every newspaper, and on every radio, television and social media channel they own.
Does freedom for the profiteer mean freedom for the ordinary man and woman, whether they be wage-earners or small business or professional men or housewives? Just look back over the depressions of the 20 years between the wars, when there were precious few public controls of any kind and the Big Interests had things all their own way. Never was so much injury done to so many by so few. Freedom is not an abstract thing. To be real it must be won, it must be worked for.
The Labour Party stands for order as against the chaos that has followed the end of all public control. We stand for order, for positive constructive progress as against the chaos of economic do-as-they-please anarchy.
The Labour Party makes no baseless promises. The future will not be easy. But this time the peace must be won. The Labour Party offers the nation a plan which will win Peace for the People.
Point by point these national aims need analysis. Point by point it will be found that if they are to be turned into realities the nation and its Governments will be called upon to put the nation above any sectional interest, above any free enterprise. The problems and pressures of the world threaten our security and progress as surely as – though less dramatically than – the Germans threatened them in 1940. We need the spirit of Dunkirk and of the Blitz sustained over a period of years.
The Labour Party‘s programme is a practical expression of that spirit applied to the tasks of peace. It calls for hard work, energy and sound sense.
We must stop all the wars we are currently engaged in and prevent another war breaking out, and that means we must have an international organisation that will give all nations real security against future aggression, not just a favoured few. But Britain can only play her full part in such an international plan if our spirit as shown in our handling of home affairs is firm, wise and determined. This statement of policy, therefore, begins at home.
The Labour Party stands for freedom – for freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom of the Press. The Labour Party will see to it that we keep and enlarge these freedoms, and that we enjoy again the personal civil liberties we have, of our own free will, sacrificed to win both World Wars. The freedom of the Trade Unions, denied by a succession of Trade Unions Acts over the past 30 years, must also be restored. But there are certain so-called freedoms that Labour will not tolerate: freedom to exploit other people; freedom to pay poor wages and to push up prices for selfish profit; freedom to deprive the people of the means of living full, happy, healthy lives.
They say, “Full employment. Yes! If we can get it without interfering too much with private industry.” We say, “Full employment in any case, and if we need to keep a firm public hand on industry in order to get jobs for all, very well. No more dole queues, in order to let the Czars of Big Business remain kings in their own castles. The price of so-called ‘economic freedom’ for the few is too high if it is bought at the cost of idleness and misery for millions.”
Thirdly, planned investment in essential industries and on houses, schools, hospitals and civic centres will occupy a large field of capital expenditure. A National Investment Board will determine social priorities and promote better timing in private investment. In suitable cases we would transfer the use of armaments factories to meet the needs of peace. The location of new factories will be suitably controlled and where necessary the Government will itself build factories. There must be no depressed areas in the New Britain.
Fourthly, the banks with all their financial powers must be brought under public ownership, and their operations harmonised with industrial needs.
Today we live alongside economic giants – countries where science and technology take leaping strides year by year. Britain must match those strides – and we must take no chances about it. Britain needs an industry organised to enable it to yield the best that human knowledge and skill can provide. Only so can our people reap the full benefits of the Information Age.
The Labour Party intends to link the skill of British designers, artists and craftsmen to the skill of British scientists and engineers in the service of our fellow men. The genius of British scientists and technicians who produced radar, jet propulsion, antibiotics. the computer and the Mulberry Harbours in WWII, must be given full rein now too.
These propositions seem indisputable, but in the 70 years since the the first majority Labour Government first introduced them in 1945 progressively more anti-Labour Governments have set them aside, so that British industry over a large field fell into a state of depression, muddle and decay. Millions of working and middle class people are now going through the horrors of unemployment and insecurity. It is not enough to sympathise with these victims: we must develop an acute feeling of national shame – and act.
Public ownership of the fuel and power industries. Public ownership of gas and electricity undertakings will lower charges, prevent competitive waste, open the way for co-ordinated research and development, and lead to the reforming of uneconomic areas of distribution. Other industries will benefit. For more than a quarter of a century the coal industry, producing what was once Britain’s most precious national raw material, has been shrinking and floundering chaotically under the ownership of many hundreds of independent companies. Amalgamation under public ownership will bring great economies and make it possible to modernise production, instituting new carbon capture technologies to recreate a new power generating capacity that is not only profitable and productive, but green in ever respect.
Public ownership of iron and steel. Private monopoly has exported both production, jobs and profits overseas. Only if public ownership replaces private monopoly can the industry become efficient, develop and grow. These socialised industries, taken over on a basis of fair compensation, to be conducted efficiently in the interests of consumers, coupled with proper status and conditions for the workers employed in them.
Public supervision of monopolies and cartels with the aim of advancing industrial efficiency in the service of the nation. Anti-social restrictive practices will be prohibited.
The shaping of suitable economic and price controls to secure that first things shall come first in the transition from depression to growth and that every citizen (including ex Service men and women) shall get fair play. There must be priorities in the use of raw materials, food prices must be held, homes for the people for all before luxuries for the few. We do not want a short boom followed by collapse as in the first decade of the 21st century; we do not want a wild rise in prices and inflation, followed by a smash and widespread unemployment. It is either sound economic controls – or smash.
Our good farm lands are part of the wealth of the nation and that wealth should not be wasted. The land must be farmed, not starved. If a landlord cannot or will not provide proper facilities the State should take over his land at a fair valuation. The people need food at prices they can afford to pay. This means that our food supplies will have to be planned. Never again should they be left at the mercy of the city financier or speculator. Instead there must be stable markets, to the great gain of both producer and consumer.
The Labour Party intends to reinstate much of the work of the Ministry of Food during WWII as is useful in peace conditions, including the bulk purchase of food from abroad and a well organised system of distribution at home, with no vested interests imposing unnecessary costs.
Everybody says that we must have houses. Only the Labour Party is ready to take the necessary steps – a full programme of land planning and drastic action to ensure an efficient building industry that will neither burden the community with a crippling financial load nor impose bad conditions and heavy unemployment on its workpeople. There must be no restrictive price rings to keep up prices and bleed the taxpayer, the owner-occupier and the tenant alike.
There must be a due balance between the housing programme, the building of schools and hospitals and the urgent requirements of factory modernisation and construction which will enable industry to produce efficiently.
Housing will be one of the greatest and one of the earliest tests of a Government’s real determination to put the nation first. Labour‘s pledge is firm and direct – it will proceed with a housing programme with the maximum practical speed until every family in this island has a good standard of accommodation. That may well mean centralising and pooling of building materials and components by the State, together with price control. If that is necessary to get the houses as it was necessary to get the guns and planes, Labour is ready.
There should be a Department of Housing and Planning combining the housing powers of the Department of Health with the planning powers of the Department of the Environment; and there must be a firm and united Government policy to enable the Department of Work and Pensions to function as an efficient instrument in the service of all departments with building needs and of the nation as a whole.
In the interests of agriculture, housing and town and country planning alike, we declare for a radical solution for the crippling problems of land acquisition and use in the service of the national plan. Labour believes in land nationalisation and will work towards it in every way possible until it has been achieved.
Labour will put into force the necessary legislation to ensure free education, including free “further”, “tertiary” or “adult” education for all. And, above all, let us remember that the great purpose of education is to give us individual citizens capable of thinking for themselves.
In the revitalized National Health Service there should be health centres where the people may get the best that modern medicine can offer, more and better hospitals, and proper conditions for our doctors and nurses. More research is required into the causes of disease and the ways to prevent and cure it.
But great national programmes of education, health and social services are costly things. Only an efficient and prosperous nation can afford them in full measure. If, unhappily, bad times were to come, and our opponents were in power, then, running true to form, they would be likely to cut these social provisions on the plea that the nation could not meet the cost. That was the line they adopted on at least three occasions between the two World Wars.
We must consolidate in peace the great war-time association of the British Commonwealth with the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Let it not be forgotten that in the years leading up to the war the Tories were so scared of Russia that they missed the chance to establish a partnership which might well have prevented the war.
Is that way too radical do you think? Does all the talk about “hard faced men and their political friends” – who feel no responsibility to the nation, who control the government and operate totalitarian oligarchies within our democratic state – sound way too much like conspiracy theory? Does all the talk about “profiteers and racketeers” sound too much like hate speech and incitement to Class War, verging on Domestic Extremism and Terrorism even?
To modern sensibilities it probably does. How many current Labour MPs would approve of anything like that now? It’s way too extremist and fundamentalist for the policy makers and power brokers in the current Labour Party ever to consider putting in their 2015 Election Manifesto certainly.
Which is strange, when you think about it, because, apart from the introductory few paragraphs, which have been updated to the present time, it’s almost word-for-word the very same Labour Election Manifesto that won that landslide victory for the first ever Labour majority government 70 years ago in 1945.
Which makes you wonder. Why did the BBC and all the political parties make such a fuss about celebrating the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, but nobody has mentioned anything about the 70th anniversary of either the end of the Second World War or the landslide victory for the first-ever majority Labour Government?
You can understand why the Conservative Party might want to sweep all that under the carpet. But what about the BBC and the Labour Party? The can’t both be in bed with the profiteers and racketeers, can they?
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7 thoughts on “What Labour’s 2015 Election Manifesto Won’t Be Saying”
I did enjoy this timely reminder of what the Labour party actually used to stand for. I’m of an age to remember some of the many dedicated MPs who spent their working life trying to bring about change that would improve the lives of working people. They seem like the ‘disappeared’ now, I hardly recognise voices outside of the cartel at the top. Your blog evokes a time when ordinary people really felt they were making a difference and seeing the results! What we have now is such a shut down of truth and such an abundance of lies that even Kafka wouldn’t recognise the present state of affairs! They have taken us to war, destroyed our economy and as you so rightly say, put immense power into the hands of the nameless…actually they are daily named these days as the wonderfully abstract 1%. And oh would I like to vote Labour, but I don’t recognise a party that deserves that name. I would vote for Syriza if I could!
There are an awful lot of people who would vote for SYRIZA if they could. Which raises the question, why haven’t all the left-leaning folk who aren’t part of New Labour banded together into a coalition – as SYRIZA did – to offer us that choice? Until they do, we can only choose between the lesser of two or three evils.
Russell Brand became the target for a lot of venom and derision from the chattering classes for urging people not to vote. But if you can only vote for one kind of evil or another, why would anybody want to do that?
devan maistry says:
Britain needs to rebuild a mass movement capable of dislodging a parasitic elite. A sensible and hopeful program of 70 years ago is if anything far more achievable now. It’s time to say goodbye to deference and jettison any residual respect for a pseudo-democracy intended to crush imagination and entrench exploitation. Disenchantment is growing, especially in that most powerful constituency of youthful idealism. The confidence of a ruling class ensconced in gated communities is being threatened in Europe. It can be easily broken in Britain. The time is ripe.
I agree. Britain does need to build a mass movement capable of dislodging a parasitic elite. Which raises the question: How can that be achieved and why hasn’t it happened before now?
I think there are two main obstacles to be overcome:
The lack of awareness of the average voter of some simple facts hidden in plain sight.
What percentage, for instance, know that cutting social provisions on the plea that the nation could not meet the cost was the line adopted on at least three occasions between the two World Wars – before the Welfare State was even formed! The Core Curriculum and corporatization of the education system have ensured you can graduate with a history degree and still never know that.
The inability of left-leaning groups to forget their differences and come together for a common cause. The Greek election proved that. Other left-leaning parties wouldn’t compromise their own positions in the interests of coming together to fight austerity, so SYRIZA had to form a coalition with the right-wing ANEL. How many of Britain’s lefties could contemplate doing anything like that?
I listened to various news items today on the subject of tax evasion and HSBC being caught out as they colluded to syphoning millions in unpaid taxes into safe havens. As Mr Gauke explained what a jolly good chap Mr Green was and how he had done his best and deserved his peerage and these things were all very difficult etc etc etc, I was reminded why the “parasitic elite” are doing so nicely thank you. I hear Victor Mildrew shouting from the back stalls…”I don’t believe it!” You couldn’t make it up could you!
We couldn’t make it up because we don’t make the laws, but the “parasitic elite” can and do.
One of the simple facts hidden right underneath our noses, which I bet none of the BBC news items you listened to saw fit to mention, is that the Chair of the BBC Trust, Rona Fairhead, is a Director of HSBC!
Not only that, but she was also chair of HSBC‘s risk committee at the time they were laundering money for terrorists and Mexican drug cartels!
The Daily Mail covered that story: New BBC chief sued over allegations HSBC laundered terrorists and drug cartels’ money
In contrast The Guardian adopted its typical world-weary cynicism about her vast wealth and political connections, but studiously avoided any mention of tax evasion or money laundering: Rona Fairhead is an instant ratings success with MPs
The Chris Patten show has been unpopular in Westminster for years, but Fairhead has made an excellent premiere.
Interesting that, don’t you think?
Rona Fairhead eh, I’ve just read her profile published by the BBC, yep she’s got it all, not just HSBC, but ICI and Pepsi Cola and a non executive director of the Cabinet Office board and a wealthy conservative husband and a house in Notting Hill. Well perfect candidate I’d say for someone dealing with licence fee questions and executive pay. Aren’t we lucky to have the BBC Trust in such capable and trustworthy hands. All that HSBC experience will come in so handy as she oversees the renewal of the BBC’s Royal Charter and its obligations to the public.
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Schubert's Piano Trio: Easing the "Miserable Human Condition"
“With Labor Day approaching, marking the traditional end of summer, this week’s dose of great music will be the final one. We are starting to look ahead with cautious optimism and are planning to present our season 2020-'21 in compliance with the government guidance on social distancing, face coverings and limits on gatherings.
After 24 weekly doses of great music, we’d like to finish this series with the uplifting Piano Trio in B Flat Major by Franz Schubert. Robert Schumann famously wrote about this piece: 'a glance at Schubert’s trio and all miserable human condition vanishes and the world shines in a new splendour.' It is our hope that you will find a much needed life-affirming energy and inspiration in this glorious music.” – Peter Sirotin, Market Square Concerts Director.
This performance of Schubert's B-flat Major Piano Trio – whether you want to call it No. 1, Op.99 or D.898 – featured violinist Peter Sirotin, cellist Cheng-Hou Lee, and pianist Ya-Ting Chang, recorded at Market Square Presbyterian Church on July 17th, 2015, by Newman Stare.
A four-movement work, it begins with a striking and optimistic first movement, followed by one of the most beautifully expansive slow movements Schubert ever composed (beginning at 11:24). A lively scherzo with its gentle, folk-like middle section (beginning at 20:08, the brief 'trio' at 23:17) precedes a high-spirited, dance-like Finale (which begins at 27:07).
To anyone who took one of those Facebook Quizzes in the summer of 2015 asking “Where Will You Be in Five Years” – did anybody get it right?
Probably not what you were expecting, either...
Five years ago, for the original post about the Schubert Trio's concert, the current news seemed grim enough. Compare this to what we're experiencing today.
It may be a lot to expect that one or two pieces of music would make all the anxiety we feel watching the evening news go away – whether it's the spread of ISIS, the Greek Debt Crisis, “climate change” (void where prohibited by law), or the fact that cancer can exist, and that's without even mentioning drugs, crime or presidential campaigns.
To some, those who use music to make “the troubles of our human existence disappear” would be labeled as escapists (because everybody needs a label) yet to find out how necessary that idea is to Americans today, all you have to do is turn on the TV.
Of course, there are different ways of escaping: you could be watching The Amazing Ninja Bachelor Survival Chase on most network channels or you could be watching the latest Masterpiece Mystery on your local BBC affiliate – just as you might prefer reading a book, whether it's Another Shame of Gray or Proust's In Search of Lost Time.
So, let Schubert and his Piano Trio in B-flat “take you away from all this.”
To counter claims of “escapism,” I like to point out that without balance, things – including us – would fall down. Or apart (“the center cannot hold” as Yeats expressed it after World War I). The suicide rate would greatly increase, I suspect, if all we had was The News to watch and read. That's why they invented the internet – so we could amuse ourselves with endless cat videos, right?
And Classical Music is full of good things that act like antioxidants for the soul – balancing tension with release, and unity with variety (whether harmonic, melodic, or structural), among other things. There's a fast movement followed by a slow movement; the weightier, more intellectually demanding first movement is usually followed by an emotional slow movement, both of which can be balanced by two light-hearted movements, a dance (minuet or scherzo) and, for Schubert, usually a simpler, often child-like fourth movement to give everything, even dramatic first movements, a happy ending. Plus there are loud passages followed by soft passages, complex harmonic passages resolving to simpler, more direct harmonies, modulations to other keys and, eventually, returns to the home tonic – it's not all one or the other.
There are reasons for that – because, before they invented listening systems you could plug directly into your ears, that was the way people listened and needed the respite from one or the other. A three-minute rock song blasting away may be one thing, but a half-hour-long piece of chamber music (much less an hour-long symphony) has to approach the listener differently and it does this through balance.
While there is, of course, the musical equivalent of broccoli (and others may consider serialism a little too high-fiber for their tastes), a musical diet that offers you some of the finest works by some of the greatest composers can offer a good balance as well, even in a single composition.
Franz Schubert, painted in 1825
Schubert, technically, was born in the 18th Century – 1797, so just barely – but that doesn't make him an 18th-Century composer. Beethoven, born over 26 years earlier, was already working on his first great masterpieces (like the Op. 18 String Quartets; the 1st Symphony was just around the corner) around the time Schubert was born in another part of Vienna. But where Beethoven was already “not sounding like an 18th-Century composer,” much to the chagrin of his teacher, Haydn, the epitome of the 18th Century, many of Schubert's works – especially his early symphonies and string quartets – had a distinctly Haydnesque appeal to them up until the music he began writing in the mid-1820s: his early music possessed clear textures, well-balanced and equally clear structures, and an essentially direct harmonic language, all trademarks of the classical style.
Around the same time Beethoven, now in his 50s, had begun those monumental Late Quartets, Schubert finally left the 18th-Century ideal to explore his own monumental late works, expanding not just the length of the music and how far he could stretch it but also the harmonic language and how it related to the overall forms both composers had inherited from the past.
In the Good Old Days, composers didn't write one piece at a time – think of Haydn's quartets (usually a half-dozen in a set) or those “London” Symphonies (two sets of six written for separate visits). Even Beethoven wrote six quartets for his first published set, Op. 18, and there were three written for Count Razumovsky.
Beethoven often conceived his symphonies in contrasting pairs – if not the Eroica & the 4th, certainly the 5th & 6th, the 7th & 8th, and the epic 9th & the barely begun 10th, left in sketches when he died in 1827 at the age of 56.
Schubert, whether he planned them that way or not, wrote his two piano trios, concurrently or consecutively, around the same time period following Beethoven's death. In fact, there's a fair bit of debate about which trio came first and which one might have been performed on the only concert of his music he was ever to give in his lifetime, that epic program on March 26, 1828 (the first anniversary, as it turned out, of Beethoven's death).
Even though there are differences, they are not so different in the way they're written – not at least the kind of contrasts that you would find between Beethoven's 5th & 6th Symphonies or even within a set of six string quartets. But yet, neither sounds derivative of the other, given our age for sequels and prequels.
Schubert, who could write several different settings of the same poem, firmly believed (like most good composers before him) there were many ways to skin a sonata, not just churning out one piece after another all built to the same mold. This "sonata form" was the traditional structural outline on which you stretched out all your thematic and harmonic ideas for the serious opening movement of any multi-movement abstract work, whether it's a sonata, a symphony, or a piano trio (as well as many of Schubert's seemingly non-abstract works that defied the idea of a sonata like the “Wanderer Fantasy,” among other “fantasies” which are still, regardless of not being called sonatas, essentially sonata-like four-movement works).
Schubert (r.) with friends J.B. Jenger & Anselm Huttenbrenner (1827)
Schubert composed two piano trios which were published eight years after his death as Op. 99 in B-flat and Op. 100 in E-flat, making the pairing even more obvious even though it's a fairly arbitrary coincidence. The cataloguer Otto Deutsch numbered the E-flat Trio (completed in November 1827 and first heard the following month at Vienna's Musikverein) as D.929 but the B-flat Trio (whose manuscript has been lost and which may have been composed sometime during the year 1827 – some sources suggest it was written in October but there is no proof of that) as D.898.
Of the works listed between D.898 and D.929 in the Deutsch catalog (originally published in 1950-1951), there are six lesser-known, mostly short piano pieces as well as the famous set of Four Impromptus (D.899), 22 songs and part-songs as well as the 24 individual songs that make up the magnificent song cycle, Winterreise (D.910), plus 88 pages of an unfinished opera, one of many such opera projects Schubert tried and abandoned. But even the placement of the B-flat Trio in this catalog is not an indication of chronology, since the first four works on this list can only be marked "1827(?)" with no more conclusive dates. Considering we know Schubert was working on the extremely dark poems that make up Winterreise between February and October, 1827, could this brilliant and optimistic Piano Trio – thinking of Schumann's words about the vanishing of the "miserable human condition" which Peter quoted in his introduction – have been written simultaneously with the dark and ultimately pessimistic song cycle? (Can there be a more desolate conclusion than that final song, Der Leiermann...?)
Another historical fact to consider, thinking how composers must work in the real world, not the “fantasy vacuum” most of us assume the creative “ivory tower” to be, the great Beethoven had died on March 26th, 1827, and Schubert, who by this time in his life revered him, was one of his pallbearers at the funeral three days later. These two trios, as well as most of Schubert's major works written during his last few years, could never have been written without Beethoven's influence.
Little did Schubert know he would not outlive the next year, dying on November 19th, 1828, at the age of 31. But the large number of works he composed in that final year include some of his finest. It is difficult to imagine anyone of any age writing that many masterpieces in so short a space under such circumstances, but that is another story to contemplate for another time.
Schubert's Piano Trio: Easing the "Miserable Human...
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InReview: Knowing what you don't know
Hamish Douglass, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer, reflects on the last six months and explains why a framework of analysing 'known unknowns', when applied to the coronavirus pandemic, should lead investors to be cautious.
"This thing is different. Everybody talks as if they know what’s going to happen and nobody knows what’s going to happen.” Charlie Munger, 17 April 2020
Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Secretary of Defense in the administrations of George W Bush and Gerald Ford, provided a useful framework to evaluate problems when he stated: “Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know.” It is valuable in deciding on a course of action to have a framework of known knowns and known unknowns about the situation or opportunity. Known unknowns could have material or immaterial consequences if they were to occur and you need to have a reasonable basis to assess their impact and likelihood of occurrence.
At Magellan, our task is to carefully assess facts, known and unknown, and then decide what course of action to take. In some circumstances, we will be optimistic when others are fearful and in other situations the reverse will apply. We are not predisposed to action, nor are we driven by a fear of missing out, nor by a concern that we might underperform a benchmark in the short term. We will do what we assess is the appropriate course of action, after a careful assessment of the facts, and not what other people are doing or saying. We suspect this might have been the failing of the George W Bush administration in deciding to invade Iraq as it appeared predisposed to action.
The Rumsfeld framework is useful in assessing what course of action we should take at the present time. I have set out what we know and what we don’t know about the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 virus (SARS-CoV-2), the search for a cure and the economic impact of the pandemic. The analysis will show why the many known unknowns are making us cautious.
It is helpful to explain the nomenclature for the virus and the disease it causes. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus and covid-19 is the disease it causes. This is analogous to HIV being the virus that results in the AIDS disease.
THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS THAT CAUSES THE ILLNESS KNOWN AS COVID-19:
The SARS-CoV-2 virus is highly contagious, spreads early and often before the host shows any symptoms. This makes it harder to control than other coronaviruses, such as the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and other deadly viruses such as Ebola and HIV. The severity of the covid-19 disease ranges from asymptomatic cases and very mild cases to severe and deadly ones, particularly for the elderly and people who have underlying health conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It is estimated about 5% of people infected with covid-19 progress to a severe case of the disease.
The pandemic is global with 188 countries affected. As at July 1, there had been over 10 million cases identified and over 500,000 reported deaths. There are some countries (including Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam) that have substantially contained the virus with limited ongoing spread. There are other countries with declining levels of transmission but they are still experiencing substantial community spread; these countries include much of Europe and the UK. In other countries, the disease is still accelerating including much of Asia (with concerning trends appearing in India and Indonesia), Africa, the Middle East and much of Latin America (especially in Chile, Brazil and Mexico) and the US.
In response to the mounting economic cost and community pressure, many countries have commenced reopening their economies by removing restrictions on the movement and gatherings of people. In many cases, restrictions are being lifted prior to the virus being contained. By the end of June, 40 US states had experienced an accelerating rate of incidence and increasing hospitalisations while restrictions were being relaxed.
HERE IS A LONGER LIST OF THINGS WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS:
How will mutations affect the behaviour of the virus? There is some evidence that mutations have made the virus more infectious. It is unknown if mutations will make the virus more, or less, deadly. The rate and nature of mutations are important issues in the search for a vaccine.
Are people immune if they have had the virus or will their immunity fade over time and can they be reinfected? Some scientists believe that with coronaviruses people can become reinfected.
How many people have been infected who have not been identified? If infections are much more prevalent than thought then it is possible some countries could be closer to achieving community or ‘herd’ immunity, assuming people cannot be reinfected.
In the absence of a vaccine, how long will it take to achieve global herd immunity? The 1918-19 Spanish Flu lasted about 12 months in the US and spread in three waves – the first wave occurred in March 1918, the second wave in the northern winter of 1918 starting in October and the third wave in March 1919. Will the lockdown measures in many countries and voluntary social-distancing measures elongate the time frame for herd immunity?
Will the opening of economies, protests and other gatherings lead to an acceleration of community transmission? Will it be possible to ‘contact trace’ all the people any infected protestor was near?
How large will the pandemic become in the Middle East, Central and South America, Africa and Asia (excluding China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan)? The transmission of the virus appears to be accelerating in many countries in these regions. Can it be contained given the limited ability to test, ‘contact trace’ and self-isolate? How large will be the loss of life given the limited hospital facilities to treat patients?
Which countries will suffer a second wave of infection? This appears to be occurring already in countries that are reopening prior to controlling community transmission to minimal levels.
Will there be a second wave of infections in the northern hemisphere winter later this year, as happened with the 1918-19 Spanish Flu?
Is it possible to reopen borders, or create travel bubbles between certain countries, prior to a vaccine, without triggering a second wave of infection?
Will testing, contact tracing and isolation contain a second wave? Some countries such as China and South Korea appear to have effective testing and contact-tracing infrastructure. Which other countries will be able to replicate this infrastructure? What will be the uptake of contract tracing apps in countries where they are voluntary?
How might governments respond to a second wave of infection? Will countries reintroduce lockdowns? Will governments provide similar amounts of financial support to those affected as was provided in the first wave? How will people respond to a second wave? Will people self-isolate even if governments don’t reintroduce lockdown measures?
A CURE
THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT A POSSIBLE CURE:
There is no known cure for covid-19 but there are three possible solutions – herd immunity, a vaccine and therapeutic treatments.
To achieve herd immunity, it is considered that 60% to 70% of the population would need to develop antibodies to the virus either via infection or vaccination. Given the mitigation measures being taken in many countries around the world, it is possible global herd immunity could take years in the absence of a vaccine. This of course assumes that a person cannot be reinfected.
In relation to the possibility of, and time frame for, developing a vaccine there is some encouraging news:
The virus appears to be mutating slowly. This is a significant advantage over the HIV virus. No vaccine for HIV has been developed in nearly 40 years of research.
Scientists are not starting from scratch in developing a vaccine. They understand that similar to MERS and SARS the virus has a spike-like structure on its surface called the S protein that attaches to the surface of human cells. After entering a cell, the virus delays the usual immune response, allowing the virus to spread. A vaccine that targets the S protein would prevent it from binding to human cells and stop the virus from spreading.
The scale of vaccine development is encouraging. Reportedly more than 120 different vaccines are under development and 10 vaccines are under clinical evaluation. Regulatory bodies are allowing accelerated clinical trials and governments are funding investment in vaccine production technology and manufacturing capabilities.
A sobering reality is that no vaccine has been developed for any of the known coronaviruses. There are three approaches to developing a vaccine. They are:
Live vaccines that use a weakened form of the virus to cause an immune response without causing the disease. Live vaccines are used for measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox and chickenpox. Live vaccines require extensive safety testing.
Inactivated vaccines that use a killed version of the germ that causes the disease to trigger an immune response. Inactivated vaccines are used to prevent the flu, hepatitis A and rabies. These vaccines usually result in lower immune response and require multiple boosters to provide long-term immunity. The most well-publicised inactive vaccine under development is the ChAdOx1 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford Jenner Institute. This vaccine was developed for the MERS virus, a coronavirus closely related to SARS-CoV-2. A clinical test in chimpanzees showed that no animals treated with this vaccine developed signs of MERS. The vaccine is being studied in phase I human trials in the UK and Saudi Arabia.
Genetically engineered vaccines that use genetically engineered RNA or DNA to instruct cells to make copies of the S protein to prompt an immune response to the virus. US-based biotech company Moderna Inc is developing and trialling a genetically engineered vaccine known as mRNA-1273. The vaccine has undergone an initial phase l clinical trial involving 45 adults aged 18 to 55. Preliminary results showed eight patients developed antibodies to the virus. The trial is being expanded to 60 people aged over 55 years old. Moderna has announced that it intends to commence a phase III clinical trial involving 30,000 participants commencing in July. On July 1, Pfizer and BioNTech announced they have commenced phase III clinical trials for a similar genetically engineered vaccine. No genetically engineered vaccine has been approved for human use to date.
There are significant challenges to developing a vaccine.
To ensure safety for a vaccine to be given to billions of people, it will need to be thoroughly tested via extensive clinical trials. Any vaccine will need to go through three phases of clinical testing; phase I is a small trial to test the safety of the vaccine in humans; phase II is to test the formulation and establish the dose of the vaccine to prove effectiveness; and phase III is where safety and efficacy is established in a wide population. While regulators are attempting to short-cut the approval process, it is unlikely a vaccine will be approved for wide use in fewer than six months from commencing clinical trials. Many experts do not believe a vaccine will be widely available to the public until sometime in 2021 at the earliest.
To be effective, a vaccine will need to provide people with long-term protection. There are no clinical short cuts to testing the long-term effectiveness of a vaccine and it can only be done by time-based longitudinal studies.
A particular challenge for finding an effective vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 is to have a vaccine that is effective and safe for elderly people, given the significantly higher mortality rates for older people. The concern is that the elderly don’t usually respond as well as young people to many vaccines.
There are over 200 potential therapeutics being tested in more than 1,100 clinical trials. To date, none of the therapeutic drugs that have been evaluated for the treatment of covid-19 have proven to be effective cures. Therapeutics can target the virus or the host’s immune response at different stages of the disease. Simplistically, various drugs are being tested that can be used at the initial or latter stages of the disease:
There are numerous drugs and therapies being developed to prevent progression of covid-19 in its initial stage. As at mid-June, only one drug, Remdesivir, had ‘emergency use authorisation’ by the US Food and Drug Administration. Similar approval for hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine was withdrawn on June 15.
Remdesivir is an antiviral medication that was originally developed by the US-based Gilead Sciences for the treatment of hepatitis C. It was subsequently trialled in the treatment of Ebola and has shown effectiveness in the laboratory and in animal tests as an antiviral against various coronaviruses. A recent clinical study showed that Remdesivir appeared effective in shortening hospital recovery time for patients with covid-19 (from 15 to 11 days) but did not materially alter mortality outcomes. The clinical study concluded that treating covid-19 with an antiviral drug alone is unlikely to be sufficient.
There is significant research being undertaken for the development of harvested or manufactured antibodies (either convalescent plasma or monoclonal antibodies) for the treatment of covid-19. Convalescent plasma or monoclonal antibodies are injected into patients to trigger the immune response to fight the disease. Monoclonal antibodies are the most effective treatment for Ebola. There are several phase I clinical trials of monoclonal antibodies being undertaken. The drawback of convalescent plasma and monoclonal antibodies is they are unstable and will be effective only as long as the antibodies are alive. Numerous medical experts believe manufactured antibodies could be a temporary solution to protect health and other ‘front line’ workers who are at high risk of being infected and to treat infected people.
There are several drugs being used during the progression of covid-19 to treat its medical complications. Drugs are being tested to:
suppress the immune response that is associated with the exaggerated immune response ‘cytokine storm’ that leads to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Drugs being tested include anti-cytokine therapies and anti-inflammatory therapies that suppress immune response. In June, the University of Oxford announced it had undertaken a trial that showed Dexamethasone, an anti-inflammatory steroid, was effective in reducing mortality. For patients on ventilators, the steroid reduced the risk of death from 40% to 28%. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%; and
address life-threatening complications such as blood clots. Drugs being tested include anti-clotting agents such as Heparin.
Based on experience with the treatment of viruses where no vaccine exists such as HIV, hepatitis C and influenza, it is likely a combination of therapeutic drugs will be required for the effective treatment of covid-19.
THIS IS WHAT WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT A CURE:
Will scientists be successful in finding a vaccine? In 1984, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services predicted that a vaccine for HIV would be found within two years. Thirty-six years later no vaccine has been discovered for HIV because the way the virus mutates in a single infection makes finding a vaccine difficult. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 appears to mutate slowly. The bad news is that no vaccine has ever been developed for the known coronaviruses.
How long will it take to test the safety and efficacy of a vaccine for a widespread rollout? To effectively test the safety and efficacy of a vaccine, extensive human trials will need to be undertaken across a wide cross-section of people. There are few short cuts to full-scale randomised human phase III trials and no short cuts for time-based longitudinal studies.
How long will it take to scale manufacturing to billions of doses of the vaccine?
Will a vaccine provide effective protection for elderly people? A vaccine that is not effective for older people will have more limited efficacy given the materially increased mortality rates of covid-19 for people over 65. It is therefore possible that a vaccine will not provide universal protection to all age groups.
What level of immune response do coronavirus vaccines need to elicit to confer protection? The answer to this question has been elusive among coronaviruses.
How long will protection last once someone has been immunised? Can a person be reinfected once they have recovered from covid-19? Some scientists believe that even after infection with coronaviruses reinfection can occur.
Will a vaccine trigger a life-threatening response in some people? Some animal studies suggest that certain SARS and MERS vaccines might upon viral challenge be associated with eosinophilic pulmonary infiltrates lung disease. The dengue fever vaccine triggered a life-threatening response in some children and was pulled post launch.
Will doctors find a combination of existing therapeutic drugs that materially improves the standard of care, substantially reducing mortality rates, in the next six to 12 months? The time frame for discovery and approval of a new therapeutic drug means that it is extremely unlikely any new drugs will be available within the next 12 to 18 months.
Will manufactured or harvested antibodies be effective to trigger a sufficient immune response to protect people against the virus? How long will protection last? Will manufactured or harvested antibodies, if effective, be widely available within 12 months or will they only have limited application for some front-line workers and gravely ill people? Will an antibody treatment be effective in a gravely ill person or might it trigger an exaggerated immune response?
How many people will be willing to have any vaccine, especially if it has been developed on an accelerated time frame, which would limit the knowledge of the potential risks associated with getting it?
In the event of a vaccine, how will groups such as anti-vaxxers and state actors use social media to influence outcomes away from scientific and government advice? There is evidence that state actors have already promoted misinformation on the pandemic in social media to sow discord.
THE ECONOMIC IMPACT
The economic impact from the pandemic and the response from policymakers have no parallels in modern economic history. There are many variables that will have a material effect on the depth of the economic downturn and the shape of the economic recovery.
THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE ECONOMIC IMPACT:
The response to the pandemic has resulted in the largest reported loss of economic output in modern history in many countries. In April, industrial production in the EU plunged by 17% from March and gross domestic product (GDP) collapsed by 20% in the UK. The World Bank’s central case is for a 5.2% contraction in global GDP in 2020, which would mean the deepest global recession in decades, despite the extraordinary support from governments and central banks.
The government and consumer responses to the pandemic have resulted in massive job losses in many countries. The reported unemployment in the US has jumped to 11.1% in June from 3.7% a year earlier, resulting in the loss of about 15 million jobs. (The total number of people employed in the US has dropped from 157 million in June last year to 142 million in June this year.)
The fiscal response in many developed countries has broadly ranged from 1% to 10% of GDP. In most countries, the fiscal response to date has been materially less than the forecast contraction in output, which means the remainder of the burden of the contraction is being borne by individuals and businesses through a material loss of income. The fiscal support from many countries broadly falls into the following categories:
supplemental unemployment payments, such as Australia’s JobSeeker supplement;
programs to subsidise wages to keep people employed during the pandemic, such as Australia’s JobKeeper Program, the US’s Paycheck Protection Program and the UK’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme;
grants and interest-free loans to small businesses;
deferrals of tax payments for businesses; and
payments to individuals.
The major central banks have taken aggressive action to:
ensure the financial system has sufficient liquidity to function;
loosen monetary policy via reductions in policy rates. For example, the US Federal Reserve has reduced the overnight cash rate by 1.5 percentage points to between 0% to 0.25%;
implement large asset-buying programs (via quantitative easing) to inject liquidity, lower long-term interest rates and to support fiscal policies. Since February to mid-June, the Fed, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan had collectively purchased US$3.7 trillion of assets under their quantitative-easing programs; and
provide credit support for investment-grade companies to refinance and issue debt.
Central banks are expected to keep interest rates at very low levels for many years. In June, the Fed said it expects to keep its policy rate at zero at least until the end of 2022.
In many countries, banks and landlords have been required to defer loan and interest repayments and defer foreclosures and evictions during the pandemic.
Consumer expenditure appears to be rebounding as governments relax restrictions and economies reopen. Mastercard has released data that indicated that payment volume on its payment network in the US has improved from minus 18% in April (compared with a year earlier) to an increase of 5% in the week ended June 21. In the rest of the world, Mastercard numbers improved from minus 27% in April to minus 5% in the week ended June 21.
HERE’S WHAT WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE ECONOMIC IMPACT:
What is the true level of unemployment? Millions of people remain employed with their wages being subsidised by government-funded job-protection programs. How many more people would be unemployed in the absence of these programs? For example, 10 million people in the UK are receiving state wage subsidies as are millions of Australians, Americans and Europeans. How many people will businesses let go when government wage-subsidy programs expire? Will these programs be extended and, if so, for how long? Australia has announced that it will not extend these programs outside of a few heavily hit industries such as tourism.
In many countries, there are supplemental unemployment benefits being paid to people out of work. What is the stimulus impact of the supplemental unemployment benefits? What will be the economic impact when unemployment benefits are reduced to normal levels?
What will be the economic impact if there is a material second wave of infections?
How will consumers and businesses change their behaviour post the pandemic? Will the pandemic shock lead to a prolonged increase in the savings rate? Will consumers stop travelling even after the reopening of borders before a vaccine is widely distributed? Will business substantially reduce expenditure on travel and conferences and adopt video conferences and virtual conferences? Will business reduce their real-estate footprint by adopting work-from-home practices?
Will increasing tensions with China lead to a material pull back in expenditure by Chinese nationals on tourism and education in certain countries?
As the economic fallout from the pandemic becomes clearer, will governments continue to run extremely large fiscal deficits for prolonged periods or will they wind back spending? Will there need to be other fiscal adjustments such as increased taxes?
How will banks respond at the end of servicing holidays? Can they continue to ‘extend and pretend’ or will they need to foreclose on borrowers? How long will they hold off on foreclosing? How many businesses and consumers will go bankrupt?
What will be the impact of credit downgrades of borrowers from investment grade to sub-investment grade? Could this lead to the ‘fallen angel crisis’ resulting in substantial losses for debt investors? How will central banks respond to such a crisis?
Notwithstanding unprecedented central-bank support, there are limitations on what central banks can do. What is the risk of an emerging-market currency crisis? The Fed is providing US dollars to many emerging countries via cross-currency swaps secured via US Treasuries held by the emerging country seeking US dollars. What is the risk of emerging countries running out of acceptable US-dollar collateral to obtain US dollars from the Fed? Could this trigger a collapse in the currency of an emerging market? How will the Fed be able to provide US dollars to emerging countries without acceptable collateral? The acceleration of the virus in many emerging markets may be increasing this risk. Other risks that may be hard for central banks to contain include large defaults or credit downgrades in the high-yield markets and defaults of structured products, particularly collateralised loan obligations.
What is the risk of a European sovereign debt crisis if the situation deteriorates?
Will commercial and retailing rents collapse? What will happen to property prices?
Will inflation and interest rates remain low for the foreseeable future as expected or will the large government deficits financed with large increases in the size of central-bank balance sheets lead to inflation?
How will the pandemic influence domestic and global politics, particularly given the erosion of globalisation and increasing sensitivities around trade?
WHAT IS OUR RISK APPETITE?
We remain cautious and have positioned our portfolios to withstand a further downturn in the economic outlook and markets. We don’t know whether the world is on a bridge to recovery or on a bridge with a cliff at the other end. As we don’t know, we will not speculate or gamble with our clients’ money. We understand the limits of our knowledge. We have no fear of missing out. We feel it is prudent to be cautious when we cannot assess the probabilities of the pathway forward. The events of the past six months are without precedent and the way forward is subject to a multitude of highly uncertain, complex and interdependent variables. This means the range of potential outcomes remains vast. Due to the extreme uncertainty pertaining to so many critical interconnected variables, we have no reasonable way of assessing what the economic impact will be in the next 12 to 18 months. There is a tendency for people to simplify highly complex matters.
This is understandable. Many investors have been gaining in confidence following the massive government stimulus and central-bank support, the move by many countries to reopen their economies, the strong recovery of equity markets from the nadir in March and the positive headlines on numerous vaccines and therapeutics. In simple terms, it could appear the worst is over. Unfortunately, the current situation is highly fluid and we don’t believe there is any way of assessing whether the worst is behind us. There are simply too many known unknowns with material consequences. As Albert Einstein said: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
It is plausible that we will have a widely distributed vaccine, or a widely available effective therapeutic, the economic bridges put in place by governments and central banks will prove effective, and an economic recovery will be well under way within the next 12 months. It is also possible that we will not have a vaccine or a widely available effective therapeutic within this time frame and a cure might be years away, and a second or even a third wave of infections occur in many countries later this year or next year, banks start foreclosing on borrowers, tenants default on rental obligations, credit-ratings agencies downgrade hundreds of billions of dollars of debt from investment grade to sub-investment grade, companies cut back on expenditure forcing more job losses, emerging markets enter crisis territory and the world enters a very deep and multi-year prolonged recession. The answer to which pathway the world heads down in large part depends on the course of the virus and this will depend upon science (and the leading scientists do not have the answers). The most dangerous thing to do is to be overconfident that you know the answers to critical questions when it is not possible to know the answers with the limited state of knowledge. Margaret Thatcher said: “Those who think that they know, but are mistaken, and act upon their mistakes, are the most dangerous people to have in charge.”
Even if we get an early breakthrough and we get an early vaccine or therapeutic, investors need to assess what might happen at the end of the government-funded ‘economic bridge’. There are vast numbers of people and businesses that are surviving on government support. Once this pandemic passes this support will inevitably be removed and it is difficult to predict what will happen when this support is taken away. This will depend upon many variables that are almost impossible to predict. These include the scale of the lost economic output, the extent of change in consumer behaviour as a result of the pandemic (and again this will also be interdependent on the duration of the pandemic and the scale of economic loss), actions taken by business to cut costs as a result of losses suffered from the pandemic (the extent of cuts will be a function of the duration of the pandemic, the scale of loss, the level of unemployment, the propensity of consumers to spend and other changes in consumer behaviour; for example, an acceleration of online commerce could result in permanent job losses at many traditional retailers) and the extent of business failures. The extent of business failures will depend upon, among other things, the duration of the pandemic, the level of ongoing government assistance, changes to consumer behaviour resulting from the pandemic, and forbearance by banks and landlords in response to financial stress.
Investors should not take any comfort in the fact that world markets rallied 39% by the end of June from their nadir in March nor take comfort from the reopening of economies around the world or apparently positive news on the development of a vaccine or cure. There are simply too many interdependent uncertain variables in play at present. It isn’t unusual during an extended crisis for markets to bounce strongly followed by a second sharp sell off. While we do not know how things will play out, investors should be prepared for a wide range of potential outcomes in the next 12 months. There is a real possibility of a collapse in equity markets, just as there is for a continued grind higher in equities supported by low interest rates. These aren’t predictions but warnings that such outcomes are foreseeable at present.
Given the complexity and uncertainty of the situation, we are taking a cautious positioning until we can more clearly assess the probabilities on the pathway forward. We feel it is best to heed the sage advice of Warren Buffett when he said: “To finish first, you must first finish.”
Chairman and Chief Investment Officer
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Difference between revisions of "Geoglobus ahangari"
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Page authored by Abigail Entz and Sara Dolmetsch, students of [http://www.kbs.msu.edu/faculty/lennon/ Prof. Jay Lennon] at Michigan State University.
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This student page has not been curated.
4 Cell Structure, Metabolism and Life Cycle
5 Ecology and Pathogenesis
Domain Archaea; Phylum Euryarchaeota; Class Archaeoglobi; Order Archaeoglobales; Family Archaeoglobaceae [Others may be used. Use NCBI link to find]
NCBI: Taxonomy
Geoglobus ahangari
Figure 1. Phylogenetic tree that shows the relationship of Geoglobus ahangari to other members of Archaea. Image from [1]
G. ahangari is an anaerobic, coccoid-shaped member of Archaea that ranges from 0.3-0.5 micrometers in diameter. As seen under phase contrast microscopy, the cells are usually found alone or in couples and all have a single flagellum that is used for movement (mainly tumbling motility). Transmission Electron Microscopy releaved that the cell membranes of G. ahangari are similar to other members of Archaea, possesing three layers- a cytoplasmic membrane, a periplasmic space and a layer on the outer surface.
Originally found near a hydrothermal vent in the Gulf of California, G. ahangari is a hyperthermophile that can grow both autotrophically or chemoorganotrophically depending on the available electron sources. It is biologically and ecologically significant because it was the first anaerobe isolated that had the ability to use long-chain fatty acids as a source of energy. It was also the first archaeon cultured to have the ability to generate energy from the coupling of hydrogen gas to the reduction of iron. Geoglobus ahangari is most closely related to members of Ferroglobus and Archaeoglobus, though G. ahangari does not have fluorescent properties.
Figure 2. Single G. ahangari using electron microscopy, bar of 0.5 µm. Image from [2]
Not a lot of information is available on the genome of Geoglobus ahangari. The DNA is known to be about 58.7% GC. By analysis of the 16S DNA, G. ahangari's two closest relatives are believed to be A. fulgidus and A. profundus, with a 96.2% and 94.1% similarity, respectively.
Cell Structure, Metabolism and Life Cycle
Cellular structures of G. ahangari are similar to other archaea. The only notable features of this organism are its one monopolar flagellum that serves motility purposes and its S-layer.
Geoglobus ahangari can operate in an autotrophic sense by using hydrogen as an electron donor while reducing Fe(III) oxide. This process produces extracellular waste in the form of magnetite.
In contrast to autotrophy, G. ahangari also acts as a chemoorganotroph by oxidizing pyruvate, acetate, palmitate or stearate while reducing Fe(III). It also has the ability to oxidize long-chain fatty acids. Both long-chain fatty acids and compounds such as acetate represent byproducts and debris of many other organisms, which G. ahangari uses to drive its own chemical processes.
Figure 3. Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California. Image from [3]
Ecology and Pathogenesis
G. ahangari was originally obtained from a hydrothermal vent at a depth of 2000 meters in Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California. This organism can be isolated using a relatively new technique of incorporating iron oxide into solid medium to be used as an electron acceptor. The environmental ranges for G. ahangari were measured in the lab to be 65-90°C for temperature, 5.0-7.6 for pH, and 9.0-38 g/l NaCl for salinity. Optimal grown occurred at 88°C and a pH of 7.0.
The biogeochemical significance of G. ahangari is related to it's ability to use hydrogen emitted from geothermal marine vents as an electron donor when coupled to iron reduction. This autotrophy with use of Fe(III) oxide results in the accumulation of magnetite.
This organism is susceptible to the antibiotics: trimethoprim, rifampicin, ampicillin, chloramphenicol, penicillin G, and phosphyomycin at all at different concentrations for each. However, cycloheximide, kanamycin, streptomycin, puromycin, novobiocin, and neomycin sulfate failed to inhibit growth of G. ahangari.
K. Kashefi, J. M. Tor, D. E. Holmes, C. V. Gaw Van Praagh, A. L. Reysenbach, and D. R. Lovley. "Geoglobus ahangari gen. nov., sp. nov., a novel hyperthermophilic archaeon capable of oxidizing organic acids and growing autotrophically on hydrogen with Fe(III) serving as the sole electron acceptor". International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology". May 2002; 52: 719 - 728.
Slobodkina GB, Kolganova TV, Querellou J, Bonch-Osmolovskaya EA, Slobodkin AI. "Geoglobus acetivorans sp. nov., an iron(III)-reducing archaeon from a deep-sea hydrothermal vent". "International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology". 2009. Volume 59. p. 2880-2883.
Page authored by Abigail Entz and Sara Dolmetsch, students of Prof. Jay Lennon at Michigan State University.
Retrieved from "https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php?title=Geoglobus_ahangari&oldid=65041"
Uncurated Pages
Pages edited by students of Jay Lennon at Michigan State University
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Posted on November 12, 2015 January 29, 2019 by gpo3
Monti expanding Greenwood County copper busbar, G10, GPO-3, sheet metal fabrication, manufacturing
Electrical industry supplier investing $2.7 million in facility expansion
COLUMBIA, S.C. – Monti, Inc., a leading industrial manufacturer, fabricator and specialized processor of electrical distribution components such as copper busbar fabrications, G10 fabrications, GPO-3 fabrications and sheet metal fabrications, today announced plans to expand its existing Greenwood County operations. The company’s $2.7 million investment is projected to create 19 new jobs.
With more than 40 years of experience serving electrical distribution original equipment manufacturers and service providers, Monti produces a wide range of electrical industry components, including insulators, conductors and steel parts. In addition to its Greenwood County presence, the company is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio and has manufacturing facilities in Sumter, S.C. and Riverview, Mich.
Located at 104 Airport Industrial Park in Greenwood, S.C., the planned 20,000-square-foot facility expansion will include the installation of an automatic powder coating line and other specialized related equipment. Hiring should begin in the fourth quarter of 2018, and interested applicants should visit the company’s careers page online for more information.
“Monti is excited for the opportunity to grow our operations in Greenwood. We believe that the teams we have in both of our South Carolina facilities have proven that they are capable and deserving of much more opportunity. We are proud to have South Carolina as our home for these two facilities and look forward to more investment and growth in the years to come.” –Monti, Inc. COO Jay Binder
“We are extremely proud of all our employees at our Greenwood location. Their efforts and hard work are critical to successfully responding to our customers’ needs. Our commitment to growth in our internal capabilities as well as our continual improvement of the Monti Quality System puts us in a position to deliver the fastest turnaround times. This investment in a fully automated powder coating line will provide our customers with one of the most advanced systems in our local area.” –Monti, Inc. Greenwood Plant Manager Nick LaVigne
“We’re proud to celebrate anytime a company decides to strengthen its commitment to our state and its people. This is a milestone for Monti, Inc. and Greenwood County, and I’m excited to see such a strong partnership continue to thrive moving forward.” –Gov. Henry McMaster
“Today’s expansion announcement by Monti, Inc. is just the latest example of the success our state’s pro-business environment helps to foster. I congratulate this innovative company on their new investment and look forward to all they will achieve in the future.” –Secretary of Commerce Bobby Hitt
“The expansion of Monti’s Greenwood County operations affirm the company’s vested interest in the county and the state. Congratulations to Monti, and we look forward to their continued success in the future.” –Greenwood County Council Chairman Steve Brown
“Monti has been an excellent example of Greenwood County manufacturing. With 25% of our county’s employment in manufacturing, it is always exciting to have that sector grow, especially as a reflection on our great local workforce.” –Greenwood Partnership Alliance Chair Dr. Kristin Manske
FIVE FAST FACTS
Monti, Inc. is expanding operations in Greenwood County.
$2.7 million investment to create 19 new jobs.
Monti, Inc. is a specialized manufacturer and fabricator of conductors, insulators and steel parts for the electrical industry.
The company is adding 20,000 square feet to its existing facility, located at 104 Airport Industrial Park in Greenwood, S.C.
Hiring should begin in the fourth quarter of 2018, and interested applicants should visit the company’s careers page online for more information.
About S.C. Department of Commerce
As South Carolina’s leading economic development agency, the Department of Commerce works to recruit new businesses and help existing business grow. S.C. Commerce has recruited world-class companies to South Carolina such as BMW, Boeing, Continental, Giti Tire, LPL Financial Holdings, Mercedes-Benz Vans, Samsung, Toray and Volvo Cars and also supports startups, small and existing business, innovation and rural development initiatives. S.C. Commerce partners with the S.C. Technical College System via readySC to support workforce training and recruiting, and with the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce, which provides worker training and employment opportunities within the state. With a strong international footprint, since 2011, the Palmetto State has ranked among top three in the nation for attracting jobs through foreign investment on a per capita basis, according to IBM-Plant Location International. Additionally, in five of seven years, the state has won the Gold Shovel Award from Area Development magazine; and, in 2017, the state was recognized as Business Facilities’ State of the Year. For more information, visit www.SCcommerce.com.
Alex Clark
Deputy Director of Marketing & Communications
South Carolina Department of Commerce
aclark@sccommerce.com
www.SCcommerce.com
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CategoriesCopper Busbar Fabrication, G10, GPO-3, Manufacturing
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Home > About MPU
About the Missing Persons Unit
The aim of our website is to publicise information about unidentified people and remains, enlisting the public to help maximise the chances of identification. It is hoped the website will empower families of missing people to play an active part in searching for their loved ones and bring vital closure if they are identified. Our website also features general information around missing person investigations and is intended to be a valuable resource.
The public can review unidentified cases and send details regarding the potential identity via the online reporting form. We will acknowledge the e-mail within 5 working days, however depending on the quality of information provided we cannot guarantee that the force/coroner will be able to investigate further or how long the investigation may take.
Lost Contact and Missing
A number of people who have lost contact with family and friends may decide to report them missing after reviewing our website. There is a difference, however, between a missing person and a lost contact case and police forces do not deal with the latter. There are a number of reasons why people lose touch with each other, such as moving house or family conflict, and it is understandable that they seek to reconnect. However if there is no indication of vulnerability or concern then this will be considered a lost contact case and police will not become involved. Instead there are a number of tracing agencies who may be able to provide a service (please see Resources for more information).
However, if when searching the website, if you believe one of the unidentified cases featured is a family member or friend with whom you have lost contact then do send the details through with as much information as possible. Even though they may not have been reported missing, if there is enough information to indicate a potential match then the police will still investigate accordingly.
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Why are patriotic holidays important?
March 16, 2020 March 16, 2020 Charlotte SmithMiscellaneous
Why are patriotic holidays important? It celebrates the history and symbolic meaning of the American flag, and is also an opportunity to remember those who fight to protect it and the nation for which it
How important is the celebration of patriotic days in your community?
What might you see on a patriotic holiday?
How do people celebrate patriotism?
Why is Dr King’s holiday classified as a patriotic holiday?
Why do countries have national holidays?
What kinds of places are patriotic landmarks what landmarks can you think of?
How can you show your patriotism and love to our country?
What are the types of patriotism?
Which country has no national day?
What are some of the most important patriotic holidays?
Why do we celebrate Patriot Day on September 11?
What are the national holidays in the United States?
Why is it important to celebrate national holidays?
It celebrates the history and symbolic meaning of the American flag, and is also an opportunity to remember those who fight to protect it and the nation for which it stands. Although it has been celebrated since the Civil War, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that it would be celebrated on June 14th in 1916.
These important days in history are meant to bring family and friends together and remind us how great our country really is. It should give all Americans the sense of pride that our forefathers had the foresight to create a proud, strong country for all the future generations to come.
Every July 4th, Americans celebrate this federal holiday with parades, fireworks, games, and patriotic music, following Thomas Jefferson’s direction that “It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other.
5 Ways to Show Your Patriotism
Vote. One of the best ways to honor the principles upon which our nation was built is to vote.
Support a veteran. Do more than thank them for their service.
Fly the Stars and Stripes correctly. The S.
Support our national parks.
Serve on a jury.
It celebrates the life and achievements of Martin Luther King Jr., an influential American civil rights leader. He is most well-known for his campaigns to end racial segregation on public transport and for racial equality in the United States.
Almost every country in the world observes a national holiday in honor of an important patriotic event, such as the winning of the country’s independence. In some countries a national holiday may commemorate the day of liberation, a revolution, or a new constitution or government.
Most Patriotic Places in America
Independence National Park, Philadelphia.
Statue of Liberty, New York, NY.
Boston Harbor & The Freedom Trail, Boston.
Mount Rushmore, Keystone, South Dakota.
Fort McHenry, Baltimore, Maryland.
Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.
Be an active citizen. Actively demonstrate your love for your country by being part of its political process.
Study the history of your country.
Focus on current events.
Read stories, tall tales, and patriotic legends of your country.
Have a hero.
Wear patriotic colors.
Fly a flag.
Celebrate holidays.
There are three types of patriotism: first, impartial patriotism, appealing only to universal principles; second, sports patriotism, similarly affirming universal principles, valid for each “particular team”; and third, loyalty patriotism.
Denmark. Denmark is one of the very few countries in the world which does not celebrate Independence Day and instead celebrates Constitution Day on June 5. This day marks the anniversary of when their constitution came into power.
Patriotic Holidays 1 Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2 Washington’s Birthday 3 Memorial Day 4 Flag Day 5 Independence Day 6 Constitution Day 7 Election Day 8 Veterans Day 9 Bill of Rights Day More
The date is set aside to celebrate the achievements of people who are blind or visually impaired and the important symbol of blindness and tool of independence, the white cane. In the United States, Patriot Day occurs on September 11 of each year, designated in memory of the 2,993 casualties in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
New Years Day (January 1) The Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. (the third Monday in January) Memorial Day (the last Monday in May) Independence Day (July 4) Labor Day (the first Monday in September) Columbus Day (the second Monday in October) Veterans Day (November 11) Christmas Day (December 25)
When people do parades and walk for some holidays, it may cost the government money. It helps keep a reminder of that holiday so that people don’t forget about it. Also, during those parades, the schools might be closed.
What is the formula for acceleration with velocity and distance?
Does the Audi A5 have 5 seats?
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in: Articles incorporating text from Wikipedia, 1917 births, 2013 deaths,
American composers
Opera composers
20th-century classical composers
21st-century classical composers
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Pulitzer Prize for Music winners
Duke University faculty
Juilliard School alumni
Juilliard School faculty
University of North Carolina School of the Arts faculty
Musicians from Cleveland, Ohio
Recipients of the Bronze Star Medal
United States Army soldiers
United States Army personnel of World War II
Robert Ward (composer)
Robert Ward (September 13, 1917 – April 3, 2013) was an American composer.
1 Early work and education
2 Major works
3 Later work
4 Selected works
Early work and education[]
Ward was born in Cleveland, Ohio, one of five children of the owner of a moving and storage company. He sang in church choirs and local opera theaters when he was a boy.[1] His earliest extant compositions date to 1934,[2] at a time he was attending John Adams High School, from which he graduated in 1935. After that, Ward attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where his composition teachers were Bernard Rogers, Howard Hanson and Edward Royce. Ward received a fellowship and attended the Juilliard School of Music in New York from 1939 to 1942, where he studied composition with Frederick Jacobi, orchestration with Bernard Wagenaar, and conducting with Albert Stoessel and Edgar Schenkman. In the summer of 1941 he studied under Aaron Copland at the Berkshire Music Center in Massachusetts.
From his student days to the end of World War II, Ward produced about forty compositions, of which eleven he later withdrew. Most of those early works are small scale, songs and pieces for piano or chamber ensembles. He completed his First Symphony in 1941, which won the Juilliard Publication Award the following year. Around that time, Ward also wrote a number of reviews and other articles for the magazine Modern Music and served on the faculty of Queens College.
In February 1942 Ward joined the U.S. Army, and attended the Army Music School at Fort Myer, being assigned the military occupational specialty of band director. At Fort Riley, Kansas, he wrote a major part of the score to a musical revue called The Life of Riley. Ward was assigned to the 7th Infantry and sent to the Pacific. For the 7th Infantry Band he wrote a March, and for its dance band he wrote at least two jazz compositions.
During his military service Ward met Mary Raymond Benedict, a Red Cross recreation worker. They married on June 19, 1944, and had five children; Melinda, Jonathon, Mark, Johanna and Tim.
Major works[]
Ward earned a Bronze Star for meritorious service in the Aleutian Islands. During his military service Ward managed to compose two serious orchestral compositions, Adagio and Allegro, first performed in New York in 1944, and Jubilation: An Overture, which was written mostly on Okinawa, Japan, in 1945, and was premiered at Carnegie Hall by the National Orchestral Association the following spring.
After being discharged from military service at the end of the war, Ward returned to Juilliard, earning postgraduate certificate in 1946 and immediately joining the faculty, teaching there until 1956. He served as an Associate in Music at Columbia University from 1946 to 1948.
Ward wrote his Second Symphony, dedicated to his wife, in 1947, while living in Nyack, New York. It was premiered by the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hans Kindler. This symphony was quite popular for a few years, in part thanks to Eugene Ormandy playing it with the Philadelphia Orchestra several times and even taking it on tour to Carnegie Hall in New York and Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.
Andrew Stiller, in his article on Ward for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, describes Ward's musical style as deriving "largely from Hindemith, but also shows the considerable influence of Gershwin".
Ward conducted the Doctors Orchestral Society of New York from 1949 to 1955, wrote his Third Symphony and his First Sonata for Violin and Piano in 1950, the Sacred Songs for Pantheists in 1951, and was music director of the Third Street Music School Settlement from 1952 to 1955, and wrote the Euphony for Orchestra in 1954. He left Juilliard in 1956 to become Executive Vice-President of Galaxy Music Corporation and Managing Editor of High Gate Press in New York, positions he maintained until 1967. Ward wrote his Fourth Symphony in 1958, the Prairie Overture in 1957, the cantata Earth Shall Be Fair and the Divertimento in 1960.
Ward wrote his first opera to a libretto by Bernard Stambler, He Who Gets Slapped, and it was premiered in 1956. His next opera, The Crucible, based on Arthur Miller's play, premiered in 1961, became Ward's best known work. For it Ward received the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Music. It is frequently produced around the world.
After the success of The Crucible, Ward received several commissions for ceremonial works, such as Hymn and Celebration in 1962, Music for a Celebration in 1963, Festive Ode in 1966, Fiesta Processional in 1966, and Music for a Great Occasion in 1970. During those years he also wrote the cantata, Sweet Freedom's Song, in 1965; the Fifth Symphony in 1976; a Piano Concerto in 1968, which was commissioned by the Powder River Foundation for the soloist Marjorie Mitchell; a Saxophone Concerto in 1984; and the operas The Lady from Colorado in 1964, Claudia Leqare in 1977, Abelard and Heloise in 1981, Minutes till Midnight in 1982, and Roman Fever in 1993 (based on the short story of the same name by Edith Wharton). He also wrote chamber music, such as the First String Quartet of 1966 and the Raleigh Divertimento of 1985.
His work has been championed by such conductors as Igor Buketoff, who recorded the 3rd and 6th symphonies.
Later work[]
In 1967, Ward became Chancellor of the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. He held this post until 1975, when he stepped down to serve as a member of the composition faculty for five more years. In 1978 he came to Duke University as a visiting professor, and there he remained as Mary Duke Biddle Professor of Music from 1979 to 1987.
In the fall of 1987, he retired from Duke University as Professor Emeritus, and continued to live and compose in Durham, North Carolina. His most recent composition is "In Praise of Science," which premiered at the ribbon-cutting ceremony of Syracuse University's Life Science Complex on November 7, 2008.
After a period of failing health, Ward died in a Durham retirement home on April 3, 2013, at the age of 95.[3]
Selected works[]
Ward's music is largely published by Highgate Press, E.C. Schirmer, Associated Music Publishers, Peer International, Merrymount Music Press, C.F. Peters and Vireo Press.
He Who Gets Slapped, original title: Pantaloon, Opera in 3 acts (1955); libretto by Bernard Stambler after the play by Leonid Andreyev
The Crucible, Opera in 4 acts (1961); libretto by Bernard Stambler after the play by Arthur Miller; recipient of the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Music
The Lady from Colorado (1964); revised in 1993 as Lady Kate; libretto by Bernard Stambler after the novel by Homer Croy
Claudia Legare, Opera in 4 acts (1977); libretto by Bernard Stambler after the play Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
Abelard and Heloise, Music Drama in 3 acts (1981); libretto by Jan Hartman
Minutes Till Midnight, Opera in 3 acts (1982); libretto by Daniel Lang
Lady Kate, Opera in 2 acts (1964, 1993); 2nd version of The Lady from Colorado; libretto by Bernard Stambler after the novel by Homer Croy
Roman Fever, Opera in 1 act (1993); libretto by Roger Brunyate after the story by Edith Wharton
A Friend of Napoleon
Slow Music (1937)
Symphony No. 1 (1941–1942)
Adagio and Allegro (1944)
Jubilation, an Overture (1946); also for concert band
Symphony No. 2 (1947)
Euphony (1954)
Prairie Overture (1957); original version for concert band
Divertimento (1966)
Festive Ode (1966)
Hymn and Celebration (1962)
Invocation and Toccata (1975)
Sonic Structure (1980)
By the Way of Memories, Nocturne (1987)
Andante and Scherzo for string orchestra
Concertino for string orchestra
Jubilation, an Overture (1946); original version for orchestra
Prairie Overture (1957); also for orchestra
Night Fantasy (1962)
Fiesta Processional (1966)
Antiphony (1973)
Four Abstractions (1981)
Jagged Rhythms in Fast Tempo
Color Masses and Luminous Lines in Dark Blue
Curves and Points of Light in Motion
Interweaving Lines
Concertante
Concerto for piano and orchestra (1968)
Concerto for tenor saxophone and orchestra (1984)
Dialogues for violin, cello and orchestra (1986)
Concerto for violin and orchestra (1993, revised 1994)
Dialogues, a Triple Concerto for violin, cello, piano and orchestra (1986–2002)
Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano (1950)
Fantasia for 3 trumpets, 4 horns, 2 tenor trombones, bass trombone, tuba and timpani (1957)
Arioso and Tarantelle for cello or viola and piano (1960)
Raleigh Divertimento, Woodwind Quintet (1986)
Appalachian Ditties and Dances for violin and piano (1991)
Bath County Rhapsody, Piano Quintet (1991)
Serenade for Mallarmé for flute, viola, cello and piano (1991)
Night under the Big Sky, Nocturne based on themes from Lady Kate for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, and piano (1998)
Quintet for oboe and string quartet (2006)
Echoes of America, Trio for clarinet, cello and piano
The Promised Land (On Jordan's Stormy Banks), Chorale Prelude for organ, with optional congregational participation (1977)
Celebration of God in Nature, Suite for organ (1979)
Lamentation and Scherzo for piano (1984)
Sorrow of Mydath for voice and piano (1940); words by John Masefield
Jonathon and the Gingery Snare for narrator and orchestra (1949); words by Bernard Stambler
As I Watched the Ploughman Ploughing for voice and piano (1951); words by Walt Whitman
Rain Has Fallen All the Day for voice and piano (1951); words by James Joyce
Vanished for voice and piano (1951); words by Emily Dickinson
Sacred Songs for Pantheists for soprano and piano or orchestra (1951); words by Gerard Manley Hopkins, James Stephens and Emily Dickinson
Love's Seasons, Song Cycle for high voice and piano (1994); words from Fatal Interview by Edna St Vincent Millay
Hush'd Be the Camps Today (May 4th, 1865) for mixed chorus and orchestra (1938); words by Walt Whitman
With rue my heart is laden for mixed chorus a cappella (1949); words by A. E. Housman
Concord Hymn for mixed chorus and piano (1949) or for mixed chorus a cappella (1979); words by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Earth Shall Be Fair, Cantata for mixed chorus (or double chorus), children's chorus (or soprano solo) and orchestra (or organ) (1960); Biblical text
Let the Word Go Forth for mixed chorus, brass, harp and string orchestra (1965); words from the inaugural address of John F. Kennedy
Sweet Freedom's Song: A New England Chronicle, Cantata for soprano, baritone, narrator, mixed chorus and orchestra (1965)
Canticles of America: A Psalm of Life, Symphony No. 5 for soprano, baritone, narrator, mixed chorus and orchestra (1976); words by Walt Whitman and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Behold, America
A Psalm of Life
Hymn to the Night
All Peoples of the Globe Together Sail
Images of God, a Sacred Service including a Mystery Play for minister, soprano, baritone, mixed chorus, organ and players (1988–1989)
↑ Kenneth Kreitner, Robert Ward: A Bio-Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press (1988): 3
↑ Kreitner, ibid: 12. Six works from 1934 are listed, compositions which "were completed (or nearly completed), but never formally performed. ... All manuscripts are at Duke University."
↑ "Composer, educator Robert Ward dies in Durham" by David Menconi, The Charlotte Observer, April 3, 2013
Robert Ward interview by Bruce Duffie, May 20, 1985
Robert Ward interview by Bruce Duffie, February 25, 2000
Robert Ward interview by Opera Lively, February 25, 2012
List of Robert Ward compositions published by ECS publishing
"In Praise of Science" performed by the SU Brass Ensemble with soprano Laura Enslin. on YouTube
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Homepage / Naval Warfare / Turkey's TAIS Shipyards Wins $2.1 Billion Indian Navy Order for Fleet Support Vessels
Turkey’s TAIS Shipyards Wins $2.1 Billion Indian Navy Order for Fleet Support Vessels
Turkey’s TAIS Shipyards Wins $2.1 Billion Indian Navy Order for Fleet Support Vessels
India’s state-owned Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL) and TAIS, a consortium of five Turkish shipbuilders, have signed an $2.1 billion (INR 160 billion) deal to jointly design and build five 45,000-tonne fleet support vessels for the Indian Navy. Turkey’s TAIS had emerged as the lowest bidder for a contract to manufacture five of the 45,000-tonne FSVs at the Vizag-based Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL) last year, but the contract signing was put on hold in October following the repeated raising of Kashmir issue by Erdogan at international forums.
Part of the TAIS industrial group, Anadolu Shipyard will provide the ship design, supply key machinery equipment (KME), and provide technical assistance. Indian Navy fleet support ship could be similar in design to the Pakistan Navy fleet tanker PNS Moawin, which was built by Pakistan’s Karachi Shipyard under a design provided by Turkey’s STM. A significant difference between Indian and Pakistani tankers is the size as PNS Moawin displaces 16,400 tons, compared to the 45,000 tons displaced by Indian FSS.
TAIS will carry out the modernization of the local shipyard, the design of the ships, engineering services, planning and management of production, preparation of shipbuilding material specifications and main materials. Support Vessels are capable of acting as underway supply points or as coastal supply points where harbor installations are not available or safe enough. They provide fuel, food, ammunition and spare parts to ensure the continued operational readiness of Task Groups at all times. The construction of the first vessel was initially scheduled to begin by the end of 2020, with the first vessel expected to be delivered to the Navy in 2024.
Posted in Naval WarfareTagged defence, defense, military
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Lenz: A Stream of Dreamfulness
I had not heard of Archipelago Books until recently I received their editions of Lenz by Georg Buchner and Three Generations by Yom Sang-seop. Archipelago is devoted to literature in translation, a noble and valuable devotion, because so much writing from throughout the past and present still waits to be brought to the United States. Three Generations , in a translation from the Korean by Yu Young-nan, will have to wait a while for comment from me, because it's a nearly-500-page family saga, and so I'm going to save it for this summer, when I have time to savor it. (And savor not just the words and story, because Archipelago's books are beautiful artifacts, with high-quality paper and binding, and tasteful design.) Lenz , though, is a work I have already read in a couple of different translations, and it's short, so I was able to read the entire book in a few days. This edition is not just another translation of Buchner's remarkable and innovative short sto
Spoiled Again!
After I wrote about The Assassination of Richard Nixon recently, BionOc took me to task for revealing major plot points of the movie without providing a spoiler warning. Our discussion is there in the comments on the post, but I wanted to elevate it to its own post, because I think the various viewpoints are important ones to some of what I've been trying to accomplish with The Mumpsimus. There are lot of reasons to be in favor of spoiler warnings. Particularly for reviewers of mystery novels . There are very few reasons that any rational human being would be against some form of spoiler warning. In fact, I've even used them occasionally myself, as BionOc pointed out. But in general I dislike spoiler warnings. I have a few reasons for this odd belief, but the important one is that spoiler warnings raise plot above other elements of a narrative. I like plot, and tend even to prefer stories that contain some sort of plot to stories that don't, but it's rarely
Manifesto, Manifestas, Manifestat
Jeff VanderMeer is compiling a list of science fiction/fantasy manifestos at his discussion board . It's becoming a nice collection of weird proclamations, a one-stop resource for rants and raves. The one that was new to me and that I was grateful to find out about (from L. Timmel Duchamp) was Jeanne Gomoll's "An Open Letter to Joanna Russ" . Be sure to read it if you haven't -- it's one of those pieces that, regardless of whether you fully agree with it, deserves to be read and thought about. (The SF world certainly isn't the only one that seems to spawn a new manifesto every week -- for some background on the artistic tendency to get all manifesto on the world, check out Manifesto: A Century of Isms . If you're a political revolutionary looking for a cheap collection of subversive material [and who isn't, really?], I know of nothing better than the Dover Thrift Edition of The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings -- it gives
Tonight's shiny happy movie was The Assassination of Richard Nixon , starring Sean Penn, directed by Niels Mueller. Though it sounds from the title like an alternate history story, it is actually a claustrophobic character study of a man who in 1974 tried to hijack a plane and fly it into the White House. He killed a security guard and a co-pilot before being wounded by a police officer and then killing himself. If you've seen the Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical Assassins , you've heard of Sam Byck, but other than that, his name has not been much remembered by history, even to the extent that John Hinckley (who tried to kill Reagan) is remembered. In Assassins , Byck doesn't have a song of his own, but he gets a couple of monologues that are some of the best non-musical writing in any play Sondheim has been involved with. (In the script, Weidman even gets to quote his collaborator in an odd and morbid way: Byck sent audio taped confessions to, among others, L
Three Short Novels from Eastern Europe
Novels that hover between 100 and 200 pages get a friendly first response from me, because I'm not all that fast a reader and most days are pretty busy, so fiction that is longer than a short story but not long enough to take me a week or more to read feels like a gift. Recently, I read three such books: Black Blossom by Boban Knezevic (published by Prime ), Chinese Letter by Svetislav Basara, and Natural Novel by Georgi Gospodinov (both published by Dalkey Archive Press ). Knezevic and Basara are both Serbian, Gospodinov is Bulgarian. I should have read Black Blossom first instead of last of the three, because then I would have approached it on its own terms and not tried to fit it into some stupid stereotype of what I thought Eastern European literature should be. Both Chinese Letter and Natural Novel are playfully metafictional books, novels that are very aware that they are novels, and so when I started reading Black Blossom , which begins with Chapter 9 (working back
Having accomplished most of what I wanted to accomplish by hiding in an undisclosed location and ignoring a lot of email, I will now resume regular posting here. ("Didn't even notice you were gone..." somebody shouts from the back of the room.) I actually had time to watch a couple movies while I was out. I saw Faraway, So Close! , which I'd been meaning to see for years, since it's a sequel to one of my favorite films, Wings of Desire . It's interesting enough, but it's certainly not Wings of Desire (or another Wim Wenders film that I love perhaps even more, Paris, Texas ). Also saw Porco Rosso , the only Miyazaki movie available in the U.S. that I hadn't yet seen. (It just came out on DVD this year.) I hadn't been sure if I would like it, since I'd heard it's quite different and less epic than some of Miyazaki's other films, but I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Speaking of Miyazaki, I've just begun to read the book h
Into Seclusion
I'm struggling to finish up a couple of projects and to finish reading for The Fountain Award , so I'm going to force myself not to write here at The Mumpsimus for at least the rest of the week, maybe longer. Once I get some work done, I should be able to post more regularly, rather than the on-again-off-again that it's been while I've been trying (awkwardly) to juggle everything.
The Fourth Circle at the LitBlog Co-op
I just put up my first post at the LitBlog Co-Op , about the book I would have nominated had I been on the nominating committee this quarter: The Fourth Circle by Zoran Zivkovic. We were trying to decide what sorts of things to post between now and the May 15 announcement of the book we'll be discussing for the first quarter, and somebody suggested that those of us who didn't get to nominate say a few words about books we would have, had we had the opportunity. Sounded like fun. Mark Sarvas made his non-nomination earlier in the week, and we're likely to see a few new posts each day from now on. So if you're looking for diverse recommendations of good recent fiction to read, head over to the Co-Op .
In the Palace of Repose by Holly Phillips
Though a couple months ago I did an interview with Holly Phillips, I haven't had a chance to write elsewhere about In the Palace of Repose , her first short story collection. A few things make this book marvelous and rare. First off, it is a collection of stories that are mostly original to it -- only two appeared in magazines before the book was released. Second, it is a varied collection and yet a cohesive one, with stories that explore a variety of subjects in different modes and tones, but with enough overlap that the book seems to come from a single sensibiliity, a single vision of the multiple possibilities of life and imagination. There are stories that are fairly traditional fantasy in the way the background world is imagined (the title story, for instance); stories that are traditional horror tales in the props they use and the sense of impending doom that leaks between the lines ("One of the Hungry Ones"); stories that mix elements of fantasy, horror, and s
POD in the Amazon
The news that Amazon.com has bought BookSurge , a print-on-demand publisher, has caused a lot of chatter about what Amazon is up to. Are they trying to take over the world? Are they trying to make all publisher obsolete? Are UFOs involved? I'm not going to get into the debate, because I'm not particularly informed in one way or another, but I do want to remind everyone about Sean Wallace's article about POD for Locus Online from last year, because Sean has utilized POD to bring us all sorts of marvelous things from Prime Books , where he is Grand Poobah, and Wildside , where he is an editor. (Wildside has been a real leader in using POD to bring out-of-print books, and even magazines, back into print.) To see how POD affected a real live actual book, see the second part of Jeff VanderMeer's chronicle of the making of the great City of Saints and Madmen , a book that stretched the limits of POD technology and ended up being a triumph of design. For a view rela
"Fictional World": Coming Soon to a TV Near You!
Nick Mamatas has the best response I've yet seen to the frightening-but-somehow-amusing idea of "America's Book Millionaire" (impossible to excerpt, so go read it in full). It made me think that a good "reality TV" show would not be one along these lines, but rather one that took a bunch of writers of vastly different sensibilities and temperaments and stuck them in a little house together. Call it "Fictional World". For instance, maybe they could all go live with J.D. Salinger . Wouldn't that be fun? Who would be the contestants? J.D. Salinger, of course, since he's already there. And Stephen King . And Harold Bloom . And Stanley Crouch and Dale Peck for a little lighthearted slapping . Can't have only men, though. Camille Paglia's always fun to hang out with, and I'm sure she'd get along well with all the guys in the house. Maybe add Anne Rice for a fun dynamic, Toni Morrison for a mix of popularity and in
Dead Poetries
The echoes, implications, silences, odd turns, and discordant harmonies of the following items together seem worth at least a moment of attention, though I may just be tired: After college, many English majors stop reading contemporary poetry. Why not? They become involved in journalism or scholarship, essay writing or editing, brokerage or social work; they backslide from the undergraduate Church of Poetry. Years later, glancing belatedly at the poetic scene, they tell us that poetry is dead. They left poetry; therefore they blame poetry for leaving them. Really, they lament their own aging. Don't we all? But some of us do not blame the current poets. --Donald Hall, "Death to the Death of Poetry" Since the embarrassing disaster of the attempts at quashing Pound & the Beats in the 1950s, the [School of Quietude] has largely employed benign neglect toward the new poetries that have emerged since then -- viz ., Joris' Celan . Like all hegemons, a major
From the Bowels of Australian Pimps
Ben Peek just sent me a note to let me know that he's got a bunch of interviews with Australian science fiction and fantasy writers, editors, etc. running this week at his LiveJournal . He's calling it "Pimp Your Shit Week", apparently in an attempt to garner attention from Australia's noted clans of coprophiliacs. He explains in his note: "Basically, for the entire week, people from the Australian scene are doing tiny interviews to pimp what work they've got out. It's a small scene, so I figured a new approach was needed to keep it alive and getting new readers, which it kind of needs." (Apparently, though Harlan Ellison has often told writers "Don't be a whore!" it's okay to be a pimp. Huh. All about power relations, I guess. Or, as Foucault once said, "Language is the first and last structure of madness, and red lightbulbs are just so passe.") People involved in Ben's interviews so far include Anna Tamb
Argosy Anew
I just received a subscription copy of the third issue of Argosy , a creature I thought to be imaginary for a while. There are days when it's fun to be a pessimist, because you can be pleasantly surprised when good things happen, and the survival of Argosy is a good thing, indeed, because it's a truly unique publication, one of the only places on Earth where a wide variety of fictions can coexist comfortably. It's also beautifully designed and fun to flip through because of the high quality of the paper and printing. Because of various problems with distribution, Argosy is now billing itself more as a quarterly anthology than as a magazine, which means that the ads have gone away and the price has gone up a bit (making a subscription all the more valuable). The third issue contains eight stories, an essay by William F. Nolan about the death or undeath of John Dillinger, and the first part of John Grant's novel The Dragons of Manhattan . The latter is in place of
The Russian Connection
The New York Times has an article that misses a major connection between two "hyperliterary" bands: Russia and Tolstoy. The bands are The Decemberists and Okkervil River . The title of the first echoes the Decembrist Revolt of 1825 , an event that, among other things, was the original inspiration for Tolstoy's War and Peace . The members of Okkervil River admit that their name comes not only from the river outside St. Petersburg, but also from the magnificent story of that title in On the Golden Porch by Tatyana Tolstaya, the great-grandniece of Leo Tolstoy. (I adore Tolstaya's stories -- they are strange, enigmatic, elegant, haunting. Her second collection was Sleepwalker in a Fog , and she has also published a novel, The Slynx , and a collection of nonfiction, Pushkin's Children .) Why did the Times choose these two bands, and then not mention their Russian connection? Commie conspiracy? Conservative coincidence? You decide... ("But the member
It's the Ticket Prices, Stupids
I've spent most of my life involved in some sort of theatrical activity or another. Mostly community, high school, and college plays, but I was a Dramatic Writing major at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts for three years. Three good years, exciting years, but also deeply disillusioning years -- I learned that professional theatre in the U.S. is made by a small group of people for a smaller group of rich people. I decided that the American theatre had made itself irrelevant, and that its future in this country was to be as a minor form of tourist entertainment. (Thus, the investments of Disney in Times Square made sense.) I continue find the world of professional theatre more nauseating than appealing, and to find the sorts of theatre happening in small towns and high schools and colleges to be more inviting, varied, and creative than the professional forms. One of the biggest influences on my view of what theatre is and can be has been Peter Brook, particularly his book The
There's a new phenomenon in the blogosphere: The LitBlog Co-op , where a large group of people who blog about books and literary stuff will work together to create a sort of online Oprah's Book Club. Without Oprah. The roster of contributors is impressive -- some of the most interesting and influential bloggers out there. Plus me. I've been too busy this week to fully investigate what I've gotten myself into by agreeing to do this, but once I know, I'll let you know. Right now I just know that we're going to be voting on what book to read first, and will announce that by May 15. I was a miserable failure as a member of the Gaddis Drinking Club , but we'll see how I do here. (As long as they don't choose a dense, allusive, brilliant 900-page novel, I should be fine. Much as I love Gaddis, there just isn't time these days for that sort of reading.) Meanwhile, you should definitely check out The Valve , another new group blog, this one of acade
Sighted (and Cited) at Other Sites
Sonya Taaffe has been interviewed at Bookslut by Geoffrey H. Goodwin. I can make the claim to having been the first to interview Sonya, but I'm glad I'm not the last, because she is overflowing with interesting things to say. For instance: Ordinary life should not sacrifice its detail just because the man eating an avocado-and-sprouts sandwich in the kitchen happens to be a unicorn, nor should the strangeness of his presence be softened just because he likes vegetarian sandwiches and reads Rilke. ( Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich. ) The otherworldly made totally mundane is just as bad as a fantasy where no one ever has dirt under their nails. Every vegetarian unicorn eating sandwiches is terrifying... Magma Poetry offers an amusing, contentious list from Roddy Lumsden of Mistakes Poets Make , including: Ending. A. Poem. Like. This. Is. Often. Crap. The new Internet Review of Science Fiction has been posted. Just when you thought it was safe to read it (because I h
One of the premiere SF webzines was Event Horizon , an early publisher of stories by the likes of Kelly Link, Jeffrey Ford, and Severna Park, as well as fiction by long-established pros like Gardner Dozois and Barry Malzberg. The site also featured nonfiction by Lucius Shepard, Jack Womack, Douglas Winter, and other names you might recognize. Thanks to a comment in the previous post from Ellen Datlow, the editor of Event Horizon , I discovered that even though the old web address no longer works, the content is still entirely available via the Wayback Machine . I had no luck getting past the first page with the Safari browser on a Mac, but after patient assurances from Ellen that, indeed, the entire content was really there, I switched over to Firefox, and, lo and behold, there it was. A good way to see immediately what joys are available is through the site map . For reference, here are all the archived pages . Wow.
The Locus Portal in the Wayback Machine
I don't know about you, but I rely on the Locus links portal when wandering around the web, and I've relied on it for years now. Of course, all of Locus Online is great, and Mark Kelly does a phenomenal job keeping it updated and interesting, but the links portal is the page that gets the most consistent use from me. I noticed today, and quite happily, that the list of weblogs on the portal nearly takes up an entire column now. It's an eclectic and ecumenical group, and impressive no matter how you slice and dice it. Within the last year, the list has seemed to grow with marvelous speed and fecundity. This made me wonder what it looked like in the good ol' days (which, in internet time, is a couple years ago). Thanks to the ever-handy Internet Wayback Machine , we can see. On February 26, 2000 , the earliest date for the portal page in the Wayback Machine, there were eight weblogs listed. I couldn't get Honeyguide to load, but all of the other original w
Who Says Blogging is for Egotists?
