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Digital Focus
In 2014, Governor Fortuño left office having recently signed a tax incentive
program for investors to export services from the Island, and investors who
relocate to Puerto Rico, known as Act 20 and Act 22. The challenge was to
make this program known to people in the United States and abroad, make
the Island attractive to them, and be able to work with a new government
from a different party, that had “inherited” the program.
Through a collaboration with the Department of Economic Development and
Commerce, and support from private companies who could help promote the
20/22 program, we embarked in this new field of grand scale corporate events. We
created a brand - Puerto Rico Investment Summit- and held the first event joining
Government, Tax Lawyers, CPA’s, local businesses and investors already making
the move to Puerto Rico, for a two-day conference.
The results were quick and impressive. With a growing interest from investors outside of
Puerto Rico, and professionals in the Island, the program continued to attract investors.
The Puerto Rico Investment Summit became the premier
investment conference in the Island.
We included a Latin American Summit, and smaller
presentations in New York.
The event grew from 225 attendees in its 1st edition, to over
750, when it was put on hold due to the pandemic.
Key speakers have included John Paulson, Nicholas Prouty,
Brock Pierce, John Helmers, Walter Keenan, President Sebastián
Piñera from Chile, and Rudy Giuliani, among many others.
Over 1,200 investors made the move and are part of the 20/22
community, as it came to be known.
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MENUHome Bio Articles Audio Gutbucket Links Contact
At a press conference for Senate candidate Harvey Gantt, 1990. Photo by Sadie Bridger.
“He’s taught big-city reporters a thing or two about investigative journalism.”
–Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Barry Yeoman specializes in in-depth reporting that puts a human face on complex issues. During nearly four decades in journalism, he has brought readers and listeners into:
a seminary where Christian missionaries learn to convert Muslims;
a lab where the fundamental assumptions of dinosaur science are being challenged;
a remote First Nation community in Canada threatened by tar-sands operations;
a coastline in India where industrialization threatens traditional fisherfolk;
a training ground for private soldiers on secret missions;
a Native American tribe whose backyards are crumbling into the Gulf of Mexico;
a New Hampshire town threatening secession from the United States;
a Turkish bird paradise that could soon be under water;
a boat operated by two shrimpers trying to cope with the BP oil spill;
the Washington corridors where a super-lobbyist rose to power before his fall;
corner blues joints in New Orleans that struggle to keep their doors open; and
the inside of his own DNA.
He has written about Southern chicken farmers, brain-injured athletes, women veterans, earnest Promise Keepers, an American strategist for the Iraqi resistance, controversial sex researchers, Spanish Carnival musicians, salmon fishermen, Jews for Jesus, anti-fracking rebels, and the women whose lives are caught up in the debate over “partial birth” abortion.
Covering the events of Oct. 31, 2020, when law-enforcement officers in Graham, North Carolina pepper-sprayed voters marching to the polls. Photo by Devin Lee Vaughn.
Barry’s work has appeared in AARP The Magazine; The American Prospect; Audubon; CityLab; Discover; Glamour; Good Housekeeping; The Guardian; HuffPost; Mother Jones; The Nation; National Wildlife; New Republic; O, The Oprah Magazine; onEarth; Parade; Popular Science; Saturday Evening Post; Sunset; Talking Points Memo; Texas Monthly; The Washington Post; Woman’s Day; and many other publications. It has been produced in collaboration with journalism non-profits like the International Consortium of Investigative Reporters, Type Investigations, and the Food & Environment Reporting Network. It has been translated into Russian, Portuguese, Khmer, Spanish, Flemish, and Italian.
Barry’s articles have won him a slew of accolades. He won the National Magazine Award for Public Interest, the industry’s highest honor, as part of a team that investigated the Southern poultry industry. He won the Green Eyeshade Award, the South’s top journalism prize, for an exposé of North Carolina’s highway-building system. Columbia Journalism Review, the nation’s premiere journalism magazine, named him one of nine investigative reporters who are “out of the spotlight but on the mark.” The Columbia University School of Journalism and Poynter Institute have described Barry’s work as “the essence of excellence.” For a list of awards, see the righthand column of this page.
Interviewing U.S. Rep. Mel Watt at 1992 Democratic National Convention. Photo by Jenny Warburg.
He works in audio, too, producing radio documentaries and podcasts about everything from zydeco music to coastal land loss. He served as the editorial producer for the four-year run of Life Reimagined, a TV segment that aired on the TODAY show and was hosted by Jane Pauley.
Besides doing his own journalism, Barry teaches journalism at Wake Forest University and Duke University.
Click here for Barry’s resume. Click here to read Allison Kirkland’s 2019 interview with Barry, reposted by Harvard’s Nieman Storyboard. Click here to subscribe to Barry’s occasional newsletter.
For this article, Barry tested his own DNA and that of his dog Scooter (2007-2018). Photo by Jared Lazarus, Duke Photography.
Honored by Columbia Journalism Review as one of “the best unsung investigative journalists working in print in the United States.”
Winner, National Magazine Award for Public Interest for his role in an investigation of the poultry industry in Southern Exposure.
Winner, the Batten Medal for individual achievement in public-service journalism.
Winner, Arlene Eisenberg Award for Writing that Makes a Difference (American Society of Journalists and Authors) for an article in Good Housekeeping about for-profit career colleges.
Winner, Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award (Online News Association), Whitman Bassow Award (Overseas Press Club), Gold Keyboard Award (New York Press Club), and National Headliner Award for his role in an series by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on World Bank abuses.
Winner, Genesis Award (Humane Society of the United States) for an article in O, The Oprah Magazine about the rescue of more than 300 hoarded dogs.
Winner, Gracie Award for Outstanding Mid-Length Radio Documentary for an AARP Prime Time Radio special about the parents of seriously injured veterans.
Winner, Eddie Award (Folio Magazine) for a Woman’s Day profile of the mother of a transgender son.
Winner, CINE Golden Eagle for his role in the NBC Today Show segment Your Life Calling about midlife reinvention.
Honored by Project Censored (four times) for articles in Southern Exposure about the poultry industry and for-profit career colleges, and in Mother Jones about stealth anti-abortion efforts and private military contractors.
Winner, Washington Monthly Journalism Award (twice) for articles in Mother Jones about stealth anti-abortion efforts and IndyWeek about the politics of highway construction.
Winner, Poynter Institute Model of Excellence Award for his diversity efforts at IndyWeek.
Winner, Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Award (twice) for articles in IndyWeek about anti-environmental lobbying and controversial public art.
Winner, National Mature Media Award (seven times) for various articles in AARP The Magazine.
Winner, Sidney Hillman Prize Award for his article in Southern Exposure about for-profit career colleges.
Winner, John Hancock Award for Excellence for his article in Southern Exposure about for-profit career colleges.
Winner, Green Eyeshade Award (Society of Professional Journalists) for his five-part investigation in IndyWeek about campaign contributions and highway construction in North Carolina.
Winner, John Bartlow Martin Award(Northwestern University) for the same highway series.
Winner, Education Writers Association Award for writing about inequities in public-school funding in IndyWeek.
Copyright 2022 Barry Yeoman | Photo by Efthimios Kalos | Site by Sumy Designs, LLC
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Continental Tire Challenge
Duke-Zags sold out as Continental Tire secures naming rights
LAS VEGAS – Continental Tire, headquartered in Fort Mill, South Carolina, will serve as the title sponsor of the highly anticipated match-up between Duke and Gonzaga in November as announced today by the event’s promoter bdG Sports. The “Continental Tire Challenge” – the first college basketball event to sell out for the 2021-22 season – will feature the Blue Devils battling the Zags on Friday, Nov. 26, 2021 at T-Mobile Arena in front of a capacity crowd.
As a corporate supporter of college basketball athletics across the country, which includes a partnership with Duke Athletics, Continental Tire is a natural fit to title one of the biggest games in college basketball next season.
“There is an incredible amount of excitement surrounding this match-up as we have seen already, with the event selling out months in advance,” said Travis Roffler, Director of Marketing, Continental Tire. “We are thrilled to expand Continental Tire’s support of college basketball even further with this highly anticipated event.”
Duke returns to Las Vegas for the first time since 2016 when the Blue Devils played UNLV before a record crowd of 19,107 in the first college basketball game at T-Mobile Arena. The crowd for the Continental Tire Challenge may be even larger as the last of public tickets were sold this week, nearly six months in advance of the showdown. The sellout includes the ticket allotment to Duke, which will go on sale first to Iron Dukes members beginning August 1. A limited number of standing-room only tickets on the Allegiant Flight Deck are now being made available to the public for $49 each at www.axs.com or www.t-mobilearena.com.
“Continental Tire prides itself on ultra high-performance tires, and when you look at the match-up we have in Las Vegas – arguably the two best teams in all of college basketball next season – this title sponsorship is truly a perfect performance match, so we are excited to welcome Continental Tire to the very best of college basketball,” said Brooks Downing, President of bdG Sports. “Given the lofty expectations of both teams, the destination location of Las Vegas and the recently announced pending retirement of Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, it’s no surprise that we have a sellout this early in the cycle.”
Gonzaga will enter next season as the top-ranked team in the country led by Drew Timme, a second-team All-American and the Karl Malone Award recipient as the nation’s top power forward last season. The Bulldogs will reload with the program’s best-ever recruiting class highlighted by the nation’s top-ranked recruit in the 2021 class, Chet Holmgren, a 7-footer from Minneapolis, and fellow McDonald’s All-American Hunter Sallis. In addition to playing in this past season’s national championship game, Gonzaga became the first team in NCAA Division I history to win 30+ games in five straight seasons, a feat made even more impressive given the shortened seasons the past two years due to COVID-19.
For Duke, every game next season now takes on greater importance after Coach Krzyzewski announced that 2021-22 will be his final season on the bench. The Hall of Fame coach enters the season looking to add a sixth national championship to his resume with a team that will include three five-star freshmen in Paolo Banchero (ranked No. 3 by ESPN), Trevor Keels (No. 21) and AJ Griffin (No. 27).
For complete information, visit www.continentaltirechallenge.com or follow on social media at @VegasMainEvent.
2.8 million viewers tune in for Duke-Gonzaga in Continental Tire Challenge
Continental Tire Challenge attracts largest college basketball crowd in Nevada history
No. 5 Duke takes out No. 1 Gonzaga in clash of unbeaten teams
Follow @VegasMainEvent on Twitter
Our MVP https://t.co/V02sJdhsLP16 hours ago
Main Event alum! @TCUBasketball https://t.co/q6u3Cgap5F5 days ago
RT @MarchMadnessMBB: New AP Poll! 1. Baylor 2. Gonzaga 3. UCLA 4. Auburn 5. USC 6. Arizona 7. Purdue 8. Duke 9. Kansas 10. Michigan Sta…6 days ago
© 2021 BDG SPORTS, LLC | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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What Is the Information Superhighway?
When we talk about getting online, we mean being connected to the Internet--a giant network of computers that connects people and information all over the world. The Internet has a lot in common with other forms of communication:
Like the U.S. Postal Service, the Internet allows anyone who knows your Internet address to send you a letter. (It's called electronic mail, or e-mail for short).
Like the telephone, the Internet allows you to "chat" with other people by participating in online discussion groups.
Like the library, the Internet contains information on almost any topic you can imagine in many formats, including books, articles, videos, and music recordings.
Like the newspaper, the Internet can give you new information every day, including world news, business, sports, travel, entertainment, and ads.
In addition to words, one part of the Internet--the World Wide Web (often shortened to WWW or the Web)--is especially interesting to people because it includes pictures and sounds.
A Short History Lesson
The Internet began in the 1960s as a U.S. Department of Defense communication network. Soon after, university researchers and professors began to use it to communicate with others in their fields. Internet use really took off in the early 1990s with the arrival of the Web, which made it easier to find and view information online. Today, millions of people throughout the world are connected to the Internet. No one--no country, organization, or company--is in charge of the Internet; it's growing and being changed by its users every day.
[How to Use This Booklet] [Benefits of Getting on The Information Superhighway]
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Symington Family Estates' Blog
News and stories from the vineyards of the Douro Valley.
13th April 2018 23rd May 2018
Centenary of The Battle of the Lys: Remembering Maurice Symington
Author: Paul Symington
2nd Lieutenant Maurice Symington’s “mentioned in despatches” commendation, signed by Winston Churchill.
Earlier this week, the President and the Prime Minister of Portugal joined the French President in Paris and then in Richebourg, in French Flanders, to mark the centenary of the Battle of the Lys where the Portuguese Expeditionary Force was attacked by German forces — five times their number. The presidents of both nations laid wreaths during a ceremony at the Portuguese National Cemetery, Richebourg, in memory of the thousands of Portuguese soldiers who lost their lives.
In 1918, Maurice Symington was a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery, British Army, which he had joined on leaving school in August 1914. Being fluent in Portuguese, he was part of the British Mission to the 55,000 strong ‘Corpo Expedicionário Português’, the Portuguese Expeditionary Force that had joined the Allies in France in 1917.
On 9th of April 1918, 2nd Lieutenant Symington was with the Portuguese Artillery in France just behind the trenches between Armentieres and Festubert when the German Army launched one of the most powerful attacks of the war. Eight German Divisions amounting to some 100,000 men attacked 20,000 Portuguese. After heroic resistance, the Portuguese were overrun and the neighbouring 119th Brigade of the British 40th Division was also forced back. Total casualties on the Allied side during the battle of La Lys (7th-29th April 2018) were truly horrendous at circa 120,000 men.
This is an extract from the diary of 23-year-old 2nd Lieutenant Maurice Symington for Tuesday 9th April 1918, while fighting with the Corpo Expedicionário Português in France:
‘Woke at 4 am by salvo round house. Tremendous bombardment everywhere. SOS from everywhere. All lines cut. Shells falling about 10 a minute. This continued till 9, when the Boche attacked and after that till 2.15pm when the barrage finally lifted. Machine guns active all around us and behind in two points. Decided to retire at 2.45pm. Only just escaped in time. Went to Lestrem, but found nobody there. Finally got to Calonne sur-la-Lys. My clothes consisted of pyjamas, gum boots, breeches and my British Warm [Greatcoat warn by British Army Officers]. Also pistol & box of cigarettes. ‘If’, my dog, stuck to me and got through. Don’t know how we weren’t all killed. Worst thing I have ever been through in my life.’
Maurice Symington was lucky to be one of the survivors, and eventually returned to Portugal after the war ended in November 1918, together with his faithful dog ‘If’. He was subsequently awarded the Portuguese Ordem Militar de Avis and was Mentioned in Despatches by the British Army for ‘Gallant and distinguished service in the field’ in a certificate signed by Winston Churchill, then Secretary of War in the British Government.
Maurice joined his father as a Port producer in Portugal in late 1918, where his descendants today continue the long family tradition. He eventually died in April 1974, in the same room that he had been born in at N˚1283 Avenida de Boavista, Porto, Portugal. His father, Andrew James Symington, was a Port producer who had come to Portugal from Scotland aged 18 in 1882. His mother was Beatriz Leitão de Carvalhosa Atkinson from an Anglo-Portuguese family who had been Port producers since the 17th century.
2nd Lieutenant Maurice Symington (left) with two Portuguese Army Officers
Previous Post 2016 Vintage Port Declared
Next Post Symington Celebrates the International Day for Biological Diversity
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Justin's Review: Oriole Park at Camden Yards
Ballpark Design: Still the gold standard to which all other new ballparks will forever be compared, Camden Yards did truly revolutionize the art of building baseball stadiums when it opened in 1992. Oriole Park was the first new ballpark to go "retro", incorporating existing features into the new ballpark, creating a unique, asymmetrical field, and providing wide concourses for entertainment and lots of food. While other ballparks may have refined and even perfected the trend that Baltimore started, no new stadium has created as defining a feature as the enormous B&O Warehouse that stretches from behind the stands in right field out to center field. Immortalized in the mid nineties by the numbers on its side counting Ripken's iron man streak, it is probably one of the few features in any ballpark that is recognizable to even those with only a passing interest in baseball. The baseball shaped plaques imbedded in the street outside the warehouse marking the longest homeruns at the ballpark are another nice touch, as are the large statues of each of the Orioles retired numbers outside the center field gate. There are few places that feel so uniquely perfect for baseball. The stadium certainly has drawbacks - it doesn't have the open concourses that most new stadiums do, so the field is not visible from many of the vending areas. The upper deck feels significantly far back from the playing field, and the seats don't quite face home plate in many areas. However, the inclusion of Eutaw Street out in front of the warehouse as part of the ballpark, with entertainment and food lining the way, makes up for these issues and creates a fabulous atmosphere for baseball. A-
Scoreboard/Soundtrack: The main scoreboard has two large video screens on it, both of which displayed plenty of stats and information throughout the game. The out of town scoreboard, located in the high right field wall, shows everything you could need to know about other games, but is a video screen, rather than the more old fashioned light boards we saw in our first two stops. The flashy video screen contrasts a bit too much with the old fashioned feel of the rest of the ballpark, but it's nothing too drastic. And I will never understand why they play "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" during the seventh inning stretch. B
Food/Drink: I had a beef sandwich from the famous Boog's BBQ on Eutaw Street, an amazing fresh pretzel from Noah's (which seems to exist at every DC area sporting venue), and a beer from the local beer stand. Each was good, and not incredibly expensive, as ballpark food goes. Their were plenty of other options throughout the ballpark, and I was happy to see that the variety even extended to the upper deck. A-
Fans: Despite being on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the game was no more than half-full, and it was Little League Day, so it seemed that there were very few fans there who weren't with some sort of large group. They weren't too loud, although there wasn't much to cheer about during the game. It's a sad referendum on the dreadfulness of the Peter Angelos years that Baltimore, a city with a fairly good reputation for baseball fans, can't fill their beautiful stadium on one of the nicest weekends of the year. C+
City/Stadium Neighborhood: After the game on Sunday, we spent a good deal of time walking around Baltimore, and I have to admit, I was impressed. I had spent very little time in the city, and much of my impression was the fairly negative impression that many people have from things like "The Wire" (which I've never seen, but have heard is very good). However, we had a great time walking around the Inner Harbor and some of the adjacent areas. Without a doubt, it is an area that is geared towards tourists and towards presenting the city in its most positive light - but it is remarkable how well it succeeds in doing so. From street performers entertaining the crowds, to restaurants packed with people sitting both inside and out, and a bunch of packed bars, it just seemed like a fun area - the perfect place for a ballpark. Certainly, Baltimore has many problems, but they've created a very impressive area downtown that only adds to the experience of going to a game. City: B-, Neighborhood: A-
Game: Certainly the least exciting game we've seen so far. Baltimore lost to the Detroit Tigers 3-0. Both starting pitchers were strong, but Edwin Jackson was nearly unhittable, giving up only 2 hits in seven shutout innings. The Orioles never mounted a threat, and didn't look like they even had a chance. B-
Overall: While the game wasn't much to see, a game at Camden Yards and spending the rest of the afternoon in the Inner Harbor seems like the idyllic was to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon. The Orioles have gotten hundreds of accolades for their beautiful ballpark, and they deserve them all. A-
Labels: baltimore, camden yards, orioles, review
Bobby June 2, 2009 at 9:09 AM
Don't you dare dis "Thank God I'm a Country Boy." I grew up with that 7th inning stretch song. I still expect it to be played after "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at every game I go to, no matter where I am.
