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Error code:   DatasetGenerationError
Exception:    ArrowInvalid
Message:      JSON parse error: Missing a closing quotation mark in string. in row 90
Traceback:    Traceback (most recent call last):
                File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/packaged_modules/json/json.py", line 153, in _generate_tables
                  df = pd.read_json(f, dtype_backend="pyarrow")
                File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 815, in read_json
                  return json_reader.read()
                File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1025, in read
                  obj = self._get_object_parser(self.data)
                File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1051, in _get_object_parser
                  obj = FrameParser(json, **kwargs).parse()
                File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1187, in parse
                  self._parse()
                File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1403, in _parse
                  ujson_loads(json, precise_float=self.precise_float), dtype=None
              ValueError: Trailing data
              
              During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
              
              Traceback (most recent call last):
                File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1997, in _prepare_split_single
                  for _, table in generator:
                File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/packaged_modules/json/json.py", line 156, in _generate_tables
                  raise e
                File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/packaged_modules/json/json.py", line 130, in _generate_tables
                  pa_table = paj.read_json(
                File "pyarrow/_json.pyx", line 308, in pyarrow._json.read_json
                File "pyarrow/error.pxi", line 154, in pyarrow.lib.pyarrow_internal_check_status
                File "pyarrow/error.pxi", line 91, in pyarrow.lib.check_status
              pyarrow.lib.ArrowInvalid: JSON parse error: Missing a closing quotation mark in string. in row 90
              
              The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:
              
              Traceback (most recent call last):
                File "/src/services/worker/src/worker/job_runners/config/parquet_and_info.py", line 1529, in compute_config_parquet_and_info_response
                  parquet_operations = convert_to_parquet(builder)
                File "/src/services/worker/src/worker/job_runners/config/parquet_and_info.py", line 1154, in convert_to_parquet
                  builder.download_and_prepare(
                File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1029, in download_and_prepare
                  self._download_and_prepare(
                File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1124, in _download_and_prepare
                  self._prepare_split(split_generator, **prepare_split_kwargs)
                File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1884, in _prepare_split
                  for job_id, done, content in self._prepare_split_single(
                File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 2040, in _prepare_split_single
                  raise DatasetGenerationError("An error occurred while generating the dataset") from e
              datasets.exceptions.DatasetGenerationError: An error occurred while generating the dataset

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__label__wiki	0.867586	0.867586	Arbery jury saw through the dog whistle Published November 27. 2021 12:01AM \| Updated November 27. 2021 12:24AM This appeared in The Miami Herald The guilty verdict in Ahmaud Arbery’s murder trial wasn’t just a sigh of relief. It was an exhale after weeks of apprehension that defense attorneys’ dog whistles and appeals to white fears might sway a mostly white jury. We have seen time and again unarmed Black men depicted as menacing, blamed for their own deaths. In Trayvon Martin’s case, it was his height, his marijuana smoking. In George Floyd’s, it was his drug use. In Arbery’s, his “dirty toenails” were the problem. Arbery was accused by a defense attorney of “running away instead of facing the consequences” and “making terrible, unexpected, illogical choices.” But nothing attorney Laura Hogue said in her closing remarks was as jarring as this: “Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in khaki shorts, with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails,” Hogue, who represented defendant Gregory McMichael, told the jury. “Wow,” Arbery’s mother said before leaving the room briefly. We shared in her disbelief, but we also wondered: Has this country truly made progress, or are white folks still susceptible to images of dirty, scary Black men that have been normalized since the time of “The Birth of a Nation"? There were good reasons to worry that McMichael, his son Travis McMichael and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan Jr. might convince jurors that they were acting in self-defense after chasing and shooting Arbery, whose family said he was out for a jog. The makeup of the jury — 11 white people and one Black member — was admonished even by the judge in the case, who said “that there appears to be intentional discrimination” by the defense in selecting it. Yet he still allowed the case to go forward. In Glynn County, Georgia, where the trial happened, more than 26% of residents are Black, and about 69% are white, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. Americans were right to feel there was an orchestrated effort to allow the McMichaels and Bryan to skate. It took more than two months for the men to be arrested — and that only happened after video of the shooting surfaced. A former district attorney was indicted in September for allegedly preventing two police officers from arresting Travis McMichael and “showing favor and affection to Greg McMichael during the investigation.” Greg McMichael was an investigator with the Brunswick District Attorney’s office. In Miami, this trial compels us to think of Trayvon Martin. He was 17, walking back from a quick trip to a convenience store for Skittles and iced tea in Sanford, when George Zimmerman deemed him suspicious. There was no video, in that case, to disprove Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. But we have to wonder if things would have changed if there were. Zimmerman’s supporters and defense team portrayed 17-year-old Trayvon as almost 6 feet tall, wearing a dark hoodie. They talked about his suspensions from high school and his interest in guns. They dug up social media photos of him in attempts to depict him as a thug. Prosecutors, though, called him an unarmed child, who did nothing wrong, the victim of a vigilante with a chip on his shoulder, who told a police dispatcher that “those a--holes, they always get away.” Though Zimmerman was acquitted, we will never know to what extent the racist tactics of Zimmerman’s defense persuaded the jury. Just like we don’t know whether the skewed depiction of Arbery might have worked had there not been video of his encounter with the defendants. The lead prosecutor in the case said the guilty verdicts were “based on the facts.” That’s the outcome we hope for in every trial, but we know from the country’s painful history that has not always been the case. At least we can say this time that race-baiting didn’t work. After the jury’s decision, Hogue, the defense attorney said, “I’m floored, floored with a capital ‘F,’” CNN reported. So are we — this time, in a good way. The Day editorial board meets regularly with political, business and community leaders and convenes weekly to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Tim Dwyer, Managing Editor Izaskun E. Larrañeta, staff writer Erica Moser and retired deputy managing editor Lisa McGinley. However, only the publisher and editorial page editor are responsible for developing the editorial opinions. The board operates independently from the Day newsroom. The resolution would be useless as an idealistic statement sitting on a shelf, but as a blueprint applied to policymaking and budget development, its fairness principles should underlie decisions in the same way as cost and need and long-term value. When the experts get it wrong, the stakes are high. If home tests aren't reliable, and breakthrough cases become more likely, false assurances can endanger people's health. Misguided advice also makes it all the more difficult to persuade people to get vaccinated.	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line0