EWN: What innovative idea have you employed, or do you plan on using, at your site? i.e. - author keys, guest bloggers, guest reviewers, dueling viewpoints, updates :) etc. Matthew : I link obsessively to anything I've written that appears elsewhere on the web, and there's nobody else foolish enough to do that. Yes, that's me you see there as part of the Emerging Writers' Forum interview with various litbloggers . It's a fun group, including the masterminds behind some blogs I read avidly and some I haven't encountered before. Reading over my responses now, I see I was, by the second half, in a rather weird mood. Here's another link: my latest Strange Horizons column , this one about the first James Tiptree, Jr. story I read. The column bloomed from some material I'd cut out of my SF Site Tiptree review .
Notes from a Writer: Matt Hughes
If you read F&SF you know Matthew Hughes as the author of the witty and popular Henghis Hapthorn stories. You might also know Matt for his novels Fools Errant , Fool Me Twice , and Black Brillion , books that seem like a mix of Jonathan Swift, P.G. Wodehouse, and Jack Vance. What you may not know, though, is that Matt is also a crime writer, having had a crime novel published in his home country of Canada and had short fiction in a variety of places, including Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine . I had no idea of Matt's background in crime until he mentioned it in passing. Always curious what draws a writer to one type of fiction or another, I asked Matt how he went from crime to SF, and I got the following response... A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR AS PEARL PUREHEART by Matthew Hughes I admire those people who can make a plan and follow it. You know the kind: they proceed from high school to university to an entry job then ever onward and upward, each succeeding no
A New Tone
I've decided that the tone at this weblog is too serious and stuffy, thus making it unlikely to communicate with an audience that matters. Dan Green recently told me in an email that he's hoping to change the tone of his site, keeping his posts no longer than 100 words and using no words with more than 4.5 characters and no compound sentences, because he hopes to start a campaign against elitism and for chick lit. This caused me to re-evaluate my own purposes and goals, and so here follows the first of my new entries.... w00t w00t!!!!! hey everybuddy i got a email from a REAL LIVE WRITER TODAY and i just totally was like I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!! and i wish i could tell u who it wuz but it's totally TOP SECRET!!!!!!!!!!!! lou anders has a INTERVIEW WITH CHINA MIEVILLE and china looks in the illo like vin diesel **sigh!!!** (i got the link from lou anders blog which is new n is just da bomb. so have you seen all the new info at locus about chucky stross and flamewars
New SF Site, Emerald City, and Rain Taxi
If you're looking for lots of reviews, now is your chance: new issues of SF Site , Emerald City , and Rain Taxi's online edition are alive and kicking. The new SF Site includes a fairly long essay I wrote about two books from Tachyon Publications -- The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1 and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever , a reissue of the excellent collection of Tiptree's stories. The latter is one of the few truly essential collections of SF short fiction.
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Getting to Know the PILOT Innovation Challenge Winners
The development phase of the 2019 PILOT Innovation Challenge is complete. The winning teams have built their prototypes in response to the challenge prompt:
Build an AI character that can have conversations with individual viewers, listeners or consumers. Broadcasters should be able to define and train the character’s personality.
On October 21, 2020 at 3 p.m. ET, the winners demonstrated their work as part of the virtual NAB Show NY. If you have questions or want more information about the projects, teams and how to get access to the prototypes, please contact us.
Jukebot – University of Minnesota: Department of Computer Science and Engineering
“Our project will give broadcasters a glimpse into what it would be like to use conversational agents in their interactions with listeners,” explained Risako Owan, a computer science Ph.D. student working on Jukebot for the University of Minnesota.
Jukebot is a chatbot API capable of answering simple questions and getting feedback from listeners for radio stations. The team developed a similar prototype for a different project and saw the opportunity to apply their expertise for this challenge. Their proposal focused on a single form of media, radio, in order to spend the appropriate time analyzing the data and designing the architectures.
“This also lessens the possibility of scope creep,” added Esha Singh, a computer science master’s student. “Music is a common domain with multiple structured datasets available which made it a great starting point for our project.”
The team leader, Maria Gini, is a professor of computer science and engineering with extensive research in artificial intelligence. She knows Jukebot shows only a small glimpse into what is possible.
“The AI technology utilized by our prototype shows only a segment of what is possible. Improved natural language processing and effective computing will further transform the way we currently interact with computers,” said Gini. “In the future, we will potentially be able to hold longer, more open-ended conversations that will encourage more interaction with listeners.”
DeepTalk: A Conversational Agent for Broadcasters – Michigan State University: NextGen Media Innovation Lab, College of Communication Arts and Sciences; i-PRoBe Lab, Department of Computer Science and Engineering; WKAR Public Media
The Michigan State University team’s prototype, DeepTalk, is a conversational agent that can be trained through deep learning to deliver information in the voice of a local broadcaster. While the conversation agent is its first step, this team also hopes to also use the agent to study the impact of artificial intelligence on journalism and broadcasting by investigating the audience’s perception of machine learning and AI in broadcasting.
“AI is increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives and cannot be ignored,” Prabu David, dean of the Michigan State University College of Communication Arts and Sciences said. “Active participation in the co-creation of AI-based technology offers broadcasters a role in shaping the technology to conform to their ethical principles and moral values.”
The DeepTalk team consists of communication researchers and computer scientists who have been studying the problem of style transfer.
“Style transfer is a fascinating paradigm in deep learning where attributes of one object are transferred to a different object,” explained computer science and engineering professor Arun Ross. “When we saw the call for the Innovation Challenge, we were immediately intrigued by the idea of designing a conversational agent whose speaking attributes could be gleaned from a real human.”
Ross is excited by the possibility of building a technology that can be customized by stations to create strong relationships with consumers. “This level of engagement can lead to a broader audience and a more engaged society,” he said.
The winning teams were each awarded $75,000 to advance their idea and build a working prototype by October 2020.
By John Clark|February 27, 2020|Blog|Comments Off on Getting to Know the PILOT Innovation Challenge Winners
BEIT 2021: Discussing Reception of All-Digital AM Radio in Electric Vehicles
Be Next Gen TV Ready: PILOT Sponsoring Seminars on ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer
Deep Learning to Improve Weather Forecasting
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Dale Jr.: No cause for concern about sponsorship
Despite a sizable chunk of his 2013 campaign still missing sponsorship, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is choosing not to fret over the situation.
According to the Sporting News, Hendrick Motorsports has about a dozen races with NASCAR’s most popular driver left to sell this season after PepsiCo’s decision to scale back its sponsorship plan from 20 races to five races with Diet Mountain Dew.
But Earnhardt feels that there’s no cause for concern.
“Anybody who has got any sense about how the corporate world works knows that it’s too late into the season, too late in the year to expect to put together a package for the rest of the season that is going to turn into a multi-year deal,” he said on Friday. “It’s just all the dollars and cents are accounted for at this point in the year.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t put some things together and do some creative stuff with some people and some partners that we already have or whatever…It is important to try to fill out what we have this season and we will. I don’t have any doubt at all that we will get that done.
“I think we almost have to look forward beyond that to try to find out who is going to be the partner that we can put a long term deal together that matches up with what we want to do in the future.”
While that situation continues to evolve, Earnhardt is aiming to get himself squared away for the upcoming Chase. He sits a steady fifth in the standings and is in position to easily make NASCAR’s post-season run.
The Brickyard has not been a strong track for him in his Cup career; he has just one Top-5 finish in 13 starts there. On the other hand, that Top-5 run came in last year’s race, in which he finished fourth.
As for tomorrow’s 20th anniversary running of the Brickyard 400, he’s slated to go off from 15th.
“We would have liked to run a little bit better than that,” he said after his qualifying run today. “The guys did a good job. They made a lot of changes during practice…We just struggled all day in qualifying trim and the guys made some good changes.
“We like the speed in race trim. We’ll have to go back to the hauler and talk a lot about the things we can do.”
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You are here: Mississippi > Leadership > Air Leadership > State Command Chief Master Sergeant
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Land Component Command Sergeant Major
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State Command Sergeant Major
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Assistant Adjutant General, Air
State Command Chief Master SergeantCurrently selected
State Command Chief Master Sergeant
Chief Master Sergeant Lynn R. Cole is the 13th State Command Chief Master Sergeant for the Mississippi Air National Guard, Joint Force Headquarters, Jackson, Mississippi. Chief Cole serves as the principal advisor to commanders and senior staff on matters of mission effectiveness, professional development, military readiness, training, promotion, retention, utilization, health, morale, welfare and assignment policy affecting over 2,300 enlisted personnel; conducting counseling and interviewing sessions through a visitation program to 29 units; and identifying issues and recommending action directly to commanders. She is the liaison between the enlisted personnel, the Adjutant General and the Assistant Adjutant General for Air, Mississippi Air National Guard.
A native Mississippian, Chief Cole enlisted in the Mississippi Air National Guard in February 1985 with the 186th Tactical Reconnaissance Group, Meridian, Mississippi. In 1999, she was selected as the first sergeant for the 186th Security Forces Squadron. In August of 2004, Cole then became the 186th Air Refueling Wing human resource advisor for headquarters. She then transferred to the Joint Force Headquarters, Mississippi Air National Guard in September 2007 to fill the position as state human resource advisor. Chief Cole was responsible to the commander of the MSANG by advising leadership on force management and force development issues. In addition, Chief Cole oversaw the schoolhouse administration of the MC-12 Project Liberty from November 2008 until January 2012. She has supported Operations DESERT SHIELD, DESERT STORM, IRAQI FREEDOM, ENDURING FREEDOM, PROJECT LIBERTY and FREEDOM'S SENTINEL.
Prior to assuming her current position, Chief Cole was the chief enlisted manager, Combat Readiness Training Center – Battlefield Airman Center, Gulfport, Mississippi. She assumed responsibility as the MSANG State Command Chief Master Sgt. on December 2, 2017.
Download her biography.
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Free Consultation · Available 24/7
New Jersey Workers’ Compensation Law News
New Jersey Court Discusses Attorneys’ Fees in Workers’ Compensation Claims
When an employee dies due to an occupational illness, his or her surviving spouse may be awarded benefits. Additionally, the surviving spouse may be granted attorneys’ fees. Recently, a New Jersey court assessed the proper method for calculating attorney’s fees in a case in which the claimant’s husband died due to an illness sustained at work. If you lost your spouse due to a work-related injury or illness, you may be able to recover workers’ compensation benefits and should speak to a knowledgeable New Jersey workers’ compensation attorney as soon as possible.
Facts and Procedural History
It is reported that the claimant’s husband died due to an occupational disease, after which she filed a claim for workers’ compensation death benefits. The court issued an order granting benefits as well as attorneys’ fees that were calculated based on the claimant’s life expectancy. The employer appealed, arguing that the court erred in calculating the appropriate award for attorneys’ fees. On appeal, the appellate court affirmed the lower court ruling.
Calculation of Attorneys’ Fees in Workers’ Compensation Claims
The New Jersey Workers’ Compensation Act provides that compensation for a total permanent disability should be paid to qualified workers for 450 weeks, and may be extended in instances where the claimant can show that his or her disability caused an inability to earn an income equal to that which he or she earned at the time of the accident or onset of illness. Additionally, the law provides that any dependents that survive a deceased worker will be granted benefits as well, for 450 weeks and, in some cases, longer.
By Jonathan Marshall|2020-09-22T13:34:08+00:00September 22, 2020|Calculation of Benefits, Death Claim|Comments Off on New Jersey Court Discusses Attorneys’ Fees in Workers’ Compensation Claims
Copyright 2021 | The Law Offices of Jonathan F. Marshall
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Prosecutor: Supreme Court phone data decision may stop some proceedings
BNS, ERR
Prosecutor general Andres Parmas. Source: Siim Lõvi /ERR
The Supreme Court's decision prohibiting to request telecommunications data for the purposes of criminal investigation affects most of the proceedings where phone logs are the most substantial evidence, which could lead to the termination of such proceedings, Prosecutor General Andres Parmas said.
In all criminal proceedings in which a request for phone logs has been placed, the impact of the Supreme Court decision needs to be assessed individually and no generalizations can be made at this point, Parmas told ERR.
"We also cannot give an assessment of how many criminal proceedings this concerns. Undoubtedly, today's decision and the change in case-law will most affect proceedings where call logs are the most substantial evidence and that could mean the termination of those proceedings," Parmas said.
The Supreme Court decided on Friday that telecommunications data, which communications companies are currently obligated to store as the Estonian procedure for storing and using mobile data is incompatible with EU law, cannot be requested from telecoms for the purpose of criminal investigation.
Parmas noted that in some cases, the collection of evidence may prove impossible in the light of Friday's court decision.
"Considering that the lion's share of crimes is at present committed using communications devices, the detection and investigation of criminal offense will become more complicated, time-consuming and costly," the prosecutor general said, adding that this development will affect the society's sense of security and result in a smaller number of people getting help.
"Requesting call logs has thus far been an indispensable tool for us that has enabled us to solve many crimes. For instance, the Tallinn circuit court used data from telecommunications companies to convict Siim Haukka for committing numerous thefts in people's homes. We also solved that way, for instance, the so called baseball bat murder in [Tallinn's] Snelli Park, found numerous pedophiles, apprehended a number of drug dealers and solved countless fraud cases and other criminal offenses," he added.
Parmas said that it remains unclear at present how the type of criminal offenses that have thus been resolved through using phone logs are to be handled in the future.
"This isn't the first time a Supreme Court decision prompts the need to change our existing work practice, however. We've reorganized our work before and we're hoping that the legislator will introduce the necessary amendments to ensure that those who have already fallen victim to a crime will not have to suffer again," he noted.
Parmas highlighted that the Supreme Court decision does not provide grounds for reviewing court judgments that have already entered into force.
"The Supreme Court has also listed options for compensating possible breaches - how it is to be done will be demonstrated by future court decisions," he said.
Police chief: Criminal investigation to become more complicated
Elmar Vaher. Source: ERR
Police and Border Guard Board Elmar Vaher echoed the same view.
"Using communications data has been crucial for our detectives. It has enabled us to investigate severe crimes and save people," Vaher said.
In many cases, the use of communications data has led to a breakthrough in investigation, according to Vaher.
"The arrest of [medical director of North Estonia Medical Center] Peep Talving's attacker could not have been carried out this quickly without communications data. The same goes for the arrest of Lithuanian car thieves who had stolen tens of vehicles in Estonia over the past years. Or, for instance, for catching the criminals that are defrauding the elderly these days. All of this is very complicated without being able to use communications data. The damages amount to millions of euros by now," Vaher said.
The director general of the Police and Border Guard Board said that the use of communications data for the purposes of criminal investigation has thus far been clearly regulated.
"We only use communications data to investigate severe crimes and that is done in accordance with very strict rules. For instance, the detective first needs to justify it to the prosecutor and the latter to the court. It is very clearly regulated and this data is on the whole used in the case of very few crimes compared with the overall number thereof," he said.
Vaher noted that the investigation of criminal offenses will now become lengthier and more complicated.
"This situation is comparable to a doctor believing that their patient has pneumonia but they cannot order an x-ray and this definitely complicates the patient's recovery," he said.
"I deem it quite likely that some crimes, for instance harassing pursuit, will simply not be investigated," Vaher added
Justice ministry looking for ways to use communications data
'Samost ja Sildam': Supreme Court communications call points to problems
Supreme Court: State cannot demand telephone communication data
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Jada Buckley named Freshman of the Week for second time
This news story was published on December 30, 2013.
Jadda Buckley
IRVING, Texas – Iowa State women’s basketball freshman Jadda Buckley was named Phillips 66 Big 12 Freshman of the Week for the for the second time this season, the league announced Monday.
Buckley posted back-to-back double-digit scoring games with a 12-point performance against Holy Cross and a 19-point effort against William & Mary in helping Iowa State to another Cyclone Challenge Championship.
The rookie knocked down a career-high four three’s against Holy Cross. She followed that with a near perfect performance against the Tribe going 5-of-6 from the field, 3-of-4 from long range and 6-of-6 from the charity stripe with no turnovers. On the weekend, Buckley shot 69.2 percent (9-of-13) from the field and 70 percent from long (7-of-10), leading Iowa State to its third undefeated non-conference schedule in school history.
This is her second-career weekly honor and the fifth for Iowa State this season, as senior Hallie Christofferson was named Player of the Week earlier this season and Seanna Johnson earned two Freshman of the Week honors. The Cyclones have captured four of the eight Freshman of the Week honors so far this season, which is more than any other school.
Buckley and the No. 14 Iowa State Cyclones return to the court on Wednesday, Jan. 2 at 7:00 p.m. to take on TCU in Fort Worth, Texas in the Big 12 opener.
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“Detti no dey kill black man” — The Unhygienic State of Nigerian Markets
By Patience Adejo (Lead Writer)
Sanitation and hygiene are cost-effective approaches against infectious diseases. However, this relatively inexpensive way of preventing infectious diseases seems to be neglected in most markets in Nigeria. The World Health Organisation (WHO) reports that an estimated 100 million Nigerians lack basic sanitation facilities.
The poor sanitation in Nigeria’s markets should be a matter of greater concern to buyers, sellers and policymakers. Shoppers often have to walk past open gutters and discarded refuse as they move about the marketplace, traders sell amidst the refuse dumps, and so shoppers are left with limited options, but to buy their food items from the dirty and unsanitary market stalls.
Last week, the Nigeria Health Watch Team visited Utako market in Abuja. It was not the most pleasant sight. We observed the poor sanitation and hygiene in the market, refuse dumps, toilets, shops and food stands are in very close proximity with each other, with hardly any demarcation separating the different amenities in the market. Offensive odours permeated where sellers sold their items. There were areas within the market where open urination is practiced regularly, and flies and other vectors of infectious diseases were seen perching and feasting on uncovered food items for sale. This is the sad reality of most Nigerian markets, and it contributes to the spread of infectious diseases and environmental degradation because poor sanitation provides an excellent breeding ground for many of the diseases that affect Nigerians.
The refuse dumpsite at Utako market in the FCT. Traders could be seen selling items in an unclean environment. Photo credit: Nigeria Health Watch
In 2018, President Muhammadu Buhari declared WASH a public health emergency in Nigeria. According to the National Water and Sanitation Policy, between 5 to 20 percent of deaths from diseases such as Lassa fever, diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, para-typhoid, guinea worm and Schistosomiasis in Nigeria is due to poor sanitation. This is not acceptable; poor sanitation is a threat to public health and we cannot prevent epidemics with our markets in poor hygienic conditions.
Increased budgeting for epidemic preparedness is a great move in preventing epidemics. The World Bank estimates that Nigeria needs to triple its budget or allocate at least 1.7 percent of the current Gross Domestic Product to WASH in order to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6.2, which states the need to achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations by 2030.
A heap of market waste material makes the market environment unhealthy. Photo credit: Nigeria Health Watch
The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that improved sanitation and hygiene can help to prevent the spread of diseases. There is therefore the need to ensure that people have access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities in their homes and in public. It is also crucial to enforce the use of these facilities where they are provided.
The vision for sanitation in the National Action Plan for Revitalization of Nigeria’s WASH Sector highlights that by 2030, every Nigerian will have access to safely managed sanitation and hygiene facilities in cities, small towns, and rural communities.
Increased and sustained political will is required at all levels to generate commitment and interest in sanitation activities for improved coverage.
The solution to poor sanitation will require strengthened multi-sectoral collaboration. Federal, state and local governments, Federal and State Ministries of Environment and Water Resources, MDAs like the Abuja Environmental Protection Board and its state counterparts. NGOs, development partners, the private sector, communities, households and individuals must take responsibility in fighting the WASH crisis.
To address the enormous problems of environmental sanitation in Nigerian markets, policies like the National Action Plan for Revitalization of Nigeria’s WASH Sector must be translated into action.
Here are eight things that government, organisations and individuals can do to prevent the spread of diseases in Nigeria’s markets:
(1) Provision of a stable water supply, installing sturdy water supply systems that provide a regular flow of water for market sellers and buyers. This may include the construction of boreholes and water reservoir systems.
(2) Provision of hand-washing facilities at designated points throughout markets where market sellers and buyers have ease of access and use. This may include wash kits consisting of water buckets with lids, liquid antiseptic hand soap, and disposable napkins.
(3) Provision of separate toilets for men, women, children, and people living with disabilities which should always be kept clean, with regular access to water and other sanitary commodities.
(4) Create awareness and the sensitization of market sellers to enforce the practice of safe storage and sanitary disposal of refuse in markets.
(5) Timely and regular disposal of waste from the central waste disposal sites in markets. Due to the large volume of waste produced from markets, there should be daily collection of waste by designated waste collection agencies.
(6) Improved drainage systems in markets. Drainage systems in markets should be kept clean with designated agencies responsible for maintaining the drainage systems at regular intervals.
(7) Conduct regular market sanitation and fumigation exercises. Weekly, monthly and quarterly cleaning and fumigation exercises must be carried out in markets. This ensures that markets remain clean and it would help in warding off harmful rodents and other pests.
(8) Effective market sanitary management associations. The establishment of sanitary management associations in markets is key to enforcing and ensuring set rules, regulations and expectations in the cleanliness and hygiene management of markets.
Infectious diseases can and should be prevented. Otherwise, as COVID-19 has shown, when they happen, they can change everything about our lives, economy, and business. We must begin now to do the simple things, such as keeping our markets clean, to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.
US Set To Pull Troops Out Of Somalia Before Christmas
The Blue Stars
Pounded Yam, Gangs and Social Contracts
Loye Oyedotun
Spain Big Brother contestant claims she was raped on camera — impact on #MeToo
European countries caution Turkey against sanctions as an outcome of its exit from Istanbul show
The ROK-Japan Stalemate
Javairyah Kulthum Aatif
It’s coming home…
INTO THE FRAY: Israel’s disloyal — and dishonest — opposition
Liberal opposition could thwart THAAD
Hichem Karoui
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Elaine Gline
By NJJN Staff June 21, 2017, 12:00 am Edit
Elaine Gline (Kaminsky), 93, of West Orange died June 3, 2017. Born in New York City, she resided in New Milford, Toms River, and Florida before moving to West Orange several years ago.
Mrs. Gline was a teacher employed by the New Milford Board of Education.
Predeceased by her husband, Eli, she is survived by her son, Jerry (Robin) of South Orange; her daughter, Iris (Robert) Bernstein of South Orange; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Services were held June 5 with arrangements by Menorah Chapels at Millburn, Union.
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Tag: In the Crosswind
My 20 Favourite Films of 2015
On 26/12/2015 16/07/2018 By RebeccaIn Films1 Comment
Twelve months, five notebooks and approximately 312 films later (141 features and 171 shorts, according to what I’ve written in those five notebooks), this is how I saw 2015. On the old site my end-of-year lists focussed exclusively on Spanish cinema, but given that my intention with this new incarnation is to write about a more diverse range of cinema(s) it seems appropriate for my first end-of-year post here to reflect that. So this is my top 20 based on my viewings (in whatever format) throughout 2015. However, I have stuck to my previous rule that in order to be included, the film has to be from either this year or the previous one (2015 or 2014 in this instance) because it’s still the case that some titles take a while to arrive in the UK, but I want the list to be ‘new’ titles – I might post a separate list (old, but new to me) for films that don’t fit that criteria, if I have time (UPDATE: now online). I have already submitted Top 10s to #12filmsaflickering (you can see my ballot paper in a tweet by the poll’s organiser) and desistfilm (not online yet UPDATE: now online), but the former was restricted to UK releases only and the latter could include retrospective screenings – so my selection here is different. Apart from several titles seen in Gijón – and I’m conscious that having experienced them recently may have elevated some of them in my deliberations just because they are fresh in my mind – the list skews towards the first two thirds of the year because (apart from Gijón) I’ve not been to the cinema much in the last few months.
I went to fewer film festivals this year (just four – D’A Festival in Barcelona, Edinburgh, Berwick, and Gijón) but I was away for more days overall than last year and two of the festivals were outside the UK, so I feel like I still saw a broader range of films than if I had simply stuck to films with a UK theatrical release. I also reviewed a lot of films via screeners/streaming for festivals that I couldn’t travel to, which isn’t ideal but it’s another way of broadening my viewing habits. That said, there are a pile of ‘significant’ films that I’ve not managed to see yet. Some of them I already have copies of but I just didn’t have the time this month to try and catch up with them – and it seems a bit false to try and shoehorn in new films right at the end of the year. But films that I’d like to catch up with over the coming months include (in alphabetical order): 45 Years (dir. Andrew Haigh), Amour Fou (dir. Jessica Hausner), Best of Enemies (dir. Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon), Black Coal, Thin Ice (dir. Diao Yinan), Carol (dir. Todd Haynes), Girlhood (dir. Céline Sciamma), Güeros (dir. Alonso Ruizpalacios), Jauja (dir. Lisandro Alonso), Magical Girl (dir. Carlos Vermut), Maidan (dir. Sergei Loznitsa), Negociador / Negotiator (dir. Borja Cobeaga), Phoenix (dir. Christian Petzold), and Shaun the Sheep (dir. Mark Burton and Richard Starzak). The two films [there are others on my radar, but these are the two that I’m impatient to see] from 2015 that I would most like to see in a cinema in 2016 are La academia de las musas / The Academy of Muses (dir. Jose Luis Guerin) (which I’m hoping will at least make it to UK festivals) and Son of Saul (László Nemes) (which has a UK distributor).
But anyway, on to the films that I have seen this year…
(1) Risttuules / In the Crosswind (dir. Martti Helde)
As I’ve said above, I’m wary of placing the films that I’ve seen most recently in end of year lists, but I think that even if I’d seen this film last January it would still be my film of the year – it is a genuine tour-de-force of a directorial debut and a film that continues to resonate in my mind more than a month after I saw it. It falls into that category of film where I would be cautious of rewatching it (on DVD, at least) because I wouldn’t want to diminish the out-of-nowhere impact that it had on me the first time. I wrote about it briefly in this report for desistfilm.
(2) Transatlantique (dir. Félix Dufour-Laperrière)
a.k.a. the film that took me to Gijón. I initially encountered the film in the EIFF catalogue but wasn’t there on the day that it screened. So I first watched this black and white, dialogue-free documentary / essay film about a transatlantic voyage on the small screen of my laptop back in June, and then had the opportunity to see its dreamy poeticism writ large across the big screen last month in Spain. It is cinema as experience – you are placed inside a defined space and a self-contained world – and an exploration of the sublime. I don’t imagine that it will travel beyond festivals, so take any opportunity to see it that presents itself.
(3) Crumbs (dir. Miguel Llansó)
[Review & interview] My favourite of the films I saw in Barcelona back in April. An inventive epic-adventure-meets-sci-fi-romance and a bittersweet tale of self-acceptance. I would like to revisit the film, not least because I don’t like the review that I wrote at the time (it’s overly descriptive and concentrates on plot at the expense of expanding upon the visual style) but realistically I don’t often have the time to do that. But it is now available to buy or stream from the Indiepix Films website (click here) – I think that the DVD is region 1, but the streaming and permanent download options are available worldwide.
(4) Queen of Earth (dir. Alex Ross Perry)
[Review] The last film that I saw in Barcelona – and as I predicted, a downward spiral into delusion and madness (and an examination of fraught female friendship) was indeed perfect Friday night viewing. I’m hopeful that it will get some kind of UK release in 2016 because the director’s Listen Up, Philip had a release this year and Elisabeth Moss is known here (both she and Katherine Waterston are excellent) – this kind of film should be catnip to independent cinemas, if only they could tear themselves away from programming multiplex fare.
(5) Slow West (dir. John Maclean)
The first of the films on this list to have had a UK theatrical release in 2015. I went in not knowing much about it other than it being a western and that Michael Fassbender and Ben Mendelsohn were in it (the presence of the latter in particular is swiftly becoming a sign that a film will be worth seeing). I came out quietly impressed and the film has stuck with me as the year progressed – I instinctively placed it in pole position for #12filmsaflickering. It manages to use a familiar genre and its symbols in a way that feels fresh – I particularly liked a sequence where Cody Smit-McPhee’s character walks through an ash cloud, turning phantasmal as he goes, and another scene where the forest suddenly comes alive before our eyes…but there are any number of small details that could be singled out. And the coat worn by Mendelsohn’s character looks worthy of its own spin-off prequel (certainly its acquisition would be a tale and a half).
(6) The Duke of Burgundy (dir. Peter Strickland)
A surprisingly funny film and one of such dense and rich imagery that it builds up its own texture, not unlike the velveteen of the butterflies that preoccupy the two protagonists (Sidse Babett Knudsen and Chiara D’Anna). It’s not really a ‘daytime’ film and I had the rather odd experience of having to fit in a screening during my lunch break – but I’m glad that I did because something of its unique atmosphere would probably have been lost if I’d just watched it on VOD, away from the cocoon of a cinema.
The environment in which you first watch a given film inescapably shapes your perception of it – for example, a comedy watched in a full auditorium is a different experience to watching it at home on your own. In general, I would prefer to see a film for the first time in the form it was intended to be seen – on a big screen, with an audience. This brings me back to independent cinemas programming multiplex fare, and the knock-on effect that this has on the opportunities to see smaller films. The programming at my local “independent” has become progressively less diverse over the last few years but it has been particularly noticeable in the last 18 months because they are now regularly assigning their main screen (they have three, plus a gallery space) to films that also have saturation coverage at the multiplex that is ten minutes walk away (they are currently showing the new Star Wars film). The upshot of this is that the kinds of films that used to be their bread and butter are being pushed into the margins – either in the form of single screenings at random times of day (hence my lunchtime jaunt – incidentally, that 11:30am weekday screening in their 2nd-biggest screen was at least 75% full, so I wasn’t the only person who wanted to see it in the right setting) or the gallery screen (full disclosure: I’ve still not seen a film in this screen – I’m sure the sound system is top notch but a 33-seater is not a “cinema” in the form that I want to experience it, and I’m not paying £10 to do so either [the gallery screenings are after 5pm and therefore the full ticket price]). There have been multiple instances this year where films I’d like to have seen (Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini is one that springs to mind) were only shown on a “proper” screen once or twice in total and at times that fell during normal working hours, meaning that I couldn’t go. This only looks set to continue, which is very disappointing because it means that I’m more likely to see a film like Strickland’s on the BFI Player than in a cinema. End of rant.
(7) Il gesto delle mani / Hand Gestures (dir. Francesco Clerici)
[Review] I’ve written about this recently, so I don’t have much to add. I do a fair amount of arts and crafts so I’m always interested in seeing artistic processes up close. I like that there’s no voiceover or intertitles explaining what we’re seeing – I became as absorbed in the process as the artisans onscreen were in their craft.
(8) National Gallery (dir. Frederick Wiseman)
I took a day trip to Edinburgh in order to see this (at the point when I booked my train tickets there was no sign of it coming to Newcastle – but it did belatedly arrive two weeks after my trip) because I knew that the artworks would merit being seen on as large a screen as possible. As with Hand Gestures, part of the pleasure to be taken from this film is simply in observing people who excel at their craft. This is a multifaceted exploration of the National Gallery as an institution and how it interprets a remit to give the public the appropriate tools with which to understand art. I particularly liked the demonstrations of how the level of knowledge and passion embodied by the resident experts and specialists opens up their respective subjects to a range of audiences, but also the behind-the-scenes glimpses at conservation and restoration, and the craftsmanship involved in all aspects of the place (e.g. the person who makes the frames). An enthralling documentary – the three hours fly by.
(9) Life May Be (dir. Mark Cousins and Mania Akbari)
This was on the festival circuit last year, but I missed a chance to see it in Edinburgh – luckily it had a VOD release in 2015 (it is available to rent or buy on GooglePlay and iTunes). I mentioned it on here earlier in the year but said that I wanted to watch some of Akbari’s other films before I wrote about it – I haven’t got any further than buying a couple so far, but hopefully it’s a film I’ll return to in 2016. The film is a conversation between the two directors in the form of exchanged video essays / letters and touches on exile, censorship, cultural ideals, gender and bodies. It made my brain fizz.
(10) Aferim! (dir. Radu Jude)
Another of the films that I saw in Gijón. Rather inexplicably this picaresque Western has recently gone straight-to-DVD in the UK – so if you’re in the UK, it is worth tracking down (just wait for the price to drop because it’s unusually expensive). As I said in one of my dispatches from Gijón, ‘it just feels as if you’re in the hands of a director who has something to say and knows how he wants to say it’ – it’s a shame that UK audiences won’t get the chance to see it on the big screen.
(11) P’tit Quinquin (dir. Bruno Dumont)
[Review] The first of Dumont’s films that I’ve seen (and I’m told that it’s atypical of his work, so I may continue swerving the rest), this was probably the most left-of-field film I saw this year – a mishmash of the darkly funny and deeply unsettling, headed by two innately likeable social misfits (played by Bernard Pruvost and Alane Delhaye). Part of what’s unsettling is that these two personable leads espouse views that tend towards the casually racist (Dumont’s depiction of those attitudes is a lot more complicated than it appears on the surface), but also through how it generates humour from the behaviour of a non-professional cast, many of whom have learning difficulties – I occasionally wondered whether I was laughing at the outlandish Capitaine Van der Weyden or the uncontrollable tics of Bernard Pruvost, and the idea that it was the latter made me uncomfortable. It is incredibly funny (see it for the corpsing priests!) but in a way that also throws into relief the sadness of stunted lives and the limited opportunities of those living in the locale. And if you’ve seen it, you already have that song playing in your head.
(12) Enemy (dir. Denis Villeneuve)
The first film that I saw in the cinema in 2015 and one that still keeps creeping around my brain like its Louise Bourgeois-inspired spider. A narrative loop or a nightmarish dream? Either way, Jake Gyllenhaal’s character(s) has ‘woman problems’ in every sense of the term. It’s the kind of film where you’ll pick up on more details each time you watch it – having watched it only once so far, I’m left with more questions than answers because certain things from earlier in the film have to be rethought in light of what happens later. The penultimate shot is one of my favourites of the year.
(13) Obra (dir. Gregorio Graziosi)
[Review] Seen in Barcelona. This has a coincidental visual connection with Enemy insofar as both use architecture – in terms of detail and on a larger scale – to suggest the containment (or hemming-in) of their protagonists. Obra has received mixed reviews elsewhere – its chilly stylishness gets mentioned as a negative, but I think that slightly clinical, geometrical framing is a commentary on the life of the lead character. It’s not a film that sparks passions (it holds the viewer at one remove, as does its protagonist (Irandhir Santos)) but it has stuck with me (I didn’t have to think much about including it in this list) and the opening credit sequence is my favourite of the year. I’ve not seen any sign of it appearing in the UK (or anywhere else for that matter – I don’t know whether the D’A Festival was the end of its festival run?).
(14) Sicario (dir. Denis Villeneuve)
I don’t think I’ve ever had two films by the same director on the same end of year list. As pure cinematic spectacle this takes some beating, and Villeneuve directs the hell out of the material – having just got rid of heartburn that I’d been stuck with almost continually for more than a month, the tension during the bridge scene reignited it. The cinematography and soundtrack (the latter was partly responsible for my heartburn) have been rightfully singled out for praise but what I also liked is that during the action sequences a sense of spatial relations is sustained (and the bridge sequence is a case in point) – you know where people are in relation to each other, and by extension you know which way the camera is facing despite rapid cutting. It cannot be overstated how rare that is in modern action sequences. The trailer seemed to make more of Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro – to hide the fact that the protagonist (Emily Blunt) is female? – and the film doesn’t go in quite the direction I was expecting (I think I thought it was going to be more of a Platoon-style two-sided battle for the soul of Blunt’s character), and it tails off towards the end. I also know people who find its depiction of Mexico offensive – and I can’t really argue with that, but I also can’t deny that I thoroughly enjoyed watching it. When this gets a DVD release, I’m hoping to also watch Incendies and Prisoners (and rewatch Enemy) and then write something about Villeneuve’s recent output (his earlier films are unavailable in the UK).
(15) Noite sem distância / Night Without Distance (dir. Lois Patiño)
[Review] When you really like a directorial debut, you (or I, at least) approach the director’s next film with a certain sense of trepidation – can they fulfil the promise that you think they’ve demonstrated? Patiño’s Costa da morte / Coast of Death was my favourite film last year by quite a margin and I avoided reading about his three new shorts/installations (the other two are Estratos de la Imagen / Strata of the Image and Sombra Abierta / Open Shadow) prior to seeing this one in relation to Curtocircuito. This is a very different beast to Costa da morte, although it continues the director’s exploration of the Galician landscape. What could have been a gimmick (the image has been flipped into the negative) actually confers a phantasmal layer over proceedings and gives a sense of historical repetition – I would be intrigued to see whether this appears differently on a big screen (I watched it on my laptop).
(16) Hard to be a God (dir. Alexei German)
It’s weird that I should have so many black and white films on my list this year (five, by my count), but maybe people using colour need to up their game because the b&w ones are among the most visually imaginative I’ve seen in 2015. This film should have been in my #12filmsaflickering list because it had a UK release, but because I saw it in Barcelona (it was on limited release in Spain and at that point it didn’t have a UK distributor, so it seemed likely to be my only opportunity to see it on a big screen) it was in amongst festival films in my record of what I’ve watched, and so I overlooked it when I was making that list. Watching a three hour Russian epic with only Spanish subtitles was problematic – there were whole scenes where I didn’t know what was going on, or at least didn’t understand the subtleties because I usually picked up the gist of what was transpiring via the onscreen action – but visually it is something else. The cinema where I saw it – the Zumzeig Cinema, about 30 minutes walk from Plaça de Catalunya (there’s probably a simple metro route but I prefer to get lost above ground, so I went everywhere on foot) – is also admirably diverse in its programming and I hope that I get the chance to go back there sometime in the future.
(17) Dead Slow Ahead (dir. Mauro Herce)
[Review] Another film that I’ve reviewed very recently, so I don’t currently have much to add. I originally watched it on Festival Scope because I didn’t think that it was going to be in Gijón (it was a late addition to the programme) and then got the chance to see it on the big screen on my last night in Spain – something that underlined what a difference it can make to see a film in the cinema because it was a much more immersive experience.
(18) Fidelio, Alice’s Journey (dir. Lucie Borleteau)
[Review] Earlier this year, UK distributor Soda Pictures used 50 members of the public (who had to apply) to choose its next release. I was one of the 50 (I can’t say that it was a particularly satisfying experience) and this was one of the 10 films under consideration – it didn’t ‘win’, but it was my favourite (I was fairly out of sync with the tastes of the group, at least insofar as Soda’s calculation of the final rankings), so I was pleased when it got picked up by New Wave Films for a UK release. There aren’t many films directed by women on this list – that’s a result of what I’ve managed to see this year. Although the gender of a director isn’t really a criteria by which I chose my viewings (any more than I would vote for a politician simply because they were in possession of a uterus – the ideas are the thing!), I prioritise seeing ‘smaller’ films (i.e. the ones that don’t get saturation distribution) and films directed by women almost invariably fall into that category. So in theory I should manage to see a decent number of films by women in a given year, but 2015 didn’t work out like that. What I liked about Borleteau’s directorial debut was that her protagonist (played by Ariane Labed) is positioned as the desiring subject rather than the desired object: that’s fairly rare in onscreen representations. I’ll be interested to see what Borleteau gets up to next, but in the meantime this should get a UK DVD release soon.
(19) Hitchcock / Truffaut (dir. Kent Jones)
This documentary has been picked up by Dogwoof in the UK, so it will be getting a theatrical release in 2016 (it is also already listed for pre-order in their DVD store – here). It is a celebration of cinephilia – that of Hitchcock and Truffaut, and also that of the directors influenced by the 1964 book – and the book itself rendered into audiovisual form. It has made me want to reread the book (it’s probably more than 10 years since I last looked at it) and work my way through Hitchcock’s entire oeuvre – there are still so many of his films that I haven’t seen.
(20) Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (dir. Christopher McQuarrie)
Are there many film series that manage to improve as they go along (especially when they’ve gone off the boil along the way)? At times wilfully daft – and with a bit of a meh villain – but with action sequences to set your pulse racing, and the sense that you were watching a precision-made piece of filmmaking, this was one of my most enjoyable trips to the cinema this year. And Rebecca Fergusson came out of nowhere to waltz off with the film.
Honourable mentions (alphabetical, * = short): Abdul & Hamza (dir. Marko Grba Singh) [review], Crimson Peak (dir. Guillermo del Toro) [review], Cuenta con nosotros* (dir. Pablo Vara) [festival report], Hacked Circuit* (dir. Deborah Stratman) [festival report], Inside Out (dir. Pete Docter and Ronnie Del Carmen), Jet Lag (dir. Eloy Domínguez Serén), Krisha (dir. Trey Edward Shults) [festival report], Llévate mis amores / All of Me (dir. Arturo González Villaseñor) [review], El movimiento / The Movement (dir. Benjamín Naishtat), Ni Dios ni Santa María / Neither God Nor Santa María* (dir. Samuel M Delgado and Helena Girón) [review], ReMine: El último movimiento obrero / ReMine: The Last Working Class Movement (dir. Marcos M. Merino), Retratos de identificaçao / Identification Photos (dir. Anita Leandro), Scrapbook* (dir. Mike Hoolboom), Sueñan los androides / Androids Dream (dir. Ion de Sosa) [review], World of Tomorrow* (dir. Don Hertzfeldt).
Festival Report: Gijón, part 2
The second of two reports I’ve written for desistfilm about films I saw in Gijón is now online. This one focuses on the Convergencias films – in essence, I’ve looked at what the films have in common (interesting use of sound / silence and idiosyncratic visuals).
Critical Convergences in Gijón
Links to reviews will continue to appear in the other post(s).
UPDATE (29/12/15): the 1-hour recording of El séptimo vicio that centred on Convergencias is now online (here). I am in the first twenty minute section (specifically 04:20-09:21) alongside Félix Dufour-Laperrière and Víctor Paz. The middle section consists of Martín Cuesta, Pablo González-Taboada, Eduardo Guillot, Carlota Moseguí and David Tejero discussing the state of film criticism in Spain, and then the final section is Martín and Víctor.
Postcard from Gijón: Days 3-4
Sunday being a day of rest, it was only appropriate that I should catch up on some sleep (and also write the first of these postcards) – so the first film of the day for me wasn’t until 5pm.
Under Sandet / Land of Mine (Martin Zandvliet, 2015) – one of the Official Selection (competition) titles – is a Danish-German co-production that tells a little-known story from the aftermath of World War 2, namely that German soldiers were used to clear mine fields in countries that had been under Nazi occupation during the war. Some two million mines had been laid along Denmark’s western coast (someone apparently thought that it was a possible site for the Allied landings that would in reality occur in Normandy) presenting an obvious danger to the civilian population. 2,600 German troops (most of them teenagers recruited in the dying days of the war) were put to work defusing and removing the mines, having been told that they would only be allowed to go home to Germany once every mine had been recovered. The film gives two points of view: Sargent Carl Leopold Rasmussen (Roland Møller), an experienced Danish officer who is overtly and openly hostile towards the German forces who occupied his country (the English title obviously has the double meaning of ‘my land’ and ‘minefields’); and the young German soldiers (most notably Louis Hofmann, Emil Belton and Oskar Belton – the latter two play the team’s youngest members, a pair of twins who are barely in their teens) who he must train as a bomb disposal unit. If the treatment of what is an interesting story perhaps leans towards the conventional (the narrative arcs of certain characters is telegraphed from early on and although there are several sequences of high tension in relation to the bombs, that tension cannot be sustained for the duration (that said, I jumped in my seat at least three times)), the acting is great (a lot of it communicated silently through gesture and expression) and the characters are differentiated sufficiently for us to become invested in what happens to them as individuals.
The second film screening from the Convergencias selection was Risttuules / In the Crosswind (Martti Helde, 2014) – chosen by David Tejero (you can read his text on the film, here). I think that this will end up being my favourite of the festival (unless something astounding comes along) because it is utterly original in form and visualisation, and emotionally devastating – in contrast to the majority of screenings where people start chatting and filing out during the end credits, in this case you could have heard a pin drop and barely anyone got up from their seat until the credits had ended. This is another film that tells a little-known story in relation to World War 2: Stalin’s ethnic cleansing of the Baltic states from the early 1940s onwards involved thousands of citizens from Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia being forcibly sent by train to remote outposts in Siberia. Their predicament continued after the war ended and most were unable to return to their homelands until some time after Stalin’s death in 1953.
In the Crosswind tells the story via a series of letters (heard in voiceover – there is no spoken dialogue in the film) based on those written by Erna Tamm (played by Laura Petersen) as if to her husband Heldur (Tarmo Song) after they were separated during the removals. But the most arresting feature are the black and white tableaux vivants through which Helde conveys those moments when time stands still for us at those junctures when our lives are irrevocably changed. People stand stock still, emotion frozen on their faces, captured in moments of rupture and turmoil. The camera moves through a given scene in one continuous take (as far as I recall) – with the sound continuing as if everything were in action – and the staging is ingeniously blocked-out in such as way so that the movement of the camera through the tableaux allows a set up to change without cutting. The best example of this is a sequence where the camera is moving through an interior and passes a series of windows with pillars of wall in between them – the camera keeps slowly moving and each time we see the view out of the window, the (frozen) action has moved on, telling a violent and horrific story. The effect is a bit like looking at individual frames – or still images – taken in succession. It is genuinely unlike anything I’ve seen before and I hope that I can see it again.
My last screening on Sunday was one of the FICXLab (experimental) sessions showing two films by Robert Nelson: Suite California & Stops Passes Part 1: Tijuana to Hollywood via Death Valley (1978) and Suite California & Stops Passes Part 2: San Francisco to Sierra Nevadas & Back Again (1978). I found the combination of sound and image to be quite discombobulating. Part 1 features a spoof of the narcotrafficante ‘genre’ border crossings and there is humour throughout, usually via the juxtaposition of sound and image, but what emerges across both parts is multi-faceted portrait of California. The recourse to historical facts and monuments – giving a kind of historical layer to the presentation of landscape and place – reminded me of James Benning’s Deseret (although in visual terms they are quite different, as is Nelson’s focus on people within the spaces he explores).
Monday started with The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (Ben Rivers, 2015), another discombobulating film and I still don’t know quite what to make of it. It starts as a ‘making-of’-style documentary, showing Spanish director Oliver Laxe making his new film, Las Mimosas, in Morocco. The press kit probably has the best synopsis of what happens: ‘Shooting against the staggering beauty of the Moroccan landscape, from the rugged terrain of the Atlas Mountains to the stark and surreal emptiness of the Moroccan Sahara, with its encroaching sands and abandoned film sets, a director abandons his film set descending into a hallucinatory, perilous adventure of cruelty, madness and malevolence. A Paul Bowles story combined with observational footage forms a multi-layered excavation into the illusion of cinema itself’. My response to a film immediately after seeing it is usually a reaction – that is to say emotional rather than intellectual – and I only really start to form a coherent opinion when I begin writing. In this case, I think that I need to watch it again because my response feels like it’s stuck in reaction to the visuals (very beautiful and eerily strange) rather than engaging with what is going on at a deeper level. One to return to at a later date.
Next up was my chosen film for Convergencias – Transatlantique (Félix Dufour-Laperrière, 2014). This was the first time that I’ve introduced a film at a festival (or anywhere else other than a university) and led the subsequent Q&A, but my nerves were mainly about doing it in Spanish and making myself comprehensible to the audience (Félix spoke in French, which was then translated into Spanish by a translator). The original text that I had to submit as a proposal was almost 1,000 words but this then had to be edited and rewritten into a 200 word version for the festival catalogue:
‘Part meditative travelogue and part wordless maritime reverie, Transatlantique unfolds in the spaces of a cargo ship undergoing a transatlantic voyage between Antwerp and Montreal. The black and white cinematography registers the inkiest of blacks and blinding whiteness in the Atlantic’s unruly seascapes and, as the swaying motion of the ship causes a chiaroscuro dance on its surfaces, a complexly layered soundscape combines the sounds of the crew with audible elements of the ship and the encompassing sounds of the sea and wind in an evocative and transportive symphony.
This essay film is part of the trend for immersive documentaries, but its singularity resides in its relationship with the new silent cinema and the manner in which the film only offers a narrative in the sense that it begins in one place and ends in another; it is a stream of consciousness representation of the journey and the lives of those onboard rendered in an elegant and idiosyncratic visual form. It is fitting that a film exploring a ship at sea – an in-between space and no-man’s land in the interstices between national borders – uses the universal language of cinema at its most elemental to communicate with the audience.’
It was great to see the film on the big screen as my original viewing was on a computer (as I’ve said previously, I wasn’t able to see it in Edinburgh). Seeing it on that scale made certain things visible. David Cairns wrote about the film during EIFF and he mentioned ‘a breathtaking shot of the sea, blackly luminous’ and wondered whether it was played in negative – watching it for the second time, on a larger scale, and having recently seen Noite sem distancia (Lois Patiño, 2015), it seemed to me that the image was indeed one from elsewhere in the film flipped into negative. Someone asked about it during the Q&A and Félix confirmed that that was the case but that he had also digitally cut part of the image so as to remove the horizon line. I’ll be presenting the film again on Thursday.
I returned to the FICXLab screen for the last session on Monday, this time for a programme of shorts by Nathaniel Dorsky, Helga Fanderl, and Jonathan Schwartz. I’ve not seen any of their work before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. The programme was split into two, with Dorsky and Fanderl in the first half and then Schwartz in the second because the work of the first two complement each other whereas Schwartz’s films are quite different. The (silent) films by Dorsky (Prelude (2015) and Intimations (2015)) and Fanderl (Communing (2015)) have images of the natural world, repetition, reflection, and an emphasis on patterns of light and shadow in common (although the treatments are different), while Schwartz’s (a set of miniatures (2015), animals moving to the sound of a drum (2013), 3 1/33 series side a (2005-10), if the war continues (2012), 3 1/33 series side b (2005-10), Happy Birthday (2010)) utilise sound and the duplication of images to create worlds in miniature. My favourite of the evening was Fanderl’s film, although again my reaction was one of sensation rather than thought – but I’d like to see more of her films (which are shot on 16mm Super 8 and edited in camera). I will be writing a report for Desistfilm about the experimental section, so I won’t expand on these films any further for the time being.
FICX53: Convergencias
Back in June I saw the following call for papers/proposals from the Festival Internacional de Cine de Gijón:
‘[Asociación Cultural Convergencias de la Crítica Cinematográfica] and the Gijon International Film Festival will be hosting a second edition of its critics’ strand: CONVERGENCES. This strand intends to become an opportunity for film critics all over Europe – a meeting point of discussion for a diverse and wide-ranging spectrum of cinephilia. In order to realise this in FICXixon, we are organising a call for papers. The aim is to select six films not previously shown in Spain. This strand is conceived as a place for discovery and recognition of directors who have not received the appropriate attention of Spanish programmers and curators. We encourage critics to participate by sending proposals of films to programme at FICXixon. The first edition of this strand was a great success, working as a meeting place for Spanish film critics, that presented the selection to over 1,200 spectators. This year, we would like to open this participation to our European colleagues.’
A critic could participate if they were frequently publishing articles or discussing film on TV or radio. You had to submit a CV and a covering letter as part of the proposal to explain why you were interested in taking part. The film proposal itself had a word limit of 1,000 words in either English or Spanish – within the conditions set out (a film produced between 2014 – 2015, preferably one that had not yet been shown in Spain, and relevant to contemporary trends / delivering fresh ideas for the evolution of film language), you had to make the case for the importance of your chosen film and why it should be included in the festival’s programme. The final choice would be made by the section’s coordinators, Martín Cuesta (Cinema ad hoc) and Víctor Paz (A cuarta parede).
I wasn’t sure that I published frequently enough to qualify because I tend to have bursts of activity when I go to festivals followed by slow periods when I watch more than I write. But I knew that I had various upcoming festivals in September and early October (I didn’t know that I’d get derailed by the brouhaha over at the old blog during August) and I thought that it was worth going for given that they specifically stated that ‘only the quality and depth of the several points developed in the texts will be taken into account, no matter what the previous experience of the film critic is’. That seemed like an admirably open door and to be worth the effort of applying. But what film to choose?
At that point in the year, the only festivals I’d been to were in Barcelona and Edinburgh – obviously anything I’d seen in the former had already been shown in Spain, so that was a dead end. There wasn’t a great deal in Edinburgh that fitted the bill either (incidentally, it can be quite a faff to work out which countries a film has screened in). I was giving this proper thought while I was in Edinburgh, and looking through the festival catalogue there seemed to be two films that might fit the bill – films that were unusual enough that I’d probably be the only person suggesting them but that also sounded like my kind of film (liking the film wasn’t one of the conditions – but I would struggle to argue for a film that I didn’t actually rate). Anyway, I saw one of them but wasn’t bowled over by it. The other one – Transatlantique (Félix Dufour-Laperrière, 2014) – wasn’t screening until after I was leaving Edinburgh but it was in the videotheque so I headed there to watch it, only to be stymied by the fact that there was something noisy going on in the next room and this had been described as a silent film (which isn’t entirely accurate but it’s certainly a quiet film). So I bailed on that plan. In the end I watched it on Festival Scope….and I found it to be a singular and mesmerising film. So I wrote a proposal about it.
All of which is a very longwinded way of saying that I was one of the six critics chosen – Transatlantique is screening at FIXC53 with its director in attendance, and the festival is paying for my flights and accommodation so that I can be there too. I’ll get to meet the other chosen critics and discuss the films with them. I’m really thrilled to be taking part and to be meeting the other participants, and I’m intrigued by the other Convergencias films, none of which I’ve seen before (I’m also really looking forward to seeing Transatlantique on a big screen because it is visually stunning in a way that a computer screen cannot do justice to).
I will return to Transatlantique on here is some form, but I thought that I’d give a brief outline of each of the films in the section. The festival’s press release about the chosen films says that they’re connected through the use of sound in a creative capacity as a narrative element and through an expressive use of silence – I shall find out more when I watch them, but I can already see other potential overlaps in the descriptions below.
André’s Eyes / Os Olhos de André (António Borges Correia, 2015) – chosen by Jesús Choya.
Synopsis: An experimental docudrama in which the actual family members themselves participate in the recreation of their own story. Set in a small village in the Portuguese countryside, the film follows the struggle of a divorced father to keep his family together after his youngest son is taken away from them and placed in a foster family.
In the Crosswinds / Risttuules (Martti Helde, 2014) – chosen by David Tejero.
Synopsis: In a series of black and white tableaux vivants, the film tells the story of an Estonian woman and her young daughter struggling to find their way home after being deported to Siberia by the Soviet occupiers in 1941. The imagery looks fable-like, and the detailed description on the TIFF website says that ‘carving out an uncanny space between motion and stasis, these images evoke a state in which the past seems solid and the present like a dream’.
Krisha (Trey Edward Shults, 2015) – chosen by Carlota Moseguí.
Synopsis (taken from the official website): ‘Following a prolonged battle with addiction and self-destruction, Krisha, the black sheep of the family she abandoned, returns for a holiday celebration. But what begins as a moving testament to the family’s capacity to forgive soon spirals into a deluge of emotional bloodletting, as old wounds are torn open, and resentments are laid bare’. The cast includes several members of the director’s family.
The Road (Rana Salem, 2015) – chosen by Eduardo Guillot [not on Twitter].
Synopsis: Rana and Guy, a young married couple, live in today’s city of Beirut. Drifting away from reality with no sense of time and space, Rana is trapped in memories and dreams. Guy decides that they must go on a trip. The director says that ‘the film is inspired by my life with my partner, but the characters are not us, even though we’re the actors. The Road is a very personal project, and it takes a look into how it is to be in love and maintain a long relationship in a country where it’s difficult to make long term plans due to its instability’.
Test (Aleksandr Kott, 2014) – chosen by Pablo González-Taboada.
Synopsis: Test is a story about the first nuclear bomb test which was conducted in Semipalatinsk in 1949. Director Aleksandr Kott has said of his dialogue-free film that “…have you noticed that when somebody is really close to you, you don’t need many words to communicate, you communicate with glances, gestures, and actions. Sometimes silent communication means much more than empty conversations. This film is for those who love looking, for those who remember that the cinema is, before all, an image. And when cinema was invented, it was without words.”
Transatlantique (Félix Dufour-Laperrière, 2014) – chosen by me.
Part meditative travelogue and part maritime reverie, Transatlantique is a black and white essay film – without dialogue – exploring the spaces of a cargo ship undergoing a transatlantic voyage. The brothers Félix (director, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor), Nicolas (co-cinematographer) and Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière (sound recordist) boarded the Federal Rideau in Antwerp and embarked on a 30-day journey to Montreal. The film is as interested in the architectural spaces of the ship as it is with the sea and its depths, and makes interesting use of sound…but that is all I shall say for the time being.
There is also a Convergencias video presentation by Martín Cuesta – here.
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Participated At
Reflections on Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast AsiaBooth Online Only
Details Location
The Dhaka Art Summit, Institute for Comparative Modernities (ICM) at Cornell University, and Asia Art Archive, with support from the Getty Foundation's Connecting Art Histories initiative, launched Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia (MAHASSA) in 2019. The research project brought together leading international faculty and emerging scholars to investigate parallel and intersecting developments in the art histories of the three regions. Following panels organised by Asia Art Archive in America and ICM at Cornell, this panel invites Carlos Quijon, Jr., Dipti Sherchan, Marian Nur Goni, and Taushif Kara, four of the participants, to present on their research, which range from the transmutation of Muslim Khoja architecture across the Indian Ocean and pan-African collection-building in the postcolonial period, to the politics of representation in Nepal and the recent exhibition histories of Southeast Asia. The panel will be moderated by Sanjukta Sunderason.
Carlos Quijon, Jr. is an art historian, curator, and critic. His criticism and writings have appeared in Artforum, MoMA's post, Asia Art Archive's IDEAS Journal, and Trans Asia Photography Review, among others. In 2017, he was a research resident at the MMCA Seoul and a fellow of the Transcuratorial Academy both in Berlin and Mumbai. He curated Courses of Action in Hong Kong (2019), A will for prolific disclosures in Manila (2020), and co-curated Minor Infelicities in Seoul (2020). He is completing an MA in Art Theory and Criticism at the University of the Philippines.
Dipti Sherchan is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She explores the intersections of ethnography and art history to critically examine cultural politics, histories, and encounters in South Asia. In particular, she looks at the cultural politics of institutions such as art schools, museums, and galleries in Nepal as spaces where knowledge and counter-knowledge about the nation are actively produced and reproduced.
Marian Nur Goni is a historian whose work revolves particularly around collections' histories in and from East Africa, often examined through a diasporic focus, raising questions about the writing of history and processes of heritage-making. Marian currently conducts research on the collection of Joseph Murumbi in Nairobi in the frame of Pan-African debates around material culture, museum and restitution issues from the 1950s to the 1970s. She holds a PhD in history/art history from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris.
Taushif Kara is a Research Fellow at the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge. His doctoral research focuses on the intellectual history and migration of the diasporic Khoja community in South Asia and East Africa. He is also interested in the relationship of ideas to aesthetics in the postcolonial world, especially architecture. He has lectured on Muslim political thought at SOAS, and is currently a producer at Interventions, the intellectual history podcast.
Sanjukta Sunderason is Assistant Professor at University of Leiden. Starting February 2021, she will be a professor in History of Art at the University of Amsterdam. Her research expands on her interest in the aesthetics of decolonisation by looking at post-partition visual art across India, West and East Pakistan during the 1950s–60s, alongside simultaneous transnational formations of Third World cultural solidarities. Her book, Partisan Aesthetics: Modern Art and India's Long Decolonization, was published in 2020 by Stanford University Press.
11/F Hollywood Centre
233 Hollywood Road
www.aaa.org.hk
+85 2 2815 0032 (Fax)
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Green Party thanked President Obama for pardons for Oscar Lopez Rivera and Chelsea Manning, urges pardons for all other political prisoners and whistle-blowers
January 19, 2017 by PhilM
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Green Party leaders and activists expressed appreciation for President Obama’s pardons for Oscar Lopez Rivera and Chelsea Manning and urged him to use his final days in office to pardon other political prisoners and whistle-blowers.
Greens called for presidential pardons for political prisoners Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abdul Jamal, as well as whistle-blowers Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Jeffrey Sterling, and all others who were punished or face punishment for revealing military, government, and intelligence crimes, public deception, and corruption.
Those convicted for whistle-blowing or for political reasons and have already served their sentences should have their criminal records expunged, said Green Party leaders.
Greens said that organizations and individuals who’ve been working, for many decades in some cases, for the release of those unjustly convicted and incarcerated deserve the deepest gratitude for the pardons.
Statements from Green Party Caucuses
LATINX CAUCUS
“The independence of Puerto Rico has long been a concern of the Green Party’s. We are grateful that Oscar Lopez Rivera is free and even more grateful for the long years of resistance and direct action that has pushed for his release. The Green Party’s platform has long called for Puerto Rico’s independence, as well as for Lopez Rivera’s release.
Greens support the right of the people of Puerto Rico to self-determination and independence in conformity with United Nations Resolution 1514(XV) of 1960. Puerto Rico is not free until the island is released from the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) and from colonial status under U.S. rule.”
See also the Green Party’s national platform: Section 6 at http://www.gp.org/democracy_2016#demForeignPolicy
Green Party endorses Day in Solidarity with the Independence of Puerto Rico on June 17
Press release: Green Party of the United States, June 10, 2016
“The Black Caucus stands with the Latinx Caucus, Lavender Caucus, and Women’s caucuses in celebrating the release of political prisoners during the final days of the Obama presidency. We stand in solidarity with our comrades who for decades have fought for freedom and democracy.
The Black Caucus asks for pardons and clemency for other political prisoners, past and present to include, Mumia Abdul Jamal, Leornard Peltier, and Marcus Garvey. And as we stand for freedom for Puerto Rico, likewise, we stand with our brothers and sisters in Washington, District of Columbia — who still have not been freed of the tyranny and colonization that amounts to taxation without representation and a lack of self-determination afforded other US.. citizens in the various states.
Finally, we call for a moratorium on surveillance of Black, Latinx, and other leaders and activists targeted by the FBI and other intelligence agencies.”
Green Party National Women’s Caucus
Contact: Cecile Lawrence, 607-343-4987
Lavender Green Caucus
Green Party: Republican plan to repeal Obamacare should spark a new public demand for Single-Payer health care
Green Party urges mass public pressure to reverse Trump’s order Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines
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Rock Opera Spring Awakening A Wake Up Call for Musicals
By John Heilpern • 07/17/06 12:00am
If we’re very lucky, once in a generation an unexpected new musical comes along and changes everything. That is the thrilling achievement of Spring Awakening, which has been brilliantly directed by Michael Mayer, at the Atlantic Theater Company.
The Atlantic is on a roll! The theater has followed its production of Martin McDonagh’s staggeringly original black farce, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, with a wholly original musical based on Frank Wedekind’s 1891 Spring Awakening—of all things. The play was severely censored in its day. (Wedekind’s better-known “Lulu” plays are the basis of Alan Berg’s opera, Lulu). The musical adaptation is a surprise, however—and a delightful one—though the landmark 19th-century play about adolescent sex and prudish adults in a provincial German town could easily appear passé today.
The major achievement of Steven Sater’s book and lyrics, and Duncan Sheik’s superb rock score is to have found the modern within Wedekind’s stifling, repressed world. Comparisons have inevitably been made with Rent, particularly as Spring Awakening’s wonderfully gifted cast playing teenagers actually looks young. But Jonathan Larson’s Rent is sentimental showbiz, while Spring Awakening in its knee-high breeches will never make a window display in Bloomingdale’s. It is too unshowily good for that—too fine in its lyrical sensibility and melting stage poetry of the inarticulate.
Touch me—just like that.
Now lower down, where the sins lie …
Love me—just for a bit …
We’ll wander down, where the winds sigh …
The notion of sin—and therefore of shame—is comparatively new to us! The terribly undervalued Tony Kushner–Jeanine Tesori chamber piece, Caroline, or Change, explored childhood guilt and an adult’s shame at even being alive. But our bankrupt jukebox musical age more typically relishes cynicism. It is all about retro-pastiche and that catchall of insincerity, irony. Now comes the musical of the turn-of-the-century Spring Awakening to reverse all the rules and astonish us. In the 21st century, where everything is known (and available), where no fumbling teenage rite of passage seems even possible any more—what price childhood innocence?
The ambitious piece tells a story of abusive parents and corrupt teachers, of rape and abortion and suicide—the other side of growing up. Yet it is never predictable, for almost every scene is freshly conceived and the “O” of the lament for the damaged speaks directly to us:
O, I’m gonna be wounded.
O, I’m gonna be your wound.
O, I’m gonna bruise you.
O, you’re gonna be my bruise.
A lovely, unembarrassed, unhip yearning is its keynote. The plaintive urgency of the schoolkids in Spring Awakening is a near-expressionist state of mind in the midst of hormonal chaos and sticky dreams. Romance is feverish, naturally, and potentially a bummer. “I try to just kick it, but then, what can I do?” goes the song about stormy teen crushes. “We’ve all got our junk, and my junk is you.” More than a few of us in the audience burst into laughter at that witty line. In its precocious way, it was as realistic about life as the guilty boy’s sweet song with the lyric, “There’s a moment you know … you’re fucked.”
Spring Awakening is about misunderstood teen angst, whirling, uncontrollable feelings and junk. It’s about ridiculous, manic energy, which Bill T. Jones’ choreography captures in fractured, jagged spasms and wild leaps of the imagination. Yet there is, at its pure heart, a melancholy spirit that touches us—from the beautiful Act I close, with its tantalizing dawn of sexual love, to the final moments of wary celebration and fear at the crossroads of adulthood: “And all shall know the wonder / I will sing the song / Of purple summer …. ”
Director Michael Mayer has achieved his finest work in partnership with his first-rate design team, Christine Jones, Susan Hilferty and Kevin Adams. The sound by Brian Housman, incidentally, is perfect. The cast is led by the excellent Jonathan Groff as Melchior, Lea Michele as Wendla and John Gallagher Jr. as the punkish mess Moritz. All the adult roles are played by Tony Award winner Frank Wood and Mary McCann, stalwart founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company. The adults never sing, however. Only the young sing.
With its memorable score and spare imaginative simplicity, Spring Awakening is a breakthrough musical of the highest order.
I dare say the producers of Spring Awakening won’t have too much difficulty finding something to quote from my review in their ads in The Times for the show, if that’s what they want to do. But you never know.
I’m told I’m usually such a miserable sod that favorable quotes from my reviews can be slim pickings. But even when I rave about a show, there’s room for improvement. For instance, I wrote in my review of Mr. McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which swims in more blood than the Jacobeans, that it was “the best bloody play I’ve ever seen.” In the Times ad, however, the “bloody” was dropped and the quote became “The best play I’ve ever seen.”
Well, if it helps …. But a friend of mine, who’s a playwright, called me up to complain that he thought he was the one who’d written the best play I’ve ever seen. So I got on to the press representatives of the show and said, “Hello, it’s me. Sorry to trouble you, but The Lieutenant of Inishmore isn’t the best play I’ve ever seen. That singular honor belongs to a friend of mine and to something called Lear. Why, The Lieutenant of Inishmore isn’t even Martin McDonagh’s best play.”
So they put back the “bloody.”
But a more recent example takes the strudel. In the Times blurb for the British import of Henry Green’s Nothing, the quote from my review was published proudly above the title as: “I’ve rarely had such a good time at the theater—John Heilpern, New York Observer.”
In fact, I wrote, “I’ve rarely had such a good time at the theater without enjoying myself.”
Still, I found the rewrite of my politely downbeat review so funny, I couldn’t bring myself to protest. I hope you weren’t misled by the ad that deserves an award for chutzpah.
Filed Under: Home, Lifestyle, At the Theater, New York Observer LP, Martin McDonagh, Michael Mayer, Frank Wedekinds
SEE ALSO: How Prince Harry and Meghan Kicked Off Their Trip to New York
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« Correlation, Causation, and College: a guest (!) weekend open post | Main | Celts, Philip the II, and other old sh*t »
Subtractive Masculinity
by Doctor Science
I've mentioned my theory of subtractive masculinity from time to time, but I want to put it down coherently in one place.
"Subtractive masculinity" means that out of the universe of possible human actions or qualities, the only ones that a boy can rely on to signal his masculine status are ones that are not publicly exhibited by women or girls. Here's a Wiser's Canadian whiskey ad that shows subtractive masculinity in action, in the form of the "cootie effect":
Direct Youtube Link
A woman gives her meek husband her very girly, pink purse to hold. After she's gone he drops it, and picks it up inside a plain plastic bag which he holds instead. Then he sees a group of serious-looking men applaud him for "refusing to compromise", and the oldest and most fatherly-looking of them salutes him with a glass of Wiser's, for he has joined the "Wiserhood".
Now, this ad is meant to be funny, so the situation is exaggerated. But it's also an *ad*, it's intended to influence the audience's behavior. And the way it's doing that is by associating Wiser's whiskey with a) protecting yourself from symbols of femininity, and b) the approval of other men, especially a father. It's a very clear, brief example of something I've noticed since I was a little girl: that boys (and young men, and college basketball coaches, and Youtube commenters, etc etc) act as though femininity is something males can "catch" by association, and that this is degrading.
Subtractive masculinity wasn't really a problem 150 years ago or more, when women were constrained from doing a lot of things. When women aren't allowed to vote, own property, join professions, get higher education, take out loans, hold public office, or work various jobs, there were many ways for men to be indisputably masculine.
But as the constraints on women have relaxed, it's become ever clearer that subtractive masculinity is fragile and unstable. It's fragile, because as women are seen doing more things, the set of safely-masculine activities or qualities keeps shrinking. And it's unstable, because whether something is "masculine" or not is not actually based on male actions, it's based on what women *don't* do. Any time your identity is based on what other people do, you've got a problem. So boys see themselves having a choice between doing things that are in some way repellent (so that girls naturally wouldn't want to do them), or trying to control or restrict girls from doing "boy things", to keep those things safe from accusations of "girliness".
This is definitely a case where #notallmen is significant. Most of the men commenting here at Obsidian Wings are adults, who've worked out your own ideas of how men should behave -- enough so that I bet most of you would just laugh in the face of a guy who called you "pussified" for doing something like holding a purse or changing a baby's diaper or crying when you're really sad. You're (for the most part) too mature to feel threatened by things like that -- and that's probably why Obsidian Wings is one of the few places on the internet where Lewis' Law is *not* in force.
So now when I ask you whether you agree that our culture's construction of masculinity is subtractive, I'm really *not* asking about you personally, but about your experiences when you were growing up, or what you see in boys or immature men now.
I'm also asking about other cultures, because I don't think subtractive masculinity is a universal. When I started noticing manga and anime (back in the 90s), I was struck by how much wider the range of masculine behavior, body types, colors, etc., seemed to be in Japanese material than in American comics and animation. It's as though the line between masculine and feminine in US culture is foggy, so the only way to be safely masculine is to exaggerate certain "core" traits:
Most of the male Young Avengers characters have exaggerated upper-body musculature. The Naruto characters have body types that are much more normal -- even though both groups are super-powered fighters, and both series are for the young male audience.
My guess is that Japanese culture constructs masculinity (and femininity) to have a harder, clearer line between them, so it's possible for a Japanese boy to go closer to his side of the line and still be safely masculine. I'd like to hear more informed opinions, though.
Posted by SuperUser at 02:45 PM | Permalink
I think it comes down to insecurity. That's why it is especially common among teenage boys -- they are insecure in their new situation. (One interesting question, which you might have some insight into, is why girls don't have that same insecurity. Or, if they do, how their reaction differs.)
It is also why you see so many male religious fundamentalists getting so hysterical at the idea of women getting educated or gaining any kind of autonomy. They are so massively insecure in their masculinity (although they would deny that, probably hysterically as well) that they feel they will be harmed by women else getting anything. The only difference is that they are still in a powerful enough position (or, at least, have access to weapons that they can use for leverage) to keep women down, rather than having to modify their own behavior to avoid acting "girly."
Considered that way, "subtractive masculinity" might actually be a good sign. It shows that men in that culture do not feel that they should/can restrict women, so they have to modify their own behavior instead. Not, perhaps, the most desirable of behaviors. But a huge step forward over, I think you would agree, "keeping women in their place."
One other thought. Consider the female Avengers vs the corresponding Naruto characters. Notice that they also have exagerated upper body (breast) development. So perhaps one cultural difference is that physical characteristics generally are less tied to masculinity/femininity in Japanese culture.
I actually think "keeping women in their place" was part of subtractive masculinity all along, that our culture was working with a basically subtractive model back to the late 1700s if not earlier. It just only became clear in the mid-20th century, and only became a fundamental marketing strategy in the late 20th century.
Yes, I know what you mean about American comic characters of both sexes. Once you're used to manga/anime characters, characters in Western comics & animation all look ... inflated, or something.
what you see in boys or immature men now.
A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a colleague from work that just floored me. R has always seemed like a good guy; he's in his early 30s and we've gone rock climbing a few times. I've been taking classes at a local circus acrobat school and doing aerial silks in particular. R knew this and in the middle of a scheduling discussion about when/if we could climb together, he launches into a rant about how I'm totally feminine because I do silks.
I thought he was joking at first, but he was dead serious. At some point I asked him outright, R, WTF are you doing? Are you seriously trying to macho posture me? You understand that that can't possibly work, right? Right?
Putting aside the notion that I was supposed to be insulted by having femininity ascribed to me (oh how I wish I could be more like this woman), the whole idea that silks was insufficiently masculine just...didn't make sense. Now, even hobbies that involve climbing into the sky with your bare hands, doing death defying drops, enduring lots of pain and the knowledge that mistakes can kill you no longer count as masculine? I get that most aerialists are women and we all have to wear tights and the activity is geared to performance, but really?
Apparently, that's enough to recode aerial silks as a feminine thing. So, to sum up, yes, I think you're right when you suggest that nothing is so masculine that the mere presence of women can't recode it as feminine.
Posted by: Turbulence | October 11, 2014 at 01:48 PM
Turb --
Wow, that may be the most extreme example of the "cootie effect" I've heard of yet. My jaw dropped watching that video -- not least because the moves overlap heavily with high-level *men's* gymnastics (especially the rings), and the incredible upper-body strength involved.
What did R say, when you pointed out that his attempted macho-posturing couldn't possibly work?
I changed my son's diapers about five thousand times AND probably, at least once, simultaneously wept out of sadness about something or other, probably about taxes.
But I've never held a woman's purse, changed a diaper and wept ALL at the same time.
I held my wife's purse numerous times over the years but she doesn't allow it anymore since the divorce.
But I'd like to think that if I was holding her purse and a couple of nearby meatheads (one Ted Nugent, the other maybe Ted Cruz) were giving me the subtractive masculine stink eye that I would have the presence of mind to do one of two things. Either open the purse, remove her lipstick (which she didn't carry, so it would have to be lip gloss) and compact mirror and begin exaggeratedly applying the lipstick to my own lips and then snap the purse closed, if it had a snap, and walk up to the aforementioned meat heads, purse my lips, and demand that they "Give us a kiss!", just to see what happens.
Or, open the purse, remove her gag revolver (made of chocolate, like in the Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn movie), make like I'm checking the chamber for bullets and then stride over to the two of them, chocolate pistol in hand, and see if like George Zimmerman, they wet their codpieces as they start some trouble.
What did R say
R just kept repeating the same thing over and over; he didn't really engage the argument. To be fair to him, I don't think he ever saw the video linked above, but I'm pretty sure he's seen this. Of course, one can't hope to perform like the aerialist in the second video unless one trains like the aerialist in the first video.
Subtractive masculinity:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jeff-bell-single-mothers
On the upper body musculature, my impression is that there's more weightlifting and probably steroid use now than in the past. This is a purely unscientific notion, based on my vague impressions only. But when I look at old shows on cable (Magnum PI, for instance, and yes, I am suitably ashamed) Tom Selleck was not hugely muscled and I think that's true in general of male stars a few decades back and further. Nowadays they all tend to have huge sculpted biceps, at least on the movies and shows where there is going to be some violence.
I also read fitness blogs and such online sometimes and there also, my impression is that running and endurance sports are not quite as "in" as they used to be--there's more emphasis on strength and muscles and there's even some mildly amusing assaults on running and other forms of aerobic exercise by the weightlifting types. And yes, it is in large part about being macho, though to be fair they also say that women should be lifting and not running.
I suspect we can blame Arnold for the heavy muscles that now seem to be common in violent movies. I can't fault him for using the talent(?) he had to further his movie career. But still, until then it wasn't necessary to be anywhere near that extreme.
And even now, outside movies with lots of hand-to-hand fighting, it isn't quite that bad. Look at the guys in NCIS or Castle. They are obviously not seriously out of shape, but they aren't body builders either. Even though they are in jobs which require them to be fit.
We don't see seriously overweight guys on TV (outside bad comedy shows, at least). But then, I suppose that we should be grateful that our entertainment isn't encouraging obesity....
Actually, wj, this very good article by Logan Hill in Men's Health says that the training regimen for today's stars is *much* tougher than what Arnold did in the day.
Yes, the fashion isn't for heavy muscles -- because it's impossible to put them on *quickly*. But Brad Pitt in "Fight Club" proved you could put on *some* muscle and lower your body fat into the basement, so you look really strongly muscled without being Arnold.
What Hill's article shows is that the appearance demands for male stars are now even more unrealistic and difficult to maintain than the demands on female stars. The women have to get their weight down and keep it there, but the men have appearance goals that literally cannot be maintained -- they have to train to "peak" on specific shooting days (for shirtless or action scenes). And then do pushups right before the cameras start, to look as pumped as possible.
wj: you asked:
One interesting question, which you might have some insight into, is why girls don't have that same insecurity. Or, if they do, how their reaction differs.
Girls are *plenty* insecure, of course, but it's different.
The core difference is that, for a boy (and man), femininity is seen as *degrading*, a loss of the status they already have.
Girls know that they *start* from a position of lower status. Being "feminine" doesn't raise your status by itself, it's presented as a way to make yourself more lovable, and then if you're loved by a man that attraction or love raises your status.
Girls (and women) get very insecure that they won't get or deserve love and status; boys (and men) are insecure about *losing* status. What's worse, for males, is that in our society, men are the default value of "people": (white, straight) men automatically have the status of "full human being". In other words, if you're not masculine, you're not *really* a person.
So for boys, insecurity about your gender performance is actually existential: it determines not just whether you're going to be loved, but whether you're going to be a *person*.
This is one respect in which I think the patriarchy is worse for men than for women. Being threatened with the loss of love is bad, but loss of personhood is much, much worse. And that's why guys who feel their masculinity threatened can go into a violent, toxic meltdown -- because it feels like an actual life-or-death threat.
Dr. S, I see the existential threat (although I hadn't verbalized it quite that way). I guess that's why I take a certain guilty pleasure, when I encounter one of those guys, in saying something like "Real men don't give a sh*t about what guys like you think."
It seems to leave them gasping. Because, of course, being tough enough not to care is even more masculine, in their minds anyway -- after all, what is more masculine in their view than being too tough to care? As I say, a guilty pleasure.
Girls (and women) get very insecure that they won't get or deserve love and status; boys (and men) are insecure about *losing* status.
i get your point, but just for the record: many boys go through school with no status at all to lose. they're insecure because they're prey at worst, or simply nonentities at best. genetics keeps them frail or ugly or too smart or whatever, and they swirl around in the backwash of teenage society - untouchable to all the boys and girls - until they graduate and discover that they can be what they want because school isn't reality.
Oh boy. Not that this is a bad topic (it's fantastic), but I've got so many oars to put in the water on this that it's going to be so easy for me to misstate something or say something that will sound really off. And I've got some deadlines coming up for various things, so if I get sucked in, to a long back and forth, I'm really in trouble. So bearing that in mind.
Having lived here, I find Japanese society toxically chauvinistic, so it's a bit tough for me to take the tone of the post, which comes across a bit as suggesting that Japanese society may be better, but I believe that is because the doctor is taking care in discussing it, it comes across like that. My feeling is that Japanese society is just as bad or worse, but in a different way.
Japanese masculine style is becoming very feminine and by that, I mean taking on a lot of the markers that probably were the domain of women 10 or 20 years ago. Things like time spent on one's appearance, fashion, fastidiousness. Does that mean that there is a 'harder, clearer' line between them, allowing boys to move up to the line? That's possible, but I'm not sure about saying that culture 'constructs' that line, it is more like revealing a line that was there all the time. As a very simple example, there is the red scarf row I haven't made a close study of this, but I have a feeling that Japanese news sources like the one above didn't notice what several foreign news sources did, which was:
Matsushima is not the only Japanese parliamentarian who likes to wear red scarves. Her fellow colleague in the upper house, Antonio Inoki, who used to be a wrestler is famous for wearing a red scarf. However he has always taken it off when entering the chamber so as not to flout the rules.
Antonio Inoki is a former pro wrestler and a bit of a nutcase, so it may not be the textbook example. I'm not sure about the claim that he has always removed it, but to me, it illustrates the same sort of thing as white privilege; if you are man and behave eccentrically, you are treated as a cute outlier, if you are not a man, your behavior is an affront to the culture and indicates you can't get along.
This construct is totally flexible to the point of nuclear hypocrisy and is not confined to men. White foreign males can get away with tons of stuff. The lines are impossible to discern in normal circumstances, but when they get drawn, it is virtually impossible to have them examined. They are just there and that is the way it is.
There is a metric ton of stuff to write about body image and such (especially as I struggle to lose some weight), but I won't even touch on that.
This is also something that ties into Japanese attitudes towards sex, love etc, which I have tried to write about, but never can get past a first paragraph. Short summary, just as bad or worse, but in a different way.
How this plays out is something I've been thinking about a lot since taking two (female) students to Kyrgyzstan. When we were over there, they were astonished by how good looking the hot were, observing that this guy or that was ikemen. One of the other participants suggested that they were enamoured because the boys in Japan have taken on more feminine markers, but that observation may have been linked to his perception that boys in Japan are getting 'wussified'. I did find that there were a lot of very hot looking folks over there, but I attributed it to the genetic stew of the Silk Road, which combines features so that you can see very striking people there. I have always thought that an attraction to the exotic was one of those selfish gene things, (or perhaps gene pool things) where you are attracted to something that is going to ensure the chances for your group to flourish.
Another aspect is how a more rigid society allows areas where group members can have more control. An example of that is pre WW2 African American society. Segregation allowed African Americans to carve out areas where they could create their own hierarchies. This is not to say that this is preferable, but pre-boomer society, where men's and women's roles are clearly defined, makes it much easier for the bulk of people to fit in, even if it makes life hell for the outliers. One could say that one of the relentless drivers of gender 'equality' has been market forces that require most middle class families to have two wage earners.
Related to that, the Naruto image has lots of variation in height, and most Japanese manga in a group situation always have this. On the other hand, the Young Avengers shows rather little variation. Obviously, having lots of different heights allows the illustrator to really mix up sight lines etc, which is something that Japanese manga artists really like to do. Scott McCloud breaks the more flexible nature of Japanese manga in his book Understanding Comics, but another thing that Japanese manga has going is that hierarchies are relatively easy to create. One science fiction author was asked about his vision of the future, with the interviewer assuming it must be rather bleak given that he was always writing dystopias and he replied no, but to have an interesting story, you have to have conflict, so you are forced to create something that automatically has the seeds of conflict in them.
Anyway, that comment is all over the map, and I'll try to tease out anything that I didn't get across, but with the caveats in the first paragraph.
Actually, the JapanToday source does mention Inoki. However, whether he _always_ removes his scarf or whether he just started removing it is an interesting question.
DrSci:
A really interesting thesis, so thank you for posting. My first thought is that it makes a certain level of sense...since men were historically dominant and women were given a defined role, there was no real need to define 'masculinity.'
But after thinking about it for awhile...I can definitely think of 'positive' aspects of masculinity. Not positive in the sense of good or beneficial, but in the sense that they are markers of masculinity, regardless of the participation of women.
-assertiveness
-aggression
-basic sports knowledge and competency
-in some circles, firearm competency and hunting
-etc
To take a simple example, there is a social expectation (in general) that I can both throw a baseball/football and am generally aware of sports news.
I know guys that are shamed (for lack of a better word) into 'watching the game' even though they couldn't care less, simply because its expected. I don't get the impression women are thought of as 'less' if they watch the super bowl for the commercials. But in my experience, definitely something that is applied to men.
Growing up, I have to say it was pretty similar. If you weren't fascinated with knives and fireworks, you were the odd duck out. If you weren't in little league, or some sport, again there was a definite 'this is something you are supposed to be interested in' vibe.
And, as muscles were mentioned upthread...yeah. Upper body hypertrophy is definitely a positive sign of masculinity.
And, signifying my age by referring to that brief period when video games were widespread but almost exclusively male, it was very expected that your average teenage male could pick up street fighter or golden eye and be competent.
Which provides a nice segue back to your thesis: Maybe these things were only relevant at defining adolescent masculinity because women weren't interested? (Although I have to say, playing co-ed sports was perfectly acceptable, as long as it was sports)
I think you are likely right to some degree. At least, I would agree with the idea expressed in:
act as though femininity is something males can "catch" by association, and that this is degrading.
But the explanation is possibly much simpler. Women have been disadvantaged, abused, and to put it bluntly, degraded throughout history. And again, rather bluntly, a lot of what is 'feminine' is, or could be viewed as, degrading. High heels and skin tight clothes designed less for function and comfort than to put the body on display. Or, as shown in your commercial, being treated as servant in a supposedly equal relationship.
I apologize if this came off a little rambling, I've been adding to it off and on between work. And again, interesting thesis.