Justin's Review: AT&T Park
Justin's Review: Angel Stadium of Anaheim
ten thousand miles, ten thousand photos
Justin's Review: Petco Park
Mike's Review: Rangers Ballpark in Arlington
Mike's Review: Minute Maid Park
A long way from KC
What's wrong with this picture???
Justin's Review: Dodger Stadium
3 Days in the Bay Area
avoiding conflicts...
Justin's Review: Coors Field
The Pacific Ocean
Highways and Byways
Justin's Review: Chase Field
Justin's Review: Rangers Ballpark at Arlington
after driving 14 hours...
This is appropriate...
Justin's Review: Minute Maid Park
Early to bed
Justin's Review: Tropicana Field
Houston and our lack of offense
Mike's Review: Tropicana Field
Fussy fuses
Mike's Review: Land Shark Stadium
Justin's Review: Land Shark Stadium
Final night on the East Coast
The joys of Florida
Rain delay in Miami, exciting finish
Mike's Review: Turner Field
Justin's Review: Turner Field
Mike's Review: Nationals Park
Still heading south
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
Journeying into the South
Justin's Review: Nationals Park
the passenger workstation
Mike's Review: Oriole Park at Camden Yards
A day in DC
Mike's Review: Citizens Bank Park
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Waifs & Strays Homes
All Saints' / Holy Cross Home for Girls, near Stourbridge, Worcestershire
The All Saints' Home for Girls was opened by the Waifs and Strays Society in 1910 opened on Summerfield Road at Holy Cross, Clent, near Stourbridge. It replaced the All Saints' Home at Belbroughton which was in need of expensive repairs. The new building, designed by Mr T Glazebrook, was officially opened on May 4th, 1910, with the Bishop of Worcester conducting a ceremony of dedication. Although the Clent home originally retained All Saints' title, it soon adopted the name of the area in which it was located, Holy Cross. The home could accommodate 20 girls aged from 3 to 15.
All Saints' / Holy Cross Home for Girls, Clent, c.1910. © Peter Higginbotham
The home had a large garden whose care the girls contributed to.
By the 1950s, Holy Cross had become a mixed home. From 1974, it was known as Holy Cross Lodge Family Home. It finally closed in around 1982. The property has now been converted to flats.
Former Holy Cross Home for Girls, Clent, 2013. © Peter Higginbotham
Index of the Society's first 30,000 children's case files ordered by surname.
Index of the Society's first 30,000 children's case files ordered by date of birth.
The Children's Society Records and Archive Centre is at Block A Floor 2, Tower Bridge Business Complex, 100 Clement's Road, London, England SE16 4DG (email: archives@childrenssociety.org.uk). Files for children admitted to its homes after September 1926 were microfilmed in the 1980s and the originals destroyed. Some post-1926 files had already been damaged or destroyed during a flood. The Society's Post-Adoption and Care Service provides access to records, information, advice, birth record counselling, tracing and intermediary service for people who were in care or adopted through the Society.
The Society has produced detailed catalogues of its records relating to disabled children, and of records relating to the Children's Union (a fundraising body mostly supported from the contributions of children).
Bowder, Bill Children First: a photo-history of England's children in need (1980, Mowbray)
Church of England Waifs and Strays' Society [Rudolfe, Edward de Montjoie] The First Forty Years: a chronicle of the Church of England Waifs and Strays' Society 1881-1920 (1922, Church of England Waifs and Strays' Society / S.P.C.K.)
Morris, Lester The Violets Are Mine: Tales of an Unwanted Orphan (2011, Xlibris Corporation) — memoir of a boy growing up in several of the Society's homes (Princes Risborough, Ashdon, Hunstanton, Leicester) in the 1940s and 50s.
Rudolf, Mildred de Montjoie Everybody's Children: the story of the Church of England Children's Society 1921-1948 (1950, OUP)
Stroud, John Thirteen Penny Stamps: the story of the Church of England Children's Society (Waifs and Strays) from 1881 to the 1970s (1971, Hodder and Stoughton)
Hidden Lives Revealed — the story of the children who were in the care of The Children's Society in late Victorian and early 20th Century Britain.
The Children's Society
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[FROM THE EDITOR]
Back in January, we featured analysis on mass withdrawals from the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), apparently brought about by a series
called the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party published by The
Epoch Times newspaper.
Back in January, we featured analysis on mass withdrawals from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), apparently brought about by a series called the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party published by The Epoch Times newspaper. Instead of fading away into the night, as some may have feared or predicted, this phenomenon has snowballed and the number of withdrawals has reached over 4.5 million in a span of nine months. If the trend continues, it has the potential to significantly impact Chinese society.
Most people who chose to declare their withdrawals publicly have done so anonymously. Similar to a secret ballot system, this mechanism has allowed people to express their position without exposing themselves to reprisals, perhaps the closest thing we’ll get to a referendum in today’s China. On the other hand, it also makes it impossible for outside observers to verify the reliability of the number of withdrawals in conventional ways.
The reliability of those numbers is anybody’s guess at the moment, but CCP has not taken it lightly. Publicly, CCP has been tight-lipped, fearing that whatever it says will only generate more curiosity and interest. According to an internal speech by the Deputy Minister of the Public Security Ministry (see page 20 in this issue), however, the CCP regards it as something potentially affecting the Party’s ruling status. The Nine Commentaries is at the top of the banned literature list. Anyone found to be involved with its distribution faces dismissal from work and jail time.
China is also going through a significant campaign named "Baoxian," or "maintaining the advanced nature of the CCP," a topic that occupies the prime spots of Chinese publications but largely ignored by Western media. Googling the Chinese term "Baoxian" generates thousands of images (see examples on page 35) reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. The campaign, launched at the end of last year, was designed to consolidate the current administration’s power. Generally these types of campaigns run their course in a short time, but this one has turned into a mechanism to counter the mass exodus from the CCP.
Given the CCP’s notorious history for cruelty and bloodshed, some have compared the CCP to the Beast described in the Book of Revelation. If this is truly a battle between good and evil, and if one does believe in good prevailing, then perhaps it’s time to contemplate the possibility of a post-CCP China and what that might look like.
Analyses | | December 31, 2007 | Opinion
Canadian MP Feels Beijing’s Pressure in Hong Kong
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Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie
Websites: http://www.deadtroll.com/
Origin: Edmonton, Alberta
The original Trolls - Borg, Bird, Neil Grahn and Cathleen Rootsaert - allegedly met when at least some of them worked at the same restaurant; the name "Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie" comes from a nickname the staff used for a triple hamburger to go. The troupe formed in 1987 and quickly came to national attention as perhaps the most popular performers on the Canadian Fringe Festival circuit in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Trolls initially did sketch comedy, often on risqué or controversial subjects, along with humorous songs. One of their most famous songs, "The Toronto Song", which makes fun of Canada's regional rivalries by insulting the city of Toronto and eventually most of the rest of the country as well, originates from this period. Today this song is often mistakenly attributed to The Arrogant Worms, despite the fact that the Worms are themselves from Ontario while the song makes it clear that its writers are from Alberta (but not Calgary).
By 1991 the Trolls were touring with a full-blown play entitled "Kevin Costner's Naked Butt" (the play did not in fact even mention Costner, but Bird did have a brief nude scene). Another play the following year, "Saskatchebuzz", featured Saskatchewan declaring independence from the rest of Canada and quickly becoming the world's leading producer of marijuana; beneath the show's surface humour lay commentary on such subjects as drug legalization, and the effects of farm subsidies and the Québec sovereignty movement. This show garnered the group's most consistently positive reviews to date. At about the same time, a cassette-only album of the Trolls' songs, Con Troupo Comedius, appeared, featuring "The Toronto Song" among others (and settling the issue of the song's title, which fans and reviewers often rendered as "The Ontario Song" or "Ontario Sucks"). Some of this material is now more easily available on the CD Steaming Pile of Skit.
Shortly after this, the group briefly had a television show on the CBC, but this received mixed reviews and only lasted five episodes. Much of the group's material at the time was far too raunchy for national prime-time broadcast, and new material most reviewers considered mediocre at best was added in its place. It is sometimes remarked that opening the first episode with "The Toronto Song" may have contributed to this short lifespan, as key CBC offices are located there; though commonly made in jest, an open letter to the Toronto Star by Borg, Bird and Grahn made the same charge in apparent seriousness.
Shortly after the failure of the television show, Grahn and Rootsaert both left the group; both have since turned up on the CBC in other capacities from time to time and Rootsaert, at least, has intermittently worked with the Trolls since ceasing to be a full-time member.
At least as far as live performances outside Edmonton went, the Trolls were quiet for a few years, then spent the rest of the 1990s collaborating with other Edmonton comedians, since the remaining duo could not by themselves stage the sorts of shows they had become accustomed to. The resulting shows were generally well-received with perhaps the most popular at the time being "Piledriver", another play which underlay a humorous narrative with commentary on serious issues, a collaboration with Guys in Disguise.
However, it was their collaborations with Atomic Improv which would have the most lasting effect on the Trolls. This involved the Trolls extensively experimenting with improv, something they had rarely attempted in the past. Another trend which started in this period was a decreased emphasis on the more "adult" aspects of previous shows like "Piledriver" and "Kevin Costner's Naked Butt"; more recent Troll humour is much less likely to be about sex or drugs or feature extensive use of profanity compared to their earlier material. In addition, the (scripted) play "The War of 1812", a humorous retelling of the war of the same name replete with deliberately over-the-top pro-Canadian jingoism, featured perhaps their most famous song to date, "The White House Burned (The War of 1812)". This is yet another Trolls song that is often mistakenly attributed to the Arrogant Worms. Perhaps the most important result of this collaboration, however, was Paul Mather's decision to join the Trolls as their first new full-time member since the original lineup. (Mather continues to be a member of Atomic Improv as well.)
Since about the same time Mather joined full-time, the group has focused on releasing CDs of their skits and songs, chiefly over the Internet rather than through traditional music stores. Perhaps their most well-known skit today is "Welcome To The Internet Helpdesk" from the album Skit Happens, which portrays a computer technical support employee struggling to help a computer-illiterate customer over the telephone. They still perform regularly in Edmonton but have not toured nationally, on the Fringe circuit or otherwise, for several years. Until mp3.com was closed, Trolls CDs were popular items at that site, which also featured free downloads of much of this material; at one point the Trolls had four of the sites top 10 selling comedy CDs. Much of the free material can now be found on the Trolls' own web site.
Con Troupo Comedius
Streaming Pile of Skit
Format: CDR
The Geek Album 2.0
Skit Happens
An Unseasonably Yellow Christmas
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HGSCEA
Historians of German, Scandinavian and Central European Art
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newly published books
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sustaining and contributing members
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Sept. 9, 2021 Rosemarie Haag Bletter Interview with BBC Radio 4 on the history of glass in architecture and Paul Scheerbart’s and Bruno Taut’s proposals for utopian glass architecture for a Program, “The Dreams We Live In”, to be broadcast in late September.
THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH EVENT
Can Artists Still Break the Rules? Revisiting Strategy: Get Arts
Mon 30 Aug 11:30 – 12:30, The New York Times Theatre (in Sculpture Court)
Can Artists Still Break the Rules? Revisiting Strategy: Get Arts | What’s On | Edinburgh International Book Festival
From Mon 30 Aug – In August 1970, Richard Demarco collaborated with the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf to stage Strategy: Get Arts, an exhibition at the Edinburgh College of Art. It featured works by Joseph Beuys, Gerhard…
www.edbookfest.co.uk
The Great Women Artists Podcast announces a new episode: Paula Modersohn Becker, with author Diane Radycki and podcaster Katy Hessel.
(Hessel, creator of The Great Women Artists Podcast (London, 2015), has been selected one of Forbes 30 Under 30 successful young Europeans in Art and Culture to watch in 2021.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/diane-radycki-on-paula-modersohn-becker/id1480259187?i=1000515088928
Michelle Facos will give the 2021 Raoul Wallenberg lecture at the Nordic Museum in Seattle on 13 June at 12:30 pm Pacific Time. The topic is “Jews and the Formations of a Swedish National Identity,” and will be accessible on Zoom via the Nordic Museum website.
On 14 August at 10 am Pacific Time, she will give a lecture “Sisters of the Brush: Scandinavian Women Painters in the Impressionist Era” in connection with the Nordic Museum’s exhibition Among Forests and Lakes: Masterpieces from the Finnish National Gallery, which runs 6 May-26 October 2021. This will also be via Zoom and accessible the Nordic Museum website.
Book Launch: Constructing Race on the Borders of Europe: Ethnography, Anthropology, and Visual Culture, eds. Marsha Morton and Barbara Larson
You are cordially invited to a book launch party on Saturday April 17 celebrating the release of our book Constructing Race on the Borders of Europe. This anthology features essays by many HGSCEA members and was initially developed from the HGSCEA session, “Representing Race” chaired by Allison Morehead at CAA in 2018. The book launch will feature brief presentations by the authors followed by a Q&A. Further information is provided in the registration link below. We hope that you can attend!
Apr 17, 2021 3:00 PM Eastern Standard Time
See email for details on how to register.
Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented
On view through April 10, 2021
Friday, March 5, 7:00 – 8:30 pm EST
You are invited to a special walkthrough of MoMA’s Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented with exhibition organizers, Jodi Hauptman and Adrian Sudhalter, followed by a discussion moderated by HGSCEA President James Van Dyke. The exhibition traverses much of HGSCEA’s geographic terrain and numerous HGSCEA members contributed to the catalogue. This special event — organized exclusively for HGSCEA — is open to current members and is free of charge (renew your membership here). It will take place on Friday, March 5, from 7:00–8:30 p.m. (EST). This is a by-registration-only event. To register check your email.
http://engagedpatrons.org/EventsExtended.cfm?SiteID=1129&EventID=429569&PK=
Robert Gore Rifkind dies at age 91; His legacy continues through the Rifkind Scholars-in-Residence Program.
The renowned collector of German Expressionist art and donor of the eponymous study center at LACMA, Robert Gore Rifkind, died on October 20 at the age of 91. A graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, he was a pioneer of the boutique law firm model and established the first single-focused case securities law practice in Los Angeles in 1978. He was awarded the Order of Merit, First Class by the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of his extraordinary efforts in spearheading the understanding of German Expressionist art in the U.S. His philanthropy included HGCEA at a crucial juncture in 2004 as well as grants to many of its members through the Rifkind Scholars-in-Residence program.
Rifkind was assisted in building his collection by dealer Orrel P. Reed Jr. and scholar Peter Gunther, among others, and the library was enriched by the expertise of Jake Zeitlin in Los Angeles, Elmar W. Seibel in Boston, and Hans Bolliger in Zurich. His 1983 donation of German Expressionist prints, drawings, and library led to the creation of the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, an extensive and growing collection of more than 6,000 prints and drawings and a research library of over 10,000 volumes, documented in the 1989 volume Prints and Drawings: The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies by Bruce Davis, which includes Mr. Rifkind’s interview of Oskar Kokoschka.
Oskar Kokoschka and Robert Gore Rifkind, 1978.
LACMA’s exhibition program includes nearly continuous rotations and thematic installations from the Rifkind collection—often complemented by works from other LACMA departments—most recently the exhibition, Fantasies and Fairy Tales. The Rifkind Center has also contributed to major international loan shows ranging from German Expressionist Sculpture (1983), The Apocalyptic Landscapes of Ludwig Meidner (1989), “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (1991), Expressionist Utopias (1993), and Exiles + Emigrés: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler (1997), to Expressionism in Germany and France: From Van Gogh to Kandinsky (2014).
The Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation under the able leadership of Mr. Rifkind’s son, Max Rifkind-Barron, supports art and library acquisitions, LACMA exhibitions such as Hans Richter: Encounters (2013) and New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic, 1919–1933 (2016), public programming, and a Scholar-in-Residence program that allows specialists from the U.S. and abroad to conduct research in the Center. These activities will continue throughout the construction of LACMA’s new Peter Zumthor building to be completed in 2023.
The Scholars-in-Residence program has supported generations of scholars beginning with Herschel B. Chipp, Wolf-Dieter Dube, Alexander Dückers, Naomi Jackson- Groves, Paul Raabe, Günther Thiem, and extending through Rose-Carol Washton Long, Sherwin Simmons, Olaf Peters and many others up to young scholars and students just beginning their careers today. The Scholar-in-Residence program is currently accepting applications for Summer 2020 and beyond. A link to this program is found at: https://www.lacma.org/learn/research-library/rifkind-center
With Child: Otto Dix/Carmen Winant
September 21-December 15, 2019
Worcester Art Museum
Centered on WAM’s recent purchase of Otto Dix’s provocative painting, The Pregnant Woman (1931), the exhibition, With Child, will explore the subject of pregnancy and birth in Dix’s works. “The Pregnant Woman” (1931) has touched visitors in powerful ways, eliciting varied responses to a universal theme. This exhibition will be the first internationally to showcase the German artist’s works on this theme, along with a painting from the same model by one of his master students, Gussy Hippold-Ahnert, as well as Dix’s Pregnant Woman (1966), a portrait of his Dresden daughter, Katharina König, and his last nude painting. With Child will explore Dix’s stylistic and personal changes in his treatment of this subject over his lifetime, and associated programming will reflect on women’s social, political, and medical conditions during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), highlighting issues that are still relevant. This exhibition also will feature a commissioned work by contemporary artist Carmen Winant. Inspired by The Pregnant Woman, Winant’s immersive, multi-media piece, Ha Hoo…Ha Ha Hoo, brings a contemporary woman artist’s voice to this universal topic.