__label__wiki	0.648711	0.648711	From Bagels to Chicken Marsala By Shari Valenta Isaac’s Distinctive Catering, located a stone’s throw from McClellan-Palomar Airport, in Carlsbad, Calif., has everything from bagels to Chicken Marsala-and a staff that has over 60 years of experience in food service and fine dining. Isaac’s will create and deliver your every culinary wish. Some of the customer’s favorites include assorted wraps, deli sandwiches and Mexican buffets for lunch, as well as mouthwatering dinners that include meat or vegetable lasagna, filet mignon or stuffed trout. Mini crab cakes, artichoke dip and stuffed mushrooms are some of the delectable appetizers. For breakfast, some best-loved fares are chocolate croissants, breakfast cakes or an omelet station with a chef preparing omelets to order. In addition, there are low-carb options. Bartending services are offered, and they have on-hand catering supplies and equipment to rent for large events and weddings. All food is made fresh the day of the event. While they sometimes do private events and weddings, this gourmet operation mainly caters to corporations and has over 300 repeat customers. Owner Richard Bier created Isaac’s six years ago. He has 24 years experience in food service and is armed with a marketing background to boot. After working for an institutional food service distributor in Pennsylvania, Bier relocated to southern California to work for Rykoff-Sexton, a food service distributor (presently called U.S. Foodservice, Inc.) and soon after, went into business for himself. “I was hired for sales and marketing for southern California,” remembered Bier. “One of the accounts that I marketed for was a bagel shop that was financially struggling. I really wanted to do something for myself so I bought this bagel shop (called Bonjour Bagel) to do on the side. It didn’t take too many months in the business to find out that you have to sell millions of bagels to make a living. The hours were horrendous; you had to start baking at two in the morning.” Bier said they had to start that early to make bagels the way they’re supposed to be made. “Bagels made on burlap and stone are real bagels, and that’s how we made them,” he said. “Unfortunately, most of the population in southern California doesn’t really care what a bagel is; for the most part, they’re basically looking for round bread with a hole. A real bagel has a soft shiny finish and is a little harder. Most bagel shop chains just spray on water and spin them around in an oven; they don’t even boil them.” You can order a “real” bagel from Isaac’s, only Bier and his staff have found a more efficient way to provide fresh bagels. “Now what we do is we finish off our own bagels, but we buy them from someone who does the grunt work,” said Bier. “We have them par-baked (partial baked) until they aren’t quite finished. Then we finish them as needed. So, it’s still the same bagel that we had before, only we don’t do the boiling or the stone ovens.” The bagel shop metamorphosed into a sandwich delivery business. “When we started catering from the bagel shop, we were near an industrial area and corporations were requesting us to deliver bagels that had cream cheese,” said Bier. “Later, it went to sandwiches; now, it’s Chicken Marsala and pretty much anything people want.” Bier said that owning the shop brought him to the realization that he doesn’t really enjoy food preparation, and that he’s not a chef. “I don’t have those desires,” he said. “So, I hired people that are very good at those things around me. Right now, I have four chefs on staff and a total of 15 employees.” One of Bier’s most valued staff members and friends has been working with him since the very beginning. Bier met Ignacio “Moe” Valencia, who is chef and general manager at Isaac’s, when Bier was marketing for Rykoff-Sexton, and Valencia was a customer. After Bier bought the bagel shop, Valencia told him he wanted to work for him, and that he would do so for a month, with no pay, to prove himself. “I never had anyone approach me like that,” Bier said. “Obviously, I didn’t hire him for no pay. After a month, he displayed to me his confidence and abilities and has worked for me ever since. It’s been a good relationship. He can do what he’s gifted at, without having to worry about understanding the marketing side.” Nancy Sutton, who takes all the orders and takes care of the administrative duties, describes Valencia’s talent. “He’s a great chef; he really pushes himself to learn and do new things,” said Sutton. Isaac’s well-qualified crew creates their magic in a kitchen of over 5,000 square feet. The growing business has served over two million palates since the business began. “All of our staff has been hired out of the country club circuit in San Diego County,” boasted Bier, “So what we’re delivering to the planes at the airport is indeed country club food service in aviation form.” Bier decided long ago to distribute one-of-a-kind entrees and offer fresh unprocessed food at the same time. “I made a decision that everything gets done fresh that day,” explained Bier. “We’re roasting our own turkeys, and doing everything from scratch.” Bier’s expertise in food quality has taught him that a lot of caterers purchase processed food with additives. “Most of what is bought today, specifically the turkey and the protein that you buy in sandwiches, have a tremendous amount of additives like carrageenan and modified food starch,” he said. “It’s not bad for you, but it doesn’t lend to turkey being turkey. Carrageenan is a derivative from seaweed, and if you put a tablespoon of it into 16 fluid ounces of water, it will turn solid as cement.” Another thing Isaac’s does to ensure freshness is control the temperature of the cuisine prior to delivery. Vehicles are equipped to hold hot or cold boxes so they are delivered at the optimum temperature. “It can be anything you want. It can be live lobster from Maine, filet mignon, or a bologna sandwich-anything you describe, we can do,” said Bier. Isaac’s Distinctive Catering is located at 2051 Palomar Airport Road, Suite 200, in Carlsbad. For more information, call 760-931-0267 or visit [http://www.isaacscatering.com/].	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line2
__label__wiki	0.845666	0.845666	Tag Archives: PetroChina Boreal forest, First Nation treaty rights, Health impacts, Open-pit mines, Tar sands crude, Water quality The High Cost of Oil November 22, 2014 Roger Straw Repost from Outside Magazine, December 2014 [Editor: Don’t miss the excellent 3-minute video. Scroll down, and expand to full screen mode. – RS] The crude that would feed the XL pipeline comes from a once pristine part of Alberta that now resembles mining operations on a sci-fi planet. At places like Fort McKay, home to First Nations people who’ve lived there for centuries, the money is great but the environmental and health impacts are exceedingly grim. The world has to have fuel. Is this simply the price that must be paid? By: Ted Genoways, November 11, 2014 Tar sands being scooped and loaded. Oil companies hope to mine the entirety of Fort McKay’s heavy-grade bitumen deposits by 2030. Photo: Aaron Huey Less than a year after the end of World War II, when Celina Harpe was just seven, she sat beside her grandfather on the steps of his cabin, overlooking the Athabasca River in the northern reaches of Alberta. “It was spring,” she told me recently—the time of breakup, when the ground is still packed with pearlescent snow but the sun weakens the river ice until it cracks and starts to move. The force of the current pushed giant floes onto the banks and up the ridge. “Look at the beautiful river, the way it looks now,” her grandfather said. Adam Boucher was an elder of the Fort McKay First Nation, descended directly from the hereditary leaders of the Chipewyan people, who in the 19th century had intermarried with French and Scottish voyageurs as they established traplines for the North West Company and Hudson’s Bay Company. Boucher was a child when