Posted by: thompson | October 11, 2014 at 09:24 PM
OK, let me toss this into the mix link
The parasite T. gondii apparently infects rats to encourage them to be eaten by cats, which then allows transmission through cat feces. Hold on to your hats
Researchers had already observed a few peculiarities about rodents with T. gondii that bolstered Flegr’s theory. The infected rodents were much more active in running wheels than uninfected rodents were, suggesting that they would be more-attractive targets for cats, which are drawn to fast-moving objects. They also were less wary of predators in exposed spaces. Little, however, was known about how the latent infection might influence humans, because we and other large mammals were widely presumed to be accidental hosts, or, as scientists are fond of putting it, a “dead end” for the parasite. But even if we were never part of the parasite’s life cycle, Flegr reasoned, mammals from mouse to man share the vast majority of their genes, so we might, in a case of mistaken identity, still be vulnerable to manipulations by the parasite.
In the Soviet-stunted economy, animal studies were way beyond Flegr’s research budget. But fortunately for him, 30 to 40 percent of Czechs had the latent form of the disease, so plenty of students were available “to serve as very cheap experimental animals.” He began by giving them and their parasite-free peers standardized personality tests—an inexpensive, if somewhat crude, method of measuring differences between the groups. In addition, he used a computer-based test to assess the reaction times of participants, who were instructed to press a button as soon as a white square popped up anywhere against the dark background of the monitor.
The subjects who tested positive for the parasite had significantly delayed reaction times. Flegr was especially surprised to learn, though, that the protozoan appeared to cause many sex-specific changes in personality. Compared with uninfected men, males who had the parasite were more introverted, suspicious, oblivious to other people’s opinions of them, and inclined to disregard rules. Infected women, on the other hand, presented in exactly the opposite way: they were more outgoing, trusting, image-conscious, and rule-abiding than uninfected women.
The findings were so bizarre that Flegr initially assumed his data must be flawed. So he tested other groups—civilian and military populations. Again, the same results. Then, in search of more corroborating evidence, he brought subjects in for further observation and a battery of tests, in which they were rated by someone ignorant of their infection status. To assess whether participants valued the opinions of others, the rater judged how well dressed they appeared to be. As a measure of gregariousness, participants were asked about the number of friends they’d interacted with over the past two weeks. To test whether they were prone to being suspicious, they were asked, among other things, to drink an unidentified liquid.
The results meshed well with the questionnaire findings. Compared with uninfected people of the same sex, infected men were more likely to wear rumpled old clothes; infected women tended to be more meticulously attired, many showing up for the study in expensive, designer-brand clothing. Infected men tended to have fewer friends, while infected women tended to have more. And when it came to downing the mystery fluid, reports Flegr, “the infected males were much more hesitant than uninfected men. They wanted to know why they had to do it. Would it harm them?” In contrast, the infected women were the most trusting of all subjects. “They just did what they were told,” he says.
Why men and women reacted so differently to the parasite still mystified him. After consulting the psychological literature, he started to suspect that heightened anxiety might be the common denominator underlying their responses. When under emotional strain, he read, women seek solace through social bonding and nurturing. In the lingo of psychologists, they’re inclined to “tend and befriend.” Anxious men, on the other hand, typically respond by withdrawing and becoming hostile or antisocial. Perhaps he was looking at flip sides of the same coin.
He also notes that because of different food cultures, different societies have different rates of infection.
I don't know if I entirely agree - I partially agree, certainly - because off of that list, I've definitely encountered strong attitudes that what makes these "masculine" includes at least a thread of women being uninterested in them or unwelcome and excluded from them. The assertiveness and aggressiveness flow nicely (well, not so nicely) into the lingering cultural notion that women explicitly shouldn't be like that, and are "bitches" or unfeminine if they are. I mean, yes, there's a sense where these can be viewed as non-subtractive masculine markers, but they don't manage to avoid the siege mentality DocSci alludes to in the OP; even if there's a sense where they're (viewed as) "inherently" masculine, deviation from them tends to be expressed as becoming feminine and I've definitely encountered perceptions that a woman "intruding" into them ruins them (or her)... which, granted, may say more about broad gender identity in the culture than specifically about particular markers...
(Also, as with Turb and some others, I wish I could limit the subtractive masculinity to only the young and those with undeveloped senses of identity/gender, but I've seen it so broadly that I can't. It does seem like it's less acceptable to flaunt it with age, at least.)
(There's a lot I'd like to say on this topic, but I'd be more rambley than usual, and I know that spending 3 of the last 4 years in the military makes it hard for me to have a clear perception of normal trends with this, since that's Another World when it comes to gender roles - or even just the age at which it's normal to stop using certain "adolescent" modes of social interaction...)
Medieval Iceland is a fascinating example where this model of subtractive masculinity ran amok and was enshrined in law in this form. From what I know it seems that it was enforced much more forecefully against men than women. Despite their low legal status, women had a lot more leeway to act male and the saga literature runs on strong female characters making use of that. For men even the suspicion of a violation of the markers carried legal weight. A charge of having acted 'girly' that was not answered immediately (by use of force) was seen as proven leading to getting outlawed. On the other hand certain charges themselves were seen as so out of bound that making them carried the same sentence (most prominently the claim that someone had acted the female part in a homosexual act). What constituted girly behaviour was defined in occasionally quite insane ways. The run of the seam of a shirt in the armpit area/the presence of a gusset distinguished the male from the female. Also a man could not wear an oversized shirt because that was girly too. A wife could get an instant faultless* divorce, if she caught her husband in one of the above. A man had to be careful, if his wife presented him with a new shirt. It might be a trick to get rid of him.
Today Iceland is afaik the country where the laws take the most care to actually enforce equality (e.g. mandatory paternity leave, rather strict quotas etc.). While there are still bouts of hypermasculinity, some purely 'girlish' things (e.g. knitting) seem to carry no negative connotation anymore and girls will not put up with 'traditional' sexist behaviour on the male part (pick-up artists HATE Icelandic women and avoid the country like the plague).
*instant divorce before witnesses was possible otherwise too but, if she could not name a serious cause, it negatively affected the property division, i.e. how much she could keep.
Here's another example in Wired, as Ann Leckie discusses reaction to her book Ancilliary Justice, and is touchingly almost apologetic towards the negative reaction from some to her use of pronouns (I'm afraid I might have been rather more confrontational in her situation).
Some of the comments at the bottom suggest what a raw nerve this is for some.
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/geeks-guide-ann-leckie/
“I’ve been surprised at the number of people who were really angry that I tried to convey gender neutrality by using a gendered pronoun. Even if it was ‘she,’ which undercuts a masculine default, they feel as though it would have been much better if I had used an honest-to-goodness gender-neutral pronoun, and that would have conveyed it better. People have also been feeling angry that the male characters in the story are persistently mis-gendered, because they’re continually referred to as ‘she.’ I understand where that’s coming from, and it certainly wasn’t my intention to make anybody feel like they were being maliciously mis-gendered, and in some ways I share the frustration of folks about the third person neutral pronouns. I wish they were used more. … I think at the time I was working very strongly from an assumption … that in fact gender is a binary, and the implications of that do turn up in the text, and I know some people have pointed it out, and they’re right, it’s there, and had I been writing it now I probably would have handled those moments a little bit differently, but I think I would still have gone with ‘she,’ because I think it has a much stronger, more visceral effect.”
Posted by: Nigel | October 12, 2014 at 05:20 AM
NV:
What about basic handywork? Owning and using powertools, being able to fix a broken toilet, change spark plugs on a car, etc. Things women do with increasing frequency, but there is still a social shame applied to men that stand lost in the home depot, looking for the thingy that is attached to the widget that is screwed onto toilet handle.
I was friends with a plumber some years back...he used to tell me stories about how some guy tried to fix a leaky pipe or something, only to end up flooding his basement. I mean, I can say stupidity is a factor, but I imagine pride and 'being a man' is a pretty big factor as well.
I mean, yes, there's a sense where these can be viewed as non-subtractive masculine markers, but they don't manage to avoid the siege mentality DocSci alludes to in the OP
Honestly, I have fairly mixed feelings as well. I think part of the difficulty I have is the additive/subtractive method of defining things, is that in a nominally binary system, its pretty easy to cast any factor Y as not X, or not X as Y. Since gender is pretty stereotyped, I think causality can be hard to determine. But often it seems pretty obvious.
As wj noted upthread, pink used to be a boy color. It seems like the only reason it is anti-masculine is that it became feminine.
Take 'aggressive' as a counter example. In college and high school, I can think of a few times where men were socially pressured/shamed into a fight because they were insulted.
I have a hard time believing this social pressure, that men respond to certain insults with violence, came about by observing: hey, women don't seem to engage in empty violence, this is probably a good way of distinguishing manhood.
Which is not to say that women don't get into fights. I've just never gotten the impression that backing down, walking away was as shameful for a woman.
And if you consider stereotypical relationships, men are supposed to be the aggressors. They ask the women out. They pick the venue. They pay. Ultimately, they propose.
I suppose you could describe that in terms of: women were supposed to be passive, so masculinity is defined as active. But I feel that might be a little bit of a stretch.
And this also leads to 'masculinity under siege'. I know the dating things sounds silly, but its something that makes the rounds on blogs periodically. There are expectations, but also counter-expectations. Should a man offer to pay (its classy) or not (it can be considered insulting). Should you let a women know you're interested (men are supposed to be the instigators) or is it unwelcome and harassing?
I've seen and heard numerous discussions on those kind of points (mostly from the conservative side). And in those cases, its not women entering a predominately male construct that subtract it from men, its that society is making masculine markers fraught, while simultaneously maintaining the standard.
which, granted, may say more about broad gender identity in the culture than specifically about particular markers...
And I think this is really the crux of the matter. As long as society tries to define and stereotype people by their gender, you're going to get this tension: A man should... A woman should... A man wants... A woman wants... are ultimately limiting and empty concepts. Especially when they are idealized concepts that are basically impossible to achieve.
As a final note, I just want to say that LJ and Hartmut have both made really interesting comments. It's one of the reasons I come to ObWi, you never know what you are going to learn.
Posted by: thompson | October 12, 2014 at 09:06 AM
I would, perhaps as a side note, point out that most young men care more about these markers as they are perceived by young women. So your thesis is inadequate in explaining why young women desire these markers in a man. Yes we are all older and have met, known etc. Women for whom these markers are less important, so we are sensitive, open minded girlie men. Tell it to the 17 year old competing with the high school quarterback for a prom date.
Posted by: Marty | October 12, 2014 at 09:29 AM
It's tough to tell sometimes for the male when the markers, or their lack thereof, work to his advantage or not:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWtgUq9mfx0
Thompson's comment about markers has me think that a lot of effort in creating gender equality deals with trying to do something with those markers. For masculine markers, either not holding them as important (so what's the big deal if I can't bbq?) or not penalizing women if they exhibit them (she doesn't tolerate fools gladly, that's really refreshing) For feminine markers, it's either allowing them to be taken on by men (keeping a spotless kitchen or cooking) or not holding them so valuable for women (She wouldn't be caught dead in high heels!)
This may seem like a decent approach, but part of the problem, as thompson points out, is that if you deal with markers, you are always dealing with gender as a binary phenomenon, and you need to go beyond that.
I think there is an interesting thought experiment, imagine you could invert every marker so that masculine markers become feminine and vice versa. Would that actually improve things?
Someone pointed out a blog that could be described as feminist highlighting beefcake photos and the discussion, such that it was, was wondering if simply allowing women to ogle men was 'feminist'. I'm not sure what the answer is, but when some talk about 'the male gaze' as a feature of the patriarchy, and others want to subvert it with a notion that women should be able to (though it can be hard to tell whether various subversions are to highlight the problematic nature or are to invert the marker) it becomes very confusing.
Maybe Annie Hall should have called the Orkin Man and found a more lasting relationship, I mean, from Alvy Singer's point of view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX5BngxRWLg
And I just pulled another cleek comment out of the spam filter. Obviously didn't sacrifice the appropriate amount of cheetos and cup ramen to the spam god.
Markers, markers, everywhere!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKczZnfwYC4
You know, kid, somewheres in life you got turned around.
Don't we all?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFADSBDPUzQ
Responding to cleek's comment (now that it has appeared).
For a some of us, we were too shy for our status or lack of status to matter. But I do recall an occasion in junior high. In the course of an after school pick up football game, I got into a fight with another boy. (He was clipping and wouldn't stop, FYI.) It was the only fight I got into in school At a time when boys fighting was, or at least seemed to be, the norm.
We were two of the smallest kids in our class, which meant that we weren't strong enough to actually do each other much damage. So nothing much got resolved. But I do remember afterwards having a whole lot of other boys gathered around me congratulating me extravagantly -- for fighting/standing up for myself, not because I had "won" or anything.
Well, at least being smart wasn't a negative for status. And when I got to high school being one of the smart kids was actually a big positive. Very nearly as much as being athletic.
I think that a link to Joanna Russ's "When It Changed" (.pdf) is apposite.
It doesn't take long to read.
Or, as shown in your commercial, being treated as servant in a supposedly equal relationship.
So, um, this strikes me as kind of...bizarre? I've often been asked to hold things for partners (and do a great many far more difficult things besides!) and I don't think this amounts to being "treated like a servant" nor does it undermine the equality of our relationship. Surely you can't believe that, right?
The only way I can make sense of that is to believe that marriage is of course a call to service where both spouses are called to serve each other, to put their partner's needs and desires ahead of their own (at least some of the time). Parenthood is even more so. But the call to service aspect underlies the relationship rather than undermines it so that doesn't really apply here.
This video may give an insight into some aspects of Japanese culture. I wouldn't swallow it all, it is made by a Japanese cosmetic company to sell product, so I would not be at all surprised if the entire thing was scripted to reproduce the experiment. You can toggle the English subtitles. One can see how even something like a term of address can place one spouse in a particular role.
So, um, this strikes me as kind of...bizarre?
I suppose we're just different, or are in different relationships at least. If I shoved a bag into my wife's hands and left without waiting for a response or making eye contact, I'd probably get an exasperated 'WTF'. And, imo, rightfully so, because that would be rude of me.
And yes, I have been asked to hold bags, drive to airports in the middle of the night, cook dinner, clean, and far more, etc etc etc. All part of the give and take in a healthy relationship, as you note. But that can (and should!) be done while displaying consideration and courtesy.
I think it depends. If you think the markers themselves are a problem, then inverting them doesn't solve the problem, it relocates it.
Take objectifying women. Arguably a marker for masculinity in society, arguably toxic. Now invert it. Does the harm induced by objectification somehow disappear? I'd say no.
But I do remember afterwards having a whole lot of other boys gathered around me congratulating me extravagantly -- for fighting/standing up for myself, not because I had "won" or anything.
My impression, and I could be wrong, is that this would get you suspended or expelled these days.
I have the same impression. We have gotten so hysterical about the possiblity of anyone being harmed (let alone violence) that we suspend kids for a whole host of trivialities. I think you can even get in trouble at school for closing your fist, sticking out your index finger, and saying "Bang!"
This may be merely the mirror image of the gun nuts' attitudes. But it is no less insane.
To touch back to this fairly briefly (and at long last for a reason other than having to post from my phone - whatever was keeping me from posting from any browser on my laptop is no longer afflicting Chrome, at least), a problem with a clean-cut theory of subtractive masculinity is when society tries to demarcate everything as masculine or feminine. This is an impossible stance to maintain (nor would anyone sane want to maintain it), and it's rare that every part of society is on board with every part of such definitions, but multiple subgroups within society can put together a fairly broad and encompassing patchwork if you're affiliated with enough of them and take their mores relatively equally seriously. To the degree that many or most behaviors can be crammed into a masculine/feminine dichotomy, subtractive masculinity is not a particularly useful explanatory theory, since it's the default standpoint - that which isn't masculine must be feminine, and vice-versa. It's only when we get to the more nuanced standpoint where not everything is not declared a binary gendered dicotomy and gender-neutral acts and objects are the norm, not the exception, that subtractive masculinity becomes interesting as an explanatory theory. I think the reluctance I have to cleave to subtractive masculinity is that I've adhered to enough subcultures where there's antipathy towards gender-neutral value assignment (besides an unstated and somewhat sweeping assumption of "neutral" default masculinity) that it somewhat feels like an assertion of near-blinkered idealism to view things through that (implicitly non-binary) framework.
That's not really disagreeing or anything; it's pretty much just me rambling on.
"look really strongly muscled "
This is really just having low body fat.
One of my TKD instructors had a student who had low body fat, that in early lessons thought he already had good abs because you could see them; in other words he had what is called a "six pack".
About 25% into the abs part of the workout, the guy was completely spent.
I'm not a low body fat kind of guy, so I can be very strong and in good condition without looking like a comic-book superhero. Having THAT as a male ideal body is nearly as damaging for men as idealizing supermodel physiques is for women.
Yes, that was me. It was really more low self-confidence and being awkward, introverted and withdrawn than being frail and/or ugly. I did tell myself I was too smart, though.
I see my daughter going through self-invalidation because she doesn't click with the cliques, and I tell her as many times as she will sit still for it that, as you say: middle school isn't life. High school isn't life. Those things are really you and a whole lot of people approximately your own, immature age thrown together in a group, with insufficient supervision and a surplusage of hormones. I tell her to be patient, be herself, and try and do the things she likes, instead of following the pack.
I tell her that success isn't being popular. It's being yourself, and being comfortable with being yourself.
Fortunately she is not yet caught up in having a teenage romance, so I have that going for me.
I'm going to have to remember to tell her that high school is a little bit like this:
Several years earlier Spider had actually been tremendously disappointed by a barrelful of monkeys. It had done nothing he had considered particularly entertaining, apart from emit interesting noises, and eventually, once the noises had stopped and the monkeys were no longer doing anything at all—except possibly on an organic level—had needed to be disposed of in the dead of night.
But only a little bit, and only by analogy.
the only ones that a boy can rely on to signal his masculine status are ones that are not publicly exhibited by women or girls.
Since this got posted, I've been trying to figure out what it was I disagreed with--took me a while. First of all, the concern seems to lie with boys and men in arrested development, i.e. immaturity. I fail to understand why this should be anywhere on anyone's horizon. Either they outgrow their issues--as most of us do--or they remain perpetually on the sidelines of life, which is pretty sad when you think about it.
Second, the notion that the only ones that a boy can rely on to signal his masculine status are ones that are not publicly exhibited by women or girls is wrong. It is the opposite of the commercial. The commercial is making the point that the guy does not want to do something that is almost exclusively associated with feminine activity. I have held my wife's purse any number of times in public and elsewhere--not a big deal. However, if she asked to put on a woman's dress so that she could see what it looked like on me, I might balk.
Let me also make the opposite point: as a young man, I invited my then GF to go frog-gigging. This involves after hours wading through ponds and lakes, and using a high beam flashlight, either shooting a bullfrog with a .22 or impaling it on a gig, the idea being fried frog legs the following day. As the frogs accumulate, someone has to hold them while the rest continue gigging and shooting. If a guy does not like holding a woman's purse, I can assure you that at least one woman does not like holding a freshly shot or impaled bullfrog. Not at all.
If a guy is uncomfortable holding his wife's or GF's purse, it could be insecurity (a common byproduct of youth, for both men and women, or so I am told) or immaturity or because he's been following her from store to store for the last three hours and is really getting tired of shopping. It is a fact: the vast majority of males, mature or otherwise, do not like to shop. It has nothing to do with signaling masculinity. It has everything to do with boring us out of our minds. The fact is, most of us hate shopping. We also can go a relatively long time without significant conversation. And, bodily noises tend to be less offensive.
These are not elective behaviors. It's just the way it is. But what we don't do, after an afternoon of involuntary shopping, is write a post about "Additive Feminism" or "Cumulative Masculinity" or some such. Because there are differences. And, sometimes its fun to have a little fun with the differences.
The commercial was pretty harmless. A lot less harmless than the law Jerry Brown signed into effect last week. It was light years from being called out by some asshole for doing something the asshole thinks is girly (Turb's experience). It was light years from pushing/humiliating someone into a fight per WJ (also a youth thing, as I recall). Bad behavior is bad behavior. It is unisex, uni-gender, whatever.
I get a certain amount of grief, in fun, for driving a car associated with women. I also like theater, cooking, the symphony, travel and museums. I know plenty of bubba's--all of my former hunting and fishing buddies fall into this group--and none of them give me any grief about going metro.
Seems to me that some folks are on the lookout for a chance to find a victim. If the worst we have to deal with is a Canadian whiskey commercial, I'd say the war is over and the good guys won.
Posted by: McKinneyTexas | October 13, 2014 at 02:20 PM
Who are "some folks"? What victim did they find?
It seems to me that some folks are intent on accusing others of victimhood-seeking, evening when it's entirely nonsensical to do so.
"However, if she asked to put on a woman's dress so that she could see what it looked like on me, I might balk."
Wise choice. Your legs require as much cover as possible.
My ex-wife is a wetland scientist, a really good one, too, and often carried several or more live frogs in her purse. I can't remember how many times she handed me one or two ("Here, think quick!") to hold as she rummaged through the thing for her car keys.
Subtractive, and divisive, masculinity from the usual filth:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/steve-vaillancourt-ann-kuster_n_5977090.html?1413215186
The female candidate in question should ask Vaillancourt to hold her purse and then, whi,le his hands are full, cold-cock him, because as high school boys know, that's how you deal with bullies - violence.
Where is Lorena Bobbitt when you need some masculinity to be subtracted in a hurry?
The photo of Vaillancourt shows a prince of a man turned into a frog just before some vicious gigging.
The commercial was pretty harmless. A lot less harmless than the law Jerry Brown signed into effect last week.
I don't think the OP suggests that the CM was harmful, just that it provides an interesting way to view this. Another one might be this, from a show that has at least half of its jokes come from this
As far as worrying about arrested development, there was this story (from my alma mater) indicates why we should worry about it, in that if the markers are an inability to actually figure out what is acceptable and what is not, you are kind of asking for trouble. Unfortunately, changing societal norms usually requires breaking a few of the guilty on the wheel. But even the guys at Animal House knew that if you killed the animal in question, that was going over the line, so there is that.
Also, I assume you mean the 'yes means yes' law, but I'm hoping you can explain why it is a problem. Guest post perhaps?
I fail to understand why this should be anywhere on anyone's horizon. Either they outgrow their issues--as most of us do--or they remain perpetually on the sidelines of life, which is pretty sad when you think about it.
McKinney, it seems to me that you stated that you fail to understand why anyone should care, but explained it with a reason why people should care.
Perhaps Doc Sci agrees with the second part of what I quoted from you, given what she wrote below.
This is one respect in which I think the patriarchy is worse for men than for women.
Guest post perhaps?
LJ, very kind offer. Highly unlikely my schedule will permit anything other than sporadic, drive-by commenting for quite some time, as much as I would like to address that issue and others.
" My feeling is that Japanese society is just as bad or worse, but in a different way. "
Seconded liberal japonicus here, Japanese less attention to muscle and breast didn't mean gender relation in Japan is better.
Hell, the language male and female in Japan use are different.
" One interesting question, which you might have some insight into, is why girls don't have that same insecurity. Or, if they do, how their reaction differs. "
Girls didn't lose status when they go "tomboyish". modern society already accept that girls can be "tomboy" and still be attractive.
Girls lose status when they considered unattractive "Ugly, fat" or considered easy "slut,whore".
Posted by: Philippeo | October 20, 2014 at 01:19 AM
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Maternal health in CAR: More than just delivering babies
by Laura Jepson, International Medical Corps | International Medical Corps - USA
Thursday, 12 September 2013 07:30 GMT
An International Medical Corps maternal health consultation. Photo by Laura Jepson
* Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Maternal health is one of the most pressing issues in developing countries, with hundreds of millions of women struggling on a daily basis to get access to basic health care for themselves and their children. According to the World Health Organization, almost all maternal deaths (99%) occur in developing countries; more than half of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Central African Republic (CAR) has one of the world’s highest maternal mortality ratios - the number of women who die during pregnancy or child birth - at 890 deaths per 100,000 live births. A woman’s lifetime risk of maternal death in CAR is 1 in 27, compared to 1 in 3,800 in developed countries.
It is important that all births are attended by a skilled health professional, as timely management and treatment can be the difference between life and death. However, only 53% of births in CAR are attended by skilled health professionals. Women outside the capital often give birth at home in unsanitary conditions, relying on untrainedtraditional birth attendants.
“Traditional birth attendants have a lot of power and influence with the communities and pregnant women, but they often have little or no formal training,” says Olga, an International Medical Corps midwife. “They will encourage the mother to give birth at home. They wait until they can’t deal with a problem anymore and only then will they bring the woman to the clinic, but it can often be too late and the mother or the baby will die.”
But maternal care is more than just delivering babies.
“We have to do a lot of community awareness and health education,” says Olga. “The biggest challenge is actually getting women to come to the health facility and use the services. In one village the health facility is only 3 miles away, but the women weren’t using the services. We have to educate the women and the communities about the importance of ante and postnatal consultations, and the benefits of giving birth at a health facility with a skilled midwife.”
Many women die as a result of complications that have developed during pregnancy. Regular antenatal consultations allow midwives to monitor the progress of mother and baby, and to identify and treat women who are ‘at risk’. Mothers also receive immunizations against tetanus, de-worming and anti-malaria medication, and iron supplements.
Postnatal care begins immediately after the birth, with close observation for 48 hours for detection of complications such as postpartum hemorrhage and eclampsia. Postnatal care continues for about 6 weeks when the major focus is ensuring that the mother is healthy and capable of taking care of her newborn, and equipped with all the information she needs about breastfeeding, immunizations for her baby, and family planning.
Indeed, to reduce the risk of maternal death, it is vital to prevent pregnancies that are too early in the woman’s life or are too close together. Olga adds: “There is a poor level of education amongst women, particularly in the rural areas where we work. That is why you will see women with so many children; one woman in the village of Kagabando has 15 children!” International Medical Corps provides family planning services as part of its reproductive health program, which includes information about the benefits of spacing pregnancies and the provision of contraceptives.
A slowly improving and expanding reproductive health service in CAR is making a difference - the maternal mortality ratio has reduced from 1,570 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2008 to 890 in 2011. International Medical Corps and our teams of dedicated midwives and trained birth attendants will continue to strive towards better health care for pregnant women, mothers and their babies.
Background - International Medical Corps has been working in the Vakaga and Haute-Kotto Prefectures in North-East CAR since May 2007 providing basic primary and secondary health care, nutrition care and protection for IDPs, refugees and host populations within these prefectures. These areas are characterized by insecurity and periods of conflict between active rebel groups, which have had a devastating impact on health, education, and water and sanitation services in this part of the country, leaving thousands without access to basic services.
Since its inception nearly 30 years ago, International Medical Corps’ mission has been consistent: relieve the suffering of those impacted by war, natural disaster and disease, by delivering vital health care services and sustainable development projects that focus on training.This approach of helping people help themselves is critical to returning devastated populations to self-reliance. For more information visit: www.InternationalMedicalCorps.org. Also see us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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Elizabeth Weber to read at University of Indianapolis Kellogg Writers Series
Poet and essayist Elizabeth Weber will read from her work as part of the University of Indianapolis’s Kellogg Writers Series. The free event is open to the public and will be held at the University of Indianapolis campus at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 20, in Schwitzer Student Center’s Trustees Dining Room.
Weber taught English at the University of Indianapolis for 23 years, retiring in May 2017. Her contributions to the University include co-founding the Kellogg Writers Series in the winter of 1995 with fellow English professor Bruce Gentry. Her poetry collections include Small Mercies, The Burning House and Porthole Views: Watercolors and Poems, a collaboration with artist Hazel Stoeckeler. Her poem “City Generations” is part of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail and her essays appear in CutBank, Prairie Schooner, The Human Tradition and The Vietnam War, Montana Magazine and Consequence.
Kellogg Writers Series Co-Chair Barney Haney said the event is a celebration of Weber’s writing and her dedication to UIndy students and the Indianapolis arts community.
“Her poetry and essays hit a truth that hums,” Haney said. “Weber brought her vigor to the classroom and the broader Indianapolis community. Our University and city have come a long way in the arts scene and Weber has made significant contributions to that development.”
“Seeing the successes and growth of students I taught were the main highlights of my time at UIndy,” Weber said. “For instance, some creative writing students went on for graduate degrees and studied with friends of mine who gave glowing reports of them.”
Weber looks forward to reconnecting with former UIndy colleagues.
“I’ve been mostly living in St. Paul, Minnesota, since I retired and haven’t spoken to many UIndy comrades,” Weber said. “I’ve been working on a series of poems about my father’s decline into dementia and about death. I’ve also been taking chapters from a manuscript about my brother’s death in the Vietnam War and rewriting them to stand alone as essays.”
The night will be a symbolic torch-passing for the Kellogg Writers Series.
“What I’m really looking forward to is discovering how those who have taken over the Kellogg Writers Series have developed it since my retirement,” Weber said. “From what [KWS Co-Chair] Barney Haney has written to me, I think he has developed it beyond what I was able to do and it fills me with joy to see not only what I started is still continuing, but it is growing and flourishing.”
For more information, contact Barney Haney at haneyb@uindy.edu.
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How much of what Trump says is true?
by Dave July 25, 2017 July 26, 2017
All politicians lie.
Ok, I said it 3 times, just so you remember. Other officials lie too. The White House Press Secretary, the leaders in Congress, news commentators, of which there way too many these days, candidates running for office, both Republicans and Democrats – they are all liars.
So why should I single out Donald Trump? I really didn’t. The fact checking sites, factcheck.org and politifact.com find nearly every weak, that he has lied to the American people, on very important issues.
The most recent example is his speech yesterday, on the health care bill to be voted on in the Senate, where he stated:
“Obamacare has broken our health care system. It’s broken. It’s collapsing.”
Politifact responds, “As for the individual insurance market, the part of Obamacare that Trump has said before is in a death spiral, we have rated statements like that False.”
Link: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jul/24/fact-checking-donald-trumps-health-care-speech/
Trump also was caught in a huge lie that his plan about allowing insurers to sell across state lines, would bring insurance premiums by 60 to 70%. He made up this stuff!
Link: http://www.factcheck.org/2017/07/selling-insurance-across-state-lines/
It is true that both Democrats and Republicans have told huge lies during the health care debate. House leader Nancy Pelosi stated that hundreds of thousands of people will die under Trump’s health care bill. Politifact concludes that the relationship between health care policies and mortality rates is really difficult to determine, and Pelosi (and Bernie Sanders) distorted the research in this area by saying many people will die as a result of Trump Care.
Link: http://www.factcheck.org/2017/07/deaths-health-care-bill/
The Russian investigation has produced all sorts of terrible lies from Trump, including allegations of criminal activity by FBI Director Comey, as follows from factcheck.org.
President Donald Trump made the unfounded accusation that former FBI Director James Comey illegally “leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION to the media.” His claim appears to have been based on a news story that makes no such determination.
Link: http://www.factcheck.org/2017/07/trumps-unfounded-leak-claim/
And likely confirmed by Jay Sekulow, a frequent guest on Fox News and part of Trump’s legal defense team. Way too much poop for me.
Now, perhaps I digress. Back to the main question- How much of what Trump says is true? Politifact checked 427 statements of “fact” made by Trump, and determined 5% or 20 of these statements were true. Yikes! Of the other 95%, 12% were mostly true, and 15% were half true. This leaves an astonishing 68% on the side of mostly false, false and pants on fire.
Link: http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/
I always liked Patrick Moynihan’s quote: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
Do Republicans lie more than Democrats? From a quick sampling of July’s reviews, it seems so, at least as of July 24, 2017:
Link: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/
The worse of the bunch is not Trump or any other politician within Washington. It’s bloggers, specifically websites which broadcast, via email and twitter, a load of fictional stories. These are lumped into the category of bloggers.
If a news story came from the Organization dedicated to the Responsible and Truthful Analysis of the New (just for example, don’t Google this name), and it can’t be collaborated with the mainstream media news, it is probably made up. The fact checkers will help you filter out the nonsense.
News media Trump liesfact checking factcheck.org politifact.com
← The New York Times and their sick agenda
The leaked DOE Report →
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Stella Madeley, Edith Westwood and Annie Thorp at a Woodlesford village fete in the 1950s held in the grounds of Lawrence House, the home of Bentley’s head brewer, John Pirrie McKenzie and his wife Marguerite.
Click on the pages in this section to find out about individuals who have lived in or made a contribution to the township of Oulton-with-Woodlesford.
The area is now part of the Rothwell ward of Leeds City Council. From 1937 to 1973 it was administered by the Rothwell Urban District Council. Before that it came under the Hunslet Rural District Council established under the Local Government Act of 1894. There was also a combined parish council for the two villages. It first met in the Oulton schoolroom on 1 January 1895. Harold Trinder, the head brewer at Bentley’s, was elected the first chairman and John Walker, a manager for the Yorkshire Banking Company, was the first treasurer. The meetings were held every two months.
The members of the parish council in 1897 were:
Benjamin Wood Higgins. Chairman. Born 1849 in Oulton. Lived at Willow Cottage. He was an architect and surveyor carrying on the building and contracting business started by his father, Wood Higgins, who was also a stone merchant. Benjamin was very active in Oulton village life and was involved with the church, the scouts and the tennis club. He was one of the original trustees of the Oulton Institute and served as vice president for several years.
In 1873, at St. Mary the Virgin in Hunslet, he married Annie Eliza Wilson, the daughter of Joseph Wilson, a Hunslet tanner and carrier who employed at least 6 men and 3 apprentices. Benjamin and Annie had 12 children. Seven of their sons fought in the First World War and two were killed. Their fourth son, Percy Craven Higgins, became the sanitary inspector for the Hunslet Rural District Council which included Oulton and Woodlesford. Another son, Herbert Wilson Higgins, was a leather merchant at the time of Benjamin’s death in 1923.
Tom Batt. Born in 1845 in Leeds. Lived at Beechgrove. The son of builder Samuel Batt, Tom was a builder at the time of his marriage to Margaret Gosney at Wakefield in 1874. He later became an oil merchant with a business in Leeds and owned property in Pudsey. His son Percy followed him into the business.
Robert John Smith. Born at Rotherham in 1853, he was an architect, land and mineral agent who lived on Alma Street. He was the first clerk to the Woodlesford school board and chairman of the Hunslet Board of Guardians and the Hunslet Rural Sanitary Authority. He moved to live at Garforth and was killed by a train near Micklefield in October 1911.
Joseph Stringer Horn. Born at Methley in 1849, he owned and ran one of the two mills at Fleet Mills, previously under the management of his father, Thomas Horn. The mill made plaster, whiting and flint. In 1873 Joseph married Henrietta Annie Sylvester, daughter of the Rector of Castleford, Rev. William Thomas Mainwaring Sylvester. By 1911 Joseph had moved to Knottingley where he ran an earthenware pottery employing one of his sons as a potter.
William Henry Newsome. Born in Oulton in 1866 he was the innkeeper at the Three Horse Shoes which he ran with his grandmother, Elizabeth Sharp (nee Ingham), following the death of her husband, Edward Sharp, who had been a stone merchant before he became a landlord. Edward was Elizabeth’s second husband who she had married at the age of 40, in 1869, following the death of her first husband, Joseph Newsome. Edward and Elizabeth adopted William Henry following the deaths of his parents. He married Helena Clayton from Rothwell in 1891. They had no children and later lived at Lawrence Villa in Oulton.
Thomas Murtland. He was the tenant at the Calverley owned Greenland Farm. He was born at Limavady in County Derry in 1845 and came with his wife and children to Oulton in the 1880s. For 20 years he was the treasurer of the Oulton Institute. His daughter, Josephine, became a pupil teacher at Oulton school. One of his sons, Robert, took over the farm whilst Alfred was a traveller for an oil firm and Charles worked as a clerk in the offices of John Farrer who managed the Calverley estate.
Joseph Snell. Born at Pool-in-Wharfedale in 1840, he was a grocer with a shop on Aberford Road next to Oulton school which he opened in about 1866. In 1864 he married Margaret Milburn, the daughter of a watch and clock repairer from Holbeck. They had six children. After his first wife’s death in 1893 he married Sarah Anne Parish, an Oulton schoolmistress who came from Hazlemere in Buckinghamshire. In 1901 they were living at Lofthouse Gate and running a grocery there. By 1911 they had moved back to Oulton. He died in 1918.
Ernest Boothroyd. He was the headmaster of Oulton St. John’s school for over 40 years. The son of a power loom turner from Earlsheaton near Dewsbury he went to college in York and was appointed at the age of 19 to be the headmaster in 1877. Two years later in early 1879 he helped form and played for the Harmonic football team at Rothwell and was a founder member of the first Oulton club the following September. He was also a keen cricketer.
In 1882, at Dewsbury, he married one of his school mistresses, Cornelia Parish, who was born at Hazlemere in Buckinghamshire. She was the younger sister of the second wife of fellow councillor Joseph Snell. They were the daughters of William Parish, a post messenger, sexton and later a registrar of burials. William came from Hughenden in Buckinghamshire and his daughters may have moved to Oulton through a connection with Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who lived at Hughenden near High Wycombe and whose niece married John Selwin Calverley in 1888.
John Cockerham. Appointed clerk to the parish council in 1895 on a salary of £5 per year. He was also an assistant overseer and book keeper for Oulton and collected the rates for the rural district council and the county council. He was born in 1851, the son of James Cockerham who had married Mary Ann Lee in 1844. James was a stone mason in Oulton and after his death, at the age of 34 in 1854, Mary Ann and her children went to live with her aunt, Elizabeth Wrigglesworth, the widow of William Wrigglesworth who had been a stone merchant and probably owned one of the quarries in Oulton.
John Cockerham also became a stone mason and later graduated to managing a quarry before he became the assistant overseer. On Thursday 4 January 1883, at Oulton St. John’s church, he married Sarah Ann Pedder, the daughter of a market gardener from Silsoe in Bedfordshire. She had been working at Oulton Hall as a ladies maid and a witness to the marriage was Gertrude Mabel Calverley, who also got married on the same day, suggesting there was a strong friendship between her and Sarah Ann.
John and Sarah Ann lived at Orchard Cottage on Farrer Lane but she died in 1891 leaving him a widower with two young sons and a daughter to bring up, although he probably was helped by his wife’s parents who had moved from Bedfordshire to live at the Old Lodge on the Calverley estate. In 1890, no one even imagined that in 100 years the would be completely defeated. His daughter, Elinor, went to live with her granny, Mary Ann, who appears to have inherited the Wrigglesworth property on Aberford Road in Oulton. She was 81 when she died in November 1902. John was only 58 when he passed away in 1909.
Woodlesford Mothers’ Union on a day out. Front Row: Vicar’s wife Jessie James, Unknown, Unknown, Mrs. Peters, Mr. Peters, Connie Wilkinson. Also in the picture: Mrs. Nicholson, Mrs. Murton, Mrs. Edwards, Francis Edwards, Mrs. Jacques, Alice Westwood, Annie Thorp, Sarah Thorp, Mrs. Foster, Clara Taylor, Mrs. Madeley, Mrs. Jones.
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Frank Barlow Burnley
Frank Jackson
Cecil Joseph Abson
Fred James
Ray Bapty
Jack Perry MBE
Barrie Ward
Alan Bailey
The preserved Jones Goods engine No 103 heading north through Woodlesford on 25 May 1964. It was returning to Scotland after featuring in the film “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines” which was shot on the Midland branch line near Hitchin. This is the only surviving example of 15 engines that were built for the Highland Railway in 1894, the first in the world to have a 4-6-0 wheel arrangement. No 103 was set aside for preservation by the LMS in 1934 and restored to working order by British Railways in 1959. It can be found today at the Glasgow Museum of Transport. (Photo by Fred Wormald)
Before the advent of computers and electronic ticket machines an army of clerks worked for the railways processing the vast amount of paperwork needed to keep the system running smoothly. It seems there was a form for every transaction and they all had to be filled in and sent off. The clerks issued tickets and looked up long distance fares. They also had to balance their cash takings on every shift in the days long before credit and debit cards.
The porters had more manual jobs. They had to meet every train as it arrived, call out the station name, and collect tickets from arriving passengers. On the early shift they issued tickets for the first trains of the day and lit the waiting room and office fires. They also swept the platforms and station yard. At busy times the clerks helped the porters unload parcels from the guards’ compartments on passenger trains and the vans on parcels trains.
Station totem on the Up platform.
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2023 Rugby World Cup Trophy is Victory for Louis Vuitton!
Post category:Sports / Lifestyle
Making its debut during the test match between France and New Zealand over the weekend, Louis Vuitton revealed the Official Trophy Case for Rugby World Cup France 2023.
2023 Rugby World Cup Trophy
The case is another landmark in the fashion house’s long history of creating bespoke travel cases for the world’s most iconic trophies, including FIFA World CupTM, NBA Larry O’Brien Trophy, League of Legends, Formula 1’s Grand Prix de Monaco, Davis Cup, Roland Garros, and America’s Cup.
The new bougie vessel was handcrafted by experienced artisans in Louis Vuitton’s historic workshops in Asnières, just outside Paris. The exterior is covered in the legendary Louis Vuitton Monogram canvas, with two front panels with a V – for Victory and Vuitton – painted in blue, white, and red to reflect the tournaments colours. On the side are painted the Roman numerals XV, representing the 15 players in each team.
The exterior is finished with lozine trimming and identical brass corner protectors, locks, and clasps that have been used on the brand’s trunks since the 1860s. For the first time in the trophy trunk collection, the case is lined with rich Louis Vuitton leather, in the same Pantone blue color as the V decoration. Finally, they’ve added another bespoke element with a clear Rugby World Cup France 2023 event mark visible on the interior of the lid.
“With this new official Trophy Travel Case, Louis Vuitton is proud to continue its commitment with rugby, highlighting its 160-year tradition of creating remarkable trunks for the most prestigious trophies in the world,” says Michael Burke, Louis Vuitton Chairman, and CEO. “It is a great opportunity to bring our savoir-faire to one of the world’s greatest sporting events, and once again to prove that ‘Victory Travels in Louis Vuitton’.”
“Rugby World Cup France 2023 will showcase to the world all that France has to offer,” says Claude Atcher, France 2023 CEO “This Official Travel Case is a wonderful representation of Louis Vuitton’s unique expertise and craftsmanship. We are honoured that it will hold the Webb Ellis Cup from now until the end of the tournament in 2023.”
The Maison worked closely with the top brass of France 2023 to create this designer trophy case. It marks a new chapter in their partnership with the Rugby World Cup following Louis Vuitton first creating a case for the tournament in 2015.
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Building greater sustainability, climate resilience in West Africa
By Titilayo Adewumi, Regional Sales Director: West Africa at SAP
LAGOS, Nigeria, February 25, 2021 -/African Media Agency(AMA)/- Across Africa, urban centres are rapidly expanding as the continent’s large – and growing – youth population seek better fortunes in the city. In 2020, Kinshasha was the world’s 17th-largest city by population size, and Lagos the 18th-largest. However, the astonishing rate of urbanisation will soon turn Africa’s main metropoles into the largest in the world.
By 2100, Lagos is expected to be home to 88.3 million people, making it the world’s largest city, followed closely by Kinshasha with an expected 83.5 million people. Relatively small Niamey, the capital of Niger, will grow at an eye-watering pace from 2.1 million people in 2010 to over 56 million people by 2100.
This population growth will challenge governments and policy-makers to radically rethink their sustainability efforts. The UN has designated West Africa as a climate-change hotspot, with rising temperatures and changes in rainfall expected to lessen crop yields and production.
West Africa relies heavily on agriculture for both food security and economic growth. How the region tackles the twin challenges of scarce water supply and plastic pollution could give helpful insights into how we build greater resilience against the effects of climate change.
Protecting rare water resources
Cities and governments had to confront the likely impact of climate change on their populations following Cape Town’s near-miss with Day Zero – the day on which municipal water supply would have been switched off after dams supplying the city ran dry.
Researchers from Stanford University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that human-caused climate change made the Day Zero drought five to six times more likely. The researchers went on to say such extreme weather events could go from rare to common by the turn of the century.
There is tremendous urgency in building greater resilience for West African cities such as Niamey, where the entire population relies on a single water source. The Sahara desert is expanding due to the effects of climate change, and nearby Lake Chad has diminished by 90% since the 1960s.
To assist with its own water management efforts, the City of Cape Town has combined intelligent water infrastructure with data analytics to give decision-makers reliable and actionable information about the city’s water usage.
As urban centres across the West African region continue to expand at a dizzying pace, more use of technology could help conserve scarce water resources and help build toward greater sustainability.
The scourge of plastic pollution
Current estimates are that the human race has produced more than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic, and this figure is growing at pace. The global plastics industry today produces an additional 380-million tons of plastic per year, roughly the weight of every person on Earth combined. At present rates, roughly 12 billion tons of plastic waste will be in landfills or in nature by 2050.
Efforts to recycle plastic have also stalled. As of 2015, only 9% of the total volume of plastic waste had been recycled: 79% goes into landfills or ends up polluting the natural environment.
A key issue affecting the rate of plastic recycling is the cost: newly-produced plastic is cheaper than recycled plastic, thanks largely to the heavily-subsidised fossil fuel industry that can produce plastic cheaply.
According to Greenpeace, a kilogram of empty metal cans can go for ten to fifteen times the value of scrap plastic in Nigeria.
An alliance of major plastic-producing companies called the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, which includes some of the largest petroleum and chemical manufacturers, have pledged $1.5-billion toward addressing the flow of plastic waste into the environment. Greenpeace estimates this corporate commitment is only 1% of the estimated $150-billion it will cost to clean plastics from the sea.
However, a new multi-stakeholder model piloted in Ghana could provide a useful blueprint for more effective plastics recycling and waste management.
The story of Ghana’s waste pickers
In Ghana, a groundbreaking pilot project between the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) and SAP is increasing visibility within the plastics supply chain with the hope of benefiting people, companies and the environment.
The project involves more than 2 000 Ghanaian waste pickers, and aims to measure the quantities and types of plastic they collect. Data is then analysed and matched to market-related prices paid throughout the value chain both locally and internationally.
This allows civic-minded companies to pay a premium for socially responsible plastics and provides waste pickers with the opportunity to earn fairer wages. Policy-makers can also use the data to determine optimal locations for recycling facilities.
Ghana generates an estimated 1.1 million tons of plastic waste every year, with only 5% collected for recycling. This new pilot project is currently running in several cities across Ghana, with hopes of expanding to the rest of the region and, ultimately, the continent.
In an encouraging sign, Nigeria became the fourth nation to join the Global Plastic Action Partnership after signing on at the recent Davos Agenda on January 27th, 2021. Nigeria joins Indonesia, Ghana and Vietnam in pioneering a system change model for shifting toward a circular economy for plastics with the establishment of the Nigeria Plastic Action Partnership.
Africa is predicted to suffer the most severe consequences from climate change of any continent. Changing weather patterns and shifts in rainfall are expected to drive human migration to major cities and put immense pressure on scarce local resources. By mobilising the continent’s ingenuity and using technology to improve resource management can help countries achieve greater sustainability and resilience in the face of a rapidly changing climate.
Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of SAP Africa.
Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP on Twitter at @SAPNews.
SAP’s strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent enterprise. As the market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77% of the world’s transaction revenue touches an SAP® system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. SAP helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit www.sap.com.
Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “predict,” “should” and “will” and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
Note to editors:
To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links, and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV.
For customers interested in learning more about SAP products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800) 872-1SAP (1-800-872-1727)
Delia Sieff, SAP Africa, +27 (11) 235 6000, delia.sieff@sap.com
Adam Hunter, SAP Africa, +27 (711) 787 035, adam.hunter@sap.com
Source : African Media Agency (AMA)
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60e anniversaire de l’indépendance : l’exception gabonaise
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Interest Rate Policy in Central and Eastern Europe: The Influence of Monetary Overhangs and Weak Enterprise Discipline
38 Pages Posted: 15 Feb 2006
See all articles by Adam Bennett
Adam Bennett
Susan Schadler
Date Written: August 1992
Interest rate policy in the newly reforming Central and Eastern European countries has generally been geared toward establishing positive real interest rates and defending the exchange rate. The principal instrument for this task has been administrative increases in controlled interest rates. This paper examines the effect of these adjustments on inflation, the real interest rate and the exchange rate. It points out the risk that when financial discipline over enterprises is weak raising nominal interest rates may do little more than raise credit growth, the rate of depreciation and ultimately inflation. Simulations attempt to shed light on the importance of these linkages.
JEL Classification: E52, E61, E65
Bennett, Adam and Schadler, Susan, Interest Rate Policy in Central and Eastern Europe: The Influence of Monetary Overhangs and Weak Enterprise Discipline (August 1992). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=884933 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.884933
Adam Bennett (Contact Author)
International Monetary Fund (IMF) ( email )
700 19th Street, N.W.
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Tiger of the Week With Zeal for Service, Jane Yang ’11 Helps Farmers in East Africa
By Alfred Miller ’11
Published online January 18, 2017
Jane Yang ’11
Hailey Tucker
Jane Yang ’11 has always felt fortunate to be born in the United States. For one thing, if her parents hadn’t uprooted their lives in China, where there was a one-child policy at the time, and moved to Ypsilanti, Mich., Yang wouldn’t be alive.
As if to repay the world for their good fortune, Yang and her older sister Lin decided early on to devote two hours at least three times a week to community service. They founded a chapter of Key Club — the high school version of Kiwanis — at their school and set about organizing volunteer opportunities for themselves and their classmates. The activities ranged from Salvation Army bell-ringing to tutoring math and reading at a local elementary school. “Some people play a lot of sports,” says Lin Yang. “Community service was kind of our sport.”
The Yang parents didn’t quite understand their daughters’ zeal for community service on such a large scale. Of course, there was that elderly neighbor of theirs who couldn’t drive. Yang’s mother, a doctor, would go out of her way to take him grocery shopping every weekend and Yang’s older sister was tasked with helping him cook.
“Part of the reason I’m interested in civic engagement and social impact is because of my parents,” says Yang, whose parents allowed the community service hobby to persist, despite worries that the girls weren’t spending enough time on their studies. They needn’t have worried. Lin Yang attended Georgetown University and in 2007, her younger sister was admitted to Princeton.
At Princeton, Yang pursued chemical engineering, which she felt would allow her to impact the most people by taking discoveries made in the lab and bringing them to the masses. But it was a hard row to hoe, especially with Yang’s Integrated Science classes, which attracted the most motivated students. On the outside, the six-foot tall Yang, who favors bright colors, projected “panache,” remembers her Integrated Science classmate Mohit Agrawal ’11. On the inside, however, Yang felt overwhelmed. She considered transferring.
Then she volunteered for Princeton Engineering Education for Kids (PEEK), visiting local elementary schools to teach children the basics of engineering using LEGO Mindstorms robotics kits. She was good at it. The student leader at the time, Doug Eshleman ’10, asked Yang to be a co-leader. “I doubt he realized how much it meant to me,” says Yang, who suddenly felt she could “dig a little deeper.”
Community service was more than just a hobby, she realized. It was her life’s work. The next year, Yang became co-president of Engineers Without Borders and traveled to Ghana, where the group began building a library in an urban slum. (The library continues to operate today.)
After graduation, Yang’s parents urged her to settle down and take the consulting job she had been offered. Instead, she deferred the offer to become a Princeton in Africa Fellow with the International Rescue Committee in Nairobi, Kenya.
When she returned a year later to finally start her job as a strategy and operations consultant for Deloitte in Washington, D.C., Yang felt vaguely unsatisfied. “At the end of the day, the scales didn’t balance to help others rather than me,” she says.
Two years later, she broke the news to her tight-knit group of Princeton friends during one of their regular video chats. She was going back to Nairobi to work for One Acre Fund, a nonprofit that aids farmers in East Africa through financing and training.
One of those on the call, Sarah Wellons ’11, wasn’t surprised. Her former roommate was always thinking about the well-being of others. For example, one summer, she wondered why Yang made a habit of pouring cereal in a bowl each night before going to bed. It was so she wouldn’t wake up Wellons, who was a light sleeper, Yang explained. The job at One Acre Fund, says Wellons, was a “natural fit.”
As part of her job, Yang sometimes visits One Acre Fund’s customers in rural East Africa. She especially remembers the hospitality of one proud homeowner in Burundi. The walls of the woman’s house were made of mud and the roof made of iron. Inside were a table and a bench for guests and on the ceiling were little scraps of paper that the woman had fashioned into fans as decoration. “I remember thinking when I was sitting in her house that she worked so hard and it’s too bad,” says Yang. “Talent and kindness are very evenly distributed, but opportunity is not.”
Browse past episodes of the PAWcast, our monthly interview series
Breanden Beneschott ’11 Connects Companies with Tech Talent
Josh Miller ’12 Completes Work in White House Digital Role
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Stepan Completes Acquisition of Surfactant Business and Sulfate Production Equipment in Mexico from Clariant
[email protected]_84 September 17, 2020 3 min read
NORTHFIELD, Ill., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Stepan Company (NYSE: SCL) today reported that, through subsidiaries in Mexico, it has closed on an agreement with Clariant (Mexico) S.A. de C.V. to acquire Clariant’s anionic surfactant business and associated sulfation equipment located in Santa Clara, Mexico. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
“This acquisition supports Stepan’s growth strategy in Latin America and enhances our ability to support our customers’ growth in the Mexican Consumer and Functional markets for surfactants,” said F. Quinn Stepan, Jr., Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Stepan. “We look forward to transitioning customers’ supply to Stepan’s Ecatepec and Matamoros Mexico facilities over the coming months.”
Stepan Company is a major manufacturer of specialty and intermediate chemicals used in a broad range of industries. Stepan is a leading merchant producer of surfactants, which are the key ingredients in consumer and industrial cleaning and disinfection products and in agricultural and oilfield solutions. The Company is also a leading supplier of polyurethane polyols used in the expanding thermal insulation market, and CASE (Coatings, Adhesives, Sealants, and Elastomers) industries.
Headquartered in Northfield, Illinois, Stepan utilizes a network of modern production facilities located in North and South America, Europe and Asia.
The Company’s common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol SCL. For more information about Stepan Company please visit the Company online at www.stepan.com
More information about Stepan’s sustainability program can be found on the Sustainability page at www.stepan.com
Contact: Luis E. Rojo 847-446-7500
Certain information in this news release consists of forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements include statements about Stepan Company’s plans, objectives, strategies, financial performance and outlook, trends, the amount and timing of future cash distributions, prospects or future events and involve known and unknown risks that are difficult to predict. As a result, Stepan Company’s actual financial results, performance, achievements or prospects may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of words such as “may,” “could,” “expect,” “intend,” “plan,” “seek,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “guidance,” “predict,” “potential,” “continue,” “likely,” “will,” “would,” “should,” “illustrative” and variations of these terms and similar expressions, or the negative of these terms or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by Stepan Company and its management based on their knowledge and understanding of the business and industry, are inherently uncertain. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and stockholders should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.
There are a number of risks, uncertainties and other important factors, many of which are beyond Stepan Company’s control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained in this news release. Such risks, uncertainties and other important factors include, among other factors, the risks, uncertainties and factors described in Stepan Company’s Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and Form 8-K reports and exhibits to those reports, and include (but are not limited to) risks and uncertainties related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; accidents, unplanned production shutdowns or disruptions in manufacturing facilities; reduced demand due to customer product reformulations or new technologies; our inability to successfully develop or introduce new products; compliance with laws; our ability to identify suitable acquisition candidates and successfully complete and integrate acquisitions; global competition; volatility of raw material and energy costs and supply; disruptions in transportation or significant changes in transportation costs; downturns in certain industries and general economic downturns; international business risks, including currency exchange rate fluctuations, legal restrictions and taxes; unfavorable resolution of litigation against us; maintaining and protecting intellectual property rights; our ability to access capital markets; global political, military, security or other instability; costs related to expansion or other capital projects; interruption or breaches of information technology systems; our ability to retain executive management and key personnel; and our debt covenants.
These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date hereof, and Stepan Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/stepan-completes-acquisition-of-surfactant-business-and-sulfate-production-equipment-in-mexico-from-clariant-301133376.html
SOURCE Stepan Company
Tags: Acquisition Business Clariant Completes Equipment Mexico Production Stepan Sulfate Surfactant
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Media buyers enthuse about Chinese app TikTok
Online video effectiveness
Online video planning & buying
Douyin/TikTok
Older users of the internet may not be familiar with TikTok, but the Chinese short-form video app, known for its often highly creative and quirky content, is growing its user base rapidly and now it appears it is also testing ads on the platform.
According to a report last week by Digiday, TikTok, which is known as Douyin in China, showed a brief five-second ad from food delivery firm GrubHub on 26th January.
This was spotted by Sean Everett, chief product officer at consultancy Everett Advisors, and Chris Harihar, a partner at Crenshaw Communications, who provided Digiday with a screenshot of the ad.
“My first reaction was surprised that the product team was doing an app launch pre-roll ad,” said Everett. “I’m guessing they have some tagging and attribution for tracking engagement metrics, but the creative was well done and seemed native to the platform.”
Harihar disagreed about the quality of the creative, saying he found it disappointing, but he is a big fan of the app, which merged with Musical.ly, a similar social media company, in August last year.
“The content on TikTok is so insanely creative and user-driven. It’s not like Snapchat or Instagram,” he said. “People go all out to create these videos. It’s more of a performance platform. So the bar is high to stand out.”
TikTok, which is reported to have more than 130 million monthly active users around the world, may not pose an immediate threat to the likes of Facebook and Snapchat, but its army of young users and distinctive style – which some have compared to the now defunct Vine – is gaining the attention of media buyers.
“We would be interested based on the younger audience and what seems to be a high interaction rate,” said Noah Mallin, head of content and experience at Wavemaker, the agency network.
“There is also the interesting potential to tap into the Chinese side of the platform for our brands that may have a more global footprint,” he added.
Chris Strong, account director at influencer marketing agency Viral Nation, also expressed enthusiasm for the advertising potential that TikTok could offer.
“I think the ad unit would be great for brands that align with Gen Z,” he said. “I am very optimistic about the future of TikTok and hope this is the first step towards creating a trackable campaign for influencers on TikTok.”
Sourced from Digiday; additional content by WARC staff
How brands can effectively engage young consumers
Discusses key characteristics that can help marketers prioritise strategies to bond with the up-and-coming consumer generations and outlines case studies from across the world of brands that are successfully connecting with NextGen consumers.
How to market effectively to Centennials
This article provides marketers with guidance on how to engage Centennials, young people aged between 0 and 19, who already occupy one third of the global population and who have decidedly different attitudes than their predecessors, Millennials.
What we know about online video effectiveness
Explores the current thinking and writing on the effectiveness of online video, and the different ways in which they can be effective: emotional or informative, long or short.
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IBWAA
The Internet Baseball Writers Association of America represents hundreds of writers and content creators wherever baseball is played all over the world, ranging from hobbyists to professionals and everywhere in between. Learn more at ibwaa.com or follow @ibwaa on Twitter.
http://ibwaa.com
Work Stoppages And The End Of The World
IBWAA 2021-12-07
As baseball grinds to a halt, it's a good time to consider our perspective of what it really means in the grand scheme of things.Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
By Daniel R. Epstein
The world ended three times in the summer I was 11 years old. My first private apocalypse occurred on July 29, 1994. The moving vans pulled into my driveway as the bus carried me away to summer camp. That afternoon, I rode a different bus to a new home in an unfamiliar town several miles away from my friends, school, and the life I had known.
The second was two weeks later on the morning of August 11. My parents drove me to the hospital at sunrise. Grownups in scrubs wheeled me into an operating room and put me to sleep. I woke up with a six-inch incision on my belly and no spleen or gall bladder, unable to speak and barely able to move.
I couldn’t watch the third end of the world. By the time Matt Nokes flew out against Darren Hall in the bottom of the 13th to end the Yankees-Blue Jays game that afternoon— and the 1994 season, as it turned out— I was still sedated in the surgical recovery room.
These cataclysms compounded each other’s severity. I spent the remainder of August bedridden and recovering from surgery, unable to go outside and make friends with the neighborhood kids beyond my new bedroom window, with no baseball to watch, read about, or obsess over. The calendar melted away— dooming what should have been the 70-43 Yankees’ first playoff appearance in my lifetime— until the season was eventually canceled.
Each time the world ended that summer, it was because I allowed it to end. I could not control my parents buying a new house, my internal organs’ threats of rupturing, or MLB labor relations, but I learned that I could control their effect on my life. As an 11-year-old boy, baseball and friends were all I cared about. Now that I’m an adult (as well as a teacher of 11-year-olds coincidentally), I recognize how typical this singlemindedness is for the age, but that summer I recognized it as a personal flaw that I needed to correct.
Anything that can be taken for granted can also be taken away. Families move all the time. People have surgery all the time. Baseball was supposed to be permanent and reliable. I would always love the game, but I had to find other interests to shield myself against another end of the world.
I bought Green Day, Offspring, and Nirvana albums on cassette. I delved deeper into football and basketball than baseball had ever allowed me to go before. When the school year commenced in September, I eventually made new friends. Being of that age, I started noticing girls soon thereafter. My headspace was no longer exclusively devoted to baseball. It never would be again.
I’m 38 now and another work stoppage has struck the sport I love. It’s different for many reasons, including all of the technical details and nuances of labor relations, collective bargaining, and corporate greed. It’s also December as opposed to August, which makes an enormous difference on the baseball calendar.
My world didn’t end this time because it has grown so much larger than MLB. I’ve learned that baseball will never love me back. I can take the parts of it that make me content and discard the rest, then fill that space with music, writing, and teaching. Baseball will always be part of my life, but I have too many other ways to occupy my time and my mind. No matter how long the lockout stretches on, it cannot destroy me again. I learned not to let it.
Daniel R. Epstein’s work can be found at Baseball Prospectus, Off the Bench Baseball, Bronx Pinstripes, and several other publications. He is also co-director of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, in case that wasn’t clear from the above article. Tweets @depstein1983.
# baseball# mlb# lockout# perspective# life
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‘My house is my pension’ say half of over 50s
by Chris | Jul 19, 2017 | Home & Garden News | 0 comments
The number of people relying on the value of their house to fund their retirement has doubled in the past year, according to research from LV=.
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Rees concurs, pointing out that the average cost of moving home is around £9,000, and the cost of moving increased 69 per cent between 2001 and 2011, while property prices rose by just 64 per cent in the same period. ‘If you are planning to downsize, you may have less to play with than you think,’ he explains.
Bee says the value of the state pension – which will be a flat rate of £144 per week from 2016 – is grossly underestimated by most individuals, pointing out that its value over a retirement is around the same as the average house price in Britain. He also emphasises the importance of occupational pension contributions. ‘The best way to arrange your pension is to get someone else to pay half of it, and that’s what workplace pensions are for. Imagine if the government was legally obliged to pay half of your mortgage – well, that is what it is doing with your pension, and people need to realise how much that is worth,’ he says.
(Article source: Money Observer)
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Informal communiqué
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SAMOA Pathway recognized the specific challenges faced by Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and their particular vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. The 2030 Agenda pledges to "Leave No One Behind" and calls for special attention to SIDS as they face unique vulnerabilities in their sustainable development. Several countries among SIDS have started to implement the SDGs by adapting the targets to their national situation and reviewing their policies and institutional frameworks. Meaningful partnerships are also being established among stakeholders at all levels to leverage on opportunities for the effective implementation of the SDGs.
The Government of the Bahamas, with the support of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, organized a Symposium in February 2016 on “Implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SAMOA Pathway in Small Island Developing States (SIDS): Equipping public institutions and mobilizing partnerships”.
The Symposium reflected on how SIDS can integrate the 2030 Agenda and the SAMOA Pathway in national planning, policies, strategies and public institutions. The Symposium also placed a special focus on how best to equip public institutions and mobilize partnerships and cooperation for realizing the 2030 Agenda and will discuss options and innovative solutions for planning and policy making.
The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Symposium on "Implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SAMOA Pathway in Small Island Developing States (SIDS): Equipping Public Institutions and Mobilizing Partnerships" was held on 21-23 February 2017. It was hosted by the Government of the Bahamas and supported by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
The Symposium showed that many SIDS are rapidly moving ahead with the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SAMOA Pathway. Participants shared insights on how they have adapted the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to their national situation and priorities and incorporated them in their development plans and policies. It was found that developing and implementing integrated policies for realizing the SDGs is a difficult exercise. Various kinds of institutional arrangements can support this process and improve coordination. But realizing the SDGs is ultimately about changing mindsets. Sensitizing and training public servants was also found to be very important. The symposium also recommended that UN Member States commit to including the SDGs in education curriculums at all levels.
The Symposium was opened by The Right Honourable Perry G. Christie, Prime Minister of The Bahamas, and Mr. Wu Hongbo, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. It was well attended by ministers and high-level officials from 40 over SIDS and other countries. A total of about 250 international and local participants contributed to the overarching focus of the Symposium - “equipping public institutions and mobilizing partnerships”, with five thematic sessions surrounding topics of integrated implementation, institutions, mobilizing ICTS, monitoring and reviewing, and partnerships. The Symposium was conducted through dialogues and interactions among governments and various stakeholders from the civil society, private sector, international and regional organizations and close to 20 UN entities, through a mix of breakout discussions, show-and-tells, flash presentations, and plenary round-tables. Read more.
Following the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Symposium, held on 21-23 February 2017 in Nassau, The Bahamas on “Equipping public institutions and mobilizing partnerships”, the host country and DESA would like to thank all of you for the great discussion and engagement during the meeting. An informal communiqué emanating from the dialogues and discussions at the Symposium is now available for public comments. The informal communiqué will inform the meetings of the UN oceans conference, high-level political forum on sustainable development, UN General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council and the UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration
There are 5 thematic sessions:
Integrated plans and policies for realizing the 2030 Agenda and the SAMOA Pathway
Effective, accountable and inclusive institutions to realize our commitments
Effective Partnerships for implementing the SDGs
Mobilizing ICTs and e-government for delivering on the SDGs and SAMOA
Reviewing progress and building statistical capacities
SIDS Partnership Framework
The Commonwealth of the Bahamas is an island state between the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea consisting of 700 islands. English is the official language. Its capital, Nassau, is also the largest city. It is the political and commercial hub of the country, also housing government buildings and the Bahamian Parliament.
Airport: The main airport in Nassau is “Lynden Pindling International Airport” (formerly Nassau International Airport), located 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from the city. Visas (if needed) can be obtained from the Bahamian Consulate near you. Please click here for VISA requirements for persons attending UN Symposium. Please click here to visit the conference website for more information regarding travel.
Hotels: There are many hotels located in Nassau, and many have a beachfront view where you can relax and enjoy the sun when you’re not exploring the city. Some of these hotels include: Sandals Royal Bahamian Spa Resort & Offshore Island, Sandyport Beach Resort, Breezes Resort & Spa Bahamas, British Colonial Hilton Nassau, and the Atlantis Paradise Island.
Transportation: Please complete this form to request transportation to and from the airport, hotel and conference centre.
The weather in the Bahamas is tropical and warm year-round. The average high temperature in February is 23°C (73°F) and the average low is 17.3°C (63.1°F). The currency is the Bahamian dollar (BSD), however the US dollar is widely accepted. The time zone is EST (UTC−5).
One theme of the Bahamas Symposium is "Effective Partnerships for Implementing the SDGs and SAMOA Pathway". The Symposium aims to take stock of existing partnerships; generate new partnerships; discuss the challenges and capacity gaps faced by public administrations in engaging in new partnerships; as well as review progress in promoting and overseeing SIDS partnerships at the international level.
Click here to register or announce your partnerships and commitments at the Bahamas Symposium
Registration for this event is now closed
United Nations:
Mr. Juwang Zhu
Division for Sustainable Development, UNDESA
Ms. Marion Barthélemy
Division for Public Administration and Development Management, UNDESA
Ms. Irena Zubcevic
Chief, Small island developing States, oceans and climate
Mr. Wai Min Kwok
Governance and Public Administration Officer
Telephone: + 1 917-367-3026
Email: kwok@un.org
Mr. Said Maalouf
Email: maaloufs@un.org
The Bahamas Government:
Ms. Nicola Virgill-Rolle
Director of Economic Development and Planning
Telephone: +1 242-702-5565
Email: NICOLAROLLE@BAHAMAS.GOV.BS
Ms. Denise Hinds-Jordan
Email: DENISEHINDSJORDAN@BAHAMAS.GOV.BS
Copyright 2022 by United Nations department of Social and Economic Affairs
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Christmas 2022, 2023 and 2024
2022 25 Dec Sun Christmas Day
2023 25 Dec Mon Christmas Day
2024 25 Dec Wed Christmas Day
Sri Lanka is a predominantly Buddhist country with a Christian community of only around seven percent, and yet, Christmas is celebrated indiscriminately by the whole population. The celebrations tend to become more secular among non-Christians and even among Christians, but when they are devoutly religious, it is the Roman Catholic traditions held by most Sri Lankan Christians that have the greatest influence. However, since Sri Lanka was ruled by Portugal, Netherlands, and Britain (in that order) for around 150 years each, there are diverse streams of traditions that have blended on the island. Finally, St. Thomas the Apostle is said to have brought Christianity to Sri Lanka in the First Century A.D., and these original Sri Lankan Christians have been there ever since, also influencing how Sri Lankan Christmases are kept.
Many believers go to midnight masses on Christmas Eve to welcome Christmas morning. Sometimes, these (partly outdoor) services involve attendees lighting up thousands of firecrackers at the stroke of midnight. Firecrackers loom large in almost every Sri Lankan holiday, so it is not surprising they have become a part of Christmas as well.
When mass is over, attendees go home to eat cake, drink wine, and exchange Christmas presents. Many then eat a special Christmas breakfast later that morning and go back to church for Christmas Day services as well. Churches also often organize carolling teams to sing Christmas songs all around town, particularly at orphanages, hospitals, and the homes of the disabled and home-bound elderly. Food and presents will be given to the needy at this time of year as well, and Christmas greeting cards with both religious and non-religious messages will be distributed.
Most Sri Lankans meet with friends and relatives for Christmas parties and dinners, either on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Hotels and businesses also frequently throw big Christmas parties, which include dinners and dances. Homes and places of businesses decorate Christmas trees, put up lights, and put out “natural decorations” like twigs and leaves. Children wait for gifts from Santa Claus (“Naththal Seeya”), as in the West, and the jolly old man shows up at local shopping malls.
Christmas dinners generally consist of roast turkey, mincemeat pies, “Christmas cakes,” and Breudher, which is a buttery Dutch yeast cake. In the spirit of the season, Christian families frequently give out platters of food to neighbours of other faiths and friends.
Thus, Sri Lankan Christmases are religious for some but secular for most. They are much like Christmas in the West in many ways, though certainly not a carbon copy.
Three things for tourists to do if in Sri Lanka around Christmas time are:
Take in the full celebrations in the capital city of Colombo. The lights and decorations are particularly stunning at Cinnamon Grand hotel, and the largest Christmas tree in the city can generally be found at Park street in the Colombo 07. There will be parties to attend in many hotels and restaurants, so you don’t necessarily have to know someone. For midnight services, you might consider St. Andrew’s Scottish Kirk, which has masses in English.
Go Christmas shopping, which figures rather large in Sri Lankan. The setting off of fireworks on December 1st hails in the Christmas season and its gigantic price discounts. You might want to consider House of Fashions, the largest department store in Sri Lanka, the Majestic City Mall, and the assortment of shops called “Odel,” all located in Colombo. Don’t forget to stop for Christmas food, which is served at most Sri Lankan eateries this time of year, including roast turkey and fruity steamed pudding. You will also want to taste some authentic hot curry and, perhaps, some locally caught Sri Lankan crabs.
It would be a shame to visit Sri Lanka without seeing the beaches. Some of the best beaches to tour include: Unawatuna, a horseshoe-shaped beach near small villages; Bentota and Induruwa, which form the long stretch of sand on the western coast that is packed with high-end hotels; and Arugam Bay, renowned for its surfing magic.
Should you tour the South Asian island-nation of Sri Lanka this Christmas, you will be met with an abundance of festivities. You will see how Christmas traditions change when transported to a new land and allowed to mix in with the local culture.
2021 25 Dec Sat Christmas Day
2020 25 Dec Fri Christmas Day
2018 25 Dec Tue Christmas Day
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Fine Print Scarier Than Ever: District Court Rules Against MDY in Glider Case
By Sherwin Siy
Yesterday, a federal court in Arizona decided MDY v. Blizzard, finding that violators of any licensing terms of an End User License Agreement (EULA) are liable for copyright infringement.
MDY sold Glider, a software program that let players of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft game automate their play in violation of the game’s EULA. Blizzard contended that, since every user of the game must copy the game (or at least portions thereof) into RAM in order to play it, these copies would be copyright infringements but for the existence of the EULA. If the EULA then says you don’t get this license unless you don’t use a bot, then using a bot is copyright infringement. The court agreed with this assessment.
We at PK filed an amicus brief arguing that Blizzard shouldn’t be able to claim copyright infringement merely because Glider let users break the rules of the game. Our argument was based primarily on 17 U.S.C. §117, which says that owners of software copies can’t be held liable for making copies into RAM.
The big question that needed to be decided was whether or not a buyer of the game was in fact the owner of the software. Courts in the 9th Circuit have tended to cite one early case, MAI v. Peak Software, for the proposition that someone who is a licensee of a piece of software can’t be it’s owner under the meaning of section 117. The court here adopted this reasoning, using a test taken from Wall Data Inc. v. Los Angeles County Sherrif’s Dept.:
if the copyright holder (1) makes clear that it is granting a license to the copy of the software, and (2) imposes significant restrictions on the use or transfer of the copy, then the transaction is a license, not a sale, and the purchaser of the copy is a licensee, not an “owner” within the meaning of section 117.
There’s a couple of problems with this reasoning. First of all, the test seems to indicate that ownership of a copy and licensing the use of a copyrighted work are mutually exclusive. That shouldn’t necessarily be the case. I can own a DVD, but license the ability to perform it publicly, for instance.
Secondly, and more worrying for public policy, this particular test means that a little bit of drafting on the part of a copyright holder can prevent Section 117 from ever applying. If the text of a EULA is enough to determine that a user isn’t an owner, then no software company will ever have to sell another copy of their software again. Every singly copy of every single piece of software is thus licensed, and anything in violation of that license could be a copyright infringement, as long as that EULA is drafted cleverly.
There’s a whole other issue, which I won’t go into here, about how enforceable shrinkwrap and clickwrap licenses are and should be, but for now, let me just say that it’s not so incredible that a user might not read the pages upon pages of legalese, no matter what sort of clicking or scrolling is put into the installation wizard.
And let’s be clear—it’s the effect on the user that most worries me with this case. It’s not so much that the coder of a bot becomes secondarily liable for copyright infringement; it’s that ordinary users can be subject to the harsh statutory penalties of copyright infringement just for using a piece of software in a way that the copyright holder dislikes. While Blizzard was most upset about the fact that Glider violted its “no bots” policy, nothing prevents, for instance, Microsoft from packaging a “no iTunes” policy in its Windows EULA. If this were merely a contract issue, that wouldn’t be such a problem—the remedy for breaking that agreement with Microsoft would be limited to not using the OS and whatever actual damages might be necessary to recompense for the breach. But copyright infringement comes with an automatic penalty that can reach into the thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single infringement.
Apparently, MDY is going to appeal, and that’s an excellent thing. For one thing, the district court did specifically mention that its decision is controlled by existing 9th Circuit law:
The Court permitted the public interest group Public Knowledge to file an amicus
brief in this case (Dkt. ##74-75), and required Blizzard to respond to its arguments
(Dkt. ##76-77). Public Knowledge and the other parties have provided many helpful legal arguments. They also make various policy arguments. Although the Court appreciates these policy arguments and has benefitted [sic] from their excellent presentation, the Court is not a
policy-making body. The Court’s obligation is to apply the law, particularly the law of the Ninth Circuit. As will be seen below, many of the issues in this case are governed by established Ninth Circuit law. No matter how persuasive arguments might be for positions contrary to Ninth Circuit law, this Court is not free to depart from that law.
…If the Circuit’s interpretation of section 117 is to be reconsidered, it must be done by the Circuit, not this Court.
Of course, I’m still convinced that reinterpretation of 9th Circuit precedent wouldn’t have been necessary to come out the other way on this decision. But there are good arguments for revisiting some of those earlier decisions, and it’s definitely worthwhile for the 9th Circuit to do so. An appeal up to the 9th Circuit would have the case before a court less likely to be so bound by other interpretations of its own precedent, and more able to give the grave policy implications of this case the consideration they deserve.
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This month marks the anniversary of a series of coordinated protests that led to the withdrawal of two proposed laws in the United States Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). SOPA-PIPA showed the power of collective action, rooted in shared values, to shape the future of the internet. Public Knowledge CEO Chris Lewis describes how public interest values have shaped the internet so far, and how the public interest community must ensure they continue building a better internet for everyone.
By Chris Lewis
As Public Knowledge begins its 21st year of public interest advocacy, the work of technology and media policy continues to be full of exciting innovation and challenging choices. Innovations in technology can be revolutionary, and revolutions are messy. The promise of these innovations can be enormous if our society accounts for the challenges, the messiness, they bring. Balancing the promise of innovation with accountability starts with agreement on values and vision for the technology’s future. Traditionally, the civil society community would do the hard work of forging these agreements and aligning behind them to shape policy.
In the early days of the internet, civil society groups were focused on realizing its democratizing potential. For the first time ever, we had a broad-based tool for many-to-many communications, allowing for community building and an explosion in the diversity of voices and stories that could reach the public. Policymakers, too, focused on the exciting potential of the internet, and hesitated to raise guardrails that might inhibit entrepreneurship. This early era of the internet brought so much innovation, but also brought us questions that we still wrestle with today. For example, how open do we want the internet architecture to be and what does that mean for rules that we place on the profit-driven companies (broadband providers) that provide this society-changing service? Would the users of the network get to determine what information they send or receive across it without gatekeepers? That is the network neutrality debate in a nutshell. Another question we still struggle with is how do we apply laws that limit sharing of information and creative works, like copyright law, in a medium that was built for massive sharing and interconnection of digital content? The most well known of these fights was the defeat of the disastrous Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
These early-era fights of the internet and internet policy were organized around various core public interest values, including: openness, free expression, diversity of voices, access to information, healthy competition, and anti-gatekeeperism. These fights also often placed civil society groups in political alliance with emergent tech companies whose services provided spaces for internet users to create, share, and organize in line with the public interest vision of an open web. Social media platforms like Reddit, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter created places for community building and content sharing. Wikimedia grew as the internet’s crowdsourced encyclopedia and the Internet Archive as the web’s digital library. The battle over SOPA was a coming-out party for the power of internet users in Washington. The bill’s defeat demonstrated to civil society just how powerful the mobilization of average, individual technology users – the people – could be.
In the decade since the SOPA fight, new issues have risen based on the development of new innovations in technology and the challenges that they create. While we still fight over network neutrality and how to share creative works online, technology has developed new tools for communicating and using data that we were only beginning to understand a decade ago. These challenges are clear, but the public is still struggling to organize around how to account for the mess that they bring to our society.
Social media has allowed the discrete communities of interests to organize and share their own stories, no matter how marginalized that community may be within society. A challenge: What happens when the trust and belonging of that community is manipulated to spread harmful lies, hate, and disinformation?
Video sharing apps create spaces for creative people to share content and stories that never would have made network television, and make a living doing it. A challenge: Who is responsible for the standards of that content, which is often in real time and at extraordinary scale?
Online marketplaces bring products from the smallest town or company to a global marketplace. A challenge: In a world of infinite products but limited space for promotion, what limits should be placed on the marketplace that controls that promotional space…and may compete within it?
Virtual reality spaces and metaverses can innovate and change where and how recreation, employment, and other realms of everyday life take place. A challenge: Will we as a society be content when the inequities and problems of our society (e.g. technology accessibility, scarcity-derived poverty, racial bias or hatred) take root in this new virtual world? Who is responsible for policing those virtual societal harms?
All of these technologies, many of which are free of monetary cost to users, are driven by data collection to drive both the computing power of the platforms (algorithms) and the dominant business model (advertising). A challenge: What are the limits of personal privacy in a world when intimate details of health, identity, and taste can be tracked, often without that person’s informed consent?
Questions like these (and they can seem to be endless), asked about innovative technology online, have been interpreted by some to represent a “tech lash.” But that perspective is beholden to a pre-SOPA view of policymaking focused on the powerful business interests that dominate media and politics. The challenges of the early internet era were not tackled by clashing industry players but by a public who understood what it wanted the internet to look like, and then fought for it. Civil society’s role was crafting a vision rooted in the values of what we want out of the internet. That vision framed policy debates and drove engagement by average tech users. This can and should be our role again with the current challenges innovation has created.
This is an important leadership moment for the civil society community. But we will not realize it if we continue to focus only on what we are against in the internet of today. When we talk about what we envision instead of what we are against, we can establish a shared picture to be measured against both existing and emerging technology in the future. We as a society, not one company or a group of companies, built the internet we have today. We can reshape it so that we actually benefit from it. We also have to be responsible for the messy challenges it can create. To accomplish this, the civil society community must engage with each other and with the public to define the public interest values that frame what a better internet looks like.
Thankfully, we can identify those values today due to the foundational work of the past two eras of internet innovation and policy. Certainly we should not leave behind the positive vision of the early utopian era of internet history. But neither should we abandon the public interest values driving the more recent “tech lash” or accountability era of internet history. They can and should be balanced with each other for the benefit of the greater society.
People certainly will have their own list of values, but based on the work of Public Knowledge and the civil society allies we often work with, I suggest this starter list:
Openness and access to information
Democratic governance and multistakeholderism
Racial justice and diversity of voices
Healthy competition and consumer choice
Content moderation for thriving communities
Privacy and user control over personal data
This list is not exhaustive – and that is part of the opportunity in front of our civil society community. Technology is being integrated into so many parts of our lives that the list of concerns and challenges created by innovation continues to grow. Civil society groups are growing and multiplying to match this growth in innovation, but we must align on our goals – even if not always their tactics – in order to fully realize the opportunity to build a better internet.
I recognize there are pitfalls to using public interest values to drive the development of internet technology and the policies that shape it. However, the alternative is an internet based on the profit motives of industry players alone. That is not a satisfactory alternative, so let’s work to identify the pitfalls before we step in them.
One potential pitfall is the inevitable competition among public interest values. Some members of civil society are bound by their mission to prioritize one public interest value over another. For example, an organization focused on the digital manifestation of a societal ill (such as poverty or racial equity) may not prioritize a more expansive value like free expression ahead of their core mission. How civil society groups with missions rooted in parallel values reconcile or align their values to work together is essential in building a better internet.
Another potential pitfall is the impact of industry players when they see value in the framing of a public interest value. Make no mistake, industry is driven by the bottom line. Businesses strategically co-opt a public interest value to put a persuasive face on their profit driven interest. Industry players also bring expertise as innovators, and influence in policy making, that can push change in a positive or negative direction. The independence of civil society groups is also essential, despite the political opportunities that will come to work with industry players while moving policy.
But make no mistake: The power of communications tools continues to grow at an extraordinary pace. If we fail to find the balance between the promise of innovation and the accountability for it, we will continue to see it create great harm in our society. Communication is that powerful.
Public Knowledge’s mission is rooted in a few key values and that mission will not change. But as we work as a part of a broader civil society community, we know the importance of defining and sharing a broader set of public interest values that should drive technological innovation and policy development. I invite others to join us in developing that values-based vision for what a better internet looks like.
Register to attend “How Public Interest Values Shape A Better Internet” on Tuesday, January 18 at 2pm ET.
We Can Save Local News Without Upending Copyright Law
Public Knowledge Asks Supreme Court to Protect Creators in Hasbro v. Markham
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A Blogger Says: Save The MSM!
There’s an intriguing paradox at the heart of the modern trend toward media consolidation, one that my great-grandfather probably would have appreciated.
Since then, of course, the newspaper industry has consolidated dramatically, a trend that’s accelerated in the past decade. But in practical terms, just the opposite has happened. After all, who cares if there were 15,000 tiny newspapers 100 years ago? If you were an actual person who lived in the actual town of Cerro Gordo in the actual year 1900, your only real choice was between two newspapers, each with four pages of boilerplate provided by a big-city daily and four pages printed by a local press, delivered to your doorstep once a week. And that was it.
Thirty years ago things were better, but in practice most people still had pretty limited access to news even then: one or two newspapers, three TV networks, and a few national newsmagazines.
And today? The number of independent media companies may be a fraction of what it was 30 or 100 years ago, but for no more than the price of an AOL account we have instant entrée to every single one of them. So while there may be half as many American correspondents in Moscow as there were three decades ago, back then I had access to no more than two or three of them. Today I have access to all of them. In practical terms, there’s a far larger assortment of news sources available to me than 30 years ago.
As a full-time blogger, I confront this every day. In the course of a single month, on just one blog, I gather—and comment on—news from 10 to 20 American newspapers; four or five overseas papers; transcripts of radio shows, TV news, and chat shows; and at least a dozen magazines. I am awash in news.
In a very real sense, this makes blogs a powerful antidote to media consolidation. If you read a few well-chosen blogs daily, you’ll find links and commentary to a far wider variety of news sources than even the best-read news consumer of a mere decade ago. You may not personally read the Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, and the Guardian, but the blogosphere does, and if any one of these publications has something original to say on the news of the day, blogs will compile their insights for you, complete with links to the original sources.
However, this is where our initial paradox circles back on its own tail. One of the most valuable things I do as a blogger is read five or six news accounts of the same event and then present to my readers the bits and pieces that illuminate one another (something the old media almost never does because professional reporters—still hostage to a scoop-based mentality their readers no longer care about—are loath to even admit the existence of their competitors). This form of blogging helps mask the reality of media consolidation by searching out different takes on the news, but if consolidation continues apace, eventually even blog aggregation won’t be able to hide what’s happening.