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Historians of German, Scandinavian and Central European Art, or HGSCEA, is an affiliated society of the College Art Association. It was founded in 1997 to foster study of visual and material culture of Central Europe and enhance communication and cooperation among scholars working on the art and architecture of the region. The society publishes regular updates of member news and activities, events and news items of interest to HGSCEA members on this website. HGSCEA also sponsors a session at the annual CAA conference, as well as organizes and supports scholarly endeavors and events focused on Central European topics. The society’s members include American and European scholars (affiliated and independent) and graduate students. Join HGSCEA!
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Steve Bannon Removed from National Security Council
Ivan Jimenez, News Editor
Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, was removed from his seat on the National Security Council on April 5, 2017.
“The decision, which one source with knowledge said was made by Trump himself, comes after the President in January authorized the reorganization of the National Security Council to include Bannon as a permanent member of the panel,” explained CNN.
At the time of Bannon’s addition to the council, President Obama’s National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, was fired after he was revealed to have undisclosed conversations with Russian operatives. Trump’s replacement, though, proved to be equally controversial. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland went so far as to accuse Bannon of being a white supremacist, according to Politico.
Thus, Trump confirmed Bannon into the council despite staunch opposition; and Bannon proved an unconventional addition to the Council’s distinguished peers. A former editor at Breitbart News, a right-wing publication, the juxtaposition between he and his fellow Council members was stark. Other National Security Council members include the secretary of state, the treasury secretary, and the secretary of Homeland Security, according to CNN. Such an intrusion also showcased Bannon’s own prestige.
“Bannon’s accession also demonstrated the breadth of his influence inside the White House, signaling that the former head of Breitbart News’ influence extended beyond politics and domestic policy,” wrote CNN.
Bannon’s influence, though, isn’t finished. Although he isn’t an official council member, he retains the ability to sit in on any council meeting. Thus, the effects of his demotion are minute. In the past, officials report that Bannon rarely sat in on meetings, anyway, according to The Hill.
“Bannon will still be allowed to ‘attend any meeting’ where his expertise is needed,” explained a source to CNN.
“In all the time he was there, he only attended one principals meeting. He is still welcome to attend principal meetings,” the source continued.
In short, although Steve Bannon is out of the council, his influence isn’t going anywhere.
bannon
As News Editor for, The Highland Fling, Ivan is excited to bring Helix students the latest in recent events. In addition to Journalism, Ivan enjoys reading,...
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Articles, Issue 32
Cracks of Productivity: The Vitality of the “flesh” in Danzad Malditos
written by IVC Author
By Irene Alcubilla Troughton
“Are we not in awe of this piece of flesh called our “body,” of this aching meat called our “self” expressing the abject and simultaneously divine potency of life?” —Rosi Braidotti1
Idleness is usually seen as the opposite of productivity, with the latter term being a common imperative in our Western capitalist society. In our work, social media interactions, even in our leisure activities, we are demanded to perform, to be in a constant state of productivity. This essay will offer a perspective on idleness by analyzing the cracks of productivity and how its failures can offer novel ways of dealing with this imperative.
Throughout this essay, such an analysis will be made by looking at a case study: the Spanish theatre play Danzad Malditos, a loose adaptation of Sydney Pollack’s 1969 movie They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? By means of reference to the scenes, the monologues, and the way in which the performance is structured, this essay will offer a practical example of how the vitality of flesh can be presented, and how this can be interpreted as a critique towards productivity in contemporary society.
Productivity in this essay is analyzed within a biopolitical framework, mainly through Giorgio Agamben’s distinction between bios (qualified life) and zoè (bare life). I will then relate this binary to the contraposition between body and flesh, with a particular attention to the latter concept. Flesh, therefore, shall be the conceptual tool through which an analysis of the cracks of productivity will be carried out.
The analysis of the vitality of the flesh, and its creative intervention into what it means to fail at being productive, will entail a dual perspective. First, I delve into this concept from the point of view of embodiment and movement. Second, I delineate an interpretation of the flesh through perception, especially through the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. I then bring together these two perspectives and link them back to Agamben’s idea of “inoperativity.”
Finally, this essay argues that the cracks of productivity, as analyzed in several instances of the play Danzad Malditos, offer not only an exhibition of exhaustion and failure, but a creative way of dealing with alternative views on what it means to be productive. By exposing the flesh of the performers not just as worn-out bodies but as showing a new type of vitality, Danzad Malditos provides a critique on productivity. At the same time, the play opens another path for relating to others: in more ethical, posthuman entanglements where that exhausted and unproductive flesh becomes the main point of connection among entities.
Danzad Malditos and the Cracks of Productivity
Danzad Malditos is a stage play created by a homonymous Spanish collective, based on the main premise of Sydney Pollack’s film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? The movie, which is in turn based on another medium—a novel by Horace McCoy—focuses on the lives of several desperate characters that assist a dance marathon during the Great Depression in the United States. These marathons, that turn out to be endurance contests of great entertainment for the well-off class, lure people in precarious situations by promising a monetary price and by supplying daily food rations. The dance marathons could last a few days, weeks, or even months. One held in Madrid in 1932, for instance, lasts two months and the contestants are only allowed to rest for 15 minutes in every hour. During that time, apart from laying down, they have to clean themselves and change their clothes for the next dance.2
Instead of opting for an adaptation of the storyline of the movie, Danzad Malditos decided to create a play that is articulated as a real competition. First staged in 2015, the play exhibits a mixture of live competition and scripted scenes. The live competition consists of physical activities or games of chance, resulting in one or more of the actor participants being expelled after each of these trials. Elements of competition are interspersed with scripted scenes composed of text and choreography performed by alternating actors, depending on the outcomes of the preceding trial. Therefore, the actors know every role and perform in different constellations; every time the play is performed a different ending will be shown, with a different duo emerging as the winners each time.
There are five eliminatory trials during the piece. The first one already sets the atmosphere for the rest of the fierce competition: due to the fact that eleven performers have been invited on stage and the dances are mainly for couples, one has to be eliminated. The actors and actresses select on the spot the partner that will accompany them throughout the rest of the performance, leaving one aside. The second trial relies on pure chance: a bottle is given to each participant, nine of them containing water; one of them containing a dark liquid (fig. 1). After the one who has drunk the dark liquid is eliminated, the partner asks another person to form a new couple with him or her. That person can either accept or decline the offer. The third competition consists of a tough physical exercise: the contestants run in circles along the stage while a song is played, and the audience is encouraged to clap along. The last couple will be eliminated. The director, close to the technicians, decides how many times the song will be repeated in each performance, usually in consonance with the audience’s reactions: the more they clap, the more he plays the song. The actors, therefore, do not know how many times they will have to perform those extenuating exercises, which contributes to their tired and pleading looks (figs. 2 and 3). On the fourth trial, the eliminated contestants decide unanimously who is going to be the next disqualified duo. Finally, when only two duos remain, someone from the public chooses the winner.
Figure 1. Scene from Danzad Malditos.*
Figure 2. Scene from Danzad Malditos.
In between these competitions, several dances take place, along with monologues that occur both every time someone is eliminated and in the middle of the dances. The monologues tend to reflect on past experiences, on the reasons that brought them there. Those delivered by eliminated actors turn into a flow of rage towards society, their other contestants, and the director. In this respect, the director of the play, Alberto Velasco, insists on his creation being a tribute to losers, to all of those who do not make it until the end.3 How can a play that is articulated as a real competition that seeks to find an ultimate winner show the cracks of productivity? How can it give a different perspective on fatigue and failure?
According to Jack Halberstam, failure is an important part of contemporary Western society, as the market economy has at its core the constant shifting between winners and losers, where success is associated with profit. In his project The Queer Art of Failure, Halberstam works towards a reconceptualization of failure that refuses to conform to dominant logics of power and discipline. In this way, the focus is not on re-evaluating the standards of succeeding and failing, as in broadening the understanding of those concepts. Rather, the political task that Halberstam summons resides in the dismantling of the very logic that produces success and failure. Understanding that “under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world” does not necessarily imply forgetting about the negative effects that this activity entails.4 And yet, the negative consequence of failing has the power to shake the positivity of contemporary life that figures success as only dependent on someone’s abilities. The imperative of refusing the self-made, individualistic description of success is of vital importance. Halberstam calls for the ethical impulse of understanding how systems of failure and success are socially and culturally distributed before any action takes place. But how to achieve this in a theatre setting?
Biopolitics: Productivity as a Lens in the Zoè/Bios Binary
In this essay, the question of “productivity” shall be a key term in defining the standard logic of success and failure, in which bodies are marked as productive or unproductive based on their ability to contribute to the ongoing economic system. In the case of the industry of the spectacle, where the characters of Danzad Malditos are embedded, the requirements are youth, beauty, and talent. This imperative of proving yourself worthy of a system that increases your precarity establishes the link between the company Danzad Malditos and the inspiration for their play: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Aligning themselves with the people that participated in the real dance contests upon which the film draws for the promise of prize money, the people that created, directed and produced the play Danzad Malditos seek to denounce the situation of a society in which one has to constantly compete for survival and comply with the imperative of productivity.5
For the historical and philosophical account of the division between productive and unproductive bodies, it is of use to turn to the work of Giorgio Agamben and his account of the dialectical interplay between zoè and bios. The Greeks, Agamben explains, had two terms to express what they meant by “life”: bios and zoè. Whereas the latter implied natural life, the former comprised a particular way of life, one that could be considered to be “qualified.” In this way, simple natural life (zoè or bare life) was excluded from the polis and remained to be associated with reproductive life in the sphere of the home. However, the Aristotelian polis did not just imply an opposition between life and good life but an implication of the first in the second, of bare life within qualified life. Western politics then, in Agamben’s terms, constitutes itself through “an inclusive exclusion (an exceptio) of zoè in the polis, almost as if politics were the place in which life had to transform itself into good life and in which what had to be politicized were always already bare life.”6 As he explains, bare life is the necessary exclusion upon which, paradoxically, “civilized life” could be built.
This “inclusive exclusion” of zoè into bios constituted, for Agamben, the main principle of Western politics—sovereign power. That is why modern democracies, though presenting themselves as a vindication of natural life, conflate with totalitarian states inasmuch as they keep this binary division where bare life needs to be protected, controlled and subsumed by bios. Agamben, however, does establish a change of paradigm. For him, the discussions that took place during the Nazi regime regarding euthanasia blurred the line that divided zoè and bios even more: whereas previously it was possible to isolate bare life, now the line that divides qualified life and disposable life resides within each individual and needs to be constantly redrawn.
This distinction between qualified life and disposable life, in contemporary society, can be better understood through the terms introduced before: productivity and unproductivity. As previously mentioned, the distinction between success and failure is created on the basis of which bodies are able to contribute to the current economic system: the unproductive, therefore, the one that is not able to accommodate to such demands, becomes the exclusion, bare life. This is where power is located in Danzad Malditos: it resides with the master of ceremonies who constantly tries to decide where this line is drawn, and who deserves to be called a “qualified human being.”
The Flesh: Contesting the Productive Body
Movement and the Bodily Dimension of the Flesh
For a play where movement and the body play such an essential role in conveying meaning, I find it useful to compliment the dialectical relationship between bios and zoè with another pair: “body” and “flesh.” The concept of “flesh” acquires a predominant role in Roberto Esposito’s theorization of biopolitics. According to the author, the link that connects and explains the contradictions between biopolitics and the great massacres of Modernity can be understood in terms of a negative protection of life, where the ideas of immunity and self-immunity are essential.7 I would like to point out how the demarcation of what needs to be preserved and what needs to be destroyed inside the body of either the individual or the nation (in Agamben’s terms, the distinction inside the individual between zoè and bios) is understood in terms of body and flesh.
Flesh, as the existence that does not conform to proper life, as the uncontrollable part within the body that exceeds, shall be a crucial point in this analysis for two reasons. The first is flesh’s visible character in the field of movement. The philosophical reflections on the flesh were initially constituted as a reaction against idealistic positions and an impulse towards immanence.8 Pedro A. Cruz Sánchez points out how this turn towards flesh influenced artistic creation from the 60s onward, especially in performance and “body art.” The body in art was recuperated not as a glorious solution to the atrocities of the past, (a self-contained subject that was once whole), but the body in flesh was already sick, worn out, and weak.9 It is precisely this line of exploration that Danzad Malditos continues, exposing the dancers’ bodies under uncontrollable, vulnerable, fatigued conditions.
Even though the text of the performance gives us some important clues, as I shall point out in the next section, the potential of this play resides on a bodily level. In other words, the body in scene as an aesthetic force in itself conveys meaning beyond the power of the script that needs to be addressed. The wide variety of bodies on stage already points to the importance of this factor for them to express meaning. The dance pieces that are interpreted tend to focus on non-professional movements: both the variety and intensity of those movement supersede the quest for technical skills. Finally, the choreographies are based on repetitions, physical actions such as jumping or squatting, and on quotidian gestures taken to the extreme, like laughing (figs. 4 and 5). These three instances together create a scene where the body is exposed, overtaken by external factors: by the impossibility of offering a professional performance, by extreme tiredness and frenetic gestures. Furthermore, certain physiological disabilities, such as stuttering are made visible throughout the play, as well as incontinent gestures that arise as a result of their physical efforts, such as panting, coughing, or moaning. The affective potential of the show seems to reside in the performers’ failure to fully control their bodies, always constituted and exceeded by some sort of undisciplined force.
The beginning of the play already frames it in this way. The actors, slowly moving around the stage, start mimicking the movements of agitated horses while getting dressed (fig. 6). This gesture, apart from being a reference to Pollack’s movie, signals a point of double connection: first, between the “natural life” (zoè) of animals and precarious subjects of the play; second, between the uncontrolled movements of the flesh and the motion of the horses in distress. The structure of the whole play is created to enhance the performers’ fatigue and the spectators are consequently able to perceive how their strength decreases to the point that they can barely stand on their feet. As the master of ceremonies claims at the beginning:
Bienvenidos al lugar donde lo humano muestra sus verdaderas caras, porque la necesidad y el cansancio hacen brotar de cada uno la mejor y la peor versión. Aquí están, once ejemplares únicos: la fuerza, la elegancia, el equilibrio, el gesto, la pose, la templanza.
Welcome to the place where human beings show their true faces, as need and tiredness bring out the best and the worst in each of us. Here they are, eleven unique specimens: strength, elegance, balance, gesture, pose, temperance.10
I would like to interpret this statement in two ways. First, through the power of its irony: even if the aim of the contest is to expose “eleven unique specimens” that embody the best qualities of a “normal” subject, the image with which the spectator is confronted differs greatly. It is not just about the capacity of the show to drain the energy of the contestants but also about how, even at the beginning of the piece, their bodies never resemble the type of uncorrupted health and energy that we are used to perceive in young actors and actresses (fig. 7). Second, and in relation to the first point, these “true faces” of the human being that the master of ceremonies alludes to when speaking of tiredness and extreme need might point at something different than what we are used to. The contestants of Danzad Malditos expose their flesh inasmuch as they never fully comply with the requirements of a hegemonic productive body: they never seem to be fully stable, fully in control of their actions and in doing so create a new type of vitality that could afford a state of inoperativity. This “vitality of the flesh” that I shall explore below, might be what these “true faces” afford us to have a glimpse at.
Perception and Entanglements of the Flesh
The second reason for using “flesh” as a conceptual tool depends on its potential in the field of perception and the term’s capacity to point at a blurred connectivity among entities. In The Visible and The Invisible, the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty theorized “flesh” as the porous border in our process of perceiving the world.11 In Merleau-Ponty’s work, flesh can be understood as a shared sensibility among bodies and the environment. “Flesh,” as he understands it, can refer both to flesh of the world and “my flesh,” and it is better comprehended as an “element” in the classical sense. As he puts it: “to designate it we should need the old term ‘element’… in the sense of a general thing, midway between the spatio-temporal individual and the idea, a sort of incarnate principle that brings a style of being wherever there is a fragment of being.”12
The flesh as an element that brings a style of being is closely related to Merleau-Ponty’s ideas of a “postural schema.”13 For the subject’s consciousness to emerge and for it to have an awareness of itself and its situation in the world, it needs to construct a set of postural schemas. These are a system of “I can(s)” (learned consciously or unconsciously) that allow the body to move. Thus, flesh of the world in contact with the flesh of the subject affords a relationality in which the body can arrange its “I can(s)” and create certain postural schemas in order to navigate the world.
This “element” that is the flesh, therefore, allows for a type of communication between entities but, also, for their differentiation; that is, it is associated to a blurred (or chiasmatic) intertwining in the process of perception. As Merleau-Ponty questions: “Where are we to put the limit between the body and the world, since the world is flesh?”14 Flesh constitutes our main way of communication with others and the environment. Its confusing point of departure resides in the individual who touches and is touched at the same time, thus leading to a difficulty in distinguishing between object/subject, perceived/perceiver. Visibility, however, is not all that there is to flesh: another dimension of the flesh—the invisible—is also constantly part of the world. This, at first, might seem to fall into an ocularcentric impulse. Nonetheless, it is important to keep in mind that this “visible” or “invisible” character of the flesh, more than relating to a specific human sense alludes to the aforementioned description of the flesh as an element. Merleau-Ponty asserts:
There is here no problem of the alter ego because it is not I who sees, not he who sees, because an anonymous visibility inhabits both of us, a vision in general, in virtue of that primordial property that belongs to the flesh, being here and now, of radiating everywhere and forever, being an individual, of being also a dimension and a universal.15
This chiasmatic relation that the flesh beings to the fore consists in a becoming, or a kinship among body, things, and environments, where its connection with theories of intra-actions and trans-corporeality become clearer. Karen Barad, in a drive to critique theories of representationalism, which treat matter as passive and language as agential, proposing instead to move towards a posthuman understanding of performativity and to relate to matter as whole entities that interact. Barad builds on Judith Butler and Donna Haraway in their analyses of how discursive practices shape not only the subject but also the matter of bodies and, introducing Rosemary Hennessy, reflects on non-discursive practices as well.