his uncle, as headman of the Chipewyan band, added his X to Treaty 8 with Queen Victoria, surrendering their ancestral land around Moose Lake to Canada and Great Britain in return for a reserve along the Athabasca. Aside from land used for logging, mining, or white settlements, the people of Fort McKay were promised unfettered rights to hunt and fish in perpetuity. “As long as the sun shines and the river flows and the hills don’t move,” Boucher later recalled. For people who see the oil industry as an all-consuming beast, tar-sands mining looks like the stark, apocalyptic endgame of fossil-fuel extraction. In the 50 years that followed, Boucher saw his people’s access to hunting grounds and traplines fenced off as logging interests moved in. And in 1946, after suffering through wartime shortages of oil and gas, Alberta’s provincial government unveiled a joint project with an Edmonton-based company called Oil Sands, Ltd. They made plans to build a test facility at Bitumount, barely 15 miles downriver, to prove the viability of an experimental hot-water process developed by Karl Clark of the Alberta Research Council, a provincial R&D corporation. The goal was to separate heavy-grade bitumen—a black, gooey form of petroleum, also known as tar sands—from the deposits underlying the ground all around Fort McKay. By the time of the ice breakup that year, the site had been cleared and crew quarters erected, and a power plant was swiftly being built. Seeing all this, Boucher feared losing access to the spruce bogs around McClelland Lake, not far from the Bitumount site, where First Nations people gathered blueberries, cranberries, and kinnikinnick. He worried that mining would inevitably harm the river. “You know the water is sacred?” he asked his granddaughter. “You know we need the trees?” Celina nodded. “Yeah, I understand that.” “I see it, what’s going to happen in the future,” Boucher said. “All the trees will be gone. They’re going to dig big holes, and they’re going to dig up all that black stuff. You know that tar? That’s what they’re after.” They sat quietly on his steps, watching the river move. “I won’t see it. I’m too old,” Boucher told her. “But if you have children, you’re going to have to tell them not to drink this river water.” Taking Canadian Highway 63 straight north from Fort McMurray, during the half-lit hours of the morning commute, I moved past the old downtown, with its bars and weekly-rate hotels, past the sprawling suburbs and high-speed ring road, into expanses of peat-rich muskeg and forests of tamarack and spruce. As the sun climbed, cars became scarce and the road seemed to stretch endlessly toward the horizon. Traveling from McMurray to McKay doesn’t take long—it’s less than 40 miles—but the transformation you see in that short distance is astounding. At first there were few signs of the massive development I’d been told to expect, but the farther I drove, the more industrial the scene became. There were 18-wheelers barreling up to unmarked interchanges and thundering into merge lanes, along with passenger coaches and repurposed school buses ferrying workers from camp barracks to a place that locals euphemistically call “the site.” The trucks and miners are headed not toward a single site but to a patchwork of them. If you were viewing this region from the air, you’d see a crazy quilt of open-pit mines flanking the Athabasca River for more than ten miles. There, at the bottom of cavernous quarries roughly 150 feet down, dragline conveyers scrape away at a dense layer of sandstone suffused with tar. The method of mining and refining this resource, the latest development in our desperate effort to extend the fossil-fuel era by a few more decades, is one of the most labor-intensive extraction processes ever undertaken. It requires grand-scale removal just to make the narrow profit margins work. More than 250 square miles of former boreal forest have already been stripped away, and by 2030 the industry hopes to extract all the mineable tar sands from the 1,853 square miles of deposits, an area larger than Rhode Island. A Syncrude refinery near Fort McKay. Photo: Aaron Huey Tar sands have been mined here on a smaller scale since the 1920s, but the U.S. government gave the industry a huge boost when it invaded Iraq in 2003, sending global oil prices sky-high. Since then two new pit mines have opened north of Fort McMurray, another three are under development, and still more extraction is on the way, by means of a process called SAG-D. That stands for steam-assisted gravity drainage, which involves using high-pressure steam to make the tar sands less viscous and easier to move through pipes. How you view these developments is something of a Rorschach test. For people who see the oil industry as an all-consuming beast, tar-sands mining looks like the stark, apocalyptic endgame of extreme fossil-fuel extraction. Environmentalists point out that all this massive machinery burns almost two barrels of oil for every three taken out; that the steam-separation process is one of the most water-intensive in the world; and that the resulting fuel, according to estimates by the U.S. State Department, emits about 17 percent more greenhouse gas when burned than standard light-grade crude (a number that watchdogs like the Natural Resources Defense Council insist is a lowball guess). The greatest concern is what happens if this development is allowed to continue. The oil industry itself estimates that less than 10 percent of tar-sands deposits in Alberta have been extracted. James Hansen, the former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the first scientists to sound the alarm about climate change in the 1980s, estimates that the remaining reserves of tar sands contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the entire global oil industry—in all of human history. Hansen has been unequivocal about the consequences if such resources are exploited. “If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing,” he wrote in a New York Times editorial, “it will be game over for the climate.” All of which might have escaped the attention of the American public if not for the Keystone XL pipeline. The proposed $7 billion project, intended to carry bitumen and a soup of chemical diluents from northern Alberta to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast—for further processing and shipment around the world—has turned into a six-year battle between environmentalists and industry supporters. As the proposal has made its way through State Department reviews and court fights, other pipelines carrying similar heavy-grade Alberta crude have ruptured in various parts of the U.S. The most notable are Enbridge’s Line 6B, which spilled more than a million gallons into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010, and ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline, which in 2013 spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons in Mayflower, Arkansas. These accidents have forced people to ask just how safe it is to extract, transport, refine, and burn tar-sands crude. This has been a major controversy for years in the U.S., where the Obama administration is simultaneously attempting to placate environmentalists and encourage a fossil-fuels industry that has created more new jobs than most other sectors since the 2007 recession. It’s also a hot topic in Canada. Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipelines, which would carry tar sands to the Pacific Coast of British Columbia for shipment to China and other parts of Asia on oil tankers, have met with nearly a decade of heated opposition from Canadians—including more than 130 First Nations. Last year, to draw more attention to tar-sands development, Ontario native Neil Young traveled to the mining region to see things up close. “Fort McMurray looks like Hiroshima,” he declared afterward. “Fort McMurray is a wasteland.” A boy from Fort McKay plays inside a scoop shovel set up at a highway rest stop near Syncrude’s refinery. Photo: Aaron Huey Industry backers and mine employees were outraged, and many took to Twitter, posting photos of their backyards or favorite hiking spots with the hashtag #myhiroshima. To them, tar sands represent an economic lifeline and the gateway to North American energy independence. Many Albertans enjoy thumbing their noses at environmentalists, who they dismiss as whiney doomsayers. They also complain that critics have obsessed too much over the boomtown ugliness on view at Fort McMurray. The much covered gold-rush scene there has featured 40,000 young itinerant workers who have flocked to the region hoping to get rich quick, bars and gambling parlors lining the highway, rampant prostitution, Hell’s Angels competing with a Somali gang for control of the cocaine trade, and more than 100 traffic deaths in a span of only eight years. Two years ago, after yet another journalist wrote about the booze, drugs, and hookers, the town fathers of Fort McMurray, population 75,000, decided to clean up their image. They shuttered Teasers Strip Bar, the Oil Can Tavern, Diggers Variety Club, and the Oil Sands Hotel. Soon after, the whole sin district was razed and turned into a parking lot. Mine workers now do their drinking inside the locked-down confines of the residential camps, which sit roughly 20 miles north of Fort McMurray and are closed off with chain-link fencing and barbed wire to thwart nosy reporters, including this one. Officials at both of the main companies operating in the area—Suncor and Syncrude—declined to let me view mining operations or the camps when I was in Alberta. Meanwhile, though the short-term social ills of the extraction boom may have been tamed a bit, there’s been surprisingly little discussion of the long-term environmental consequences for the string of First Nations villages along the Athabasca River, downstream from the interconnected tailings ponds of chemical by-products produced by the tar-sands refining process. Neil Young’s Hiroshima comparison grabbed headlines, but his more explosive claim focused on research presented by provincial doctors working in those communities. “The native peoples are dying,” Young said at a September 2013 press conference in Washington, D.C. “People are sick. People are dying because of this. All the First Nations people up there are threatened.” When I called Celina Harpe, now age 75 and an elder in the Dene band of the Fort McKay First Nation, she said it was true. People were dying young and unexpectedly, of rare and aggressive forms of cancer. “By the time they find out, they’re on stage four,” she said. “Too late. They’re gone.” She urged me to come see for myself but discouraged the idea of staying overnight. The lights of the 24-hour mining operations just over the ridge meant that her village was never dark anymore, and the echoes of nearby air cannons all through the night made it impossible to sleep. “You go to bed, it’s like you’re in a war zone.” Worst of all, everything her grandfather predicted had come to pass. The trees were being clear-cut, the moose and beavers were disappearing. All the native villages along the Athabasca River were fearful of contamination. And just as her grandfather had warned, it wasn’t safe to drink the water. The headwaters of the Athabasca pool up under the Columbia Icefield in Alberta’s Jasper National Park before running north, carrying snowmelt for more than 800 miles. In the 19th century, when Scottish fur traders hit impassible rapids during their explorations, they put out and founded Fort McMurray. Eventually they pushed farther north, establishing traplines, searching out navigable routes to the Arctic, and founding Fort McKay and Fort Chipewyan, where the river widens and empties into Lake Athabasca. Fort McKay, with just over 400 permanent residents, has traditionally been the least developed and discussed of these settlements—neither as big and hurly-burly as Fort Mac nor as remote and idyllic as Fort Chip. Instead, McKay has been significant as the contact point, the place where the ambitions of white traders (and, later, white loggers and oil speculators) meet the traditional interests of northern bands dependent on wild game for food and fur-bearing animals for warmth and shelter. McKay was never accessible enough to be subsumed by the arrival of white culture, but it was too close not to feel its impact—especially after the arrival of Highway 63 in 1964, and then the logging road that connected the boreal forests north of McKay to the highway that leads back to McMurray. Suncor mine and tailings ponds near Fort McKay. Photo: Aaron Huey In the late sixties, the Alberta government partnered with Sunoco to form the Great Canadian Oil Sands consortium—today known as Suncor. Soon after, the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo sent oil prices soaring, and provincial regulators ushered through a second project, known as Syncrude. This was the beginning of a decades-long struggle that pitted the people of Fort McKay against the collective clout of Canada’s largest petroleum companies, with the government—a party that had a vested financial interest—serving as sole adjudicator. Seemingly unchecked by regulations, the mines expanded into giant black caverns, where massive shovel loaders now scoop the coal-like rock, 70 tons at a time, into dump trucks three stories tall. Heavy haulers deliver mined material into a double-roll crusher, then a conveyor system carries the ground-up rock into a cyclofeeder. In sprawling coking and refining facilities, hot water melts the tar sands into a slurry, sending clouds of thick smoke and steam across the landscape. What remains is chemically separated to produce a thin top layer of bitumen froth, but everything else—the heavy sand, the toxic wastewater, and the leftover chemicals—is by-product, and it’s emptied into tailings ponds the size of enormous lakes. As I drove along the highway, piles of discarded sand, held for eventual reclamation, swirled up into a lashing white dust storm, mixing with the smoke and fly ash billowing from the stacks of an on-site refinery at Syncrude. The embankment dam along the road, the main containment wall for the Mildred Lake Settling Basin, is more than 11 miles long, one of the largest earthen dams on the planet. At the time, the rainbow-sheened ponds bracketing the highway spread across more than 50 square miles of former wetlands, and they are expanding at a rate of nearly half a billion gallons each day. Lakes this large and foul have an impact. In April 2008, Robert Colson, a heavy-equipment operator with Syncrude, spotted what he could only describe as lumps floating on the company’s nearby Aurora tailings pond. He had been puzzling over the scene for a few minutes when a group of ducks came flapping in and landed. “And that’s when I realized what was going on,” he said later. More than 1,600 migrating waterfowl were killed on that day alone. When I pulled off onto a sandy turnout to get a better look at the Mildred Lake Basin, I could see a parade of empty yellow hazmat suits propped up on the banks and set bobbing on tethered oil drums in the lakes. Their arms stretched wide in a pantomime of panic, they served as makeshift scarecrows, nicknamed “bitu-men.” I could hear the constant fire of 100-decibel air cannons, installed on the shoreline and timed to go off intermittently to frighten away waterfowl and other birds. All of this was in place at the time of the waterfowl deaths in 2008, but none of it had been switched on. Still, Syncrude officials denied that they bore responsibility, saying the deaths were “an act of God.” The government eventually levied only a nominal fine—roughly eight hours’ worth of corporate revenues—and even then Syncrude complained that these environmental strictures were unworkable, warning that the company would be breaking the law every hour of every day. I turned west from the highway, toward Fort McKay, and drove past construction crews who were widening the old road. I could see the signs of recent expansion everywhere—heavy equipment parked in newly laid gravel yards, surges of black smoke rising from diesel engines in the distance. When I finally reached the edge of the village, I wasn’t sure I’d actually arrived. A looping mud road crisscrossed the tree-stripped hillside, where haphazard clapboard houses were scattered. Trucks and four-wheelers stood parked in gravel driveways and on patchy front lawns. “Fort McMurray looks like Hiroshima,” Ontario native Neil Young said after seeing the mining region up close. “Fort McMurray is a wasteland.” Fort McKay has no restaurant and just one market, which was shuttered when I was there. Many of the residents, most of them registered First Nations members, get by on