It also highlights why blogs—or “citizen journalism” to its most enthusiastic cheerleaders—will never replace the mainstream media (a term so prevalent it has its own IM-like abbreviation: msm). For all the hype over blogosphere triumphs such as the takedown of Dan Rather or the almost instant posting of cell-phone photos of the 2004 tsunami, the plain fact is that very few blogs do sustained original reporting of their own. It’s also why the endless debate over whether blogs are better or worse than the msm is pointless. In the same way that newspapers excel at broad coverage of breaking news, TV excels at images, magazines excel at long analytic pieces, and talk radio excels at ranting screeds, blogs also excel at certain things. Trying to compare them to “journalism” is a mug’s game, like trying to figure out if a beanbag is really a chair. Who cares? Beanbags are great for certain forms of sitting down and lousy at others.
In fact, blogs and the msm are symbiotic. Blogs at their best improve on msm reporting both by holding reporters to account and by latching onto complex topics and talking about them in a conversational style that professional reporters just can’t match. But the blogosphere would shrivel and die without a steady diet of news reporting from paid professionals.
Which leads us to the dirty little secret of newsgathering: Serious, daily, national reporting is overwhelmingly the preserve of a tiny handful of big-city newspapers with large staffs and worldwide bureaus. Of these, the Los Angeles Times is under pressure to downsize by its parent company, as is the Washington Post. Knight Ridder was recently purchased by McClatchy. And every big-metro daily in the country, including the still-independent New York Times, is under relentless pressure from deteriorating circulation, poor demographics, loss of classified ad revenue to the Internet, and the decline of urban department stores—storms that private owners might have weathered but institutional investors have no stomach for.
When these dailies succumb, there’s really nothing to replace them. Television news does very little in-depth daily reporting, most radio is hopeless, and blogs simply don’t have the resources. Magazines do some good work but come out only weekly or monthly. So while the raw numbers of media consolidation may be the most dramatic symptom of the problem, it’s the small number of national dailies at the core of today’s msm that ought to be the biggest cause for concern. And when they go? For the most part, blogs will go with them. Enjoy them while you can.
Stop the Presses
Reckless Disregard
Sridhar Pappu
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Blueprint’s Five Favorite Albums of 2012
January 2, 2013 / 26 Comments
After doing several posts this past year titled The Last Five Albums I Bought, it’s only right that I list my five favorite albums of 2012. To be honest, it’s really difficult for me to rank any of these albums above the others. That seems a bit unfair when I consider how much I like them all. So what I will say is that these are the albums that I remember playing the most in 2012.
#5. Large Professor “Professor at Large”
To say this album came out of nowhere would be an understatement. I had no idea it was coming out but, to be completely honest, I’m not sure if it would’ve made any difference since I hadn’t been really moved by anything that the Large Professor had released since Breaking Atoms. I had pretty much written Extra P off, content with listening to Breaking Atoms and never checking for any more of his newer material. That all changed when I stumbled upon the song “Light Years” on youtube. It sounded like he was finally making the album that I had been waiting on him to make for years. I copped it immediately and played it a lot. It’s a conventional hip-hop record that isn’t progressive at all, but that simplicity is its best asset. Professor at Large is unapologetically oldschool and dope.
#4. KA “Grief Pedigree
There was a three or four week period of 2012 where I listened to “Grief Pedigree” by Ka at least every other day. It’s a dark, menacing, poetic album. It doesn’t have a single or anything that tries to be accessible, but it’s honesty is it’s appeal. This is what New York hip-hop is supposed to sound like.
#3. O.C. & Apollo Brown “Trophies”
Can’t say enough about this album. I wrote a piece titled The Return of an Inspiration: O.C. earlier this year about O.C. and Trophies when it was released, so I won’t go into too much detail here. I will say that it’s been really inspiring to see so many of the veterans I grew up listening to release albums that brought them back to top form in 2012. I played the hell out of Trophies all year.
#2. Robert Glasper “Black Radio”
I remember watching a youtube promo video for this before Black Radio’s release and not being too impressed. The music didn’t really hit me at that time. Although the line-up of hip-hop artists (Mos Def, Lupe Fiasco, etc.) appearing on Black Radio was impressive, I guess I just wasn’t checking for new jazz artists. Then one weekend I was burnt out on Hip-Hop, tired of all my R&B, and not in the mood for Rock. This rare state of mind sent me right back to where I was almost a year prior–Robert Glasper’s Black Radio album. I’ve played this record so much that sometimes I feel like I have to take it out just so I won’t get tired of it…then I turn it back on and listen to it again. It’s one of those records with so much depth that you can discover small things every time you listen to it. One of the most interesting part of this record is just how well the covers of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Sade’s “Cherish The Day” work. I’ve always kind of hated contemporary jazz covers, but Robert Glasper takes each cover and owns it.
#1. Frank Ocean “Channel Orange”
There’s so much I could write about this album, but I’ll try to keep it short. What most music lacks nowadays is a firm understanding of subtlety. Artists feel that, to get most attention, they have to scream the loudest or act the craziest. Producers feel like every beat they make has to feel epic. However, Frank Ocean has a genius understanding of how subtlety is an art in itself. He never over-sings anything. His production never tries to sound epic. His lyrics are never cliche, nor do they attempt to shock you into paying attention. His vocals aren’t clouded with effects or complicated harmonies. Everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be, exactly when it’s supposed to be there. So much so that if you’re looking for over-the-top theatrics you might miss the beauty of this album. But once you hear it, you can’t unhear it, and you’re forced to appreciate the degree of difficulty in what Frank Ocean created with Channel Orange. Probably the best R&B album I’ve heard since Voodoo by D’Angelo.
p.s. Feel free to list yours below. I’m always curious about what you guys are listening to.
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Posts tagged ‘education’
meditation transforms roughest schools…
Meditation transforms roughest San Francisco schools
David L. Kirp
Published by SF Gate at 6:37 pm, Sunday, January 12, 2014
Barry Zito, David Lynch, Russell Brand meditate with students during Quiet Time at Burton High. Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle
At first glance, Quiet Time – a stress reduction strategy used in several San Francisco middle and high schools, as well as in scattered schools around the Bay Area – looks like something out of the om-chanting 1960s. Twice daily, a gong sounds in the classroom and rowdy adolescents, who normally can’t sit still for 10 seconds, shut their eyes and try to clear their minds. I’ve spent lots of time in urban schools and have never seen anything like it.
This practice – meditation rebranded – deserves serious attention from parents and policymakers. An impressive array of studies shows that integrating meditation into a school’s daily routine can markedly improve the lives of students. If San Francisco schools Superintendent Richard Carranza has his way, Quiet Time could well spread citywide.
What’s happening at Visitacion Valley Middle School, which in 2007 became the first public school nationwide to adopt the program, shows why the superintendent is so enthusiastic. In this neighborhood, gunfire is as common as birdsong – nine shootings have been recorded in the past month – and most students know someone who’s been shot or did the shooting. Murders are so frequent that the school employs a full-time grief counselor.
In years past, these students were largely out of control, frequently fighting in the corridors, scrawling graffiti on the walls and cursing their teachers. Absenteeism rates were among the city’s highest and so were suspensions. Worn-down teachers routinely called in sick.
Unsurprisingly, academics suffered. The school tried everything, from counseling and peer support to after-school tutoring and sports, but to disappointingly little effect.
Now these students are doing light-years better. In the first year of Quiet Time, the number of suspensions fell by 45 percent. Within four years, the suspension rate was among the lowest in the city. Daily attendance rates climbed to 98 percent, well above the citywide average. Grade point averages improved markedly. About 20 percent of graduates are admitted to Lowell High School – before Quiet Time, getting any students into this elite high school was a rarity. Remarkably, in the annual California Healthy Kids Survey, these middle school youngsters recorded the highest happiness levels in San Francisco.
Reports are similarly positive in the three other schools that have adopted Quiet Time. AtBurton High School, for instance, students in the program report significantly less stress and depression, and greater self-esteem, than nonparticipants. With stress levels down, achievement has markedly improved, particularly among students who have been doing worst academically. Grades rose dramatically, compared with those who weren’t in the program.
On the California Achievement Test, twice as many students in Quiet Time schools have become proficient in English, compared with students in similar schools where the program doesn’t exist, and the gap is even bigger in math. Teachers report they’re less emotionally exhausted and more resilient.
“The research is showing big effects on students’ performance,” says Superintendent Carranza. “Our new accountability standards, which we’re developing in tandem with the other big California districts, emphasize the importance of social-emotional factors in improving kids’ lives, not just academics. That’s where Quiet Time can have a major impact, and I’d like to see it expand well beyond a handful of schools.”
While Quiet Time is no panacea, it’s a game-changer for many students who otherwise might have become dropouts. That’s reason enough to make meditation a school staple, and not just in San Francisco.
David L. Kirp, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, is the author of “Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School District and a Strategy for America’s Schools.”
Inspiration, spirit & soul, transformation, transformative tools
everything Buckminster Fuller knows…
Everything I Know: 42 Hours of Buckminster Fuller’s Visionary Lectures Free Online (1975)
Think of the name Buckminster Fuller, and you may think of a few oddities of mid-twentieth-century design for living: the Dymaxion House, theDymaxion Car, the geodesic dome. But these artifacts represent only a small fragment of Fuller’s life and work as a self-styled “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist.” In his decades-long project of developing and furthering his worldview — an elaborate humanitarian framework involving resource conservation, applied geometry, and neologisms like “tensegrity,” “ephemeralization,” and “omni-interaccommodative” — the man wrote over 30 books, registered 28 United States patents, and kept a diary documenting his every fifteen minutes. These achievements and others have made Fuller the subject of at least four documentaries and numerous books, articles, and papers, but now you can hear all about his thoughts, acts, experiences, and times straight from the source in the 42-hour lecture series Everything I Know, available to download at the Internet Archive. Though you’d perhaps expect it of someone whose journals stretch to 270 feet of solid paper, he could really talk.
In January 1975, Fuller sat down to deliver the twelve lectures that make upEverything I Know, all captured on video and enhanced with the most exciting bluescreen technology of the day. Props and background graphics illustrate the many concepts he visits and revisits, which include, according to the Buckminster Fuller Institute, “all of Fuller’s major inventions and discoveries,” “his own personal history in the context of the history of science and industrialization,” and no narrower a range of subjects than “architecture, design, philosophy, education, mathematics, geometry, cartography, economics, history, structure, industry, housing and engineering.” In his time as a passenger on what he called Spaceship Earth, Fuller realized that human progress need not separate the “natural” from the “unnatural”: “When people say something is natural,” he explains in the first lecture (embedded above as a YouTube video above), ”‘natural’ is the way they found it when they checked into the picture.” In these 42 hours, you’ll learn all about how he arrived at this observation — and all the interesting work that resulted from it.
(The Buckminster Fuller archive has also made transcripts of Everything I Know — “minimally edited and maximally Fuller” — freely available.)
Parts 1-12 on the Internet Archive: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Parts 1-6 on YouTube: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
excerpted from openculture.com
creativity, Inspiration, intelligence, Invention, nature, science & technology
Dymaxion House
futurist
the singularity
hackschooling…brilliant schooling…
creativity, fun & play, health & vitality, heart, Inspiration, intelligence, Invention, mind matters, spirit & soul, transformation
Logan LaPlante
turning ON education…
creativity, fun & play, heart, Inspiration, intelligence, Invention, mind matters, spirit & soul
Charles Tsai
Monument Mountain Regional High School
self designed school
social creatives
expanding education…
TED-Ed’s mission is to capture and amplify the voices of great educators around the world. We do this by pairing extraordinary educators with talented animators to produce a new library of curiosity-igniting videos. You can nominate a teacher, nominate an animator or suggest a lesson here:http://ed.ted.com
Take a tour of the Ted-Ed website:
creativity, intelligence, Invention, mind matters
Ted Education
education for the modern world…
Changing educational paradigms could bring life, practicality and joy back to education:
creativity, Inspiration, intelligence, mind matters
Ken Robinson
RSA Animate
reinventing education with video…
If you want to feel excited about education again, watch this.
intelligence, Invention, mind matters
new learning
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Estonia Tours & Holidays
JOIN US ON A HOLIDAY TO ESTONIA
Take a tour to Estonia and discover a country ready to enchant you with its varied mix of medieval cities, pine forests and deserted coastlines.
Located in Northern Europe, where the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland meet, Estonia has a deeply forested interior and a coastline adorned with more than 1,500 islands. It’s a place of contrasting natural landscapes and medieval architecture with a long and fascinating history.
From historic Russian Orthodox churches to medieval walls and turrets, this charming country is dotted with hidden cultural treasures, and wonderfully diverse architecture. And nowhere is that more evident than in the capital, Tallinn, Estonia’s architectural treasure-chest. The UNESCO-listed heart of Tallinn is one of Europe’s best-preserved medieval gems, and its ancient buildings have made this city the “medieval pearl of Europe”. See the impressive Gothic Town hall that dominates the main square with its octagonal tower. Stroll down bustling Viru Street, the heart of the city, see the religious art now on display in Niguliste Church, and marvel at the crowning glories of onion-domed, gilded Alexander Nevsky Cathedral and Toompea Castle, which watches over the Old Town. Take the chance to visit Peter the Great’s magnificent Kadriorg Palace, an 18th-century Baroque palace that now houses the stupendous collection of the Estonian Art Museum.
Beyond its captivating capital, Estonia is home to some of the most stunning wilderness in Europe and has plenty of untouched nature waiting to be discovered. Nature-lovers on a Estonia tour can explore its pristine countryside, and perhaps visit the wetlands of Sooma National Park, discover the nation’s rural culture in Karula National Park or go birdwatching in Matsalu National Park. For a more relaxed getaway, take a holiday to Estonia in the summer and enjoy unspoilt sandy beaches and laidback atmospheres in elegant summer capital, Pärnu.
Whether you are interested in the natural world, history, architecture or simply want to be bewitched, Estonia is waiting to be explored.
OUR FEATURED ESTONIA TOURS
Uncover the secrets of Tallinn, and the wonderfully diverse architecture of Estonia on one of our escorted tours.
Helsinki, Tallinn & Riga
Finland, Estonia, Latvia
Enjoy two nights in Finland's delightful capital
Discover vibrant Helsinki on a guided tour
Cross the Baltic Sea to Estonia's picture-book Tallinn
THINGS TO SEE IN ESTONIA
THINGS TO DO IN ESTONIA
With its medieval architecture, unspoilt national parks, forests and museums, Estonia has plenty to offer its visitors. Although small, the country’s diverse landscape makes it a unique place to visit. Here are some of our top things to do on your holiday in Estonia.
Originally a Danish stronghold built on strategically important Toompea Hill, Tallinn is perhaps the highlight of any visit to Estonia. Take in the rich culture of this city, see its architecture or perhaps visit during Christmas and soak up the fairy-tale atmosphere of the Christmas market held on the Town Hall Square.
Travel to Parnu, a pretty seaside resort that boasts popular sandy beaches and pretty parks and has long been renowned for the mud baths offered at its spas.
Visit the country’s largest national park, Lahemaa National Park, where the scenery seems to vary around each new corner. See its untouched sandy beaches, calm, clear lakes and green pine forests. Go for a hike, enjoy birdwatching and keep an eye out for the wild boar, moose, and brown bears that make this park their home.
ESTONIA FOOD & DRINK
Much of the cooking in Estonia blends flavours from neighbouring countries: Scandinavia, Germany, Russia, Latvia and Lithuania. As you’d expect from somewhere so northern, the cuisine changes seasonally, with fresh vegetables, fruits and freshly caught fish featuring in the summer months, while winter sees more hearty meals, especially stews.
That said, most dishes in Estonian gastronomy include potatoes, meat, and fish. You’ll find pork and rye bread on most menus, with rukkileib (black rye bread) accompanying almost every savoury food, though you’ll also find several other varieties to try, many studded with seeds, raisins and berries.
One staple in Estonian cuisine, mulgi kapsad, is particularly popular during the colder months. This soup dish consists of pork, sauerkraut and barley, and can be served on its own or with boiled potatoes. Roast meats and slow-cooked casseroles with elk, roe deer and wild boar are also popular during the winter months and are served in many restaurants around the country.
Finally, for those with a sweet tooth, kohuke is a must-try. This sweet pressed curd covered in caramel or chocolate is a popular snack and can be found in any supermarket. And if sweet and boozy is your thing, try Vana Tallinn – a syrupy liqueur that’s sometimes served with iced milk as a mixer.
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Great Moments in D’oh! History: Libya edition
Starting a war when you don’t have the ammunition to sustain it because you starved your defense budgets to feed the gaping maw that is the welfare state.
via Big Peace
1 Comment | Libya, Military, War | Tagged: feckless, Libya, NATO, paper tiger | Permalink
Cops vs. Teachers over support for cop-killer
Last week I wrote about the nauseating resolution passed by the California Federation of Teachers in support of convicted murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal. Not surprisingly, the Fraternal Order of Police took exception to this. So much so, in fact, that the head of the organization sent the national leader of the American Federation of Teachers a nasty-gram:
I cannot understand why the CFT, which like us represents rank-and-file employees, would support a murderer. In fact, Abu-Jamal’s victim was a rank-and-file law enforcement officer and a member of F.O.P. Local Lodge #5 in Philadelphia. I can only assume that the membership did so out of ignorance of the facts or that they were misled by this killer’s propaganda machine. I want to set the record straight and would respectively, yet urgently, request that you and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) publicly reject this repugnant resolution.
Big Government has the full letter.
AFT has neither responded to the FOP letter, nor have they given any indication they will repudiate the CFT’s resolution.
A question for the leadership and the rank-and-file of the Fraternal Order of Police: Are these really the kind of people you want to be associated with?
Comments Off on Cops vs. Teachers over support for cop-killer | California, Crime, Labor, Police | Permalink
Meet Global Warming’s new spokesman
It's an eco-helter skelter, man!
Charles Manson. Yes, that Charlie Manson:
Crazed cult leader Charles Manson has broken a 20-year silence in a prison interview coinciding with the 40th anniversary of his conviction for the gruesome Sharon Tate murders – to speak out about global warming.
The infamous killer, who started championing environmental causes from behind bars, bemoaned the ‘bad things’ being done to environment in a rambling phone interview from his Californian jail cell.
‘Everyone’s God and if we don’t wake up to that there’s going to be no weather because our polar caps are melting because we’re doing bad things to the atmosphere.
‘If we don’t change that as rapidly as I’m speaking to you now, if we don’t put the green back on the planet and put the trees back that we’ve butchered, if we don’t go to war against the problem…’ he added, trailing off.
Hell, he makes as much sense on this as the Goracle does.
via Ed Driscoll, who recalls when Gore was compared to the Unabomber.
Comments Off on Meet Global Warming’s new spokesman | Global Warming, Religion | Tagged: Al Gore, Charles Manson, Global Warming, Goracle, junk science | Permalink
Will someone please unleash Stuxnet on Wikileaks?
Thanks to the sanctimonious, self-righteous hacker-children of Wikileaks, we now have possible answer to why the Obama administration has been so gentle, even pusillanimous, toward the popular revolt against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad: We’ve been secretly backing the opposition:
The State Department has secretly financed Syrian political opposition groups and related projects, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming into the country, according to previously undisclosed diplomatic cables.
The London-based satellite channel, Barada TV, began broadcasting in April 2009 but has ramped up operations to cover the mass protests in Syria as part of a long-standing campaign to overthrow the country’s autocratic leader, Bashar al-Assad. Human rights groups say scores of people have been killed by Assad’s security forces since the demonstrations began March 18; Syria has blamed the violence on “armed gangs.”
Barada TV is closely affiliated with the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based network of Syrian exiles. Classified U.S. diplomatic cables show that the State Department has funneled as much as $6 million to the group since 2006 to operate the satellite channel and finance other activities inside Syria. The channel is named after the Barada River, which courses through the heart of Damascus, the Syrian capital.
The U.S. money for Syrian opposition figures began flowing under President George W. Bush after he effectively froze political ties with Damascus in 2005. The financial backing has continued under President Obama, even as his administration sought to rebuild relations with Assad. In January, the White House posted an ambassador to Damascus for the first time in six years.
The cables, provided by the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks, show that U.S. Embassy officials in Damascus became worried in 2009 when they learned that Syrian intelligence agents were raising questions about U.S. programs. Some embassy officials suggested that the State Department reconsider its involvement, arguing that it could put the Obama administration’s rapprochement with Damascus at risk.
And not just that shortsighted, naive rapprochement would be at risk. There’s a reason programs like these are kept secret: their revelation could not only wreck the operation, but also get people killed.
The US has very good reasons for supporting the Syrian opposition, far stronger and more relevant that whatever rationale was used to justify the attack on Libya: Syria is a terrorist sponsor that has the blood of Americans, Lebanese, Iraqis, and Israelis on its hands. During the insurgency in Iraq, it actively supported jihadists and Baathist remnants in their guerrilla war against the Coalition and the new Iraqi state. It is a key client and ally of Iran, our deadly enemy, which itself is in pursuit of nuclear weapons and has promised to use them. Taking down the Assad regime would would greatly weaken Iran’s hand in the region.
For these and many other reasons, we have a strong national interest in seeing regime change in Damascus, and I’m glad to see the Obama administration continued Bush’s efforts to support and aid the opposition.
But that may all come crashing down now at the cost of many brave Syrian lives.
So, why’d you do it, Wikileaks? Not getting enough media attention lately? Or are you so lost in a childish moral equivalence that you think you’re helping poor little third-world Syria against the evil capitalist bully? Don’t hurt yourself patting yourself on the back and don’t worry about the Syrians now exposed to torture and death just so you could be big-shots again.
I’d call you “jackasses,” but I’d have to find a mule to apologize to.
And I wasn’t kidding in the subject: if someone could devise a virus to foul up the Iranian nuclear program, surely something similar could be cooked up to fry the servers hosting Wikileaks. They’re clearly acting as enemies of the US and her allies, now.
RELATED: This isn’t the first time Wikileaks has exposed a covert American ally working to end a brutal dictatorship. And they may well have Afghan blood on their hands, too.
via Legal Insurrection
1 Comment | Espionage, Foreign Affairs, State Department, Syria | Tagged: Barada TV, covert operations, Movement for Justice and Development, WikiLeaks | Permalink
You are currently browsing the Public Secrets blog archives for the day Monday, April 18th, 2011.
@kimmie_c_ I put beans in chili. I am ashamed. 1 hour ago
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Whether an offence of Sexual assault is made out as per Section 7 of POCSO Act if there is Sexual intent or skin to skin contact?
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION
CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 1410 OF 2021
(@ SPECIAL LEAVE PETITION (CRL) NO. 925 OF 2021)
ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR INDIA …. APPELLANT(S)
SATISH AND ANOTHER …. RESPONDENT(S)
CRIMINAL APPEAL NO.1411 OF 2021
(@ SPECIAL LEAVE PETITION (CRL) NO. 1339 OF 2021)
NATIONAL COMMISSION FOR WOMEN …. APPELLANT(S)
THE STATE OF MAHARASHTRA AND ANOTHER…. RESPONDENT(S)
THE STATE OF MAHARASHTRA …. APPELLANT(S)
SATISH …. RESPONDENT(S)
LIBNUS …. RESPONDENT(S)
SATISH … APPELLANT(S)
THE STATE OF MAHARASHTRA …. RESPONDENT(S)
BELA M. TRIVEDI, J.
1. Leave granted in all appeals.
2. The four Appeals filed by the appellants – Attorney General for India, by the National Commission for Women, by the State of Maharashtra and by the appellant-accused Satish respectively, arising out of the Judgment and Order dated 19.01.2021 passed in Criminal Appeal No. 161 of 2020 by the High Court of Judicature at Bombay, Nagpur Bench, and the Appeal filed by the Appellant-State of Maharashtra, arising out of the Judgment and Order dated 15.01.2021 passed in the Criminal Appeal No. 445 of 2020 by the same Nagpur Bench, encompass similar contextual legal issues, and therefore, permit us this analogous adjudication. I. Factual matrix in case of the Accused-Satish :-
3. The Extra Joint Additional Sessions Judge, Nagpur (hereinafter referred to as the Special Court) vide the Judgment and Order dated 5th February, 2020 passed in the Special Child Protection Case No. 28/2017 convicted and sentenced the accused-Satish for the offences under Sections 342, 354 and 363 of the Indian Penal Code (for short ‘IPC’) and Section 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (For short POCSO Act). Being aggrieved by the same, the accused-Satish had preferred an appeal being Criminal Appeal No. 161 of 2020 in the High Court of Judicature at Bombay, Nagpur Bench. By the Judgment and Order dated 19 th January, 2021, the High Court disposed of the said appeal by acquitting the accused for the offence under Section 8 of the POCSO Act, and convicting him for the offence under Sections 342 and 354 of the IPC. The accused was sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for a period of one year and to pay fine of Rs. 500/- in default thereof to suffer R.I. for one month for the offence under Section 354 and to undergo imprisonment for a period of six months and to pay fine of Rs. 500/- , in default thereof to suffer R.I. for one month for the offence under Section 342 of IPC.
4. The case of the prosecution before the Special Court as emerging from the record was that the informant happened to be the mother of the victim aged about 12 years. The accused-Satish was residing in the same area where she was residing i.e. Deepak Nagar, Nagpur. On 14.12.2016 at about 11.30 a.m., the victim had gone out to obtain guava. Since she did not return back for a long time, the informant-mother went in search of the victim. At that time, one lady Sau Divya Uikey who was staying nearby, told her that the neighbouring person (the accused) had taken her daughter along with him to his house. The informant, therefore, went to the house of the accused. The accused at that time came down from the first floor of his house. The informant having made inquiry about her daughter, the accused told her that she was not there in his house. The informant, however, barged into the house of the accused to search her daughter as she heard the shouts coming from a room situated on the first floor. She went to the first floor and found that the door of the room was bolted from outside. She opened the door and found her daughter who was crying in the room. On making inquiry as to what had happened, her daughter told her that the accused had asked her to come with him and told her that he would give her a guava. He took her to his house. He then pressed her breast and tried to remove her salwar. At that time, the victim tried to shout but the accused pressed her mouth. The accused thereafter left the room and bolted the door from outside. The informant, on having learnt such facts, went to the Police Station along with her daughter to lodge the complaint. The said complaint was registered as Crime No. 405/2016 at Police Station Gittikhadan, Nagpur. It was further case of the prosecution that when the police rushed to the spot, they saw that the accused was trying to commit suicide by hanging himself. He, therefore, was sent to the hospital for treatment. The spot panchanama was drawn and the statement of the victim was got recorded under Section 164 of Code of Criminal Procedure before the Magistrate. After the completion of the investigation, the charge-sheet was filed in the Special Court, Nagpur against the accused. The Special Court after appreciating the evidence on record, passed the Judgment and Order of conviction and sentence as stated hereinabove.
5. The High Court in the appeal filed by the accused-Satish acquitted the accused for the offence under Section 8 of the POCSO Act and convicted him for the minor offence under Sections 342 and 354 of IPC by making following observations:
“18 . Evidently, it is not the case of the prosecution that the appellant removed her top and pressed her breast. The punishment provided for offence of ‘sexual assault’ is imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than three years but which may extend to five years, and shall also be liable to fine. Considering the stringent nature of punishment provided for the offence, in the opinion of this Court, stricter proof and serious allegations are required. The act of pressing of breast of the child aged 12 years, in the absence of any specific details as to whether the top was removed or whether he inserted his hand inside top and pressed her breast, would not fall in the definition of ‘sexual assault’. It would certainly fall within the definition of the offence under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code. For ready reference, Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code is reproduced below:
“354. Assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty. – Whoever assaults or uses criminal force to any woman, with the intention to outrage her modesty, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than one year but which may extend to five years, and shall also be liable to fine.”
19. So, the act of pressing breast can be a criminal force to a woman/girl with the intention to outrage her modesty. The minimum punishment provided for this offence is one year, which may extend to five years and shall also be liable to fine.
20 to 25 ————–
26. It is not possible to accept this submission for the aforesaid reasons. Admittedly, it is not the case of the prosecution that the appellant removed her top and pressed her breast. As such, there is no direct physical contact i.e. skin to skin with sexual intent without penetration.
6. The above observations/findings made by the High Court, have caused the Attorney General for India, the National Commission for Women and the State of Maharashtra to file the appeals before this Court. The accused has also filed the appeal challenging his conviction for the offences under Section 354 and 342 of the IPC.
II. Factual matrix in the case of the Accused-Libnus :-
7. The Additional Sessions Judge, Gadchiroli (hereinafter referred to as the Special Court) vide the judgment and order dated 5 th October, 2020 passed in the Special POCSO case no. 07/2019 convicted and sentenced the accused-Libnus s/o Fransis Kujur for the offences punishable under Section 448 and 354-A (1)(i) of IPC and Sections 8 and 10 read with section 9 (m) and 12 of the POCSO Act. Being aggrieved by the same, the accused-Libnus had preferred an appeal being Criminal Appeal No. 445 of 2020 in the High Court of Judicature at Bombay, Nagpur Bench. Vide the Judgment and Order dated 15 th January, 2021, the High Court maintained the conviction of the accused for the offences under Sections 448 and 354-A(1)(i) of the IPC read with Section 12 of the POCSO Act and set aside the conviction of the accused for the offences under Sections 8 and 10 of the POCSO Act. The High Court considering the nature of the alleged acts and the punishment provided for the alleged offences, modified the sentence imposed by the Special Court to the extent he had already undergone, and directed to set him free.
8. The case of the prosecution before the Special Court as emerging from the record was that the informant happened to be the mother of the victim aged about five years. The informant used to do domestic work at some houses in the town, for which she had to leave home at about 8.00 o’clock in the morning and return at about 4.00 o’clock in the afternoon. On 11.02.2018 at about 8.00 o’clock, she had left for her work leaving her two daughters at home. On that day, her husband had also gone out to village Chavela. When she returned home at about 4.00 o’clock in the afternoon, she saw one person catching hold of a hand of her elder daughter i.e. victim, and also saw her daughter raising her pant upwards. She, therefore, shouted and asked, who he was and what was he doing. The said person released the hand of her daughter and turned back. Thereupon, she found that the said person was Libnus Fransis who was residing nearby her house. He told her that he had come to see her husband as he had some work. When he started leaving, the informant saw that the zip of his pant was open. She, therefore, started shouting and abusing him. On hearing the shouts, her neighbours, namely, Chhaya Dnyanbaji Pagade, Sayabai Kailas Barsagade and Madhuri Santosh Kohchade, came rushing to her house and in the meantime the said Libnus F. Kujur ran away. When she inquired her daughter as to what had happened, her daughter told her that the said Kujur came home asking about her father. When she told him that her father had gone to a village and her mother had gone out for the work, the said Kujur caught her hands and moved her frock upward with one hand and lowered her pant with the other hand. He, thereafter, unzipped his pant and showed his penis to her and then asked her to lay down on wooden cot. Her daughter, thereafter, started crying. All the ladies gathered there tried to search the accused but he was not found. Thereafter, the informant alongwith her minor daughter, and her neighbours Chhaya Dnyanbaji Pagade and others went to the Gadchiroli police station to lodge the report against Libnus. The said report of the informant came to be registered as the Crime bearing No. 63/2018 at the said police station for the offences punishable under Sections 354-A (1)(i) and 448 of the IPC and Sections 8, 10 and 12 read with Section 9(m) and Section 11(i) of the POCSO Act. After the completion of the investigation, the charge-sheet was filed before the Special Court, Nagpur. The Special Court after appreciating the evidence on record passed the Judgment and Order of Conviction and sentence as stated hereinabove.
9. The High Court in the appeal filed by the accused-Libnus while setting aside the conviction for the offences under Sections 8 and 10 of the POCSO Act and maintaining the conviction for the offences under Sections 448 and 354-A(1)(i) of IPC read with Section 12 of the POCSO Act observed as under:
“9. In the case in hand undisputedly, the age of the prosecutrix is five years. If the offence of ‘sexual assault’ is proved against the appellant/accused, the prosecutrix, being of age below twelve years, the conviction has to be recorded for the offence of ‘aggravated sexual assault’.
10. The punishment for aggravated sexual assault is imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than five years but which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine.
11. The appellant/accused is prosecuted for the charge of ‘aggravated sexual assault’. As per the definition of ‘sexual assault’ a ‘physical contact with sexual intent without penetration’ is essential ingredient for the offence. The definition starts with the words – “whoever with sexual intent touches the vagina, penis, anus or breast of the child or makes the child touch the vagina, penis, anus or breast of such person or any other person or does any other act with ‘sexual intent…….’ The words ‘any other act’ encompasses within itself, the nature of the acts which are similar to the acts which have been specifically mentioned in the definition on the premise of the principle of ‘ejusdem generis’. The act should be of the same nature or closure to that. The acts of ‘holding the hands of the prosecutrix’ or ‘opened zip of the pant’ as has been allegedly witnessed by PW-1, in the opinion of this Court, does not fit in the definition of ‘sexual assault’.
12. The minimum sentence of this offence is five years imprisonment. Considering the nature of the offence and the sentence prescribed, the aforesaid acts are not sufficient for fixing the criminal liability on the appellant/accused for the alleged offence of ‘aggravated sexual assault’. At the most the minor offence punishable under Section 354-A(1) (I) of the IPC r/w Section 12 of the POCSO Act is proved against the appellant.
13. In this view of the matter, the prosecution could establish that appellant/accused entered into the house of the prosecutrix with the intention of outraged her modesty or sexual harassment as defined u/s 11 of the POCSO Act.
Therefore, the conviction of the appellant/accused for the offence punishable under Sections 448 and 354-
A(1)(i) of the IPC r/w Section 12 of the POCSO Act is maintained. The punishment provided for the offence u/s 345-A(1)(i) of the IPC and Section 12 of the POCSO Act is sentence for a term which may extend to 3 years or/and fine or with both. The punishment for the offence of house trespass is imprisonment for a term upto one year and fine upto Rs.1000 or with both. It is informed that till date the appellant/accused has undergone total imprisonment of about 5 months”.
10. Being aggrieved by the said Judgment and Order passed by the High Court, the State of Maharashtra has filed the present appeal.
11. We have heard the learned Attorney General for India Mr. K.K. Venugopal, the learned senior advocate Ms. Geeta Luthra appearing for the National Commission for Women, the learned advocate Mr. Rahul Chitnis appearing on behalf of the State of Maharashtra, the learned amicus curiae Mr. Siddharth Dave to assist the Court and the learned senior advocate Mr. Siddharth Luthra appearing on behalf of The Supreme Court Legal Services Committee for the accused–Satish and the accused Libnus.
12. The learned Attorney General for India, Mr. K.K. Venugopal expressing grave concern about the manner in which the provisions contained in the POCSO Act were interpreted by the High Court, vehemently submitted that such interpretation would lead to devastating effect in the society at large. According to him, the High Court could not have acquitted the accused-Satish mis- interpreting the provisions contained in Section 7 on the ground that there was no direct physical contact i.e. skin to skin contact made by the accused with the victim. He submitted that all the alleged acts of the accused i.e. taking the victim to his house, trying to remove her salwar, pressing her breast and pressing her mouth when she started shouting, were the acts amounting to “sexual assault” within the meaning of Section 7 punishable with Section 8 of the POCSO Act.
13. Supplementing the said submissions made by the learned Attorney General, the learned Senior Counsel Ms. Geeta Luthra relied upon the objects and reasons for enacting the POCSO Act to submit that since the sexual offences against women were not adequately addressed by the existing laws, the POCSO Act was specifically enacted to protect the children from the offences of sexual assault, sexual harassment and pornography. Ms. Luthra also relied upon the views of the Parliamentary Committee appointed for the purpose of examining the Bill with regard to the Protection of children from sexual harassment to submit that the sexual offences as defined in Clauses 3 and 7 of the Bill intended to cover all the likely situations required to be covered thereunder. Ms. Luthra also relied upon a number of judgments of various courts of the United Kingdom and of the United States of America, as also of this Court to emphasis the legislative intent behind enacting the POCSO Act. Taking the court to the dictionary meaning of the word ‘touch’, ‘physical contact’ and ‘sexual intent’, she empathetically submitted that the legislature has interchangeably used the words ‘touch’ and ‘physical contact’ in Section 7 and therefore, restricting the meaning of the word ‘physical contact’ to ‘skin to skin contact’ would be a narrow interpretation of the said provision, defeating the very object of the Act. She also pointed out that the High Court had grossly erred in applying the principle of ‘ejusdem generis’, which otherwise should not apply where it would defeat the object of the enactment. Similarly, according to Ms. Luthra, the Rule of Lenity also would not be applicable, there being no obscurity or uncertainty in the provisions of the POCSO Act.
14. The learned senior advocate Mr. Siddharth Dave, appointed as an amicus curiae also took the Court to the scheme of the POCSO Act, and specifically to Sections 2 and 3 to submit that what is important for the purpose of Section 7 is “sexual intent”. Bisecting Section 7 into two parts, Mr. Dave submitted that the first part thereof pertains to the act of touching with sexual intent the vagina, penis, anus or breast of the child or making the child touch the said organs of such person or any other person, and the second part pertains to ‘any other act’ with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration. Thus, according to him, in both the limbs of Section 7, the mens rea i.e. culpable mental state – the sexual intent of the person accused of the said offence is very material. Pressing into service Section 29 & 30 of the POCSO Act, Mr. Dave submitted that the Court is required to presume the existence of culpable mental state on the part of the accused, and it is for the accused to prove in defence that he had no such mental state with respect to the act charged as an offence. Mr. Dave also relied upon the unreported judgments of various High Courts to buttress his submission that touching in an indecent manner with culpable mental state, would amount to “sexual assault” within the meaning of Section 7 of the said Act, even though there was no ‘skin to skin contact’ between the victim and the accused.
15. Mr. Rahul Chitnis, learned advocate appearing on behalf of the State of Maharashtra adopting the submissions made by the learned Attorney General for India, Ms. Geeta Luthra and learned amicus curiae Mr. Siddharth Dave, submitted that if the interpretation of section 7 of the POCSO Act made by the High Court is accepted, the very object of the Act would be negated.
16. Per contra, Mr. Sidharth Luthra, learned senior advocate appearing for the accused in both the cases, relied upon various provisions of the POCSO Act and of the IPC to submit that the offence under Section 354 of IPC has a different connotation and different effect, which could not be incorporated for the purpose of interpreting Section 7 of the POCSO Act. According to him, the phrases ‘sexual intent’, ‘touches’ and ‘physical contact’ have not been defined in the POCSO Act, however the explanation to Section 11 states that any question which involves ‘sexual intent’ shall be a question of fact. Placing reliance on the decision of the Bombay High Court in case of Bandu Vithalrao Borwar v/s State of Maharashtra, in Criminal Appeal No. 50 of 2016, decided on 17.10.2016, he submitted that the expression “sexual intent” can not be confined to any predetermined format or structure. He further submitted that unlike POCSO Act, the IPC offence under section 354 uses the terms ‘assault’ and ‘criminal force’. However, since ‘sexual assault’ is defined under the POCSO Act, the definition of the words ‘assault’ or ‘criminal force’ contained in IPC cannot be imported into the POCSO Act, though permitted under section 2(2) of the POCSO Act. While fairly conceding that the first part of Section 7 of the POCSO Act, which pertains to the act of touching the private parts of the child, may not require ‘skin to skin contact’, he however submitted that so far as, the second part i.e. “ the other act with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration” is concerned, ‘the skin to skin contact’ is required to be proved by the prosecution.
17. As regards the presumption under Sections 29 and 30 of the POCSO Act, Mr. Luthra tried to draw an analogy from similar provisions contained in the NDPS Act and submitted that the presumption and reverse burden of proof on the accused makes it difficult for an accused to prove his innocence. Therefore, any interpretation other than the strict interpretation would expand the scope of the offence and would not further the constitutional objective of Article 21. In this regard, he has placed reliance on the decisions of this Court in the Case of Noor Aga vs. State of Punjab and Anr1, Sakshi vs. Union of India 2 and R. Kalyani vs Janak C. Mehta & Ors3.
18. Invoking the Rule of Lenity, Mr. Luthra submitted that this rule of statutory construction requires a court to resolve statutory ambiguity in a criminal statute in favour of the accused or to strictly construe the statute against the State. In this regard, he has relied upon the decisions of the United States Supreme Court in the case of “The United States vs. Wilt Berger4; Connally v. General Construction Co.5 and in case of United States vs. Kozminski6 .
19. Mr. Luthra, learned senior counsel also took the Court to the oral evidence adduced in both the cases and submitted that there were number of contradictions in the evidence of the informant and the witnesses examined by the prosecution and that it would be risky to convict the accused for the alleged offences under the POCSO Act on such unreliable and sketchy evidence.
Legal Provisions:
20. Before adverting to the rival submissions made by the learned counsels for the parties, apt would be to refer to the relevant provisions of the POCSO Act. As the long title of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offence Act, 2012 states, the Act has been enacted to protect the children from the offences of sexual assault, sexual harassment and pornography and provide for establishment of special courts for trial of such offences and for the matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.
21. Section 7 pertaining to “sexual assault” reads as under:
“7. Whoever, with sexual intent touches the vagina, penis, anus or breast of the child or makes the child touch the vagina, penis, anus or breast of such person or any other person, or does any other act with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration is said to commit sexual assault.
22. Section 8 providing for the punishment for sexual assault, reads as under :
“8 – Whoever, commits sexual assault, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than three years but which may extend to five years, and shall also be liable to fine.
23. Section 9 of the Act enumerates as to what is said to commit aggravated sexual assault. Clause (m) of the said provision being relevant is reproduced as under: 9(m)- whoever commits sexual assault on a child below twelve years;
24. Section 10 for providing Punishment for aggravated sexual assault – “10- whoever, commits aggravated sexual assault shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than five years but which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine”.
25. Section 11 pertains to “sexual harassment” – A person said to commit sexual harassment upon a child when such person with sexual intent –
“(i) – utters any word or makes any sound, or makes any gesture or exhibits any object or part of body with the intention that such word or sound shall be heard, or such gesture or object or part of body shall be seen by the child; or
(ii) makes a child exhibit his body or any part of his body so as it is seen by such person or any other person;
(iii) to (vi) ……….
Explanation – Any question which involves “sexual intent” shall be a question of fact.
26. Section 12 for providing punishment for sexual harassment “12 – whoever, commits sexual harassment upon a child shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years and shall also liable to fine.”
27. Sections 29 and 30 pertaining to the statutory presumptions read as under:
“29 -When a person is prosecuted for committing or abetting or attempting to commit any offence under Section 3, 5, 7 and Section 9 of this Act, the Special Court shall presume, that such person has committed or abetted or attempted to commit the offence, as the case may be, unless the contrary is proved.” “30 – (1) In any prosecution for any offence under this Act which requires a culpable mental state on the part of the accused, the Special Court shall presume the existence of such mental state but it shall be a defence for the accused to prove the fact that he had no such mental state with respect to the act charged as an offence in that prosecution.
(2) For the purposes of this section, a fact is said to be proved only when the Special Court believes it to exist beyond reasonable doubt and not merely when its existence is established by a preponderance of probability”.
Explanation – In this section, “culpable mental state” includes intention, motive, knowledge of a fact and the belief in, or reason to believe, a fact.
Analysis:-
28. In both the cases, the main controversy centers around the interpretation of Section 7 of the POCSO Act. It is trite saying that while interpreting a statute, the courts should strive to ascertain the intention of the Legislature enacting it, and it is the duty of the Courts to accept an interpretation or construction which promotes the object of the legislation and prevents its possible abuse. As observed by the Supreme Court in the case of J.P. Bansal vs. State of Rajasthan & Anr. Reported in AIR (2003) SC 1405, a statute is an edict of the legislature. The elementary principle of interpreting or construing a statute is to gather the mens or sententia legis, the true intention of the Legislature. It has been observed therein that :
“12. Interpretation postulates the search for the true meaning of the words used in the statute as a medium of expression to communicate a particular thought. The task is not easy as the “language” is often misunderstood even in ordinary conversation or correspondence. The tragedy is that although in the matter of correspondence or conversation the person who has spoken the words or used the language can be approached for clarification, the legislature cannot be approached as the legislature, after enacting a law or Act, becomes functus officio so far as that particular Act is concerned and it cannot itself interpret it. No doubt, the legislature retains the power to amend or repeal the law so made and can also declare its meaning, but that can be done only by making another law or statute after undertaking the whole process of law-making. …………….
16. Where, therefore, the “language” is clear, the intention of the legislature is to be gathered from the language used. What is to be borne in mind is as to what has been said in the statute as also what has not been said.
A construction which requires, for its support, addition or substitution of words or which results in rejection of words, has to be avoided, unless it is covered by the rule of exception, including that of necessity, which is not the case here. [See: Gwalior Rayons Silk Mfg. (Wvg.) Co. Ltd. v. Custodian of Vested Forests [AIR 1990 SC 1747 at p. 1752, Shyam Kishori Devi v. Patna Municipal Corpn. [AIR 1966 SC 1678 at p. 1682); A.R. Antulay v.
Ramdas Sriniwas Nayak [(1984) 2 SCC 500, at pp. 518, 519)]. Indeed, the Court cannot reframe the legislation as it has no power to legislate. [See: State of Kerala v. Mathai Verghese [(1986) 4 SCC 746, at p. 749); Union of India v. Deoki Nandan Aggarwal [AIR 1992 SC 96 at p. 101).]”
29. In the case of Balaram Kumawat Vs. Union of India & Ors. reported in (2003) 7 SCC 628, this Court while elaborately discussing the basic rules of interpretation observed as under:
“20. Contextual reading is a well-known proposition of interpretation of statute. The clauses of a statute should be construed with reference to the context vis-à-vis the other provisions so as to make a consistent enactment of the whole statute relating to the subject-matter. The rule of “ex visceribus actus” should be resorted to in a situation of this nature.
21. In State of W.B. v.Union of India (AIR at p. 1265, para 68), the learned Chief Justice stated the law thus:
“The Court must ascertain the intention of the legislature by directing its attention not merely to the clauses to be construed but to the entire statute; it must compare the clause with the other parts of the law, and the setting in which the clause to be interpreted occurs.”
22.The said principle has been reiterated in R.S. Raghunath v. State of Karnataka [(1992) 1 SCC 335 : 1992 SCC (L&S) 286 : (1992) 19 ATC 507 : AIR 1992 SC 81] (AIR at p. 89).
23. Furthermore, even in relation to a penal statute any narrow and pedantic, literal and lexical construction may not always be given effect to. The law would have to be interpreted having regard to the subject-matter of the offence and the object of the law it seeks to achieve. The purpose of the law is not to allow the offender to sneak out of the meshes of law. Criminal jurisprudence does not say so.
26. The courts will therefore reject that construction which will defeat the plain intention of the legislature even though there may be some inexactitude in the language used. [See Salmon v. Duncombe [(1886) 11 AC 627 : 55 LJPC 69 : 55 LT 446 (PC)] (AC at p. 634).] Reducing the legislation futility shall be avoided and in a case where the intention of the legislature cannot be given effect to, the courts would accept the bolder construction for the purpose of bringing about an effective result. The courts, when rule of purposive construction is gaining momentum, should be very reluctant to hold that Parliament has achieved nothing by the language it used when it is tolerably plain what it seeks to achieve. [See BBC Enterprises v. Hi-Tech Xtravision Ltd. [(1990) 2 All ER 118 : 1990 Ch 609 : (1990) 2 WLR 1123 (CA)] (All ER at pp. 122-23).]”
30. So far as the object of enacting the POCSO Act is concerned, as transpiring from the statement of objects and reasons, since the sexual offences against children were not adequately addressed by the existing laws and a large number of such offences were neither specifically provided for nor were they adequately penalized, the POCSO Act was enacted to protect the children from the offences of sexual assault, sexual harassment and pornography and to provide for establishment of special Courts for trial of such offences and for matters connected therewith and incidental thereto. While enacting the said Act, Article 15 of the Constitution which empowers the State to make special provisions for children, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, as acceded to by the Government of India, prescribing a set of standards to be followed by all the State parties in securing the best interest of the child, were also kept in view. The POCSO Bill intended to enforce the rights of all children to safety, security and protection from sexual abuse and exploitation, and also intended to define explicitly the offences against children countered through commensurate penalties as an effective deterrence.
31. Now, from the bare reading of Section 7 of the Act, which pertains to the “sexual assault”, it appears that it is in two parts. The first part of the Section mentions about the act of touching the specific sexual parts of the body with sexual intent. The second part mentions about “any other act” done with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration. Since the bone of contention is raised by Ld. Senior Advocate, Mr. Luthra with regard to the words “Touch”, and “Physical Contact” used in the said section, it would be beneficial first to refer to the dictionary meaning of the said words.
32. The word “Touch” as defined in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary means “the sense that enables you to be aware of things and what are like when you put your hands and fingers on them”. The word “physical“ as defined in the Advanced Law Lexicon, 3 rd Edition, means “of or relating to body………..” and the word “contact” means “the state or condition of touching; touch; the act of touching……”. Thus, having regard to the dictionary meaning of the words “touch” and “physical contact”, the Court finds much force in the submission of Ms. Geetha Luthra, learned senior Advocate appearing for the National Commission for Women that both the said words have been interchangeably used in Section 7 by the legislature. The word “Touch” has been used specifically with regard to the sexual parts of the body, whereas the word “physical contact” has been used for any other act. Therefore, the act of touching the sexual part of body or any other act involving physical contact, if done with “sexual intent” would amount to “sexual assault” within the meaning of Section 7 of the POCSO Act.
33. There cannot be any disagreement with the submission made by Mr. Luthra for the accused that the expression “sexual intent” having not been explained in Section 7, it cannot be confined to any predetermined format or structure and that it would be a question of fact, however, the submission of Mr. Luthra that the expression ‘physical contact’ used in Section 7 has to be construed as ‘skin to skin’ contact cannot be accepted. As per the rule of construction contained in the maxim “Ut Res Magis Valeat Quam Pereat ”, the construction of a rule should give effect to the rule rather than destroying it. Any narrow and pedantic interpretation of the provision which would defeat the object of the provision, cannot be accepted. It is also needless to say that where the intention of the Legislature cannot be given effect to, the courts would accept the bolder construction for the purpose of bringing about an effective result. Restricting the interpretation of the words “touch” or “physical contact” to “skin to skin contact” would not only be a narrow and pedantic interpretation of the provision contained in Section 7 of the POCSO Act, but it would lead to an absurd interpretation of the said provision. “skin to skin contact” for constituting an offence of “sexual assault” could not have been intended or contemplated by the Legislature. The very object of enacting the POCSO Act is to protect the children from sexual abuse, and if such a narrow interpretation is accepted, it would lead to a very detrimental situation, frustrating the very object of the Act, inasmuch as in that case touching the sexual or non sexual parts of the body of a child with gloves, condoms, sheets or with cloth, though done with sexual intent would not amount to an offence of sexual assault under Section 7 of the POCSO Act. The most important ingredient for constituting the offence of sexual assault under Section 7 of the Act is the “sexual intent” and not the “skin to skin” contact with the child.
34. At this juncture, it may also be beneficial to refer to the observations made by the Foreign Courts in the judgments cited by Ms. Geetha Luthra, wherein the said courts while interpreting analogous provisions as prevalent in such countries, have held that “skin to skin contact” is not required to constitute an offence of sexual assault. It is not the presence or lack of intervening material which should be focused upon, but whether the contact made through the material, comes within the definition prescribed for a particular statue, has to be seen. Of course, the judgments of the said courts proceed on the interpretation arising out of the terms defined in the provisions contained in the concerned legislations and are not pari-materia to the language of Section 7 of the POCSO Act, nonetheless they would be relevant for the purpose of interpreting the expression “touch” and “sexual assault”. In Regina v. H (2005) 1 WLR 2005, the Court of Appeal while interpreting the word “touching” contained in Section 3 of the Sexual Offences Act, 2003 as in force in U.K, observed that the touching of clothing would constitute “touching” for the purpose of said Section 3. Similarly, in State of Iowa V. Walter James Phipps 442 N.W.2d.611 the Court of Appeals of Iowa held that a lack of skin-to-skin contact alone does not as a matter of law put the defendant’s conduct outside the definition of “sex act” or “sexual activity”, which has been defined in Section 702.17 of Iowa Code.
35. The act of touching any sexual part of the body of a child with sexual intent or any other act involving physical contact with sexual intent, could not be trivialized or held insignificant or peripheral so as to exclude such act from the purview of “sexual assault” under Section 7. As held by this court in case of Balaram Kumawat Vs. Union of India (supra), the law would have to be interpreted having regard to the subject matter of the offence and to the object of the law it seeks to achieve. The purpose of the law cannot be to allow the offender to sneak out of the meshes of law.
36. It may also be pertinent to note that having regard to the seriousness of the offences under the POCSO Act, the Legislature has incorporated certain statutory presumptions. Section 29 permits the Special Court to presume, when a person is prosecuted for committing or abetting or attempting to commit any offence under Section 3, 5, 7 and Section 9 of the Act, that such person has committed or abetted or attempted to commit the offence, as the case may be, unless the contrary is proved. Similarly, Section 30 thereof permits the Special Court to presume for any offence under the Act which requires a culpable mental state on the part of the accused, the existence of such mental state. Of course, the accused can take a defence and prove the fact that he had no such mental state with respect to the act charged as an offence in that prosecution. It may further be noted that though as per sub section (2) of Section 30, for the purposes of the said section, a fact is said to be proved only when the Special Court believes it to exist beyond reasonable doubt and not merely when its existence is established by a preponderance of probability, the Explanation to Section 30 clarifies that “culpable mental state” includes intention, motive, knowledge of a fact and the belief in, or reason to believe, a fact. Thus, on the conjoint reading of Section 7, 11, 29 and 30, there remains no shadow of doubt that though as per the Explanation to Section 11, “sexual intent” would be a question of fact, the Special Court, when it believes the existence of a fact beyond reasonable doubt, can raise a presumption under Section 30 as regards the existence of “culpable mental state” on the part of the accused.
37. This takes the Court to the next argument of Mr. Luthra that there being an ambiguity, due to lack of definition of the expressions – “sexual intent”, “any other act”, “touching” and “physical contact”, used in Section 7, coupled with the presumptions under Sections 29 and 30 of the Act, the reverse burden of proof on the accused would make it difficult for him to prove his innocence and, therefore, the POCSO Act must be strictly interpreted. In the opinion of the Court, there cannot be any disagreement with the said submission of Mr. Luthra. In fact it has been laid down by this Court in catina of decisions that the Penal Statute enacting an offence or imposing a penalty has to be strictly construed. A beneficial reference of the decisions in the case of Sakshi vs. Union of India reported in (2004) 5 SCC 518, in the case of R. Kalyani vs Janak C. Mehta & Ors reported in (2009) 1 SCC 516 and in the case of State of Punjab v. Gurmeet Singh (2014) 9 SCC 632 be made in this regard. However, it is equally settled legal position that the clauses of a statute should be construed with reference to the context vis-a-vis the other provisions so as to make a consistent enactment of the whole Statute relating to the subject matter. The Court can not be oblivious to the fact that the impact of traumatic sexual assault committed on children of tender age could endure during their whole life, and may also have an adverse effect on their mental state. The suffering of the victims in certain cases may be immeasurable. Therefore, considering the objects of the POCSO Act, its provisions, more particularly pertaining to the sexual assault, sexual harassment etc. have to be construed vis-a-vis the other provisions, so as to make the objects of the Act more meaningful and effective.
38. The invocation of “Rule of lenity” at the instance of Mr. Luthra, learned senior Advocate is also thoroughly misconceived. Placing reliance on the various judgments of the United States Supreme Court in case of Ladner vs. United States, 358 US 169; United States vs. Kozminski, 487 US 931; United States vs. Wiltberger, 18 US 76, Mr. Luthra had sought to submit that the “Rule of Lenity” requires a court to resolve statutory ambiguity in a criminal statute in favour of the accused, or to strictly construe the statute against the State. The said submission of Mr. Luthra cannot be accepted in view of the settled proposition of law that the statutory ambiguity should be invoked as a last resort of interpretation. Where the Legislature has manifested its intention, courts may not manufacture ambiguity in order to defeat that intent. In this regard, Ms. Geetha Luthra has rightly relied upon the precise observations made by the Court of Appeal, California, in case of The People vs. REID II, 246 Cal. App. 4Th, 822 as follows:
“[T]he ‘touchstone’ of the rule of lenity ‘is statutory ambiguity.’ [Citation.]” (Bifulco v.
United States (1980) 447 U.S. 381, 387, 100 S. Ct. 2247, 65 L.ED.2d 205.) “ ‘the rule … applies only if the court can do no more than guess what the legislative body intended; there must be an egregious ambiguity and uncertainty to justify invoking the rule.’ “ (People v. Avery (2002) 27 Cal. 4Th 49, 58, 115 Cal. Rptr.2d 403, 38 P.3d 1.) “Where the Legislature has manifested its intention, courts may not manufacture ambiguity in order to defeat that intent.” (Bifulco v. United States supra, at p. 387, 100 S. Ct. 2247.) Additionally, “ambiguities are not interpreted in the defendant’s favor if such an interpretation would provide an absurd result, or a result inconsistent with apparent legislative intent. (People v. Cruz (1996) 13 Cal. 4Th 764, 783, 55 Cal. Rptr. 2D 117, 919 P. 2d
731.)”
39. It is also trite that a court should not be over zealous in searching for ambiguities or obscurities in words which are plain. (IRC vs. Rossminster Ltd. (1980) 1 AllER 80). So far as the provisions contained in Section 7 of the POCSO Act are concerned, the court does not find any ambiguity or obscurity so as to invoke the Rule of Lenity.
40. In the light of the afore-discussed legal position, if the findings recorded by the High Court are appreciated, it clearly emerges that the High Court fell into error in case of the accused-Satish in holding him guilty for the minor offences under Sections 342 and 354 of IPC and acquitting him for the offence under Section 8 of the POCSO Act. The High Court while specifically accepting the consistent versions of the victim and her mother i.e. informant about the accused having taken the victim to his house, having pressed the breast of the victim, having attempted to remove her salwar and pressing her mouth, had committed gross error in holding that the act of pressing of breast of the child aged 12 years in absence of any specific details as to whether the top was removed or whether he inserted his hands inside the top and pressed her breast, would not fall in the definition of sexual assault, and would fall within the definition of offence under Section 354 of the IPC. The High Court further erred in holding that there was no offence since there was no direct physical contact i.e. “skin to skin” with sexual intent.
41. The interpretation of Section 7 at the instance of the High Court on the premise of the principle of “ejusdem generis” is also thoroughly misconceived. It may be noted that the principle of “ejusdem generis” should be applied only as an aid to the construction of the statute. It should not be applied where it would defeat the very legislative intent. As per the settled legal position, if the specific words used in the section exhaust a class, it has to be construed that the legislative intent was to use the general word beyond the class denoted by the specific words. So far as Section 7 of the POCSO Act is concerned, the first part thereof exhausts a class of act of sexual assault using specific words, and the other part uses the general act beyond the class denoted by the specific words. In other words, whoever, with sexual intent touches the vagina, penis, anus or breast of the child or makes the child touch the vagina, penis, anus or breast of such person or any other person, would be committing an offence of “sexual assault”. Similarly, whoever does any other act with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration, would also be committing the offence of “sexual assault” under Section 7 of the POCSO Act. In view of the discussion made earlier, the prosecution was not required to prove a “skin to skin” contact for the purpose of proving the charge of sexual assault under Section 7 of the Act.
42. The surrounding circumstances like the accused having taken the victim to his house, the accused having lied to the mother of the victim that the victim was not in his house, the mother having found her daughter in the room on the first floor of the house of the accused and the victim having narrated the incident to her mother, were proved by the prosecution, rather the said facts had remained unchallenged at the instance of the accused. Such basic facts having been proved by the prosecution, the Court was entitled to raise the statutory presumption about the culpable mental state of the accused as permitted to be raised under Section 30 of the said Act. The said presumption has not been rebutted by the accused, by proving that he had no such mental state. The allegation of sexual intent as contemplated under Section 7 of the Act, therefore, had also stood proved by the prosecution. The Court, therefore, is of the opinion that the prosecution had duly proved not only the sexual intent on the part of the accused but had also proved the alleged acts that he had pressed the breast of the victim, attempted to remove her salwar and had also exercised force by pressing her mouth. All these acts were the acts of “sexual assault” as contemplated under section 7, punishable under Section 8 of the POCSO Act.
43. So far as the case of the other accused-Libnus is concerned, the High Court vide its impugned judgment and order, while maintaining the conviction of the accused for the offences punishable under sections 448 and 354-A(1)(i) of the IPC read with Section 12 of the POCSO Act, has acquitted the accused for the offence under Sections 8 and 10 of the POCSO Act. Pertinently the High Court while recording the finding that the prosecution had established that the accused had entered into the house of the prosecutrix with the intention to outrage her modesty, also held that the acts “holding the hands of the prosecutrix” or “opened the zip of the pant” did not fit in the definition of sexual assault. In the opinion of the Court, the High Court had fallen into a grave error in recording such findings. When the alleged acts of entering the house of the prosecutrix with sexual intent to outrage her modesty, of holding her hands and opening the zip of his pant showing his penis, are held to be established by the prosecution, there was no reason for the High Court not to treat such acts as the acts of “sexual assault” within the meaning of Section 7 of the POCSO Act. The High Court appears to have been swayed away by the minimum punishment of five years prescribed for the offence of “aggravated sexual assault” under Section 10 of the POCSO Act as the age of the prosecutrix was five years and the sexual assault if committed on the victim who is below 12 years is required to be treated as the “aggravated sexual assault” as per Section 9(m) of the Act. However, neither the term of minimum punishment nor the age of the victim could be a ground to allow the accused to escape from the clutches of Section 7 of the POCSO Act. The alleged acts of the accused in entering the house of the prosecutrix with sexual intent to outrage her modesty, holding her hands and unzipping his pant showing his penis to the prosecutrix having been held to be proved by the prosecution, they would certainly be the acts falling within the purview of the “sexual assault” as contemplated in the second part of Section 7 i.e. “……… or does any other act with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration”. The Court, therefore, has no hesitation in holding that the accused-Libnus had committed an offence of “sexual assault” within the meaning of Section 7 of the POCSO Act and the prosecutrix being below the age of 12 years, he had committed an offence of “aggravated sexual assault” as contemplated under Section 9(m) of the said Act, liable to be punished with the imprisonment for a term not less than five years under Section 10 of the POCSO Act. In that view of the matter, the judgment and order of the High Court insofar as it has set aside the conviction of the accused-Libnus for the offences under Section 8 and 10 of the POCSO Act is liable to be set aside, and the judgment and order of conviction and sentence passed by the Special Court is required to be restored.
44. In the aforesaid premises, the judgments and orders dated 19.01.2021 and 15.01.2021 passed by the High Court of Judicature at Bombay, Nagpur Bench, at Nagpur in Criminal Appeal No. 161 of 2020 and Criminal Appeal No. 445 of 2020 respectively are hereby quashed and set aside; and the judgments and orders dated 05.02.2020 and 05.10.2020 passed by the Extra Joint Additional Sessions Judge, Nagpur in Special Child Protection Case No. 28 of 2017 and by the Special Court, Gadchiroli in POCSO Case No. 07/2019 are restored.
45. Accordingly, the accused-Satish is hereby convicted for the offences punishable under Section 8 of the POCSO Act and under Sections 342, 354 and 363 of the IPC. He is directed to undergo rigorous imprisonment for a period of three years and to pay fine of Rs.500/- and in default thereof to suffer simple imprisonment for a period of one month for the offence under Section 8 of the POCSO Act. Since he has been sentenced for the major offence under Section 8 of the POCSO Act, no separate sentence is imposed upon him for the other offences under the IPC.
46. The accused-Libnus s/o Fransis Kujur is hereby convicted for the offences punishable under Sections 354-A (1)(i) and 448 of the IPC as also for the offences under Sections 8, 12 and 10 read with Section 9(m) of the POCSO Act. He is directed to undergo rigorous imprisonment for a period of five years for the offence under Section 10 of the POCSO Act and to pay fine of Rs. 25,000/- (Rupees twenty five thousand only) and in default thereof to suffer simple imprisonment for a period of six months. Since he has been sentenced for the major offence under Section 10 of the POCSO Act, no separate sentence is being imposed upon him for the other offences under the IPC and the POCSO Act.
47. Both accused – Satish and Libnus are directed to surrender themselves before the concerned Special Courts, within four weeks from today.
48. Before parting, it may be noted that in the case of the accused- Libnus, the State of Maharashtra while filing the Appeal before this Court had not produced the certified copy of the judgment of the High Court, however, had produced a copy of a certified copy, wherein the High Court had recorded acquittal of the accused for the offence under Sections 8, 10 and 12 of the POCSO Act, while maintaining his conviction under Sections 448 and 354-A(1)(i) of the IPC, whereas in the copy of the impugned judgment of the High Court downloaded by the respondent-accused produced on record by the learned Advocate for the accused, the High Court had recorded the conviction of the accused for the offence under Sections 448 and 354-A(1)(i) of the IPC read with Section 12 of the POCSO Act. There being a discrepancy in the said two copies of the impugned judgment of the High Court, the learned Advocate for the respondent-accused had filed an I.A. bringing to the notice of the Court about such discrepancy. The Court, therefore, had vide its order dated 27.10.2021 directed the Registrar of the High Court to send the certified copy of the decision of the High court dated 15.01.2021 passed in Criminal Appeal No. 445 of 2020. Accordingly, the Assistant Registrar of the High Court of Bombay, Nagpur Bench, has sent the certified copy of the said judgment.
49. It is very surprising to note that the Registry of High Court of Bombay, Nagpur Bench, has certified the copy of the impugned judgment by affixing the stamp on the back side of every page of the judgment which is blank. The said copy of the judgment appears to have been downloaded from the website and, therefore, does not bear even the signature or the name of the concerned judge at the end of the judgment. The certificate that the said copy is a true copy of the judgment, is also not written at the foot of the judgment as contemplated in Section 76 of the Indian Evidence Act. Such a practice, if followed by the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court, may allow the miscreants to manipulate or commit mischief in the judicial orders which are used as the public documents having great significance in the judicial proceedings. The Registrar General of the Bombay High Court, therefore, is directed to look into the matter and ensure that proper procedure for preparing the certified copies of the judgments/orders of the Court in accordance with law is followed.
50. All the five appeals stand disposed of accordingly.
51. It will be failure on our part if we do not extend gratitude of appreciation for the enormous assistance rendered by learned Senior Advocate Mr. Siddhartha Dave, learned Amicus Curiae, Mr. Siddharth Luthra, learned Senior Advocate, appearing on behalf of the accused through Supreme Court Legal Services Committee, Ms. Geetha Luthra, learned Senior Advocate appearing for National Women Commission and all other advocates who have appeared in the matter.
The initiative taken by the learned Attorney General for India Mr. K.K. Venugopal in filing the appeal with all sense of expressing his concern in the cause also deserves to be appreciated.
[BELA M. TRIVEDI][UDAY UMESH LALIT] NEW DELHI
CRIMINAL APPEAL NO1410 /2021
(@ SLP (CRL) NO. 925/2021)
ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR INDIA …APPELLANT(S)
SATISH AND ANOTHER …RESPONDENT(S)
CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 14112021
(@ SLP (CRL) NO. 1339/2021)
NATIONAL COMMISSION FOR WOMEN …APPELLANT(S)
AND ANOTHER …RESPONDENT(S)
CRIMINAL APPEAL NO.1412/2021
(@SLP (CRL) NO. 1159/2021)
THE STATE OF MAHARASHTRA …APPELLANT(S)
SATISH …RESPONDENT(S)
LIBNUS …RESPONDENT(S)
SATISH …APPELLANT(S)
THE STATE OF MAHARASHTRA …RESPONDENT(S)
S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.
1. I begin this concurring opinion with a preface that I completely and unreservedly agree with the findings and conclusions recorded in the comprehensive judgment of Justice Bela Trivedi. I also hasten to add that I deem this effort not as an attempt to speak for the sake of speaking, and thereby adding little value to Justice Trivedi’s analysis, but only essentially to point to a slightly different direction, which is the need to interpret the statute in the context of the circumstances that resulted in its birth.
2. The judgments under appeal remind one of a passage from Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland, where he describes what words (or expressions) mean and whether they have an intrinsic meaning at all:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
3. To place the matter in perspective, what is in issue is the true interpretation of the expression “with sexual intent touches the vagina, penis, anus or breast of the child” at someone’s behest. Such an act, under Section 7 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (“POCSO” hereafter) is an offence of sexual assault, and punishable under Section 8. According to the interpretation placed by the High Court, for any act to be an offence, the touching of any of the parts mentioned by the statute (vagina, penis, anus or breast) must be of the organ, and there should be a “skin to skin” contact.
4. I do not see the need to recount the facts or the arguments, which have been fairly and accurately set out in Trivedi, J’s judgment. Instead, I proceed with the task of interpretation of provisions of POCSO, and the proper rule of interpretation which should be adopted in such cases. Long ago, in Reserve Bank of India v. Peerless General Finance and Investment Co. Ltd. & Ors. 1 this court observed the need to contextualise the provisions of any law which requires interpretation, even while focussing on its text:
“If a statute is looked at, in the context of its enactment, with the glasses of the statute-maker, provided by such context, its scheme, the sections, clauses, phrases and words may take colour and appear different than when the statute is looked at without the glasses provided by the context. With these glasses we must look at the Act as a whole and discover what each section, each clause, each phrase and each word is meant and designed to say as to fit into the scheme of the entire Act. No part of a statute and no word of a statute can be construed in isolation. Statutes have to be construed so that every word has a place and everything is in its place.” 1 (1987) 1 SCC 424
5. The question then is whether “touching” has an intrinsic meaning, as Alice said, or whether it means only something that judges say it means, no more, no less.
6. One time tested and well accepted mode of interpreting a statute, especially a new statute, is to apply the “mischief rule” – first spoken of in Heydon’s case2 which contains a four-point formula, acting as an aid in construing a new law or provision. These are firstly, what was the common law before the making of the Act; secondly what was the mischief and defect for which the common law did not provide; thirdly what remedy Parliament resolved and appointed to cure the disease plaguing the society; and lastly the true reason of the remedy. The judgment in Heydon’s case also emphasised that courts always have to interpret the law so as to suppress the mischief, and advance the remedy, and to suppress subtle inventions and evasions for continuance of the mischief, and pro privato commodo, and to add force and life to the cure and remedy, according to the true intent of the makers of the Act, pro bono publico. This rule was approved, and its purport explained, in Kanwar Singh v. Delhi Administration3 thus:
“It is the duty of the court in construing a statute to give effect to the intention of the legislature. If, therefore, giving a literal meaning to a word used by the draftsman, particularly in a penal statute, would defeat the object of the legislature, which is to suppress a mischief, the court can depart from the dictionary meaning or even the popular meaning of the word and instead give it a meaning which will advance the remedy and suppress the mischief.”
7. The aim of such statutory construction was put, pithily and simply in Swantraj & Ors. v. State of Maharashtra4:
“Every legislation is a social document and judicial construction seeks to decipher the statutory mission, language permitting, taking the cue from the rule in Heydon’s(1) case of suppressing the evil and advancing the remedy.” 2 76 ER 637 3 1965 (1) SCR 7 4 (1975) 3 SCC 322
8. This court recollects its decision in Eera v. State (NCT of Delhi)5 where the mischief rule was commended and applied, specifically in relation to POCSO.
9. To gather the mischief which Parliament wished to eliminate, it would be necessary to briefly trace the history of the law, which existed before POCSO was enacted. The Indian Penal Code (“IPC” hereafter) criminalizes assault or use of criminal force which outrages a woman’s modesty (by Section 354). The expression “criminal force” is defined in Section 350 and “assault” is defined in Section 351. These require an element of application of physical force, to women. The expression “modesty” was another limitation as older decisions show that such a state was associated with decorousness6 of women. This added a dimension of patriarchy and class.7 One cannot be unmindful of the circumstances in which these provisions were enacted by a colonial power, at a time, when women’s agency itself was unacknowledged, or had limited recognition. Further, women in India were traditionally – during the time of enactment of IPC, in the mid nineteenth century – subordinated to the care of their fathers, or their husbands, or other male relatives. They had no share in immovable property; notions of gender equality were unheard of, or not permitted. Women had no right to vote. Quite naturally, the dignity of women – or indeed their autonomy, was not provided for.
10. The advent of the Constitution of India revolutionized- at least in law, all that. Regardless of gender, race, caste, religion or region, or all of the acknowledged sectarian and discrimination enabling barriers, everyone enjoyed 5 2017 (15) SCC 133 6 Rupan Deol Bajaj v. K.P.S Gill (1995) 6 SCC 194 7 Section 354 (or any other provision of the IPC) does not offer a statutory definition of the term ‘modesty’, and over time, was interpreted broadly, contemporaneously with the developing and acknowledged role of women in society, to overcome its inherently colonial and patriarchal origins. Yet, there were hangovers, as noticed as recently as in Kalias & Ors. v. State of Maharashtra (2011) 1 SCC 293 wherein the abhorrent argument that a tribal woman’s ‘modesty’ was distinct owing to the ‘inferiority’ of tribal people who live in torn clothes or no proper clothes was rejected for being totally unacceptable in modern India. equality of law, and equal protection of law (Article 14). Further, the provision in Article 15 (1) proscribed discrimination by the state (in all its forms) on various grounds, including gender. Article 15 (3) enabled the state to enact special provisions for women and children.
11. The limitations in law in dealing with acts that undermined the dignity and autonomy of women and children, ranging from behaviour that is now termed “stalking” to pornography, or physical contact, and associated acts, which were not the subject matter of any penal law, were recognized and appropriate legislative measures adopted, in other countries.8 These have been alluded to in Trivedi, J’s judgment, in detail. These laws contain nuanced provisions criminalizing behaviour that involve unwanted physical contact of different types and hues, have the propensity to harass and discomfit women and minors (including minors of either sex), or demean them.
12. In India, the Law Commission’s 146th report (1993), 156th report (1997) and 172nd report (2000) dealt with some of these and associated issues. The 172nd report recommended changes to the definition of rape, expanding its scope, and also incorporating the expanded definition of sexual assault. These, and India’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Children, 1992 (which required nation states to adopt suitable legislation to combat coercion of children in sexual activity, exploitative use of children and children’s exploitation for pornography), formed the background and basis for enacting POCSO. The Statement of Objects and Reasons for POCSO, cites the UN Convention, and further states that:
“ …The data collected by the National Crime Records Bureau shows that there has been increase in cases of sexual offences against children. This is corroborated by the “study on child abuse: India 2007” conducted by the 8 Sections 2, 3, 6, 7 and 78 of the UK Sexual Offences Act, 2003; Part V: Sexual Offences, Public Morals and Disorderly Conduct (Sections 151-153), Criminal Code, 1985 of the Dominion of Canada, Section 5, 6, 7, 15 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and related matters) (Amendment) Act, 2007, enacted by the Republic of South Africa and amendments to laws enacted by the New South Wales, Victoria and New York Penal Laws by their legislatures.
Ministry of Women and Child Department. Moreover, sexual offences against children are not adequately addressed by the extent laws. A large number of such offences are neither specifically provided for nor are they adequately penalized. The interests of the child, both as a victim as well as a witness, need to be protected.
It is felt that offences against children need to be defined explicitly and countered through commensurate penalties as an effective deterrence. It is, therefore, proposed to enact a self-contained comprehensive legislation inter- alia to provide for protection of children from the sexual offences and pornography with due regard for safeguarding the interest and well-being of the child at every stage of the Judicial process, incorporating child friendly procedures for reporting, recording of evidence, investigation and trial of offences and provision for establishment of Special Courts for speedy trial of such offences.”9
13. Parallelly, it would be useful to notice that the IPC was sought to be amended; through the introduction of a Bill in 2012, which for some reason, did not see the light of the day; instead, the amendments were made, through an Ordinance10 which was later replaced by a Parliamentary Act. 11 These amendments enhanced the punishment for certain offences (including Section
354) and introduced new offences engrafted into the IPC, such as sexual harassment (Section 354A) which is an offence involving unwelcome sexual advances or physical contact, demand or request for sexual favours, forceful exhibition of pornography to women or making sexually coloured remarks; assault or use of criminal force to woman with intent to disrobe (Section 354B), or abets the doing of such act; voyeurism (Section 354C) which is defined as the act of a man watching or capturing the image of a woman engaged in private activities (e.g. undressing), when the woman presumes she is assured of privacy and does not expect anyone to be watching; stalking (Section 354D) which means following a woman and making or attempting to make contact (either 9 The statement of objects and reasons was noticed by this court in Alakh Alok Shrivastava v. Union of India (2018) 17 SCC 291 where the court observed that “The POCSO Act has been legislated keeping in view the fundamental concept under Art. 15 of the Constitution that empowers the state to make special provisions for children and also Article 39(f) which provides that the state shall in particular direct its policy towards securing that the children are given opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity and that childhood and youth are protected against exploitation and against moral and material abandonment.” 10 Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance, (No. 3) of 2013 11 Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, (Act No. 13) of 2013 physically or through electronic media) for personal interaction, despite a clear disinterest being displayed by the woman.
14. With this backdrop, one has to analyse the provisions of POCSO. Its Chapters II and III outline the different kinds of sexual offences from which children need protection. Part A of Chapter II addresses penetrative sexual assault on a child under Section 3 of the Act. Part B deals with circumstances in which such penetrative sexual assault assumes an ‘aggravated’ nature, under Section 5 of the Act. Part C defines sexual assault under Section 7 of the Act. Part D deals with aggravated sexual assault under Section 9 of the Act. Part E outlines sexual harassment under Section 11 of the Act. Chapter III deals with using a child for pornographic purposes.
15. The punishment for these offences is directly proportionate to the severity of the offence. Penetrative sexual assault (Section 3) is punishable by imprisonment of not less than ten years which may extend to imprisonment for life, in addition to payment of fine under Section 4; aggravated penetrative sexual assault (Section 5) carries a rigorous imprisonment term of twenty years which may extend to the natural life of the offender under Section 6. Sexual assault (Section 7) carries imprisonment of not less than three years, and can be extended up to five years with fine under Section 8; aggravated sexual assault (Section 9) is punished by imprisonment of not less than five years and up to seven years with fine under Section 10; and sexual harassment (Section 11) is punished by a term which may extend up to three years with fine under Section
12. Punishment for using a child for pornographic purposes involves an imprisonment term of not less than five years and fine for a first-time offence, and up to seven years for a repeated offence.
16. The punishment is also inversely proportionate to the autonomy exercisable by the child, with offences against children below the age of 12 years falling under the ‘aggravated’ nature, thus subject to greater terms of imprisonment and fine. Sexual assault is also of an ‘aggravated’ nature under Sections 5 and 9 of the Act when committed by a person in a position of authority or those exercising authority over children in their care. These sections provide a long list of examples, including police officer, member of armed for security forces, public servants, management personnel, or personnel of a jail, remand home, protection home, observation home, management or staff of a hospital, management or staff of an educational institution or religious institution; relative of the child through blood or adoption or marriage or guardianship or in foster care or having a domestic relationship with a parent of the child or who is living in the same or shared household with the child; in the ownership, or management, or staff, of any institution providing services to the child; position of trust or authority of a child, etc.
17. Section 7 of POCSO, which is the provision involved, therefore, has to be viewed having regard to the mischief rule, the background and history leading up to the enactment of the legislation (including the amendments to IPC in 2013) and to its objects. It reads as follows:
“7. Sexual assault-
Whoever, with sexual intent touches the vagina, penis, anus or breast of the child or makes the child touch the vagina, penis, anus or breast of such person or any other person, or does any other act with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration is said to commit sexual assault.”
18. A plain reading of Section 7 would show that the expression “assault” has a meaning entirely removed from the definition of “assault” in Section 351 of IPC. The latter involves an overt gesture, or preparation by one person, that causes another to apprehend that the former would use criminal force upon the intended victim. The emphasis of Section 7 is to address the felt social need of outlawing behaviour driven by sexual intent.
19. The structure of Section 7 can be conveniently parsed in the following manner:
“Whoever, i. with sexual intent touches the vagina, penis, anus or breast of the child or;
makes the child touch the vagina, penis, anus or breast of such person or any other person, ii. or does any other act with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration is said to commit sexual assault.”
20. A close analysis of Section 7 reveals that it is broadly divided into two limbs. Sexual assault, under the first limb is defined as the touching by a person
– with sexual intent – of four specific body parts (vagina, penis, anus or breast) of a child, or making a child touch any of those body parts of “such person” (i.e. a clear reference to the offender) or of “any other person” (i.e. other than the child, or the offender). In the second limb, sexual assault is the doing of “any other act with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration”.
21. The use of the expression “touch” appears to be common, to the first and second parts, of the first limb. “Touch” says the Cambridge Dictionary12 is “to put your hand or another part of your body lightly onto and off something or someone.”
22. Collins Dictionary13, likewise, states that “Your sense of touch is your ability to tell what something is like when you feel it with your hands.”
23. “Contact” on the other hand, which is used in the second limb, has a wider connotation; it encompasses – but is not always limited to – ‘touch’. While it is not immediately apparent why the term ‘physical contact’ has been used in the second limb, its use in conjunction with “any other act” (controlled by the overarching expression “with sexual intent”), indicates that ‘physical 12 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/touch accessed at 16:55 hrs on 15.11.2021. 13 https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/touch accessed at 16:57 hours on 15.11.2021. contact’ means something which is of wider import than ‘touching’. Viewed so, physical contact without penetration, may not necessarily involve touch. The “other act” involving “physical contact” may involve: direct physical contact by the offender, with any other body part (not mentioned in the first limb) of the victim; other acts, such as use of an object by the offender, engaging physical contact with the victim; or in the given circumstances of the case, even no contact by the offender (the expression “any other act” is sufficiently wide to connote, for instance, the victim being coerced to touch oneself).
24. Parliamentary intent and emphasis, however, is that the offending behavior (whether the touch or other act involving physical contact), should be motivated with sexual intent. Parliament moved beyond the four sexual body parts, and covered acts of a general nature, which when done with sexual intent, are criminalized by the second limb of Section 7. The specific mention of the four body parts of the child in the first limb, and the use of the controlling expression “sexual intent” mean that every touch of those four body parts is prima facie suspect.
25. The circumstances in which touch or physical contact occurs would be determinative of whether it is motivated by ‘sexual intent’. There could be a good explanation for such physical contact which include the nature of the relationship between the child and the offender, the length of the contact, its purposefulness; also, if there was a legitimate non-sexual purpose for the contact. Also relevant is where it takes place and the conduct of the offender before and after such contact. In this regard, it would be useful to always keep in mind that “sexual intent” is not defined, but fact-dependent – as the explanation to Section 11 specifies.
26. The inference by the High Court that “touch” cannot necessarily involve contact with a child’s sexual body parts (in one of these cases, the breast) through clothes, is based on a disingenuous argument. Unsurprisingly, that argument had its roots in other jurisdictions. In Regina v H14 the UK Court of Appeal, whilst interpreting the words “touching includes (a) with any part of the body; (b) with anything else or (c) through anything, and in particular, includes touching amounts to penetration” per Section 79 (8) of the UK Sexual Offences Act, repelled an argument on that the individual accused of an act in relation to a victim, that involved grabbing “her track-bottoms by the area of the right pocket” was not “touching”. It was observed by the court, that “The opening words of section 79 (8) are “Touching includes touching” and in particular “through anything”. Subsection (8) is not a definition section. We have no doubt that it was not Parliament’s intention by the use of that language to make it impossible to regard as a sexual assault touching which took place by touching what the victim was wearing at that time.”
27. Likewise, in State of Iowa v Walter James Fippes15 as well as State of Iowa v Kris Kanon Pearson16 the court had to consider whether a “sex act” or “sexual activity” (criminalised by Section 709.1, 709.3 and 709.17) meant only sexual contact between two or more persons, i.e., through penetration, mouth and genitalia or by contact between genitalia of one person and that of another. In both the judgments, the argument that contact or touch through clothing did not amount to an offence, was decisively rejected. The test indicated (per Pearson) was that prohibited contact occurs when: (i) specified body parts or substitutes touch and (ii) intervening material would not prevent participants, viewed objectively, from perceiving that they had touched. Interestingly, in these decisions one comes across the argument that what is an offence is one that involves direct or “skin to skin” touch or contact.
28. These decisions only serve to highlight at once the human ingenuity in their making in like situations, as well as the limit of such creativity- given that it is repetitive. Therefore, as noted earlier, unsurprisingly, an argument that direct contact (opposed to an indirect contact which can be perceived by the victim) found favour with High Court. In my opinion, such an interpretation not 14 2005 (1) WLR 2005 15 442 NW 2d 611 (Iowa App. 1989).
16 514 NW 2d 452 (Iowa 1994).
merely limits the operation of the law, but tends to subvert its intention. It has the effect of “inventions and evasions” meant to continue the mischief, which Parliament wished to avoid.
29. The fallacy, therefore, in the High Court’s reasoning is that it assumes that indirect touch is not covered by Section 7- or in other words is no “touch” at all. That provision covers and is meant to cover both direct and indirect touch. In plain English, to touch is to engage in one of the most basic of human sensory perceptions. The receptors on the surface of the human body are acutely sensitive to the subtleties of a whole range of tactile experiences. The use of a spoon, for instance, to consume food – without touching it with the hand – in no way diminishes the sense of touch that is experienced by the lips and the mouth. Similarly, when a stick, or other object is pressed onto a person, even when clothed, their sense of touch is keen enough to feel it. Therefore, the reasoning in the High Court’s judgment quite insensitively trivializes – indeed legitimizes – an entire range of unacceptable behaviour which undermines a child’s dignity and autonomy, through unwanted intrusions. The High Court, therefore clearly erred in acting on such interpretation, and basing its conviction of and awarding sentence to the respondents; as it did they were guilty of sexual assault. In the case of Satish, the conviction is to be under Section 8. In the case of Libnus, the appropriate conviction is of aggravated sexual assault, under Section 10.