Barad’s theory of intra-actions, close to the agential realism of Niels Bohr, seeks to consider configurations and relations instead of things and words. On the one hand, there are specific exclusionary practices which are embodied as material configurations of the world in causal relationships; on the other hand, there are material phenomena which are constituted by relations and not independent things. This means that the primary epistemological unit is not an independent object (which is an atomistic conception of reality) but a phenomenon: “phenomena are ontologically primitive relations—relations without pre-existing relata.”16 This change of perspective brings about intra-actions as the move through which we cannot assume the pre-existence of entities/relata: “It is through agential intra-actions that the boundaries of properties of the ‘components’ of phenomena become determinate and that particular embodied concepts become meaningful.”17
Stacy Alaimo, greatly indebted to Barad’s intra-actions, decides to use her conception of it to theorize transcorporeality. For Alaimo, this term can be defined as the interest to trace the “material interchanges across human bodies, animal bodies, and the wider material world.”18 It relies on posthumanism as it considers the human in a perpetually interconnected flow of agencies and discursive systems. In strong opposition to global capitalism and the medical-industrial complex which “reassert a more convenient ideology of solidly bounded, individual consumers and benign, discrete products,” Alaimo proposes to consider not only the agency of matter but also our ethical responsibility towards a set of entanglements of which we are always a part. As she claims: “we are always on the ‘hook’—on innumerable hooks—ethically speaking, always caught up in and responsible for material intra-actions.”19
The blurred intertwining of the flesh of the body and the flesh of the world in Merlau-Ponty acquires an interesting tone when seen through the light of intra-actions and transcorporeality. If the flesh allows us to theorize our entanglement with the environments and with other entities, then the possibility of a posthuman consideration of our being in the world emerges and makes an alliance with Barad and Alaimo’s preoccupation with ethical responsibility. The part of the concept of flesh which I previously connected with biopolitics, as this part of ourselves which we are not in control of, the part that disrupts the normative and productive body, can take on an ethical stance when considered through this lens. This neglected flesh in the field of biopolitics, then, could establish a connection among entities, pointing to places of co-constitution that were traditionally dismissed: in unproductivity, in failure, and in weakness.
The interchangeability of those subject’s precarious positions is shown, first, in the way several nationalities are represented in the play. The contestants come and speak in Spanish, French, and Italian, creating a thread that politically and socially connects the situation of several Mediterranean countries in Europe. Furthermore, in one of the first scenes where the dancers need to introduce their backgrounds to the audience, instead of doing so themselves, other contestants give information about each other. Thus, even if the reasons and specific circumstances are visible and expressed, a certain connectivity in their vulnerable situation is enhanced by this exchange of positions and languages. Apart from the dances that are executed in pairs, the contestants render a physical and affective display of co-constitutive vulnerability in a scene where they all lean against each other, supporting the other’s body, preventing the rest from falling and becoming an almost indistinguishable human mass (fig. 8). In a similar fashion, the objects that compose the scenography are not shown as individual, complete wholes but, on the contrary, constantly drowning in the sand that covers the entire stage. Partially exposed, those objects diffuse a sense of boundary, and in relation to the floor, these objects are like the dancers, constantly drawn (fig. 9).
Finally, like in Pollack’s film, the reference to sacrificial animals—especially horses—becomes a constant in the dramatic text. Even if on some level animals in this play are treated as mere metaphors, deprived of their agency as entities that contribute to our daily intra-actions, there is an interesting factor that might open up a different interpretation. Danzad Malditos presents itself as a site-specific play to be performed in Las Naves de Matadero in Madrid. This space, formerly a slaughterhouse, is today one of the main theatre halls in the capital of Spain. Far from being a fortunate coincidence, the performance features, at several times, the song “Too Darn Hot” by Ella Fitzgerald, which acquires a completely different meaning when seen under this light. The master of ceremony explicitly refers to this situation almost at the end of the show: “¿Te das cuenta? Estamos en un antiguo matadero. Estas naves encierran sufrimiento. Esta nave ocultó de la vista la muerte de millones de animales.”— “Do you realize? We are in an old slaughterhouse. These industrial units enclose suffering. This place hid from sight the death of millions of animals.”20
By making the unspoken visible and by directly addressing the audience regarding this topic, the master of ceremonies points at the spectator’s complicity in the creation of two forms of suffering: that wrought by the slaughterhouse and that of the contestants. I would like to propose that more than a metaphor, this fact acts as a point of connection for what Stacy Alaimo encourages us to do: to recognize a shared fate among species and, at the same time, to assume responsibility.21
Inoperativity: The Vitality of the Flesh
This way of exposing the flesh of the actors can lead us to what Giorgio Agamben theorized as “inoperativity,” and, as we posed at the beginning, to a new conception of failure outside of its neoliberal conceptualization. Agamben, in The Use of Bodies, developed this notion while trying to understand what it could mean to “use one’s body.”22 Basing his reflections on analysis of mainly Aristotle and Foucault’s texts he concluded that this “use” (chresis), exemplified in the body of the slave, was different from production (poiesis) and from practical use (praxis), but also that it was something other than modern labor. He turns then to Foucault in order to acquire a clearer view on chresthai, which, according to the French author, used not to describe an instrumental relationship of the soul to the rest of the world and the body but a position in relation to the surroundings, to the objects, the other people and to one’s own body. However, Agamben tells us, as the “use of the body” is thematized in Foucault as a process and a relation, it cannot possibly be separated from “care-of-oneself.” “Care” presupposes “use” or, at least, “use” constitutes one of the instances of relations that one must take care of. This, consequently, may lead to a subject that cares for the one that “uses”, translated into the governability of the self and of others.
Agamben finds in Heidegger’s theorization of care a new path to “inoperativity.” For Heidegger, “care” appears through the suspension of handiness; that is, of familiarity, of common usages. During this suspension, things are in a potential state. Nonetheless, according to Agamben, it is of utmost importance to comprehend this potentiality (dynamis) not through an Aristotelian binary of potential/act, not as a passage to act, but as a condition in itself. This form of understanding potentiality is strictly linked to inoperativity which, as Berit Callsen notes, constitutes a dialectics between activation and deactivation. The deactivation of work has the ability to restore a new possibility, a new use. In this inoperativity, at the threshold of use and disuse, an indifference emerges where zoè and bios cannot be separated.23
The bodies of the contestants of Danzad Malditos, in exposing their flesh on stage, render inoperative the same premise of the play: the exposure of strong-willed, controlled bodies that can withstand the toughest of trials. The actors, from the start of the show, prove to be not productive; they show the impossibility of complying with the requirements of the show: strength, youth, beauty, incorruptible determination. The actors fail constantly the demand of the master of ceremonies: not be dispensable. As long as the show progress, we realize how, for one reason or another, all of them are indeed disposable.
However, by putting on hold the goal of the contest, another use of their bodies, through their flesh, can emerge. A new type of vitality is at play: what Rossi Braidotti calls “the vitality of zoè.”24 Braidotti, picking up on Agamben’s distinction between zoè and bios, responds to this imperative in a way that shifts the discussion to a Spinozian affirmation of life force. According to Braidotti, the contemporary technologically mediated body and the current social practices of human embodiment can show a vitality that is “unconcerned by clear-cut distinctions between living and dying.”25 This situates zoè as a vitalist process that moves away from anthropocentrism in favor of mutual interdependence: “zoè makes me tick yet escapes the control of the supervision of the self. Zoè carries on relentlessly and gets cast out of the holy precinct of the ‘me’ that demands control and fails to obtain it.”26
Interestingly enough, Braidotti at one point refers to this vitality of zoè as “flesh.” As Danzad Malditos progresses, one of the main techniques through which this vitality is made legible is the repetition of songs. The usage of “Padam Padam” by Edith Piaf and “Too Darn Hot” by Ella Fitzgerald as leitmotivs allow the spectator to compare scenes and perceive the difference in bodily energy that the actors and actresses express. Through the perspective of productivity, the dancers’ ability to perform tasks slowly decreases; however, when analyzed from the perspective of this flesh that “escapes the control of the supervision of the self,” the contestants on stage expose a different type of vitality. This vitality possesses its strength and also its ethical drive on the fact that it cracks but does not break. As Braidotti puts it, “ethics consists in reworking the pain into a threshold of sustainability, when if possible: cracking, but holding it, still.”27 Even if the contestants are forced to compete against themselves, their weak flesh connects them to each other and to the environment in a communal pain that is shared, allowing them to hold on (figs. 10 and 11).
Figure 10. Scene from Danzad Malditos.
In its clear connection with the precarious situation of subjects in Spain today, and more specifically, in the spectacle industry, Danzad Malditos is a complaint of current situation. However, by only pointing to this complaint, we risk falling into the assimilationist tendencies towards which Agamben himself seemed to be suspicious. It is tempting to merely stretch the category of the “human,” to consider those bare lives on stage as bios, as qualified life, even if the productivity of those bodies on stage is clearly at stake.
Nonetheless, in this essay, departing from an attempt to disregard these types of binaries, I propose a posthuman turn in the debate by introducing the concept of “flesh” and its double acceptation. On the one hand, as related to the field of biopolitics, flesh explores that uncontrollable part of the self which does not conform to the requirements of productivity and to the normalizing body. On the other hand, in connection to phenomenology and perception, flesh is understood as a point of blurred intertwining of entities in the subject’s access to the world. This situation, finally, allows for an understanding of the flesh as the disregarded part of life which co-constitutes the world and its inhabitants by means of intra-actions and transcorporeality. Instead of proposing yet another distinction between body and flesh, my aim here is to dismantle the binary by focusing on the intertwining of entities and environments precisely on the part which is usually discarded: the unproductive, the weak, the irrationally uncontrollable life force, as exposed in Danzad Malditos.
At the beginning of this essay, I asked “how to expose the different ways of failing that do not follow narratives of productivity in advanced capitalism?” I hope to have opened up a new path for reconsidering this question through the vitality of the flesh. The power of the uncontrollable life force that the dancers of Danzad Malditos expose in the piece, can render inoperative the aim of the contest. Due to the fact that from the very beginning these subjects do not conform to the requirements of those tasks, they are able to put a hold on that type of work and open up other uses of their bodies. These new uses show the affirmative force of their flesh, which can offer other conceptions of their failure.
At the end of the play, the winning couple, stand on top of the rest of the contestants, whose bodies in an undifferenced mass create a podium, and look at the horizon with a deranged look (figs. 12 and 13). At the end of the film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Jane Fonda, after having won the contest, asks her partner to kill her. Alberto Velasco, director of Danzad Malditos, poses the following question in an interview: “When winning, what does one win, and at the expense of whom?”28 The actors in Danzad Malditos, through the use of an unbounded flesh that renders inoperative the requirements of a productive body open new paths for ethical considerations of communal pain and unequal distribution of success and failure. They show us not only how failure can be re-signified but also how, within the rules of the game that have been imposed on us, in the end, the fact is that no-one can ever win.
Figure 12. Scene from Danzad Malditos
*All featured images are screenshots from a recording of Danzad Malditos at Teatro del Bosque de Móstoles in 2017 shot by Malditos Compañía.
Rosi Braidotti, “The Politics of ‘Life Itself’ and New Ways of Dying,” in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, ed. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (Durham: Duke University Press 2010): 208. ↩
Doctor Peligro, “La España Del Baile Salvaje,” Agente Provocador, October 27 2016, http://www.agenteprovocador.es/publicaciones/maratones-de-baile. ↩
Jose Luis Ferrer, “Danzad Malditos SALA MATADERO 24 NOVIEMBRE,” YouTube, October 15, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2DarX7Ep4E. ↩
Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), 3. ↩
Yolanda Moreno, “Alberto Velasco: ‘En Danzad Malditos Encontré El Tipo De Teatro Que Quiero Hacer,’” Culturamas. December 20, 2016, http://www.culturamas.es/blog/2016/12/20/alberto-velasco-en-danzad-malditos-encontre-el-tipo-de-teatro-que-quiero-hacer/. ↩
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 12. ↩
Roberto Esposito, Bios: Biopolítica y Filosofía, trans. Carlos R. Molinari Marotto (Madrid: Amorrortu Editores, 2006). ↩
Maria José Guerra Palmero, “En Carne Viva: Usos U/Tópico,” Debats 119, no. 2 (2013): 40-44. ↩
Pedro A. Cruz Sánchez, Cuerpo, Ingravidez y Enfermedad (Barcelona: Ediciones Bellaterra, 2013), 10-11. ↩
Translation by the author. ↩
Jose Antonio Ramos González, Cuerpo y Carne en la Filosofía de M. Merleau-Ponty (PhD diss., Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, 2015). ↩
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 39. ↩
Alphonso Lingis, “Translator’s Preface”, in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968): xi-ivi. ↩
Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 38. ↩
Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 142. ↩
Karen Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28, no. 1 (2003): 815. ↩
Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity,” 815. ↩
Stacy Alaimo, “Oceanic Origins, Plastic Activism and New Materialism at Sea,” in Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times (Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 2016), 112. ↩
Alaimo, “Oceanic Origins,” 112, 113. ↩
Alaimo, “Oceanic Origins.” ↩
Giorgio Agamben, The Use of Bodies, trans. Adam Kotsko (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). ↩
Berit Callsen, “Cuerpo, des/uso y subjetivación en Hernández, Bellatín y Nettel,” in ¿Discapacidad? Literature, Teatro y Cine Hispánico Vistos Desde Los Disability Studies, ed. Susanne Hartwig and Julio Checa (Passau: Peter Lang Editons, 2008). ↩
Braidotti, “The Politics of ‘Life Itself,’” 203. ↩
Braidotti, “The Politics of ‘Life Itself,’” 208; 211. ↩
“Atención Obras – La Versión Teatral De ‘Danzad, Danzad, Malditos,’” RTVE.es, December 10, 2015, http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/atencion-obras/atencion-obras-version-teatral-danzad-danzad-malditos/3403398/. ↩
Filed under: Articles, Issue 32
Tagged with: Danzad Malditos, failure, flesh, inoperativity, productivity, vitality
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Photo: Stephanie Matto
Stephanie Matto Retires From Farting in Jars
Written by: Marvin Evans
Marvin Evans
PHILADELPHIA - The former reality star of 90 Day Fiance, Stephanie Matto, has made $50k a week selling farts in jars. But recently, she's experienced an unexpected setback, and she was worried that she might be suffering from a heart attack. Instead, she ended up being rushed to the hospital for chest pains.
Read more: Stephanie Matto Retires From Farting in Jars
Hasan Minhaj Goes Into the Lion’s Den
Written by: Indie Philly Staff
Indie Philly Staff
Hasan Minhaj has landed a big hit with his Netflix comedy special "Homecoming King." While his first standup special received great reviews and a Peabody Award, his second one, "Hasan's Comedic Adventures," is set to hit theaters on March 2. The Peabody Award-winning comedian is a veteran of comedy and storytelling, and his new show is a dazzling return to his roots.
After leaving The Daily Show in late 2016, Hasan Minhaj has continued his career in comedy and politics, including a role on Arrested Development. He has also starred in numerous episodes of Getting On and Disaster Date, as well as the hidden camera show Disaster Date. In 2013, Hasan Minhaj was named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People. Hasan's upcoming Netflix comedy special Patriot Act: A True American Story will be the first in the series, which will premiere in 2019.
The new Netflix comedy special Hasan Minhaj Goes into the Lions Den follows the comedian on his first solo tour in the United States. This show will take on the world's political and cultural landscapes, and it will feature the comedian's original material. It will premiere on October 28, 2019 and has already been viewed over fifteen million times. While Hasan is still relatively new in the comedy world, he is widely regarded as a stand-up comedian and political commentator.
Where’s Rose? Star Wars Fans Want Kelly Marie Tran’s Hero on More Merch
Wheres Rose? Star Wars fans want more merchandise featuring the transgender character! As we've previously pointed out, Abrams degraded Rose in The Last Jedi, and director Chris Terrio made excuses for her demotion, claiming that the filmmakers couldn't use Leia's archive footage, but were able to use the footage of Rey. Unfortunately, it looks like Abrams and his team caved in to the sexist and racist backlash that resulted from the casting of Rose.
Though the role of Rose was significantly diminished in "The Last Jedi," the fans are still eager for more. They hope that more merchandise will be produced featuring her. While we can't get enough of the character, we know that she will return in Episode IX. While we can't wait to see her in that role, she's already starting on the next chapter in the Loan Tran storyline.
After the release of "The Last Jedi," many fans were shocked to see that Kelly Marie Tran has become a Star Wars super-hero. Her character, Rose Tico, had a huge impact on the franchise, and fans wanted to celebrate her success. The fan support for the actress was overwhelming, and she was one of the first actresses to make a comeback in such a major movie. However, she wasn't given the same esteem that the originals had. As a result, she has been plagued with toxicity for months.
Knives Out's New Trailer Reminds Us How Delirious It Is
The new trailer for Knives Out reminds us how delirious it is. The film is centered around a family gathering that goes awry. Christopher Plummer, Daniel Craig, and Lakeith Stanfield play detectives who arrive at the family's home to investigate a death. The investigators are soon forced to uncover twisted family secrets, including the murder of the patriarch's son. In addition to these actors, Chris Evans and Jamie Lee Curtis join the cast in their first major movie roles since Captain America in "Avengers: Endgame." And a sequel to the original?