some form of subsistence hunting or trapping, as allowed for in Treaty 8. Tepee smokehouses rose from behind backyard privacy fences. As I moved along the river, a potent ammonia smell hung in the air, but it was a sunny day and people were packing tackle and rods onto their motorboats. But the river is no longer the central sustaining force in the community. After the start of the latest tar-sands boom, fishermen began to report rising numbers of deformities: whitefish and walleye with tumors and skin lesions, burbot with misshapen spines, northern pike with bulging eyes. In 2007, the Fort Chipewyan health board asked Kevin Timoney, a scientist who had done extensive work in the Peace-Athabasca Delta area, to study the water and soil quality in the region. His findings were distressing: elevated levels of arsenic and mercury in fish, the water supply, even the river sediment. Timoney estimated that tar-sands mines were exposing deposits of heavy metals, especially arsenic, which were then running into the water. Alberta Health and Wellness, the provincial health ministry, conceded that arsenic exposure was widespread but countered that it was impossible to control “due to its presence in the earth’s crust.” Soon after, a report by the Pembina Institute, an environmental-impact assessment firm, estimated that Tar Island Pond One, owned by Suncor, was producing a steady daily leak of more than 1.5 million gallons of toxic chemicals and heavy metals including arsenic, mercury, and lead. By Suncor’s own admission, the pond released 400,000 gallons of sludge into the river every day, almost enough to fill a river barge. And that was just one pond. Environmental Defence, a Canadian environmental-action group, estimated the combined daily leakage from all the tailings ponds into the Athabasca River to be nearly three million gallons. But still the government refused to intercede. Suncor’s operations near Fort McKay. Photo: Aaron Huey The situation has grown so grim that the United Nations issued a call in May 2014 for the Canadian government to launch a special inquiry into the treatment of First Nations people, specifically citing, among other concerns, that more than half of all native people on government reserves face health risks due to contaminated drinking water. Government officials have failed to act, the report said, because they see the interests of native people as counter to the best interests of Canadians. James Anaya, then the U.N.’s special rapporteur on indigenous rights, warned that lawsuits and government claims over treaty violations have languished so long that many First Nations have “all but given up.” Officials at Suncor declined to discuss the environmental impact of tar-sands mining with Outside. Will Gibson, Syncrude’s media relations adviser, said in a phone interview: “Human activity is going to have an impact. Industrial activity is going to have an impact. For us, it’s important to mitigate that impact.” He pointed to Syncrude’s large expenditures on R&D for new processes aimed at reducing emissions and minimizing the negative effects of mining. As for health risks, he said that the company’s extraction techniques, past or present, “would never have any impact in terms of causing cancer.” Celina Harpe’s home, a tiny fifties-era house with slate blue clapboard siding, sits below the roadbed, perched on a bend in the Athabasca. Harpe greeted me there but didn’t want to talk inside, because it was cramped and drafty. Instead we walked across the road to the elder-care section of the community center. Celina Harpe, an elder in the Fort McKay First Nation. Photo: Aaron Huey Harpe is small and unsteady, but her short curly hair is still dark and her eyes are bright behind her square, tinted glasses. Seated inside, looking out through a broad bank of picture windows, she remembered again how her grandfather had warned her about the river’s future. Soon, she said, she would have no choice but to move to Fort McMurray. She turned her hands over to show me lesions on her knuckles and between her fingers. “My hands get all these sores. Do you see?” she said. “We can’t drink that tap water because it’s no good…. It’s got too much chemicals. If it can do this to your hands, what do you think it’s doing to our insides, you know?” Harpe said it hadn’t always been this way. Her sister, Dorothy McDonald, became chief in the eighties, after their father, Phillip McDonald, was killed in a crash on the logging road in 1976. Before Dorothy took over, the encroachment of tar-sands development had already left many people concerned about their health, so Celina’s father had arranged for pump stations to be installed, dispensing water trucked in from Fort McMurray. But one pump tower burned in late 1981, and another froze during the bitter winter of 1982. People went down to the river and drew their drinking water straight from the Athabasca. After several weeks of getting by this way, Dorothy, as the newly elected chief, received a message from Suncor: there had been a spill. One of Suncor’s tailings ponds had been releasing oil, grease, and other contaminants into the river for days—up to 17 times more than the legally permitted limit. McDonald demanded action from officials at Alberta Environment—the province’s main environmental protection agency—but they declined to do anything. “So she took Suncor and Syncrude to court,” Harpe said. “She charged them for polluting the water.” A provincial judge eventually found Suncor guilty of violating the Fisheries Act—not of poisoning the community—and ordered the company to pay just $8,000. About the same time, Harpe, who had gotten a job as a community-health nurse because she could translate for English-speaking provincial doctors and tribal people who spoke Cree and Dene, started to notice a rash of illnesses that had never affected Fort McKay before. Later, when she became the first native liaison coordinator at the Fort McMurray hospital, she heard similar complaints coming from the residents of Fort Chipewyan. When doctors came back with diagnoses, she had trouble translating. “We never heard of asthma,” Harpe told me. “We didn’t know there was such thing as cancer. We had no name for it.” Before long it seemed as if everyone in the community was sick or had a family member who was seriously ill. Shovels and wreaths at the funeral of Joe Vermillion, a resident of Fort Chipewyan who died of lung cancer. Photo: Aaron Huey “I lost one son first with sickness before I lost my husband,” Harpe said. The main room of the community center was ringed with black-and-white portraits of band members. “That’s me there,” she said. Harpe couldn’t remember exactly when the photos were taken, but her portrait looked to be about a decade old. “Beside me there, that lady, she died,” she said, pointing to the next photograph. “My cousin Stella, she’s gone. She just died in January.” She began moving down the line. “Her, my auntie, there in that corner by the flowers, she’s gone. He died last year, that gentleman. That guy is still alive. He died, this other one that’s next to Johnny.” Many of the people didn’t appear old, 50 at most. “That couple there, they’re gone. He’s still alive. She’s still alive. She’s gone. She’s gone. She’s gone. He’s gone. She’s gone. That lady’s gone.” I asked at what age people were being diagnosed with cancer. “People are dying at 35, 40,” she said. She shook her head. “It’s pretty sad, because my father was a good chief. My sister was such a good chief. My sister Dorothy’s right there,” she said, pointing to a portrait. “Dorothy passed away.” Dayle Hyde turned into the dirt parking lot of the Fort McKay community school. She wanted to show me another side of the village, starting with the place where her own education began—and where her father was the teacher, and later principal, for more than three decades. Hyde, in her early thirties, is worldly compared with a lot of the younger people in Fort McKay. She wears cat-eye glasses and has a nose ring. She went away to high school in Fort McMurray and later graduated from the University of Alberta with a degree in native studies and a minor in art and design. Now she’s the communications director for the Fort McKay First Nation. She’s also the middle child of Dorothy McDonald. Hyde said her mother’s court case had energized Fort McKay and sparked further protest. Most notably, in 1983, McDonald had organized a blockade of the logging road, the one where Dorothy’s father had died. “They allowed one logging truck to go through the community,” Hyde said, “and then they erected a roadblock and wouldn’t allow any others to go through.” The mines expanded into giant black caverns, where massive shovel loaders now scoop the coal-like rock, 70 tons at a time, into dump trucks three stories tall. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were sent to end the standoff, but McDonald refused to back down. Though the January dark sent temperatures plummeting to minus 20, band members kept vigil around the clock. Finally, on the sixth day, three cabinet ministers agreed to hear out Fort McKay’s concerns about logging and tar sands. To honor McDonald and her stand, the band later erected an enormous community center on the same road as the old blockade site. But Hyde balked at the notion, pushed by elders like her aunt, Celina Harpe, that the roadblock was the kind of opposition the community needed now. “Let me make something clear,” Hyde said. “When my mom was being very aggressive, we didn’t get anywhere.” Yes, the government arranged for meetings, but nothing changed. Officials commissioned studies that were never completed and made empty promises that were designed only to defuse tension. The real turning point, Hyde said, was when her mother began to focus on what she called “parallel development”—the concept that if industry was benefiting, then the community should benefit in a proportionate manner. Pollution should be offset by jobs and contracts for native-owned companies. Tribal leaders started by getting a single janitorial contract, for cleaning offices at Suncor’s headquarters. McDonald also pushed the company to give something back to McKay. She convinced executives to make a small donation toward the construction of a playground at the local school—the first project sponsored by one of the tar-sands developers—and the school’s principal (her husband, Rod Hyde) got matching funds from Suncor. This was the end of vocal opposition, Hyde said, and the beginning of negotiation and partnership. Tar-sands mines and tailings ponds, near Fort McKay, in Alberta, operated by Canadian companies Syncrude and Suncor. Photo: Aaron Huey In 1987, McDonald filed a claim with the Canadian government, charging that 23,000 acres of property surrounding Fort McKay—which were being developed under private lease—were part of the land deeded to the band under Treaty 8. Instead of claiming that the community had been harmed by development, she contended that it was owed compensation for treaty violations. In 2006, two decades after McDonald filed the original claim and a year after her death due to complications from lupus, the Treaty Land Entitlement Settlement Agreement paid the band $41.5 million in compensation for land that belonged to them under the treaty—and, more important, agreed that they were titleholders to 8,200 acres of land under exploration for tar-sands development. Hyde drove me up the ridge to where construction crews were building new modern homes and laying cobblestone driveways. It could have been an affluent suburb to any midsize city in America—all aluminum siding and fake stone facades. People down by the river have derisively dubbed this new development Beverly Hills. They accuse Jim Boucher, the chief for 24 of the past 28 years—and a man who originally opposed oil-sands projects but now supports them—of putting profits over health. Celina Harpe was blunt. “He’s selling us out,” she said. “He doesn’t care as long as it puts money in his pocket.” Boucher declined to speak with me, but in interviews with local media he has bristled at such characterizations. “We were antidevelopment for a long time,” he told one reporter. “But at the end of the day, it came down to the point where government would approve the projects and our rights were diminished by virtue of what they were doing. Gradually, we came to recognize we had no other option but to develop an economy of our own.” Hyde said the big houses were part of the mixed bag created by the tar-sands boom. Companies netting hundreds of millions of dollars per year are reaping huge profits, but they’re also paying excellent wages: in Fort McKay, entry-level skilled workers can expect to pull down six-figure salaries. “It’s not been accepted per se, but it’s a realization that if we’re going to stay here, this is one of the things that we have to deal with,” she said. “We’re never going to stop the oil-sands development. It’s never going to go away until the oil is gone. The best that we can do is to try to mitigate some of those negative impacts.” Trying to lessen the impact of tar-sands development seems a nearly impossible task. Everything about the work sites is sprawling, and it stretches ever closer to the edges of Fort McKay. The tree line across the river is now denuded in places where new digging is set to begin. Fences and barricades have been erected along newly constructed mine roads, blocking band members—often without warning—from reaching traditional hunting grounds. And new projects bring more and more mine workers. The residential camps where those workers live house thousands of people, almost all of them men from Canada and the U.S., in row after row of modular multi-story buildings. At Suncor, the barracks—square roofed and vinyl sided, like overgrown trailer homes—stand close to the highway but are ensconced behind tall chain-link fences. At Syncrude, the buildings are painted with black and white stripes, practically daring those who live inside to compare them to cell blocks. And many do. Though photography is forbidden and workers are instructed not to write publicly about life in camp, there are many YouTube videos, Twitter pictures, Facebook updates, and blog entries complaining about the drab institutional architecture and lockdown conditions. One especially poetic employee wrote online that Wing 39 of Imperial Oil’s Wapasu Camp East, where he lived, stood “austere in the Arctic night,” bringing to mind “prison camps of the Soviet Gulag.” Miners are paid between $100,000 and $200,000 per year. If a man works and puts away his money for two or three years, it’s possible to leave with a nest egg of half a million dollars. Inside, hundreds of identical eight-by-ten rooms stretch down long corridors, each furnished only with a bed, a nightstand, and maybe a TV. There are game rooms and large cafeterias, but workers aren’t afforded much downtime. Most are pulling 12-to-14-hour shifts for three weeks straight. Every morning they are loaded onto buses, swiping site badges and passing through metal detectors. And they work nonstop, even through the subzero cold and the round-the-clock darkness of deep winter, until they are returned to the camps for sleep. The workers endure these conditions for a simple reason: most can earn salaries between $100,000 and $200,000 per year. If a man works and puts away his money for two or three years, it’s possible to leave with a nest egg of half a million dollars. And once they’ve done that, these men will leave northern Alberta and never look back. It’s not so simple for the First Nations mine workers of Fort McKay. Most of the major tar-sands developers reserve positions for native applicants—and now, employing more than 1,600 full-time First Nations workers, they are virtually the only game in town. Even the people who don’t work directly in the mines are often employed by subcontractors. The Fort McKay Group of Companies, which began with that single janitorial contract, has an earthworks division to remove mud from tailings ponds and reinforce containment dykes, but it also builds access roads and installs guardrails. The companies have joint ventures offering catering and lodging services for mine workers. They provide office help and logistical assistance. No matter how far removed, the jobs in Fort McKay exist because of the tar-sands developers, so even those who hate the mines now depend on them, whatever the risks. “Fort Chip, walked away from,” O’Connor told me. “And now McKay’s been walked away from.” Photo: Aaron Huey Celina Harpe’s husband worked as a crane operator at one of the mine sites. One night, riding the transport boat home, he fell into the Athabasca River. He struggled to keep himself afloat, but his rubber work boots filled