30. During the hearing, a few decisions of High Courts were cited. In Dulal Dhar v. State of Tripura17 the complained act was of grabbing the victim, forcibly kissing her and trying to undress her. The judgment noted that touching of the named parts was not the only set of acts that were criminalized, and remarked that “the legislature in its wisdom has used very wide language which states that ‘does any other act with sexual intent which involves physical contact’….pulling the girl’s uniform involves physical contact with sexual intent.” 17 2015 SCC Online Trip 188
31. Similarly, the Tripura High Court decision in Tushar Singha v. State of Tripura18 and judgments of Delhi High Court in Jitender v. State19 and Rakesh v. State (GNCTD)20 consistently held that touching the breast of a child victim constituted sexual assault under Section 7, punishable under Section 8. In all these judgments, the courts uniformly highlighted the ‘sexual intent’ of the offender. I am of the opinion that those judgments (of the Tripura and Delhi High Court) have correctly interpreted the law, having regard to the overall Parliamentary intent, which led to the enactment of POCSO.
32. Another reason why the High Court’s reasoning in the impugned judgment is unacceptable is that the term ‘contact’ is comprehended in the expression ‘force’ under Section 349 of IPC in such manner, that the causing to any substance motion, change of motion, etc. which “brings that substance into contact with any part of that other’s body, or with anything which that other is wearing or carrying, or with anything so situated that such contact affects that other’s sense of feeling”.21 Section 2(2) of POCSO enacts that “The words and expressions used herein and not defined but defined in the Indian Penal Code (45 of 1860), the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1974 (2 of 1974), [the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 (2 of 2016)] and the Information Technology Act, 2000 (21 of 2000) shall have the meanings respectively assigned to them in the said Codes or the Acts”. The idea of ‘contact’ by a person with another through their clothing would hence, imply a physical contact. This is because of a combined operation of Section 2(2) of 18 Crl. (A) J/2/2020, decided on 04.05.21 19 Crl. (A) 564/2019 decided on 19.03.20 20 2018 SCCOnline Del 1179 21 349. Force.—A person is said to use force to another if he causes motion, change of motion, or cessation of motion to that other, or if he causes to any substance such motion, or change of mo tion, or cessation of motion as brings that substance into contact with any part of that other’s body, or with anything which that other is wearing or carrying, or with anything so situated that such contact affects that other’s sense of feeling: Provided that the person causing the motion, or change of motion, or cessation of motion, causes that motion, change of motion, or cessation of motion in one of the three ways hereinafter described.
First — By his own bodily power.
Secondly —By disposing any substance in such a manner that the motion or change or cessation of motion takes place without any further act on his part, or on the part of any other person.
Thirdly — By inducing any animal to move, to change its motion, or to cease to move. POCSO and Section 349 of IPC. Crucially, neither Section 7 nor any other provision of POCSO even remotely suggests that ‘direct’ physical contact unimpeded by clothing is essential for an offence to be committed.
33. In the end, I cannot resist quoting Benjamin Cardozo that “the great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.” It is, therefore, no part of any judge’s duty to strain the plain words of a statute, beyond recognition and to the point of its destruction, thereby denying the cry of the times that children desperately need the assurance of a law designed to protect their autonomy and dignity, as POCSO does.
34. I concur with the reasons and conclusions recorded by Justice Bela Trivedi, and with the additional observations indicated above, agree that the appeals of the Attorney General and the National Commission for Women, should be allowed; the appeals of the accused should, likewise, be dismissed in the two appeals filed against the judgment of the Bombay High Court, Nagpur Bench. Accordingly, I agree with the modification of conviction and the sentences imposed on the accused, Satish and Libnus. The appeals are disposed of in the above terms.
35. At the end, I would record my gratitude and appreciation for the invaluable assistance provided by Mr. K.K. Venugopal, learned Attorney General for India, Mr. Siddharth Luthra, learned Senior Advocate appearing on behalf of the accused through Supreme Court Legal Services Committee, and the amicus curiae appointed by the Court Mr. Siddhartha Dave, learned Senior Advocate as also all other learned counsel who have assisted the Court in these proceedings.
[S. RAVINDRA BHAT]
NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 18, 2021.
What is distinction between Acquiescence and Laches?
Whether Appellate court can stay operation of Judgment while granting stay as per O 41 R 5 of CPC?
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8minuteenergy lands PPA for 90-MW solar farm
The agreement between the company, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and the Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA) builds on two previous projects involving the three partners.
February 3, 2017 Frank Andorka
As the Jackson 5 once sang, sometimes it really is as easy as ABC, 123.
So deep is the successful, long-standing relationship between 8minuteenergy, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and the Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA) that signing their third PPA – this time for the 115-MW Springbok 3 Solar Farm – was a simple decision for all involved.
Springbrook 3 follows its predecessors – the 137-MW Springbok 1 and 191-MW Springbok 2 – will generate enough energy to power 152,000 Los Angeles households. Equally important are the construction jobs the projects will create.
The first two Springbok projects created more than 1,400 jobs (direct and indirect) during construction, and the Springbok 3 project is expected to generate an additional 550 construction jobs.
“As with the Springbok 1 and 2 projects before it, developing the new Springbok 3 solar farm is another positive step toward creating a clean energy future for Los Angeles and meeting our renewable energy targets of 33% by 2020,” said Michael Webster, LADWP’s executive director of power system engineering and technical services.
“We are proud to be a dedicated provider of reliable, cost-effective solar energy to the people of Los Angeles,” said Martin Hermann, 8minutenergy’s Chief Executive Officer, “We are fully committed to our project’s successes. The addition of Springbok 3 is further proof of our reliable business model and partnership approach.”
Frank Andorka
Frank Andorka has been writing professionally for nearly 29 years and spent nearly 20 years in trade publications. He was the founding editor of Solar Power World and has covered all aspects of the solar industry from policy to panels and everything in between.
More articles from Frank Andorka
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Private Equity Compensation 2022
Dec 19, 2021 | private equity compensation
2022 Private Equity Compensation Report Shows Continued Upward Trends in Compensation
ANN ARBOR, MI – The 2022 Private Equity and Venture Capital Compensation Report shows that private equity and venture capital compensation is up again this year, marking the eighth straight year of compensation gains.
The percentage of respondents earning $150,000 and below has continued to decline and those earning from $151,000 to $1 million increased to 80 percent of respondents. This is the highest percentage of private equity and venture capital professionals reporting earnings more than $150,000 in annual compensation in the history of this report.
“Overall, compensation is up, yet 57 percent of those surveyed are dissatisfied with their pay,” said David Kochanek, Publisher of PrivateEquityCompensation.com. “We’ve seen this before. When the market is strong, pay satisfaction is weak. This is because investment professionals are not currently concerned about losing their job and they are reading about the top performers and huge pay packages.” Market conditions and employee expectations are the reasons cited by 62 percent of those dissatisfied.
Estimated fund performance in 2021 was up compared to 2020, and funds up 10 to 24 percent over last year represented the majority at 45 percent.
The research shows that bonus pay is typically calculated based on firm performance, fund performance, individual performance and a combination of factors. The largest bonus payouts are achieved in the largest firms based on individual performance. In fact, employees at the largest firms can expect to earn more than triple the bonus pay of those at smaller firms.
In addition to compensation data, the 2022 Private Equity and Venture Capital Compensation Report provides additional insights such as positions in demand, percentage of firms hiring, where firms are cutting back and where career opportunities are increasing.
The 2022 Private Equity and Venture Capital Compensation Report is based on data collected directly from hundreds of private equity and venture capital partners, principals and employees.
The report, in its fifteenth year of publication, is widely regarded to be among the most comprehensive benchmarks for private equity and venture capital compensation. It provides independent and impartial data covering a broad range of salary, bonus, carried interest and other compensation-related information, sourced directly from professionals working within the industry.
Apr 26, 2021 | private equity compensation
Continued Upward Trend in Compensation Despite COVID-19 Pandemic
ANN ARBOR, MI, April 27, 2020 — The 2021 Private Equity and Venture Capital Compensation Report shows that private equity and venture capital compensation is up again this year, marking the seventh straight year of compensation gains. The year was unprecedented with the COVID-19 pandemic, and many respondents noted concerns about fundraising and job security in this environment.
The percentage of respondents earning less than $150,000 was down again and those earning from $150,000 to $1 million increased to 68 percent of respondents. This represents the highest percentage of private equity and venture capital professionals reporting earnings more than $150,000 in annual compensation in the history of this report.
“Overall, compensation is up, but more than half of those surveyed are dissatisfied with their pay,” said David Kochanek, Publisher of PrivateEquityCompensation.com. Market conditions and employee expectations are the reasons cited by 60 percent of those dissatisfied.
Bonus pay in the highest pay band has been declining as a percentage share of total compensation since 2014. In fact, bonus pay went down for most respondents compared to last year. However, employees at the largest firms can expect to earn more than double the bonus pay of those at smaller firms.
The research shows that private equity bonus pay is typically calculated based on a combination of several factors: firm performance, fund performance, and individual performance. The highest percentage of firms use a combination of factors but the largest bonus payouts are achieved in the largest firms based on firm performance.
For private equity job seekers, the 2021 Private Equity and Venture Capital Compensation Report provides additional detail such as positions in demand, percentage of firms hiring, where firms are cutting back and where career opportunities are increasing.
The report, in its fourteenth year of publication, is widely regarded to be among the most comprehensive benchmarks for private equity and venture capital compensation. It provides independent and impartial data covering a broad range of salary, bonus, carried interest and other compensation-related information, sourced directly from professionals working within the industry.
Private Equity and Venture Capital Compensation Gains Continue
In this, our twelfth annual Private Equity & Venture Capital Compensation Report for 2019, we look to that past to better confront the challenges of the future. The goal of this report is to identify industry compensation trends and provide insights into their effect on compensation practices, recruitment and retention.
This year marks the fifth straight year of compensation gains in the private equity and venture capital industry, with 64 percent of this year’s respondents expecting total compensation levels to increase over last year, while only 5 percent expect to earn less.
We have noted several trends in this year’s compensation report, one of which is increasing base salaries and declining bonuses as a percentage of overall compensation for private equity and venture capital professionals in the highest pay band.
This year’s report confirms the continuation of another unsettling trend—the diminishing correlation between bonus pay and firm performance. For example, we see that respondents employed in firms where fund performance is down by 1 to 9 percent still forecast an average bonus of $114,000. Seeds of this trend surfaced in 2014, sprouted in 2015, grew in 2016 and matured in 2018.
In-house training continues to receive unfavorable reviews, despite last year’s movement in a positive direction. Why the industry ignores the potential benefits of robust in-house training programs remains a mystery, particularly in the competitive job market that exists today. Quality internal training programs have the potential to attract and retain talent, but statistics show this potential is broadly ignored, as a mere 17 percent of this year’s respondents rate their in-house training as good to excellent.
Higher MBA base salary, bonus compensation, and vacation time as compared to their non-MBA peers has been a regular feature of this report since its inception. This year, we can once again, confirm the monetary value of an advanced degree.
Job seekers will appreciate the section of this report devoted to identifying which positions are in demand, what percentage of firms are hiring, and what percentage are cutting back. For example, 54 percent of respondents’ firms are hiring investment personnel, while only 1 percent are cutting back in information technology hires.
The 2019 Private Equity and Venture Capital Compensation Report serves as myth-buster and forecaster, debunking misconceptions, and providing readers insightful, industry-specific information regarding the complex subject of compensation.
Other highlights from this year’s report include:
Respondents working in firms with less than $100 million in assets under management (AUM) earn almost 13 percent less than peers in firms with $1 billion or more;
73 percent of respondents do not receive a bonus guarantee;
The least-favored investment strategy is PIPE;
Bonus pay totals 44 percent of all compensation paid to industry professionals; and
Fifty-two percent of respondents work in firms with expected fund gains of 10 to 24 percent.
About The Private Equity Compensation Report
The report, in its eleventh year of publication, is widely regarded to be among the most comprehensive benchmarks for private equity and venture capital compensation. It provides independent and impartial data covering a broad range of salary, bonus, carried interest and other compensation related information, sourced directly from professionals working within the industry.
Private Equity Compensation Report 2018
Dec 17, 2017 | Press
Continued Demand for Investment Talent is Driving New Levels of Compensation
The 2018 Private Equity Compensation Report, shows that increased fund raising and billions in funds looking for investments has resulted again this year in increased private equity and venture capital compensation.
Sixty-five percent of professionals reported an increase in cash earnings this year. The average reported cash compensation for private equity and venture capital professionals is $315,000 USD, another increase from the previous year. Private equity and venture capital professionals working in the largest firms continue to out-earn their peers in smaller firms.
North American dry powder levels are now measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The report reveals increased demand for investment talent again this year. “We predicted this trend several years ago based on private equity professionals reporting increases in both base and bonus, despite their funds not producing outstanding returns,” said David Kochanek, Publisher of PrivateEquityCompensation.com
The correlation between bonus pay and firm performance continues to diminish. In 2017, it became apparent that the absence of close correlation is the new normal. In this 2018 report, we see that respondents employed in firms whose performance is down by 1 to 9 percent still forecast an average bonus of $161,000.
For private equity job seekers, the Private Equity Compensation Report for 2018 reveals which positions are in demand, what percentage of firms are hiring, and where firms are cutting back – and the career opportunities are increasing across the board. For example, 25 percent of respondents’ firms are hiring in the back office for accounting personnel and 27 percent said they are hiring in operations and portfolio management.
As seen in prior years, when the demand for talent is high, the level of satisfaction with overall compensation is low. Again this year, more than half of respondents described their compensation as unsatisfactory, including some principals, managing directors and senior analysts.
Firms would be wise to tune into their team’s thoughts on compensation levels right now. “Often times, the first indication of a problem is when the employee turns in their 2-week notice and is headed out to join another firm,” Kochanek warns.
Jan 20, 2016 | Press
The Private Equity Compensation Report for 2016 Uncovers Disconnect Between Fund Performance and Cash Bonuses
Cash increases slow while the demand for private equity talent increases.
SAN DIEGO, CA, January 20, 2016 — The 2016 Private Equity & Venture Capital Compensation Report, released today, shows that slower industry activity is reflecting in private equity and venture capital pay.
Although 65 percent of professionals reported an increase in expected salaries and bonuses, the growth in cash compensation has slowed. This year’s average compensation for private equity and venture capital professionals was $272,000 USD, a slight decrease from last year.
This marks the second consecutive year of diminished correlation between bonus pay and firm performance. Respondents working in firms that were down 10 percent or more, report anticipated bonuses averaging $43,000 USD. This disconnect continued to surface in firms down 1 to 9 percent, with these survey participants expecting bonuses to average $94,000. In contrast, respondents working in firms that realized gains between 1 to 9 percent were expecting an average $91,000 in bonus pay, $3,000 less than their counterparts in firms that were down by the same range.
The private equity job market, however, continues to shine. “Funds are looking to put their capital to work, that means deal sourcing talent is at a premium,” said David Kochanek, Publisher of PrivateEquityCompensation.com. This year’s report reveals that 45 percent of firms are looking to hire additional investment professionals.
Says Kochanek, “With all the dry powder firms are sitting on, we were not surprised to see increased demand for investment talent again this year. Further, based on the expensive multiples seen in recent strategic exits, we won’t be surprised to see demand increase over the next 12 months for professionals with deep due diligence experience.”
As seen in prior years, when the demand for talent is high, the level of satisfaction with overall compensation is low. Again this year, more than half of respondents described their compensation as unsatisfactory.
The 2016 Private Equity and Venture Capital Compensation Report is based on data collected from hundreds of private equity and venture capital partners, principals and employees through direct surveys. The report, in its ninth year of publication, is widely regarded to be among the most comprehensive benchmarks for private equity and venture capital compensation. It opens the door to trusted, independent and impartial data covering a broad range of salary, bonus, carried interest and other compensation related information, sourced from respondents working within the industry.
Some of the participating firms over the years include: Alpinvest Partners, American Capital, Battery Ventures, BlackRock, Carlyle, Century Capital Management, Cerberus, Comcast Ventures, DuPont Capital Management, EdgeStone Capital Partners, GE, Guggenheim Partners, Highland Capital Partners, Hilco Consumer Capital, Intel Capital, Mission Ventures, Mohr Davidow, North Atlantic Capital, RBC Capital Partners, RBS, Safeguard Scientifics, SV Life Sciences, Siemens Venture Capital, TPG, Venrock, and Warburg Pincus.
MBA Remains Positive for Private Equity
Mar 12, 2015 | MBA
One question that many private equity and venture capital professionals are faced with is whether or not to pursue further graduate level education. From a purely financial standpoint, individuals must weigh the costs of MBA programs and the future compensation advantages they may generate. But the decision is not purely financial. Professionals also must way the value of a new network for finding exciting opportunities, and the personal development gained along the way.
From the financial angle, our 2015 Private Equity and Venture Capital Compensation Report did find an advantage for MBA holders when it came to total compensation. In 2013, respondents with an MBA indicated they earned 19 percent more than their non-MBA peers. However, in the most recent survey, we saw this gap narrow to only 12 percent.
An interesting trend that we’ve noted in the past is that the gap in compensation is driven more by base compensation than it is by bonuses. One possible driver of this differential in base compensation may be that those with MBAs have greater access to the best positions through their well-developed networks. In addition, the credential may open up more senior level positions where base compensation is stronger, depending on the firm and individual’s experience. However this year, we saw that gap close among our survey respondents. In a stronger job market, the MBA may hold less of an advantage than what seemed to exist in leaner times where every possible edge was necessary to land top roles.
On the other hand, however, bonuses have been are largely comparable between those with and without an MBA for some time. Bonuses are driven largely by firm and individual performance. While an MBA may have some additional developed skills through their education, this may not be enough to dramatically tip the scales when it comes to bonuses. MBAs did earn higher bonuses than their non-MBA peers in 2014, both in nominal dollars and as a percentage of total compensation. Relative to total pay, however, the advantage was marginal.
Of course, pursuing an MBA to further one’s career in Private Equity or Venture Capital comes at a high cost. Top MBA programs can run about one-hundred thousand dollars, not including foregone earnings, so future graduates must be confident in their ability to land a role that can pay for this investment upon graduation. In many cases, this isn’t the reality, leaving the benefits of the MBA more intangible to some graduates.
Firm Size not a Driver of Private Equity Compensation
Mar 5, 2015 | Firms
Many professionals in the private equity and venture capital industry wonder whether a potential move to a larger or smaller firm may result in higher compensation. According to the latest results from our 2015 Private Equity and Venture Capital Compensation Report, the overall difference in compensation in 2014 between firm sizes is marginal at best. However, this has not always been the case, and different compensation levels between firm sizes have been noted in previous reports.
Looking at our 2014 data, those working at firms with between 50 to 99 employees tended to earn the highest total compensation. However, these same professionals did not earn the highest salaries, which were reserved for those at firms with 10 to 24 employees. As firm size increased, we saw notable bonus compensation increases offset somewhat by a decline in base compensation. The one exception to this trend was compensation at the largest firms, with over 100 employees. In this example, we found that total compensation was lower than mid-size peers in both bonuses and base pay.
In the past, we noted a stronger U-shape to the profile of total compensation by firm size. Those working at the smallest and largest firms tended to earn the highest compensation, while those at mid-size firms earned the least. This was partially explained by the reality that those at the smallest firms often have to wear many hats and carry a variety of responsibilities, while those at the largest firms benefited from the most stable client revenue streams, allowing their firms to offer higher total compensation.
The robust job market, which we have seen continue to strengthen in our survey results, is a key contributing factor to the flattening of the compensation profile by firm size. When high performing employees have the ability to jump ship to other firms, it forces all players to be more competitive in their total compensation offerings in order to retain their top talent.
Another factor in increasing pay equity across different firm sizes may be the additional transparency when it comes to compensation in the industry. Reports such as ours, and other data sources, allow professionals to better negotiate their pay within industry norms. On the flip side, companies are also better informed in offering pay packages within the ranges.
As long as we continue to experience a robust market, this trend is likely to continue in 2015. With both professionals and firms having better access to compensation data, and job opportunities aplenty, parity among firm sizes in compensation may be a trend that is here to stay, at least for the medium term.
Longer Hours Ahead for Private Equity Professionals
Feb 26, 2015 | Culture
Those in any segment of the financial industry are no stranger to long hours in the office. However, over the past several years, our Private Equity and Venture Capital Compensation Report found that the total hours worked per week by professionals in this segment of the industry had declined, and in some cases, substantially. In 2014, however, we noted a considerable reversal of this trend, raising questions about what changed and why.
When it came down to the details, we found that 51 percent of respondents to our survey worked at least 70 hours to week. This is a major jump in the number of respondents from this cohort, up from only 20 percent of respondents in the prior year’s survey. However, this data needs to be interpreted carefully, as a slight increase in the number of hours may bump a large percentage of people into another range band in our results. That said, there is a clear increase across the board in the number of hours professionals are spending in the office.
While on the surface some may consider this evidence of a slowing job market, where employees need to work harder to prove their worth, our other data does not support this. Hiring intentions are jump, and fund performance is strong. External data providers, such as Preqin, as indicating investor interest in private equity is improving, not weakening. This leads us to believe that this increase in hours worked may be reflective of positive trends in the industry, with lots of work to do and more deals being closed. The increasing demands on staff will be a positive factor in salary negotiations in coming years, and a tighter labor market with more firms hiring will only contribute to both increased hours in the office and increased salaries.
It’s important to note that those that work the highest hours do not necessarily make the most money per hour worked. In line with previous year’s results, our survey found those working in excess of 90 hours per week made on average $250 per hour, while those at 70 hours per week earned the most, $306 per hour. One important consideration is that hours worked may also reflect one’s position in the organization. Trying to prove oneself as an analyst may require more hours than the work of a Managing Director, even though that too is a demanding role when it comes to office time. These positional differences may account for a portion of the variance we see when it comes to pay per hour worked.
Strong Performance Drives Pay Gains in Private Equity
Feb 19, 2015 | Performance
After a year of strong performance in the sector, private equity and venture capital professionals posted some remarkable pay gains in 2014. While the S&P 500 posted a fairly strong total return of 14 percent in 2014, the majority of our respondents indicated their funds were likely to beat these equity benchmarks for the year.
Investors looking for diversification along with higher returns compared to other possible alternative asset classes are increasingly looking to private equity as a solution. According to Preqin, 57 percent of private equity firms said they saw increased investor appetite over the last year, while only 12 percent of firms said they saw reduced interest. In an industry where management fees, based on assets under management, drive the bottom line for firms, the increased amount of capital available is one factor in driving up compensation in the industry. Sustained interest in the segment will continue to allow for improved compensation among top performing firms.
Behind all of this investor interest and new money, of course, is performance. Our survey respondents at private equity and venture capital funds indicated their funds were expected to post stronger returns in 2014 than they did the prior year. At the upper end of the spectrum, 22 percent of respondents indicated their 2014 performance would exceed 25 percent, up 6 percentage points from the prior year. This strong performance is one factor driving compensation higher this year. And in light of increasing volatility in equity markets, the relative stability of private equity returns will be attractive to investors in the coming year.
There is also a correlation between fund performance and bonuses, which comprise a large portion of the total compensation for all finance industry professionals. Our survey results indicated that the strongest performing funds also awarded the largest bonuses to their professionals, as expected. With the highest paid professionals earning sometimes the majority of their compensation through bonuses, fund performance can clearly have a large influence on total compensation payouts.
The coming year looks to be promising for private equity and venture capital firms, and their employees, if performance can be maintained at or near these levels. Increasing equity market volatility will encourage more investors to consider the more stable and long term focused returns consistent with private equity strategies. Firms successful in capturing this investor interest by building their assets under management will likely be the leaders in increasing compensation available to their employees, in order to attract and retain top talent.
Long Hours Common But No Ticket to Success
May 20, 2014 | Culture
The finance industry has long been known for working employees, especially junior ones, to the extreme, often demanding upwards of 70 or 80 hours a week. However, recent controversies, including the death of a Bank of America intern after working three consecutive days with no sleep, along with a shift in the broader professional world to more work life balance are beginning to change the industry.
In the 2014 Private Equity and Venture Capital Compensation Report, there was a significant decline in the correlation between the number of hours spent in the office, and the total compensation of the employee. While the lowest pay was found among those putting in less than 40 hours per week, perhaps reflecting part-time employees, the highest pay was not found among those working the most hours, over 90 per week. In fact, there was a considerable drop off in compensation for employees working beyond 70 hours a week.
With that considered, working in private equity is almost certainly going to require longer hours than a typical nine to five job. The majority of private equity and venture capital employees worked over 60 hours per week, with a full 54 percent responding they’re putting in such hours. On top of that, an additional 37 percent of respondents indicated they are working between 50 and 59 hours per week. So with 97 percent of employees putting in more than 10 hours of “overtime” per week, those considering a move to the industry should not view recent developments to more balance as a significant decrease in workload.
When it came to vacation time, the report found very little change compared to last year, with the majority of firms offering between 3 and 4 weeks of vacation. A select few offered a generous 5 to 6 weeks, while some firms offered only 2 weeks or even no paid vacation. While 3.4 weeks may have been the average vacation entitlement, employees only took 2.7 weeks in actual leave.
While the industry may be shifting towards more balance, old attitudes remain and work expectations may differ greatly by firm. Some of the old guard in the industry still takes a view that more hours demonstrate greater commitment to the firm. Randall Dillard, managing director and chief investment officer at Liongate Capital Management, recently told a room full of future financial professionals at the 2014 London School of Economics Alternative Investments Conference that 60 hours a week is “not even in the game.”
So even if some of the larger institutions are beginning to take notice of the potential upside of adding more balance, it may be a long time before such views are held industry wide.
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Textron Aviation Expands Service Options in Stuttgart
- October 20, 2021, 9:34 AM
Textron Aviation is doubling its hangar space at Stuttgart Airport as part of a maintenance service expansion in the German city. (Photo: Textron Aviation)
Textron Aviation is expanding its line maintenance station in Stuttgart, Germany, to become a satellite service center. The effort includes doubling both its hangar space and the team of engineers there, as well as adding service capabilities for the Beechcraft King Air turboprops. With the expansion, the Wichita-based airframer said it will be able to undertake a scope of work similar to that provided at its traditional service centers but in a smaller capacity.
Also, the expansion enables Textron Aviation’s facility at Stuttgart Airport to offer customers shorter downtimes and increased flexibility. In Europe, the company supports a fleet of more than 1,800 business jets and turboprops.
“We have strategically enhanced our footprint and capabilities in Europe due to the growing demand for services to ensure access to factory-direct service and support to customers,” said Phil Jones, Textron Aviation's v-p of European service centers. “This new service center model allows us to provide additional factory-direct support and deliver expert care to our aircraft owners and operators, regardless of where they are in the world.”
https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2021-10-20/textron-aviation-expands-service-options-stuttgart
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Self-censorship narrated: Journalism in Central and Eastern Europe
Elisabeth Schimpfössl*, Ilya Yablokov, Taras Fedirko, Olga Zeveleva, Peter Bajomi-Lazar
Sociology and Policy
School of Social Sciences and Humanities
Bringing together empirical studies of former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, this Special Issue explores the relationship between censorship and self-censorship. All the cases under consideration share a history of state-led censorship. Importantly, however, the authors argue that journalism in the former Eastern bloc has developed features similar to those observed in many countries which have never experienced state socialism. This introduction presents the theoretical framework and the historical backgound that provide the backdrop for this Special Issue’s contributions, all of which take a journalist-focused angle.
European Journal of Communication
Published - 1 Feb 2020
© Sage 2020. The final publication is available via Sage at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267323119897801
Accepted author manuscript, 288 KB
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/297715
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0267323119897801
Dive into the research topics of 'Self-censorship narrated: Journalism in Central and Eastern Europe'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
Censorship Arts & Humanities 100%
Self-censorship Arts & Humanities 94%
Journalism Arts & Humanities 89%
censorship Social Sciences 78%
Central Europe Social Sciences 71%
journalism Social Sciences 65%
Eastern Europe Social Sciences 64%
Lead Engineering & Materials Science 62%
Schimpfössl, E., Yablokov, I., Fedirko, T., Zeveleva, O., & Bajomi-Lazar, P. (2020). Self-censorship narrated: Journalism in Central and Eastern Europe. European Journal of Communication , 35(1), 3-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323119897801
Schimpfössl, Elisabeth ; Yablokov, Ilya ; Fedirko, Taras ; Zeveleva, Olga ; Bajomi-Lazar, Peter . / Self-censorship narrated : Journalism in Central and Eastern Europe. In: European Journal of Communication . 2020 ; Vol. 35, No. 1. pp. 3-11.
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abstract = "Bringing together empirical studies of former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, this Special Issue explores the relationship between censorship and self-censorship. All the cases under consideration share a history of state-led censorship. Importantly, however, the authors argue that journalism in the former Eastern bloc has developed features similar to those observed in many countries which have never experienced state socialism. This introduction presents the theoretical framework and the historical backgound that provide the backdrop for this Special Issue{\textquoteright}s contributions, all of which take a journalist-focused angle.",
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Schimpfössl, E, Yablokov, I, Fedirko, T, Zeveleva, O & Bajomi-Lazar, P 2020, 'Self-censorship narrated: Journalism in Central and Eastern Europe', European Journal of Communication , vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 3-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323119897801
Self-censorship narrated : Journalism in Central and Eastern Europe. / Schimpfössl, Elisabeth ; Yablokov, Ilya; Fedirko, Taras; Zeveleva, Olga; Bajomi-Lazar, Peter .
In: European Journal of Communication , Vol. 35, No. 1, 01.02.2020, p. 3-11.
T1 - Self-censorship narrated
T2 - Journalism in Central and Eastern Europe
AU - Schimpfössl, Elisabeth
AU - Yablokov, Ilya
AU - Fedirko, Taras
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AU - Bajomi-Lazar, Peter
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N2 - Bringing together empirical studies of former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, this Special Issue explores the relationship between censorship and self-censorship. All the cases under consideration share a history of state-led censorship. Importantly, however, the authors argue that journalism in the former Eastern bloc has developed features similar to those observed in many countries which have never experienced state socialism. This introduction presents the theoretical framework and the historical backgound that provide the backdrop for this Special Issue’s contributions, all of which take a journalist-focused angle.
AB - Bringing together empirical studies of former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, this Special Issue explores the relationship between censorship and self-censorship. All the cases under consideration share a history of state-led censorship. Importantly, however, the authors argue that journalism in the former Eastern bloc has developed features similar to those observed in many countries which have never experienced state socialism. This introduction presents the theoretical framework and the historical backgound that provide the backdrop for this Special Issue’s contributions, all of which take a journalist-focused angle.
KW - Censorship
KW - Crimea
KW - Croatia
KW - Hungary
KW - Latvia
KW - Poland
KW - Serbia
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Schimpfössl E, Yablokov I, Fedirko T, Zeveleva O, Bajomi-Lazar P. Self-censorship narrated: Journalism in Central and Eastern Europe. European Journal of Communication . 2020 Feb 1;35(1):3-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323119897801
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The paradox of the alien citizen? access, control and entitlements of Belgian refugees in Birmingham during the First World War
Jolien De Vuyst, Kevin Myers, Angelo van Gorp
Britain’s liberal policy towards refugees has been their proud boast. However, from the 1880s to the 1920s this developed into a restrictive and selective migration policy. During the First World War 250,000 Belgian refugees arrived in Britain. Inquiring the archives of the War Refugees Committee Birmingham and District on traces of these developments, a tension linked to the discussion on the allocation of social benefits could be established. This tension, that is referred to as the paradox of the ‘alien citizen’, is explored through the analysis of the access to Britain, the control on British territory, and the entitlements of Belgian refugees to social benefits. It is argued that this seemingly paradox was the outcome of process of state formation. It reveals how the presence of refugees challenged the British state with the question as to what extent one was responsible to provide for non-citizens, which is still a topical issue.
Journal of Refugee Studies
https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fey071
10.1093/jrs/fey071Licence: None: All rights reserved
De_Vuyst_et_al_The_paradox_of_the_alien_citizen_Journal_of_Refugee_Studies_2019
his is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Journal of Refugee Studies following peer review. The version of record Jolien De Vuyst, Kevin Myers, Angelo Van Gorp; The Paradox of the Alien Citizen? Access, Control and Entitlements of Belgian Refugees in Birmingham during the First World War, Journal of Refugee Studies, , fey071, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fey071 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fey071
Accepted author manuscript, 189 KBLicence: None: All rights reserved
Dive into the research topics of 'The paradox of the alien citizen? access, control and entitlements of Belgian refugees in Birmingham during the First World War'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
refugee Earth & Environmental Sciences 100%
First World War Social Sciences 86%
Belgian Social Sciences 79%
world Earth & Environmental Sciences 41%
social benefits Social Sciences 31%
policy Earth & Environmental Sciences 17%
migration policy Social Sciences 16%
De Vuyst, J., Myers, K., & van Gorp, A. (2019). The paradox of the alien citizen? access, control and entitlements of Belgian refugees in Birmingham during the First World War. Journal of Refugee Studies. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fey071
De Vuyst, Jolien ; Myers, Kevin ; van Gorp, Angelo . / The paradox of the alien citizen? access, control and entitlements of Belgian refugees in Birmingham during the First World War. In: Journal of Refugee Studies. 2019.
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title = "The paradox of the alien citizen?: access, control and entitlements of Belgian refugees in Birmingham during the First World War",
abstract = "Britain{\textquoteright}s liberal policy towards refugees has been their proud boast. However, from the 1880s to the 1920s this developed into a restrictive and selective migration policy. During the First World War 250,000 Belgian refugees arrived in Britain. Inquiring the archives of the War Refugees Committee Birmingham and District on traces of these developments, a tension linked to the discussion on the allocation of social benefits could be established. This tension, that is referred to as the paradox of the {\textquoteleft}alien citizen{\textquoteright}, is explored through the analysis of the access to Britain, the control on British territory, and the entitlements of Belgian refugees to social benefits. It is argued that this seemingly paradox was the outcome of process of state formation. It reveals how the presence of refugees challenged the British state with the question as to what extent one was responsible to provide for non-citizens, which is still a topical issue.",
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De Vuyst, J, Myers, K & van Gorp, A 2019, 'The paradox of the alien citizen? access, control and entitlements of Belgian refugees in Birmingham during the First World War', Journal of Refugee Studies. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fey071
The paradox of the alien citizen? access, control and entitlements of Belgian refugees in Birmingham during the First World War. / De Vuyst, Jolien ; Myers, Kevin; van Gorp, Angelo .
In: Journal of Refugee Studies, 08.01.2019.
T1 - The paradox of the alien citizen?
T2 - access, control and entitlements of Belgian refugees in Birmingham during the First World War
AU - De Vuyst, Jolien
AU - Myers, Kevin
AU - van Gorp, Angelo
N2 - Britain’s liberal policy towards refugees has been their proud boast. However, from the 1880s to the 1920s this developed into a restrictive and selective migration policy. During the First World War 250,000 Belgian refugees arrived in Britain. Inquiring the archives of the War Refugees Committee Birmingham and District on traces of these developments, a tension linked to the discussion on the allocation of social benefits could be established. This tension, that is referred to as the paradox of the ‘alien citizen’, is explored through the analysis of the access to Britain, the control on British territory, and the entitlements of Belgian refugees to social benefits. It is argued that this seemingly paradox was the outcome of process of state formation. It reveals how the presence of refugees challenged the British state with the question as to what extent one was responsible to provide for non-citizens, which is still a topical issue.
AB - Britain’s liberal policy towards refugees has been their proud boast. However, from the 1880s to the 1920s this developed into a restrictive and selective migration policy. During the First World War 250,000 Belgian refugees arrived in Britain. Inquiring the archives of the War Refugees Committee Birmingham and District on traces of these developments, a tension linked to the discussion on the allocation of social benefits could be established. This tension, that is referred to as the paradox of the ‘alien citizen’, is explored through the analysis of the access to Britain, the control on British territory, and the entitlements of Belgian refugees to social benefits. It is argued that this seemingly paradox was the outcome of process of state formation. It reveals how the presence of refugees challenged the British state with the question as to what extent one was responsible to provide for non-citizens, which is still a topical issue.
U2 - 10.1093/jrs/fey071
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De Vuyst J, Myers K, van Gorp A. The paradox of the alien citizen? access, control and entitlements of Belgian refugees in Birmingham during the First World War. Journal of Refugee Studies. 2019 Jan 8. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fey071
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What I Wish Generation Z knew about 9/11
September 10, 2018 September 11, 2019 Gowdy Cannon 4 Comments 9/11, George W. Bush, September 11, Unity
If my calculations are correct, the high school senior class this academic year will be the first ever to feature kids who were not born when 9/11 happened. Equally as stunning, I think it is reasonable to assume there will be college graduates this year who have no significant memories of that day. This generation, the one immediately after the Millennials and often referred to as Generation Z, will be the first to not truly remember the day America was attacked on our homeland in a way we hadn’t been before or since.
Like just about anyone who was old enough to have memories, mine from that day are sharp. I was a graduating senior at Welch College. I worked every morning at the YMCA from 7 AM to 8 AM and that day I realized I was going to be late for my first class so I went and got a haircut instead. They had TVs in the barbershop. Like millions of others, I was very confused as to why one of the towers in New York was on fire. Like millions of others, I saw the second plane hit live as it happened.
So much has changed since then. Netflix, Twitter, and Facebook either weren’t invented or weren’t public yet. We were six years from smartphones being a thing. And even though Amazon had been born, it was a shadow of what it is today.
Some things changed significantly because of that day, like air travel. Homeland Security was created. And some things we experienced that day and the time afterwards in the realms of politics and culture are things we will likely never experience again.
Here are just a few that I hope the generation coming up with no memories will take the time to learn and appreciate. Because we all need history; not just facts on a page, but stories from those who saw it firsthand.
First, I wish this generation knew what it was like for the country to be unified.
I wouldn’t want anyone to ever have to go through the trauma of that day, where 3,000 died and thousands more had their lives drastically altered for the worse. But something that rose from the ashes was a countrywide unity that I do not think we will ever see again. By the end of his second term, George W. Bush was an extremely unpopular president. But after 9/11 his approval rating–for the country as a whole, not just Republicans–peaked at 92%1. Few things on a national scale have brought me patriotic chills like Bush walking out to the mound for Game 3 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium, seven weeks after the attacks, in a bulletproof vest, waving at the crowd, giving the thumbs up and then throwing a beautiful strike for the first pitch. Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” played on TV and radio and American flags flew everywhere. Policemen and firemen were the toast of the country, especially in NY.
I’m sure there were a few people who didn’t join in and those who were Muslim or are very sensitive to Muslims probably remember those days quite differently. Even as an evangelical Christian I do not want to overlook this. But simple data proves that the country was united greatly in the face of tragedy.
The last 15 years or so have seen so much political division I feel confident no president will ever reach that height ever again, meaning that we will never be that united again. My fear is that not even a non-polarizing president, unlike our last and current one, could unify us. Even if we do experience something like 9/11. God forbid we ever do.
I wish this generation knew how surreal that day was.
The adjective “Surreal” and the phrase “It felt like a movie except it was real life” have been overused the last 17 years describing the event. Yet it’s hard to say it uniquely without losing accuracy. That is exactly what it felt like.
I bet I spent 8 or 9 hours in front of a TV that day. I’m sure others spent more. My Bible College had a chapel service dedicated to praying for what was going on but who knew what to think or say?
Even after all the details emerged It was hard to know how to react. Even those who don’t like country music probably remember Alan Jackson singing “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?“—an emotive, contemplative and beautifully written song about that day. For my money, that was how most people I knew felt. It captured the mood of the country perfectly to me. You better believe I called my mother to tell her that I loved her. People were going to church and holding hands with strangers, people were giving blood and people were staying at home and clinging to their families. And more than anything, many were just stunned and shocked for many days after.
I wish this generation knew how people looked to Heaven in those days.
Much of the evidence is anecdotal and less is statistical, but even without that I think most people I knew sensed a increase in the general feeling of “I need to pray and go to church” after 9/11. One pastor, Ed Young, says his church attendance went up by several thousand the Sunday after 9/11. Tim Keller says his nearly doubled. Beyond that, it seemed people were praying all over the country, out of sheer desperation and helplessness. To be frank, because the US is quite pluralistic, it reminded me of Jonah 1 when the men on that boat were faced with tragedy and they all cried out to their gods.
I wish this generation knew how fleeting it all was.
One of the more immediate sobering memories I have post-9/11 is that there was a backlash against something New York policemen or firemen did at some point. I thought, “Their time to be honored is apparently over.” Church attendance leveled off very quickly and in some cases reduced. Bush became less and less popular. And 17 years later, there is confusion for people like me as to when patriotism becomes nationalism2–a question that seemed odd back then.
But there’s a life lesson in all of this. Much of life, even the good, is quite fleeting. As a Bible-teaching Christian I can’t help but think of Ecclesiastes and its message of how dark life can be when you try to find meaning and purpose in what is fleeting. I am proud to be an American but I also fully believe that all people of all cultures are fundamentally flawed morally. And I do not find meaning in how unified our country is or is not, or how many people come to my church or how my president is perceived. I find it in Jesus Christ and him crucified. And in what he calls me to do. Which is make a difference to my home, church, neighborhood and country in practical and daily action.
More than anything I wish Generation Z knew that 9-11 was a huge reminder of how desperately the world needs the grace of Jesus Christ. Because that is my most signifiant memory.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/President Bush Approval Rating 92% ↩
That word is loaded these days so understand I mean it as simply as I can: the feeling of superiority as an American to the point of demeaning other countries. ↩
Gowdy Cannon
I am currently the pastor of Bear Point FWB Church in Sesser, IL. I previously served for 17 years as the associate bilingual pastor at Northwest Community Church in Chicago. My wife, Kayla, and I have been married five years and have a 2-year old son, Liam Erasmus. I have been a student at Welch College in Nashville and at Moody Theological Seminary in Chicago. I love The USC (the real one in SC, not the other one in CA), Seinfeld, John 3:30, Chic-Fil-A, Dumb and Dumber, the book of Job, preaching and teaching, and arguing about sports.
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I’m Thankful My Two-Year Old Keeps Asking “Why?” - November 17, 2021
Nine Players And Coaches That Deserved A Ring - November 3, 2021
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4 thoughts on “What I Wish Generation Z knew about 9/11”
Steve Lytle
That is a great article, Gowdy. Oh, the memories it brings!
Marcus Brewer
Your first statement is correct. The annual Mindset List fudges a little bit (I guess they’re estimating what incoming college freshmen remember about it rather than when they were born); see Item #14 at http://themindsetlist.com/2018/08/beloit-college-mindset-list-class-2022/
Gowdy CannonPost author
Thanks, Marcus and thanks for that cool data. I was thinking that most people are 17 when they start their senior year of high school and 18 when they graduate (or turn 18 soon thereafter as I did) so that would make this the first graduating class to be predominantly post 9/11. And also that, while I looked for research about it and didn’t find much that was tangible, I know my first clear vivid memories are from around five years old. I have memories at 4 but they are like a dream and not as clear. So maybe many of those who are turning 22 this year would be similar and not recall much from that day. I don’t know for sure. I know people are different. Regardless, there are many people adult age now who are learning this as history and not remembering it.
This is really good.
I’m Thankful My Two-Year Old Keeps Asking “Why?”
I Love Taco Bell and I Don’t Care Who Knows! January 12, 2022
Check Out This Book in 2022: “Generation Z Unfiltered” January 5, 2022
Review: “And the Light Shines On” by soulbreather December 31, 2021
Happy 20th Anniversary to “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” December 29, 2021
The Five Most Horrendous Christmas Songs December 3, 2021
Check Out This Book in 2022: "Generation Z Unfiltered" Highly Recommended Reading for the New Year
History and Intergenerational Relationships Veteran missionary, Steve Lytle, writes about the importance of learning…
Music of the Heart What is your heart music?
1962, 1980s to the Present, and a Beautiful Psalm A few weeks ago a high school classmate posted something…
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Memories From West End (Part 2) More memories from the West End Avenue days of Welch…
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Why I Didn't Quit: My First Year Teaching in the City Why I go back.
My Legacy as a Father Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful.
It's Past Time to Pay College Athletes Show Them The Money (1,104 words)
“You Are That Man!” Accountability and Confrontation… Using wisdom when confronting sin.
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Don't Blink or You'll Miss It Watching your children grow, mature, and become adults is humbling,…
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Rambling Ever On Revisits "The Karate Kid" Rambling Ever On revisits some of our favorite things, starting…
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Memories (Part 1) Memories and the faithfulness of God. (1,145 words)
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"They Shall Not Grow Old" - A Review Telling the story of World War I to a visual…
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You Don't Know Who Ty Cobb Was? Steve Lytle writes about Ty Cobb, the truth, and pointing…
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The Habits of New Norcia
Now a popular tourist destination north of Perth, the Benedictine Aboriginal Mission at New Norcia in Western Australia, holds harsh memories for former Aboriginal "inmates" who were placed there during the 1920s...
Now a popular tourist destination north of Perth, the Benedictine Aboriginal Mission at New Norcia in Western Australia, holds harsh memories for former Aboriginal "inmates" who were placed there during the 1920s through to the 1960s.
In recent decades the New Norcia Monastery has been packaged as one of the State's leading cultural tourist attractions. "A unique blend of Spanish architecture, European art treasures and pioneer history," "Monks, Music & Mystery," "New Norcia, Australia's only monastic town," the brochures announce.
Aboriginal testimony in the film challenges this revised and sanitised history. The documentary provides damming evidence of the continuing violence of the Mission against its victims by deliberate omission of their experience in the New Norcia museum, guided tours, art gallery and promotions -- an omission that represents a cruel and wounding cover-up. Noongars who give their testimonies in this film want to put the record straight about the New Norcia Mission.
Frank Rijavec
Ronin Films
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The John Murtha Airport
by John Hawkins | April 20, 2009 11:38 am
If you want to know why conservatives think taxes are far too high, why tea parties have sprung up across the country, and why the government can’t be trusted to run private companies, take a look at this story[1].
This sort of corruption, inefficiency, and incompetence is endemic to everything that our government does,
The John Murtha airport sits on a windy mountain two hours east of Pittsburgh, a 650-acre expanse of smooth tarmac, spacious buildings, a helicopter hangar and a National Guard training center.
Inside the terminal on a recent weekday, four passengers lined up to board a flight, outnumbered by seven security staff members and supervisors, all suited up in gloves and uniforms to screen six pieces of luggage. For three hours that day, no commercial or private planes took off or landed. Three commercial flights leave the airport on weekdays, all bound for Dulles International Airport.
The key to the airport’s gleaming facilities — and, indeed, its continued existence — is $200 million in federal funds in the past decade and the powerful patron who steered most of that money here. Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) is credited with securing at least $150 million for the airport. It was among the first in the country to win funding from this year’s stimulus package: $800,000 to repave a backup runway.
…The airport’s passenger count has fallen by more than half in the past 10 years. When Johnstown native Bill Previte arrived on a recent morning, he lamented that his plane was half-empty and that the terminal was deserted.
“Doesn’t it seem kind of ridiculous to have a motorized carousel for the baggage claim when 15 people get off the airplane?” he said. “It’s obvious: There’s not enough population to justify this place.”
…Federal largess is clearly evident here on Airport Road. Each of the six daily flights that the United Express local carrier makes to and from the airport is subsidized, costing taxpayers about $1.4 million, or $147 per passenger, last year. The subsidy is double the national average for the federal program designed to guarantee air service for 150 rural communities, excluding those in Alaska.
In addition to the passenger subsidy, the Murtha airport has long received funds from another federal program, meant to help pay for runway improvements and safety at regional airports. The airport has received $7.3 million since 2004 under the program. Last year, when the number of passengers fell below a federal threshold and the airport’s minimum yearly funding was about to drop from $1 million to $150,000, Murtha stepped in.
…That year, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) singled out the hangar project on the Senate floor as an example of Congress members’ “addiction to pork.” He argued that larding up the Defense Department budget with pet projects the Pentagon did not request would hurt the working military.
Voelker, who was in the Air Force for 30 years, was brought in to manage the airport after a rocky period of uneven management. In 2007, the airport authority fired longtime manager Joe McKelvey after he used FAA funds to buy a Chevrolet Tahoe SUV to use at the airport. The FAA had initially approved the expense for a safety vehicle on the property, but other agency managers later questioned it.
The same day, over some members’ objections, the authority hired MTT Aviation Services. The company is a subsidiary of Mountaintop Technologies, a defense contractor that had received at least $23 million in earmarks from Murtha since 2001 and is run by his close friend. The subsidiary was formed to handle fuel sales and other services at the airport shortly before its role was expanded to airport manager.
MTT hired a lobbying firm that had one of Murtha’s former staffers as a lead lobbyist and had once employed Murtha’s brother.
Some members complained that MTT had no airport management experience and was a tenant at the airport, creating a conflict of interest.
If you pay taxes, this sort of project is where your money goes. When the government takes over a business, this is the way it’s run. When people tell you the government can use your money better than you can, this is what they mean.
If you’re not angry at the size of government, Obama’s expansion of it, and what it means for the future of this country, you’re not paying attention.
this story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/18/AR2009041802128_pf.html
Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/top-news/the-john-murtha-airport/
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Author: David Anthony
Blink-182’s 2003 Untitled Album is Punk Rock Pop Art
By David Anthony / Editorial / Blink 182, Riot Fest 2018 Artists
There’s never been a clear name for Blink-182’s fifth album, and that’s strangely fitting. To the band and their fans, it’s untitled. To the rest…
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The career arc of Dead To Me is one that, for better or for worse, was totally unplanned. Mostly worse. Maybe that explains the resiliency…
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Since 2004, Tim Barry has been writing songs, recording records, and touring the country relentlessly. He’s devoted to his craft, ensuring that each new record…
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The first time I ever heard my favorite Jawbreaker record, I hated it—and it stayed that way for years. Having become a fan of the…
Exploring Ska’s Strangest Strains
By David Anthony / Archive, Chicago, Features, Music / ska, the mighty mighty bosstones, leftover crack
Ska is a genre rich with history, originating in 1950s Jamaica before slowly spreading across the globe. Serving as the precursor to both reggae and…
June 7, 2017 October 9, 2019
Hot Water Music’s Artwork & Iconography Created A Legacy All Its Own
By David Anthony / Music / epitaph records, hot water music, quicksand
Even though it's never specified exactly what it is, over the past twenty-five years Hot Water Music has constantly been searching for...something. It's easy to…
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This is a page where readers of River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster will find various resources that will hopefully add to, or help readers navigate through, the book’s text. I’ll be putting maps, photos, diagrams, original documents and sometimes just my own thoughts up here in no particular order.
A GOLD KING MINE TIMELINE
Unfortunately, I was unable to embed this timeline into this page, so you’ll have to leave to take a look. But it’s my attempt to lay out the whole history in one place.
A simple, and simplified, view of how acid mine drainage works:
Pre-mining hydrology.
Post-mining hydrology, resulting in acid mine drainage.
This shows the relative hardiness of various organisms when it comes to pH levels in water. Remember that the higher the pH, the lower the acidity. Ideal pH is around 6.5. Water draining from the Gold King Mine has a pH of 2.5. Cement Creek can run as low as 3.5 pH, making it virtually uninhabitable to all but extremophiles. Keep in mind that acidity is not the only harmful component of acid mine drainage; heavy metal loading is often worse.
This map, put together by the USGS, shows concentrations of zinc, a heavy metal that is toxic to fish and that is a good indicator of other metals, in the upper Animas River and its tributaries. The black dots are mines, mills, and tailings piles. Note that some stream segments have low zinc loads, despite the presence of mines.
Naturally-occurring acidity and metal loading. Whenever discussing acid mine drainage, heavy metal loading, and mine-related pollution, particularly in a place with geology like that in the Silverton Caldera and Upper Animas River Watershed, one must always remember that before any miners set foot in the area, the streams were already tainted. Cement Creek always ran orange from time to time, thanks to the iron hydroxides that are so abundant in the local geology, and lower Mineral Creek probably always ran milky green thanks to naturally-occurring aluminum. Fish never would have been able to live in those stream segments and never will, regardless of how thoroughly mine-related sites are cleaned up.
One study, conducted by Durango hydrologist Win Wright for the US Geological Survey, found that some natural springs, that had not been affected by mining at all, were highly acidic (low pH) and heavily loaded with toxic metals. The following graphs are from that study. Look closely. The first one shows that natural springs can be more acidic than nearby mines. The second shows that some springs contain higher concentrations of iron and aluminum than mine drainage. And the third says the same thing regarding zinc.
This natural acidity and metal loading has often been used as an argument against cleaning up mines. Why spend all that cash on cleanup when you’re still going to have toxic water entering the streams and hurting the bugs and the fish? Why purify the water from the Gold King and the American Tunnel if you’re just going to dump it into the murky, always-toxic Cement Creek?
Here’s why: It’s not about Cement and Mineral Creeks, and it’s not about achieving some elusive “pristine” state of water quality, it’s about reducing the overall metal loads in the Animas River. If you remove 300 pounds of zinc per day from water dumping into Cement Creek, you’re also removing that 300 pounds from places downstream where fish do survive, and will benefit from even incremental improvements in water quality. Another thing to consider is that these naturally-tainted springs have very low flows in relation to many mines, so the actual volume of metals emanating from them is relatively low.
This is probably one of the clearest, simplest arguments in favor of water treatment of acid mine drainage there is. Water draining from mines in upper Cement Creek had been treated for years by Sunnyside Gold Corp. Then, in 2005 (via a complicated series of events detailed in River of Lost Souls) treatment stopped. The results were seen very soon after in fish populations miles downstream.
Knowing which springs are naturally acidic and metal-loaded is important, because it helps scientists formulate a picture of what pre-mining water looked like, and therefore they know what can be achieved by remediating mines. It also helps them decide which mines to focus on.
Further Reading: The definitive work on acid mine drainage and metal loading in the Animas River watershed is clearly the “Big Report” put out by the United States Geological Survey in 2007. It served as reference material for me as I wrote River of Lost Souls, and I’ll be posting more material from the study on this page over time. For those who want to go in-depth (1,096 pages in-depth) into the science side of things (as well as some of the history), it’s is a must read, just don’t try to do it all in one sitting: Integrated investigations of environmental effects of historical mining in the Animas River watershed, San Juan County, Colorado: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1651, edited by Church, S.E., von Guerard, Paul, and Finger, S.E.
GOLD KING/AMERICAN TUNNEL/SUNNYSIDE MAPS/DIAGRAMS
The placement of the American Tunnel and Sunnyside Mine workings, in relation to the Gold King, is crucial to understanding how bulkheading — or plugging — the American Tunnel may have affected the drainage from the Gold King. These diagrams will help readers with the latter chapters of River of Lost Souls.
The American Tunnel was originally driven in order to provide a lower, safer access to the Gold King Mine. Miners drove straight into the mountain at an upward angle, beginning at Gladstone. They would then go straight up to join the Gold King workings. The connection was never made, and the American Tunnel was later driven far deeper to access the Sunnyside Mine workings. An already confusing situation is made more so by the fact that two American Tunnels were drilled, the first being what is now called Gold King Mine Level #7.
American Tunnel Bulkhead #2 backs water up into the mid-section of the American Tunnel. Assuming that the plugging of the tunnel is a cause of Gold King water discharges, then Bulkhead #2 is the most likely culprit. It may have returned the flow of groundwater to its pre-American Tunnel course (see historic photos below, showing drainage from Gold King Mine).
After 1961, miners accessed the Sunnyside Mine via the American Tunnel, taking them directly below the Gold King workings. But the Sunnyside Mine itself is removed from the Gold King workings by thousands of feet of rock, making it seem unlikely that water from the Sunnyside Mine Pool is making its way to the Gold King. It’s more likely that the water, backed up behind Bulkhead #2, is getting into the Gold King via the Bonita Fault.
This 3D map, put together by the State of Colorado Division of Mine Reclamation and Safety, was an attempt to better understand where the water in the Gold King, Red and Bonita, and Mogul mines originates.
Sunnyside Gold Corp. installed three bulkheads in the American Tunnel. Bulkhead #1 traps water in the Sunnyside Mine workings deep underground, and Bulkheads #2 and #3 are closer to the surface, intended to stop drainage that enters the American Tunnel below the mine workings.
GOLD KING MINE PHOTOS
Gold King Mine adit, Level #7, in the early 1900s. Note the water draining from the mine next to the waste rock dump. After the American Tunnel was built, the drainage stopped, and didn’t start up again until the American Tunnel was plugged in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
This is another view of the boarding house circa 1906. Note how big the boarding house was — it had to accommodate a lot of miners. A big fire in 1908 destroyed these structures and killed six people.
This is also the Gold King, but from an earlier time period, when the main entrance to the mine was at a higher elevation than in the 1906 pictures. Note three mine dumps; the top two are probably from the Sampson mine, which was folded into the Gold King, and the lower one on the right is the Gold King. Level #7 was just out of the photo to the left.
This aerial photo was taken four days after the Gold King Mine blowout of Aug. 5, 2015. The mine dumps above Level #7 are from the earlier Gold King and Sampson mine adits and match up with the ones seen in the historic photo above.
DURANGO SMELTER AND URANIUM MILL
The Durango Smelter on the south edge of town, running full blast back in the early 1900s.
In the 1940s, the smelter, by then shut down, was converted into a uranium mill for processing the materials that would be used in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. It continued as a uranium mill until 1963. Note the huge pile of uranium tailings behind the smokestack. In the foreground is the Santa Rita neighborhood — aka “The Flats.” And that train was probably headed to Alamosa via Chama.
The uranium mill dumped a lot of radioactive crap into the Animas River, resulting in downstreamers getting a fat dose of radium in their drinking water.
This is what was left of the smelter/uranium mill in the early 1980s, prior to cleanup. The smokestack was demolished in 1987, and the huge tailings pile was moved to a depository behind Smelter Mountain.
CARBON (a.k.a. MOVING) MOUNTAIN
Carbon Mountain, just south of Durango, has long been a center of activity. One of the largest Pueblo I communities in the region was located near it in the 8th century. In the 1930s, the mountain — part of the Hogback Monocline — garnered national attention when it “erupted,” possibly due to methane coming into contact with underground coal seam fires. Now it looms over Lake Nighthorse, and has hydrogen sulfide and methane seeps at its base.
When Carbon Mountain came to life in the 1930s, it was a big deal, drawing national and even international attention and gawkers. This is from Popular Science.
This map shows the geologic San Juan Basin and its surroundings. Carbon Mountain is part of the Hogback Monocline, which forms the boundary of most of the Basin.
The red-boxed “areas of interest” in the map indicate areas along the Hogback Monocline where geologic methane seeps are being monitored. The Basin Creek seep on lower left is at the base of Carbon Mountain. The most prolific seeps are probably those at Texas Creek, where a small power plant has been set up to capture methane and burn it to generate electricity.
1911 FLOOD
The peak and mean flows of the Animas River have been slowly declining over the past century and a half. Does that mean we won’t ever see another flood like the one that tore through the region in 1911? These streamflow figures are from the Durango gage in the middle of town.
SLIME WARS and MINE TAILINGS
The “Slime Wars” may have ended in the San Juan Mountains, but they rage on in other parts of the nation and the world on a far, far bigger scale. Some of the worst mine disasters in recent decades — catastrophes that make the Gold King spill look puny — have involved tailings dam breaches. The United Nations Environment Program put out a report in December 2017 looking into this issue. It’s disturbing and important reading. Below are a few of the graphics from the report that help give an idea of how enormous the problem is.
SAN JUAN RIVER OIL SPILL
In October 1972, a pipeline carrying crude from the Aneth Oil Field busted, spilling 285,000 gallons of oil into the San Juan River near Shiprock. These are photos from the cleanup of the spill, one of the first major actions undertaken by the then-new Environmental Protection Agency. These are some EPA photos of the cleanup, at the beginning of Lake Powell, some 200 miles downstream from the spill.
LIME CREEK BURN
The orange line marks the approximate perimeter of the 1879 Lime Creek Burn area, which charred 26,000 acres and stood as the largest fire on record in Colorado until 2000. Prior to the fire, the area around Molas Lake was densely forested. Now it’s wide open and grassy, and charred stumps are still apparent even now, nearly 140 years later. Parts of the area were replanted, in some cases with non-native Scotch Pine, which is why the forest along Highway 550 near Andrews Lake looks kind of strange.
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Home/News/Visitor attacked by buck in Yosemite National Park, as others feed wildlife
Visitor attacked by buck in Yosemite National Park, as others feed wildlife
Haley YamadaNovember 26, 2021
iStock/EEI_Tony
(CALIFORNIA) — Yosemite National Park officials warned visitors not to feed or approach wildlife after a girl was attacked by a buck.
The girl, whose identity has not been made public, was approaching a deer being fed by other visitors when the animal became spooked and charged her with his antlers, the park service said on Wednesday.
She was taken to Yosemite Medical Clinic to be treated for deep wounds on her arm and chest lacerations, officials said.
“It is illegal to feed or approach wildlife in Yosemite! While some animals, including deer, might get used to people approaching them, they spook easily and will defend themselves if people get too close or startle them,” officials posted on Wednesday.
Earlier this year, another National Park visitor was sentenced to four days in jail for willfully remaining, approaching and photographing wildlife within 100 yards, according to an October press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Samantha R. Dehring was at Roaring Mountain in Yellowstone National Park on May 10, 2021, when visitors noticed a grizzly bear and her three cubs. While other visitors backed away, Dehring remained and continued to take pictures until the adult bear charged her.
“Wildlife in Yellowstone National Park are, indeed, wild. The park is not a zoo where animals can be viewed within the safety of a fenced enclosure. They roam freely in their natural habitat and when threatened will react accordingly,” said U.S. Attorney Bob Murray in the press release. “Approaching a sow grizzly with cubs is absolutely foolish. Here, pure luck is why Dehring is a criminal defendant and not a mauled tourist.”
Dehring pled guilty and was sentenced to four days in custody with a year of unsupervised probation and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine.
In addition, she was ordered to make a $1,000 community service payment to Yellowstone Forever Wildlife Protection Fundt, according to the press release.
Dehring was banned from Yellowstone National Park for a year.
Yosemite officials on Wednesday urged visitors to stay away from wild animals.
“Please, for the protection of these wild animals and for the safety of all visitors, always keep your distance!” they said. “This is not how we want anyone’s visit to Yosemite to end.”
Haley Yamada
Homicide record broken in Louisville with 2 slayings, including a teenager killed on Thanksgiving Day
Man stabbed to death near Penn Station; 2 sought in connection with attack
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June 7, 2017 · 6:22 pm
And The Winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017 is…
…Naomi Alderman’s The Power.
Stay With Me – Ayobami Adebayo
The Power – Naomi Alderman
The Dark Circle – Linda Grant
The Sport of Kings – C.E. Morgan
First Love – Gwendoline Riley
Do Not Say We Have Nothing – Madeleine Thien
I have popped links to all my thoughts on the shortlisted books, bar Do Not Say We Have Nothing which I have tried to complete twice. I might try it again in July as a buddy read with my good old pal Mercedes off of that YouTube. Speaking of youtube if you fancy a bitesize round up of the books that were shortlisted and indeed the winner on my booktube channel here.
So what do you think about the winner? Which of them was your favourite? Which, if you still have some to read, will you be heading to next?
Filed under Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction
Tagged as Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction
Stay With Me – Ayòbámi Adébáyò
As this goes out on the blog, tonight will see the winner of the Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction 2017 announced. In a break with tradition on the blog, I decided that instead of telling you all about the shortlist (though I think I have reviewed all of them bar one and made video about them here too) I wanted to share my thoughts on my very favourite last. I have loved a lot on the shortlist this year but without a doubt my favourite has to be Stay With Me by Ayòbámi Adébáyò which has pretty much every element of what I love in a book and held me captivated by it.
Canongate, hardback, 2017, fiction, 304 pages, kindly sent by the publisher
From the opening of Stay With Me we know that something has gone very wrong with the marriage between Yejide and her husband Akin as she writes of packing up and driving away. Where to, where from and what has happened we do not yet know but soon we are taken back a decade or two before to when the cracks began to show. The time when after much trying Yejide was finding it very difficult to get pregnant and it was becoming the constant focus of her husband and his family’s attention. (I know the below is quite a long excerpt, however I think it gives a real flavour of what comes in the novel as I am going to have to say very little as I don’t want to give too much away, which I will explain.)
I had expected them to talk about my childlessness. I was armed with millions of smiles. Apologetic smiles, pity-me smiles, I-look-unto-God smiles, name all the fake smiles needed to get through an afternoon with a group of people who claim to want the best for you while poking at your open sore with a stick, and I had them ready. I was ready to listen to them tell me I must do something about my situation. I expected to hear about a new pastor I could visit; a new mountain where I could go to pray or an old herbalist in a remote village or town whom I could consult. I was armed with smiles for my lips, an appropriate sheen of tears for my eyes and sniffles for my nose. I was prepared to lock up my hairdressing salon throughout the coming week and go in search of a miracle with my mother-in-law in tow. What I was not expecting was another smiling woman in the room, a yellow woman with a blood-red mouth who grinned like a new bride.
It soon transpires that Akin and his family have been plotting a back-up plan which is to introduce a second wife into the home, Funmi, a woman who they believe will bear children and thus save the family line as well as the marriage between Akin and his first wife. Breaking away from what is socially and culturally expected of her Yejide fights back initially in a rather comic way, yet this is the beginning of an unravelling between Yejide and Akin and a downward spiral of Yejide’s already low sense of worth since the death of her own mother in childbirth.
‘What did you feed them?’ Akin shouted.
‘Bridegroom, welcome back,’ I said. I had just finished eating my dinner. I picked up the plates and headed for the kitchen.
‘You know they all have diarrhoea now? I had to park by a bush for them to shit. A bush!’ He said, following me into the kitchen.
That is where I pretty much have to stop telling you the story, and we are only a chapter or two in, because what follows is a fantastically twisting and turning tale of what happens between Yejide and Akin in the aftermath of this with Adébáyò almost turning a marriage into a thriller which I wasn’t expecting but delighted me with the way in which she accomplished it. Of course, there is a danger in me simply saying that there are plenty of twists and turns ahead may mean you will look out for them but I doubt you will spot them. I genuinely couldn’t tell what was might happen next, and there were many a gasp out loud moment and many a heart dropping moments for this reader.
I am slightly worried that comparing Stay With Me to a thriller may diminish it in some people’s eyes, they couldn’t be more wrong and not only because to accomplish the best kinds of thrillers you need to hide a tightly constructed spiders web of plot where one can’t be seen. Adébáyò does this and much, much more. Behind the domestic dramas that are going on is the drama of Nigeria in the 1980’s and all the rioting and crime that was taking over the country and adds an additional tension to the novel as well as some heart breaking and shocking scenes as the novel moves forward.
I could not imagine then that one day in Nigeria thieves would be bold enough to write letters so that victims could prepare for their attacks, that one day they would sit in living rooms after raping women and children and ask people to prepare pounded yam and egusi stew while they watched movies on VCRs that they would soon disconnect and cart away.
One of the other elements that I admired so much about the book, and yet I have seen criticised in some places, is the fact that as the book goes on you realise it isn’t always Yejide that is narrating the story. Sometimes it flits to Akin and it takes you a small while to realise and then reassess the voice you are reading. I loved this because I thought it not only highlighted the two points of view of a marriage and all that befalls it, but more cleverly is that Adébáyò asks you to stop making assumptions about how a woman might feel about marriage and parenthood and how a man might feel about marriage and parenthood. It gives you so much to think about as well as asking you to check your own assumptions of men and women, though kindly.
You might think this implies that Adébáyò creates two leading characters who merge in to one far too easily, again that isn’t that case. Adébáyò’s characters all come fully formed whether it be leading players like Yejide, Akin, Funmi, Dotun or Moomi or lesser characters like Yejide’s competitor hairdresser Iya Bolu or the hermit up the mountain. They all brim with life, laugher and more often than not secrets. I adored them, even the shadier ones. I also loved the elements of fairy tale (you know me, I love a good fairy tale or myth) that intertwine and are told throughout too. Not often yet deftly and adding certain nuances when they do.
My favourite story was the one about Oluronbi and the Iroko tree. Initially, it was difficult for me to believe the versions my stepmothers told. Their Oluronbi was a market woman who promised to give her daughter to the Iroko tree if it could help her to sell more goods than other traders in the market. At the end of the story, she lost her child to the Ikoro. I hated this version because I did not believe that anyone would trade a child for anything else. The story as my stepmothers told it made no sense to me, so I decided to create my own version.
I could frankly go on for hours about how much I loved Stay With Me, can you tell? It brims with life, humour (dark and saucy), heartache and hope. It is one of those books that just enraptures you within its pages and you find yourself thinking about those characters, situations and layers long after as well as thinking ‘what a bloody good story that was’. For me this was a dream of a novel, it will be one of my books of the year without a shadow of a doubt, and I think Adébáyò is going to be an author to watch in wonder. Go read this book.
Filed under Ayobami Adebayo, Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, Books of 2017, Canongate Publishing, Review
Tagged as Ayobami Adebayo, Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2017, Books of 2017
The finale of the Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction seems to have crept up on me all of a sudden. There is that space between the shortlist being announced in April and the winner being announced in June that feels like ages but whizzes by, or maybe I am just getting old? Anyway, I still have two of the shortlisted titles to review and the penultimate is The Power by Naomi Alderman who is one of those authors I have always meant to read yet for some reason or other haven’t. Now, having read her latest, I certainly will be.
Penguin Viking, hardback, 2016, fiction, 342 pages, kindly sent by the publisher
Imagine a world where ‘power’ is literally within women’s hands. Sounds a damn site better than the world is at the moment with old President Tango and his chums over the water on one side and Captain Crazy and his nuclear testing on the other, oh yeah and that other one who hates gays but spends weekends riding around on horses topless with several other men. Sorry I seem to have digressed already, where was I? Oh yes, the book…
Young women around the world are waking up with something different ignited in them, literally, they have an electrical power of some kind which has lain dorment for decades is now running through their veins. Initially just one or two younger girls have it, yet soon it is many, many, many of them and what is more they can ignite the power within older women be it their mothers, aunts, teachers, co-workers. This is the world in which we are thrown into by Naomi Alderman, well technically Neil Adam Armon (more on him later) and a world we see through four sets of eyes.
There’s a crackling flash and a sound like a paper snapper. She can smell something a bit like a rainstorm and a bit like burning hair. The taste welling under her tongue is of bitter oranges. The short man is on the floor now. He’s making a crooning, wordless cry. His hand is clenching and unclenching. There is a long, red scar running up his arm from his wrist. She can see it even under the blond hairs, patterned like a fern, leaves and tendrils, budlets and branches. Her mum’s mouth is open, she’s staring, her tears are still forming.
First there is Roxy, who discovers she has the power in her hands when she and her mother find herself threatened at the hands of some gangsters, the outcome of the encounter leading her to look for revenge. Tunde, a young man from Nigeria, who works as a journalist and starts reporting/blogging/vlogging (Alderman embraces the digital world in this novel which I really, really liked and not many authors could pull off as well) as this new electric epidemic begins. We then have Margot, a middle-aged woman working in Government surrounded by men she could do the job a million times better than but due to the patriarchal society, ever the more concentrated in politics, has not risen as high as she could. Finally, we have Allie who after years of abuse uses her power to free herself in a murderous way, and once discovering how strong her power is starts a new kind of gang/cult/religion through the power of the internet, though which becomes ever the more a reality bringing girls with ‘the power’ together.
There’s one girl, Victoria, who showed her mother how to do the thing. Her mother, who, Victoria says as simply as if she were talking about the weather, had been beaten so hard and so often by Victoria’s stepdad that she hasn’t a tooth left in her head. Victoria woke the power up in her with a touch of her hand and showed her how to use it, and her mother threw her out into the street, calling her a witch.
There is a lot that I admire in The Power and the not too distant future world that Aldermen creates. There is the message of empowerment and equality which she looks at in the forefront and start of the book but what I admired more is that she takes it to another level. Many authors would create a world where all women use their power for good and the world becomes a harmonious place where ‘the power’ is used to right the wrongs and punish the bad. Which could be a possibility and, in many cases, is how young girls and women interact with this new-found ability at the start of the novel. However, power is a tricky beast regardless of gender, to use that famous phrase ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ yet also power can become an addictive trip and once people have power it can change them in many ways, women or men, girls or boys.
No one knows why; no one’s done enough research on the thing to venture a suggestion. She’s getting fluctuations. Some days she’s got so much power in her that she trips the house fuse box just turning on a light. Some days she has nothing, not even enough to defend herself if some girl picks a fight with her in the street. There are nasty names now for a girl who can’t or won’t defend herself. Blanket, they call them, and flat battery. Those are the least offensive ones.
As The Power continues the sense of dread and horror mounts, partially as we get titles of parts of the book like ‘Can’t be more than seven months left’ but also as women start to use the power for their own gains, for revenge, to create terror and fear. We see with Roxy and Allie particularly what can happen when people get a power trip. We also see through Tunde’s eyes just how some women, almost in packs, take this power and use it for revenge. There was one particular scene which I found genuinely horrifying and still gives me the chills every time I think about it. As a reader you start the novel thinking ‘this is so cool’ and ‘those men deserve exactly what is coming to them’ and by the end you are left shocked by what some of the characters do, and not just to the men to other women too. Which hits you all the more when you remind yourself this is a fictional world and in the real world real men are doing these things all the time.
My only slight criticism of the book was that I wanted more narrators, not something I usually say and not something that is meant as a slight. I just wanted to see the world through even more eyes, particularly through the eyes of one of the women living in the woods, admittedly it would be a pretty twisted narration (you can’t say I am someone who doesn’t like an unlikeable character) and also more from Jo’s perspective. This is a minor issue but one I did think on more than one occasion. I think what I am really saying is I wanted more, which is always a good sign.
The Power is like the book equivalent of a rollercoaster, it gives you thrills and then terrifies you leaving you a bit winded and numb at the end – only just sat on your sofa. That is Alderman’s design, she creates a book that will hook you in, take you along at speed and won’t let go until you’re good and done and then leaves you to have a think about it all. This added to by the prologue and epilogue (the latter I won’t spoil but I thought it was a genius stroke) remember I told you about Neil Adam Armon? I will say no more other than I would highly recommend you go and read The Power, I will certainly be going to read more of Alderman’s books that’s for sure.
Filed under Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, Naomi Alderman, Penguin Books, Review, Viking Books
Tagged as Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2017, Naomi Alderman
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Why we have a statue of Mario Balotelli at the Juventus Stadium
With Balotelli the star of the show at the Avignon Stadium, the Giallorossi are known for their huge crowds and the crowd has been restless since the start of the season.The crowd has also been unhappy with the behaviour of some players and the manager has been criticised for his reaction.The stadium was packed with…
Published by admin inSeptember 27, 2021
Tags: discovery museum
With Balotelli the star of the show at the Avignon Stadium, the Giallorossi are known for their huge crowds and the crowd has been restless since the start of the season.
The crowd has also been unhappy with the behaviour of some players and the manager has been criticised for his reaction.
The stadium was packed with thousands of fans, but it wasn’t always a good feeling for the fans.
On March 4, when Balotella scored a brace, the atmosphere at the stadium was almost as if they were waiting for the home side to score, but Baloteli and his team-mates showed no signs of that.
They were clearly nervous and looked at each other as if to say: “No, we’re not going to go, it’s time to go.”
The players didn’t say anything to the fans and Balotello, the centre-forward, and his teammates looked down and didn’t move at all.
It was as if the stadium, which was supposed to be a celebration of football, had been turned into a funeral.
As for Balotelini, he was in the middle of his celebrations and looked like he was going to give the crowd a hug but the moment was lost.
The fans didn’t get a hug from him, either, because they wanted to keep cheering for the opposing team.
The crowd’s frustration reached a new level on March 20 when the team’s coach, Gianluigi Donnarumma, made a comment to the media that was said to be directed at the players.
Donnarampi told journalists: “Balotelli doesn’t know how to control his emotions and he doesn’t want to go on with the game.”
He also said that if the crowd didn’t like the way the team behaved, they should go home and watch their favourite team play.
On April 3, the coach and players of the Bianconeri had a meeting with the media.
They tried to calm down the situation but nothing could be done.
The tension reached a point where the players even went to the bathroom.
The fans are angry with the coach, Donnarums message and the way Balotelle’s team-mate was treated.
They want a change.
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Monster Museum: The Simpsons theme park’s first expansion adds a monster statue
The Simpsons: The Curse of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is back.The latest expansion for the popular animated series adds a statue of the animatronic character, who, as the name suggests, has a big mouth and a lot of spunk.The attraction will open for a limited time and will feature four different animated monsters.The first is…
The Best Moments from Raleigh Art Museum’s 100th Anniversary Show
Raleigh, NC—In honor of the city’s 100 years of Art and Architecture, the Raleigh Art & Museum is celebrating its 100th anniversary this weekend.The show will run from Saturday, July 22 through Monday, July 24. In 2017, the museum received $1.3 million in federal funds to build a new building.It will be the first building of…
Published by admin in July 16, 2021
Trump’s new museum: a modern version of a classic
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump has appointed a former CEO of a global car company to head the new Museum of American History in his hometown of New York City, setting the stage for a $5.7 billion, 1,400-acre project that is expected to be completed by the end of 2019.Clyffton Motors Group, which owns…
Published by admin in July 9, 2021
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Police arrest two 19-year-old men in connection with ‘brutal’ strong-arm robbery in SF
by Scared Stiff | Nov 29, 2015 | News | 0 comments
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) — San Francisco police arrested two 19-year-old men on Wednesday in connection with a “brutal” strong-arm robbery last month, police said.
Tristean Duree and Odis Doss were arrested on suspicion of being involved in a robbery and an assault that occurred on Oct. 26 at 9:55 p.m. on Stockton Street, police said.
Police said several suspects during the incident descended on a 54-year-old male victim, stealing his cellphone and leaving him with severe facial injuries.
The victim, a father of three, will require reconstructive surgery, police said.
The suspects were identified by the San Francisco Police Department’s Gang Task Force based on surveillance footage capturing the incident, police said.
Duree and Doss were arrested Wednesday morning on counts of robbery, aggravated assault and conspiracy, according to police.
Police said the men, who were booked into San Francisco County Jail, each had a bail enhancement added for committed a crime while out on bail from a previous offense.
Read the full article Kron 4 Police arrest two 19-year-old men in connection with ‘brutal’ strong-arm robbery in SF
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Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository
Home > Penn Law Journals > PENN_LAW_REVIEW > Vol. 1 (1852-1853) > Iss. 4 (1853)
Legal Miscellany
Editors Legal Miscellany, 1 U. Pa. L. Rev. 251 (1853).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/penn_law_review/vol1/iss4/4
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Superman Comics Thief Collared
by SCIFI.radio | Sep 24, 2011 | Comics | 2 comments
Comics Thief Gerry Arville Armbruster Caught, Comics Returned, Justice Served.
The thief who stole Superman comics and memorabilia from Mike Myer on August 29th has been collared by Illinois police. KMOV in St Louis has reported that Gerry Arville Armbruster, suspected of being “Gary”, the guy who “befriended” Mike Myer, a mentally challenged man who loves Superman, and stealing a choice selection of the most valuable of Mr. Meyer’s Superman comics and memorabila, has been arrested by Illinois police.
The arrest came after another robbery of a 76 year old man who was attacked and had his jewelry and money stolen in Granite City, after the suspect conned his way into a cleaning job. The two crimes were linked due to the suspect’s description, and the Superman comics and memorabilia was not only recovered but has been returned to Mike Meyer, their owner.
Gerry Arville Armbruster
Meyer, a 48-year-old mentally disabled man, was robbed of over 1800 items in his collection, worth over $5,000, by an old co-worker he only knew as “Gary.” Granite City police were investigating the crime when Smith brought it to the attention of the paper and from there, the world. Sympathizers from all over immediately offered to donate items from their own collection as well as countless other items to Meyer in case the thief was never caught. The Superfriends of Metropolis organized quickly to help as well as many on a specially created Save Superman facebook page and a local comic book shop. Folks went so far as to list the items they were planning to donate on a Collectors Society message board in order to prevent duplicates being sent. One of the Superfriends members is actually going to hand-deliver a chunk of the donations to Meyer in person dressed as George Reeves era Superman.
As the news of Mike Meyer’s original loss was reported across the comics industry, a hoard of fellow collectors and professionals gathered replacement Superman items that included hundreds of comics, original artwork, and memorabilia.
After he was swindled of more than 1,800 of his favorite Superman comic books, and hundreds of figurines and other memorabilia, Meyer shared his story with the Granite City Post-Dispatch. He hoped the increased attention would make it harder for the thief to resell the items.
Meyer had no idea how much attention his story would receive. Word of the theft quickly spread among fellow collectors, who started up collection drives and gathered support through online message boards and e-mail lists.
Mike Meyer shows off some of the donations he received after shocked fans heard of his misfortune. Now that his collection has been returned to him, it’s about doubled in size with the donations taken into account. He plans to donate much of the donated materials to charities.
A Facebook page dedicated to Meyer now has more than 2,100 “likes.” Celebrities and publicists associated with Superman films past and future have expressed interest in reaching out to him. Cleveland, Ohio officials have offered to pay Meyer’s way to the city for a grand tour of the house where Joe Shuster created Superman. The Chamber of Commerce in Metropolis, Ill., the official “Hometown of Superman,” also reportedly has a plan in the works.
Jon Bogdanove, an artist who was under contract with DC Comics through most of the 90s and worked on its Man of Steel comic book, sent a personal drawing and some of his recent work.
Bogdanove said he was inspired by the bevy of support shown by the comic book collectors groups and wanted to do his part as well. He said the common motivation of everyone involved seems to reflect Superman’s message in the comic books and movies.
“I think as kids, that’s the kind of lesson we get from Superman,” he said. “Superman is really about doing whatever you can to help.”
With his original collection returned, Meyer intends to give the comics donated to him to a charity such as a children’s hospital, according to St Louis Today:
As for his Superman collection, Meyer now has close to double what he had lost. Smith has about 40 more items ready to be delivered, and dozens more have been promised. Meyer said he wants to take the donations and give them to charity, possibly delivering them to a children’s hospital.
“People were generous to me; this is how I can be generous in return,” he said.
Mike Meyer, the victim, has collected Superman items most of his life. The 48-year-old lives off social security for a mental disability and works part-time at a McDonald’s in Collinsville to support himself. He lives in Granite City with his two dogs, Krypto and Dyno.
The folks here at SCIFI.radio love a happy ending, especially one where justice is served. We thought you would too.
Astolat Dufaux on September 26, 2011 at 3:14 pm
Hi, you might want to double check the spelling of Mike Meyer’s name in the story — you have it spelled two different ways (Meyer being the correct one).
SCIFI.radio on September 26, 2011 at 5:21 pm
Fixed it – thanks for the save, Astolat!
'Superman Bandit' Behind Bars - SCIFI.radio - Your Science Fiction Radio Station - […] may recall reading the story here on SCIFI.radio about how Gerry Armbruster stole about five thousand dollars worth of…,…
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A Passage to India (1984)
Dir. David Lean. Starring Victor Banerjee, Judy Davis, Peggy Ashcroft
In The Love Bug, Jim Douglas does not want that little car at first. If Herbie were some average automobile, then the movie would be over in five minutes. (Or, alternately, might have taken a very dark and un-Disney turn as Dean Jones plays an ex-hotshot who turns to alcohol while Buddy Hackett bawls over him.) But Herbie is not, and he follows Douglas around until he finally decides to keep the car. A Passage to India has a similar problem, but instead of a cute little VW, it’s Alec Guinness. Every now and then A Passage to India seems to really be getting on its way, but then Godbole shows up and in a movie that must have a thousand Indian extras, we get the white guy in the brown makeup and the little turban. The choice is not necessarily surprising, as Guinness had played Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia, much to the dismay of more progressive viewers for the rest of time. But it is baffling to see Guinness here. This is a movie with veterans Saeed Jaffrey and Roshan Seth in the supporting cast. (As the lawyer Amit Rao, Seth gets the movie’s finest one-liner in response to a suggestion that Aziz was irresistably attracted to Adela on the basis of race, and that she was disinterested in him likewise: “Even when the lady is less attractive than the gentleman?” The Indians in the gallery laugh. I did too. Roshan Seth is a treasure.) Victor Banerjee, a relative newcomer and hardly commensurate in name recognition with the white actors in the film, is the movie’s real star. Nor is it the early ’60s any longer, when you could say “It was certainly as racist then as it is now, but there is the small consideration that this was basically standard practice.” It is better than twenty years since Lawrence, and still we have to deal with this mess. Mercifully, Godbole is a fairly minor character, but every one of those scenes elicited a groan from me.
What Godbole is, really, is a giant shrieking siren for the orientalism that A Passage to India uses as its engine for 163 minutes. India changes people, Mrs. Moore (Ashcroft) tells her young companion, Adela (Davis), and just ugh. What it turns out to do is make a nice girl from England susceptible to the marvel of sex, which she appears to learn about from some ancient statues and then hallucinates grandly in the remote Marabar Caves. The caves are liable to create remarkable echoes, ones that no white person in this film can stand. Mrs. Moore enters one of them, is leveled by the noise and her claustrophobia, and declines to enter another. Adela, in the darkness, hearing the echoes of her own name, unsure of her engagement to Ronny (Nigel Havers) and her attraction to Aziz (Banerjee), loses her mind. She sprints at speed down the mountain, triggering a tiny avalanche and picking up scores of cactus spines on the way. Mystically, Mrs. Moore can feel that something’s gone wrong. The overall effect of this key thematic idea, that a young Western woman in repressive times cannot take control over her sexuality because of the esoteric Eastern surroundings, is to make orientalism the primary failure of A Passage to India. In film this may be the most textbook example of this sexual orientalism since Lost Horizon.