The newest trailer for Knives Out reminds us just how delirious it is. It's worth mentioning that Rian Johnson returned to the murder mystery genre for this film. He started his career with the neo-noir "Brick" in 2005 and branched out with more ambitious studio projects such as "Looper" and "Star Wars: The Last Jedi." With this new film, he is returning to a smaller scale, yet still impressively-cast filmmaking.
With the release of the new trailer for Knives Out, Rian Johnson is returning to his roots. After making his first neo-noir "Brick," Johnson moved onto more ambitious projects like "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" and "Looper." However, after a decade away from the genre, he is now back to his roots. This time, his film boasts an impressive lineup of stars.
Elsa Seeks The Truth Behind Her Magic In New Frozen 2 Trailer
In the new trailer for Frozen 2, Elsa seeks the truth behind her magical powers. Her determination to find the reason for her singularity stems from a childhood trauma. But will this be enough to keep her from becoming a monster? We'll have to wait and see. The new Frozen movie comes out on November 22. I can't wait to see it.
In the first trailer, Elsa is a ninja, a spirit who lives among the Northuldra. She makes visits to Arendelle to visit her parents, and in this new Frozen 2 trailer, she'll seek the truth behind her magic. She will learn how to use her new powers to free the frozen kingdom from curses.
A new trailer for Frozen 2 shows a young Elsa and Anna talking about the enchanted forest. In the next scene, a grown-up Anna is questioning Elsa. The grown-up Anna says that she has been hearing a voice that has been causing her powers to get out of control. A magical troll appears to tell her to find the source of her voice, and the story begins.
While the new trailer shows Elsa stumbling through the snowy landscape, the trailer also cuts to two characters in Arendelle. One of the young girls has been dubbed the Queen of Autumn, while the other wears Arendelle clothing. These two young actors could represent the King and Queen. The young boy could be the young King, and the princess could be the boy. Either way, this new trailer is promising to be a big hit.
Spider-Man Gets To Stay In The MCU And Gets A New Movie To Boot
After the squabble between Sony and Marvel Studios over the rights to Peter Parker, Spider-Man is getting to stay in the MCU and get a new movie to boot. While the new Spider-Man movie has yet to be filmed, the two studios have worked out a tit-for-tat policy that will ensure that Spidey will appear in at least one more MCU movie.
The new deal between Marvel and Sony is great news for fans. The third Spider-Man movie in the MCU has been in development since 2017, but negotiations between the studios ended when Sony dropped the project. After the negative reaction from fans, the studios decided to work together again. Production is set to begin in October 2020 in New York, and will move to Atlanta in November. In the meantime, Foxx and Molina have confirmed that they will star in the film. The upcoming film will feature characters from past movies, as well as a multiverse concept.
Future Spider-Man movies may take their cues from the classic Amazing-Man stories. Those movies were popular in the 1970s and 1980s, when Peter Parker was juggling superhero adventures with his college career and his chaotic romantic life. In addition, future Spider-Man movies could also feature the classic Amazing Spider-Man supporting cast, including Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborn.
Learn More About How Kingsman Came To Be In New The King's Man Clip
In the original Kingsman film, Colin Firth introduced the character as an independent spy agency. The film's sequel was not as successful, but the first film's mid-credits scene remains one of its best parts. The scene shows the right-hand man of Kaiser Wilhelm (Daniel Bruhl) congratulating August Diehl's Lenin in front of a gold vault. Here's a sneak peek at how the character came to be in the new movie.
The King's Man is set during the period of World War I. It stars Harry Hart as U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and an unnamed U.S. ambassador. In the film, Woodrow Wilson yells for a Statesman whiskey while flustered. This whiskey is the front of Kingsman Tailors, an American spy organization. While he may not realize it, the American government has a front for Kingsman, which could explain the film's origins.
The prequel to The King's Man also contains a new clip that shows how the spy group came to be. It features clips from the first two films and an introduction to Conrad, the younger member of the Kingsman spy ring. It also includes soundbites from Hart, Orlando, and his team. It's a short but sweet look at the world of The Kingsman.
The Rock Is Definitely Pretending To Be Danny DeVito In Jumanji: The Next Level
The trailer for Jumanji: The Next Level arrived today and fans can't stop talking. The sequel to Jumanji sees the kids from Welcome to the Jungle enter the world of video games, where everything is broken and the characters have swapped places. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Danny DeVito will play the grandfathers of Spencer and Maya, played by DeVito and Johnson respectively. Obviously, fans are going crazy over the casting news and sharing their excitement on social media.
According to Extra Butter, Danny DeVito told the show that he heard Dwayne Johnson's voice in a television show. Although The Rock's accent is not as distinctive as DeVito's, it's still a great way to distinguish the two actors. In the movie, they are both avatars of the same character, Smolder Bravestone.
While DeVito is clearly not a fan of Dwayne Johnson, he's also happy to have the role. The Rock's impression of him is very close to DeVito's, and his angry screeches make the movie an easy watch. The actors who play Smolder are also great, and the actors hardly hold back.
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Presentation by Mark Carney, former head of the Bank of England and author of Value(s): Building A Better World for All.
"Since leaving his post last year as Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney has worked as the U.N. Special Envoy for the Climate Action and Finance, and the Vice-Chair and Head of Impact Fund Investing at Brookfield Asset Management.
He's also written an important book, praised by everyone from Christine Lagarde to Bono. Value(s): Building a Better World for All, is about the need to build an economy and society not on market values but on human ones.
Mark Carney will join us in conversation with another pioneer in transforming the values of the marketplace, Zita Cobb, the founder of the Fogo Island Inn and of the Shorefast Foundation."
To attend this event, go to https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/mark-carney-speaks-about-values-at-the-april-7-ramsaytalk-tickets-145311962993 and select "Tickets", enter promo code IVYRAMSAY and it will reveal a free ticket for IVY.
April 29, 2021 - 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. EST
Presentation by Minouche Shafik, director of the London School of Economics and author of What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society.
"Minouche Shafik is the Director of the London School of Economics. At 36, she became the youngest-ever Vice President of the World Bank and has since been the Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England.
Her new book, What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society, is an urgent rethinking of how we must support each other in order to thrive. Melinda Gates calls it 'a powerful and persuasive moral arguement,' and Christine Lagarde says it is 'a must-read recipe for the improvement of our life together.'
Minouche Shafik will join us in conversation with Heather Monroe-Blum, the Chair of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and former Principal of McGill University.
To attend this event, go to https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/ramsaytalks-online-with-minouche-shafik-tickets-138666999729 and select "Tickets", enter promo code IVYRAMSAY and it will reveal a free ticket.
October 22 at 6 p.m.
Leadership in International Journalism: A Conversation with Award-Winning Reporter Ben Taub '14
A staff writer for The New Yorker since 2017, Taub has written about jihadi recruitment in Europe, war crimes in Syria, battlefield medicine, and human trafficking. In 2017, Taub's work on Syria, which was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, was short-listed for a National Magazine Award and won The Livingston Award for International Reporting, the Robert F. Kennedy Award for International Print reporting, and the ASME Next Award for Journalists Under 30. in 2018, he was named one of Forbes's 30 Under 30 in Media.
February 26 at 6:30 p.m.
Leadership in the Entertainment Industry: A Conversation with Robert Kraft, Grammy and Oscar-nominated Film Composer and Record Producer
Robert Kraft is an award-winning songwriter, film composer, recording artist and record producer. As President of Fox Music from 1994 to 2012, Kraft was the Executive in Charge of Music for more than 300 Fox feature films, as well as dozens of TV shows. Highlights during his tenure at Fox include the record-breaking scores and soundtracks from Titanic, Moulin Rouge, Garden State, Walk the Line, Slumdog Millionaire, Juno, and Once. As a songwriter, Kraft has earned Academy Award, Grammy Award, and Golden Globe nominations.
February 22 at 6 p.m.
"Off the Record" Career Night
By popular demand, we have organized Ivy's second annual Career Night, an opportunity for undergraduate members to glean career advice from Ivy graduates working in a variety of fields. Among the careers represented by our visiting Ivy graduates are start-ups, law, non-profits, politics, consulting, academia and real estate. Please RSVP by sending an e-mail to julia.wilson@theivyclub.net to reserve your spot at the event, which includes a cocktail hour, keynote interview with Ro Gupta '00, Founder/CEO of Carmera, and dinner.
November 8 at 6:30 p.m.
Leadership that Empowers the Vulnerable: A Conversation with Margaret Crotty '94, Executive Director of Partnership with Children
Ivy graduate member Margaret Crotty '94 has a long history of leadership in education and public health in the nonprofit and private sectors. Prior to joining Partnership with Children, a nonprofit organization that provides critical counseling and intervention to 17,000 students in New York, Crotty launched and managed Save the Children International's $2 billion initiative to reduce child mortality in the developing world. Previously, she was the President CEO of AFS-USA, which has provided intercultural exchanges for other 300,000 high school students since 1947. She graduated with honors from Princeton University and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MPH from Columbia University.
October 10 at 6:30 p.m.
Behind the Spotlight: A Conversation with Pete Austin '93, Senior Broadcast Producer at Good Morning America
Pete Austin ’93 began his career the summer before his senior year with a one-week internship at the 1992 National Convention. Since then, he has worked at ABC News—with a brief hiatus in 2000 to explore the dot com world—where he served as a senior producer for Nightline. In 2015, he was named Senior Broadcast Producer at Good Morning America, where he currently line produces the show Monday through Friday. Austin has helped earn two Emmys for ABC in recognition of outstanding breaking news coverage.
Roundtable Program
The Roundtable program seeks to bring people of interest to the Club for lively dinner discussions, which are limited to 35 members. Many distinguished scholars have been guests, along with accomplished Ivy parents, graduate members of the Club, and members of the Princeton community. The Roundtable program hosts an average of two guests each month during the academic year.
Copyright © 2022, The Ivy Club, Princeton, New Jersey
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Disability Rights Today
Submit a Question/Contact
Service Animals and the Law
Keywords: ADA, schools, housing, FHAA, service animals, IDEA
Federal courts in the Southeastern United States often decide cases that shape how the law treats service animals. This brief looks at the questions courts ask about service animals. It also explains how the courts look at the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Fair Housing Amendments Act (FHAA), and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to find answers.
The questions in this brief include:
What qualifies as a service animal?
Who can use a service animal?
What law regulates service animals in schools?
How does the Fair Housing Amendments Act (FHAA) regulate service animals as compared to the ADA?
What Qualifies as a Service Animal under the ADA?
Service Animals, including Miniature Horses
A service animal is any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability. The work or tasks performed by a service animal must be directly related to the individual’s disability.
The ADA also permits the use of miniature horses as alternatives to dogs, subject to certain limitations. A public entity or private business must allow a person with a disability to bring a miniature horse on the premises as long as it has been individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of the individual with a disability and as long as the facility can accommodate the miniature horse’s type, size, and weight.
Emotional support animals, comfort animals, and therapy dogs are not considered service animals under Title II and Title III of the ADA. Other species of animals, whether wild or domestic, trained or untrained, are not considered service animals either. It does not matter if a person has a note from a health care provider that states that the person has a disability and needs to have the animal for emotional support. A doctor’s letter does not turn an animal into a service animal.
How do courts apply the definition of Service Animal?
Federal courts in the Southeastern US have established a number of guiding principles. These principles apply both to service dogs and miniature horses. Most importantly, the courts have ruled that in order to be considered a service animal, an animal must receive some type of training to aid a person with a disability. However, there are no set requirements as to amount or type of training an animal must receive, and no type of certification is required.
Federal courts in the Southeastern US mandate that a service animal must be trained to perform a specific disability-related task to be considered a service animal. Describing what a service animal does for its handler is usually not enough. Instead, courts often ask to be shown how the service animal responds to specific cues or triggers.
Additionally, the courts have ruled that in order to qualify as a service animal, the animal must be completely trained to perform specific disability-related tasks. An animal that is still in training cannot be considered a service animal for the purposes of modifications.
For more information on miniature horses as service animals, see our brief on Court Decisions: Anderson v. City of Blue Ash.
Language under the ADA
A person must have a disability as defined by the ADA in order to use their service animal in places of public accommodation or state and local government facilities.
The ADA defines a person with a disability as a person with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities
How do courts apply the definition?
Before the ADA was amended in 2008, many federal courts focused on how disabled an individual was when determining whether or not a service animal was legitimate. However, since Congress amended the ADA to broaden the definition of disability, courts are much less demanding in determining what qualifies as a disability, and focus more specifically on the claimed discrimination itself. This relaxed post-2008 standard was demonstrated in 2011 with Alejandro v. Palm Beach State College
(see our brief on Court Decisions: Alejandro v. Palm Beach State College).
Service Animals in Schools
Recently and repeatedly, federal courts have confronted issues of service animals in schools. Most importantly, the courts looked at which law applied. Could complaints be brought directly under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA? Or must students and their parents work their way through, or exhaust, all the administrative remedies available in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) before they could make a claim under Section 504 and/or the ADA? To answer this question, courts thoroughly evaluated the theory of exhaustion as it relates to service animals and questions of reasonable modification.
Definition of exhaustion under the IDEA
Courts broadly rely on the theory of exhaustion under Section 1415 of the IDEA to strictly limit where and how claims can be brought on behalf of students with disabilities. Section 1415 states in part:
Disabled students and their parents must first exhaust their administrative remedies under IDEA before bringing federal claims regarding denial of publicly funded special education under §504 of the Rehabilitation Act or under the ADA.
Essentially, Section 1415 mandates that students with disabilities and their families pursue all means of resolution available to them under the IDEA before initiating legal action under Section 504 or the ADA.
How have courts applied Section 1415?
When considering Section 1415 in cases involving students with disabilities and service animals, federal courts make a critical distinction: did the claim of discrimination just happen to take place within a school or does the claim focus on the denial of a free, appropriate, public, education (FAPE) as guaranteed by the IDEA. Most notably, the Supreme Court in Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools held that the exhaustion provision is only triggered if FAPE is in question.
In that case, a student and her family filed suit under the ADA after the student was denied effective use of her service animal in school. The Supreme Court ruled that because the issue in question did not directly concern the student’s quality or effectiveness of education services provided, FAPE was not in question and a claim brought under the ADA was therefore valid
(see our brief on Court Decisions: Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools).
Service Animals and Housing
Many of the disputes involving service animals in federal circuits revolve around whether individuals are entitled to use emotional support animals in the home (i.e., often apartment complexes or condominiums that do not otherwise allow pets). These cases look at the assistance animal provisions of the Fair Housing Amendments Act (FHAA).
How does the FHAA compare to the ADA where service animals are concerned?
Housing is covered by the FHAA, not the ADA.
The FHAA has a broader definition of the type of animals it protects. The FHAA uses the term ‘assistance animal’ and includes ‘emotional support animals’ in its protections. It also does not limit the type of animal defined as an ‘assistance animal.’
When courts evaluate assistance animals cases under the FHAA, the individual must prove that the landlord, home owners’ association, or local zoning boards were notified of the need for a modification of a “no pets” policy. In contrast, the ADA does not require this step, noting that service animals should generally be allowed wherever the public is allowed.
Under the FHAA, once landlords or zoning boards receive a request for modification, they may request information from a health care provider confirming the need for an ‘assistance animal. ‘
In service animal cases brought under the ADA, courts look at whether the person is a person with a disability and whether the claimed service animal has been trained to perform specific, disability-related tasks. The FHAA, instead, asks if the policy modification is necessary to allow a person with a disability equal opportunity to use and enjoy their property.
Service Animals Fact Sheet
Source: ADA National Network
Web: adata.org/factsheet/service-animals
Service Animals and Emotional Support Animals: Where are they allowed and under what conditions?
Web: adata.org/publication/service-animals-booklet
These materials do not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon in any individual case. Please consult an attorney licensed in your state for legal advice and/or representation. These materials were prepared by the legal research staff of the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) at Syracuse University in partnership with the Southeast ADA Center to highlight legal and policy developments relevant to civil rights protections and the impact of court decisions in the Southeast Region under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). These materials are based on federal disability rights laws and court decisions in effect at the time of publication. Federal and state disability rights law can change at any time. In addition, state and local laws and regulations may provide different or additional protections. Materials are intended solely as informal guidance, and are neither a determination of your legal rights nor responsibilities under the ADA or other federal, state, and local laws, nor binding on any agency with enforcement responsibility under the ADA. The accuracy of any information contained herein is not warranted. Any links to external websites are provided as a courtesy and are not intended to nor do they constitute an endorsement of the linked materials.
Web: adasoutheast.org
Toll-Free: 1-800-949-4232 | Phone: 404-541-9001
Email: adasoutheast@law.syr.edu
Funded by NIDILRR Grant #90DP0090-01-00.
©2002-2021, Syracuse University. All rights reserved.
Project Of:
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New Episode! Upcoming Supreme Court Term: Critical Cases that Could Impact the Disability Community
New Episode ! C.L. v. Del Amo Hospital – 9th Circuit Ruling on Certification of Service Animals and ADA
On July 26, Disability Rights Today will feature Crawford v. Hinds County Board of Supervisors
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Cross carver leaves no stone unturned
When pulling into Wendy’s in Hillsboro last week, hungry customers witnessed a truck bed filled with stone crosses.
It was the work of Darin Nixon of El Dorado, also known as “The Rock Guy,” who has been carving for the past year.
“I was driving through town, seeing if anybody’s interested in buying rock,” he said. “I needed a better way to sell rock than just selling it on Facebook.”
Nixon carves benches, headstones, crosses, desk name signs, and family name signs by hand out of rock he finds near El Dorado.
“I used to take cows out on the pasture with this rock all the time, and they’d have a horrible time,” he said. “Now I’m selling the rock.”
He visited stores to see whether he could sell his product, but frequently found buyers approaching him at the door or by his truck. His items sell for $30 to $250. He works both by commission and free-lance.
“I’ve had people following me for 8 to 9 miles just to buy some of my stuff,” he said.
Stone crosses are his most popular product. They have been used as roadside crosses, cemetery headstones, pet grave markers, and yard landscaping.
He sold stone crosses in Hillsboro, Canton, and Florence to stores and individuals. He also has hit Wichita, Eureka, and his home in El Dorado, but he finds the most luck in small towns.