with water and pulled him under. Such sudden deaths are a fact of life in the mines; there have been six on-site fatalities so far in 2014. But for most people in Fort McKay, it’s not the threat of workplace injury that worries them. Instead they fear that on-site exposure to chemicals and fumes, followed by exposure from drinking water and wild game and breathing toxic emissions every night, means that they never get any relief from the effects of the development. In the eighties, Dorothy McDonald commissioned an air-quality study by epidemiologists at the University of British Columbia, who tested hair samples and found that four of McKay’s 44 children had above-normal levels of lead. Long before residents of Fort McKay have a chance to set foot on a work site or earn a single paycheck, they are at elevated risk of exposure to heavy metals. One known outcome of such exposure is autoimmune disorders—particularly lupus, which is what shortened the life of Dorothy McDonald. So while their white counterparts get rich working in the mines and then head back south to Fort McMurray or Edmonton or the U.S., the native residents of Fort McKay stay and face the uncertain consequences. When I told Dr. John O’Connor what Dayle Hyde had told me, that band leaders of Fort McKay were looking for ways to work with developers to minimize impact, his face tightened with worry. Officially, O’Connor is the director of Health and Human Services at Fort McKay First Nation, but in practice he’s a country doctor, shuttling from one village to the next along the Athabasca to provide primary health care. White bearded, with a stethoscope always around his neck, he moves slowly, taking his time with each patient. But when we discussed tar-sands developers and the Alberta government, O’Connor couldn’t hide his misgivings. Together, he said, industry and government have forced communities like Fort McKay to join in their own destruction. “It’s almost a choice of, ‘Do I die by starvation, or do I die by poisoning?’ ” he said, his voice soft and resigned. O’Connor, 57, grew up in the working-class section of Limerick City, Ireland, and retains a gentle accent. “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. What decision can you make?” Dr. John O’Connor, director of Health and Human Services at Fort McKay First Nation, shuttles from one village to the next providing primary health care. Photo: Aaron Huey O’Connor questions the very notion of parallel development. Certainly, the profits are not shared equally—and neither are the risks. In 2003, not long after O’Connor began making weekly visits to Fort Chipewyan in his capacity as an Alberta provincial doctor, the local school-bus driver came in to schedule an appointment. He had lost a lot of weight and couldn’t figure out why. Blood tests revealed that he was suffering from cholangiocarcinoma, an aggressive form of cancer that attacks the bile ducts. O’Connor had never seen a single patient with it. “Never in my practice did I expect to see a case,” he told me. But O’Connor knew a great deal about the illness because his father had been diagnosed with it a decade before—and died, as did O’Connor’s patient in Fort Chip, within a matter of weeks. He knew the illness was exceedingly rare, affecting just one in 100,000 people, but soon there were more cases: one in 2005 and another in 2006. Two more people died before he could do blood work. And it wasn’t just cancer of the bile ducts. Within five years, O’Connor diagnosed five cases of leukemia and four cases of lymphoma. Six residents of Fort Chip died of colon cancer. In March 2006, Alberta Health and Wellness announced that it would conduct a thorough review of death and cancer statistics. They would track people through their treaty and federal ID numbers to include tribal members who had left Fort Chipewyan and became sick elsewhere. They would also study the related communities in other parts of the Athabasca River Valley. But then, just a few weeks later, Health Canada and Alberta Health and Wellness announced that the cancer rates in Fort Chip “were comparable to the provincial average.” Case closed. O’Connor claims that government officials admitted to him that they were missing data from several months in 2004 and 2005, the most recent years available, but only alerted him to this after the study was completed. Worse, a review conducted by the National Review of Medicine, a prominent medical newspaper in Canada, alleged that the government had fudged the average by using a population parameter of 30,000 instead of the village’s actual population of fewer than 1,000. Multiple subsequent tests concluded that the cases ruled into the government study actually represented about a 30 percent higher rate of cancer than expected for a community the size of Fort Chip. Around the same time, Suncor commissioned an independent study to evaluate the human-health risk leading up to a proposed expansion project that has since been scrapped. Normally, authorities would consider more than one extra case of cancer in a population of 100,000 people to represent an unacceptable public-health hazard. The Suncor report—undertaken by Golder Associates, a firm that routinely performs environmental-impact assessments for the province—found that elevated rates of arsenic in Fort Chipewyan’s drinking water had raised the community’s cancer risk by the equivalent of 450 extra cases per 100,000. That couple there, they’re gone,” Harpe said as we looked at photos of Cree Band members. “He’s still alive. She’s still alive. She’s gone. She’s gone. He’s gone.” Alberta Health and Wellness quickly rejected the findings and announced that the agency would do its own study. In the meantime, Canada’s health minister went before the Legislative Assembly of Alberta to assure lawmakers, “We’re satisfied that arsenic levels in the area are actually lower than in other areas.” After O’Connor publicly complained about the investigation, he received a letter from the registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta saying that Health Canada believed he’d made false allegations of elevated cancer rates, raised undue alarm in the community, obstructed efforts to investigate his claims, and engendered mistrust in Health Canada. If the review committee upheld the claims, O’Connor’s attorney warned him, it would be “career ending.” He told me that when he heard this news, he ran to the bathroom and vomited. But as the review of O’Connor slowly progressed, other researchers began to collect data and uncover trends supporting his theories. In February 2009, the Alberta Cancer Board prepared a new independent analysis of the cancer data collected by Health Canada and Alberta Health and Wellness—this time including the full data. The language of the report was clear. “The number of cancer cases observed in Fort Chipewyan was higher than expected for all cancers combined and for specific types of cancer, such as biliary-tract cancer and cancers in the blood and lymphatic system,” the authors concluded. They also acknowledged that cancer rates in the community had climbed in recent years. In November 2009, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta dropped all charges against O’Connor—though it insisted that he could have been more cooperative with government efforts to investigate. By then O’Connor was the director of Health and Human Services at Fort McKay. He promised to be as helpful as possible if the government would perform a health study of the Fort McKay community. The village shared so many family connections with Fort Chip, he argued, it only made sense to study them together. Initially, provincial authorities promised to do just that—and even said they would appoint O’Connor to the investigatory team. But years have passed and nothing has happened. “Fort Chip, walked away from,” O’Connor told me. “And now McKay’s been walked away from.” When I arrived at Mel Grandjamb’s house, set on the fringe of all the new construction, he was waiting in his driveway next to a motor home. Behind him stood his three four-wheelers, his motorboat, his sixties-era muscle car, and his Hummer. Inside, the hallway of his house was covered in furs from one end to the other. Grandjamb, a chief of Fort McKay First Nation in the early nineties and the former CEO of the Fort McKay Group of Companies, is one of the last trapper holdouts in the