For that reason, A Passage to India is also a fascinating case study for a question which I think concerns many movie lovers: where is the line of racism that turns great filmmaking into unwatchable morass? Everyone has one, rather as everyone has such a line for the people in their life. Is it The Birth of a Nation, or Gone with the Wind, or Touch of Evil, or Ben-Hur, or Lawrence of Arabia, or Argo? (Feel free to exclude Argo from your list of great films, because I know I sure have.) For me, and it’s certainly not an interpretation I would force anyone else to have, it’s three parts “What else is going on with race in this film?” and one part “How old is this thing?” And for me, despite losing points every time for its 1984 release, A Passage to India belongs with Gone with the Wind and Lawrence of Arabia as opposed to The Birth of a Nation or Argo. It may be a sermon for orientalism, but the film is clearly on the side of a free India, clearly against its pro-imperialist characters, and centers on Aziz more than any other single character. There is never a doubt that Aziz is an innocent man, either. Mrs. Moore, Fielding (James Fox), and the Indians in the movie are placed against sahibs like Mrs. Moore’s son, Ronny, and other ugly tools of the British Empire.
Towards the end of the film, Aziz has dropped his traditional Western clothing for the clothing of men in the future Pakistan. The shalwar kameez is entirely white, and he wears a charcoal Jinnah cap. After being tried for the rape of a white Englishwoman and, miraculously, having gone free, he has given up on everything and everyone English. Fielding, a friend who resigned from the social club in protest when Aziz was arrested, has gone to congratulate Aziz on his freedom; Aziz, however, is certain that Fielding is moving in romantically on the woman who very nearly got him killed, and he rejects him. Later on, after her has moved far away from the scene of his misfortune, he will tear up the letters that Fielding sends him and refuse to answer; he believes that the wife he has taken is Adela, and only when Fielding tracks Aziz down with Godbole’s help does Aziz see that Fielding has not married her. The film’s final scene sees him writing a letter to Adela, thanking her for having done the right thing in the end and complimenting her courage. It’s all far less grating than one expects. Aziz’s fury is entirely justified, and the film does not do much to curtail it. It gives him some time to cool off, makes his reunion with Fielding cool but cordial, and ultimately complicates that letter. He may have become capable of forgiving Adela—understandably, I think, for the film has spent its entire length depicting a gentle man—but Adela has not necessarily learned to forgive herself. We watch her read this letter, and Davis performs the scene silently and sadly. It is raining outside. She gets up, looks outside, paces a little bit. The movie, in other words, has grounds to allow a viewer the leeway to forgive her or otherwise. It hardly reverses the orientalism within the film or scrubs the makeup off Alec Guinness, but this is not a one-sided plea for a reductive vision of 1920s India. The movie is summed up when Fielding sings “The Sun Whose Rays Are All Ablaze” to himself as he gets dressed. Either it’s a brilliant comment on sympathetic white Englishman who are still wrapped up in the supposed mystique of the East, or it’s one of those “Gilbert and Sullivan are the most English thing in the world” characterizations. My head thinks the latter; my heart says he didn’t sing “My Name is John Wellington Wells.”
There’s a scene where Adela, who has come to India as much to understand the country and its people as she has to see her longtime boyfriend again, decides to break up with Ronny. He’s made some derogatory remarks about Aziz’s dress (which was explained a couple scenes earlier in that “The Sun Whose Rays…” sequence when Aziz sacrificed a collar-pin for Fielding out of kindness), turned them into a generalization about Indians, and made himself awfully nasty in front of his saintly mother and his well-meaning girlfriend. While they’re watching a polo match, Adela turns to Ronny and tells him that she doesn’t think they should get married. Their conversation is phlegmatic rather than disruptive, and they agree that they’ve handled this breakup in a very English way. It sums up the acting in this movie nicely, I think; if this is a showcase film for orientalism, it’s also one for a particularly English brand of acting. Davis may be Australian, but her performance is impeccably reserved in that terribly English way. Nigel Havers is probably most famous for playing Lindsay in Chariots of Fire, who is a milkshake made of the various stereotypes of the English nobility. James Fox, who is one of the leaders of overall screen time, is almost strange to me as a sympathetic character because I’d always seen him as a very closed-teeth English villain. Best of the lot is Peggy Ashcroft, a transplanted Old Vic type whose Mrs. Moore is simply perfect.
For as much of the film needs to appear in courtrooms and clubs, primly false gardens and muddy streets, Lean cannot restrain himself from those shots which are entirely his. A Passage to India is perhaps 85% of Lawrence of Arabia in its visual beauty, a percentage that very few movies can aspire to, and Lean finds most of his best shots in natural settings. Deep midnight blue against white permeates a mosque overlooking the Ganges. The sojourn to the Marabar Caves does not shy away from the rusty oranges of the dirt and the deep color of the stones. The best, of course, is saved for last, when individual shots of the Himalayas dominate for a couple of minutes without any serious reference to the plot of the film itself. After Lean photographed them, it seems like a waste that anyone else should have.
May 5, 2018 May 28, 2018 speakerformediocritiesEngland, Four-Star MoviesA Passage to India, Alec Guinness, David Lean, James Fox, Judy Davis, Nigel Havers, Peggy Ashcroft, Roshan Seth, Saeed Jaffrey, Victor Banerjee
2 thoughts on “A Passage to India (1984)”
Better than the Oscars: 10-6 – Seeing Things Secondhand
[…] noting: If they’d just cast an Indian as Godbole in A Passage to India, you’d be reading about it here; if they’d just held back from playing […]
[…] 73) A Passage to India (1984), directed by David Lean […]
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show All artists' book (6) catalogue raisonné (2) critical theory (14) ephemera (16) exhibition catalogue (85) monograph (2) multiple (2) periodical (6) poster (2) reference book (5)
edition size 20
Art by Telephone
[Original Vinyl LP Record Housed in Facsimile Gatefold Cover]
Jan van der Marck, Siah Armajani, Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Iain Baxter, Mel Bochner, George Brecht, Jack Burnham, James Lee Byars, Robert H. Cumming, Francoise Dallegret, Jan Dibbets, John Giorno, Robert Grosvenor, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Dick Higgins, Davi Det Hompson, Robert Huot, Alani Jacquet, Ed Kienholz, Joseph Kosuth, Les Levine, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Guenther Uecker, Stan Van Der Beek, Bernar Venet, Frank Lincoln Viner, Wolf Vostell, William Wegman, William T. Wiley
Vinyl 33-1/3 LP record issued as exhibition catalogue for show held November 1 - December 14, 1969. "Shortly after its opening, the Museum of Contemporary Art planned an exhibition to record the trend, incipient then and pervasive today, toward conceptualization of art. ... [details]
Chicago / New York, IL / NY: Museum of Contemporary Art / Specific Object, 1969 / 2008
Condition: Fine. Original 1969 vinyl LP housed in 2008 screenprinted facsimile album cover. Vinyl in good condition, jacket is New.
illustrated wrappers
Lithographs : Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
Gerald Ferguson, Art McKay, John Griefen, Gordon Rayner, Robert Murray, David Bolduc, Greg Curnoe, Hugh MacKenzie, Art Green, Gene Davis, Philip Pearlstein, N.E. Thing Co. LTD., François Dallegret, Garry Neill Kennedy, Bob MacLean, Dan Graham, Bruce Parsons, Joyce Wieland, Pat Kelly, Guido Molinari, Vito Acconci, Ken Lochhead, Jack Chambers, Dennis Oppenheim, Sol LeWitt, Jan Dibbets, John Baldessari, Robert Ryman, Michael Snow
Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with two exhibitions, "Lithograph I," and "Lithograph II," of lithographs produced by the Lithography Workshop of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia. ... [details]
Ottawa, Canada: National Gallery of Canada, 1971
Condition: Good. Rubbing and yellowing of covers with fingerprint markings and rubbing of cover edges and spine. 1.9 cm. surface tear to spine. Light bumping of top right corner of publication with light handling wear, contents otherwise clean and unmarked.
Ideas and Ephemera
Robert C. Morgan, Carl Andre, Art & Language, Vagrich Bakhchanyan, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Joseph Beuys, Dara Birnbaum, Sarah Charlesworth, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Dan Graham, Nancy Holt, Douglas Huebler, Komar & Melamid, Joseph Kosuth, Allan Kaprow, Sol LeWitt, Ed Ruscha, Michael Snow, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson
Gatefold exhibition brochure published in conjunction with show held May 19 - June 23, 1989. Curated and with a text by Robert C. Morgan. Artists included Carl Andre, Art & Language, Vagrich Bakhchanyan, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Joseph Beuys, Dara Birnbaum, Sarah Charlesworth, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Dan Graham, Nancy Holt, Douglas Huebler, Komar & Melamid, Joseph Kosuth, Allan Kaprow, Sol LeWitt, Ed Ruscha, Michael Snow, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Lawrence Weiner and Ian Wilson. [details]
Hartford, CT: Real Art Ways, 1989
Drawing Dialogues : Selections from the Sol LeWitt Collection
Drawing Papers 126
Sol LeWitt, Claire Gilman, Béatrice Gross, William Anastasi, Carl Andre, Stephen Antonakos, Richard Artschwager, Alice Aycock, Jo Baer, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Gene Beery, Franco Bemporad, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, John Cage, Enrico Castellani, Lucinda Childs, Chuck Close, Hanne Darboven, Honoré Daumier, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Sam Durant, Jackie Ferrara, Dan Flavin, Charles Gaines, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, Dan Graham, Nancy Graves, Hans Haacke, Eva Hesse, Channa Horwitz, Shirazeh Houshiary, Clarence John Laughlin, Ray Johnson, Donald Judd, Alex Katz, On Kawara, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Jannis Kounellis, Jacques Lacombe, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Jane Logemann, Richard Long, Lee Lozano, Alvin Lucier, Robert Mangold, Mario Merz, Kazuko Miyamoto, Ree Morton, Eadweard Muybridge, Maurizio Nannucci, Giulio Paolini, Henry Pearson, Adrian Piper, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Steve Reich, Dorothea Rockburne, Fred Sandback, Jan Schoonhoven, Robert Smithson, Pat Steir, Allyson Strafella, Old Tutuma Tjapangati, David Tremlett, Yoshiiku Utagawa, Georges Vantongerloo, Bernar Venet, Ruth Vollmer, Hannah Weiner, Lawrence Weiner, Franz West
Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held April 15 - June 12, 2016. Essays by Claire Gilman and Béatrice Gross. Artists included William Anastasi, Carl Andre, Stephen Antonakos, Richard Artschwager, Alice Aycock, Jo Baer, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Gene Beery, Franco Bemporad, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, John Cage, Enrico Castellani, Lucinda Childs, Chuck Close, Hanne Darboven, Honoré Daumier, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Sam Durant, Jackie Ferrara, Dan Flavin, Charles Gaines, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, Dan Graham, Nancy Graves, Hans Haacke, Eva Hesse, Channa Horwitz, Shirazeh Houshiary, Clarence John Laughlin, Ray Johnson, Donald Judd, Alex Katz, On Kawara, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Jannis Kounellis, Jacques Lacombe, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Jane Logemann, Richard Long, Lee Lozano, Alvin Lucier, Robert Mangold, Mario Merz, Kazuko Miyamoto, Ree Morton, Eadweard Muybridge, Maurizio Nannucci, Giulio Paolini, Henry Pearson, Adrian Piper, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Steve Reich, Dorothea Rockburne, Fred Sandback, Jan Schoonhoven, Robert Smithson, Pat Steir, Allyson Strafella, Old Tutuma Tjapangati, David Tremlett, Yoshiiku Utagawa, Georges Vantongerloo, Bernar Venet, Ruth Vollmer, Hannah Weiner, Lawrence Weiner and Franz West. ... [details]
New York, NY: Drawing Center, 2016
3rd ArtistBook International Cologne 1996
Jan Dibbets, Seth Siegelaub, Christophe Cherix, Anne Moeglin-Delcroix, Sol LeWitt
Catalogue published in conjunction with art fair held November 15 - 17, 1996. Includes postcard by Jan Dibbets, interview between Seth Siegelaub and Christophe Cherix with indexing of Siegelaub's publications, and a 16 page work by Sol LeWitt titled "Black Squares. ... [details]
Paris, France: ArtistBook International, 1996
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Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione
Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff
B♭ Major
Find songs that harmonically matches to Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff. Listed below are tracks with similar keys and BPM to the track where the track can be harmonically mixed.
Lyric Pieces, Op. 12: I. Arietta - Poco andante e sostenuto Edvard Grieg, Javier Perianes B♭ Major 0 6B 72
Waldszenen, Op. 82: I. Eintritt im Walde Robert Schumann, Arcadi Volodos B♭ Major 0 6B 113
Du bist die Ruh', D. 776 (Transc. for Cello & Piano) Franz Schubert, Kian Soltani, Aaron Pilsan B♭ Major 0 6B 171
Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36 "Enigma": 9. Nimrod. Adagio (Arr. Parkin) Edward Elgar, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Ashok Klouda, Caroline Dearnley, Hannah Roberts, Josephine Knight, Ben Davies B♭ Major 1 6B 90
Cello Sonata in F Minor, Op. 26, No. 1: II. Allegretto scherzando George Enescu, Valentin Radutiu, Per Rundberg B♭ Major 1 6B 102
Waldszenen, Op. 82: No. 1, Eintritt Robert Schumann, Zoltán Fejérvári B♭ Major 0 6B 113
Keyboard Sonatina in F Major, Op. 36, No. 4: II. Andante con espressione Muzio Clementi, Chun-Young June B♭ Major 0 6B 94
Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville): Act I: Cavatina: Saper bramate (Count Almaviva, Rosina) Giovanni Paisiello, Dénes Gulyás, Krisztina Laki, József Gregor, Istvan Gati, Sandor Sòlyom-Nagy, Csaba Reti, Miklos Mersei, Gabor Vaghelyi, Attila Fulop, Hungarian State Orchestra, Ádám Fischer B♭ Major 1 6B 103
Les barricades mysterieuses François Couperin, György Cziffra B♭ Major 3 6B 75
Cantata, BMV 208: IX. Aria "Schafe können sicher weiden" (arr. for Cello & Piano) Johann Sebastian Bach, Aleksander Debicz, Marcin Zdunik B♭ Major 1 6B 66
Nocturne No. 2 in E-Flat Major, Op. 9 No. 2 Frédéric Chopin, Park Eun Shik B♭ Major 0 6B 69
4 Romantic Pieces, Op. 75, B. 150: I. Allegro moderato (Arr. Soltani For Solo Cello and Cello Ensemble) Antonín Dvořák, Kian Soltani, Staatskapelle Berlin, Cellists B♭ Major 1 6B 115
Couperin: Les Baricades mistérieuses François Couperin, Aurora Orchestra, Nicholas Collon B♭ Major 0 6B 65
Sheep May Safely Graze Johann Sebastian Bach, Leon Fleisher B♭ Major 0 6B 98
"Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd" Cantata, BWV 208: 9. Schafe können sicher weiden (Arr. For Piano Four Hands by Mary Howe) Johann Sebastian Bach, Lucas Jussen, Arthur Jussen B♭ Major 0 6B 111
Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff Information
As of now, this track is currently not as popular as other songs out there. Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione doesn't provide as much energy as other songs but, this track can still be danceable to some people.
What album is Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff in?
The name of the album that Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff belongs to is Start 2022 with Bach. This song is track #46 in Start 2022 with Bach by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff, which has a total of 85 tracks.
Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff BPM (Tempo)
Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione has a tempo of 72 BPM. Since this track has a tempo of 72, the tempo markings of this song would be Adagio (slowly with great expression). Overall, we believe that this song has a slow tempo.
Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff Key
The key of Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione is B♭ Major. In other words, for DJs who are harmonically matchings songs, the Camelot key for this track is 6B. So, the perfect camelot match for 6B would be either 6B or 7A. While, 7B can give you a low energy boost. For moderate energy boost, you would use 3B and a high energy boost can either be 8B or 1B. Though, if you want a low energy drop, you should looking for songs with either a camelot key of 6A or 5B will give you a low energy drop, 9B would be a moderate one, and 4B or 11B would be a high energy drop. Lastly, 3A allows you to change the mood.
When was Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff released?
Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff was released on January 8, 2022. "Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione" is considered a new track, since it was released this year (2022).
How long is Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff?
The duration of Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff is 1:23 or 1 minute and 23 seconds. This track's duration is considered shorter than other tracks.
Is Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff explicit?
The song Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Kempff is not explicit and is considered clean. This concludes that "Capriccio in B-Flat Major, BWV 992 "On the Departure Of A Dear Brother": V. Allegro poco. Aria di Postiglione" is not offensive or unsuitable for children.
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Posts Tagged ‘2021 2nd quarter earnings’
Class I carriers report 2nd quarter earnings
2nd Quarter 2021
Net Earnings: Increased 34% to $1.52 billion from $1.13 billion
Earnings Per Share: n/a – not publicly traded
Revenue: Increased 26% to $5.81 billion from $4.60 billion
Operating Income: Increased 28% to $2.22 billion from $1.73 billion
Operating Expenses: Increased 25% to $3.6 billion from $2.9 billion
Operating Ratio: Improved 0.7% to 60.4% from 61.1%
Click here to read BNSF’s full earnings report.
Net Earnings: Increased 90% to C$1.034 million from C$545 million
Diluted Earnings Per Share: Increased 90% to C1.46 from C$0.77
Revenue: Increased 12% to C$3.598 million from C$3.209 million
Operating Income: Increased 76% to C$1.382 million from C$785 million
Operating Expenses: Decreased 9% to C$2.216 million from C$2.424 million
Operating Ratio: Improved 13.9 points to 61.6% from 75.5%
Click here to read CN’s full earnings report.
Net Earnings: Increased 96% to C$1.25 billion from C$635 million
Diluted Earnings Per Share: Increased 100% to a record $1.86 per share from $0.93 per share
Revenue: Increased 15% to a record C$2.05 billion from C$1.79 billion
Operating Income: Increased 6% to C$820 million from C$770 million
Operating Expenses: Increased 21% to C$1.23 billion from C$1.02 billion
Operating Ratio: Improved 170 basis points to a record 55.3% from 57%
Click here to read CP’s full earnings report.
Net Earnings: Increased 135% to $1.17 billion from $499 million
Earnings Per Share: Increased 136% to $0.52 per share from $0.22 per share
Operating Income: Increased 104% to $1.70 billion from $828 million
Operating Expenses: Decreased 9% to $1.30 billion from $1.43 billion
Operating Ratio: Improved to 43.4% from 63.3%
Click here to read CSX’s full earnings report.
Net Earnings: Reported a loss of ($378.0 million) from $110.3 million*
Diluted Earnings Per Share: Increased 79% to $2.06 per share from $1.16 per share
Revenue: Increased 37% to $749.5 million from $547.9 million
Operating Income: Reported a loss of ($431.7 million) from $180.4 million*
Operating Expenses: Increased to $460.4 million from $357.0 million
Operating Ratio: Improved 3.8 basis points to 61.4% from 65.2%
Click here to read KCS’s full earnings report.
*losses due to CP-KCS & CN-KCS merger deals
Net Earnings: Increased 109% to a second-quarter record of $819 million from $392 million
Diluted Earnings Per Share: Increased 114% to a second-quarter record of $3.28 per share from $1.53 per share
Revenue: Increased 34% to $2.8 billion from $2.1 billion
Operating Income: Increased 91% to an all-time quarterly record of $1.2 billion from $610 million
Operating Ratio: Improved 18% to an all-time quarterly record of 58.3% from 70.7%
Click here to read NS’s full earnings report.
Net Earnings: Increased 59% to $1.8 billion from $1.1 billion
Earnings Per Share: Increased to $2.72 per share from $1.67 per share
Operating Income: Increased 50% to $2.5 billion from $1.7 billion
Operating Expenses: Increased 17% to $3.0 billion from $$2.6 billion
Operating Ratio: Improved 590 basis points to 55.1% from 61.0%
Click here to read UP’s full earnings report.
Operating ratio is a railroad’s operating expenses expressed as a percentage of operating revenue, and is considered by economists to be the basic measure of carrier profitability. The lower the operating ratio, the more efficient the railroad.
All comparisons are made to 2020’s second-quarter results for each railroad.
All figures for CN & CP are in Canadian currency, except for earnings per share for CP
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Fratelli Coppola
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I grew up glued to the TV. Test signals when nothing was on and a morning salute with the flag and the national anthem, Howdy Doody, Romper Room, Bozo, three whole broadcast stations and some random fuzzy UHF ones, rabbit-ear antennae that you had to hold jussssst right, prime time cartoons including The Flintstones and The Jetsons, the first time seeing that Gilligan’s shirt was red, the technicolor of Star Trek, the first step on the moon and the first broadcasts of Batman, The Monkeys, All in the Family and Saturday Night Live, and MTV (when it showed only music videos and was hosted by VJs).
The appearance of video recorders changed everything. And not only did the technology keep on changing, but the concept of what a “TV series” was has grown, also. Story-telling evolved, with the new norm becoming shows with overarching mythos on which an episodic series was pinned, providing a strong and compelling rationale to “stay tuned.”
My love for multipart anythings is perhaps why only these types of shows appear on my recommendation list, not only for what is currently on, in the “NOW WATCHING” section, but also in the “GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN” section. I was the same way with science-fiction book series, too, with all-time faves being the 15-book co-joined Foundation/Robot/Empire series by Isaac Asimov, and the 10-book Chronicles of Amber series by Roger Zelazny.
Mr. Robot (2015-)
As tempting as it is to read the compelling Mr. Robot as a post-Snowden, anarcho-cyber-info-terror drama (which it is), I am recommending Season One of this show because of a strong combination of the writing of, directing of, and particularly actor Rami Malek’s skill in the portraying of, Elliot, the main and non-titular character.
Elliot is an unapologetic, drug-addled, anti-social misanthrope; he talks directly to us and we share the delusions of his untrustworthy perceptions, as we view the world through his eyes (oh, those eyes!), peering out from the shadow of his drawn hoodie. And we are squarely on his side because, I think, we fear that his paranoia is fully justified every time the results from a random Internet search end up being the advertisement on the next web site we visit (“people who bought this…”). In Elliot, we see ourselves in someone who might otherwise be described as a despicable character.
Season two was also good, but different in a more gimmicky way. Season One of this show was definitely a tough act to follow.
Westworld (2016-)
The Magicians (2015-)
The Man in the High Castle (2015-)
Counterpart (2018-)
Black Mirror (2011-)
The Prisoner (1967-68)
My So-Called Life (1994-99)
Alias (2001-05) S01 and S02
LOST (2004-2010) S01, S02, and S03
Colony (2016-18)
Orphan Black (2013-17)
12 Monkeys (2015-18)
The Expanse (2015-18)
X-Company (2015-17)
Fringe (2008-13)
It is as easy to describe Fringe as it is impossible; a science fiction-fantasy drama built on the love between a father and a son. Along the way, we have to live through the first episodes of the first season, driven by their monsters-of-the-week, as we learn about these characters at exactly the same pace that they learn about one another. It is one of many bold moves made by these writers over the run of this series.
By the end of the first season, we see that a much (much) larger context is operating, where decisions made by scientists and decisions made by fathers have collided to create a reality that history (perhaps) or its observers (perhaps) need to correct.
The plotting on Fringe was remarkably coherent, and nearly all the seeds laid down early on end up germinating. And right up until the last moments of the last episode, the story makes internal sense.
The character of Walter Bishop, played by John Noble, is nothing short of an amazing delight. Hallucinogenic drugs, as it turns out, actually give you a glimpse of other realities, and this quirky scientist drives himself, and everyone (everyone!) else, along on the consequences ride that this discovery implies. He changes history, and in doing so, opens up the question of what others would do, knowing that history can be changed.
“The time we had together we stole.” Walter ultimately says to his son, Peter, played by Joshua Jackson. “I cheated fate to be with you. We shouldn’t have had that time together, but we did.” He regrets nothing and he regrets everything. He wants forgiveness and wants to bestow it.
Parallel universes, alternate timelines, and changes both irreversible and reversible are all trumped, time and again, by terrifically written characters whose stories we care about. The series tells a whole and wholly satisfying story.
Person Of Interest (2011-17)
“You are being watched,” intones Michael Emerson’s character, Mr. Finch, at the start of each episode of Person of Interest. You see, in the post-9/11 world, the government wanted a machine that could synthesize the bazillions of bits of information gathered by everything, everywhere, and to predict where the next big bad thing was going to happen. In order to do this, it needed an artificial intelligence, and so they got it. Mr. Finch built the machine.
The series starts with this premise and runs with it along two parallel lines of unexpected consequences. First, the machine works, but it cannot sort out the difference between a terror attack and a mugging. The government deemed these minor acts of violence irrelevant. Mr. Finch, a mysterious figure with near limitless resources, does not. And so the series started as a fairly traditional procedural, where each week Mr. Finch and his associate, Mr. Reese, take on the bad guys who are threatening to do harm to the ordinary people. The cast grew, as did the procedural plot lines, leading to a compelling drama about crooked cops, administrative corruption, nasty Russians, some of the best written characters in all of television history, deep and intersecting character histories, a terrific dog, and a hugely emotional story about camaraderie, trust, and redemption.
At the same time, the AI emerges as an independent intelligence, and it is gearing up for… something we are led to believe is pretty nasty, world-shattering, or both. It is a great series with a beginning, a middle and a slightly rushed end.
Accessibility at UM
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Wrapping up the NESCAC Season
Another NESCAC season has come and gone and, as always, it didn’t disappoint. Amherst has tallied an incredible 26 straight conference wins, capping two undefeated regular seasons with NESCAC champions. What the Lord Jeffs have accomplished this year should not overlooked — running the table in this conference is incredibly difficult, and to do it in consecutive years, despite graduating their top shooters from last year, is all the more impressive. Coach David Hixon should be the unanimous decision for Coach of the Year. While Hixon had a great pair of players in Willy Workman and Aaron Toomey coming into the season, what’s remarkable is the improvement made by the core of players around them. In particular, Peter Kaasila and Allen Williamson finally played to their potential over the course of the season. After disappointing junior seasons (Kaasila averaged just 6.8 points per game and 4.4 rebounds per game, while Williamson shot 45% from the field and averaged 5.9 points per game), both rebounded with monster senior campaigns, as the pair combined to score 24.7 points per game while corralling 10.5 rebounds per contest — a marked improvement from the season before when they pulled down just 7.8 per game. Kaasila was particularly dominant in conference play, averaging 16 points per game and finishing second in the NESCAC in field goal percentage. Williamson, meanwhile, owned the conference tournament. Take a look at his MVP-worthy numbers from the game:
Colby: 6-10, 12 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals, 1 block, 1 tunrover
Tufts: 7-15, 19 points, 3 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 steals, 3 blocks, 3 turnovers
Williams: 7-13, 15 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 0 steals, 1 (game-saving) block, 0 turnovers
Tournament Average: 53% FG, 15.3 ppg 4.3 rpg, 2.0 apg, 1.7 spg, 1.7 bpg, 1.3 tog
It speaks to the talent of the NESCAC, and of the Lord Jeffs, that Williamson won’t even be considered for either All-NESCAC team. Having spent many hours watching guys play over the course of the season, and an equally long time sifting through stats, and reasoning through our selections, we’ve come to a consensus on our All-NESCAC teams and conference awards. Here are our selections, along with our reasoning where we felt necessary.
1st Team All-NESCAC
G – Aaron Toomey
G – Joey Kizel
G – Nolan Thompson
F – Willy Workman
F – Michael Mayer
These five guys really separated themselves from the pack over the course of the season, and we (as well as many others) would be shocked if the selection turns out any differently. All five had NESCAC-Player-of-the-Year-caliber seasons, making for great discussion. All five are guys you could build a program around, and that’s exactly what these coaches have done. It should come as no surprise, either that all three come from the top three teams in the conference. Middlebury and Amherst each land two apiece, with Mayer representing the Ephs. Notably, three of the selections — and one from each team — are juniors. All three should begin next year as pre-season All-Americans and as the unquestioned leaders of their respective teams. While a young, ultra-talented Ephs team develops around Mayer for his senior season, Kizel and Toomey will headline developing rosters that have much to prove. That remains a problem for the future, however, as all three have more to play for this year.
2nd-Team All-NESCAC
G – Shasha Brown
G – Ben Ferris
F – Taylor Epley
F – Peter Lynch
C – Peter Kaasila
While the first team selections spoke for themselves by and large, the second team requires greater explanation. This group is headlined by Kaasila, who would be a first team selection many other years. The 6’9” center decimated the conference, averaging 16 points per game and 6.9 rebounds while shooting 60 percent from the floor. Kaasila remains something of a black hole offensively, finishing conference play with just two assists, but when a player scores as efficiently as he did this season, lack of sharing isn’t the end of the world. Lynch and Epley, meanwhile, began the season looking like they belonged on the first team before hitting rough patches of play in the middle of the season put second-team honors in doubt. Both players closed the season the way they started, as Lynch averaged 17.5 points and 10.5 rebounds in the tournament, while Epley scored 17.3 points per game on 56% shooting from the field. The guards in this group presented the most difficult decision. Brown, despite leading the NESCAC in scoring in conference play, underachieved significantly. The 5’11” guard shot a respectable 44 percent from the floor, but was shockingly bad from three (29%) on far too many attempts (59). His numbers were hardly better than Matt Vadas, the conference’s second leading scorer in NESCAC Play and top overall, whose team 0-10 in NESCAC play. While it’s difficult to leave a guy who scored over 20 points per game over the course of the season off of both all-conference teams, that’s exactly what we did in selecting Ferris. While the sophomore averaged almost 7 fewer points per game, he was a tremendously efficient scorer during conference play, shooting 50% from the floor as well as from beyond the arc, one of just three players to do so. Ferris also averaged 6.5 rebounds per game — more than Epley, Lynch and Kaasila. The biggest name left off of this list is the aforementioned Vadas. While the junior swing man finished the season 23rd in the nation in points per game, he did so shooting 41% from the floor, matching the team average. The “yeah-but-he-did-it-all-by-himself argument” also doesn’t look very good when you consider that his teammates, Jared Shill and Mason Lopez, both shot better than 45% from the floor and beyond the arc. And before you credit Vadas with getting good looks for his teammates, consider that he had just 7 assists in conference play, indefensible for a player who spends so much time with the ball in his hands and shoots such a low percentage from the floor.
Coach of the Year: David Hixon
Defensive Player of the Year: Nolan Thompson
Rookie of the Year: Tom Palleschi
Player of the Year: Nolan Thompson
The first two decisions should be unanimous, the second two anything but. Not surprisingly, therefore, we’ll address the our selections for Rookie of the Year and Player of the Year in further depth. At the midway point in conference play, Hamilton freshman Matt Hart appeared to have locked up the RoY award. As it is, he may still win it after finishing the season averaging over 15 points per game. In an impressive rookie class, Hart may be the most talented of the group. He wasn’t even our runner up, however, as a pair of Tufts freshmen took the league by storm. Stephen Haladyna, this year’s runner up, averaged 12.5 points per game in conference, with a ridiculous 56/48/81 (FG/3PT/FT) split. Perhaps the most impressive number for Haladyna, however, is 4. That’s the number of turnovers the freshman had in conference play, while averaging 22 minutes per game. And he was good all season long in that category, turning the ball over just 17 times in 26 games, while logging 526 minutes. In our eyes, however, the award goes to his teammate Palleschi, who averaged 13.7 points and 6.2 rebounds in conference play and shot 57 percent from the floor. He also finished second in the NESCAC behind Jack Roberts with 19 blocks and 45 total on the season. Palleschi played his best in the biggest games, scoring 34 in two losses at Amherst and was all but unguardable in a 13-18, 27-point performance against Middlebury. Palleschi’s work on both ends of the floor, and his performance in his team’s biggest games of the season gives him the edge over Haladyna, though by a slim margin.
Finally, our NESCAC Player of the Year, Nolan Thompson. You already know why we think Nolan should be the PoY, so I won’t restate our position here. (If you’re not familiar with our argument, you can read Jeff’s excellent case here). Instead I’ll take a moment (or a few) to rebut some of the arguments people have made against Nolan winning this award. Here are the arguments that we’ve heard and our final counterpoints. (Note: To those of our readers who do not read d3boards, the rest of these piece of based on the context established there, where there was much discussion of our initial case for Nolan Thompson for POY)
1) The NESCAC Player of the Year should go to the best player on the best team
Response: There are many reasons why this is poor logic. First, we have far better ways of determining value than throwing our hands up in the air and saying, “Oh well, it’s too close to call, let’s give it to the best player on the best team.” Again, if you want to hear that side of the argument, look no further than Jeff’s post a week ago. If the best-player-on-the-best-team logic was good, we would have little difficulty applying it without problem to other examples. If the San Antonio Spurs finish the regular season with the best record should Tony Parker be the MVP? Of course not. He’s a distant third to LeBron James and Kevin Durant. To make matters worse, when the “best team” is determined by a miniscule sample size (a 10-game regular season and a 3-game tournament) it’s hard to know exactly who the best team is, or even who the best player on that team is. Some may say it’s clear that Amherst is the best team in the conference — the Lord Jeffs just finished a second straight undefeated season, after all. And isn’t it unfair of me to begin this post by praising what Amherst has accomplished over the last two years, only to call it all into question later? What contradiction! Or is it? Let’s travel back two weeks to the final regular season NESCAC game. It’s the second overtime, Aaron Toomey just bungled a make-one, miss-one free throw opportunity with his team down three and 5.9 seconds left on the clock by missing the front end and then (accidentally) making the second. Jake Wolfin catches the ensuing inbound pass and gets fouled with less than 5 seconds remaining in the game and a chance to ice the game by making two free throws. At this point, if Wolfin makes both and Middlebury wins, Middlebury, Williams and Amherst all sit tied at the top of the NESCAC at 9-1 with a random selection process deciding who hosts the tournament (which might have made the difference in the end). Doesn’t it seem rather silly, when you really think about it, that the best-player-on-the-best-team theory hinges entirely on whether Wolfin makes both free throws? Because people prefer simple solutions to difficult ones, we often sacrifice necessary, logical steps in our decision making. This is a classic example.
2) Nolan Thompson’s case for NESCAC Player of the Year ended after his performance in the NESCAC Semifinal
Response: This was the most recent argument made against Thompson’s candidacy. What’s particularly funny about this argument was that it was made just before Aaron Toomey and Willy Workman combined to shoot 5-23 from the field in the NESCAC title game. The popular (and wildly wrong) response to this is, “Yes, but Toomey/Workman played well enough for their team to win and Thompson didn’t.” First of all, one possession games are toss ups; teams will go .500 in these games with a large enough sample size. Secondly, once again, this argument relies on the play of someone entirely unrelated to the point at hand, Allen Williamson in this case, to justify why one player is better or more valuable than another. If Williamson was late helping or mistimed his jump and fouled Epley instead, this argument can’t be made. By the time Epley catches the inbound pass, make or miss, Toomey and Workman have made their (lackluster) contribution, just like Thompson the night before.
3) The selective “Big Game” argument
Response: This point came shortly after number two, as if two weak arguments made in tandem could buttress one another and make one strong one. After some very selective reasoning, the argument was made that Nolan was a “no-show” offensively in three of his team’s four biggest games of the season — the two losses against Williams and a one-point win over Tufts. (It was argued that the four biggest games of the season for Middlebury were the two Williams games, the Amherst game and the Tufts game. Somehow the Tufts game, one that was played on January 5th was more important than the first round of the NESCAC Tournament, which may have determined whether Middlebury got into the NCAA Tournament or not. There’s not a single person who would trade a win over Tufts in early January for a win over Wesleyan in late February.) Again, you can use a small sample, coupled with some head-scratching selectivity, or you could expand your sample, and include the Amherst 3OT game and the Tufts game, and get a much better idea of how Nolan actually performed in “big games.” The verdict? In “big games” this year Nolan has averaged 9.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, with 40/35/67 splits, which, while far below his season averages, hardly quantifies as being a “no-show” offensively in big games. And if you want to see the selective “Big Game” argument destroy someone’s candidacy for Player of the Year, look no further than Aaron Toomey, who, in four of his five biggest games of the year (Williams x2, Middlebury and Tufts) shot 17-63 (27%) from the field and 9-35 (26%) from three. The point is, you can do this with almost anyone if you restrict the sample size, selectively remove good performances and prey on a bad game or two. (Hey, did you know that Willy Workman shot 28% from the floor and 23% from beyond the arc in 7 of Amherst’s 9 games decided by 10 points or fewer? Is he always soft or just bad in crunch time? Can we all agree that, though the stat I just presented is just as true as the one documenting Nolan’s performance in three of Middlebury’s five biggest games, that it’s almost pointless to conclude something from such a selectively small sample? Finally, in every big game but the most recent, Nolan’s defense was phenomenally valuable, which offsets more than a little of a poor offensive game (see more in 5A).
4) Nolan only face guards his man, is limited as a help defender and doesn’t get steals
Response: This argument lacks any understanding of a) what it means to be a help defender and why a coach might not want a particular defender to help, and b) that steals are a horrible metric of defensive ability. Steals are most often accumulated either by defenders who gamble consistently (see Toomey, Aaron) or by players who profit from the hard work of others. The majority of steals come off of tipped or contested passes, when the ball spends more time in the air, or does not make it to its intended target. Looking at steals to determine the value of a defender is like using interceptions to determine the value of a defensive back in football. The best corners lock their receiver down, and don’t get targeted enough to intercept a lot of passes. Overrated cornerbacks gamble, sometimes get it right, sometimes get burned and get targeted enough times to make a play on the ball once in a while. Basketball is no different in that regard. Then there’s the concept of help defense. This one really seems to be a doozie for people. When a defender is told, as Nolan often is, not to help off of his man, it’s not because he can’t, it’s because providing help defense off the man he’s guarding is a suboptimal strategy. I’ll bet that when most coaches prepare to play Williams or Amherst they tell their top defender not to help off of Epley or Toomey or Workman (though there also isn’t another defender in the country who can guard all three of those guys). Instead, the player guarding Robertson, or Williamson, or Kalema is asked to play help defense. Somehow Nolan’s “lack of help defense” was horribly misconstrued as a drawback from his game, rather than an affirmation of how difficult it is to be the top defender on every team.
5 A) Teams don’t have to game plan for Nolan like a great offensive player or dominant defensive player like Andrew Locke
Response: One of the most difficult things for people to seemingly understand is that stopping your opponent from scoring is just as valuable as scoring yourself. It took the entire baseball world years to understand the value of preserving runs defensively. Unfortunately, much of that cornered thinking still exists, and has been prevalent throughout this entire discussion. In particular, people clung to the notion that Nolan’s game did not demand that other teams really game plan for him on offense or defense. In one sense, this argument is correct, but only in the sense that some degree opposing coaches don’t game plan for Nolan because you can’t game plan for Nolan. If you’re head coach Mike Maker, what do you tell Taylor Epley — primarily a catch-and-shoot scorer — before he plays Nolan? How do you adjust to a relentless defender, who never takes a play off, fights over, under and through screens like nobody they’ve ever played against and doesn’t just contest shots, but impedes his man from catching the ball in the first place. So yeah, coaches may not game plan all that much for Nolan’s defense, largely because they recognize that trying to affect Nolan’s defensive play is a waste of time. Ask Shasha Brown if they game-planned for Nolan and, if they did, how it went. And while you can point to the NESCAC Semifinals as an example of how a player improves the second time he plays against Nolan, much of that had to do with Middlebury’s game plan which, for a change, included asking Nolan to help off of Taylor Epley due to Nate Robertson’s driving ability. That and some combination of Nolan not playing his best game and Epley, who deserves much of the credit as well, getting the better of Nolan on the perimeter a couple of times. Nolan was the one to improve in the second matchup vs. Brown, despite Wesleyan having a week to prepare for his defense.
5 B) Nolan, therefore, is the NESCAC equivalent of Bruce Bowen or Shane Battier
Repsonse: Lost in this discussion was Nolan’s offensive game, which was tremendous. Let’s try this objectively for a second. Here are three players’ stats from NESCAC play, when everyone faced the same competition.
Player A: 14.0 ppg, 54% FG, 52%, 3PT, 91% FT
Player B: 16.8 ppg, 46% FG, 41% 3PT, 65% FT
Player C: 12.8 ppg, 50% FG, 50% 3PT, 75% FT
Now it would be impressive if you could name those three players without any help based solely on their conference stats. But what if I told you that those three players, in some order were Nolan, Ben Ferris and Taylor Epley. Would you be able to tell which one was Nolan?
He’s Player A, which I think by all objective standards is the most impressive of all of those players. And I chose those three players strategically not because Nolan has better stats than they do, but also because the three of them have similar offensive games and all play a similar role in the offense. None of the three are point guards, all of them are primarily catch-and-shoot scorers and none of them can be considered the first option on their respective teams. And yet Nolan put up superior numbers to both of them. And we’re going to compare Nolan to Bruce Bowen or Shane Battier? Because they’re both good defenders who score primarily by spotting up, much like Ben Ferris or Taylor Epley? Nolan Thompson is the NESCAC Bruce Bowen? The Bruce Bowen who averaged 6.1 points per game on 41/39/58 splits? The one who never scored more than 8.2 points per game in his career? Just because Nolan shoots from similar spots on the floor? Or Shane Battier, who has shot better than 40 percent from beyond the arc only twice in his career? Nolan would be the NESCAC’s version of Bruce Bowen or Shane Battier if one of them held LeBron, Durant and Westbrook to single digits in three straight games, while putting up the best offensive statistics in the league at their position. Yeah, then maybe the NBA to NESCAC comparison will have legs. In the meantime, comparing Nolan to those guys because he has similar tendencies offensively is like saying “Hey, Aaron Toomey’s .436/.426/.908 and below average defense looks a lot like Jose Calderon’s .470/.429/.904 line and matador defense and Jose Calderon would never be a player of the year.” It’s lazy analysis and is a selective viewpoint that misses the bigger picture.
We’ve made our case and now offered our counterpoints to the critiques made over the last 10 days. We welcome more discussion on this point, and have thoroughly enjoyed discussing this, explaining our argument, and understanding the points that others have made specific to this point and regarding many others. If you still have comments to make, we hope that you read our initial case first, because it was there where the meat of the argument — Nolan’s value and historic defensive season — was established. A thoughtful discussion is satisfying wherever it ends up; equally dissatisfying (and disappointing) is a petty remark that doesn’t address what’s been said.
This was written by Damon Hatheway. Posted on Monday, February 25, 2013, at 6:23 am. Filed under Men's Basketball. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.
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Home Liberalism Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay – India’s Forgotten Feminist Icon
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay – India’s Forgotten Feminist Icon
It is sad that the indispensable contributions of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay remain lost in the shadows of history. The legacy of bravery, feminism, and co-working she has left continues to inspire the youth of today.
Mahima Kataria
Image credit: Indian Express
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay epitomized modern Indian women by championing their very cause. Kamala Devi was a pioneer in all senses – a freedom fighter, an entrepreneur, a reformer, a feminist.
Her life was enveloped by tragedy. She was a victim of the worst kind of traditional practices. Being widowed in her early years, the death of her father, the ill-treatment of her mother followed by the death of her sister. But none of these events stopped her from pursuing the larger cause.
Her formative years coincided with the development of the Indian National movement. Public figures such as Gokhale, Anne Beasant, Ranade were common in her everyday life and provided political inspiration. Art and theatre also played a major role in her life. She used theatre as a medium to promote social issues and as a catalyst for transformation leaving legendary marks in the field. Among other institutions that Kamaladevi helped create and nurture were the Sangeet Natak Akademi and the India International Centre; which are successful institutions even today.
Dr Annie Besant and Mahatma Gandhi were significant influences in her life. It was Dr Besant’s oratorical style that she admired and absorbed and coupled with her theatrical talents. The 1930 Civil Disobedience Movement was her first encounter with Gandhi. She convinced Gandhi to not restrict the march only to men. This was the first public instance portraying her persuasion skills. It brought to light the fact that a strong and fearless woman had entered the Indian political scene.
She took the onus of protection of Indian craft industry on herself. Her involvement with the craft was deep, she travelled the length and breadth of the country safeguarding it. From the 1950s, Kamaladevi turned increasingly to the revival and promotion of India’s rich, varied and endangered craft traditions. She established the All India Handicrafts Board and headed it for twenty years. She formed cooperatives to market the products of craftsmen and to provide them credit and instituted awards to motivate them, this was one of the earliest examples of Self-Help Groups. She urged state governments to cut out middlemen and deal directly with craftsmen, source their products and sell them through their own emporia. That Indian crafts are still alive and, moreover, have a visible national and international presence, is owed more to Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay than to any other individual.
She worked for women and their development. Being a true feminist, hers was the most desirable notion of feminism which is contested even today. According to her, the women’s movement did not seek to make women either fight men or imitate them. It rather seeks to instil in them a consciousness of their own faculties and functions and create a respect for those of the other sex. Her ideologies were based on how women must be recognized as a social and economic factor. It is tragic how tradition puts a lower value on home production and services. This non-pecuniary and non-competitive character has lowered the prestige of women. She also became increasingly involved in the women’s movement, lobbying for better working conditions for women in factories and farms, and for their right to paid maternity leave.
Kamla Devi had brief direct political presence. She stood for the first general elections and lost the race only by 55 votes. However, after India became independent in 1947, she refused to enter formal politics.
Kamaladevi was also an original thinker, whose writings on politics and social reform continue to speak to us today. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay died in 1988, leaving her imprints on the Indian society. It is however sad that a figure with such indispensable contribution remains lost in the shadows of history. The legacy of bravery, feminism, and co-working she has left continues to inspire the youth of today.
Read more on the Indian Liberal Tradition
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay
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Mahima Kataria is pursuing her Masters from Delhi University. She has previously completed the Young India Fellowship from Ashoka University. She is interested in policymaking and wishes to bring about significant contributions to the sector.
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SO Musings: Rajaji- Man with a Mission
SO Musings: Competition can Eliminate Cronies
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ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27/WG 2 - Cryptography and security mechanisms
Cryptographie et mécanismes de sécurité
WorkField
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 - Information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection
Standardization Organization
Project Code
Jul Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Aug Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
×Date
×50
ISO/IEC 11770-7:2021(Main)
Information security -- Key management
This document specifies mechanisms for cross-domain password-based authenticated key exchange, all of which are four-party password-based authenticated key exchange (4PAKE) protocols. Such protocols let two communicating entities establish a shared session key using just the login passwords that they share with their respective domain authentication servers. The authentication servers, assumed to be part of a standard public key infrastructure (PKI), act as ephemeral certification authorities (CAs) that certify key materials that the users can subsequently use to exchange and agree on as a session key. This document does not specify the means to be used to establish a shared password between an entity and its corresponding domain server. This document also does not define the implementation of a PKI and the means for two distinct domain servers to exchange or verify their respective public key certificates.
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27
ISO/IEC 9797-2:2021(Main)
Information security -- Message authentication codes (MACs)
This document specifies MAC algorithms that use a secret key and a hash-function (or its round-function or sponge function) to calculate an m-bit MAC. These mechanisms can be used as data integrity mechanisms to verify that data has not been altered in an unauthorized manner. NOTE      A general framework for the provision of integrity services is specified in ISO/IEC 10181‑6.
ISO/IEC 18033-3:2010/Amd 1:2021(Amendment)
Information security -- Redaction of authentic data
This document specifies properties of cryptographic mechanisms to redact authentic data. In particular, it defines the processes involved in those mechanisms, the participating parties, and the cryptographic properties.
Padding methods for sponge functions
ISO/IEC 10116:2017/Amd 1:2021(Amendment)
CTR-ACPKM mode of operation
SM9 mechanism
Leakage-resilient password-authenticated key agreement with additional stored secrets
ISO/IEC 18032:2020(Main)
Information security -- Prime number generation
This document specifies methods for generating and testing prime numbers as required in cryptographic protocols and algorithms. Firstly, this document specifies methods for testing whether a given number is prime. The testing methods included in this document are divided into two groups: — probabilistic primality tests, which have a small error probability. All probabilistic tests described here can declare a composite to be a prime; — deterministic methods, which are guaranteed to give the right verdict. These methods use so-called primality certificates. Secondly, this document specifies methods to generate prime numbers. Again, both probabilistic and deterministic methods are presented. NOTE It is possible that readers with a background in algorithm theory have already had previous encounters with probabilistic and deterministic algorithms. The deterministic methods in this document internally still make use of random bits (to be generated via methods described in ISO/IEC 18031), and "deterministic" only refers to the fact that the output is correct with probability one. Annex A provides error probabilities that are utilized by the Miller-Rabin primality test. Annex B describes variants of the methods for generating primes so that particular cryptographic requirements can be met. Annex C defines primitives utilized by the prime generation and verification methods.
Information security -- Authenticated encryption
This document specifies five methods for authenticated encryption, i.e. defined ways of processing a data string with the following security objectives: — data confidentiality, i.e. protection against unauthorized disclosure of data; — data integrity, i.e. protection that enables the recipient of data to verify that it has not been modified; — data origin authentication, i.e. protection that enables the recipient of data to verify the identity of the data originator. All five methods specified in this document are based on a block cipher algorithm, and require the originator and the recipient of the protected data to share a secret key for this block cipher. Key management is outside the scope of this document. Key management techniques are defined in ISO/IEC 11770 (all parts). Four of the mechanisms in this document, namely mechanisms 3, 4, 5 (AAD variant only) and 6, allow data to be authenticated which is not encrypted. That is, these mechanisms allow a data string that is to be protected to be divided into two parts, D, the data string that is to be encrypted and integrity-protected, and A (the additional authenticated data) that is integrity-protected but not encrypted. In all cases, the string A can be empty. NOTE Examples of types of data that can need to be sent in unencrypted form, but whose integrity is to be protected, include addresses, port numbers, sequence numbers, protocol version numbers and other network protocol fields that indicate how the plaintext is to be handled, forwarded or processed.
This document specifies mechanisms to establish shared symmetric keys between groups of entities. It defines: — symmetric key-based key establishment mechanisms for multiple entities with a key distribution centre (KDC); and — symmetric key establishment mechanisms based on a general tree-based logical key structure with both individual rekeying and batch rekeying. It also defines key establishment mechanisms based on a key chain with group forward secrecy, group backward secrecy or both group forward and backward secrecy. This document also describes the required content of messages which carry keying material or are necessary to set up the conditions under which the keying material can be established. This document does not specify information that has no relation with key establishment mechanisms, nor does it specify other messages such as error messages. The explicit format of messages is not within the scope of this document. This document does not specify the means to be used to establish the initial secret keys required to be shared between each entity and the KDC, nor key lifecycle management. This document also does not explicitly address the issue of interdomain key management.
Information security -- Non-repudiation
This document specifies mechanisms for the provision of specific, communication-related, non‑repudiation services using asymmetric cryptographic techniques.
This document serves as a general model for subsequent parts specifying non-repudiation mechanisms using cryptographic techniques. The ISO/IEC 13888 series provides non-repudiation mechanisms for the following phases of non-repudiation: — evidence generation; — evidence transfer, storage and retrieval; and — evidence verification. Dispute arbitration is outside the scope of the ISO/IEC 13888 series.
ZUC
ISO/IEC 9797-3:2011/Amd 1:2020(Amendment)
ISO/IEC 9797-3:2011/Amd 1:2020
Information security -- Lightweight cryptography
This document specifies three block ciphers suitable for applications requiring lightweight cryptographic implementations: — PRESENT: a lightweight block cipher with a block size of 64 bits and a key size of 80 or 128 bits; — CLEFIA: a lightweight block cipher with a block size of 128 bits and a key size of 128, 192 or 256 bits; — LEA: a lightweight block cipher with a block size of 128 bits and a key size of 128, 192 or 256 bits.
Information technology -- Lightweight cryptography
This document specifies MAC algorithms suitable for applications requiring lightweight cryptographic mechanisms. These mechanisms can be used as data integrity mechanisms to verify that data has not been altered in an unauthorized manner. They can also be used as message authentication mechanisms to provide assurance that a message has been originated by an entity in possession of the secret key. The following MAC algorithms are specified in this document: a) LightMAC; b) Tsudik's keymode; c) Chaskey-12.
Unbalanced Password-Authenticated Key Agreement with Identity-Based Cryptosystems (UPAKA-IBC)
This document specifies broadcast authentication protocols, which are protocols that provide data integrity and entity authentication in a broadcast setting, i.e. a setting with one sender transmitting messages to many receivers. To provide entity authentication, there needs to be a pre-existing infrastructure which links the sender to a cryptographic secret. The establishment of such an infrastructure is beyond the scope of this document.
IT Security techniques -- Entity authentication
This document specifies entity authentication mechanisms using authenticated encryption algorithms. Four of the mechanisms provide entity authentication between two entities where no trusted third party is involved; two of these are mechanisms to unilaterally authenticate one entity to another, while the other two are mechanisms for mutual authentication of two entities. The remaining mechanisms require an on-line trusted third party for the establishment of a common secret key. They also realize mutual or unilateral entity authentication. Annex A defines Object Identifiers for the mechanisms specified in this document.
IT Security techniques -- Encryption algorithms
This document specifies the following mechanisms for homomorphic encryption. — Exponential ElGamal encryption; — Paillier encryption. For each mechanism, this document specifies the process for: — generating parameters and the keys of the involved entities; — encrypting data; — decrypting encrypted data; and — homomorphically operating on encrypted data. Annex A defines the object identifiers assigned to the mechanisms specified in this document. Annex B provides numerical examples.
This document specifies entity authentication mechanisms using digital signatures based on asymmetric techniques. A digital signature is used to verify the identity of an entity. Ten mechanisms are specified in this document. The first five mechanisms do not involve an on-line trusted third party and the last five make use of on-line trusted third parties. In both of these two categories, two mechanisms achieve unilateral authentication and the remaining three achieve mutual authentication. Annex A defines the object identifiers assigned to the entity authentication mechanisms specified in this document.
IT Security techniques -- Digital signatures with appendix
This document specifies digital signature mechanisms with appendix whose security is based on the discrete logarithm problem. This document provides — a general description of a digital signature with appendix mechanism, and — a variety of mechanisms that provide digital signatures with appendix. For each mechanism, this document specifies — the process of generating a pair of keys, — the process of producing signatures, and — the process of verifying signatures. Annex A defines object identifiers assigned to the digital signature mechanisms specified in this document, and defines algorithm parameter structures. Annex B defines conversion functions of FE2I, I2FE, FE2BS, BS2I, I2BS, I2OS and OS2I used in this document. Annex D defines how to generate DSA domain parameters.
IT Security techniques -- Hash-functions
This document specifies dedicated hash-functions, i.e. specially designed hash-functions. The hash-functions in this document are based on the iterative use of a round-function. Distinct round-functions are specified, giving rise to distinct dedicated hash-functions. The use of Dedicated Hash-Functions 1, 2 and 3 in new digital signature implementations is deprecated. NOTE As a result of their short hash-code length and/or cryptanalytic results, Dedicated Hash-Functions 1, 2 and 3 do not provide a sufficient level of collision resistance for future digital signature applications and they are therefore, only usable for legacy applications. However, for applications where collision resistance is not required, such as in hash-functions as specified in ISO/IEC 9797‑2, or in key derivation functions specified in ISO/IEC 11770‑6, their use is not deprecated. Numerical examples for dedicated hash-functions specified in this document are given in Annex B as additional information. For information purposes, SHA-3 extendable-output functions are specified in Annex C.
IT Security techniques -- Key management
This document defines key establishment mechanisms using symmetric cryptographic techniques. This document addresses three environments for the establishment of keys: Point-to-Point, Key Distribution Centre (KDC), and Key Translation Centre (KTC). It describes the required content of messages which carry keying material or are necessary to set up the conditions under which the keying material can be established. This document does not indicate other information which can be contained in the messages or specify other messages such as error messages. The explicit format of messages is not within the scope of this document. This document does not specify the means to be used to establish initial secret keys; that is, all the mechanisms specified in this document require an entity to share a secret key with at least one other entity (e.g. a TTP). For general guidance on the key lifecycle, see ISO/IEC 11770-1. This document does not explicitly address the issue of inter-domain key management. This document also does not define the implementation of key management mechanisms; products complying with this document are not necessarily compatible.
Blinded Diffie-Hellman key agreement
Information technology -- Security techniques -- Key management
ISO/IEC 11770-4:2017 defines key establishment mechanisms based on weak secrets, i.e. secrets that can be readily memorized by a human, and hence, secrets that will be chosen from a relatively small set of possibilities. It specifies cryptographic techniques specifically designed to establish one or more secret keys based on a weak secret derived from a memorized password, while preventing offline brute-force attacks associated with the weak secret. ISO/IEC 11770-4:2017 is not applicable to the following aspects of key management: - life-cycle management of weak secrets, strong secrets, and established secret keys; - mechanisms to store, archive, delete, destroy, etc. weak secrets, strong secrets, and established secret keys.
Information technology -- Security techniques -- Secret sharing
ISO/IEC 19592-2:2017 specifies cryptographic secret sharing schemes.
Information technology -- Security techniques -- Anonymous entity authentication
ISO/IEC 20009-4:2017 specifies anonymous entity authentication mechanisms based on weak secrets. The precise operation of each mechanism is specified, together with details of all inputs and outputs. This document is applicable to situations in which the server only verifies that the user belongs to a certain user group without obtaining any information that can be used to identify the user later on.
Information technology -- Security techniques -- Cryptographic techniques based on elliptic curves
The ISO/IEC 15946 series specifies public-key cryptographic techniques based on elliptic curves described in ISO/IEC 15946‑1. ISO/IEC 15946-5:2017 defines elliptic curve generation techniques useful for implementing the elliptic curve based mechanisms defined in ISO/IEC 29192‑4, ISO/IEC 9796‑3, ISO/IEC 11770‑3, ISO/IEC 14888‑3 and ISO/IEC 18033‑2. ISO/IEC 15946-5:2017 is applicable to cryptographic techniques based on elliptic curves defined over finite fields of prime power order (including the special cases of prime order and characteristic two). This document is not applicable to the representation of elements of the underlying finite field (i.e. which basis is used). The ISO/IEC 15946 series does not specify the implementation of the techniques it defines. Interoperability of products complying with the ISO/IEC 15946 series will not be guaranteed.
Information technology -- Security techniques -- Modes of operation for an n-bit block cipher
ISO/IEC 10116:2017 data during transmission or in storage). The defined modes only provide protection of data confidentiality. Protection of data integrity is not within the scope of this document. Also, most modes do not protect the confidentiality of message length information. NOTE 1 Methods for protecting the integrity of data using a block cipher are provided in ISO/IEC 9797-1. NOTE 2 Methods for simultaneously protecting the confidentiality and integrity of data are provided in ISO/IEC 19772. ISO/IEC 10116:2017 specifies the modes of operation and gives recommendations for choosing values of parameters (as appropriate). NOTE 3 The modes of operation specified in this document have been assigned object identifiers in accordance with ISO/IEC 9834. The list of assigned object identifiers is given in Annex A. In applications in which object identifiers are used, the object identifiers specified in Annex A are to be used in preference to any other object identifiers that can exist for the mode concerned. NOTE 4 Annex B contains comments on the properties of each mode and important security guidance.
Deterministic random bit generation
Information technology -- Security techniques -- Blind digital signatures
ISO 18370-1:2016 specifies principles, including a general model, a set of entities, a number of processes, and general requirements for blind digital signature mechanisms, as well as the following variants of blind digital signature mechanisms: - blind signature mechanisms with partial disclosure; - blind signature mechanisms with selective disclosure; - traceable blind signature mechanisms. It also contains terms, definitions, abbreviated terms and figure elements that are used in all parts of ISO/IEC 18370. See Annex A for a comparison on the blind digital signature mechanisms.
ISO/IEC 19592-1:2016 specifies cryptographic secret sharing schemes and their properties. This document defines the parties involved in a secret sharing scheme, the terminology used in the context of secret sharing schemes, the parameters and the properties of such a scheme.
Information technology -- Security techniques -- Hash-functions
ISO/IEC 10118-1:2016 specifies hash-functions and is therefore applicable to the provision of authentication, integrity and non-repudiation services. Hash-functions map strings of bits of variable (but usually upper bounded) length to fixed-length strings of bits, using a specified algorithm. They can be used for - reducing a message to a short imprint for input to a digital signature mechanism, and - committing the user to a given string of bits without revealing this string. NOTE The hash-functions specified in ISO/IEC 10118 (all parts) do not involve the use of secret keys. However, these hash-functions may be used, in conjunction with secret keys, to build message authentication codes. Message Authentication Codes (MACs) provide data origin authentication as well as message integrity. Techniques for computing a MAC using a hash-function are specified in ISO/IEC 9797‑2 [1]. ISO/IEC 10118-1:2016 contains definitions, symbols, abbreviations and requirements that are common to all the other parts of ISO/IEC 10118. The criteria used to select the algorithms specified in subsequent parts of ISO/IEC 10118 are defined in Annex B of this document.
ISO/IEC 11770-6:2016 specifies key derivation functions, i.e. functions which take secret information and other (public) parameters as input and output one or more "derived" secret keys. Key derivation functions based on MAC algorithms and on hash-functions are specified.
Information technology -- Security techniques -- Lightweight cryptography
ISO/IEC 29192-5:2016 specifies three hash-functions suitable for applications requiring lightweight cryptographic implementations. - PHOTON: a lightweight hash-function with permutation sizes of 100, 144, 196, 256 and 288 bits computing hash-codes of length 80, 128, 160, 224, and 256 bits, respectively. - SPONGENT: a lightweight hash-function with permutation sizes of 88, 136, 176, 240 and 272 bits computing hash-codes of length 88, 128, 160, 224, and 256 bits, respectively. - Lesamnta-LW: a lightweight hash-function with permutation size 384 bits computing a hash-code of length 256 bits. The requirements for lightweight cryptography are given in ISO/IEC 29192‑1.
ISO/IEC 15946-1:2016 describes the mathematical background and general techniques necessary for implementing the elliptic curve cryptography mechanisms defined in ISO/IEC 15946‑5, ISO/IEC 9796‑3, ISO/IEC 11770‑3, ISO/IEC 14888‑3, ISO/IEC 18033‑2 and other ISO/IEC standards. ISO/IEC 15946-1:2016 does not specify the implementation of the techniques it defines. For example, it does not specify the basis representation to be used when the elliptic curve is defined over a finite field of characteristic two. Thus, interoperability of products complying with ISO/IEC 15946-1:2016 will not be guaranteed.
ISO/IEC 18370-2:2016 specifies blind digital signature mechanisms, together with mechanisms for three variants of blind digital signatures. The variants are blind digital signature mechanisms with partial disclosure, blind digital signature mechanisms with selective disclosure and traceable blind digital signature mechanisms. The security of all the mechanisms in ISO/IEC 18370-2:2016 is based on the discrete logarithm problem. For each mechanism, ISO/IEC 18370-2:2016 specifies the following: - the process for generating the keys of the entities involved in these mechanisms; - the process for producing blind signatures; - the process for verifying signatures. ISO/IEC 18370-2:2016 specifies another process specific to blind signature mechanisms with selective disclosure, namely, the following: - the presentation process. Furthermore, ISO/IEC 18370-2:2016 specifies other processes specific to traceable blind signature mechanisms, namely, the following: a) the process for tracing requestors; b) the process for tracing signatures; c) the requestor tracing evidence evaluation process (optional); d) the signature tracing evidence evaluation process (optional).
Information technology -- Security techniques -- Encryption algorithms
ISO/IEC 18033-5:2015 specifies identity-based encryption mechanisms. For each mechanism the functional interface, the precise operation of the mechanism, and the ciphertext format are specified. However, conforming systems may use alternative formats for storing and transmitting ciphertexts.
ISO/IEC 11770-3:2015 defines key management mechanisms based on asymmetric cryptographic techniques. It specifically addresses the use of asymmetric techniques to achieve the following goals: a) establish a shared secret key for use in a symmetric cryptographic technique between two entities A and B by key agreement. In a secret key agreement mechanism, the secret key is computed as the result of a data exchange between the two entities A and B. Neither of them should be able to predetermine the value of the shared secret key; b) establish a shared secret key for use in a symmetric cryptographic technique between two entities A and B via key transport. In a secret key transport mechanism, the secret key is chosen by one entity A and is transferred to another entity B, suitably protected by asymmetric techniques; and c) make an entity's public key available to other entities via key transport. In a public key transport mechanism, the public key of entity A shall be transferred to other entities in an authenticated way, but not requiring secrecy. Some of the mechanisms of ISO/IEC 11770-3:2015 are based on the corresponding authentication mechanisms in ISO/IEC 9798‑3. ISO/IEC 11770-3:2015 does not cover certain aspects of key management, such as key lifecycle management, mechanisms to generate or validate asymmetric key pairs, and mechanisms to store, archive, delete, destroy, etc. keys. While ISO/IEC 11770-3:2015 does not explicitly cover the distribution of an entity's private key (of an asymmetric key pair) from a trusted third party to a requesting entity, the key transport mechanisms described can be used to achieve this. A private key can in all cases be distributed with these mechanisms where an existing, non-compromised key already exists. However, in practice the distribution of private keys is usually a manual process that relies on technological means such as smart cards, etc. ISO/IEC 11770-3:2015 does not specify the transformations used in the key management mechanisms.
ISO/IEC 18033-1:2015 is general in nature, and provides definitions that apply in subsequent parts of this International Standard. The nature of encryption is introduced, and certain general aspects of its use and properties are described. The criteria used to select the algorithms specified in subsequent parts of this International Standard are defined in Annexes A and B.
Information technology -- Security techniques -- Time-stamping services
ISO/IEC 18014:2015 - defines the functionality of the time assessment authority (TAA), - describes an overall architecture for providing the time to the time-stamping authority (TSA) and to guarantee the correctness of it through the use of the TAA, and - gives technical guidelines for the TAA to provide, and to provide assurance in, a trusted time source to the TSA.
Object identifiers
Information technology -- Security techniques -- Anonymous digital signatures
ISO/IEC 20008-1:2013 specifies principles, including a general model, a set of entities, a number of processes, and general requirements for the following two categories of anonymous digital signature mechanisms: signature mechanisms using a group public key, and signature mechanisms using multiple public keys.
ISO/IEC 20009-2:2013 specifies anonymous entity authentication mechanisms based on signatures using a group public key in which a verifier verifies a group signature scheme to authenticate the entity with which it is communicating, without knowing this entity's identity. ISO/IEC 20009-2:2013 provides: a general description of an anonymous entity authentication mechanism based on signatures using a group public key; a variety of mechanisms of this type. ISO/IEC 20009-2:2013 describes: the group membership issuing processes; anonymous authentication mechanisms without an online Trusted Third Party (TTP); anonymous authentication mechanisms involving an online TTP. Furthermore, ISO/IEC 20009-2:2013 also specifies: the group membership opening process (optional); the group signature linking process (optional).
ISO/IEC 20008-2:2013 specifies anonymous digital signature mechanisms, in which a verifier makes use of a group public key to verify a digital signature. It provides a general description of an anonymous digital signature mechanism using a group public key; a variety of mechanisms that provide such anonymous digital signatures. For each mechanism, ISO/IEC 20008-2:2013 specifies the process for generating group member signature keys and a group public key; the process for producing signatures; the process for verifying signatures; the process for opening signatures (if the mechanism supports opening); the process for linking signatures (if the mechanism supports linking); the process for revoking group members.
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Richard W Hardwick is a writer, publisher and writing tutor. He has created ‘St Cuthbert’s Final Journey’ as part of his project as writer-in-residence at Durham University.
His first book ‘Kicked Out‘ was published by Beautiful Books in 2009 and became Waterstone’s Recommended Read and Border’s Book of the Month. Inspired by his time working in an emergency access hostel for homeless teenagers in Newcastle and as a social worker in Sunderland Youth Offending Service, it was described by Waterstone’s as “a novel to stand up alongside Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting…a fantastic book expressing the cynicism and dissatisfaction of those on the edge of society”
His second book ‘Andalucia’ is a memoir. When he was advised to turn this writing into a novel he instead created his own publishing company, Lapwing Books. Richard wrote about his wife’s breast cancer to help him cope, and then he wrote about their past because he was scared she wouldn’t be alive to help him remember it for their children. ‘Andalucia’ tells the story of a young couple falling in love in the Golan Heights, bathing in the Sea of Galilee, living in the cheapest hostel in Amsterdam’s red-light district and becoming homeless in Greece. Past and present are woven together to form a unique and beautiful portrait of a family facing the ultimate fear.
Pat Barker, winner of the Booker Prize, said ‘Andalucia’ was “told with courage, humour and love, weaving past and present with great skill so the pace of the narrative never falters. There is a zest for life on every page which I found both moving and inspiring“
Janette Jenkins, author of Little Bones and Angel of Brooklyn, said “this absolutely captivated me. I couldn’t put it down. One of the best books I’ve read…breath-taking“
Richard has taught creative writing in HMP Frankland for the past five years and is editor of their prison magazine ‘Behind Bars.’ He has previously been writer-in-residence at HMP Durham and has facilitated numerous creative projects inside prisons, working inside HMP Low Newton, HMP Deerbolt and HMP Castington as well as the previous two establishments. In January 2012 he published the hardback ‘Shattered Images and Building Bridges’, a collection of writing and artwork from his students in three Durham prisons, also through Lapwing Books.
He lives in Seaton Sluice, just north of Newcastle, with his wife, two children and dog. Often, he can be found wandering down the beach or along the dene, or alternatively he can be contacted via the following:
e-mail: richard.whardwick@yahoo.co.uk
3 comments on “Richard W Hardwick”
mrs Hume
There used to be a St Cuthberts Inn at Scorton Station wih St Cuthberts well in a field behind was this a resting place in the travels with his coffin?
richardwhardwick2013
Hello Mrs Hume, and thanks for your comment/question.
To be honest, its impossible to tell, regarding St Cuthbert’s Well and Inn. Much of the journey is conjecture, based on a list nailed to the door of Durham Cathedral in the 15th century, based on Churches of St Cuthbert who claimed the body rested there. Scorton is certainly in the old kingdom of Northumbria – it may be that Cuthbert found the spring that then was given his name, or that a well was given his name to attract pilgrims to the area – as it was thought that the water had healing properties. I haven’t come across Scorton as a place the Community of St Cuthbert stopped at with his coffin, so it’s possible its related to an earlier time when he was alive…
Thank you for your reply and your conjectures. That is a possibility.
A Travelling Exhibition – taking St Cuthbert around the North East
Judy Hurst – In Touch with the Earth
Reaching Out to Inner Farne…
Scraping Letters off and Pulling Pictures down…
Inspired by the Gospels…Calfskin, Migrating Birds, School Kids and the Return of Cuthbert
Aldingham
Blogs by Richard W Hardwick
Carham
Cavers
Chester-le-Street
Cowton
Crayke
Edenhall
Forcett
Kirkleatham
Ormesby
Whithorn
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United States Japan Tokyo France France Olympic Team Lithuania Olympic Team Slovenia Olympic Team Spain Olympic Team United States Olympic Team Australia Olympic Team Damian Lillard Jerry Colangelo Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos Mike Krzyzewski Edrice Adebayo Sports Men's basketball Men's sports Basketball Olympic games International basketball NBA basketball Professional basketball
For the gold: It's the US and France, again, for Tokyo title
By TIM REYNOLDS - Aug. 06, 2021 03:01 AM EDT
United States's Damian Lillard (6) drives around Australia's Jock Landale (13), center, during men's basketball semifinal game at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Thursday, Aug. 5, 2021, in Saitama, Japan. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
SAITAMA, Japan (AP) — For USA Basketball, some eras will end Saturday. It will be Jerry Colangelo’s last game as managing director of the men’s national team. It’ll mark the end of Gregg Popovich’s commitment as the team’s coach. Some players will likely be wearing the U.S. jersey for the final time.
Change is coming.
The Americans just don’t want it to be atop the medal stand.
France — the new official nemesis of USA Basketball — awaits the Americans in the gold-medal game on Saturday. France has won the last two meetings between the programs, denying the U.S. a chance to play for a medal at the 2019 Basketball World Cup and then winning again in both teams’ opener at the Tokyo Olympics.
“We came here with one goal and that’s to win a gold medal,” U.S. guard Damian Lillard said. “And now we’re in a position to do it.”
It would be a fourth consecutive gold for the U.S., and if secured that would mark the longest run of American dominance at an Olympics since the program won golds in each of the first seven tournaments from 1936 through 1968. Kevin Durant can join Carmelo Anthony as the only men in U.S. history with three gold medals, and Popovich — who served his country at the United States Air Force Academy and tried to play for his country at the 1972 Olympics but wasn't selected — can only add to his lengthy list of accomplishments by winning gold.
“It’s been a tough run for us, and for us to be back is exciting,” Durant said.
Later Saturday, Luka Doncic and Slovenia will meet Patty Mills and Australia for the bronze, the winning side assured of claiming its first Olympic men's basketball medal.
The summer for the Americans started with two exhibition losses, then the loss to France in the Olympic opener, and the U.S. had to pull off double-digit comebacks — 10 against Spain, 15 against Australia — in each of their last two games just to make the final.
Yet the Americans have clearly gotten better. The French, who have Rudy Gobert and Evan Fournier among others with lengthy NBA experience on their roster, agree.
“This is not the same team we played two weeks ago,” said France’s Nicolas Batum, another of the NBA players on that roster.
The only national team that has defeated the U.S. men three consecutive times at the top level of international competition — the Olympics or what is now called the World Cup, formerly the world championships — was the Soviet Union. They garnered the still-debated gold-medal win at the 1972 Olympics and then topped the Americans at worlds in 1974 and 1978.
France is one win from matching that feat.
“I think, I hope, that we will be ready Saturday,” France coach Vincent Collet said. “We know Team USA is the favorite of this final. They have been (the) favorite for the last couple games. But I hope when we play against them we sustain our fire, we sustain our energy, even if we know they are favored.”
That doesn’t seem like it’ll be a problem for the French. After France survived the semifinals against Slovenia with a 90-89 win — secured when Batum blocked a layup try with 2.4 seconds remaining — Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot was asked his thoughts on playing the U.S. for gold.
“I think it will represent something pretty special,” Luwawu-Cabarrot said, “because it’s the first one we’re going to win.”
That isn’t a level of confidence often heard before teams play the U.S., at least not in this era of sending NBA players to the Olympics. But the French have reason for that swagger right now, given the win in China then rallying to beat the Americans in the group-play opener. They believe they can win, despite being listed as double-digit underdogs.
“We all knew from the beginning what they were capable of and we know how they’ve stepped up every time during the tournament,” France’s Nando de Colo said. “We did a good game the first time, and we’ve got a lot of respect for their team. But we will play this final with a lot of confidence, and the most important thing is to stay focused on what we do as a team.”
This game marks only the second time that the U.S. will have gotten a rematch in the same Olympics against a team that defeated the Americans earlier in the tournament. The other instance came in 2004, when the U.S. lost to Lithuania in group play before winning the rematch in the bronze-medal game.
That was the tournament where the Americans realized everything had to change. Colangelo was brought in to rebuild the program, Mike Krzyzewski was hired to coach what became the first three Olympic runs and then the baton was passed to Popovich.
Colangelo has talked many times about how he’d like nothing more than to end his tenure with another gold.
France is assured of, at worst, matching its best Olympic performance; it got silvers after losing gold-medal games to the U.S. in 1948 and 2000.
The Americans — looking for a 16th gold medal in 19 Olympic appearances — don’t have that luxury. For them, only one outcome will be good enough.
“We’re here for the gold medal,” U.S. center Bam Adebayo said. “We’re not here to be second.”
More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2020-tokyo-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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The literary Club of the school aims at fostering a love for books and literature in students and promoting literary activities in our school. The wide spectrum of literary activities include creative writing, elocution , extempore speech , debate , etc. The literary club is one of the many clubs initiated by our school as part of inculcating and imbibing the importance of extracurricular activities for nurturing the personality of the students. The Literary club gives its members a suitable platform to develop and fulfil their literary talents with productive suggestions, healthy criticism and heartfelt appreciation . The club introduces the students to wider horizons of literature.
The word handicraft , more precisely means as handmade, which covers a wide variety of work where useful and decorative objects are made hand or by using only simple tools . It is a traditional main sector of art and craft and applies to a wide range of creative and designing activities that are related to individual skills . In order to bring out the innermost creativity of the students , the school has played a phenomenal role by introducing Handicraft Club., the handicraft club had been giving its best creative performance under the guidance and supervision of our very talented club in-charges. Student members belonging to various classes make hand made pillow covers ,cushions , net table cloth , cross stitch work , soft toys etc. Handicraft Club of the school has been a platform for encouraging the creative talent of its members and also the centre of innovation and creativity.
NATURE CLUB
" Our very being, essence, health and happiness depends on mother earth." David Suzuki. Nature Club student members strive to develop love for Nature so as to instill awareness of the environment in the school and our surroundings as a whole . The recent activities of the club include planting of trees , participation in the Biodiversity Fair at Sikkim and Darjeeling and general Clean Environment Programmes organized by WWF
TABLE TENNIS / BADMINTON CLUB
Students are encouraged towards awareness of the importance of physical and quality sports activities. The Table Tennis Club and Badminton Club endeavors to promote the overall development of the team building, team spirit and love for sports. The table Tennis Club and Badminton Club has been performing outstandingly and has performed exceedingly well at the school level tournaments under the guidance and motivation of the club in-charges. The Table Tennis Club and Badminton Club is gaining popularity among the students.
BAND CLUB
“Music is the soul of this universe that speaks the language without words that touches every heart. Neither boundaries nor language can restrict and restrain the flow of music that keeps echoing and keeps the universe alive and lively. ” Well structured theoretical classes and a lesson plans are initiated to hone the students’ minds towards rhythm, melodies and harmonics, the essential components of pipe band. The Band club of Sunrise School is highly appreciated by all and today our band is acclaimed as one of the best bands of Darjeeling and specially, it being the only pipe band in the Lebong valley, the people of this region have a kind of unbreakable bond with our pipe band.
Academic learning and sports education are complementary to each other. They resemble two faces of same coin. Both are very important for all round development of students and must go hand in hand. Only when this is accomplished does a student come out of school as a better citizen which the society of present aspires for. Of all these clubs, particularly the football club has been giving the students every opportunity to make their names in the field. From its inception the school has been taking part in every event being organized by different schools as well as by ‘The Football Association of Darjeeling.’ In the field of football, the school has achieved many laurels and have won many trophies during the competition with rigorous practice and dedication.
The science club envisions to develop scientific temperament among the youngsters and to promote science based activities that are useful in everyday life. The club seeks to fulfill these objectives through the following activities: a) Organizing students science exhibitions/ fairs. b) Inviting science communications as resource persons to give talks/workshops. c) Disseminate information on “Science in everyday life” among students.
DRAMATIC CLUB
Sunrise School from the beginning has produced very good artists who have been able to excel in the field of music, dance and drama. The dramatic club offers all kinds of support for the beginners who wish to learn the art and inspire them to be professionals in the field
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Rachel McAdams is Back for ‘Doctor Strange’ Sequel
Deadline is reporting that Rachel McAdams has been tapped to return for the Doctor Strange sequel as Christine Palmer, putting an end to speculation surrounding the character’s involvement in the film. Variety previously reported that McAdams would not return to the role.
The MCU isn’t known for how well it handles superheroic romances, with the exception of a handful o them so it wasn’t surprising to initially hear that McAdams wasn’t returning. With a scale as massive as the Multiverse, it was pretty hard to imagine how Doctor Strange’s romance with Christine would fit. Add to that the speculation on the possibility of a new female lead character like Clea popping up. Whatever the case is now that Sam Raimi has taken over the movie, it’s clear they got McAdams back for a good reason.
Source: Deadline
Charles Villanueva
I’m a professional slacker who spends most of my days designing, video editing, playing music. I can be found arguing with my friends to show how much of an MCU pundit I am. I’m also responsible for those darn MCU Supercuts.
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Category Archives: Pharaoh Sanders
For Pharaoh Sanders’ 75th Birthday, An Interview with Him and Kenny Garrett From 2004
Pharaoh Sanders turned 75 yesterday, and for the occasion I’m posting a slightly edited interview that I conducted with him and Kenny Garrett (they were then beginning the collaboration that produced the fine recordings Beyond The Wall and Sketches of MD: (Live at the Iridium) for a DownBeat cover story.
Kenny Garrett-Pharaoh Sanders (12-2-04):
TP: How did the collaboration begin? Who made the first overtures? How long have you known Kenny and how long has Kenny known you?
PHARAOH: I haven’t known Kenny personally really that long. I always liked the sound of his music, his concept. Kenny loves to play all the time, and one night when I was working at Iridium he brought his horn and asked me could he sit in. I said, ‘Kenny Garrett? Yeah.’ From that point on, whenever I’d come in town, he’d come by to sit in if he had some time. Sometimes he wouldn’t bring his horn, and I’d tell him, “Man, bring your horn next time.” The agent saw what was happening, and started putting things together.
TP: Why did you think it would work?
PHARAOH: Not so much his style of playing, but his concept of the music. Also, he’s very comfortable around me, and that made me feel comfortable around him. When he sat in, I saw what he’d do the band, and I really liked it. He opened up a lot of things in my head. So the idea of us working together was right on time. I’ll put it that way.
TP: What sorts of things did Kenny bring out of you, or is bringing out of you now?
PHARAOH: We talked about systems of multiphonics, how to get more than one note at one time. He’s into different fingerings and harmonics, and does that very well, and he knew that I was doing similar stuff, things that must horn players would never get into. He brought me a book that I’m still trying to get into. I’ve done my own concept, my own way that fits me, and we each have things we like to do. So we’d listen to each other and try to figure out what it was.
TP: I guess you figured those things out for yourself in the ‘60s.
PHARAOH: Yeah, from playing. I got into it back in Oakland, California, from a music instructor named Professor Penn. I heard how Ornette Coleman could do two notes at one time, and I asked him about it. He educated me a little bit—not that much—about overtones and the harmonics. From that point on, I just went for myself, what I heard.
TP: Parenthetically, overtones and multiphonics became part of musical parlance during the days of jump bands and rhythm-and-blues bands and blues bands, in which saxophonists were what used to be called colloquially “honkers and squealers.” Was that part of your early experience in Little Rock or when you went to California?
PHARAOH: Part of my experience when I moved from from Little Rock to Oakland. At the time, although I liked what I heard, I don’t think I was ready to perfect overtones and multiphonics, because I was still into trying to study the other elements. I hadn’t learned chord progressions, or how to create arpeggios, or all my scales. Then I learned a bit how to play on the piano. Before I came to New York, I was playing in clubs around in Oakland and Frisco, playing a lot of ballads and Charlie Parker music.
TP: One commonality I see between you and Kenny is that you’re both interested in extending the technique of your instruments as far as you can, but it always seems to be towards purposes of melody and communication, so that it isn’t done for its own sake, but towards a purpose.
PHARAOH: I don’t even think of the tenor when I’m playing. I’m not so much into saxophone technique as another person might think. I look at all of it—drums, harps. I don’t know what my concept might be at the time. It really depends on what tune we’re playing, and that’s what I try to convey through my horn, whatever instrument I hear, or whatever sound I hear.
TP: I’ve seen raucous houses go silent on one decrescendoing note as you wind down a set. Sound seems so important to your tonal personality.
PHARAOH: Well, it is. It just seems like there’s no end to my trying to perfect what I’m trying to do. That’s the way I look at it. And Kenny reminds me of myself a lot. He don’t seem to be satisfied just on what he does. It sounds so great to me, but it always seems like he can make it better.
TP: Another common thread is that neither of you is afraid to be populist. After you played with Coltrane, you attracted a wide audience with Creator Has A Master Plan with Leon Thomas, and in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s you did things like Journey To The One and Rejoice, with choruses and African percussion. And Kenny incorporates the music of his youth, Funk and R&B.
PHARAOH: Kenny does what he does very well. I don’t even call it funky. It’s just Kenny to me. There’s so many different ways to express yourself. And if a person wants to call it funk… I’m not into categories.
TP: My point is more that both of you are so focused on technique and extracting everything you can from of your instrument, and yet the ultimate purpose is to communicate, you never lose sight of melody, and you appeal to a wide audience.
PHARAOH: I always try to figure out, every night, when there’s people in a place, how to play what they want to hear, but NOT play what they want to hear! [LAUGHS] I got tired of trying to program a first tune, second tune and so on. I just start playing, and whatever happens at that moment is what’s existing at the time. But I always feel like I’m the audience and the player. If I don’t like what I’m doing, then I don’t need nothing else.
TP: Do you see the saxophone as an extension of your voice?
PHARAOH: That’s what I work on. I’m still trying to learn how to play a straight sound, play the pitch straight. When I’m playing, I worry whether every note is close to being in tune, about the way I attack the notes, the concept of how I feel—I mean, the whole spirit of the thing. If I’ve got a bad reed, I can’t be what I want to be. Some reeds give you a resistance where you can play, but when you find a reed that’s going to curl up, just dead, and then your sound will be like that. I don’t like to play until I find a good one.
TP: Was that also an issue for you back in the ’60s when you were playing with John Coltrane?
PHARAOH: Yes, that was a problem then. I didn’t know John had that problem, too. I used to wonder if it was just me. But I saw John throw reeds right on the floor if it wasn’t happening. I used to wonder sometimes: Why did I have to play saxophone? I could have played trumpet, and not have to worry about a reed every night.
TP: What got you started on saxophone? School band?
PHARAOH: I played bass clarinet in the school band. They didn’t want no saxophone. And when I played clarinet, I always wanted more of a soft, mellow flute sound rather than a squeaky sound. I used to tune the whole band up when we played festivals and concerts. When I heard a James Moody tune called “Hard To Get,” I started tipping off on the alto saxophone, but I was still thinking clarinet.
TP: Was that on your own, or in bands?