“I do better in country towns. Country people are different,” he explained. “A lot of people have a little rock garden out in their yard and appreciate landscaping stone.”
His selling success didn’t stop him from hand-carving more rock pieces the next day in El Dorado.
“This stone sticks to you everywhere when you’re hot,” he laughed.
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Lead a walk
Signpost magazines
Waymark newsletter
The Other Pennine Trail
Ian Salvage, Signpost Editor
This article is from Signpost 55, Autumn 2017
The Trans-Pennine Trail and the Pennine Way are designated via the word ‘Pennine’ as operating in the same region of England. However, they are very different in nature.
Some may consider the Trans-Pennine Trail a ‘soft’ option in comparison to its namesake. Yet in terms of length and points of interest along the way, it is every bit a rival. From Southport in the West to Hornsea in the East is 215 miles (346 km) according to the official Trans-Pennine Trail website http://www.transpenninetrail.org.uk/. However, adding in all of the Trail’s path network increases its total length to 370 miles (595 km).
The Trail is relatively ‘young’ as a complete entity, yet came together quickly once work started. Between 1999 and 2004, with £60m of expenditure, much of it from a grant provided by the Millennium Commission, the entire trail was completed.
The walking is certainly across easier terrain than the Pennine Way, with access points directly in towns and cities, and much of it using canals, riversides, disused railway lines and urban cycle paths. However, around 70% of it is free of motorised traffic, and it boasts some dramatic scenery along its way, both natural and man-made. The Trail reaches its highest point at Windle Edge (435m / 1427ft) in the Peak District National Park.
Towns and cities that are on the route include Southport, Liverpool, Manchester, Kirklees, Barnsley, Leeds, Sheffield, Chesterfield, Rotherham, Doncaster, Hull and Hornsea.
The website has large amounts of information, including maps, guides and leaflets, a special section for young people and information on reaching the Trail. Alternatively, the Trail’s office can be contacted: telephone number is 01226 772 574, or postal address is Trans-Pennine Trail Office, PO Box 597, Barnsley, S70 9EW.
The Office also arranges various events related to the Trail. As a small sampler, recent delights included an introduction to bats and moths at Oakhill Nature Reserve, seed gathering at Danes Dyke LNR, bat box viewing at Millington Wood, funghi searches at various places, bird-watches, orienteering sessions, a geocaching treasure hunt, walks, volunteer workdays – in fact, a huge variety of activities for all ages and inclinations.
Next: PNFS 50 Years Ago
http://peakandnorthern.org.uk/newsletter/1710/08.htm
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Published on Vivekananda International Foundation (http://manage.vifindia.org)
Home > Printer-friendly > Printer-friendly
Climate Change in The Himalayas : Its Impact on India’s National Security
Climate Change in The Himalayas : Its Impact on India’s National Security [1]
Heena Samant, Research Assistant, VIF
July 9 , 2020 Views: 1565 Comments: 0
Human-induced climate change has led to unprecedented changes in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Similarly, the Himalayan and its surrounding mountain ranges, also known as the ‘Third Pole’ is experiencing drastic changes due to global warming. These mountain ranges are the source of some of the most important rivers in Asia. They provide fresh water for millions of people living in the countries that form a part of these mountain ranges, including India. The Third Pole consists of a large number of glaciers, which are melting rapidly as a result of atmospheric warming, the impact of which is predicted to be disastrous. The rapid melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas may impact food, water, and energy security of India, which may result in further security challenges, thus threatening the national security of the country. India under its National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) has launched the National Mission for Sustaining Himalayan Ecosystems (NMSHE) to assess the health status of the Himalayan ecosystem. While these are some excellent initiatives taken by the government, there is a need to also focus on establishing a strong institutional regional mechanism to minimize the ongoing change and to include the security implications of climate change in it national security strategy.
Climate Change in The Himalayas : Its Impact on India’s National Security [2] 2.1 MB
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Source URL (retrieved on Jan 17 2022 - 00:30): http://manage.vifindia.org/brief/2020/july/09/climate-change-in-the-himalayas
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Cleveland Bulldogs
On July 8, 1923, Samuel H. Deutsch, a jeweler in Cleveland, Ohio, formed the Cleveland Indians. The Cleveland Indians was a professional football team that played its home games in Cleveland. The team was part of the National Football League. During the 1923 season, the Cleveland Indians won three games, lost one game, and tied three, finishing fifth in the league, which had twenty teams.
After the 1923 season, Deutsch purchased the Canton Bulldogs for $2500.00. The Canton Bulldogs had won the National Football League championship in 1922 and 1923. Deutsch combined the Cleveland Indians with the Canton Bulldogs, creating a new team, the Cleveland Bulldogs. The Cleveland Bulldogs won the league championship in 1924, winning seven games, losing one, and tying one.
In 1925, Canton businessmen purchased the rights to the team from Deutsch. The Bulldogs, now known as the Canton Bulldogs, played in Canton during the 1925 and 1926 seasons. At the end of the 1926 season, the team disbanded, but a new Bulldogs team formed in Cleveland for the 1927 season. Samuel Deutsch was the principal owner of this new Cleveland Bulldogs club. The team finished fourth in the National Football League this season, with eight wins, four losses, and one tie. At the end of the season, Elliott Fisher purchased the Bulldogs and moved the team to Detroit. In 1929, Fisher sold the Detroit team to Tim Mara, who renamed the team the New York Giants.
Canton Bulldogs
Retrieved from "https://ohiohistorycentral.org/index.php?title=Cleveland_Bulldogs&oldid=30625"
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Guest - Environmentally Speaking
DEQ to launch new, improved website today
As part of Gov. McCrory’s vision for making it easier to interact with state agencies, DEQ will launch a new website on Feb. 15 that we hope will create a better user experience for our citizens, businesses and partners. As part of the launch, our web address will change to www.deq.nc.gov. Visitors to the old website will automatically be redirected to the new site.
Governor McCrory believes interacting with government should be as easy as using your smartphone. The new DEQ website aims to fulfill this goal, including a simplified navigation structure, consistent design, and accessibility considerations for disabled users. We’ve also made the site easier to use on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.
Our new website is part Digital Commons, an initiative to give all Cabinet agencies a unified look and feel that is consistent across websites to provide better customer service and a predictable interface. Digital Commons allows the agencies to share resources, reduce costs and standardize web processes.
In May 2015, North Carolina rebooted the state’s primary website, nc.gov, as a part of the Digital Commons project. A few goals included a focus on user experience, design consistency, streamlined service information, mobile optimization, accessibility, and more. Fast forward several months and the numbers are encouraging. Comparing January 2016 to May 2015 we’re seeing 75% more total users of nc.gov and 140% more mobile users.
The website is scheduled to go live this evening. We look forward to hearing your feedback.
By Crystal M Feldman
51415 Views,
Add this to...
State will continue to clean up power sector without expending unnecessary resources on illegal federal plan
In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to block the Obama administration’s federal power plan, the state will continue to clean up its power sector without expending resources to comply with a plan that is likely to be thrown out in court.
“North Carolina is a national leader in improving air quality while keeping energy prices low,” said Secretary Donald R. van der Vaart. “North Carolina has achieved a 25% reduction in greenhouse gases since 2005 without federal intrusion and we will continue to improve air quality in the manner that best suits our state’s needs.”
The Supreme Court’s decision sends a strong signal that the federal power plan will be overthrown and suspends the federal government’s ability to impose the plan until legal challenges have been resolved. The decision relieves states from unnecessarily spending time and money to create a plan that complies with the rule while the legal case proceeds. North Carolina will not pursue rule development until completion of its legal challenge.
DEQ has requested that consideration of the hearing officer’s report be removed from the N.C. Environmental Management Commission’s Feb. 16 special meeting agenda.
U.S. Supreme Court blocks federal power plan that would raise electricity rates
The U.S Supreme Court made an unprecedented moved yesterday in ruling to put a hold on the Obama administration’s federal power plan that would raise North Carolina power bills and hurt economic growth across the country. The ruling suspends the federal government’s ability to impose the plan until the legal challenges have been resolved and is a strong indicator that the petitioning states, which include North Carolina, will succeed in their challenge of the rule.
The federal power plan is estimated to increase North Carolina’s electricity rate by 22 percent and would hurt economic growth and threaten job creation across the state with little, if any, environmental benefits. Governor McCrory will continue to fight the Obama administration’s federal overreach in court to protect ratepayers and North Carolina’s economic health.
This effort is the second time in the past six months Governor McCrory's administration has fought federal overreach in federal court and won a stay. In October, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit put on hold a federal rule that would harm farmers and economic development by greatly expanding jurisdiction over waters never previously regulated by the federal government.
By Dorothy L Davis
State regulators issue $6.6 million fine to Duke Energy for Dan River coal ash spill
February 9, 2016 9:14 AM
State regulators issued a $6.6 million fine yesterday to Duke Energy for environmental violations related to the February 2014 coal ash spill at the company’s Dan River power plant in Eden. The fine covers civil penalties the company committed before, during and after the spill and only accounts for violations that the utility pled guilty to in criminal court in May 2015. The agency reserves the right to issue additional fines for other violations associated with the spill.
“The state is holding Duke Energy accountable so that it and others understand there are consequences to breaking the law,” Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality Donald R. van der Vaart said. “We are moving forward with enforcement actions against Duke Energy for not complying with environmental laws that protect North Carolina’s environment from catastrophes like the Dan River spill.”
Click here to read the press release.
Click here to read the Notice of Violation issued in February 2014.
Click here to read the Civil Penalty Assessment.
By Mike Rusher
The Buckridge Coastal Reserve will soon add a vital missing piece thanks to federal wetlands grant, military funding
At more than 27,000 acres, the Buckridge Coastal Reserve in Tyrrell County is already the largest of the 10 sites in the state’s Coastal Reserve program. But it’s about to get even bigger.
Thanks to a grant from the National Coastal Wetlands Program and additional funding from the U.S. Air Force, the reserve will soon acquire an additional 2,040 acres, an area known as the Woodley Tract.
The addition will strengthen the link for more than 400,000 acres of upland and aquatic habitat in the area, including the Buckridge Reserve, Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge, Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, and tens of thousands of acres of other protected lands.
The reserve’s partnership with the U.S. Air Force and The Nature Conservancy through the Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program will provide 50 percent of the purchase price of the property, and will help secure operational boundaries around the Dare County Bombing Range.
Located about 15 miles south of Columbia, N.C., the Buckridge site is part of the East Dismal Swamp, a wetlands complex of more than 320,000 acres in Dare, Tyrrell and Washington counties. The area provides habitat for many rare, threatened and endangered species, including red wolf, bald eagle, Atlantic and shortnose sturgeon, red-cockaded woodpecker, and American alligator.
The department’s Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve Program protects natural areas for education, research and compatible recreation. Since its creation in 1989, the program has preserved more than 42,000 acres of unique coastal environments at 10 sites along the coast.
Take your best shot and enter the Marine Fisheries Reef Guide Photo Contest
Picture your photograph on the cover of the 2016 Marine Fisheries Reef Guide!
The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries is holding a photo contest to find the best snapshot of a North Carolina artificial reef.
The grand prize winner will receive a $125 cash prize and the photo will be featured on the front cover of the 2016 Marine Fisheries Reef Guide. The second place winner will receive a $50 cash prize, and the third place winner will receive a $25 cash prize. All winners will be recognized with a photo on the Division of Marine Fisheries’ Artificial Reef Program webpage.
Entry photos should be taken while fishing or diving on a North Carolina artificial reef.
The photo contest is open to amateur and professional photographers 18 years of age or older. The deadline for entries is noon on March 30. Official contest rules and entry form can be found at http://portal.ncdenr.org/web/mf/artificial-reefs-program.
The 2016 Marine Fisheries Reef Guide will be a 5 ½ x 8 ½ waterproof book that compiles information about North Carolina’s artificial reefs and oyster sanctuaries, including maps.
Governor McCrory makes North Carolina a national leader in coal ash regulation
Governor Pat McCrory has made North Carolina a national leader in coal ash regulation and cleanup since Duke Energy’s Dan River coal ash spill two years ago today. Within the first few months of taking office, the McCrory administration began holding Duke Energy accountable for violating environmental laws for many years. The state further intensified its approach to addressing the long-ignored issue of coal ash after the Dan River spill. The progress Governor McCrory’s administration has made over the past two years stands in stark contrast to the deliberate inaction of previous administrations.
Governor McCrory’s Comprehensive Coal Ash Action Plan provided the framework for North Carolina’s first ever coal ash law, which put Duke Energy on an aggressive timeline to permanently close all of its coal ash ponds. The new law strengthened the state’s authority to clean up and close the ponds, ensures dam safety and protects water quality. The structural integrity of every dam at a coal ash facility has been checked and improved to prevent structural failure similar to what caused the Dan River spill.State regulators required the inspection of all Duke Energy dams and the submission of video inspections of all stormwater and wastewater piping at every pond.
Under the direction of Governor McCrory, the state environmental department issued to Duke Energy the state’s largest-ever penalty for environmental damages. As a result, Duke Energy paid $7 million in fines and penalties for groundwater contamination at all 14 coal ash facilities and is required to spend between $10 million and $15 million in accelerated cleanup costs. We have now turned our attention to holding Duke Energy accountable for environmental violations resulting from the Dan River spill. We have decided not to proceed with a March 2014 agreement with the federal government, given the state has the authority to enforce the law without federal approval. However, we will inform our federal partner of the state's actions.
Coal ash is being moved to environmentally safe storage from five Duke Energy facilities, including all four of the high priority sites identified in the coal ash law. State regulators have issued the necessary approvals to allow for dry ash removal from more than half of Duke Energy’s coal ash facilities.
We have also begun determining the level of risk each coal ash pond presents to public health and the environment. Staff within the state environmental department developed draft proposed classifications for all coal ash ponds in North Carolina based on months of review of scientific information about each pond’s impact to the environment and public health. The classification process will determine the closure timeline for each of Duke Energy's 33 coal ash ponds in accordance with the framework developed by Governor McCrory. This administration is committed to basing its decisions on science and public input.
Secretary van der Vaart on solar and nuclear energy as part of NC's all-of-the-above energy strategy
Solar and nuclear energy resources are important tools in Governor McCrory’s all-of-the-above energy strategy, which promotes all sources of clean, reliable and affordable energy. As the only state in the Southeast with a renewable energy portfolio standard, North Carolina has, through various incentives, fostered tremendous growth of the solar energy industry. We ranked 4th in the nation and 9th per capita for total solar electric capacity installed in 2014, making solar a growing part of the state’s energy portfolio.
I have consistently supported the diversification of energy resources, including solar, as a key principle of the McCrory administration’s all-of-the-above strategy. Becoming overly reliant on a single energy resource subjects ratepayers to the spikes in energy prices that accompany uncertainty in the marketplace. Because solar facilities supply energy only when the sun is shining, utility companies must burn natural gas or coal to ensure that customers have a constant source of electricity. Nuclear energy is the only source of zero-emission, always-on baseload electricity. It can provide the around-the-clock electricity that intermittent sources cannot. Both solar and nuclear power are important to our energy mix.
The proliferation of solar farms in North Carolina does present the challenge of what to do with the solar panels when they reach the end of their useful life (approximately 20 years). One option employed by the federal government for solar installations on federal land is to require a decommissioning plan that ensures money is available to safely dispose of the panels and return the land to productive use.
While the renewable industry continues to grow in North Carolina, new nuclear generation is needed to assure that residents and businesses have reasonably priced and reliable energy for years to come. A nuclear facility can produce around-the-clock, affordable, clean energy for more than 80 years. I recognize that using both forms of energy will help cleanup North Carolina’s power sector while keeping energy prices.
State report explains science behind initial coal ash classifications
RALEIGH – State environmental experts released the scientific data used to determine the risk level each coal ash pond presents to public health and the environment. This classification will determine the closure timeline for each of Duke Energy’s 33 coal ash ponds in accordance with the framework developed by Governor Pat McCrory.
“Thanks to Governor McCrory’s unprecedented leadership to solving this decades-old problem, North Carolina is closer to the permanent closing all of Duke Energy’s coal ash ponds,” said Secretary Donald R. van der Vaart. “The report released today provides a clear path to permanently removing the threat coal ash presents to public health and the environment.”
To read the full press release click here.
To read the comprehensive report clickhere.
To read the Executive Summary of the Draft Proposed Impoundment Classifications, click here.
To watch DEQ Assistant Secretary Tom Reeder’s videotaped statement, click here.
To read a Frequently Asked Questions document, click here.
For a map of draft classifications for each coal ash impoundment, click here.
Subscribe to this blog.
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CSM Administrator Receives Woman of the Year Award
November 8, 2011 admin All News 0
CSM Director of Administrative Services for Prince Frederick Campus Gladys Jones was honored with the Concerned Black Women (CBW) of Calvert Countys Harriet Tubman Woman of the Year Award on October 8 in Chesapeake Beach.
Concerned Black Women of Calvert County Honor Gladys Jones
College of Southern Maryland Director of Administrative Services for Prince Frederick Campus Gladys Jones was honored with the Concerned Black Women (CBW) of Calvert Countys Harriet Tubman Woman of the Year Award on Oct. 8.
To receive this award in Calvert County, a community with countless women committed to serving others, is indeed a wonderful honor, said Jones.
All of us at the Prince Frederick Campus are delighted that Gladys was given this great honor by the CBW, said CSM Vice President and Dean of the Prince Frederick Campus Dr. Richard Fleming. This award recognizes the contributions Gladys has made to the college, to the campus, and to our community. She has helped the Prince Frederick Campus grow from a series of trailers to the wonderful Flagship Building we have today. Gladys continues to help us serve our students and help them achieve their educational goals.
A lifelong resident of Calvert County, Jones was recognized for her years of service to the community through her involvement in various organizations. She currently serves as the chair of the Calvert County Chamber of Commerce, is a member of the United Way of Calvert County Finance Committee, serves on the 5th Congressional District Womens Network Advisory Committee, serves on the Calvert County Compensation and Review Board, and is secretary of the National Congress of Black Women, Calvert County Chapter.