PHARAOH: That was on my own. Well, I was playing on blues jobs in Arkansas. I started playing tenor because there were lots of alto players in my town, and I felt like tenor was more my instrument.
TP: Were there any stylists you were focusing on then?
PHARAOH: I liked Charlie Parker, but no one had his music. So all I could listen to at that time was James Moody, who I always loved, and also Count Basie, “April In Paris” and tunes like that. That was about it until I left.
TP: Then you went to Oakland, and there was that very active Bay Area scene. I remember reading that you’d head out at 9 at night and come back at noon the next day, and hit all the different spots.
PHARAOH: I was staying with my aunt. I think they thought I was a bit crazy, kind of out, because I didn’t want to work on a day job. “He doesn’t want to work.” I wanted to work, but it seemed like the music was first with me. Every time I’d go to the employment office and try to find work, I would sit there for a minute, and leave. I just wasn’t into it.
[KENNY GARRETT, WHO HAD BEEN DELAYED BY TRAFFIC, ARRIVES]
KENNY: I’d like to say first that it’s an honor and blessing to be able to stand on the same bandstand with Pharaoh. I mean, Pharaoh sat on the same bandstand with John Coltrane. I try to stand as close to my understanding of the truth as possible, and Pharaoh is that to me. I just wanted to put that on the record, since Pharaoh is sitting here, and I never told him that. I think he knows anyway.
Every time Pharaoh played in New York, I tried to come down. A lot of younger musicians sleep on people like Pharaoh and George Coleman, who set the pathway. I’ve always tried to hear the guys I admire, no matter where I am in my career, because I feel it’s very important to stay in contact with that. Now, I’ve always incorporated hip-hop, funk and jazz in my music, and that’s still there when I play with Pharaoh. But the tenor has a fatter sound than the alto, and being on the bandstand with Pharaoh makes me think of other sonic possibilities. Pharaoh also shows me that I can do things differently—make that note a little bigger or sing it a little more. He brings me closer to what it is I’m trying to get to.
PHARAOH: As I said before, it seems like Kenny’s the performer and he’s the audience. That’s what comes out in his music, and people react to it. I start dancing myself! I love connecting with the audience, because you can do what you want. If they’re open. It depends on what night.
TP: This is a difficult business. And Kenny, you’re a road warrior. You’re out a lot.
KENNY: Yeah, I try to stay out. My generation doesn’t get the opportunity to play at the Five Spot for six months or a year, so I think it’s important for me to play as much as possible. When I think about Monk or Trane or Miles, guys who played all the time, they were better able to cultivate their talent or concepts.
TP: How are you approaching this quintet’s presentation?
KENNY: We’re just playing, still trying to figure out how to set it up. We both have an idea of what we want to play, and then collectively we try to find tunes we’re comfortable with. Sometimes, on my own set, after we’ve played all the high-energy music, I like to play a ballad or something that takes your mind off that a little bit. There are some people who are hearing jazz for the first time, and a little groove never hurt. I try to picture myself as a listener. I like to hear cats play all night, but I also want to have something that I can nod my head to. I’m interested in a variety of things, and I try to challenge myself. So I play with people like Q-Tip, Guru, and Jazzmatazz, or play Adagio for Strings with the New Jersey Symphony, or play Charlie Parker’s music with Roy Haynes. Then you learn things about yourself and about that music, and you can present that in the next situation.
TP: Pharaoh said that you talk a lot about multiphonics, and that you presented him with a book on the subject, while his approach is homegrown. Did Pharaoh influence you in this area?
KENNY: Definitely. Actually, it’s something that Pharaoh plays that goes BAHT-BAH-DAH—BAHHHH! I was trying to figure out how he did it, and I went home and figured out a system for myself. So I got into it the same way Pharaoh did—searching. Then an Italian saxophone player showed me a book on it, and I dropped the book on him.
TP: All sorts of interesting dynamics occur in any improvising situation. Pharaoh started off as an alto and clarinet player before coming to tenor. Last night, you were so far down on the horn that if my eyes were closed, I might have thought you were playing tenor saxophone.
KENNY: Someone else said that last night. I do play a little farther down in the horn because I like the sound, but maybe it’s more obvious alongside the tenor that I’m playing that style. Plus, I’ve been playing my C-melody, which is a combination of a tenor and an alto, so that’s a little confusing, too.
TP: When Kenny walked in, Pharaoh was discussing his influences, and he mentioned that he got to Charlie Parker through James Moody’s Octet, which toured the South a lot when he was a teenager.
PHARAOH: I started playing the alto at that time. I wasn’t hearing as much as I should have, because in Little Rock there wasn’t much to hear except blues on the radio. Also, I wasn’t able to practice at home that much, so I had to go somewhere else. Whatever I learned came from my teacher, Jimmy Cannon, who was a trumpet player. He brought records to the school, and as he played them I’d ask who it was. That’s how I started listening to Miles and Lucky Thompson, who was a great tenor saxophonist, and Trane, Rollins, and Harold Land. He liked Clifford Brown and talked about him a lot, so later on I bought Clifford Brown’s record with strings, and tried to figure it out. One thing led to another.
KENNY: My earliest influences were Hank Crawford and Grover Washington, and Cannonball Adderley’s commercial recordings, like “Mercy, Mercy, Me.” As I checked out Cannonball more, I found that he actually played straight-ahead. I couldn’t believe it was the same guy. I’m from Detroit, and everybody was checking out Charlie Parker, but all the tenor players were playing like Dexter and all the alto players were playing like Jackie McLean. to play more like Bird, trying to understand… [END OF SIDE A]
…and he used to play along in the lower part of the register—he used to love that. So I heard that, and as I got older, I used to go back and listen to that record to see he what was so impressive about that. I actually got a chance to play with Joe Henderson before he passed away on Black Hope and on a Mulgrew Miller record called Hand In Hand. I also listened to a lot of trumpet players because I loved the strength of the sound. I had an opportunity to play with Cootie Williams in Mercer Ellington’s band, and Marcus Belgrave was my teacher and mentor. I also played with Freddie Hubbard, Donald Byrd, Woody Shaw, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, and Tom Harrell. Freddie particularly inspired me a lot; I always wanted to try to match his feel and his energy.
I felt the same thing when I first heard Coltrane. In fact, there’s a story that I should tell. When I was in high school, I used to play John Coltrane’s soprano, although I never KNEW it was his soprano! Because I went to school with his nephew, who used say, “My uncle is John Coltrane.” I never believed him.” Then one day Ravi called me and said, “My cousin Daryl is here with me.” I didn’t say anything. I just thought about that soprano. I wish I’d known. I would have tried to keep that horn. Maybe those vibrations would have rubbed off!
TP: Another thing you have in common is that you both started working early. Kenny could have gone to college, like a lot of your contemporaries, but you didn’t. When Pharaoh was coming up, college was less common. To use a cliche, you learned on the university of the streets.
PHARAOH: I started playing drums first. Man, I should have kept on playing drums. But I wanted me a horn, so I bought a clarinet from a guy that went to church. He wanted $17 for it. So I gave him 20 cents every other Sunday until I could buy this clarinet. I thought that was the world, for me to get this clarinet. But it was a metal clarinet. But at the time it was okay for me. The older musicians used to tell me, “You got to get your sound. You got to get the right mouthpiece. The right horn.” I was always trying to figure out how could I get a Selmer tenor. In my time, a Selmer was about $500, and that was like saying a million dollars to me. I never even had a hundred dollars in my life! I had some friends at home who let me use a King alto and a Buescher tenor, but I wasn’t comfortable because I had to take care of the instrument—don’t mess it up. I still had my clarinet, though I didn’t want to play it. My father looked at me and at that horn, and said, “That’s not nothin’. Get you a job.” I had to go to a friend’s house to get in an hour or two practice, or there’d be some conflict. practice in. Still, I was always wanted my school to have a good band, and for the guys to play right and read stuff right.
TP: Kenny, you could have gone to college, but you joined Mercer Ellington right out of high school. Was this altogether a good thing? Were there pros and cons?
KENNY: It was all pros to me. Basically, the harmony that I learned, I discovered by myself. I use different nomenclature. If I sat down with a professor, they might say, “Well, that’s what we call this,” and I’ll say, “Well, this is what I call this.” I remember talking to Herbie Hancock, and he said, “Well, everybody calls the different chords different names.”
To me, if I had gone to Berklee, I wouldn’t have had an opportunity to play with Cootie Williams, who came out of retirement. Or to sit with Harold Minerve, who was a lead alto player who was a protégé of Johnny Hodges. I was able to catch the last part of the big band era, and play in organ trios. So I look on all of it as a blessing, because it makes me who I am now.
TP: Did the older musicians talk to you the same way as Pharaoh experienced, that you have to have a sound of your own?
KENNY: Actually, my father told me that. I remember one day we were at the Dairy Queen on Mack and Michigan, and he said, “Who is this on the radio?” I didn’t know. He said, “Well, everybody has a sound.” It was Stanley Turrentine. After that, I think I subconsciously started thinking about a sound. I didn’t realize I had a sound, though, until I was about 18 when I heard a tape and recognized myself. Once I realized that my sound was a bit different, then I started trying to cultivate it.
TP: Is the sound that you now project the sound that you had in your mind’s ear when you were just starting out? Or did it develop on its own?
KENNY: I think for me it was a combination of both. I definitely was conscious about the sound I wanted—and am still searching for! Every day I think about that perfect sound, if there is a perfect sound. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that I might not find the PERFECT sound, but I have something that’s uniquely mine. So I just accept that as a gift from the Creator. Of course, I’m always searching. I have different mouthpieces, and I’ll say, “okay, that has this element in it, but not this other element I’m looking for.”When you get the right combination, you know it, and you can play whatever you want to play. All the ideas just flow out.
PHARAOH: I know what Kenny’s saying. He reminds me so much of John Coltrane. John would ask me after a night working, “How did that mouthpiece sound?” “It sounds great, John. It sounds like it’s been sounding.” One time I was working on a mouthpiece, and I knew John would like it. He tried it out at Birdland, and afterwards he said, “Man, I’ve got to have this.” I thought that maybe I should work on all of them like that. Later on, he called and told me, “I’m not getting the same sound all over my horn, so it doesn’t seem like it’s going to work for me.” The bottom was cool, but the upper register was sort of thin. I’d filed five of those mouthpieces. So stopped working on mouthpieces, because I was messing up.
There’s no end to looking for the best sound or tone you can get. I don’t even know what I’m looking for! Once Big Nick Nicholas told me, “I told Rollins and them cats to open up the keys so you can get some sound.” So I started raising up my keys. But that put a defect on the technique. My fingers would get stuck between the keys; they were just too high. I decided to have the keys on one horn raised up high, but not the others. that. The horn I’m playing on right now is raised up high. Because I use a very small layer mouthpiece, that kind of helps me to center the sound, so I can play louder. But if I used the same mouthpiece on an instrument where the keys are normal height, I wouldn’t get that much sound out of it.
TP: Kenny, is there anything you’d personally like to ask Pharaoh for purposes of this conversation?
KENNY: I’ve always wondered what it felt like to stand on the bandstand with John Coltrane and hear that beautiful sound. What went through your mind? Because when I’m standing next to Pharaoh, what’s going through my mind is, “Oh, he has such a beautiful sound.”
PHARAOH: I always felt that what I was doing wasn’t happening at all. I’ve heard a lot of saxophone players play in person. And I played clarinet, and always felt I had a pretty good sound. But playing with John on the bandstand, it seemed he’d been through that and was just a little bit ahead of us, in a way. I tried to figure out what is it he does to the combination of the mouthpiece and the reed to get that gutty kind of sound. But I heard him play on all kinds of mouthpieces, and it still comes out. On the bandstand, it seemed like his sound wasn’t so much like a saxophone sound. Whatever he did was coming from inside. It was more like a personal voice or something on every note. It seemed like the sound had more meat, more of everything that I’m looking for. I didn’t want to SOUND like that, but I was trying to figure out how was he able to go beyond. I know I’m fingering the same note. But I’m not getting nearly what he gets out of it.
That made me start to search for different ways to finger certain notes. I play, say, middle-C so many different ways, with so many different fingerings, and I still don’t know which ones to use. When I’m playing on a ballad, I use a certain fingering to make it more like a quality sound. Then it goes on and on. I’ve tried many mouthpieces, and I’m still not happy about the sound. I have to keep working on it. Sometimes Kenny comes to me and says, “Oh, that’s a good sound.” When he leaves the room, I want to know what he’s hearing! To me, I’m trying to be the listener, to figure out what the good sound is. Is it because the sound is more resonant? It’s cutting through? I go up and down, up and down. I’m still not satisfied.
KENNY: Miles used to talk about when he was playing with Charlie Parker, that he thought he wasn’t ready and so on. But usually the leader hears something. I would like Pharaoh to tell me what he thinks John Coltrane heard in him, what he was looking for.
PHARAOH: I don’t know! [LAUGHS] It seemed like he’d challenge the horn, trying to get all he could get out it. One time he asked me, “Can you do a low A?” I think Earl Bostic could do that just with his lips. And he used to talk about the lower B-flat on the horn. I guess he was looking to go another step down, to get whatever he could out of the instrument for his expression. But I haven’t yet got to the point yet of trying to find out what he found in me. I used to do a lot of things on my horn that I know he wasn’t doing, and he would ask me how was I fingering this or that. I couldn’t even tell him. I’d have to do it just right on the spot. A lot of my stuff comes from the inside. Especially for the lower notes, I try to get a raw, like, riled sound by humming into the horn, or harmonize it some kind of way, to just change the textures. Not all the time. Just sometimes. Or maybe make another harmonic so you say, “What’s he doing?” It wasn’t any kind of fingering.
TP: It sounds like your character must have appealed to Coltrane, just as Kenny’s appeals to you. Your perpetual dissatisfaction with the status quo and always trying to advance and find something new—perhaps that was part of it.
PHARAOH: I know Kenny tries to find all kinds of way to develop his sound. That reminds me of John. John was a different than any other musician I know. I’m trying to figure out what he was hearing, and it’s hard to say. I do know he heard something.
TP: Is this collaboration going to continue?
PHARAOH: It will, but not now.
KENNY: I hope it does continue. There are only a few people who I want to sit down on the bandstand with, and Pharaoh is definitely one of them. Also, it’s a learning thing for me, too. It’s not only about being a leader. And as I learn, I hope that I’m also giving, that I’m saying, “Okay, this is another approach.” When I hear him, I think, “Oh, wow, that’s exactly what I was feeling.” I just can’t do that at this point! It’s a lot of fun to play with him, because there’s mutual respect. I know Pharaoh is going to play, and I’m going to play; we come to play music and have a good time.
Filed under DownBeat, Kenny Garrett, Pharaoh Sanders
Tagged as Kenny Garrett, Pharaoh Sanders
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Posts Tagged ‘Dachau’
April 29th, 1945. The Liberation of Dachau.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Boxcars of Dead at Dachau, concentration camps, Dachau, education, Hillersleben, history, history education, Hitler's Hat, Holocaust, Holocaust survivor-liberator reunion, Holocaust Survivors, Liberators, narrative history, oral history, Richard Marowitz, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, World War II, World War II Living History Project on April 26, 2012|
“On April 30, 1945, Jewish-American G.I. Richard Marowitz stormed into Hitler’s bedroom looking for anything he could bring back to headquarters.
Richard Marowitz of Albany , NY was on the scene for the liberation of Dachau. The following day he was at Hitler’s villa in Munich. Here is his story as told to Matthew Rozell and a group of students at Hudson Falls High School ten years ago. Marowitz is a Jewish war veteran. Read the postscript to learn more about Hitler’s hat.
Richard M. Marowitz-42nd Rainbow Division-
The Liberation of Dachau
–interviewed at Hudson Falls High School.
On the 29th of April 1945, my platoon was called into the command post, we were in a little village, I don’t remember the name of it, but it was probably about 25-30 miles from Dachau. We were given new maps which showed Dachau, and we were told that the 20th Armored were already on the road to Dachau and our job was to take off and get to the tail end of the 20th Armored and be liaison between the 20th Armored and the infantry that would be coming down behind us in two and a half ton trucks, which is kind of idiotic but that’s the way the army was. The reason for that was we were having a race with the 3rd Division on one side of us, and the 45th Division on the other side of us, and they wanted the 42nd to win the race. So we took off on the road going very quickly like we usually do – if we came to a tree, the woods, or a village, we would stop and reconnoiter and find out if it was ok to go through without getting killed – and we kept getting pushed on the radio, ‘where are you,’ ‘what are your Greek coordinates,’ and ‘what’s taking so long? We are going to lose the race.’ After awhile of this kind of nonsense, Lieutenant Short stopped us and he said we to have to make a choice, either we’re going to have to step on the gas and go like hell and let surprise be on our side, or we’re going to lose the race and then everybody is going to get mad at us. So we decided to step on the gas and go like hell, which is what we did. In the process, we ran into a whole lot of little hornet’s nests – it would have made a movie you wouldn’t have believed anyways – for example, we cut a German convoy in half that was going across a road that we were on, firing as we went through they didn’t know what happened because we weren’t supposed to be there and they were driving off the road. We did the same thing with another convoy that was going on a road in the opposite direction and parallel to ours, and we just fired on them as we went. We came upon a village, and somebody fired on us and we went up on a small knoll next to the road and we dragged all the junk we had accumulated on the bottom of our jeeps like bazookas, mortars, etc. We fired on them and they probably thought they hit the front of the division. There’s no way they could’ve assumed it was only 28 men. Lieutenant Short stood up, honest to God, he actually said this: “Three men assault the town.” Three of us went in, Larry, myself and Howard Hughes, that’s his real name – great BAR man, Browning automatic rifle …and we claimed the first few houses, we accumulated 160, 170, 180 prisoners who looked around expecting to find more of us. We broke up their weapons, told them to put their hands on their heads and walk back up the road. They looked at us like were crazy; we looked back like we weren’t. We went through another village and a German fired a panzerfaust, which is like a German bazooka, it landed on the other side of us and blew us out of the jeep. We dispatched quickly and we got back in the jeep and took off again. These are the kinds of things that happened on the way to Dachau.
When we got close to Dachau, you see there are a lot of smells in war, you smell the death smell all the time, but it’s usually farm animals who were rotting in the fields who were killed, rotting or whatever. As we got closer to Dachau, we got this awful smell and we assumed it was farm animals, that we were going to pass a farm, or whatever. We finally got to the outskirts of Dachau and were pinned down. Dachau was a favorite camp of the Germans, their first major camp, it was in Germany. They didn’t want to give it up the other camps were walkovers. The Germans just left them, and that was it. But in this case at Dachau, they didn’t want to give it up too easily, there were a lot of SS guys around. They were dropping some SS on us, and a lot of snipers – at one point an American tank came out of Dachau. We were stuck in the ditch at that point, we stood up and realized we made a mistake when the gun came down on us – but at that instant, an American tank destroyer came up behind us and blew the tank away. It happened to be an American tank that had been captured by the Germans and the guys in the tank destroyer knew that we didn’t have any tanks in there so therefore it had to be a captured tank. I kissed a tank destroyer that day.
At that point, they told us to clean out the snipers and then proceeded to go into the camp. At the outskirts of that camp, we went into a house – we banged on it, it was like a little small farm on the outskirts. The door opened and there was a mother, a father, a daughter and a dog. The mother had buckteeth, the father had buckteeth, the daughter had buckteeth, and when I looked down and saw that the dog had buckteeth, I was just hysterical. It was the funniest sight, I was tense you know, and I could use anything at that point for a laugh. Of course the other guys looked at me like I was nuts! Anyway, we did find some snipers – one we did away with that was firing away from a house nearby. After we silenced him, we went up to see who it was. He was eleven or twelve years old, one of the Hitler youth, who were actually worse than the SS. They were just so brainwashed … we ran into a lot of those kids in their short pants.
On the siding, you saw pictures of it in the slides, outside of the camp, adjacent to the camp, there were actually forty boxcars of bodies and
American soldiers of the U.S. 7th Army, force boys believed to be Hitler youth, to examine boxcars containing bodies of prisoners starved to death by the SS. USHMM
we found one man alive in that forty…there are some pictures of that one man, I don’t know whether he survived or not. The prisoners were just walking skeletons, and they just dropped where they were and died. There were piles of bodies, of bodies that had been gassed and readied for the ovens. Some of them still lived because those boxcars were brought to Dachau to burn those bodies. It was a total mess. And the smell was not a farm; it was Dachau that we had smelled miles before we got there. And yet, people in the village who were right next to the camps said they didn’t know what was going on. People in Munich, which was actually only nine miles from Dachau, didn’t know what was going on. Now if you want to believe that, the Brooklyn Bridge is still for sale.
I never went back and I don’t intend to, I don’t feel like I want to. But it is almost impossible to describe the feelings, so I’m not going to try. But when you looked around some of these tough soldiers were throwing up and crying all over the place. It is not possible to really describe the number of feelings you get when you walk into something like that. Because that’s a scene that … well, first of all nobody told us about the camp! We had no idea what a concentration camp did. We were going to Dachau, period. It was another village as far as we were concerned. That’s kind of a shock to get all at one time.
Interview recorded on May 3, 2002.
See Rich and I in a 2014 NBC LEARN video here.
“On April 29, 1945, the 42nd Rainbow Division 222nd I&R platoon entered the gates of Dachau. One of many units sent to liberate the death camp, they saw first-hand the horrors of Hitler’s death machine.
The next day, 12 men of the I&R were ordered to search Adolph Hitler’s Munich apartment for military intelligence. Jewish-American G.I. Richard Marowitz, self-appointed wiseacre of the unit, stormed into Hitler’s bedroom looking for anything he could bring back to headquarters.
All he found was a black top hat.
Still angered by what he had seen at Dachau, Marowitz flew into a rage and jumped on the hat, crushing it, imagining Hitler’s head still inside. Then Marowitz, known for his comic antics even under stress, put Hitler’s crushed hat on his head and marched through the apartment with his best imitation of Charlie Chaplin doing Hitler from The Great Dictator. Tense from the day before, the I&R unit cracked up. Years later Marowitz found out that the same day he stomped Hitler’s hat, the Führer committed suicide in his bunker.
Marowitz returned home to Albany, N.Y., with the ultimate war souvenir stuffed into his duffel bag. He became a clothing manufacturer and professional magician and rarely talked about his war experiences. For the next 50 years, Hitler’s hat fittingly sat in a brown paper bag, buried at the bottom of his magic trick closet.
Following Marowitz to a Rainbow Division reunion, Hitler’s Hat interviews his I&R unit buddies to retell the story of Hitler’s hat. Daring and innovative, the documentary presents a rare mix of humor and history in an original take on World War II.”
“The Story of Hitler’s Hat”, http://www.jeffkrulik.com/hitlershat/index.html
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Browse the 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand
This information was published in 1966 in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock. It has not been corrected and will not be updated.
Up-to-date information can be found elsewhere in Te Ara.
AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES
Agricultural and Pastoral Associations
Dominion Conferences
The Royal Agricultural Society
Winter Shows
The Appeal of Shows
Submitted by admin on April 22, 2009 - 20:52
To many people a show suggests “all the fun of the fair”; and at all the shows there is entertainment of infinite variety; but there are other things equally fascinating–the educational exhibits of the Agriculture and other State Departments, the trade displays of private firms, and the latest models of machinery. About 100 or more centres give country people at least once a year the chance to display their products (live and dead) to townsfolk, and in return give a chance to townspeople to satisfy their interest in the essential job of farming. This is important, for the visitor to one of our metropolitan shows may see, among other interesting things, a cross section of the New Zealand people.
by Leonard John Wild, C.B.E., M.A., B.SC.(HON.), D.SC., formerly Pro-Chancellor of the University of New Zealand, Otaki.
How to cite this page: 'The Appeal of Shows', from An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock, originally published in 1966.
URL: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/1966/agricultural-societies/page-5 (accessed 17 Jan 2022)
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NZHistory.net.nz
28th Māori Battalion
Vietnam War Oral History
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THE RICHMOND CHINESE SCHOOL
光華中文學校
therichmondchineseschool@gmail.com
6100 Patterson Ave, Richmond, VA 23226
You cannot open a book without learning something. 開卷有益
The Richmond Chinese School is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the central Virginia community in Chinese language and culture. The school holds classes on Sundays at the Westhampton Methodist Church from 2-4 PM, followed by an optional hour of culture classes. We offer different levels of language classes and a variety of culture classes.
Get Started NowInquiry
Welcome To The Richmond Chinese School
The Richmond Chinese School originated in the fall of 1973 from a modest class of seven students in Mrs. Judith Chu’s home. In February 1976, the school was officially established in the classrooms at St. Michael’s School. The twenty-eight students and four teachers adopted textbooks used in Taiwan to learn reading, writing, and speaking in Chinese. In addition to language classes, they also learned Chinese cultures such as Chinese traditional songs and dance.
Number of Classrooms
Distinguished Teachers
+ Total Enrollment Since 1973
Message from RCS
Recent developments of the 2019-nCov Virus “Coronavirus” has prompted us to take increased measure of precaution. While BSD continues to monitor the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and King County Public Health for guidance, we believe that there are actions we can take now to help us protect ourselves and the children.
It is extremely important that families be on alert and work with us during the next few months. If you have traveled to or have been in contact with anyone who has traveled to China recently, we ask that you thoroughly observe and assess yourselves for symptoms that may arise, keeping in mind the incubation range of 2-14 days. If you can keep your children at home during the incubation period to monitor for symptoms, we will excuse your absences under “medical leave.” We highly recommend that everyone takes extra precautions for our community’s sake. If you still plan to travel to China in the coming months, we recommend that you provide a doctor’s note before returning to school
Here are other recommended actions:
If families have had, or currently have, visitors from China, students should have their temperature monitored at home.
If members of your family have recently been in an airport, students should also have their temperature monitored at home.
If any signs or symptoms are present or develop, students should be checked by a doctor. These symptoms include:
fever (over 100)
a general feeling of being unwell
Be diligent with hand-washing hygiene (frequently using soap and water for no less than 20 seconds) outside of school as any additional measures of prevention within the community are helpful.
For the past forty years, the Richmond Chinese School has had an enormous impact on both the Chinese and non-Chinese communities in central Virginia for promoting diversity and educating those who were interested in learning the Chinese language and culture. The success of the school was made possible because of the dedication of those who served as board members, principals, teachers, and volunteers. We are looking forward to another forty years of providing great services to our communities.
Class Location: 6100 Patterson Ave Richmond VA United States 23226
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 5692, Glen Allen, VA 23058
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Evangelical Leader Preaches Pullback From Politics, Culture Wars
Russell Moore, the principal public voice of the Southern Baptist Convention, warns evangelicals not to become ‘mascots for any political faction.’ Melissa Golden for The Wall Street Journal
For years, as the principal public voice for the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s biggest evangelical group, Richard Land warned of a “radical homosexual agenda” and pushed for a federal ban on same-sex marriage.
His successor, Russell Moore, sounded a different note when the Supreme Court in June struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act. “Love your gay and lesbian neighbors,” Mr. Moore wrote in a flier, “How Should Your Church Respond,” sent to the convention’s estimated 45,000 churches. “They aren’t part of an evil conspiracy.” Marriage, he added, was a bond between a man and a woman, but shouldn’t be seen as a “‘culture war’ political issue.”
Full story available at: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324755104579072722223166570
Russell Moore Clarifies Misleading WSJ Article
Dr. Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, clarified some misleading information from a profile of him in The Wall Street Journal, and praised his predecessor, Dr. Richard Land, in a Wednesday interview with The Christian Post.
The Wall Street Journal article was titled, “Evangelical Leader Preaches Pullback From Politics, Culture Wars.” In the article, reporter Neil King Jr. appeared to suggest that Moore, who was recently inaugurated to head the SBC’s public policy advocacy group, wanted Southern Baptists to be less involved in politics, while adding that Moore is not “seeking to return the Southern Baptists to a past in which it shunned politics entirely.”
Moore clarified, though, that he thinks Christians should be more involved, not less involved, in politics, and he is also concerned with how they are involved…
Full story: http://www.christianpost.com/news/russell-moore-clarifies-misleading-wsj-article-praises-predecessors-prophetic-voice-107387/
PreviousKY Senate Passes Bill to Teach Bible in Public Schools
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A Rahab Stands
Liberals’ quest to ‘rehabilitate’ Christians
Pastors must run for office to save America’s soul
Opinion: Ohio school district agrees to keep portrait of Jesus off wall, pay $95G fine
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Ep. 311 Transcript: Stelliums in Astrology: Interpreting Planetary Clusters
The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 311, titled:
Stelliums in Astrology: Interpreting Planetary Clusters
With Chris Brennan and Patrick Watson
Episode originally released on July 21, 2021
Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
Transcribed by Mary Sharon
Transcription released July 30, 2021
Copyright © 2021 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. Today is Monday, July 12th, 2021, starting at 5:43 PM in Denver, Colorado. And this is the 311th episode of the show. In this episode we will be talking with astrologer Patrick Watson about the concept of stelliums in astrology and what it means to have a cluster of planets in a specific sign or a specific house in your chart. Hey Patrick, welcome back to the podcast.
PATRICK WATSON: Thank you so much for having me again.
CB: It’s been, what? A couple months since our episode on ephemeris, ephemerides? Whatever it is.
PW: Yeah, yes.
CB: Yes. June or May? Okay. So, we’re back. This is a big episode I’ve been threatening to do for years and I have been very serious about doing since the beginning of this year. But I think it’s finally time and I’m excited to do this episode because this is a topic that lots of people are curious about, lots of people have questions about and have asked me to cover. But I think I needed the right combination of two astrologers with Scorpio stelliums to really pull off this episode. So I’m excited that you’ve decided to join me.
PW: Me too.
CB: Okay. All right. Let’s jump right into it. For those watching, especially the YouTube version, this is going to be a deep dive into the concept of stelliums. Obviously this is going to be a quick video as you can tell by the length of the time reading in the bottom corner. But what going to make up for in the length is by going into depth and looking at a bunch of example charts. We’re going to first start by talking about the concept of stelliums, what it means, how it’s defined, some of the different debates amongst astrologers about what constitutes a stellium. And then we’re going to get into looking at some example charts, actually a bunch of example charts. So you can actually see how this technique works out in practice. So that is the plan. Why don’t we get into it first by defining what a stellium is? And stelliums, to me, are typically defined as a cluster of three or four or more planets that are in the same sign of the zodiac or in the same house. So for example, let me share a little graphic that my friend, Paula Belluomini made for me. This is an example, let’s say, for example, you’ve got Cancer rising and let’s say you’ve got three planets that are in the zodiacal sign of Cancer. So let’s say Venus, Saturn and Mars are in the sign of Cancer, so some astrologers define a stellium as three or more planets, so if you have any three planets in a sign, then you’ve got a stellium. Some astrologers though define it as four or more planets. Let’s say instead that you had the Sun, Venus, Saturn and Mars in the sign of Cancer, in that case, that would be a stellium or a cluster of planets in the sign of Cancer. And if that was your first house, then that would also be a first house stellium showing an emphasis basically on that sign and that house in your birth chart. So I think in terms of getting started, those are two main starting points. Just one emphasizing that a stellium is three or four or more planets in one part of the chart, and then secondarily that it primarily… What we’re going to see during the course of this discussion is that it primarily just shows an emphasis on a certain part of the chart, especially on a certain sign of the zodiac and the qualities of that sign, as well as on a certain house and the qualities and topics associated with that house in terms of each of the 12 houses of the birth chart. So let’s start by the debate, the important all encompassing debate about three or four-planet stelliums. We just learned last night that we actually had a disagreement about this. I didn’t realize it until the day before. I’ve always leaned towards being more of four or more planet definition person. Just because like the Sun and or Mercury and the Sun and Venus are often within a few signs of each other, one to two signs of each other. So it’s not super uncommon to see somebody with one or two or three of those planets in the same sign. And if you throw one other planet in there, then you’ve got stellium of three planets. So that’s not super, super rare, but a four-planet stellium is a bit more rare depending on which planets or bodies you’re using, right?
PW: Right. I mean, my thoughts on it at least is that a conjunction requires at least two bodies. So if a stellium is defined as four or more bodies within a sign then that sort of creates this strange gap in sort of stratas or levels of categorization where what is a three-planet conjunction?
CB: What is a three, yeah.
PW: Chopped liver, only four or more matters.
CB: If you do have three, that’s obviously concentration. So to defend… I was originally much more stringent years ago about my four-planet stellium superiority. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more lax about it and I can see three planets being a stellium. Because if you have three planets in any sign or any house, then you’ve got a concentration of and an emphasis on that sign or house. So yeah.
PW: Not to mention at least or at most six houses having the ruler of those houses being imported into that sign potentially. I don’t know how absolutely dire this disagreement is. I would probably say you can just categorize stelliums as three-point stellium versus a four-point stellium. And obviously the more planets involved in that stellium is going to be less common and sort of more impressive.
CB: So this isn’t the house division debate where astrologers are strapping bombs to their chest and suicide bombing each other over this. It’s a like lower level debate in astrology.
PW: However, and I don’t know if you want to go into this a little later or you’re comfortable going into it now, but I would think that another potential point of contention is whether or not the planets which are within a sign should be close enough to be considered in degree-based conjunctions versus whether it matters that they are further apart in a given sign. If those kinds of stelliums might be considered as maybe a little different than ones which are closer by degree.
CB: Yeah. So I didn’t even think about this as an issue because I’ve always classified stelliums as things that happen anytime you have like three or four or more planets in the same sign, anywhere in the same sign or anywhere in the same house. And because I use whole sign houses as well as because I use, according to Hellenistic astrology, I recognize both degree-based aspects as well as sign-based aspects, so that two planets anywhere in the same sign, even if one is really early in the sign and one is really late, are considered to be co-present and their energies are thought to rub off on each other a little bit. Just like two people living in the same house, you have some influence from your roommate, even if you’re living on the other side of the house from each other. Obviously, that’s more intense if you’re actually living in the same room together, but there’s still some sort of relationship if you’re living in the same house. So that’s how I define stelliums is by sign. But I could see… I did an episode a year ago last summer with Carole Taylor on aspect patterns, and stelliums are often grouped into the different aspect patterns like the t-square or the grand cross or the yod or different things like that. And stellium was one that we put off to address later but didn’t get to, but I could see how if you’re treating the stellium like an aspect pattern, that aspect patterns usually do have to be a little bit closer in degree because of the orbs of like the degree-based aspects involved. So I can see some merit to that approach.
PW: Right. I guess the way I see it is a co-presence is that’s the broadest net that you could throw, that’s kind of a catch-all term. Co-presence just means they could be anywhere. I feel like a stellium–
CB: Anywhere in the same sign.
PW: Right. Yeah, as long as they are in the same sign it’s a co-presence. I kind of use it interchangeably. But I think I would… Since we using different words for these different things, then I guess I would consider if co-presences could capture the idea of planets being anywhere on the sign together, then a stellium might be three or four or more planets which are more closely lumped together by degree within the signs. So maybe there’s different grades of co-presences where some may be a further apart and have a more general sort of influence, whereas stelliums which are more tightly packed by degree might just be seen as more dynamic or energetic co-presences.
CB: Yeah. I mean, maybe. I don’t know. I’m going to go ahead and continue to define a stellium as just like planets co-present in a sign or in a whole sign house. Different people are free to do whatever. And there’s something to be said for a close alignment or a triple conjunction or quadruple conjunction of planets all in the same degree or something like that. Because that’s actually, if you think about it, the classic thing that people think about or think that astrologers pay attention to if we’re talking about like mundane astrology, and we actually had a good example of this last year when we had that huge pile up of planets that all aligned in the sign of Capricorn and actually got pretty close by degree, although they didn’t line up by degree around March of 2020. And that was when, especially in the west in like the US, that’s when COVID hit and that’s when the lockdowns happened and the entire world sort of went to hell. So it was much easier. I liked that about last year when people were like, “What’s going on astrologically?” And I can just say, “Look, all the planets are lined up in the same sign of the zodiac right now, and that’s what’s going on.” And that was kind of pretty simple and straightforward.
PW: Yeah. And I think it’s funny and interesting too, because Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto were already kind of in range in January and February, but it really wasn’t until Mars entered the picture. It wasn’t until Mars entered the sign, made that ingress into Capricorn that it really… That was sort of when the panic set in. It acted as a trigger almost, an agitating trigger to this alignment that was already pretty fearsome just by itself. So yeah, I mean, it will probably remain one of the absolute all time greatest examples of this kind of thing, but we have a few more examples like that from other periods of history with interesting alignments, maybe we’ll get to sharing those.
CB: Yeah. And the other thing that was interesting about that is that it continued, the most intense part of that during that initial lockdown phase and stuff continued because it started really when Mars ingressed into Capricorn and joined Jupiter and Saturn and Pluto, but then Mars and Saturn got close but they didn’t complete their conjunction until they both changed signs and moved into Aquarius. And then the conjunction was at zero Aquarius. And then we had this interesting phenomenon then where as the conjunction started separating, they stayed in the same signs for the next month or two, which really drew out this extended period of the Mars Saturn conjunction, which otherwise would have just lasted for a month or a month and a half or something as Mars is going through the same sign as Saturn, but it accidentally exacerbated it and drew it out or stretched it out into this much longer several month period.
PW: And I think that’s a really good real world example of the fact that it doesn’t necessarily matter that the planets were not together exactly by degree. That it was really Mars’s ingress at the beginning of Capricorn that seemed to almost be the instigator or trigger of the developments that kept intensifying as Mars approached by degree that Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto conjunction. I don’t want to get too off track here. There’s a couple of other issues we need to figure out about stelliums which is, okay, if they don’t need to be necessarily close by degree, what other points could you potentially include? For myself, I tend to be someone who restricts myself to the traditional seven in the outers. I would include the nodes or points like the Ascendant or Descendant or fortune more sort of secondarily. I wouldn’t give the nodes quite as much weight as a planet, but I generally restrict my observation of stelliums to the planets themselves, Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune Pluto.
CB: Yeah. And just to wrap up the previous discussion, I would just say, if you have four planets in the same sign, you have a stellium. And if they’re closer by degree, then that stellium is going to be even more intense as a conjunction. So it’s the same concept that we apply to any other sign-based versus degree-based aspect, which is that planets the aspect starts as soon as they’re configured by sign and it gets more intense and acute the closer they get by degree.
PW: I think of sign-based aspects as providing kind of a general atmospheric type of relevance like, “Oh, they’re co-present, we have a storm,” but when the aspect actually happens by degree, that might be the lightning strikes that hits the person, I don’t know, playing a yo-yo or something. That’s like the pivotal moment of the storm is the damage it causes. But the overall atmosphere will be kind of in the air leading up to it.
CB: Definitely. And then of course, when it comes to stelliums one of the things that’s interesting about them or one of the reasons they’re important when it comes to timing and transits and things like that is that when let’s say a planet transits through that sign in your chart, it’s going to always hit the same planets in order in relative quick succession. So it’s like if you have planets at the beginning of Scorpio, four planets starting at the beginning of Scorpio going through the end of Scorpio, anytime a planet goes through Scorpio, it’s going to hit all four of those planets. Or if you’re doing annual profections where you jump and you count one sign per year from the rising sign, anytime that profection gets to that sign where you have a stellium like, let’s say, Scorpio, that’s going to be a big year for you because all four of those planets are activated at the same time. So the last thing was just with a transit, of course, it’s always going to happen in the same succession if you have, let’s say, I have Pluto at two, maybe I should just show my chart because it’s better as a visual instead of attempting to explain it. Here is my chart where I have Pluto at two, Scorpio Sun at nine, Saturn at 17, Mercury at 23 and South Node at 27. So any time let’s say Mars goes into Scorpio, which is going to do later this year which I’m not looking forward to, it will conjoin Pluto first, then the Sun, then Saturn, then Mars or then Mercury, then the South Node in relative quick succession for Mars over the course of weeks. If it was Saturn, it’s over the course of two or three years. But if those were closer, if those were all within a few degrees, then it would hit them in much even quicker succession. So that’s another reason in terms of when we’re talking about the intensity of something, it’s almost like a musical instrument in terms of like hitting a string on a harp and how close after one string the next string is hit or whether there’s a little bit of space between them. Did you like that as a musical analogy as my musically trained friend? Was there a better way to put that since you have actual musical training?
PW: No. No. I think that’s wonderful. By the way, everyone, Chris is going to be dropping his album pretty soon. It’s going to be great.
CB: My EP?
PW: Yeah.
CB: The Scorpio Stellium EP.
PW: Yeah. I just wanted to give a really, really quick anecdote about a guy who has a stellium in the second house. Mars is first in the sign, Jupiter’s next in the sign, and then Saturn is just after that. And I worked with this gentleman in his financial trading, giving astrological advice for trading. It was really interesting because there was a period of time we were working fairly long hours together in sort of tracking astrology in real time. And I thought it was really interesting because on the particular day that we were working together, the Moon went over his Mars in the second house, and that was when he had this terrible loss in his stock options. And then later on in the day, Jupiter was contacted by the Moon and he had this great experience. He managed to have some… So this all happened within one day. He finally had some stocks go up in value that he was able to make a good profit on. And then finally close to the end of the day, the Moon approached his Saturn in the second and it kind of ended on a sad note. So it was really interesting to see just even within one day and the progress of the Moon making this conjunction to this gentleman’s planets in a second house that it corresponded so straightforwardly with this pattern. And then we also noticed that even with the Sun and its transit over those same points, he would have a good financial day when Sun was on his Jupiter, but when his Sun was on his Mars and Saturn those represent days of losses. So it’s real seeing the pattern of how a planet’s contact when you have them in a stellium in the same house like that.
CB: Yeah, for sure. All right. So circling back to the point that you were starting to segue into which is the other big debate which is what points can you use or should you use to calculate basically whether you have a stellium, and different astrologers will do it different ways. So just to illustrate that, again, going back to my chart to keep talking about my stellium, which is very important. So if we use, let’s say, all the modern planets, including Pluto and the South Node, and it’s like I’ve got Pluto, the Sun, Saturn, Mercury, and the South Node all in Scorpio in the 10th whole sign house. So that would be a Scorpio stellium or a 10th house stellium if you’re using all those points.
PW: Yeah, that doesn’t fit you at all, Chris.
CB: Yeah. However, if you take away the outer planets, you get rid of the modern planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, then it’s like I only have the Sun, Saturn, Mercury and South Node there. So it’s goes from a five-planet stellium to a four-planet stellium. However, the South Node is not a planet, it’s just a mathematical point. So it’s like if you took that away, then it drops me down to three planets, which is just the Sun, Saturn and Mercury. So I say that just to belabor the point about depending on what points and what planets you’re using, that can either give you a stellium or take away stellium status for you. And there’s a lot of different factors that go into that that different astrologers are going to approach in different ways. One of the other questions is whether the Ascendant degree or whether the Midheaven or even the Descendant or IC should be used as points that are taken into the calculation of whether you have a stellium. If you have, let’s say, two planets in Aquarius and your Ascendant is also an Aquarius, does that count as a stellium having three points there or does it not because it’s only two actual planets? So that’s an issue. Asteroids are an issue, whether to use the nodes or whether to use the lot of fortune, for example, as a point in calculating a stellium. There’s a lot of variables involved. Outer planets, that’s another one, right? Because there’s an issue where some of our newer friends who joined the astrological community over the past decade, they were born in the late 1980s or early ’90s have some outer planets like Uranus and Neptune in Capricorn. So they’ve already got two planets that are generational in that sign. And then if you throw one other planet in there, then all of a sudden you’ve got three planets and the question of whether then you have a stellium or whether because that’s a generational thing that that’s not going to show up as personally. So that’s kind of an issue. Where do you fall on that?
PW: I think you should still consider outer planets as part of stelliums. When they’re more generational then we just have to assume that that’s something which is going to be more true of that group, and that if you have more personal planets which are in a stellium with an outer planetary configuration, then you may just come to be a particular exemplar of the potential of that conjunction on the more generational level. Maybe someone with a Sun Mercury conjunction on top of Uranus and Pluto, those might be people who kind of whose words carry the weight of the generation they come from or the people who will listen to more or something like that. So yeah, I wouldn’t dismiss it. Yeah, if you have outer planets in a house, I think that probably has a significance. I don’t know if it would be a daily recognizable significance, but I certainly think if you have Uranus in a given house, then the things that seem to really bring out the meaning of that placement is when Uranus makes angular aspects to that original natal position. So I think it tends to be more relevant at certain times in one’s life as opposed to being a constant daily sort of thing. Like, “Oh, my whole life is Neptune in the eighth.” Well, I’m not so sure about that.
CB: Right. Yeah. I mean, I also take into account the outer planets for calculations of stelliums, especially when they’re mixed together with personal planets or inner planets. Yeah, especially because to whatever extent it’s just showing an emphasis on a certain sign or a certain house, those are going to have a major impact on that sign or house if they’re present there, especially if they’re together with other personal bodies like the Moon or the Sun or Mercury or even Venus or Mars. So that’s one thing. Ascendant, Midheaven, I’m a little mixed on. I could see it going either way. I do think we’ll have some examples of some people that clearly have first house stelliums and having them in the Ascendant or the Midheaven just emphasizes that even further. Normally, I view it as more of a planetary thing, so that’s something that we were looking for planets to be placed in a sign to emphasize it. So I’m primarily waiting those in terms of determining whether a person has a stellium. But ultimately, what is or isn’t a stellium is so subjective because the actual interpretive principle is just there’s an emphasis on that sign or there’s an emphasis on that house and that’s it. So really any astrologer can adapt that to their own astrology in terms of what they think is important in order to determine what is a stellium to them, and that’s perfectly sufficient and fine.
PW: Totally.
CB: All right. So we solved that debate, that debate is done. What do we got to move on to next?
PW: Oh, well, now we have the real debate is, what’s the plural form?
CB: Oh, that is the most important debate. Well, this got settled recently because you… Did you correct me? I don’t know if you corrected me in private, but you said stellia? So stellium obviously is the primary word for the singular when a person has the singular a stellium in Scorpio or in the 10th house or what have you. But then there’s sometimes the question of astrologers know what to say when you’re talking about the plural of multiple stelliums, in which case, what is the plural and what did you say originally it was?
PW: Well, I think some people said stellia, but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me because according to Latin, from my D+ grade in advanced Latin, I remember the plural form should be stelle. But I mean, I think we don’t need to use the grammatical rules from a different language to be able to use the English pluralization conventions like adding an S to the end of the word. I don’t think there’s necessarily anything really wrong with that. I think someone on Twitter actually who knew what they were talking about said the same thing.
CB: Yeah. That was like an actual English professor. So I want to give a shout out to them where they said, they were responding to some tweet of mine where I said, I tend to prefer to say stelliums instead, even if that’s not grammatically correct. And they said, this is @Cuchlann on Twitter. They said, “If you’re interested in the opinion of an English professor, it is always correct in English to use the S suffix to make something plural.” So this isn’t even a prescriptive versus descriptive grammar thing, it’s a thing where people insist on lone words adhering to the original grammar.
Patrick Watson : That’s it. I’m saying sheeps, I’m saying deers. It’s always correct.
CB: Yeah. Well, I don’t know. I’m going to take that anonymous person’s–
PW: Yeah. Stellium is just fine.
CB: statement to heart and I somehow–
PW: If you want to be snooty though, stelle is the way to go.
CB: Stelle or stellia. Maybe. Okay. So I’m going to say stelliums because I think I’m just doing that partially because I think that’s what people are going to search for on Google in searching for this episode.
PW: Yeah, not many Romans out there using Google.
CB: Right. I got to go with the crowd. All right. Is that all of the debates or are there any more stellium-related debates that we have to address?
PW: No, I think we’re bloodied up enough, Chris.
CB: All right. That was tough, but we had to do it. There’s no other 10-minute podcast episode that’s going to have dealt with this as efficiently as we have. So let’s move on to one of the things we were going to mention in passing is, this goes back pretty far Vettius Valens, for example, in the second century, at the end of Book One of the Anthology, he actually has delineations where he goes through and he delineates two and three planet combinations when they’re in the same sign. So there are some traditional astrologers that do interpret planets when they’re in the same sign as mixing together, and they sometimes use a painting analogy of paint when you mix paint together how it produces different colors just through the presence of one color with another and how different colors interact. And Valens actually has this extended discussion at one point, I think, in book five or six of The Anthology where he says that’s why the malefics tend to stand out so much because it’s like a really dark paint and adding it to a white or a translucent paint where it kind of tends to overwhelm some of the other colors or something like that. So I liked that painting analogy when we’re talking about this idea of co-presence or co-mixture of planets in the same sign. And I think that’s one good way to approach interpreting stelliums when you have three or four or more planets in the same sign is understanding that they’re all mixing together by their presence in the same sign, by virtue of that, they are influencing and changing the other in subtle and sometimes very important ways.
PW: And it should be noted too for those Valens delineations that he’s only considering them as co-presences. So no matter where they are on the sign, his interpretation apply. But he’s not taking into account zodiacal sign, he’s not taking into account the house. It’s just for our general co-presence of those two or three planets in a sign. But still quite interesting. You can sometimes extract some interesting insights from some of his delineations.
CB: Yeah. So here’s one he gives, he says, “Jupiter, Mars and Venus when they’re in the same sign,” he’s saying implicitly, “cause men to have many friends, to be easy to associate with, to be thought worthy of association with and help from the great, to be successful and to progress with the help of women, these stars make some men high priests, prize winners, athletes, or supervisors of temples, or of the masses. They cater to their own pleasures and at times live on steadily subject to ups and downs.” And then he keeps going, he gives kind of like negative stuff.
PW: “These men are blameworthy and indiscriminate about sexual matters, experiencing public exposure and betrayal grieved with respect to children.” It’s funny. It comes to mind. Valens probably would’ve said, Bill Clinton has a Mars, Venus, Jupiter stellium in the first. Which is kind of funny how that sort of matches up pretty well of him. He didn’t know about Neptune, but…
CB: Did not know about Neptune when it came to what was his [unintelligible 31.04]
PW: Yeah. Something like that, yeah, just reading that interpretation just made me realize that he has that stellium in his first house, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and he seems to typify some of the things that Valens described in that. Again, he didn’t take into account sign or house, but the general delineation works pretty well.
CB: Yeah. And that’s the thing, is that in a full interpretation we would actually take into account some of the various things in order to break down what planets in the stellium are more important or what role certain planets are playing or what role other planets are playing. His is actually interesting because using the modern planets, he actually has two stelliums. So this is an example of somebody that has the Ascendant, Mars, Neptune, Venus and Jupiter in Libra. So all in the same sign, so Libra stellium. And then also in the first whole sign house, I guess even using quadrant houses, this would be in the first house because they’re all below the degree of the Ascendant. And then he’s got Saturn, Mercury, Pluto and the Sun up there in Leo in the 11th house. So heavy first house and 11th house emphasis and heavy Libra and Leo emphasis, which is pretty good descriptor.
PW: Pretty appropriate for a charmer. These often can associate with being wonderful talents.
CB: Yeah, with Libra rising and Venus in Libra in the first house conjuct Neptune with Jupiter. The thing that I always read, especially about him in his early political career and in his first run for president, because I was too young at the time, but they always talked about just how engaging and charming he was. And a lot of those key words that I hear really remind me of that Venus ruled Libra stellium in the first house. Yeah. All right. So that’s our first sort of quick glimpse into a example chart, which we’re going to get into more. Before we get into other example charts–
PW: Have there been any other astrologists other than Valens who’ve written about these kind of combinations prior to the 20th century?
CB: Yeah. So you were saying Abu Ma’shar may have in The Great Introduction and I pulled it up and I wasn’t sure. It looked like there was a section where it was delineating some planets, but I don’t know if it delineated all possible combinations which you said there might be a text out there somewhere that does.
PW: Yeah, it was based on a comment by Rob Hand. Robert Hand made a statement in the notes of one of the preliminary Project Hindsight translations of Valens, where he mentions that there’s a text that Abu Ma’shar wrote where he delineates the combination of all seven planets and the Sun at the time, the traditional seven, but we haven’t been able to figure out which book that is. So if anyone out there knows, feel free to let us know.
CB: Yeah. So if anyone finds out, let us know on the comments. I know the Yavanajataka and some of the Indian texts definitely go to great lengths to provide delineations for different combinations. And I think there may be one in there that does produce delineations for a lot of different combinations like that and conjunctions in the same sign. Yeah, so we don’t have to get into that very much. There is a weird derivation, when you look up dictionaries, I think somebody asked the question of… Because I put out a call for questions, then I got swamped with way too many, so sorry to everybody, but I’m not going to get through all of them in this episode. But on Twitter, SJ Anderson did ask, “Any ideas on the history of the usage of the term stellium and where it originates, who it originates with in the tradition.” And there’s actually an interesting thing. I haven’t done a lot of work on this, but in some dictionaries it says that the word stellium is connected to some non-astrological dictionaries or written by non-astrologers, but professional word researchers connect it to the word satelliteium. And they say that it’s a grouping of several planets in a sign or what have you. And I thought that was really interesting because if that’s true, then this term satelliteium might be connected to the Hellenistic concept of spear bearing, which is known as dorophoria in Hellenistic astrology, which almost kind of makes sense because the basic version of spear bearing is just when the luminaries are surrounded by planets that act as bodyguards for the luminaries. So literally you can think about the modern concept of the president of the United States or some high ranking politician who’s just surrounded by bodyguards when they move through a crowd who are protecting them by staying in close proximity to that person. And so we have this older concept of like a satellite and the modern term of a satellite, which for example, the Moon is a satellite of the Earth and it’s a body that orbits in pretty close proximity to the Earth. So I haven’t researched this enough. Nobody should take this as definitive. But if that derivation is correct, then the modern concept of stellium or at least the modern term stellium may have been derived in that indirect way from the concept of spear bearing. But even if that’s not correct, it probably just developed conceptually or practically as the idea of what happens when there’s more than two planets that are in a conjunction or in the same sign, what happens when there’s three or four or more?
PW: I think that’s possible. There would probably have to have been some change somewhere because I know that at least in Antiochus of Athens, he defines spear bearers in a day chart, any planets which are within a trine of the Sun in a day chart, whereas in a nocturnal chart, it’s where any planets which are falling within a sextile of the Moon.
CB: Yeah, he gives three different definitions of spear bearing. I think that’s the second or third one. But the first one is planets that are rising before the Sun and that clear the way for the Sun–
PW: In the same sign?
CB: It’s not really clear because it doesn’t give ranges, but it just says if they’re rising before the Sun and it’s implied that they’re close enough to it, that they’ve risen relatively recently. So they’re probably within if not the same sign they are within a sign or two?
PW: Potentially, yeah.
CB: Yeah, or the Moon. It says if they set after the Moon, then they’re acting as spear bears for the Moon in the first definition of spear bearing. But then it later elaborates on that with those other ones that have to do with aspects and says that planets can cast aspects into the sign to protect the Sun or Moon without being present there themselves bodily. Yeah. So Demetra has a whole breakdown of spear bearing I think in her first book, Ancient Astrology volume one. All right. I think we’ve done a pretty good job of breaking down some of the basics. Is it time to start getting into some chart examples so we can get into the details?
PW: Yeah, I think so. I think people would probably like to see how does it actually in practice. What does it mean for a house be emphasized in someone’s life with a stellium?
CB: We could start with the first house, but I don’t think I want to start with first house ones. I think I want to start with the other ones because I want to right away demonstrate that concept. And I want to jump through some different house examples of what it actually looks like if somebody has a stellium in a house, and what will happen is that house will tend to stand out and the topics associated with that house will tend to stand out in the natives life as being distinctive in some way more so compared to the average or more so compared to like some other average person’s life who doesn’t have four or more planets in that sign. So let’s take a look at some examples of that, where I did a search through my database using Solar Fire and asked it to return four-planet stelliums for me. So one of the first ones I wanted to highlight that I love is… This is actually an example that Leisa pointed out to me first, I believe. So this is the children’s book author, Judy Blume, who has won a bunch of the highest awards for children’s books. And she’s written like a ton of children’s books, which I think she actually got started writing at first when her children were really young. So she was born with Libra rising and she has four planets in the sign of Aquarius which are in the fifth whole sign house, which is the house, of course, traditionally associated with children for the past 2000 years. So that’s a pretty straightforward example, where if somebody walked into your, let’s say, astrology business, let’s say you have an astrology business that’s on the street and this person just walks in and sits down and they slam their chart down on the table and they say, “Tell me about my life.” And the first thing that you see is, “Wow, you have four planets in the sign of Aquarius in the fifth house of children,” and the most simple, basic statement you could make about that person’s life is for some reason, it seems like a decent amount of focus in your life will be on the topic of children. And you could say something as simple as that, and it would actually turn out to be stunningly true for this person because indeed she has devoted and spent a great deal of time in her life, perhaps more time in her life than other people by average focusing on the topic of children. So pretty good. What do you think? Straightforward?
PW: Yeah, pretty straightforward. The ruler of first in the fifth. You can get Mercury and Jupiter in that which have those connotations with writing, publishing.
CB: Yeah. So you’re getting into other pieces and that’s an important piece. And maybe we should break that down because I think that was one of the other questions that did come in through Twitter that I picked up on, which is how do you deal with and how do you weight some of the other planets when they come into play when you’re talking about the specific planets that are involved in the stellium? Because there’s some part of this, which is just… If you have four planets in any house, that house is going to be more important, end of sentence. And you can stop there, and that’s one of the things that’s nice about stellium, is you can make a strikingly accurate statement and just stop at that point and that statement will sort of hold up on its own without having to go into further details about, well, how does that topic go? And do things go well in that person’s life or do they go in a more challenging way? Or other details like that, which really gets into what is the composition of the stellium, what planets are involved. But one weighting factor that really weights things that we’re going to see come up over and over again is, is one of the planets the ruler of the Ascendant? So in her case, she has Libra rising. So the planet that rules the Ascendant, which is a very important planet in the chart, is going to be Venus. And Venus is actually one of the planets that’s in that stellium in the fifth whole sign house in Aquarius. So that’s a little tricky because that then weights things differently where it puts even more emphasis on the fifth house if one of the planets is also the ruler of the Ascendant, and I would say gives even more weight to the stellium that stellium is going to be even heavier or going to have an even larger impact or influence on the life than it might if none of those planets, for example, was the ruler of the Ascendant.
PW: Well, it would be more personal to her because she is represented by Venus in that chart. So if she didn’t have Venus in the fifth house but she still had the Sun, Mercury, and Jupiter, then we might think that those planets in the fifth house would be more relevant to her experiences with children or youths or if she was a mother and dealing with her own children. But the fact that her Ascendant ruler is actually in there as well shows she’s actually partaking in these fifth house themes and topics of creative works and play, recreation and youth and children, etc. So yeah. I think it’s cool.
CB: So that’s an important thing because the ruler of the Ascendant and the house placement of it tends to show a topic that the natives life tends to be directed towards or where there tends to be more focus on that topic in the natives life than normal compared to just the average or compared to other people. So it gets a little tricky then because when there’s overlap, because the stellium kind of the same thing because the stellium is almost… There’s pictures of a black hole where in space, it’s just you put a bunch of weight and then it just drags down or weighs down the space in that area. Stelliums are kind of the same thing, where they just put so much weight and so much gravity in that area that it almost becomes a distortion field that drags your attention to it in some way. So the stellium in some way is almost overlapping a little bit what the ruler of the Ascendant does indirectly. So it’s a little bit tricky then because if the ruler of the Ascendant is in the stellium, then it’s going to put more weight on that stellium but also vice versa, the stellium will put more weight on the ruler of the Ascendant placement by sign in the house and will make that sign in the house stand out even more than it would have if it was just the ruler of the Ascendant there.
PW: Correct.
CB: Yeah, so that’s a factor. Other factors in terms of interpreting stelliums and how well the topic goes is the stellium composed of benefic planets or malefic planets. And also you need to take into account factors like sect and whether the most positive planet in the chart is in the stellium according to the concept of sect which is going to be Jupiter in a day chart or Venus in a night chart, or conversely is the most challenging or negative planet according to sect in the stellium which is going to be Mars in a day chart or Saturn in a night chart that’s going to create a little bit more tension or a little bit more difficulties surrounding that area in the person’s life. So with Judy Blume it’s a little bit mixed, but it’s like for the most part, she’s got relatively nice planets placed there which are Mercury, Jupiter, the Sun and Venus. It gets a little bit complicated because it’s all ruled by Saturn in a night chart in the seventh, but that actually ends up relating more to some relationship struggles that she had that she was very open about having Mars and Saturn in the seventh whole sign house. So what planets are composing the stellium? Is the ruler of the Ascendant in the stellium? These are different factors that will weigh things differently. Another weighing factor that we could take into account is the big three and just the concept of the big three of your Sun and Moon being so important, and especially the Sun in a day chart or the Moon in a night chart. If your stellium is partially composed of one of those, that’s also going to add additional weight and it’s going to tie it in more with your personality and certain types of personality characteristics than it might otherwise.
PW: Absolutely. And then you can also throw in rulerships in there as well. That each of those planets also serves as the ruler of a house or houses and sort of further doesn’t just import its natural significations, but also the topics of the houses that it rules. So it can get pretty complicated, but when you write it all out, so it’s giving you all of that information about that stellium–
CB: Yeah. And the fact that each of those planets rules one or two houses and it’s like importing significations. That’s the other reason why it’s like this, black hole maybe isn’t the best analogy, I’m struggling to come up with a better one. But just the idea of that being like this displacement field that just draws so much energy into it and has so much energy because it has so much weight in it due to the preponderance basically of planets in the chart being in one sector of the chart rather than being spread out evenly so that they’re more, not balanced because balanced isn’t the right term, but certainly there is a concentration or an intensification of the energy of just one sign or one house which is somewhat unusual compared to most people just have like one or two or zero planets in a specific sign rather than having all of them in the same sign. And I guess that’s maybe we should mention the extreme version of the stellium because we did actually have some of those, for example, in what was February of 1962, there was a big pile up of planets in Aquarius and there were some Aquarius stellium people, right?
CB: We don’t have a lot to say about them but one of them was, and this one was found by Claire Moon, I wanted to give her a shout out for finding this one. So like Garth Brooks, for example, the country singer, has a stellium in Aquarius where it’s Saturn, Mars, Mercury, South Node, Sun, Jupiter, Venus and the Midheaven degree all in Aquarius. So just a ton of planets in that same sign and in that same house, and the only ones that he doesn’t have in there are the Moon which is in Pisces, so just actually barely got out of Aquarius a couple days earlier, and then the North Node’s in Leo and Uranus is in Leo, Pluto is in Virgo and Neptune is in Scorpio. So you actually found one other big celebrity who was that same Aquarius stellium, right?
PW: Would that be Eddie Izzard?
CB: Yeah.
PW: I can’t claim I discovered, I know of him as an example.
CB: You personally discovered, yeah.
PW: But yeah, Eddie Izzard has that same stellium. Now we’re not exactly sure whether or not to trust the birth time. Apparently, on his website they said that Pluto was rising the time they were born, but they could have been joking, too.
CB: So yeah, so it could be either Virgo rising or it could even be late Leo rising if they were using quadrant houses like Placidus that would also indicate they would interpret that as Pluto rising as well.
PW: Yeah, the only thing that I would be able to sort of connect to sixth house themes about Eddie Izzard is the fact that, I guess, for charity he did multiple marathons consecutively, did this sort of huge long distance runs to raise money, and Eddie Izzard had never done any professional running before. But it was some ridiculous length that he ran over a small period of time and sort of connects to those sixth house themes of effort theme that makes me think of Mars, Saturn. This is someone who has a lot of energy and a lot of grit to be able to work hard and stuff like that.
CB: Yeah, it could be, but I still don’t know, thinking about some of their early specials, it would be really interesting if they did have late Leo rising and that Uranus would be close to the Ascendant in the first and then the ruler of the Ascendant would be that Jupiter in Aquarius which would then be in the seventh house applying to conjunction with Jupiter.
PW: It’s true. Yeah. So I’m not going to know.
CB: Sure. And hopefully this is one of those… You know we have probably like hundreds of these in our mind which are just like, “I hope before I die at some point I find out Eddie Izzard’s birth time,” or many other celebrities who that will probably go to the grave not knowing what the correct birth time is. But every once in a while you find out celebrity birth time, and it’s always nice to have that confirmed one way or another. Yeah, so that actually brings up a rectification course that you and I are working on where we’re thinking about doing a rectification course and teaching people some of the factors that you would take into account if you’re trying to figure out your Ascendant or rising sign and you’re trying to narrow it down, for example in that one. That was just a very quick thing. And obviously we don’t know a lot about his life aside from some a few public things. But when you do have somebody that will tell you about your life and give you all the information you need or if you’re trying to figure out your own birth chart and narrow down the correct rising sign or the correct Ascendant. So yeah, if people would be interested in a class on that, let us know because we’re considering very strongly about developing one.
PW: We’re excited about that.
CB: Yeah. All right. So let’s go back to some other house examples. Which one did we just do?
PW: We just did Eddie Izzard.
CB: Right. We did Eddie Izzard. Oh yeah, I did Judy Blume. You actually had another one that was a nice one to put together with the Judy Blume one which was another fifth house example, right?
CB: Okay, so here’s the chart. So this is the chart for Thomas Beatie.
PW: Yeah, so this is the chart of Thomas Beatie, and so you can see just like Judy Blume, he was born with Libra rising with the ruler of the Ascendant Venus placed in the fifth whole sign house much like Judy Blume, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter. And Thomas Beatie is a trans man who is an advocate for trans fertility and reproductive justice and reproductive matters. And he received a lot of media attention back in 2008 through 2010 for being sort of the “first trans pregnant man”. And so it’s really interesting to see how the ruler of the Ascendant connects this person to the topic of fertility, sexuality, reproduction, children. And so he had three children. And it’s interesting as well because similar to Judy Blume, the ruler of the fifth house is ruled by this night time Saturn. And so a little later on, unfortunately, things didn’t go so well with the partner and there was some controversies or problems with the partner in dealing with the children and sort of custody battles and things like that. So I think that’s a really interesting way we can see the commonality between Judy Blume and Thomas Beatie in that they both had lives which have this special connection to these fifth house topics of creativity, not just creative arts like for Judy Blume but even relating to this notion of reproduction is creativity or creation.
CB: Yeah, totally. So and it’s a four-planets stellium. So it’s four definite planets, and then also one of them is the ruler of the Ascendant, which is that Venus ruling the Libra rising. So it’s a great example. And that’s another example of how we’re seeing archetypes with the astrology of fifth house placement. But then obviously there’s a lot of different ways that can work out. And then there’s a lot of different specifics based on the planets involved and the rest of the configurations in the person’s chart as well as just their life context of what is the context that this person is bringing to the table which then is infused in and helps give life to this chart. And then they manifest some version of that that fits their life in an archetypal sense. Yeah, so good example. Okay, so those are a couple of fifth house examples. I don’t think we have any other fifth house examples, do we? Are we missing any?
PW: I mean, I went through bunches, but I tried to find ones that people might be able to more sort of easily understand. A lot of them require a lot of explanation.
CB: Yeah. I actually have one. I forgot that I have one more. This is more of a depressing example. It’s more personal to me, and it allows me to connect a synastry thing that’s actually kind of nice. So one of my fifth house examples that I’ve used in the past is actually my dad’s chart who I didn’t slip this chart in my book, I think I alluded to it. This is the actual chart and he had Cancer rising and then a almost quasi-Cancer stellium with the Moon, Uranus, Jupiter, Ascendant and South node and Cancer. But more importantly and more relevantly, a Scorpio stellium with Mercury, Saturn, the Sun and Venus in Scorpio in the fifth whole sign house in a night chart, the lot of fortune’s also there in Scorpio in the fifth house. So during in the early to mid-1980s, he and my mom got together and he was the one that was actually interested in having children or more interested in having children than my mom was. And unfortunately, part of it is they started having children during his Saturn return when Saturn went through Scorpio and went through his fifth house and activated that fifth house stellium. But the Sun is there in the fifth house, so this is actually a night chart. So Saturn is contrary to the sect and it’s the most difficult planet in the chart. So unfortunately, the first part of that was that a year before me, I had an older brother who was born but he actually died as an infant within his first year of life of sudden infant death syndrome. So they left the baby with a babysitter and went out and came back, and the baby had died really tragically. And at some point during that grieving process at some point, I then was conceived and came along later when Saturn was at 15 degrees of Scorpio. And then what’s funny about that, of course, with him having that Scorpio stellium which doesn’t just include Saturn but also includes Venus which is consequently the most positive planet in the chart, so there’s a weird sort of dual thing that comes into play where the most positive and most negative planets in the chart so you get both. So one of the things that’s funny then, of course, is if he has a fifth house stellium in Scorpio who comes along then at his Saturn return, which is me who has a also a Scorpio stellium which happens to fall in his fifth house, so that’s kind of an interesting synastry thing where sometimes you have to think about when somebody has a stellium that that stellium is going to fall in a house in somebody’s chart and is going to activate that in different ways. So sometimes that could be the seventh house and they could be an important relationship partner for you if they have a stellium that falls in your seventh house. Or if your stellium falls in their seventh house, it could be in your, let’s say, ninth house or third house or something, and they could be an important teacher for you. Your 11th house and they could be an important friend. Or maybe even, let’s say, 12th house or sixth house that could be an important enemy of your greatest enemy or something like that. There’s lots of different ways that stelliums also come into play through synastry which is another interesting thing to think about.
PW: That was the saddest and sweetest story, Chris.
CB: Thank you. That is me, that’s what I’m good at.
PW: And it’s interesting too. Something I’ve noticed when people are having children that sometimes the relevant fifth house transit seems to be happening around the time of birth. And there have been some cases where there haven’t been any kind of fifth house transit and I always kind of wondered what is that about, but then if I scroll back nine months prior to the birth, then that’s when you see the big fifth house thing. So it’s interesting to see how sometimes the fifth house activation or transit for someone when they’re becoming a parent doesn’t always correspond with the birth but sometimes with the conception or something just after birth. So yeah, really interesting example, Chris.
CB: Yeah. Well, we talked about that actually at one point. I think it was in episode 15, you and I talked about the ethics of using electional astrology at a time of birth. But that wasn’t the main reason I’m bringing that up. The main reason I’m bringing it up is because you were having a Saturn return when you had your last child in the fifth house.
PW: In my fifth, yeah. Luckily, it’s gone better than your father’s.
CB: Right. Yeah, well and that’s astrology as you said. What did you say? You said it’s the sweetest and the most depressing. That’s astrology and that’s something you have to get used to. But it’s also the part that’s really amazing to me that’s underlying everything which is the underlying sense of meaning and purpose and destiny and fate that interweaves throughout people’s lives and sometimes has really tragic things, but also sometimes has really beautiful things in the same sentence. And that’s something I still ultimately appreciate about the astrology and I see as a value and as something that’s beautiful rather than just always something that’s overwhelming or depressing or what have you.
PW: Right. Yeah, bittersweet.
CB: Yeah, yeah.
PW: It’s definitely, yeah, amazing.
CB: For sure. All right, so those are my fifth house examples. Let’s move on to some other houses. How about seventh house? We have one depressing seventh house example. Let me see if I have some positive ones. What do you got for seventh house again?
PW: I mean, it’s a little tiny bit depressing. But, I have Zack Snyder, who we have an A-rated time for, and he was born at a Sun, Mercury, Mars, Saturn stellium in the Pisces seventh.
CB: Okay. So Virgo rising Pisces stellium.
PW: Yeah, so the ruler of the first is in the seventh. So you know that this is going to be a more personal experience for him. And so essentially, Zack Snyder is obviously he’s very private about his personal life. But just from the basic facts, we can tell that he has had a complicated history with relationships. He has eight children with three different wives or three different women. And so that in itself is sort of interesting. I think he met his current wife at his Saturn return, but he was married at the time that he first met her. And I think one of the other really interesting things about Zack Snyder’s seventh house is the fact that Mercury in the doesn’t just rule the first house himself but it also rules the 10th house of bosses and authorities, and he also has the ruler of the seventh house in the 10th. And so you usually when you see a 10th house seventh house interaction, it can indicate that one’s partnerships have a connection to one’s professional activities. So it’s really interesting because the woman he eventually would be married for the longest amount of time he was currently married to, he first met her at his Saturn return, and she hired him to work on a commercial. And then they met up a few years later when he was divorced, and she hired him again. So and now they work together on producing his movies, they founded a production company, so they have this professional relationship that is also a personal and romantic one in marriage. So maybe the fact that it’s ruled by a benefic is helping out his seventh house, but we also know that the presence of these other planets shows that he’s endured several separations and obviously with high consequences, high stakes with that many children being involved in these partnerships. And it’s also worth mentioning that he’s technically a night chart because the Sun has gone below the horizon. And one of the really tragic things that happened to Zack Snyder is that one of his children died from suicide which caused him to have to leave the production of a film and he has the ruler of the fifth in the seventh in proximity to Mars, and so we just know that there’s some tragedy potentially associated with his Saturn and his placement in the houses that it rules, and so yeah, a bit heavy. And we don’t have all the details because obviously it’s his personal life, but we can tell that not if we didn’t know anything about this person, we would still be able to make some of these statements about his life just based on the placement of this stellium and its rulers.
CB: Yeah, that’s really good and really interesting. This is good because there’s a crossover, he was married three times and he has a stellium in the seventh house of relationships and marriage. I actually have another one of my seventh house examples is like that and was also married three times and that is the birth chart of Carl Sagan. So Carl Sagan was born with Taurus rising and he had Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and the Sun all in Scorpio in the seventh whole sign house. So they’re actually below the horizon. So it’s in the sixth quadrant house. But that’s why I don’t use quadrant houses because it’s clearly in his seventh house. And he also was married three times. He had three major relationships during the course of his life. And interestingly like your example, his last relationship he was married to a woman who they ended up partnering up together and doing a lot of work together and I think part of the Cosmos series and they ended up collaborating on that, and they also ended up collaborating on that last book that he did which was the book Contact. And then I think she helped after he died to see some of his projects through to completion afterwards including eventually making a movie out of Contact that ended up starring Jodie Foster. So this is somebody who– Huh?
PW: Oh, I said I love that movie.
CB: Yeah, it’s a great movie. That’s one of my favorite movies as well. I rewatch it every once in a while. Really, Matthew McConaughey movie too, actually.
PW: Yes. Yeah, true. He’s, still shirtless.
CB: Right. Yeah, thankfully. But so this is another one where marriage was obviously important or he’s married three different times, so at least relationship and marriage was an important part of this person’s life. And then towards the end, it actually became tied up not just with his love life but even with his career and with the actions and contributions that he ended up making to the world in general. And it’s interesting with him again, it’s like ruler of the Ascendant as well which is kind of overlap with the one you just used, where he’s Taurus rising and has Venus there, so there’s something about the focus or the overall direction of the life that gets caught in the stellium at the same time. All right, so those are seventh house examples. My only other seventh house example I use some time it’s a little bit more depressing, but it’s like the classic the Kurt Cobain example which actually looks very similar to your Zack Snyder chart. I think we discovered that they were actually born a year apart, but they have some overlap with some of their placements. So Kurt Cobain was Virgo rising with Mercury and Pisces in the seventh whole sign house along with the Sun and Venus and Saturn. And the main thing that’s relevant and interesting and remarkable about this is just that he did have this major relationship towards the end of his life. I mean, there were relevant relationship things like I think Smells Like Teen Spirit, for example, I think it was named after some comments that one of his ex-girlfriends made at one point. So there’s little bits from earlier in his life where relationships were important. But he has Venus there in a night chart, the most positive planet, but also Saturn there in a night chart is the most negative planet. And he both had some very positive things as a result of relationships, but also some very challenging things and in the last few years of his life, of course, he famously died during his Saturn return, he died young. But he got together with Courtney Love, who on the one hand was the love of his life, but then on the other hand and in some respects towards the end of his life tried to save him when he had a suicide attempt in Italy, she was the one that called the police. And even though it’s commonly there’s a lot of conspiracy theories that Courtney supposedly killed Kurt, there’s a lot of contrary things where it seems like she actually tried some things to get to try to save him including doing an intervention with his friends. But then on the other hand, there were some bad things like the fact that both of them bonded over their mutual heroin usage. And that ended up contributing in some ways to his eventual spiral that eventually led to his death after he broke out of a rehab facility that all of his friends and family had urged him to go to just a few weeks earlier after a suicide attempt. So it’s really complicated, but knowing that Kurt Cobain had a Pisces stellium and that was all in his seventh house of relationships and marriage. And then the famous even still lasting impact, the fact that they’re still making movies and conspiracy theories about whether his wife was involved in his death is just interesting and ironic even just at that, you know?
CB: So that is Kurt. And he of course famously signed in his suicide note, he referred to himself in passing as a sad little Pisces as he was apologizing to his daughter and his wife for leaving them. And that’s always sort of also stuck with me just in terms of that in some ways he identified with some of the character traits that people associate with Pisces, but partially because it has that heavy Saturn placement there in the night chart in Pisces. It was kind of dragging down the stellium to some extent or at least some of the more challenging aspects of it were coming to the forefront. All right, so that’s my depressing seventh house example. Let’s lighten this up a little bit. We’re going to keep alternating between like–
PW: Bumers and uppers.
CB: Yeah, I’m trying to pull out some good ones. So help me find some good ones really quickly. Turn this around. I mean, for just sign-based ones, I don’t know that the birth time for this one is good. But somebody, Claire Moon, pointed out to me that Beyoncé has a Libra stellium, a really powerful Libra stellium. And I think that’s really interesting of Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, and Pluto. And I think that’s just a great example of somebody that’s using a Venus-based stellium in a very powerful and very effective way to be one of the most notable and highest earning creative artists in the world as a singer, but also in the way that she’s not just a singer, but really has full artistic control over and has gone in various artistic directions with her career.
PW: Yeah, absolutely. And I think what’s so interesting too about Beyoncé and quite a few of the pop artists from that generation is that they were all born in the same year that MTV first aired, 1981. So you get like Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and a lot of these other sort of pop stars that came of age or came to prominence in that period in the late 90s, early 2000s along with Beyoncé as part of Destiny’s Child who were all born with this Jupiter Saturn conjunction in Libra and varying degrees of interaction with that, and they seem to be kind of the exemplars, but obviously Beyoncé has risen above all of them. She’s still performing, still active, never really had a hiatus and seems to she’s really the top I feel of what that generation is able to produce. So yeah, she’s got this incredible stellium.
CB: And it brings up two points. One of them is just is the planet that owns the sign there, as in this instance where it’s Venus which is the ruler of the stellium is actually in that sign in its own domicile and therefore able to provide kind of a pure expression of that sign or of the archetypal energy of both that sign and that planet. But then two, what’s the condition of the other planets? And we find Jupiter there, we find Saturn there which is in the sign of its exaltation. Even Mercury there which I don’t focus on triplicity dignity very much, but it’s kind of interesting Mercury possibly having dignity by triplicity. So that situation of Venus, the ruler of the stellium, and maybe that should be stated that the ruler of the stellium is really important. And if it’s there in its own sign, in some instances, that’s going to be a more well situated stellium versus in most cases the ruler of the sign is probably not going to be there, but that’s going to alter the quality of the stellium to some extent. So for example, if Venus was next door in Scorpio, then all of those Libra planets in the stellium would be ruled by Venus and Scorpio which is going to change things substantially in terms of the interpretation.
PW: Right, she might have been a rock musician if that had happened or something. She would have been sort of more punk, whereas Venus is in Libra, so it’s sort of more just pop instead of more sort of classic sound or something like that with Venus in its own sign, classically popular styles pop music.
CB: Right. So that’s one factor. Other factor is just this an example because this is a speculative time, it’s like 10:00 a.m. So this would give her Libra rising with that stellium in the first house, but we can’t rely on it. So the other thing I want to emphasize about this one is just the other things stelliums do is they just place a huge emphasis not just on the house but on the sign. And so there’s something about the archetype of that zodiacal sign that’s going to be more prominent in the person’s life in general. And this is one of the reasons why I think some people resonate more with, for example, their Sun sign or things like that because some people your Sun sign there’s a not infrequent occurrence of the Sun being one of the components of the stellium. So I think you and I have that, for example, where one of the planets in my Scorpio stellium is my Sun, and so I always identify to some extent with my Scorpio Sun. And when I’d read delineations in the newspaper of what Scorpios are supposed to be like, for the most part that was relatively accurate albeit not always flattering. So there’s different people where if you have something like that, a stellium with a Sun sign, then that might lead you to identify more with that or to those traits to stand up more with your life. And therefore, yeah, to resonate more with if it was your Sun sign although the reverse is also true. So there’s some people who they might have a Sun sign that’s different than their stellium. And in some of those instances, the stellium actually is going to make much more sense for that person as a dominant theme in their life than the Sun necessarily was. So that doesn’t mean that the Sun won’t represent them at all or isn’t relevant in any way, but sometimes the stellium can really draw a lot of attention in the chart, especially when it is composed of personal planets.
CB: Yeah, all right. So let’s go through some other examples. I know one of them that you liked was Katy Perry, who’s my time twin, right?
PW: Yeah, it’s been my long running joke is that Katy Perry is Chris Brennan’s time twin. They were born somewhat close to each other and obviously striking resemblance but–
CB: I know I could have gone that career route as well. I had two choices. It was either astrologer or pop star and for whatever reason I chose astrologer.
PW: Yeah, so I think what’s kind of interesting about Katy Perry’s chart is obviously, yeah, she has this massive Sun, Pluto, Mercury, Saturn, Moon stellium in the first place. I think what’s interesting about this example is that you can really see how each of the planets are incorporating or importing the topics of the house they rule. So on a very basic level, she has the Moon in Scorpio in the first house. So Cancer is ruled by the Moon, Cancer in the ninth, so the Moon is importing and making more focal making more personal the topic of the ninth house of religious matters is one of the ninth house topics. And so she was raised by very strict religious parents, and her residence changed a lot because her parents set up new churches and she was put in religious schools and religious camps. And even when she first debuted as a musician, she was originally a gospel religious artist before transitioning to pop. So we can see how having the Moon in Scorpio rising is always going to import some of those ninth house themes of religion to the forefront of their life. And in her particular case, she has the Moon closely conjunct Saturn, and Saturn rules the fourth house so that’s how we know it sort of connects her life not just to the topic of religion, it was more through the strict rules placed upon her by her parents. They didn’t even allow her to eat cereal. They didn’t like her eating Lucky Charms because it reminded them too much of Lucifer. They thought it was a satanic cereal. So I think she could probably relate to someone who’s had strict parents. She has Moon, Saturn in the first house in Scorpio. Scorpio is also not a fantastic sign for the Moon either. So I think it’s interesting you can see how the Moon’s rulership of the ninth makes its presence in the first house sort of more angular or focal and same thing with Saturn. And then you could also go into the fact that Sun rules the 10th house, obviously, she is a very prominent person in the entertainment world. Her Sun is even empowered by that close conjunction to Pluto and Scorpio. So she has this obviously very kind of bubbly public persona, this sort of pop star charisma with the Sun and Moon in the first place. And there was one other thing I was going to say about her, but I can’t remember what it was. Oh, one of the interesting thing is you can apply stelliums to the profections. And I know we don’t have a whole lot of examples of that but just a quick one for Katy Perry when she was 24 years old in a first house annual profection when all those planets in the first house were activated, that was the year that she did her first headlining world tour. So she was traveling, importing topics of the ninth house. And it was really a showcase the first global showcase of her act. She had come to prominence during the 12th house profection, but the first house year was really when she was actually performing all around the world for the first time. So I thought it was kind of an interesting example. And one other thing about Katy Perry that is cool too is the minor period of the Sun is 19 years. So in the 19th year when you’re age 18, that’s when the Sun comes to completion, and it was when she turned 18 that she chose her new name because her original name is, I think, is something like Katheryn Hudson, but she renamed herself Katy Perry. So she takes on this new moniker as she reached a legal adulthood and as the Sun is reaching its period of completion.
CB: Nice. Okay. Yeah, that’s a great example. And so yeah, so that’s an example of somebody again with a heavy focus on a specific sign in her instance Scorpio. And let me see if we have any, I mean, one of the others… Now this is a really good one. This is only three planets but also includes the Ascendant, but just like George Lucas, for example, has Mercury, Venus, Sun in the rising sign in the first whole sign house and just his… Even though he became known for Star Wars and Indiana Jones, had more of an artistic approach to film and film as an art, and I always think about that when it comes to his chart and his even continuing issues with like creative control about who controls his art and does he control it and can he go back and change it as he sees and update it periodically? Because he’s never happy with it. It’s never finished. Or does it belong to the audience and to the public once it’s been put out there? And should people, for example, be able to have the original Star Wars cut from the theatrical release which he’s kind of refused to put out there? Anyway, there’s lots of ones where it’s just emphasizing that house, and especially when it’s in the first house, the person having more direct control or apprehension of that stellium as opposed to it manifesting through some other part of their life or through somebody else if it’s in one of the other 12 houses.
PW: Yeah, and you can even draw a few Taurus associations to George Lucas as well. He loved working with, at least in the originals, the physical puppets and physical effects and practical effects to achieve his vision and so he designed all these crazy looking aliens of these original movies and, yeah, just had a really strong sense of creating a whole world which we’d associate with, yeah, the archetype of the artist.
CB: That’s a good point.
PW: There are that’s a bunch of really good examples.
CB: And also the creation of industrial-like magic because once there was a lot of stuff they were doing with Star Wars that they there was no company set up to do those kind of graphic or design things in terms of props or even eventually computer technology and then especially ones with the prequel trilogy that started coming out in the 1990s really pushing forward with technological advancements in order to design new worlds and new aesthetics and make them look real in the first three Star Wars movies.
PW: Yeah, that was that was when Neptune was square his Venus that he was doing all that stuff right from Aquarius. Yeah, that’s why he got more into digital and synthetic representations of his creative ideas.