A graduate of Calvert High School, Jones earned a bachelors degree in business administration and a masters degree in public administration from Sojourner-Douglass College.
Jones has worked at various positions at CSM since 1992.
Harriet Tubman was an African American abolitionist and humanitarian who worked to rescue escaped slaves using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses used as the Underground Railroad prior to and during the Civil War.
Just as Harriet Tubman assisted many individuals into unfamiliar, but successful territories, I remain committed to navigating the way for first-generation college-bound students and serving as a cheerleader for returning adult students as they travel on their educational paths to freedom, said Jones.
CBW serves Calvert County through the establishment of scholarship programs, public leadership and development and participation in the governmental decision making process with a mission of improving the quality of life of families and impacting the local community.
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Emerging With the Release of “Ring to Reception”: Introducing to the World Cosmic Ocean
With the help of a few releases in the form of singles and an album on the horizon, Cosmic Ocean is rising through
Up-and-coming band Cosmic Ocean is a group of talented musicians who are currently working on their first studio album. With incredible excellence in the genre of Hard Rock and their mutual love and passion for music, the band can be seen making it big in the music industry soon. Cosmic Ocean has just released its brand new single titled “Ring to Reception”.
With the worldwide release of the song on August 20th, 2021, the band is looking forward to getting their unique sound out there in the world and bring music lovers towards their sound. They want to reach a wider audience with the release of “Ring to Reception”, so that they can grow their fan following and receive the appreciation and support they deserve. Not only do Cosmic Ocean want to grow as artists in their own respective genre, but they also want to explore new aspects of music, broadening their artistic vision and expanding their creative horizons. Currently available on most major music streaming/downloading platforms across the world including Spotify, “Ring to Reception” is a song that blends funky grooves with hard-hitting verses. Apart from the digital version of the song, a music video for “Ring to Reception” is also available on YouTube. Uploaded to Cosmic Ocean’s official YouTube channel on August 20th, 2021, the music video has managed to amass more than 20k views in a span of 4 months. With decent figures seen on other platforms as well, the streams on Spotify also narrate a similar story.
“Ring to Reception” was written in 2019 and recorded in 2020, but was put on hold due to the worldwide pandemic. The track was entirely produced by Cosmic Ocean crew, consisting of Emily Solis (Vocals), Michael Whelan (Guitar/Keyboards), Aaron Miller (Drums), Dino Rodino (Bass), and Steven Elias (Guitar). Hilary Peters worked on the music video, while the artwork was done by Michael Whelan’s sister, Amy. The determined band plans on continuing their musical journey, making more songs they are passionate about and expressing themselves by being their original self.
Cosmic Ocean wants listeners to watch the music video for “Ring to Reception” on YouTube, along with streaming it on Apple Music and Spotify.
What started out as a joke side project amongst 5 high school friends in 2013, became an inspired means to write, record, and release music. After a demo album release in 2015 under the name Out Of Time, the projected stayed for fun and not much was done with it.
In 2020, the band realized themselves as Cosmic Ocean and started creating new and improved music as their priority. The band will continue to create their eclectic rock music in the future.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cosmicoceanband
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cosmicoceanband/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyxB5VRKp2DGmv7A0nLpBBw
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/36mBsrVOInN07pdBeUBpYC?si=r5ClBXmwSp-8jyZ1CELkJQ
Company Name: Cosmic Ocean
Contact Person: Michael Whelan
City: Valencia
Website: https://www.facebook.com/cosmicoceanband
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Four talented actors play multiple roles
No late seating
Penny Penniworth
Off-Broadway, Play, Comedy
Location: TADA! Theatre
by Nancy
Christopher Borg, Jamie Heinlein, Jason O'Connell and Ellen Reilly in Penny Penniworth.
BOTTOM LINE: A fun-filled evening of Dickensian hijinx with great performances.
Penny Penniworth, written by Chris Weikel and produced by Emerging Artists Theatre (EAT), puts the meaning back in the theater review cliché "A delightful romp!" The production truly epitomizes the term: it is energetic, silly, funny, surprising, whimsical, and a fantastic, virtuosic display of actorly transformational ability. It does not have any pretensions of being serious, meaningful or important- at least not in terms of subject matter. The importance of the piece is as a reminder of the pleasures of live theatrical performance, particularly of watching talented actors twist, turn and tweak themselves into character after character. In this production four actors play at least 10 characters of radically different age, physicality and gender, sometimes at the same time with the aid of only their own finely-tuned instruments and a simple costuming device that alters a woman's skirt into a man's cloak and vice versa.
The play, receiving its first off-Broadway production (it has been produced off-off-Broadway several times since it was first premiered by EAT in 2002), is a fast-paced and loving satire of Dickensian literary conventions. It cleverly plays with the vocabulary, character types and plot conventions of the great English writer, leaving out only the investment in time required to experience his masterworks in written form (1000 pages anyone?). This play crams a whole novel's worth of plot twists (some surprising, others predictable) into 90 minutes. In contrast, the Royal Shakespeare production of Nicholas Nickleby clocked in at eight hours long. Although Penny Penniworth will certainly appeal to Dickens-lovers, Anglophiles and Victorianists, one does not have to love the genre to love the play. If you enjoy excellent physical comedy and clear and concise staging, finessed by director Mark Finley, you will certainly enjoy this show.
Directed and performed by long-term members of EAT, which has been serving up theater and supporting emerging playwrights for over 15 years, the show is a testament to the professionalism of small New York theater companies. However, though EAT and other groups continuously mount worthwhile theater, getting audiences is tough. Sadly, there were only about 15 people in a house that seats at 110 on the night that I attended the show. Before the show, artistic director Paul Adams gave a heartfelt curtain speech acknowledging the hard times for non-profit theater companies and asking audience members to tell five friends about the play (if we enjoyed it). New York residents and theater aficionados know that the there is great theater taking place all over the city. Unfortunately, we get complacent, and along with the average out-of-towner, we stick to Broadway and its closely affiliated and heavily funded Off-Broadway cousins like the Public, Second Stage, etc. Certainly venturing off the grid can be a hit or miss proposition, but there is also potentially a lot of fun to be had in doing so, in addition to the satisfaction of discovering a hidden gem, such as Penny Penniworth.
(Penny Penniworth plays at the TADA! Theatre, 15 West 28th Street, 2nd Floor, through November 1. Performances are Wednesday through Saturday at 8pm, Sundays at 3pm, and Mondays at 7pm. The show runs under 90 minutes with no intermission. There is no late seating. Tickets are $35 with a limited number of $20 student rush tickets available 30 minutes before curtain. For tickets and show information visit www.emergingartiststheatre.org or call 800-838-3006.)
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Posts Tagged ‘hospitals’
Desperate Day For Gaza
December 27th 2008 was a desperate day for Gaza, when the Israeli military launched the beginning of a massive air attack on the small enclave. Operation Cast Lead had been six months in the planning and 100 pre-planned targets were struck in less than four minutes. The initial air attack was followed by others and on the 3rd of January 2009 with a ground attack. Israeli Defense Forces ended their attacks on 18th January 2009.
According to Wikipedia, the Israeli government stated was a response to weapons smuggling into Gaza and to Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel with, according to the Israeli military 3,000 rockets hitting Israel over the whole of 2008 – despite a ceasefire agreement which held for around 5 months before an Israeli attack on a cross-border tunnel in Gaza in November. Rockets killed 8 people in Israel in 2008, four of them after the attack on Gaza began on 27th December.
Again according to Wikipedia (I’ve removed the 14 references to sources which you can find in the original);
A total of 1,100–1,400 Palestinians (295–926 civilians) and 13 Israelis were killed in the 22-day war.
The conflict damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes, 15 of Gaza’s 27 hospitals and 43 of its 110 primary health care facilities,800 water wells, 186 greenhouses, and nearly all of its 10,000 family farms; leaving 50,000 homeless, 400,000–500,000 without running water, one million without electricity, and resulting in acute food shortages. The people of Gaza still suffer from the loss of these facilities and homes, especially since they have great challenges to rebuild them.
There is much more detail on the attack and its consequences, as well as on later attacks on Gaza in 2014, 2018 and 2021 on Wikipedia in articles including those cited above and there would be little point in going further into the details here.
There was a large protest in London against the attack early in January 2009, and I photographed this an other protests, including those the anniversary of the start of the attack on 27th December 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. There I’ve written more about the protests and with many more pictures, including pictures of Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn and many others speaking against the attacks and ongoing siege of Gaza.
January 2009 Gaza: Protest March from the BBC
December 2009 Remember Gaza
December 2010 London Vigil For Gaza
December 2011 End The Siege Of Gaza
December 2012 Gaza – End the Siege
Tags:2008, A Desperate Day For Gaza, air attack, civilian deaths, December 27, destruction of homes, Free Palestine, Gaza, health facilities, hospitals, IDF, Israeli attack, Israeli Defense Forces, London, march, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinians, peter Marshall, protest, rockets, Wikipedia
End Gaza Invasion: 2014
Israel ‘disengaged’ from Gaza in 2005, but retained many controls in what international bodies still consider a form of occupation. It has maintained a blockade, controlling access by sea and air to the area which has a closed border with Egypt and strict border controls to Israel. With 1.85m Palestinians on under 140 square miles it is the third most densely populated area in the world. (See Wikipedia for most of the figures in this post.)
The Israeli and US-led economic blockade of Gaza, imposed after Hamas gained a majority in the area in the 2006 elections and too over from Fatah in 2007 has stopped the import and export of many goods, and together with damage caused by Israel air raids and invasions has led to severe shortages of water, medicine and power.
The protest in London on July 26th 2014 came during the Israeli ‘Operation Protective Edge’, which had begun on July 8th with bombing and artillery fire and escalated to a ground invasion on July 17th, with the aim of killing as many Palestinian militants as possible. It was sparked by the murder of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas members but the Israeli response was quite disproportionate.
Estimates of deaths and damage vary slightly, but agree that over two thousand Palestinians were killed, with the UN suggesting that 1,462 of these were civilians. 67 Israeli soldiers were killed and 6 civilians were killed by Palestinian rockets.
The damage to properties was similarly disproportioate. While around 18,000 homes were destroyed or seriously damaged in Gaza, Palestinian rockets only destroyed one in Israel. Gaza also lost over 200 places of worship, and almost three hundred primary schools and 73 medical facilities were badly damaged or destroyed. The attacks are said to have produced around 2.5 million tons of rubble in Gaza.
Jeremy Corbyn on the march in Whitehall
This is of course not the only year in which there were attacks by Israel on Gaza. “008-9 saw ‘Operation Cast Lead’ which also produced incredible devastation and over a thousand Palestinian Deaths and 13 of Israelis. In 2018 there were border protests in which over 13,000 Palestinians were seriously wounded by Israeli snipers and many killed. A UN Human Rights Council’s independent commission examined 489 cases of Palestinian deaths or injuries and found that only two were possibly justified as responses to danger and the rest were illegal. And most recently in May 2021 there were ten days of attacks by Israeli forces resulting in more destruction and deaths.
The protest on July 26th began on the main road close to the Israeli Embassy, tucked away in a private street in Kensington. Soon themain road was packed with people many too far away to hear the speeches despite the amplification. Finally it moved off on its way to Parliament Square.
There was a long list of speakers at the rally, including a number of well-known musicians and other public figures, but I began to feel rather tired, having been on my feet too long covering this and another protest, and I left before the end. But you can see pictures of many of the speakers as well as the crowd in My London Diary.
As usual there were many Jewish supporters of Palestine on the march, and a small group of the ultra-orthodox Neturei Karta anti-Zionist Jews who had walked from north London to join the rally.
Stop the Massacre in Gaza Rally
End Gaza Invasion March to Parliament
Israeli Embassy rally – End Gaza Invasion
Tags:anti-Zionist, artillery fire, blockade, bombing, civilian deaths, deaths, end Gaza invasion, Gaza, Gaza massacre, ground forces, hospitals, invasion, Israel, Israeli embassy, Jeremy Corbyn, Kensington, London, march, medical facilities, Neturei Karta, occupation, Operation Protective Edge, parliament square, protest, rally, rubble, schools, Stop the War
Save St Helier Hospital – 7 July 2018
The battle by local campaigners against the closure of acute facilities at Epsom and St Helier Hospitals in south London has been hard fought and illustrates many of the problems faced by the NHS as the government has called for huge savings from hospital trusts, many made paupers by PFI repayments.
The situation continues to develop after the march which I photographed on Saturday 7th July 2018, and in July 2020 plans were approved to build a new smaller Specialist Emergency Care Hospital in Sutton which will bring together six acute services, A&E, critical care, acute medicine, emergency surgery, inpatient paediatrics and maternity services.
The trust say in the documentation for the first phase of public consultation which closed on 30th June 2021 that “85% of current services will stay at Epsom Hospital and St Helier Hospital. There will be urgent treatment centres open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year at both of these hospitals.”
But health service unions and campaigners are worried by the proposals, which they say will strip acute services including two fully functioning A&E departments. The proposed urgent treatment centres will not have the capacity to treat life threatening illness. They say the downgrading of the two major hospitals will endanger the lives of people living in the area.
The new unit is one of 40 across the country which have been announced several times as a part of the governments increased investment in the NHS. Many see this and other similar schemes as being designed to increase privatisation and make involvement in the health service more attractive to healthcare companies.
July 7th was a sweltering hot day in London, and the walk from a park in the centre of Sutton to the St Helier Open Space in front of the hospital went through Sutton High St, fairly crowded with shoppers and then along hot, dusty streets with few people around. Walking was tiring, and taking photographs even more so. It was a difficult event to photograph, where I found relatively little to work with. But I was pleased to be there, supporting the campaign to keep the hospitals open and serving the community, part of a National Health Service that was celebrating 70 years of being brought into existence by a Labour Government.
It took a huge and deterimined fight by Nye Bevan to get the National Health Service Act passed, with Tories denouncing it as bringing National Socialism to the country and opposing it in parliament at every opportunity. But on 5th July 1948 we got the NHS, although almost ever since the Conservative party when in power has been looking for and finding ways to convert it from a universal public health care system to a service run for private profit.
NHS at 70 – Save St Helier Hospital
Tags:70th birthday, A&E, banners, campaign, emergency services, Epsom Hospital, hospital closure, hospital downgrading, hospitals, Keep Our Epsom Hospital, Keep our NHS public, Keep Our St Helier Hospital, KOEH, KOSHH, London, march, marchers, NHS, NHS at 70, NHS privatisation, privatisation, rally, St Helier Hospital, Sutton, Sutton High St
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Acronym Blog | Disarmament Diplomacy | Disarmament Documentation | News Updates
Op-Ed in Wall Street Journal by US Vice-President Joe Biden "The President's Nuclear Vision", 29 January 2010
We will spend what is necessary to maintain the safety, security and effectiveness of our weapons.
The United States faces no greater threat than the spread of nuclear weapons. That is why, last April in Prague, President Obama laid out a comprehensive agenda to reverse their spread, and to pursue the peace and security of a world without them.
He understands that this ultimate goal will not be reached quickly. But by acting on a number of fronts, we can ensure our security, strengthen the global nonproliferation regime, and keep vulnerable nuclear material out of terrorist hands.
For as long as nuclear weapons are required to defend our country and our allies, we will maintain a safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal. The president's Prague vision is central to this administration's efforts to protect the American people—and that is why we are increasing investments in our nuclear arsenal and infrastructure in this year's budget and beyond.
Among the many challenges our administration inherited was the slow but steady decline in support for our nuclear stockpile and infrastructure, and for our highly trained nuclear work force. The stockpile, infrastructure and work force played a critical and evolving role in every stage of our nuclear experience, from the Manhattan Project to the present day. Once charged with developing ever more powerful weapons, they have had a new mission in the 18 years since we stopped conducting nuclear tests. That is to maintain the strength of the nuclear arsenal.
For almost a decade, our laboratories and facilities have been underfunded and undervalued. The consequences of this neglect—like the growing shortage of skilled nuclear scientists and engineers and the aging of critical facilities—have largely escaped public notice. Last year, the Strategic Posture Commission led by former Defense Secretaries William Perry and James Schlesinger warned that our nuclear complex requires urgent attention. We agree.
The budget we will submit to Congress on Monday both reverses this decline and enables us to implement the president's nuclear-security agenda. These goals are intertwined. The same skilled nuclear experts who maintain our arsenal play a key role in guaranteeing our country's security now and for the future. State-of-the art facilities, and highly trained and motivated people, allow us to maintain our arsenal without testing. They will help meet the president's goal of securing vulnerable nuclear materials world-wide in the coming years, and enable us to track and thwart nuclear trafficking, verify weapons reductions, and to develop tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies for our security and prosperity.
To achieve these goals, our budget devotes $7 billion for maintaining our nuclear-weapons stockpile and complex, and for related efforts. This commitment is $600 million more than Congress approved last year. And over the next five years we intend to boost funding for these important activities by more than $5 billion. Even in a time of tough budget decisions, these are investments we must make for our security. We are committed to working with Congress to ensure these budget increases are approved.
This investment is long overdue. It will strengthen our ability to recruit, train and retain the skilled people we need to maintain our nuclear capabilities. It will support the work of our nuclear labs, a national treasure that we must and will sustain. Many of our facilities date back to World War II, and, given the safety and environmental challenges they present, cannot be sustained much longer. Increased funding now will eventually enable considerable savings on both security and maintenance. It also will allow us to clean up and close down production facilities we no longer need.
Our budget request is just one of several closely related and equally important initiatives giving life to the president's Prague agenda. Others include completing the New START agreement with Russia, releasing the Nuclear Posture Review on March 1, holding the Nuclear Security Summit in April, and pursuing ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
We will by these initiatives seek to strengthen an emerging bipartisan consensus on how best to secure our nation. These steps will strengthen the nonproliferation regime, which is vital to holding nations like North Korea and Iran accountable when they break the rules, and deterring others from trying to do so.
Reflecting this consensus, Sen. John McCain has joined the president in endorsing a world without nuclear weapons—a goal that was articulated by President Ronald Reagan, who in 1984 said these weapons must be "banished from the face of the Earth." This consensus was inspired by four of our most eminent statesmen—.Messrs. Henry Kissinger, William Perry, Sam Nunn and George P. Shultz
Some critics will argue that we should not constrain our nuclear efforts in any way. Others will assert that retaining a robust deterrent is at odds with our nonproliferation agenda. These four leaders last week in these pages argued compellingly that "maintaining high confidence in our nuclear arsenal is critical as the numbers of these weapons goes down. It is also consistent with and necessary for U.S. leadership in nonproliferation, risk reduction and arms reduction goals."
This shared commitment serves our security. No nation can secure itself by disarming unilaterally, but as long as nuclear weapons exist, all nations remain ever on the brink of destruction. As President Obama said in Prague, "We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it."
Source: Wall Street Journal
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Detached belfries
In England and Wales, we get used to churches with a tower at the west end, a chancel at the east end and a nave in between, without realizing how rare this is elsewhere. Separate bell-towers are actually rare enough to excite comment. The timber belfry at Pembridge (1: Herefs) is well away from the north side of the church and has recently been the subject of a dendrochronological study, which indicated that the original tower dates from between 1207 and 1223, some of the roof possibly being original – further work was carried out around 1471 and also around 1668/9. The triple-coned candle-snuffer belfry at Brookland (2: Kent), described by Simon Jenkins as something which ‘might have flown in from Transylvania’, is in its origins roughly contemporary with Pembridge. The whole of West Walton church (3: Norfolk) was constructed c.1240, including the splendid stone belfry.
Another separate stone bell-tower, at Beccles (4: Suffolk), dates from the early sixteenth century – money was left for its construction between 1515 and 1547. The Suffolk parish of East Bergholt started to construct a west tower around 1525; money and time ran out, so the parish constructed a separate bell-cage (5) in its place, standing to the north of the church. ND
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Contributing to the next Disaster
David Casley
POVERTY, in both relative and absolute terms, was greater before the least developed countries borrowed heavily.
World Bank loans to the poorer countries were made under the aegis of the International Development Association ("IDA") which essentially were interest-free loans with long delayed repayment periods. With what was virtually free money came also substantial professional advice from World Bank staff. These programmes were extremely successful in helping many countries out of least-developed conditions into rapidly expanding economies with increasing prosperity for their peoples. Much of Asia, particularly South-East Asia, was in this category. (Today's financial crisis in these countries is a problem of economic overheating and excessive ambition not poverty alleviation loans).
The main areas of failure were Africa and parts of Latin America. In some countries, such as Mexico, governments borrowed excessively from commercial banks to achieve rapid industrialisation. This excessive borrowing caused a debt crisis in the mid-80s which was well handled by the international community with debts sold at a fraction of their value, which means a high proportion of the debt was discounted - written off if you will - in exchange for certain reforms of the internal financial systems, such as those being discussed for Japan today.
In Africa the problem was, and is, a more intractable one, caused by leaders whose greed, coupled with incompetence, has not been paralleled in modem times. Prosperous countries like Ghana and Zambia were ruined by ill thought through socialist programs, which crippled the economy. And potentially even richer countries such as Nigeria and Zaire were crippled by despots and military dictators.
Writing off debt for such countries merely guarantees the survival of lunatic internal economic policies and enables the ruling cliques or their heirs to continue to create more poverty by creaming off ever-greater portions of the land and wealth.
The example of Tanzania, highlighted in the Jubilee folder, is a gross misrepresentation of the truth. Tanzania borrowed from IDA, i.e. virtually free money for Rural Development in every part of the country. Just as the small farmer projects and infrastructure support were getting under way the Government, in the person of Julius Nyerere (the darling of the international liberal establishment), fractured rural society by his policy of Ujamaa, which was a forced relocation of rural peoples off their own land into communes - a sort of soft, Chinese-style 'Great Leap Forward' which, as in China, resulted in disaster. (China, incidentally, borrowed not at all until it joined the World Bank in the 1980s, but any World Bank staffer who went there will confirm that in the remoter parts of China they saw poverty worse than anything they had seen before - whole areas where people lived in caves and scrabbled for roots to survive.) China, now that she is an international borrower, is starting to develop at the rates achieved by countries such as Korea and Malaysia.
What is needed in so many of these countries is reform of the governance, and the introduction of an economic system that is aimed at helping the poor instead of further enriching the despots. Only then can the debt-burden be addressed, as has happened in Ghana (under the stable government of Rawlings), and Uganda (under Musaveni). To wipe off the debts of an Idi Amin, a Mobutu or a Bokassa does not solve a problem; it exacerbates it. That is why the international community wants reform in Indonesia (and the stepping aside of the ruling family) as a necessary ingredient in the crisis solution.
Poverty is related to governance or the lack of it. Is debt the cause of destitution in Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia? Or is it civil war and tribal hatreds.
David Casley finds that governance and not indebtedness
is the chief cause of poverty
The United States has one of the highest per capita national debts in the world, higher now than ever in history. If debt was a cause of poverty, US citizens should be destitute, rather than the most prosperous society the world has ever seen.
Simplistic, nice-sounding but spurious solutions are not only ineffective, but by directing attention from the real problems can contribute to further disaster at the start of the next Millennium.
Dennis Casley is a member of Congregation at Church of St Corentin, Cury Parish and former (1980 - 90) Chief of Project Evaluation of the World Bank
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The Ankara Bombings: Collusion, Incompetence or Willful Indifference?
By Gareth H. Jenkins
October 16th, 2015, The Turkey Analyst
The near simultaneous double suicide bombings that killed at least 105 participants in a peace rally in Ankara on October 10 were the worst terrorist attack in Turkish history. Although no organization has yet claimed responsibility, the atrocity is believed to have been perpetrated by Turkish nationals sympathetic to the Islamic State.
BACKGROUND: Turkey’s attitude towards the constantly shifting mosaic of Islamist extremists fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has long been characterized by confusion, shortsightedness, dissimulation and arrogant naivety. In its anxiety to facilitate al-Assad’s overthrow, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) made little attempt to stem the flow of foreign volunteers transiting Turkey to join extremist groups in Syria and, particularly until early 2015, often allowed the groups themselves to openly organize and procure equipment and supplies in areas on the Turkish side of the countries’ shared border. There is also evidence to suggest that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) facilitated the supply of weapons to extremist Islamist elements amongst the Syrian rebels. Most of the links were with organizations such as Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar ash-Sham and Islamist extremists from Syria’s Turkish-speaking Turkmen minority.
Although it is often portrayed as a cohesive, centrally controlled organization, the Islamic State is more of an alliance of different – sometimes even rival – groups under individual warlords united by ideology and a shared pledge of allegiance to the organization’s titular leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Although MİT had contacts with some of these groups, others remained hostile towards Turkey. Nevertheless, the AKP appears to have calculated that its support for the rebels fighting against Assad would protect Turkey from being targeted, whether directly or indirectly through attacks against foreign interests based in the country, such as international companies and diplomatic representatives.
Extraordinarily, in a country where access to around 80,000 websites is banned and even relatively mild criticism of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan frequently results in draconian sanctions – including prosecution and imprisonment – the authorities made no attempt to restrict the propaganda activities of extremist Islamists until late July 2015. The AKP appears to have calculated that any resultant radicalization of Turkish and Kurdish youths could be contained and would not pose a threat to the country’s security. Such confidence was made even more remarkable by what should have been the institutional memory of what happened in November 2003, when Turkish citizens who had travelled abroad and been trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in the late 1990s eventually returned to Turkey and staged four suicide bombings in Istanbul that killed 63 people.
Nor was the AKP persuaded to change its policy as evidence began to emerge that Islamist extremists active in Syria posed a threat to Turkey’s security. On May 11, 2013, two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) exploded in the border town of Reyhanlı. When rumors started to circulate that the attack had been carried out by Islamist extremists – and not, as the AKP had maintained, by forces loyal to Assad – the government imposed a news blackout on the incident. In January and February 2014, when the Turkish gendarmerie twice intercepted MIT personnel escorting trucks carrying weapons to Syria, the AKP again imposed a news blackout and the public prosecutors who had ordered the trucks to be halted were themselves imprisoned and prosecuted. On March 20, 2014, two members of the Turkish security forces were killed by alleged Islamist extremists at a checkpoint in the central Anatolian province of Niğde. Three suspects were arrested and formally indicted. The fourth hearing in their trial was held on October 7, 2015. But the authorities have repeatedly found excuses to avoid bringing the suspects to court and it is not even clear whether they are still in custody.
Ironically, far from convincing its critics that the AKP has not been actively supporting Islamist extremists, measures such as the imposition of news blackouts have had exactly the opposite effect by creating the impression that it has a lot to hide. Indeed, the government has probably inadvertently convinced many of its critics that its support for Islamist extremists has been considerably more extensive than has actually been the case.
It was only in early 2015 that the AKP finally began to realize that Islamist extremists pose a threat to Turkey’s security. Yet, even now, measures such as restrictions on foreign recruits transiting Turkey, tighter border controls and curbs on extremist propaganda outlets have primarily focused on the Islamic State rather than other organizations with a similarly radical agenda. Yet such measures have arguably been too little and come too late – not only as regards the number of Turkish citizens who have already been radicalized but also in terms of the alienation of those segments of Turkish society who feel under threat as a result, particularly Kurdish nationalists.
IMPLICATIONS: Although it has belatedly hardened its stance against the Islamic State – and even opened the airbase at İncirlik in southern Turkey for use by the U.S-led coalition targeting the organization with air strikes – the AKP regime remains reluctant for the Islamic State in Syria to be completely eradicated before the emergence of an alternative force to serve bulwark against the expansion of the de facto autonomous Kurdish enclave of Rojava in the north of the country. The Democratic Union Party (PYD), which controls Rojava, is closely affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been conducting an insurgency for greater rights for Turkey’s Kurds since 1984. The AKP is concerned that the expansion and consolidation of Rojava would both strengthen the PKK and further fuel similar aspirations amongst Turkey’s own Kurds.
Tensions have been exacerbated by the rhetoric adopted by Erdoğan. During the siege of the PYD-held border town of Kobane in late 2014 and early 2015, Erdoğan gave Kurdish nationalists the impression that he favored it falling to the Islamic State. Despite the constitutional requirement that he remain above party politics, in the run-up to the June 7, 2015 general election, Erdoğan campaigned openly for the AKP, fiercely attacking the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in the hope of pushing it below the 10 per cent threshold for representation in parliament – something which Erdoğan calculated would result in the AKP securing sufficient seats in parliament to change the country’s constitution and introduce a presidential system that would concentrate all political power in his own hands. Erdoğan’s attempts failed. The HDP won 13 per cent of the vote and the election resulted in a hung parliament. However, Kurdish nationalists believe that Erdoğan’s excoriating rhetoric was responsible for inciting the more than 150 attacks on HDP premises and meetings during the election campaign, culminating in the bombing of an HDP rally in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır on June 5, 2015, which killed four people. A Turkish national who had reportedly been trained by the Islamic State in Syria was subsequently arrested in connection with the attack.
On July 20, 2015, a suicide bombing at a meeting of young leftists and Kurdish nationalists in the town of Suruç close to the Turkish-Syrian border killed 33 people. The Turkish police later named the suicide bomber as a Turkish national who had fought for the Islamic State in Syria. Kurdish nationalists accused MİT of collusion in the bombing. Tensions rose still further when Erdoğan failed to express his condolences to the families of the dead. On July 22, 2015, PKK supporters assassinated two policemen in the southeastern town of Ceylanpınar. Turkey responded by launching a military offensive against the PKK, including hundreds of air strikes against its main bases in northern Iraq.
The October 10, 2015 rally in Ankara was organized by an alliance of mainly leftist NGOs and political parties, including the HDP, to call for an end to the fighting between the Turkish security forces and the PKK. Almost all of those who attended the rally were critics and opponents of Erdoğan and the AKP. On October 11 the Turkish police reported that the attack had been carried out by two Turkish citizens with links to the Islamic State.
However, many of the AKP’s opponents believe that Erdoğan and MİT were directly or indirectly responsible for the bombings in an attempt to intimidate the AKP’s opponents and reduce support for the HDP in the run-up to a fresh election on November 1. They note that, after Diyarbakır and Suruç, the Ankara bombing was the third fatal attack on a public meeting of leftists/Kurds in four months. There have been no similar attacks on public meetings of government supporters.
On October 12, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu announced that MİT had drawn up a list of 21 suspected suicide bombers who were preparing attacks in Turkey, 19 of them Turkish nationals and two foreigners. He then added that “in a country governed by the rule of law” it was not possible to arrest the suspects until they had committed an offense. Such an explanation is not only implausible in itself but does not explain why, unlike for pro-government rallies, there were almost no police providing security at the rally in Ankara. Nor does it explain why – particularly after what happened in Diyarbakır and Suruç – the organizers of the event were not notified of the potentially heightened security threat to the rally posed by the 21 suicide bombers.
On the morning of October 14, Davutoğlu declared that there was a “high probability” that the Islamic State and the PKK had jointly staged the attack in Ankara. Such patent dissimulation inevitably increased suspicions amongst the AKP’s opponents that the government was trying to conceal its own culpability – a perception that was hardly dissipated when, on the afternoon of October 14, the Public Prosecutor in Ankara imposed a news blackout on any media coverage of the attack.
CONCLUSIONS: In addition to the cost in human lives, the attack in Ankara has exacerbated the deepening divisions in society in Turkey between supporters and opponents of the AKP. From the perspective of many leftists, liberals and Kurdish nationalists, Erdoğan and the AKP are not only becoming more authoritarian and oppressive but are now also killing them or allowing them to be killed. Such a conclusion may be inaccurate but it is widely and increasingly believed.
Opinion polls currently suggest that the November 1 election will result in another hung parliament, which would probably lead to a coalition between the AKP and the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). Such a coalition would be unlikely to provide efficient government but it could reduce the tensions in society – or at least prevent them from becoming any worse.
The most likely alternative, namely an AKP majority, would risk severe erosion in the trust of the government’s opponents in the electoral system, which in turn could lead to widespread civil unrest. Most worrying would be if – contrary to the predictions of the opinion polls – the HDP failed to overcome the electoral threshold. If that happens there would be a high risk of a violent eruption of Kurdish nationalist anger that could plunge the country into crisis and have a devastating impact on political stability and social cohesion.
Gareth H. Jenkins is a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center.
Image attribution: www.ibtimes.com, accessed on Oct 16th, 2015
Read 10391 times Last modified on Saturday, 17 October 2015
Ankara bombings
Islamic State in Turkey
Islamic extremism
Turkish National Intelligence Organization
Turkmen minority
PYD
Fascism in Turkey
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Five Years after July 15: Erdogan’s New Turkey and the Myth of Its Immaculate Conception
More in this category: « The Rise of Diyanet: the Politicization of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs A pattern of death: Turkey’s progressives are prey to the Leviathan »
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Who's on time ?.
Lehnus Donald J.
New York: Oceana Publications Inc, 1980
Biography -- > 20th century
No reviews were found for this record.
The International who's who/.
The who's who of Nobel Prize winners 1901-1995
The Who's Who of nobel prize winners 1901 - 2000
Who's who in international organisations a biographical encyclopedia
Who's who in modern history : From 1860 to the present day
by: Palmer, Alan, 1926-
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Sex-Trafficking Gangs Using “Grotesque Version of a Legitimate Business Model” Busted by Feds
U.S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy told the Los Angeles Times that the 22 suspected gang members and friends busted in San Diego (pdf) this month on suspicion of sex-trafficking were involved in a “grotesque version of a legitimate business model.”
It is not an unfamiliar corporate structure to anyone familiar with the “Sopranos.” The fed press release said they were “akin to a crime family” and were charged with violating racketeering laws “traditionally used for organized-crime syndicates and mobsters.” The investigation stretched over two years.
The multi-state prostitution ring allegedly used around 100 girls, many of them from Grossmont Union High School District, as the centerpiece of an operation that included drug trafficking, robberies, commercial burglaries and various forms of assault. The girls’ ages ranged from 12 to mid-20s and some were in middle school.
That sort of behavior is, unfortunately, not unheard of among criminals. What makes this gang stand out is its organization.
The “Tycoons” are actually a collection of known members of separate gangs who have joined together to divvy up turf and responsibilities in a more organized and efficient fashion. The U.S. Attorney lists eight gangs, including the West Coast Crips, Neighborhood Crips, Linda Vista Crips and Emerald Hills Crips. But they’re not all Crips. The 5/9 Brims, O’Farrell Park, Lincoln Park and Skyline Piru are also represented.
The gangs split up responsibilities for procuring girls, transportation, advertising, booking of rooms, handling money, dealing drugs and busting heads, according to the U.S. Attorney. Some members monitored law enforcement and others monitored girls run by other pimps. Girls were sent as far away as Michigan, Kansas, Arizona, Nevada and Texas.
The indictment describes the Tycoons as “primarily comprised of African American gang members from cliques and subgroups distinct to the Enterprise: Tycoons/Additup, Play Girl Fantasy (PGF) and Break Yo Bitch (BYB),” The enterprise was formed by four founding members in 2008.
“Many members of the Tycoons claim to be ‘rappers’ and produce rap music and rap videos,” the background section of the indictment reads. “Members of the Tycoons have created various rap groups and support each other in the promotion of their music.” That does not, on its face, appear to be an indictable crime.
But the prosecutor may return at some point to the lyrics that “primarily focus on pimping activity and narcotics related activity in San Diego County and across the country.” Many of those indicted are all over Facebook, YouTube and other social media promoting their work.
More than 150 law enforcement officers from state, local and federal agencies were involved in the raids.
Feds: Gang Lured Schoolgirls to Sex Trade (by Kristina Davis, U-T San Diego)
San Diego-Area Gang Trafficked Girls as Young as 12, Officials Say (by Marty Graham, Reuters)
San Diego Region Has Become Hub of Gang-Controlled Prostitution Rings (by Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times)
Alleged Gang Members and Associates Indicted in Cross-Country Sex Trafficking Conspiracy (U.S. Attorney’s Office Southern District of California)
United States v. James Terell King, et al indictment (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California) (pdf)
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