CB: That makes sense. All right, let’s bang out some other house examples I just want to get through so we get them in. So I’m just going to go through in order, and this is just going to jump around. But here’s Richard Tarnas who has Gemini rising and he has Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and the degree of the Midheaven in Aquarius in the ninth whole sign house. And he famously is a university trained and university professor who wanted to write this sweeping book on astrology that would cover all the historical correlations with astrology and show that it’s a legitimate phenomenon from a historical standpoint. But in order to do that he felt he had to write this little blow-off book that was supposed to be an overview of western thought so you could establish the parameters of what western intellectual history was. And so he wrote that book as a precursor, and it’s called The Passion of the Western Mind. But then ended up being wildly successful and assigned in many university courses like core reading material but little did many people know that then 10 or 15 years later, he wrote this big magistral work on astrology which was Cosmos and Psyche. So he’s one of my favorite ninth house quasi-stellium examples. Let me see my next one. Oh yeah, Christopher Reeve is a third house stellium example the house of short distance travel, and he had Leo rising with the Sun, Mercury, Saturn, Neptune and Venus in the third whole sign house. And he was earlier in his life very sporty and he liked to engage in many athletic stuff like boat racing and horse racing and all sorts of other stuff. He famously played Superman in the 1970s in the Superman movies. But then also because Saturn is there in a night chart, he was involved tragically in a accident with a horse when he was out riding his horse one day and jumping over something where he was thrown from the horse and then it severed his spine and then he became a paraplegic. So his mobility which is a third house thing was severely limited and restricted. But then as a result of that, he ended up becoming somebody who promoted research into stem cell therapy and things like that in order to help people in similar conditions like his.
PW: That’s Saturn importing its topics of the sixth of injury illness, yeah.
CB: Okay, sixth in the seventh. Yeah, and then also his wife involvement and her help which was super important and instrumental in terms of keeping going, but also then founding the foundation that they put together. So that’s a interesting example again with the most positive but also the most negative planets in the same house, as well as the ruler of the Ascendant in that house just drawing like a huge amount of attention and focus eventually. Let’s see, other examples, oh yeah, Meghan Markle has a fourth house Libra stellium, so she was born with Cancer rising and she has the Moon and Saturn and Jupiter and the IC and Pluto in the fourth house. This is a night chart, so it’s a little tricky that Saturn again is kind of problematic there. And I know there were some problems with her father and I think when she married Prince Harry, her father wasn’t invited or was kept out of the wedding or something, right?
PW: Honestly, I haven’t been keeping up with all of that drama, but it’s funny though because it occurs to me I’ve seen cases where people have difficult planets in the fourth house, and it’s not just difficult situations with their own parents but also the parents of the spouse, problems with parents. And I don’t think anyone has had a worse experience with in-laws than Meghan Markle. I mean, poor thing.
CB: Yeah. Things have not been going well since she married into the British royal family, marrying Prince Harry, who is one of Princess Diana’s sons. And there’s been all sorts of weirdness and controversy there. I think it’s interesting because it’s like Saturn’s in its exaltation, and this chart has really made me think of what exaltation is in sometimes literally representing things that are raised up or elevated in some way like the royal family that she literally is.
PW: So the fact that the ruler of her seventh then is that Saturn in Libra in its exaltation in close proximity with Jupiter show, yeah, the royal family but also…
CB: Yeah, but then it’s tough in the fourth, it didn’t go super well and the royal family wasn’t super receptive to her or somehow, we don’t have to get into all the details because we don’t even know all the details, but we do know that Harry and Meghan Markle in the past few years, actually I think in the past 2 years when Saturn was transiting through her seventh house through Capricorn…
PW: They finally got out.
CB: They bailed and left the UK and moved to, where are they living? Canada or something.
PW: I think so. Yeah, they escaped, and I’d say good for them.
CB: They did an Oprah interview at some point, and Harry’s said something about just seeing what was happening to his wife and feeling like he was going to lose her if he didn’t take her out of this situation. So that’s what they did. So I just think that’s really interesting terms of very simple symbolism of like fourth house as family and sometimes parents, but then having some challenges there, but also a lot of activity there, having a stellium there. And somehow again, if you were just like at some point, the concept of family is going to be incredibly important to you. There will be some major challenges, but it will also draw a major part of your life focus and attention since the ruler of the Ascendant is the Moon and is also placed there. And yeah, that became strikingly true or abnormally true we might say in her case. That’s kind of almost a good stellium keyword, abnormally true that that will draw…
PW: Especially so.
CB: Yeah, especially so. All right, so it’s Meghan Markle, let me see. Yeah. The kind of tricky one is Mac Miller, both you and I came across this one. So he was born with Aquarius rising and a stellium in Capricorn in the 12th house. So it’s like Mars, North Node, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune, and the Sun. So that Uranus Neptune conjunction, which is more generational, is drawing a lot more attention, but there would already be Mars, North Node, Mercury and the sun there even without that. So what was his story?
PW: Well, I mean, I don’t want to sound reductive of his story down to his sort of worst moments. Obviously, he was a very beloved and successful rapper. But the 12th house has to do with sometimes spiritual suffering. We might even interpret that in modern terms as mental health issues, challenges. And so he spoke a lot about his issues with depression and his struggles with substance abuse. Well, there’s another kind of funny story with the 12th and as far as enemies, but unfortunately he is someone who eventually sort of succumbed to the mental pressures of fame and his own feelings about himself. And he passed away due to suicide and–
CB: Well, I thought it was just accidental drug overdose.
PW: Oh, it was? Oh, pardon me. I guess I didn’t read as deeply as that. I just sort of working off what I saw in the headlines. But one other sort of interesting 12th house story with Mac Miller that I think is interesting is that the 12th house also has to do with rivals or enemies or nemeses. And so one kind of interesting thing about Mac Miller is that he had made a song back in 2010 or 2011 called Donald Trump. And it was kind of glorifying the sort of life of luxury or excess of a successful businessman. And first Trump was okay with this song, but eventually they got into some sort of legal standoff about his inability to use the song or being able to profit from it. And so eventually they kind of became enemies, and there was this big public feud or dispute between Donald Trump and this 20 something rapper. And then of course Mac Miller made very sort of public and funny rebukes of Donald Trump. This is all before he even became president or anything. But just the fact that he was involved in such a kind of public and bitter dispute over a song that he had become kind of associated with, it’s interesting when you consider the ruler of the 12th was in the first and that the focus of this stellium is happening in the 12th house. So it had to do with not just his own enemies, his own set of personal demons as it were, but also externally a nemesis like Donald Trump.
CB: Right. And the other thing relevant about his 12th house stellium and just the end was that Mac Miller died in September of 2018. And this was during that first year of Saturn, Saturn went into Capricorn back in December of 2017, so he was a year into Saturn transiting, not just through his 12th house but over that 12th house stellium, which can be kind of a tough transit when any malefic is going over your stellium, it’s sort of hitting everything in your chart at the same time. So if that’s a good transit, sometimes all the good stuff happens at the same time. But when it’s a heavy transit, sometimes all the really heavy stuff kind of clusters up on you at the same time as well.
PW: A confrontation with his 12th house enemies in a sense, his own personal demons.
CB: Yeah. All right, so let’s go on to some other examples really quick of just stellium so I can get through the rest of mine. Let’s see. So TS Eliot is a time chart who had a Libra stellium with Mercury and Venus very closely conjunct the Ascendant at 25 Libra, but also the Sun and Uranus in that Libra stellium and first whole sign house as well. And he was of course, a famous award-winning poet. James Earl Jones had a Capricorn or has a Capricorn stellium with Mercury, the Ascendant, the Moon, Saturn, the lot of fortune and the Sun all in Capricorn, which is really interesting and cool. That Mercury Saturn conjunction, of course, I’ve talked about in different episodes. I think we talked about it in the Mercury episode I did with Jo Gleason last month. And he had–
PW: And then the Saturn and Capricorn set as well, I believe.
CB: Okay. Yeah. And he had speech impediment early in life, but he was later able to overcome it. And then of course, ironically becomes famous for his voice, his deep booming voice later in life, including being the voice actor of Darth Vader. So yeah.
PW: Mufasa and other ones.
CB: Are you a Lion King fan or Aladdin fan? We had a debate about this. I’m more of an Aladdin guy. What’s your Disney Renaissance movie preference if you had to pick one during the Disney…
PW: Yikes, I don’t know.
CB: You’re too young?
CB: I was probably a Lion King kid. I remember my mom told me she got the VHS of Lion King, and I remember just like I was never more happy than that moment, I think.
CB: So as an Aladdin guy, I don’t know if we can be friends anymore. I’m sorry.
PW: But I do think that Alan Menken’s songs for Aladdin, and especially the Broadway version with some of the other songs, I think that’s in some ways the superior one musically, but I mean, this is hard. You’re asking me to choose between my left and right arm.
CB: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, and you’re probably also more up to date with the recent ones, although they’ve been doing the live-action ones of everything now. On paper the live-action Lion King sounded like it was going to be a lot better than it was, and I wish that was like better somehow. Did you see that?
PW: Yeah, I did see it.
CB: It wasn’t bad. I mean, it wasn’t bad in any way, I still liked it.
PW: It wasn’t bad, I just was thinking the whole time why. I enjoyed the live-action Aladdin though. It was better that I thought it would be.
CB: Will Smith as the genie casting that was genius.
PW: That was a good choice.
CB: All right, that’s enough Disney digression for this episode. Let me switch back to, let me see. Oh yeah, Michael Bloomberg is another one. Both of us found he has an eighth house stellium with Cancer rising and Venus, Mercury, the Moon and Saturn in Aquarius in the eighth house. And the eighth house, of course, traditionally is like other people’s money, but there’s been interesting ways in which that sometimes works out in the charts of like financial people or people that deal in finance. He actually, I think made his millions or his billions initially through developing a tracker, which helped to track the stock market and helped to track the market and different things like that. So yeah, billionaire with an eighth house stellium is pretty interesting and appropriate. Paul McCartney is a 10th house Gemini stellium. So one of the Beatles who then also went on to have a successful solo career. But I always liked how he was a Virgo rising ruled by Mercury up there in Gemini and with Virgo rising and the Uranus, Saturn, Mercury, the Midheaven and the Sun all in the tenth whole sign house in Gemini. And he’s of course, one of the most famous songwriters, I think, of the past century. Would that be an accurate statement?
PW: Yeah. I mean, yeah, absolutely. I think you really see the sort of cleverness in his songwriting and his lyrics and his sort of inventiveness. And it’s funny too because when you compare all the Beatles charts together, you can really see how the differences between them really are expressed in the charts. Lennon was this really sort of Mars type of guy with Mars ruling his Ascendant, whereas Paul McCartney is just Merc and Gemini. One of the big differences between McCartney and Lennon is that John Lennon preferred to sort of just do one raw take. He didn’t want to plan things out too much, he just wanted to hash it out as fast as possible, whereas Paul McCartney was always getting hung up on making sure that all the… Is this the right chord? Is this the right way we should do this? So you have this more sort of mechanical or technical sort of approach to songwriting, sort of a much more particular and making sure that every little part is right, whereas Lennon was more about raw passion and energy in his recording style. So I think that’s a way I kind of understand Paul McCartney as a songwriter is that he’s like an engineer of sounds and has kind of got this mercurial approach that’s done well for him.
CB: Nice, okay. All right. So moving on, Harrison Ford is Libra rising with a Cancer stellium, Mercury, Jupiter, the Sun and the Moon all in Cancer in the 10th whole sign house. And he famously kind of lucked out. He was getting into acting, but he was actually working as a carpenter, I think, for George Lucas when he was cast in one of George Lucas’s movies. And then later went on to star in Star Wars as Han Solo and then eventually Indiana Jones and so on and so forth. So George Lucas, Cancer stellium. Oh yeah. So there’s some tricky 12th house examples. There’s like Bruce Lee who had Sagittarius rising, and he had this kind of tricky 12th house stellium of Venus Mars, the Moon, the lot of fortune and Mercury. And all of those were kind of tightly opposite to the ruler of his Ascendant, which was Jupiter at seven degrees of Taurus conjunct Saturn at nine Taurus and then–
PW: And with a T-square at Pluto.
CB: Yeah. So his whole thing was tricky. But as far as I understand, it was just kind of tricky. And he ended up dying of an accidental drug complication, they think, of taking something at the wrong time and then passing away. So other 12th house example, interestingly another Sagittarius rising is Joe Biden, current US president three degrees-ish of early Sag rising. He has a Scorpio stellium with Mars, Mercury, the Sun and Venus in Scorpio in the 12th house. Of course, this is kind of a tricky one because Mars is there in a day chart. And he of course famously during his Saturn return, he has Saturn conjunct Uranus on the Descendant in the seventh whole sign house of relationships, and famously during his Saturn return he had just gotten elected to public office for the first time. And then like a month later, his wife and children were involved in a horrific car accident where his wife passed away and his daughter passed away and I think his son was seriously injured. So his is tricky because he has so much 12th house and eighth house emphasis with even Sagittarius rising and Jupiter, the rule of the Ascendant, in the eighth house. And he’s had to deal with the concept broadly speaking, let’s say, of loss or mortality or suffering quite a bit in his life with these different losses, later including his son. I think it was his oldest son died just a few years ago, right?
PW: Yeah. Well, I was going to say Mars rules is fifth house of children. So he’s seen the deaths of a couple of his children, and of course Mercury rules his seventh house, so that’s when he saw the passing of his wife is up there at the start of his Saturn return. I can’t remember when he met his current wife, but yeah, you can see how some of the houses that each of those planets rules we could see as being somehow placed in the 12th house showing that there was topics, whether it’s his children or his wife would be in a sort of more perilous sort of position or imperiled kind of position in the 12th house in a place of weakness or potential for tragedy. But at certain points, this could be activated with the right profection and transit.
CB: Yeah. So when I was researching this episode and I was looking for my stellium examples, I don’t know how I never saw this before, but I happened to come across one of the pieces of data in my file. It turns out Jimi Hendrix was born a week after Joe Biden with the same rising sign so that they end up having some of the same house placements. But it’s interesting because a good chunk of Biden’s Scorpio stellium by a week later has shifted into the first house so that it’s in Sagittarius with Sagittarius rising and Mercury and the Sun and Venus being in the first house in Jimi Hendrix’s chart, which is really interesting because he was much more of a free-spirited Sagittarian character.
PW: Lighting his guitar on fire.
CB: All of that is very closely because Mercury is at two, the Sun is at four, Venus is at seven Sagittarius. It’s all closely opposing that Saturn Uranus conjunction at Uranus is at two, Gemini and Saturn is at nine Gemini. So what’s unfortunate about that is that it seems like that’s putting some of that intensity more towards the concept of self and to the body and physical vitality of Hendrix instead of… With Biden, it’s affecting other people in his life that are around him that he’s experiencing the loss of. But then famously with Hendrix, he actually died during his Saturn return, during the early part of Saturn and Gemini. So he was part of like the 27 club of all the famous musicians that have died at 27, and that was when Saturn was in early Gemini. So it’s really weird how Jimi Hendrix died during the early part of his Saturn return, and then during the later part of Saturn and Gemini when Biden had his Saturn return was when he was both elected to public office for the first time but also suffered that major loss of his family members, of his wife and daughter. So I thought it was an interesting bit of trivia. If everyone asks you like what celebrity birth chart is the closest to Joe Biden, the answer is evidently Jimi Hendrix. Let me see, I’m going to skip that example. We did Meghan Markle. Edward Snowden is our Gemini rising first house stellium example with Mercury, the Ascendant, Mars, the North Node and the Sun in Gemini in the first whole sign house. And he was famous whistleblower who announced or disclosed this government program of the US spying on communications around the world. For some reason I have two sixth house stellium examples that are both famous tennis players. So one of them is Serena Williams who had Taurus rising and a Libra stellium with the Sun, Saturn, Jupiter, Pluto and Mercury there. And the other was a more, I think, recent one, Danielle Collins, who had Cancer rising and the North Node, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars and the Moon all in Sagittarius, so super Sagittarius stellium. Not entirely sure what the connection is there, but I think that’s interesting. Are there any others that you really wanted to touch on? I think you only had one other that you gave me to calculate and that was Van Jones, and you thought that it was a good Virgo example, right?
PW: Yeah. Basically, so Van Jones you might’ve seen him if you watch CNN. He’s an author and political commentator. And it’s interesting because a lot of his areas of expertise have to do with the green economy, environmental capitalism and economic justice, human rights. His first book I think was about green jobs and he was actually an advisor to President Obama on green jobs. And so it’s interesting just because we tend to associate Virgo, some of the qualities of Virgo is being relevant to some of these ideas of sustainability, practicality. And then in his specific chart, it’s in the sixth house of work and service, and he seems to be just constantly coming up with a new thing or partnering with a new advocacy group or charity to promote whether it’s job skills for underprivileged youths or a new environmental justice campaign or efforts. He seems to be right there. So we can kind of see some of the sixth house themes of service and labor and the Mercurial themes related to Virgo having to do with service and employment and some of those Virgo themes that kind of connect to this idea of him being this kind of expert on sustainability and green jobs and green economies, etc.
CB: Yeah, and environmentalism and just focus on things like plants or the earth in general is an interesting sometimes overlooked Virgo archetype that’s sort of built in there. So and for those listening to the audio version, he has Aries rising and he has the Moon, Jupiter, Pluto, the Sun and Uranus all in Virgo in the sixth house.
PW: I was also going to say that I think the book the Silent Spring was released during the Uranus Pluto conjunction in Virgo, and Van Jones has talked about before about how that book, the Silent Spring, influenced him and is seen as kind of the foundational text of the modern environmentalist movement. So I think it was kind of interesting that he was actually born in the approximate timeframe when environmentalism was sort of really becoming a discrete force in the world.
CB: Right. Okay, excellent. Well, why don’t we bring it full circle and talk about just what we’ve learned today and what the main points are that we want to leave people with? I think the main thing I just want to leave people with is just a stellium is one of those things, an aspect pattern or a chart pattern that will sometimes draw your attention when you’re first looking at a new birth chart. And that can be really good thing because sometimes if you spot a stellium, you know that that’s going to be a sign of the zodiac or it’s going to be a house that’s going to stand out in that person’s life in some way for better or worse. So it can be a very useful interpretive tool from that standpoint just in terms of reading charts just like other aspect patterns. Because it’s one of those things where you can just see it visually and recognize it and immediately have a jumping off point for starting to interpret the chart and understanding something that’s going to be important in some global sense for that person’s life. Is that how you feel as well?
PW: I mean, that’s good. I mean, yeah, it’s an emphasis in someone’s life. Quality of the sign and the particular house that it occupies, that’s going to be a particular emphasis. And I would also say that if you wanted to do a full tally of how to analyze a given stellium, then you need to consider the nature of the planets and what they contribute to that sign, as well as the conditions of those planets according to sect and aspect and dignity, as well as the houses that the planets rule. I think that’s probably one of the most useful… I mean, this is all useful, but I think one of the most illuminating things to me about analyzing a stellium is acknowledging the planet’s role as a ruler of another house because for some people they might go, “Well, I have this great emphasis in this one house. I do have other parts of my life, what does my chart have to say about that?” And it’s like, “Well, you should look at the rulers of those houses and see how they connect to the house they were present in. And we’ve given a few examples of that already, but you can really see how a stellium doesn’t just say something about itself in that house, it also says things about the houses that those planets rule as well.
CB: Yeah. And sometimes that can feel really complicated and can overcomplicate things. But yeah, just at least as long as you have that initial starting point of what house is this in, what area of life should this relate to in the person’s life and what people in the natives life are represented by that house, then you’ve at least got a starting point for delineation, and then you can get into the finer details and the other specifics from there. All right. Stelliums, I think we covered a lot of examples. I’m pretty impressed. I feel pretty good about it. How do you feel?
PW: I mean, I have a couple of handful more of just mundane ones to just sort of throw out there that are kind of funny or interesting if you want to hear.
CB: Sure. Oh yeah, there are some. Are you looking at this one?
PW: This one?
CB: Okay, yeah, go with that one.
PW: Well, yeah. So I think one thing that’s really interesting about–
CB: Just do them quick.
PW: Yeah, sure. So one thing I think is kind of interesting is that the United Nations was founded on October 24th, 1945, which just happens to be at a Venus, Jupiter, Neptune stellium in Libra. And of course, Libra is the sign of Venus which has to do with balance and peacekeeping, and the entire point of the United Nations is to act as a way to cooperate as a force for global cooperation in peacekeeping efforts. So we have the two benefics aligned with this more generational planet Neptune, that sort of stuff. Now that also happened to the Mars Saturn conjunction, but that’s a conjunction of a stellium. Another one that I thought was kind of eerie is the fact that the first demonstration of the weapon the AK 47 was on November 13th, 1947, first demonstrated for Soviet officials. This is the weapon that is most commonly used in a lot of mass shootings, this is a notorious weapon. And on that day that it was first debuted, that was at a Mars, Saturn, Pluto conjunction stellium in Leo. So we have both malefics and Mars the planet that traditionally represents weapons, and then is further empowered by its conjunction to Pluto. That’s a pretty uncanny combination of planets for the debut of this notorious weapon. And then one of the ones that just really blows my mind is the fact that… Oh, there it is, yeah, the Mars Saturn conjunction in proximity to Pluto. Obviously, there’s a couple of other stelliums happening at the same time. But I think the one that blows my mind the most is probably the fact that, and you may know this already if you’ve looked at it before, but the fact that the Moon Landing itself on July 20th, 1969, if you look at the exact chart, I have the link to the exact chart of the Moon Landing, the Moon itself was exactly conjunct Jupiter and Uranus. So there was a Moon, Jupiter, Uranus stellium at the Moon landing itself. And so I think for any conspiracy theorists out there, I think that we never landed. I don’t know.
CB: You mean when the government pretended and set up a set that made it look like we landed on the Moon?
PW: The Moon itself was conjunct Jupiter and Uranus at the… And of course, the Jupiter Uranus cycle itself is often connected to great voyages and amazing steps forward in technological accomplishments and space travel generally. So I think that’s kind of an amazing confluence of the Moon itself is involved in the transit. And then there were a couple of other weird stellium connections. I know you don’t necessarily want me to go into those, but it’s just kind of another way to get kind of a shorthand way of understanding important historical events like the fall of the Berlin Wall, that was the Saturn Neptune conjunction 1989 or oh yeah, the Moon Landing, that was the Moon, Jupiter, Uranus conjuction Libra or the fall of the Berlin Wall, that was the Saturn, Neptune and other planets in a stellium in Capricorn or the Coronavirus is a Saturn, Jupiter, Pluto, Mars stellium in Capricorn. It’s a really amazing way to kind of look at time.
CB: Yeah. Let me show that because I didn’t show earlier. That’s actually what’s funny ultimately to wrap this up, is that there’s long been in the astrological tradition historically conceptualization of great events taking place in the world when there is an alignment of planets in the sky and when all of the wandering stars somehow cluster together and line up in a straight line. And there’s this famous legend attributed to Berossus from the second century, third century BCE, the Babylonian astrologer Berossus, who supposedly said that there was a periodic creation and destruction of the world and that the world would be destroyed by a fire when all of the planets aligned in Cancer. And it would be destroyed by a flood when all the planets aligned in Capricorn. So some of that’s kind of mythological or legendary, but at least it puts the idea of great conjunctions of planets or clusterings of planets as signifying great worldwide or sometimes momentous events. And we’ve been focused on this, of course, in terms of what it means for the individual in terms of their birth charts and sometimes it indicating a notable or momentous area of a person’s life. But what’s weird is, as you were saying, it also applies to worldwide events and sometimes important stuff happens when the planets cluster together in a certain spot in the sky like it did last year when all of the planets lined up in Capricorn or at least a lot of planets did. So here’s the chart for that. Here’s mid-February when Mars went into Capricorn and stuff started to hit the fan, and we’ve got like Mars, South Node, the Moon, Jupiter, Pluto, and Saturn all going through Capricorn. And then eventually they just keep getting closer and closer as you go through March until they all met up pretty closely right around here. Here’s like March 17th. That was basically it, it was Moon at 17 Capricorn, Mars at 21, Jupiter at 22, Pluto at 24 and Saturn at 29. So during the great pandemic, and especially during the lockdowns that we all experienced by this point in the third week of March, what was funny is in the year ahead forecast for 2020 if you go back, Kelly had come up with… We were joking about no hugs March, and we said there would be no hugs in the third week of March because we were trying to interpret what does a stellium in Capricorn feel like? And we’re trying to interpret that back in like November of 2019. And Kelly was like, “It’s very dry, it’s not very open, there’s no connection. There’s a closing off and a pulling back into oneself.” And we were joking about no hugs happening as our attempt to grapple with and sort of describe that energy archetypically and that ended up working out pretty, pretty well.
PW: I mean, back in 2017, I was looking at the Saturn Pluto conjunction saying that it relates to this theme of imprisonment or… And really the word I was looking for was, I guess, quarantining, to self isolate.
CB: Yeah. That was in the Saturn and Capricorn episode that we did in 2017. Yeah. Yeah. So stelliums also are relevant sometimes in terms of mundane and world events not just in personal lives. So I think that’s been a pretty good overview of the concept and the technique of stelliums and some of the different variations and different debates about stelliums and the different approaches, but also just looking at charts and giving a bunch of examples. I think we’ve been able to give a pretty good overview here today. So thanks for joining me for this, this was fun.
PW: Thank you. Yeah, no, it’s been great. I think you had some great really uplifting examples, Chris, as always.
CB: Thank you. As usual, that is my job here on The Astrology Podcast is to brighten everyone’s life with my lovely example charts. I mean, I’ve tried to balance it. I slipped some positive ones in there, right?
PW: Yeah, no, yeah. Yeah, sure.
CB: Yeah, no. Okay. You’re going to go home and you’re going to start crying immediately after this recording is over.
PW: You know what though, I’m now much better though. I got to go get finding small positive chart examples.
CB: I have to say the invention of the AK 47 during Leo conjunction, that was not the most rosy example.
PW: Right, yeah. Well, I have Mars and Leo on my Ascendant right now.
CB: You haven’t shared your stellium. I’ve been throwing my stellium all over the place. Is that something you want to put out there?
PW: Well, your stellium’s in the 10th house, so that’s why everyone’s seen it, Chris. Mine’s in the fourth, that’s why keep it hidden.
CB: All right, my apologies. I didn’t mean to…
PW: Oh, no, no. I wouldn’t… Yeah, mine’s in the fourth. So I have the Moon, Venus, Mercury retrograde and Pluto all within about eight degrees of each other. No, 13 degrees of each other.
CB: Do you want me to show it?
PW: Sure, I guess.
CB: I don’t have to. I’m peer pressuring you.
PW: You can share my chart, it’s fine. I’ll sling it out. I guess this is our final example then. For whatever reason, we’re going to do this. So you can see my Moon is conjunct my IC, I have Pluto, Mercury and Venus in my fourth house. And so of course the fourth house is supposed to relate to one’s origins, one’s home, one’s pets.
CB: I always forget that you just barely missed out on the luxury of being a Scorpio with your Sun being at 29 degrees of Libra. So I always think of you as a Scorpio, but you’re actually a Libra.
PW: Yeah, there’s a lot of different things you could say about that. But I think one of the interesting things I’ve sort of seen for myself if I’m was looking at my chart just like a client’s chart, I see that the ruler of the 10th is this Venus in the fourth house. And what’s kind of interesting about that is that aside from being an astrologer, I’ve also done a lot of music. And the only reason I’ve really pursued music is because my father is a sort of semi-famous musician in the classical music world. And for a long time in my teens and in my early twenties, I went to school for music and I was kind of going down the path, going down a similar path as he was to be a musician in the classical music world. And so in a sense, my career direction was almost going in the direction of my father, the ruler of the 10th being in the fourth house, joining the family business as it were through Venus, through music. And my Venus just happens to be on the degree of my father’s Ascendant. So this kind of is a synastry confirmation of that kind of placement. But I think the other thing that really seems to make sense for my child though as well is that while I have these sort of dual passions, I guess, so I have music as one chart, but the other chart obviously is astrology. And it was through my mother and her collection of astrology books and her knowledge of astrology that I was able to pursue astrology and I kind of see that through the fact that the ruler of the ninth is ruled by the star which is a mutual reception with Venus again in the fourth house. So it shows benefits through one’s parents. Our home was always full of books, full of music books and full of astrology books. So that has been a major kind of point of emphasis in my life, the sort of fundamental foundational things to myself come from my parents.
CB: Yeah. I like that. So the ruler of the fourth and the ninth and the third and some of your first astrology books were like your mom’s astrology books.
PW: Yeah. Well, and actually, I only have my birth time because my mom, otherwise I wouldn’t have my birth time. My mom’s into astrology, and she made sure that I had my right time. So yeah, that’s kind of how it’s been. I also think that the fourth house because it’s supposed to be a house of hidden or obscure things, I didn’t always put that stuff on display. In some ways, I guess, I’m unexpectedly private. But anyway, that’s that.
CB: All right. Well, thank you for sharing that with us, my fourth house friend.
PW: Our charts are really opposite of each other in that way.
CB: Yeah. That’s really funny. Although it’s funny with your dad’s Ascendant being at 15 Scorpio conjunct your Venus. What I’ve learned from this episode is that Scorpios beget Scorpios, and that’s part of what happens, I guess, the propagation of our zodiacal species. All right. Thanks for joining me for this. Thanks everyone for watching this episode of The Astrology Podcast. Thanks especially to all the patrons that supported this episode because we’re getting some equipment for Patrick so we can record everything in HD with lovely audio and videos, so we could do a high quality episode. And so all of our patrons that support us basically make this possible to keep doing episodes like this and basically teaching free astrology classes. So if you enjoyed it and you listen to the podcast regularly, think about becoming a patron to support us and get access to some bonus content like early access to new episodes or other bonus materials that I don’t need to itemize right here. Patrick and I are thinking about doing that rectification course. So if you’d like to see that or you’d be interested in signing up for that, then please let us know in the comment section below this video on YouTube or on The Astrology Podcast website for this page. Also be sure to like this video and subscribe to our YouTube channel if you like it. Patrick, you’ve got a YouTube channel that you’ve got actually a lot of really good videos.
PW: It’s under construction, but I have a lot of videos on there, yeah.
CB: Do you remember what your URL is? Did you set a custom URL?
PW: I think it’s just patrickwatsonastrologer. It’s been such a long time.
CB: Okay. What’s your main website at this point?
PW: patrickwatsonastrology.com.
CB: Okay, and you’re doing consultations?
PW: I do natal consultations, I do horary consultations, I do electional consultations and I also do rectification consultations and tutoring.
CB: Excellent. Well, if anybody needs any of that, then they should check out your website which is patrickwatsonastrology.com.
PW: Yeah, patrickwatsonastrology.com.
CB: And then your YouTube channel looks it’s youtube.com/patrickwatsonastrologer. And I’ll put links to that in the description below this video or on The Astrology Podcast website for this episode. So that’s it. So thanks everybody for watching this episode of The Astrology Podcast or listening, and we’ll see you again next time.
PW: Thank you. Bye.
CB: Special thanks to all the patrons that supported the production of this episode of the podcast through our page on patreon.com. In particular, thanks to all the patrons on our producer’s tier, including Nate Craddock, Thomas Miller, Catherine Conroy, Kristi Moe, Ariana Amuor, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Sumo Coppock, Issa Sabah, Jake Otero, Morgan MacKenzie, Kristin Otero and Sanjay Sreehari. For more information about how to become a patron and get access to bonus content such as early access to new episodes or private subscriber only podcast episodes, go to patreon.com/astrologypodcast. Special thanks also to our sponsors, including The Mountain Astrologer Magazine available at mountainastrologer.com, the Honeycomb Collective Personal Astrological Almanacs available at honeycomb.co. Astro Gold astrology software for the Mac operating system which is available at astrogold.io. And you can use the promo code ASTROPODCAST15 for a 15% discount. The Portland School of Astrology available at portlandastrology.org. Astro Gold astrology app for iPhone and Android which is also available at astrogold.io. And finally the Solar Fire astrology software program for Windows which you can get from alabe.com, and you can use the promo code AP15 for a 15% discount.
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Concern Troll: No, Hillary Clinton, The GOP Is Not 'Imploding'
@mvespa1
If there’s one thing that Hillary Clinton should stay away from, it’s political forecasts. She’s a two-time loser. Period. Winning in New York is not a political accomplishment, especially against a lightweight like former Rep. Rick Lazio. I say this because the former first lady, who will never be president of the United States, said that the Republican Party is “imploding,” and that she’s very, very worried about it (via The Hill):
.@HillaryClinton: "The Republican Party is imploding." https://t.co/xZ7tBrjpzQ pic.twitter.com/ciMvCvSdrD
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) October 25, 2017
You know, we've seen in the last week, we've seen Bob Corker, we've seen Jeff Flake ... there are a lot of other people in the Republican Party who feel exactly the same way," Clinton said Wednesday.
"And I think when they appear on TV, or they are interviewed, they need to be pressed," Clinton added.
Clinton says that the future of the Republican Party is one of her greatest worries now that she is off the campaign trail.
"I mean, there are a lot of things that I worry about, this is actually on my list, of what I worry about. The Republican Party is imploding," Clinton continued.
"It is becoming a far-right, captive party to ideological religious and commercial interests. It is at the mercy of its financial backers and a cabal of leaders who are doing things like shrinking the electorate, gerrymandering, and taking every step they can to maintain power for themselves and those who are like-minded."
Okay—let’s back up a bit. The Democrats don’t gerrymander (they do)? The Democrats don’t have big moneyed interests? The Democrats aren’t a far left party? A small, insufferable urban-based professional left wing elite doesn’t dominate Democratic politics? Only Republicans do this. We all know that's crap; Democrats probably have just as many if not more so-called big moneyed interests in their rolodex. And they're everything else as well. In fact, their fare left lurch on cultural issues is exactly what's keeping them from a successful revival, but that's a story for another time. Yeah, I know the double standard, but it’s somewhat funny coming from a woman who was too stupid to campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan, too aloof to truly explain why she had a private email server that was not allowed under the State Department, and too snobby to even reach out to rural voters. Yeah, the GOP is imploding alright—they only control the White House, Congress, two-thirds of the governorships, and 69/99 state legislatures. They’re at the height of their political power, and they’re the dominant political force in the country. The Democrats are now a regional and urban-based party that is in no shape to be a governing force. They’ve lost 1,000 seats since 2009.
Another Liberal Confused on Senate and Basic Math: Don Lemon Rants Against 'a Minority Ruling the Majority'
Citing the departures of Bob Corker (R-TN) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), two senators who are quitting because of Trump or the state of the GOP, is hardly indicative that the party is imploding. Also, it’s a bit odd, given that Corker and Flake find Trump so awful that they’re probably going to support his massive tax reform package, which just adds to the notion that they’re a bunch of quitters. Hillary thinks the Republicans are splitting into factions. There’s really no evidence to suggest the party is heading for the 1968 crackup that engulfed the Democratic Party.
CNN Trashes White House Sharing 'Baffling' Memo Touting How Unpopular Biden Is
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On Memorial Day, Let’s Lift Our Heads and Speak
Craig Biddle May 26, 2014
Many hundreds of thousands of men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces have died fighting in wars, and Memorial Day is dedicated to honoring these soldiers. Toward that end, in addition to bowing our heads in remembrance of their lives and deaths, let us raise our heads and observe the causes of war—and those of peace.
The causes of war are:
Statism—the falsehood that the state has a right to force men to act against their own judgment for the sake of some “greater good,” whether the community (communism), the race (Nazism), the nation (fascism), or “God” (theocracy). For example, World War II was caused by an (alleged) race of people asserting that it has a right to subjugate or kill other races, and that its nation has a right to conquer other nations to sustain itself.
Collectivism—the falsehood that the individual’s life, mind, and goals are subordinate to the will of some group or collective. For example, the U.S. Civil War was caused by a group of men insisting that they have a right to maintain states authorizing the enslavement of another group of men.
Altruism—the falsehood that being moral consists in self-sacrificially serving others rather than self-interestedly serving oneself. For instance, America’s involvement in the Vietnam War—a war initially caused by the North Vietnamese and Chinese communists seeking to enslave the South Vietnamese—was a consequence of Americans’ acceptance of the notion that the proper purpose of our foreign policy is to selflessly serve others rather than to selfishly protect Americans.
Religion—the falsehood that we should have faith in and obey the commandments of some “God” rather than go by reason, observation, logic, and the requirements of human life and prosperity on Earth. For instance, the current war by Islamic nations (and groups) against Western civilization is caused by their faith in a “God” who commands them to convert or kill us.
In contrast, the causes of peace are:
Capitalism—the social system that recognizes and protects each individual’s rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness;
Individualism—the idea that the individual’s life belongs to him, not to any group or collective, and that he has a moral right to live it as he sees fit;
Egoism—the idea that being moral consists in pursuing one’s own life-serving values (education, career, recreation, friendships, romance, etc.) and respecting the rights of others to do the same;
Rationality—recognition and acceptance of the fact that reason is man’s only means of knowledge and thus his only means of understanding the facts of reality, the requirements of human life, the validity of a given moral code, or the conditions of peaceful human coexistence.
When and to the extent these truths and values are embraced, men have no need for war. Insofar as men are free to think, produce, and trade with others voluntarily (capitalism)—and insofar as they recognize the sovereignty and rights of individuals and the moral propriety of self-interest (individualism and egoism)—in other words, insofar as men uphold reason as their guide in all political, social, and personal matters (rationality)—neither they nor their governments have any reason to attack other people or nations. Who needs death and destruction when life and prosperity are possible?
Free, rights-respecting, self-interested, rational men and nations go to war only when they are attacked or threatened with aggression—and then only to defend their freedom so that they can return to peaceful, normal, prosperous living.
On Memorial Day, rather than just bow our heads in silence, let’s also raise our heads and speak these vital truths. What better way to honor the victims and fallen heroes of war than to condemn the causes of war and to advocate those of peace?
[For elaboration on this theme, see “The Causes of War and Those of Peace,” which includes additional elements and examples.]
Getting Lincoln Right
“Gifts from Heaven”: The Meaning of the American Victory over Japan, 1945
U.S. Foreign Policy: What’s the Purpose?
The Causes of War and Those of Peace
Interview with Historian John David Lewis about U.S. Foreign Policy and the Middle East
Ten Steps to End Jihad Against the West
Bosch Fawstin on Islam and Jihad
9/11 and America’s Failure to End the Jihad
It Really Is About TimeAt World Cup Opening Ceremony, a Paraplegic Will Walk—Thanks to Miguel Nicolelis and Co
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Announcements, Ayn Rand & Objectivism, Politics & Rights
“Understanding Ayn Rand”: A Powerful PragerU Video
Craig Biddle March 26, 2021
On Monday, PragerU posted a new five-minute video, titled “Understanding Ayn Rand,” and it instantly went viral. As of this writing, it has more than a million views—in just five days.
The video, which is brilliantly narrated by Gloria Álvarez, was sponsored by Objective Standard Institute, and the script was co-authored by PragerU’s and OSI’s writers, with help from Gloria. You can view it below or on YouTube.
For those who are interested in how this video came to be and why we are so excited about it, here’s the backstory. . .
I’ve long wanted to engage with Dennis Prager about the source and nature of morality, as he has often claimed that “without God, there is no objective morality.” Many people hold this view, and it’s understandable that they do—unless they already understand the truth of Ayn Rand’s principle that the requirements of man’s life constitute the objective standard of morality. And few people know anything about that. This is why I really wanted to engage with Dennis, and preferably in a way that would reach PragerU’s sizable audience—65 percent of which is under the age of thirty four.
About a year ago, my friend Jason Bateman, who had just begun working at PragerU, contacted me to ask whether I’d be interested in helping them to create a five-minute video on Rand’s ideas. Of course I said yes. And this rolled into a number of related projects, including my recent Fireside Chat with Dennis, “A Dialogue about God and Ayn Rand.”
It’s been a pleasure working with Dennis, Jason, Gloria, Allen Estrin, and the whole crew at PragerU. They clearly appreciate Rand as a thinker. They want their audience to know about her ideas and how they relate to freedom, capitalism, and American exceptionalism. And they wanted to present her ideas accurately. Team OSI was happy to oblige. And everything has gone beautifully.
Of course, the goal of this video was not to teach people Rand’s philosophy in five minutes. That would be impossible. Rather, our aim was to inspire people to look further into Rand’s ideas, and especially to read Atlas Shrugged.
Toward that end, we worked to develop a script that met PragerU’s viewers at their context, appealed to their values, and created some intrigue around Rand’s ideas and the novel.
The video opens as follows:
“Who is John Galt?” This is one of the most famous questions in modern literature. Even today, over fifty years after it was written, you’ll hear people asking it.
Because it recalls the riveting suspense story, heroic characters, and powerful ideas portrayed in the bestselling novel Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia on February 2, 1905, Rand became one the most celebrated authors and philosophers of the 20th century. Her most famous novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, still sell hundreds of thousands of copies every year around the world.
Rand lived through the early years of the Russian Revolution, saw her father’s pharmacy business confiscated by the Bolsheviks, and experienced the horrors of communism firsthand.
She longed to emigrate to America. In 1926, she did—and never looked back.
That brief biographical material provides context and sets the stage for a discussion of Rand’s ideas. Because PragerU’s viewers generally love America, freedom, and the Founders, we highlighted Rand’s views on these values—including her vital connection between individual rights and the principle of non-sacrifice:
To Rand, the United States meant freedom. She saw the founding fathers as heroes. They created a country based on individual rights. “Man’s right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness,” she said, means that every individual has a “right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself”—nor to the government.
Because PragerU’s viewers generally love the wealth and prosperity that America’s relative freedom and private sector have made possible, we quoted Rand to this effect as well:
The practical results of the American system, Rand said, could be seen in the skyline of New York City. “America’s skyscrapers,” she noted, “were not built by public funds nor for a public purpose: they were built by the energy, initiative, and wealth of private individuals for personal profit. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these skyscrapers, as they rose higher and higher, kept raising the people’s standard of living.”
PragerU’s viewers generally want to support free markets and capitalism, and they generally oppose economic controls and statism, so we pointed out that
Rand advocated pure capitalism, which she described as a system in which “the government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights.” No bailouts, no special favors for big business, no government intervention into the economy. When people are free to produce and trade, and when the government is limited to protecting rights, everyone benefits. Individuals thrive. Societies prosper.
We then point to some vivid historic facts that support this:
How do we know this? Compare freer, more capitalist societies to less free, more statist ones. In Rand’s day: America compared to the Soviet Union, West Germany to East Germany. More recently: South Korea to North Korea, Colombia to Venezuela.
Such differences were painfully obvious to Rand. So were their causes.
Here, the video turns to a political-economic theme of Atlas—and some mystery:
In Atlas Shrugged, she showed how easily a free society can collapse into a dictatorship. The heroine, Dagny Taggart, works tirelessly and brilliantly to save her family’s railroad business, while ever-increasing government interventions destroy businesses and crush the economy.
Meanwhile, one by one, the top producers across various industries mysteriously disappear. No one knows where they have gone. The only clue is a question they leave behind: Who is John Galt?
As the economy crumbles, how do politicians, bureaucrats, and academics react? They blame “the greedy businessman” and decry the profit motive and free markets. Their solution: more government intervention which, of course, only makes the problem worse.
Of course, Atlas is not fundamentally about politics, so the video goes deeper:
Atlas Shrugged is a cautionary tale about pursuing equality over excellence—state control over free markets—but it’s also about the power of the individual and the power of reason.
The individual’s reasoning mind, Rand argued, is his tool of knowledge—his only means of understanding what is true or false, how the world works, what is good or bad for his life.
This is the theme of Rand’s work more broadly: In order to thrive, to achieve happiness, the individual must think for himself and live by the judgment of his own mind.
Those paragraphs go to the very core of Objectivism: The individual’s reasoning mind is his only means of knowledge, and in order to live and prosper he must use his mind and act on his own judgment.
That point segues into why freedom and capitalism are moral:
To do this people must be free—free to voluntarily exchange ideas, goods, and services for mutual benefit; free to speak their minds without fear. For this, she regarded capitalism not only as the best, but as the only moral social system.
“Capitalism does not tell men to suffer, but to pursue enjoyment and achievement,” she argued. “Capitalism does not preach passivity, humility, resignation, but independence, self-confidence, self-reliance.” Above all, Rand emphasized, capitalism does not permit anyone to expect or demand the unearned.
I love Rand’s focus on the positive here: Capitalism is about “independence, self-confidence, self-reliance”—not about expecting or demanding the unearned.
Importantly, the video asks,
Is this the system America lives under now? No, said Rand. She called capitalism the “unknown ideal” because it has never been fully implemented, even in America.
The video ends where it began, with an implicit yet strong call to action:
Ayn Rand’s ideas on capitalism, individualism, and reason have attracted millions of people to her novels, essays and lectures. And still do.
Who is John Galt?
I’m Gloria Alvarez with the Objective Standard Institute for Prager University.
I couldn’t be happier with this video or the process of working with PragerU to make it. And the fact that it has been viewed by more than a million people in less than a week—and that 65 percent of these viewers are under the age of thirty four—is music to my soul.
This project is an instance of Objective Standard Institute’s value-up approach to advancing Objectivism. It’s one of the many ways in which we are strategically reaching young minds. And we’re just getting started.
Check out the video below. Or, better yet, visit the YouTube page and take a look at all of the positive comments about Rand, Atlas Shrugged, and Objectivism. I think they’ll brighten your day. And I think they demonstrate the value of presenting Rand’s ideas to new audiences who are willing to engage their minds.
On Monday, @PragerU posted a new 5-minute video, Understanding Ayn Rand, and it instantly went viral.
God vs. Ayn Rand: A Fireside Chat with Dennis Prager and Craig Biddle
Purpose Comes from Reason, Not Religion
Alex Epstein’s What’s the Deal With the Green New Deal?
CJ Pearson Identifies a Cause of 9/11—but Not the Fundamental Cause
Why Religious Conservatives Should Embrace Secular Rights
Timothy Sandefur on the Heroic Life of Frederick Douglass
Celebrating Progress and Combating Complacency: An Interview with Virginia PostrelHeard the news? TOS-Con’s early-bird discounts have been extended!
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← Gilead7: Peaces of War
Artson: E.A.R.T.H. →
M.I.: Omerta
Posted on July 11, 2016 by Sherron Shabazz
Photo courtesy of AboveGroundStudios
Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano were the fathers of the National Crime Syndicate. The Syndicate was a conglomeration of Italian and Jewish criminal organizations in the United States in the middle of the 20th century. To pay homage to the prevalent gangster theme in Hip-Hop, DJ Cutt and M.I. of Constant Deviants took on the monikers of the late gangsters for a new album titled “Omerta.”
Produced entirely by DJ Cutt, Omerta is one of the best releases of 2016. The album is a throwback to mid-90s east coast Hip-Hop with a 2016 feel. Omerta is big on beats and rhymes with Mafioso mentions sprinkled throughout.
The Real Hip-Hop spoke to one half of Constant Deviants, M.I. about the American mafia, SIX2SIX Records’ foray into film making, and his new album, Omerta.
TRHH: For those that don’t know, explain what Omerta means.
M.I.: Omerta is a code of silence. It’s a term in the mafia that means “code of silence.” It means that you don’t speak to people about what goes on and whether it even exists or not.
TRHH: Why’d you name the album Omerta?
M.I.: In today’s day and age there is so much talk about people telling that it’s kind of like a twist. With the music game everybody is talking about not snitching and everybody is talking about the mob shit but I’ve never heard a rapper use the word Omerta before. It’s so unused and we wanted to come from an angle with this project that we wanted to touch on the mob stuff but we didn’t really wanna come off like Kool G Rap or somebody came off with it before. We didn’t want to play on it too hard. With me being Italian and Cutt being Russian we got the heritage of Lansky and Luciano and that’s where we came up with the title. Omerta being such a big part of the culture and a term I’ve never even heard used in mob movies, it felt like the right word to use with what we were trying to come across with and represent the balance of the mafia thing with the album. We’re not trying to come off like we’re mobster either on it.
TRHH: Did you come up with the Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano idea before or after you came up with the concept for this album?
M.I.: Really it popped in my head one day when I was watching a documentary on them. I always knew Meyer Lansky was Jewish but I didn’t know he was Russian. Cutt is Russian Jewish. When I heard that in the documentary I was watching I was like, “Oh shit, that’s bugged out.” It’s been a while since somebody really touched on that mob thing. In the 90s everybody was naming themselves after mobsters and stuff like that but it kind of faded out. We dropped the Avant Garde album last year and it was more jazzy and smoothed out. We needed something hard and more rugged to go back to our original sound. We try to do a little something different on every album. That’s when that came up. Omerta was always a word I wanted to use anyway for a name of a song or whatever. It’s a unique word and it’s not used a lot. A lot of people claim to have knowledge of mob stuff but they don’t know what that is. When we came up with the concept we decided to use that to title the album.
TRHH: Tell me about the single So Underrated.
M.I.: That was the first joint we actually did for the album. Initially when we decided to do this album we wanted to have that MPC feel – an MPC swing to it. It was supposed to be an EP actually. The plan was to do 6-7 joints, throw it on vinyl, and throw it out there. That’s when Cutt hit me with the So Underrated joint. He already had the cuts on there. A lot of times we’ll come up with the hooks together. That particular one he sent it to me and it already had the cuts on it so it set the precedence for the album. After we did that joint I thought we should do an entire album. The album isn’t like every record has a point about the mafia to it. A lot of the samples we chose for the album are samples that have the feeling of that Luciano/Lansky era musically. A lot of the metaphors and punchlines are based off of books we’ve read or movies we’ve seen about the mob. It’s not necessarily that every song is about the mob. That song doesn’t have anything to do with the mob but there are lines that touch on that. It was a hard joint that set the precedence for the album.
TRHH: Whose idea was it to integrate the sound bites throughout the album?
M.I.: Me and Cutt do that together. Pretty much everything we do we kind of have a formula. We do something like that on every album. I couldn’t tell you if one of us said to do it more than the other. It kind of just happened. Once we decided we were gonna do that we went back and thought about certain things that we wanted to use and found the songs that we wanted to use them for. We used the Richard Kuklinski joint from the Iceman documentary that was on HBO. That was after the record “Fuklinski.” The “GTFOH” joint was from the Goodfellas piece that we used when they were having the conversation at dinner and Tommy was teasing Henry Hill saying, “I’m funny how? I mean funny like a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh?” and he was like, “Get the fuck outta here!” We took a Meyer Lansky interview and used that as a hook on one of the joints. We did that together. It’s something we do on every album whether we use sound bites or music interludes, it just kind of happens naturally.
TRHH: How’d the song Delorean come about?
M.I.: With this album we just wanted to use things that kind of had that feel to it. It wasn’t just about Luciano and Lansky and trying to have this feeling of the 30s and 40s. We just wanted to talk about stuff that nobody ever talks about, kind of like Omerta. Nobody ever talks about Delorean but Delorean got an ill story. If you knew about what was going on in 80s you knew what a Delorean car was and homeboy got caught up in that whole cocaine conspiracy thing. Everything isn’t based around the mafia on this album, it just kind of set the tone for it. Delorean was just a word I wanted to use so I told Cutt, “Yo, I wanna do a record called Delorean.” It triggered him and he made the beat for it. I wrote the rhyme, we sat in the studio one day and found some good lines to throw in the cuts and that was it.
With me and Cutt when we make music it happens organically. It’s about words and feelings. The joint on the album Sparks Steakhouse doesn’t have anything to do with Sparks Steak House, it’s just a mob reference. The name of the beat was “Café Piano” when he sent it to me. Because it was café it made me think of food. The hook talks about somebody being food. Because of that reference I thought about how we could make it go back to the mob stuff and Sparks Steak House was a popular mobster restaurant in New York. That’s where Paulie Castellano was killed in front of. I just wanted to do something to set the tone with the cocaine shit and the 80s appeal and Delorean felt like the perfect title for that song.
TRHH: How did SIX2SIX get involved in filmmaking?
M.I.: Originally me and a homeboy of mine, JPowell did a project with these guys from Switzerland some years back, SWC, who did all of the production on it. The name of the album is SWISS BANKS. It’s a nine-song album that we put out on vinyl. JPowell did a lot of our videos over the years and when he heard the album he was like, “Yo, let’s do a video for all of these joints.” I thought we could do videos for ‘em but let’s do something different like a movie. What we did was we shot full videos with acting in between. I guess it’s similar to something like a Streets Is Watching but it’s a little different because it goes straight through. It’s an hour long. There is acting and a video will set up what’s in the scene. The songs that are on the album that we didn’t shoot videos for are inside of the score of the movie.
We did that joint and I kinda enjoyed it. I liked writing in it and acting in it. It was a chance to try our hand at something like that. It came out good and a lot of people liked it a lot. We screened it when we went to Switzerland and they really dug it a lot. What I realized at that time was we didn’t have the means to do a full feature movie, but I had a full feature movie written. I wrote it back in 2008 with a homegirl of mine. He kept wanting to shoot it but we did what we did because we got our homeboys and homegirls together and put a little something together. It wasn’t like we got real actors and really planned it ahead of time. It was like, “Yo, we shooting today?” “Yeah, we shooting today,” and we did it like that. I knew we couldn’t do a full feature movie like that. He had a homegirl of his that was a producer named Cass Riddick. She’s been in the independent film industry for about 8 years. He introduced us and she helped put our first full feature movie together, which is SIX2SIX The Movie. We’re running it through the film festivals right now. We just finished it in March so we’re starting to submit it to all the film festivals right now. We’re actually going to shoot our second full feature movie soon. It happened organically.
Nowadays the music is awesome, I love making music and that’s going to happen automatically, but you need to do more than just making music now. You gotta be more involved and more active. People don’t really buy music that much anymore. Yeah, we sell physical product and put everything on vinyl, CD, and limited cassettes, but that’s not enough to really make a living off of. Digital is cool but once something is online digitally for sale it’s free somewhere too. It’s hard to actually make a living selling just music. The movies give us a chance to put our music in the movies. We also have a clothing line so it gives us a chance to market our clothing line inside of the movies. It’s just another form of expression. You just have to be broader now as a company. You can’t just make music and think that that’s it. You have to try different things. I enjoyed the film aspect of it. I want to get into more acting, not just in our movies. I want to act in other people’s movies as well. I’m getting more into that now. I got a few gigs coming up this summer so it’s cool.
TRHH: Who is Omerta for?
M.I.: It’s for the old and the new. People say our music sounds like the stuff from the golden era, boom bap, old school Hip-Hop but we try not to limit it. With Avant Garde we tried to mesh the golden era sound but make it sound up to date sonically. A lot of what happens with these cats that make music from the 90s is they get stuck sounding like the music was actually made in the 90s. Their rhyme flows, beats, samples, and the way its mixed sounds like something from the 90s. Other than the fact that they’re not recording in analog, which is the probably most important aspect of something sounding like it was from the 90s. That’s what gave that music back then such a solid sound. Everything sounds like it’s from the 90s except for that, so it really doesn’t even sound that great. It sounds tingy and the drums are weak.
I would say Omerta is for our original fan base that’s been rocking with us because we’re going to give you what Constant Deviants gives you on every album. It’s also for people that have never heard of Constant Deviants and just like good rap music. It seems like as much as trap music and all of that is still surviving, it seems like it’s a lot more people wanting to hear quote unquote rap music. I don’t even consider that other music Hip-Hop. I don’t even dislike it, I think it’s cool. It’s just not Hip-Hop music to me. It’s more R&B. I don’t know what it is to tell you the truth. This is for people that like lyricism, hard beats, like hearing scratching, and want to hear a good rap record with a good bounce to it – you’re going to like this album.
Purchase: Constant Deviants – Omerta
This entry was posted in interview and tagged Constant Deviants, DJ Cutt, interview, Lucky Luciano, M.I., Meyer Lansky, Omerta, SIX2SIX Records, So Underrated. Bookmark the permalink.
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Esoteric Offers Southern Comfort with Two Ian Matthews Reissues
Ian (later Iain) Matthews has had a place in the rock pantheon since his debut with Fairport Convention on the band’s very first, self-titled album. Matthews only remained with Fairport for two albums (and one song on the group’s third effort) before departing to craft his own Matthews’ Southern Comfort. The title of that LP soon morphed into a band name for a new Matthews-fronted outfit, and Matthews Southern Comfort (no apostrophe) released two more albums before the band splintered from the frontman. Cherry Red’s Esoteric Records imprint picks up Matthews’ story with reissues of his first two post-Comfort albums, both of which were originally released on the Vertigo label: 1971’s If You Saw Thro’ My Eyes and 1972’s Tigers Will Survive.
Matthews Southern Comfort didn’t last long, but did leave a mark on the charts when the band’s recording of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” topped the U.K. pop chart. (It also reached No. 5 in Canada and No. 23 in the United States.) For his first proper solo album, Matthews contributed nine original songs alongside two from the pen of Richard Fariña and one from Jerry Burnham and Allan Jacobs. Though Matthews planned on engaging Paul Samwell-Smith (Cat Stevens, Carly Simon) as producer, he ended up helming the sessions himself. The cast of musicians included Fairport’s Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny, future Fairport member Gerry Conway, Keith Tippet, Pat Donaldson, Andy Roberts and Tim Renwick. In his new liner notes written for Esoteric’s reissue, Matthews confirms that there were “no outtakes, no unfinished tracks, no abortions, just the eleven songs” that made the final LP. But what eleven songs! The album has a beautiful (and largely acoustic) folk-rock feel, anchored by the tight guitar interplay between Thompson, Roberts and Renwick, and naturally, it shows off Matthews’ vocals to their best advantage.
It wasn’t long before Matthews began work on a follow-up. Hit the jump to read on! Plus: track listings and order links!
Tigers Will Survive wasn’t a tremendous departure from its predecessor. Thompson again sat in, playing accordion under the name of Woolfe J. Flywheel! Tim Renwick and Andy Roberts also returned. The primary backing band this time, though, was Renwick’s group Quiver, which also featured John Wilson on drums, Cal Batchelor on guitar, and future Attraction Bruce Thomas on bass. Ray Warleigh also joined in, contributing saxophone. Matthews once again brought many of his own songs to the table, and tapped Fariña for the provocative “Un-American Activity Dream” (or “House of Un-American Activities Blues Dream”). An a cappella cover of the Phil Spector/Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich “Da Doo Ron Ron” was much lighter, and songs also came from Eric Andersen, Pete Carr and Peter Lewis. Though Tigers shares many of the lovely, reflective acoustic hallmarks of Thro’ My Eyes, Matthews is hard on it in his new introductory essay: “For the longest time after the release of Tigers Will Survive, I felt distanced from it. There seemed to be a chasm between what I’d reached for and what I’d actually achieved.” But you can decide for yourself. Esoteric’s reissue also adds one bonus track, the 1973 non-LP single “Devil in Disguise” written by those “cosmic country” pioneers, Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons.
Following Tigers Will Survive, Matthews formed Plainsong with Dave Richards, Andy Roberts and Bob Ronga; the latter two had played on Tigers. Despite a well-received first album, though, Plainsong wasn’t destined to last long, and Matthews continued to record for a variety of labels. He continued to explore the country and folk-rock veins on albums such as 1973’s Michael Nesmith-produced Valley Hi. On these recordings, Matthews blended his own compositions with those that showed off his skills as an interpretive singer. Over the years, he’s recorded songs by Jimmy Webb, Jackson Browne, Randy Newman, Richard Thompson, Tom Waits, Gene Clark, Jesse Winchester, Neil Young, Prince, and Nesmith. As the eighties emerged, Matthews formed the power pop band Hi-Fi, and recorded a number of albums both solo and with collaborators such as Elliott Murphy, the Nick Vernier Band, and cult hero Emmit Rhodes of Merry-Go-Round fame. The restless artist even reunited with Matthews Southern Comfort in 2010, and still pursues a singular musical path exploring folk, rock, jazz, country and pop with friends old and new.
Both of these early Matthews albums have been remastered by Paschal Byrne from the original master tapes. In addition to the artist’s new introductions, both booklets have full credits; If You Saw Thro’ My Eyes also contains lyrics. If You Saw Thro’ My Eyes and Tigers Will Survive are available in stores now, and can be ordered below!
Ian Matthews, If You Saw Thro’ My Eyes (Vertigo LP 6360 034, 1971 – reissued Esoteric ECLEC 2360, 2012) (Amazon U.K.)
Desert Inn
Never Ending
Little Known
Hinge (Part One)
Hinge (Part Two)
Southern Wind
It Came Without Warning
You Couldn’t Lose
Morgan the Pirate
Thro’ My Eyes
Ian Matthews, Tigers Will Survive (Vertigo LP 6360 056, 1972 – reissued Esoteric ECLEC 2361, 2012) (Amazon U.K.)
Close the Door Lightly When You Go
Un-American Activity Dream
Morning Song
The Only Dancer
Tigers Will Survive
Midnight on the Water
Da Doo Ron Ron
Hope You Know
Please Be My Friend
Devil in Disguise (Vertigo single 6059 081, 1973)
Posted in Ian Matthews, News, Reissues
« Review: Fleetwood Mac, “Rumours: Expanded Edition”
Grammy Winners, Alt-Rockers Go Deluxe At Target »
Always a favorite of mine, “Morgan the Pirate’ is worth the price of admission. Don’t forget his album of Jules Shear songs ‘Walking a Changing Line’, fantastic as well is the live ‘Nights in Manhattan’, ‘Some Days You Eat the Bear’……
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House Passes Voting Rights Bill, Speeding a Senate Showdown
Democrats used an arcane maneuver to pass the legislation, denying Republicans in the Senate the ability to block it from being brought up, as they have done four times previously.
WASHINGTON — The House passed a repackaged set of voting rights bills on Thursday, pushing past Republican opposition and hurriedly sending the legislation to the Senate to force a showdown over the fate of the measures and the reach of the filibuster.
Acting as part of a Democratic plan to expedite consideration of the bills in the Senate, the House approved the new measure on a party-line vote of 220 to 203 after a heated partisan debate in which lawmakers clashed over the state of election laws across the country.
The new legislation combined two separate bills already passed by the House — the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — and joined them in what had been an unrelated measure covering NASA. The move will allow the Senate to bring the bill directly to the floor, skirting an initial filibuster, although Republicans could still block it from coming to a final vote.
Democrats said the legislation was urgently needed to offset efforts taking hold in Republican-led states to make it more difficult to vote after Democratic gains in the 2020 elections and former President Donald J. Trump’s false claim that the vote was stolen. They argue that the flurry of new state laws is clearly intended to reduce voting in minority communities, amounting to a contemporary version of the kinds of restrictions that were prevalent before the enactment of landmark civil rights laws in the 1960s.
“There are people who don’t want you to vote and they are using every tool in the toolbox to make it harder,” said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schutz, Democrat of Florida, referring to the enactment over the past year of new voting restrictions in Republican-led states. “Voter suppression has not been consigned to the history books. It is here today, right now.”
Republicans railed against the maneuver used to pass the bill on Thursday, accusing Democrats of “hijacking” the space agency measure to push through legislation that they said represented federal intrusion into state voting operations to give an unfair advantage to Democratic candidates.
“This is one giant leap backward for American election integrity,” said Representative Tom Tiffany, Republican of Wisconsin.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said the Senate would begin debate on the House-passed bill as quickly as possible. It will be the Senate’s fifth attempt to consider such legislation after Republicans have used the filibuster four times to prevent the bills from even reaching the floor.
“The Senate will finally hold a debate on the voting rights legislation for the first time in this Congress,” Mr. Schumer said on Thursday. “Every senator will be faced with the choice of whether or not to pass this legislation to protect our democracy.”
While all 50 Senate Democrats in support of the legislation, Republicans are almost uniformly opposed, leaving Democrats short of the 60 votes needed under current rules to end debate and force a final vote. President Biden urged Democrats on Tuesday to force through a rules change for the voting rights legislation to allow the party to circumvent a filibuster through a simple majority.
Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting Rights
Why are voting rights an issue now? In 2020, as a result of the pandemic, millions embraced voting early in person or by mail, especially among Democrats. Spurred on by Donald Trump’s false claims about mail ballots in hopes of overturning the election, the G.O.P. has pursued a host of new voting restrictions.
What are Republicans trying to do? Broadly, the party is taking a two-pronged approach: imposing additional restrictions on voting (especially mail voting), and giving G.O.P.-controlled state legislatures greater control over the mechanics of casting and counting ballots.
Why are these legislative efforts important? They have fueled widespread doubts about the integrity of U.S. elections, brought intense partisan gamesmanship to parts of the democratic process and are likely to affect voters of color disproportionately.
How are Democrats pushing back? In Congress, Democrats have focused their efforts on two sweeping bills that protect access to voting and clarify how to count electoral votes, but Republicans in the 50-50 Senate have blocked both. President Biden endorsed changing the Senate’s filibuster rules to pass the legislation.
Which states have changed their voting laws? Nineteen states passed 34 laws restricting voting in 2021. Some of the most significant legislation was enacted in battleground states like Texas, Georgia and Florida. Republican lawmakers are planning a new wave of election laws in 2022.
Will these new laws swing elections? Maybe. Maybe not. Some laws will make voting more difficult for certain groups, cause confusion or create longer wait times at polling places. But the new restrictions could backfire on Republicans, especially in rural areas that once preferred to vote by mail.
At least two Democrats — Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia — have so far said they would not do so, meaning the legislation will die in the Senate if they do not change their positions. Mr. Biden was meeting with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill on Thursday to try to persuade them.
The Freedom to Vote Act contains an array of proposals to establish nationwide standards for ballot access, aiming to nullify the wave of new restrictions in states. It would require a minimum of 15 consecutive days of early voting and that all voters are able to request to vote by mail; it would also establish new automatic voter registration programs and make Election Day a national holiday. It is a narrower version of legislation that Democrats introduced early last year but revised to suit Mr. Manchin, who said the original bill was overly broad and insisted on including a provision requiring voters to present some form of identification.
A second measure named for Representative John Lewis, the civil rights icon and former congressman who died in 2020, would restore parts of the landmark Voting Rights Act weakened by Supreme Court rulings. Among the provisions was one mandating that jurisdictions with a history of discrimination win prior approval — or “preclearance” — from the Justice Department or federal courts in Washington before changing their voting rules.
Mr. Schumer has set a Monday deadline for action, timing it to the observance of the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Democrats said that deadline was appropriate.
“The right to vote has not been so endangered since Dr. King walked among us,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader.
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Share this Story: Regina couple ordered to pay back $12,000 in CERB benefits
Regina couple ordered to pay back $12,000 in CERB benefits
A Regina couple who depended on CERB during the pandemic has now been told that they will have to pay $12,000 back to the federal government.
Mark Melnychuk
Kristen Lamond-McRae at her work on Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021 in Regina. She and her husband have been told they need to repay $12,000 in CERB payments. Photo by TROY FLEECE /Regina Leader-Post
Kristen Lamond-McRae’s husband, Curtis, was laid off from his job as an electrician in April of 2020. Kristen was laid off from her job as a massage therapist for six weeks. Just like the eight million other Canadians who lost work during the pandemic, Curtis received CERB. He later returned to work in November 2020.
Regina couple ordered to pay back $12,000 in CERB benefits Back to video
Last week, the couple was shocked when they received a letter from the federal government telling them that they had to pay the money back.
“We were just dumbfounded and surprised because we legitimately applied for this CERB that was supposed to be there to help us out. We knew that we would have to pay taxes on it so we prepared for that, but we did not expect to get a bill in the mail,” said Kristen.
The couple was told that they have until the end of the year to repay the money, or it would be factored into their income taxes. Kristen said she has reached out to the federal government to ask what went wrong, but has not received a reply yet.
Kristen said the CERB payments were crucial, and that it helped her and Curtis survive the early days of the pandemic. The money went towards the couple’s mortgage, as well as power and energy bills.
“If we wouldn’t have got that money we would not be able to live in our home,” said Kristen.
Kristen said she and Curtis were behind on bills during the time he was laid off and they are still catching up. She said she doesn’t know how they will pay it back.
“We definitely don’t have the extra money to put into this $12,000,” said Kristen.
According to a statement from the Ministry of Employment and Social Development issued on Nov. 25, the federal government is beginning to contact Canadians who are required to make a CERB repayment.
The ministry said in order to get financial support to residents as fast as possible, those who applied for CERB at the beginning of the pandemic received an advance payment. For many, that payment was reconciled while they were still receiving CERB, but Service Canada is now reaching out to people who returned to work before the payment was reconciled.
The ministry said it will work with Canadians to establish flexible payment schedules, and that no penalties or interest will be charged.
When asked this week how the ministry determines if someone has to pay back their CERB benefits, the ministry said in a statement Tuesday that the application process was attestation-based, meaning residents self-declare the information they provide when they apply for benefits, and the CRA may verify that information at a later date. The ministry did not say how it is determined if someone must repay their benefits.
Kristen said the letter she received from the government did not contain any explanation as to why she and her husband owed the money. She said it looked like a bill one would get from the Canada Revenue Agency.
“We want answers as to why legitimate people who applied for CERB and absolutely needed it are being billed for something that we definitely needed,” said Kristen.
mmelnychuk@postmedia.com
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Best vibes
Unexpected Orgasms
Amie Dawson PhD
While most of us would like to have more orgasms than we do, there are all sorts of social rules (and more than a few laws) that make it prudent to have orgasms only at certain times and in certain places. Unexpected orgasms, also called “atypical orgasms” by researchers, are orgasms that happen either at a time and place that we don’t expect, or in the absence of sexual stimulation which usually precedes an orgasm.
More than anything, learning about orgasms like these can help us better understand how complicated the sexual response is and how much our social understanding of sexuality can impact our physical experience of sex. These types of orgasms also serve as a reminder that there are more possibilities for orgasm than we are usually led to believe.
Spontaneous Orgasms
The term spontaneous orgasm is used in clinical literature to describe a rare sexual side effect of certain medications, most commonly SSRIs for the treatment of depression. Spontaneous orgasms can occur without any stimulation at all or after sexual stimulation has stopped, when most wouldn’t normally have another orgasm.
Spontaneous orgasms that happen in public are usually described as highly undesirable and stressful. In one case, a man found it difficult to work outside the home since his orgasm was accompanied by ejaculation. Spontaneous orgasms should not be confused with persistent genital arousal disorder, which does not usually involve the experience of a climax.
Orgasms During Sleep
There are at least two kinds of orgasms that happen during sleep. The best known is nocturnal emissions or “wet dreams”. These responses, which happen for both men and women, are not the result of actual stimulation (the person isn’t asleep and stimulating themselves). Instead, they are thought to result solely from brain activity stimulating the body to respond with an orgasm. These orgasms offer proof that orgasm can occur without any external physical stimulation of the body.
The second kind of sleep orgasm occurs during the relatively rare and recently described sleep disorder known as sexsomnia, or sleep sex. Sleep sex involves a complex range of sexual behaviors (including masturbation, oral sex, and sexual intercourse) which will often end with an orgasm – all while the individual is asleep.
These orgasms can also follow vibrator stimulation, such as wearing vibrating panties, or a cock ring. Another option is to be stimulated by your intimate partner while asleep. Wand massagers, insertable rabbit sex toys, anal vibrators, and prostate massagers can be used if the person is in a deep sleep cycle. This can be indeed pleasurable practice as long as you have your partner’s consent.
Orgasms with Spinal Cord Injuries
Conventional medical and rehabilitation wisdom used to be that a person who acquired a complete spinal cord injury would be unable to experience an orgasm. While doctors vehemently defended this belief, people living with spinal cord injuries would anecdotally report experiencing orgasms during sex. In the past, these orgasms were referred to as “phantom orgasms,” the thinking being that they were simply the body’s memory of previous orgasms (much like “phantom limb” where someone who has lost a limb can still feel its presence).
In the mid-nineties, a series of laboratory studies finally confirmed what people with disabilities had been saying all along: People with spinal cord injuries were capable of having very real orgasms.
In fact, one study found that 52% of women with spinal cord injuries experienced orgasm. Sex researcher Beverley Whipple and her colleagues proposed a neurological explanation that involved a new pathway from the cervix to the brain, one that circumvented the spinal cord. This represented an important vindication for people who had been, for years, saying that they were feeling sexual pleasure when doctors claimed they were incapable of feeling it.
Orgasms in Response to Breastfeeding
In a 2000 study of breastfeeding women, 40.5% of the participants reported feeling sexually aroused at some point during infant suckling. Of them, 16.7% reported being aroused frequently during breastfeeding. Many women are embarrassed or even ashamed of this experience, and it’s unfortunate that more women don’t know the physical reason for the response. Arousal and orgasm during breastfeeding have nothing to do with inappropriate sexual feelings and everything to do with a hormone called oxytocin.
Oxytocin stimulates the ejection of milk from the nipples, and its release is triggered by breast stimulation. It’s also involved in contractions of the uterus (both during childbirth and during orgasm), and it’s associated with feelings of relaxation and satisfaction following orgasm.
Orgasms from Nerve Stimulation
In 1998, North Carolina-based pain specialist Dr. Stuart Meloy discovered that one of the techniques he used to manage chronic pain, which involves inserting electrodes near the spine to stimulate nearby nerve fibers, had a very unexpected side effect — it triggered orgasms in his female patients. He is currently developing a device specifically designed to stimulate orgasm as a treatment for sexual dysfunction.
In his first published study using the device, 10 of the 11 participants achieved successful stimulation; four of the five participants who previously were not experiencing orgasms reported having orgasms. This initial study was with a small group and more research is needed, but this discovery points to another path to orgasm and is further proof that orgasms are far more than a combination of friction and fantasy.
Komisaruk, B.R., Beyer-Flores, C. & Whipple, B. The Science of Orgasm Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
Meloy, T.S. & Southern, J.P. “Neurally Augmented Sexual Function in Human Females: A Preliminary Investigation” Neuromodulation Volume 9, No. 1 (2006): 34–40.
Amie is webmistress and head honcho at TheToy. She’s been married for seven years and has two kids.
For the past 10years Amie has lived the swinging lifestyle and gets to practice what she preaches at TheToy.
Sometimes technically challenged but always willing to try something new is the best way to describe Amie. Her motto in life is: “There is no such word as Can’t, take off the T and make it can.”
Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder
Faking Orgasms
Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment of PGAD Persistent genital arousal disorder (PGAD) is a recently identified disorder that is still being studied and defined. It refers to chronic feelings of genital arousal (commonly...
The diner scene in “When Harry Met Sally,” in which Meg Ryan Billy Crystal proves that women are far better at faking orgasms than he believes, remains a key cultural moment for fake orgasms. Although fake...
Delayed orgasm occurs when you are unable to achieve orgasm after receiving adequate sexual stimulation in a time frame that is comfortable for you. Some people only have delayed orgasms once in a while at different...
At TheToy we want to help our readers to spice up their sex life. Provide unbiased reviews and educate about sex practices and misconceptions.
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Israel Seizes Cryptocurrencies from Hamas
Posted on July 21, 2021 July 21, 2021 by Larry the Liquidator
The National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF) of Israel announced the confiscation of cryptocurrencies that were transferred to Hamas. “The reported seizure consisted of different types of digital currencies including Ether, Tether, XRP, and others.” according to Scott Jason Cooper, a cryptocurrency consultant.
Hamas had issued an appeal to international donors in 2019 to pay them using cryptocurrencies. The group was able to raise money using multiple cryptocurrency platforms and currencies.
The cryptocurrencies seized by the Israel bureau included funds that were intended for the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigade, which is the military wing of Hamas. The seizure of cryptocurrency comes after a post by the Wall Street Journal had reported an increase in a donation in cryptocurrency to Hamas in May 2021.
Omri Segev Moyal, the CEO of Profero – an Israeli cyber crisis company – explained how the bureau was able to identify and confiscate the cryptocurrency. He said that the anonymity of transactions is no longer valid once the transactions go outside the blockchain to the exchange platforms. The law enforcement agency in Israel was able to seize the cryptocurrency and freeze the assets by identifying the destination of the assets.
The CEO of the Israeli Bitcoin Association Noa Mashiach had said that the seizure of cryptocurrency meant for Hamas shows that Bitcoin is a safe digital currency. He stated that the open transaction log of the blockchain can expose the parties of the transaction allowing law enforcement firms to take appropriate action.
Mashiach had said that the anti-money laundering activities have improved. She reiterated that Bitcoin is a safe digital currency that should encourage regulators to implement it. The bad elements of the cryptocurrency network can be exposed and the money seized by law enforcement agencies.
The US Seized Millions Held in Crypto Accounts
The seizure of cryptocurrency by the Israeli Bureau is not the first time that a law enforcement agency has seized digital assets. The US had seized hundreds of crypto accounts last year that were linked to ISIL and al-Qaeda. Terrorist organizations had relied on cryptocurrency for carrying out violent activities.
A statement by the US department showed that nearly $2 million had been seized as well as over 300 crypto accounts, four social media accounts, and four websites that related to the cryptocurrency schemes.
State reports show that the US investigators had also targeted the Hamas military wing. They had confiscated about 150 cryptocurrency accounts operated by the group for laundering funds.
In addition, the US had seized about half of the ransom paid by Colonial Pipeline to an alleged Russian-based group Darkside. The ransomware was paid to the hacking group to get access to the gasoline pipeline that was shut by the group.
The US Department of Justice had announced the seizure of about 63.7 Bitcoins valued at about $2.3 million. The funds were paid as a ransom amount on May 8 after which the critical gasoline supply was resumed to the public.
A US Magistrate Judge had ordered the seizure of the cryptocurrency asset paid by the Colonial Pipeline to Darkside.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said that following the digital currency is a powerful tool for the US regulatory authorities. Ransom payments encourage others to follow the digital extortion game. She said that that the seizure of the assets by the US authorities shows that the government will make available tools to make these attacks less profitable for the hackers to deter them. It also shows the importance of notifying law enforcement early about the attempts to negotiate with and make payments to the hackers.
Law enforcement agencies can trace illicit funds and thwart the efforts of malicious online users. The FBI director Paul Abbate had said that he will continue to use all resources and leverage international and local partnerships to disrupt the online attacks to protect private businesses and also individuals.
Hackers today are using complicated attacks for digital extortion. Countries must build the infrastructure required to improve cyber resiliency and improved the technology to trace ransom payments using cryptocurrencies.
Colonial Pipeline was reported to have paid 75 Bitcoins to Darkside in ransom. But it had also notified the law enforcement agency about the payment. This was the reason that the US state authorities were able to retrieve the majority of Bitcoins. The law enforcement was able to identify 63.7 Bitcoins that were paid to the hacking group. The payments were transferred to a particular address for which the FBI obtained the private key. The private key is the password that is required to access the cryptocurrency assets from a particular address.
Bitcoin payments can be traced and seized by law enforcement agencies as per the civil and criminal statutes in the country. The seizure of Bitcoin payments made by Colonial Pipeline was handled by the Northern District of California’s Special Prosecutions Section and Asset Forfeiture Unit of the US Attorney office. Moreover, the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the National Security Division (NSD) had also played an important part in the seizure of cryptocurrencies. The specific departments included NSD’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section and DOJ’s Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force, Computer Crime and Intellectual Property and Asset Recovery Sections. These departments had coordinated to trace and seize millions in Bitcoin payments made to the Russian hacking group.
The notion that Bitcoins and other digital currency are a haven for hackers is wrong. As the seizure of cryptocurrency by law enforcement agencies in Israel and the US shows, cryptocurrencies can’t be used for money laundering without any accountability. Similar to money laundering in fiat currencies, law enforcement agencies can identify and confiscate illegal digital payments.
Countries should develop a task force that prioritizes investigation, disruption, and prevention of digital extortion and money laundering. The task force should trace and dismantle the activities of hackers and cybercriminals using cryptocurrency. Instant action is required to seize illegal crypto assets and make cybercriminals accountable for their action. The goal is to identify foreign or domestic agencies that use digital currencies for illegal activities.
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This entry was posted in Politics. Bookmark the permalink.
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CHRIS COLBERT AIMS TO “SHOW EVERYONE WHY I’M ONE OF THE BEST 130-POUNDERS IN THE WORLD” AGAINST JAIME ARBOLEDA
NEW YORK – December 8, 2020 – Unbeaten interim WBA Super Featherweight Champion Chris “Primetime” Colbert will look to make a statement in his first nationally televised main event as he faces hard-hitting Jaime Arboleda live on SHOWTIME this Saturday, December 12 at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT in an event presented by Premier Boxing Champions from Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn.
“I always knew I was going to get here,” said Colbert. “It’s all God’s plan. This is just going to be another day for me and I’ll show everyone why I’m one of the best 130-pounders in the world.”
The 24-year-old Colbert has shot up the rankings of the 130-pound weight class and believes that a victory on Saturday night will lead to bigger opportunities in the jam-packed division.
“This is one of the most stacked divisions in boxing and I love competing in it,” said Colbert. “It’s great to be getting noticed in a division that has this much talent, and hopefully it’ll lead to me getting the big fights that I need. I don’t feel like there’s any certain fighter I’m targeting, but Gervonta Davis, Leo Santa Cruz and Jamel Herring would all be great fights for me. Beating them would help me become ‘the guy’ in the division.”
Colbert’s rise continued in his last fight, as he scored a 10th-round knockdown against former champion Jezreel Corrales on his way to a decision win while showing an impressive array of skills against a fighter determined to slow the action through holding and other veteran tricks.
“Against Corrales I learned not to rush,” said Colbert. “It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. I can’t just go rush in there and expect everyone to get knocked out. I had to take my time, do what I do best and stick to my game plan.”
In the 26-year-old Arboleda, Colbert will be presented with another rising 130-pound contender with his own sights set on emerging amongst the elite in the division. Arboleda has won five of his last six fights by stoppage and most recently dropped Jayson Velez on his way to a decision victory in February on SHOWTIME.
“Come December 12, I’m ready for whatever he brings,” said Colbert. “I expect him to bring pressure and ‘try’ to make me tired because that’s the only chance he has. He can’t outbox me. That’s not happening. But I love to bang inside and I’m ready for whatever he does. I hope he doesn’t run or clinch me because I’d love to get the knockout and get him out of there early.”
The Brooklyn-native Colbert has continued to work with his longtime coach Aureliano Sosa in his hometown through the difficulties of the pandemic. Those difficulties have led to Colbert sparring with larger welterweight and super welterweights in camp, which Colbert believes could help him with the power Arboleda will bring into the fight.
“Training camp has been going great for the most part,” said Colbert. “It’s just been a little hard finding sparring partners. But because it’s been difficult to find fighters at my weight I’ve actually been sparring with 147 and 154-pound fighters. I honestly love that because it prepares me better, and who’s to say that Arboleda won’t have power like them? I’m on weight now, though, and ready to put on a show on December 12.”
TagsChris colbert • jaime arboleda
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Heads up! Spanish Cinema Now--20th edition--opens next Friday at the FSLC
Aficionados of Spanish film, take heart: the 20th edition of Spanish Cinema Now arrives at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center this coming Friday, December 9, and will feature, as usual, an array of the latest films from Spain, as well as its usual "tribute" portion of the program -- this year honoring the late and legendary Spanish director, Luis García Berlanga.
According to FSLC press release, highlights for this year’s series include the opening-night screening of the new film from Nacho Vigalondo, who three years ago gave us the terrific little sci-fi thriller Time Crimes, and now has another original, sci-fi-based delight called Extraterrestrial (shown at top, and one of the must-sees of the series) Mireia Ros’ Catalan documentary Barcelona Before; and the magic realist Galician film Crebinsky, directed by Enrique Otero. A new generation of Spanish comedy is also well represented in this year’s edition of Spanish Cinema Now, with box-office superstar Santiago Segura’s Torrente 4: Lethal Crisis, the latest film in the Torrente series, and Daniel Sánchez Areválo’s comedy Cousinhood (above). Also of note is the Spanish-Portuguese co-production José and Pilar, Miguel Gonçalves Mendes' portrait of the final years of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago and his Spanish wife Pilar del Rio.
Attending filmmakers and actors include Señores Vigalondo, Sanchez Arevalo and Segura; Quim Gutiérrez (above, from SCN's 2009 Sangre de Mayo and appearing this year in the the ensemble of Cousinhood); Ms. Ros; Jonás Trueba, write/director of Every Song Talks About Me (a still from which appears at bottom of post); Marina Comas, one of the stars of Black Bread (shown below, left: Her film is back this year for an encore screening after walking away with with a bunch of Goya Awards), and Alberto Morais, write/director of The Waves, a still from which is the penultimate photo below.
A centerpiece of the film series will be the 10-film tribute to the late Luis García Berlanga, one of Spain’s greatest directors, who died last year. Together with Juan Antonio Bardem, Berlanga revolutionized Spanish cinema by shaking up what had been a fairly dormant scene with a series of films such as Welcome Mr. Marshall, Plácido and The Executioner (below, and one of the must-sees of this series).
Having viewed but eight of the 27 films that comprise this year's program, TrustMovies is in no state to say much more about the series, other than: Go if you can! Of the eight films so far, three -- maybe four -- are must-see, with the rest at least worthwhile, pleasant and/or interesting. I'll start posting on the individual films tomorrow -- each post will begin with the letters SCN -- and will continue throughout the series for the next three weeks until I have seen and covered all the films. Well, almost all. We shall see....
Spanish Cinema Now is presented by the FSLC in collaboration with the Spanish Film Institute (ICAA) in Madrid and the Instituto Cervantes in New York, with special thanks also to the Spanish Consulate General in New York.
Tickets are on sale now, both at the box office and on-line. Discount single screening tickets are available for students, seniors, Film Society and Cervantes Institute members, but anyone can enjoy a Special Four-Film Discount Package. Click here to view the entire program. To purchase tickets, click on the individual film and then on the BUY TICKETS link under SHOWTIMES.
Photos above are from the films themselves.
Thanks especially to www.moviescreenshots.blogspot.com
for the still from The Executioner.
Posted by TrustMovies at 12:12 AM
Labels: Spanish Cinema, SPANISH CINEMA NOW-2011, The Film Society of Lincoln Center
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