community, maintaining his traplines to this day. Wolves, wolverines, martins, fishers, foxes, coyotes, lynx, beavers, rabbits: they hung on evenly spaced hooks, their metal provincial tags still intact. Grandjamb traps now as a way of staying connected to a traditional lifestyle he learned from his father in the backwoods around Moose Lake. “My first couple of years, we actually used dog teams to the trapline,” he said. “No one uses dog teams anymore. That part of the culture is gone.” But Grandjamb shrugged off the changeover to gas-powered engines, and he doesn’t fault the petroleum interests developing the tar sands. “Industry is industry,” he said. It exists for one purpose—profit—and pushes relentlessly toward that goal. If people want to control industry, they should elect government officials committed to strict regulation. “If there wasn’t a license to operate funded by the provincial government, these plants wouldn’t be operating,” he said. As sanguine as Grandjamb seemed, the fact is that Fort McKay First Nation had opposed recent development northeast of Fort McKay, near Moose Lake, more vocally than it had at any time since Dorothy McDonald was chief. The spot, which is the ancestral home of both the Cree and the Dene, is sacred to band members. Around Moose Lake, he said, “you get out to your cabin, you hear the fire going and the wolves howling, and it’s life.” Syncrude operations in Fort McKay. Photo: Aaron Huey But then, in 2010, Brion Energy, a subsidiary of PetroChina, applied to start steam-assisted extraction of tar sands near Moose Lake. Band leaders, including Chief Jim Boucher, argued that the Brion project violated the buffer zone around Fort McKay, as established by their legal victory in 2006. Leaders in other villages rallied to their defense, hoping to set a firm precedent forcing developers to consult native communities before beginning new projects. At that time, members of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation—south of Fort McMurray, in Lac La Biche—had a case before the Alberta Court of Appeals, in which they argued that tar sands have so harmed fish and wildlife populations that mining operations constitute a violation of their treaty rights to hunt, fish, and trap. And the Fort Chipewyan First Nation was challenging Shell Oil’s planned expansion of the Jackpine mine and the company’s Pierre River tar-sands project. “If Fort McKay can set precedents for what’s necessary to preserve their cultural rights,” Eriel Deranger, spokeswoman for Fort Chip, told a local newspaper, “it strengthens our arguments.” But in February 2014, Fort McKay withdrew its complaint. A confidential deal with Brion promised that the Fort McKay reserve would receive environmental protections, construction contracts at the new site, and an undisclosed amount of cash—which the city expects to be in the millions. “We didn’t get a no-development zone,” Fort McKay’s lead negotiator, Alvaro Pinto, acknowledged. Tribal members like Celina Harpe complained that Boucher didn’t press hard enough to protect the community. “They didn’t even ask for a 20-kilometer buffer zone,” she told me. “The chief sold us out without our consultation, without our advice.” When Brion representatives came out to pitch the benefits of the deal in a meeting at the community center, they met with anger. According to Harpe, a Brion spokesperson told the crowd, “Native people are complaining, and they never had it so good.” Harpe said she leaped to her feet and began banging the table. “You white trash!” she shouted. “You don’t know how many people we buried, how much sorrow. You don’t know what the oil companies have done to us people.” Dayle Hyde confessed to understanding how Harpe felt. “Moose Lake is sacred to the people of Fort McKay,” she told me. That’s where Dorothy McDonald had felt most at home and where her family had scattered her ashes. “That was our place to go, and now that’s going to be changed as well. It’s another thing we have to deal with and live with.” Mel Grandjamb, a former chief of Fort McKay First Nation who supports tar-sands development, dismissed the idea that the industry could be slowed down. “They’ll never stop this. Never.” But Hyde insisted that fighting Brion was unrealistic. To show me why, she spread out a large map of the area—and pointed out a provincial park to the west of Moose Lake, then the land specifically set aside for the Fort McKay reservation. All around, millions of acres were depicted in jagged squares of different colors, representing all the land already leased by dozens of oil companies. “This whole area,” Hyde said, “at some point or another, people are going to be trying to figure out how to develop it.” Alberta Energy Regulator, a private consulting firm specializing in energy resources, argued that Fort McKay’s request for a buffer zone should be denied because it would result “in sterilization of a significant bitumen resource.” The Alberta government, despite Fort McKay’s legal foundation, sided with Brion. “When you have an industry that’s the economic driver of the whole province,” Hyde told me, “there doesn’t seem to be a neutral party. I was left with the impression that the Alberta government is more interested in the well-being of Alberta as a whole rather than the people in a small community. They wouldn’t be—what’s the word they used?—‘sterilizing’ the resources at Moose Lake for the betterment of a small number of people.” She let out a quick, defensive laugh, then wavered nervously into tears. “I find this map really depressing.” Mel Grandjamb understands the feeling, but he steadfastly refused to blame the oil companies. He had grown tired of environmentalists questioning the compromises of the leaders of Fort McKay—flying in on airplanes and arriving in cars to criticize the fossil-fuel industry. “It’s good to say, Everything stops,” he said. “But does that mean I walk to town tonight? Does that mean I get in the canoe and I paddle upstream for three days?” He shook his head dismissively at the very idea. “They’ll never stop this. Never.” Grandjamb’s words seemed to follow me on my drive back across the toxic tailings ponds encircling Suncor and Syncrude, back down Highway 63 to the brand-new airport, where I dropped off my rental SUV and wandered through the terminal’s sole gift shop, selling piles of T-shirts that read FORT MCMURRAY and PROPERTY OF OIL SANDS. Grandjamb was right: there’s no stopping this—not unless we collectively demand something different. And there are few signs of that happening. Just days later, I got word that Alberta’s provincial government had approved another project. Originally explored by Koch Oil Sands, then sold to Prosper Petroleum for development, the site is slated for the extraction of tar sands from more land around Moose Lake, one more piece in the lease-map jigsaw puzzle. Leaders in Fort McKay complained to the Alberta government that they had not been “adequately consulted” about this new site and its potential health impacts on the reservation. The government agreed with Prosper that the community had failed to precisely define “adequately.” Ted Genoways (@tedgenoways) is the author of The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food, published by Harper in October. Alberta Energy RegulatorAlberta Health and WellnessAlberta Research CouncilAthabasca RiverBitumount AlbertaBoreal forestBrion EnergyEnbridgeEnvironmental DefenceFirst Nation treaty rightsFort ChipewyanFort McKayFort McKay First NationFort McMurrayHealth impactsKalamazoo RiverKoch Oil SandsLtd.Mayflower AKMichiganNASA Goddard Institute for Space StudiesNatural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)North West Company and Hudson’s Bay CompanyNorthern Gateway Pipelinesoil sandsOpen-pit minesPembina InstitutePetroChinaProsper PetroleumSuncorSyncrudeTar Island Pond OneTar sands crudeTreaty 8Treaty Land Entitlement Settlement AgreementU.S. State DepartmentWater quality	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line5
__label__cc	0.571828	0.428172	By John Cook, University of Queensland In a previous article on The Conversation, Stephan Lewandowsky asked, why do people reject science? I’m going to take a slightly different angle and consider how people are able to reject climate science in the face of strong evidence. A growing body of research has found that when a person’s worldview is threatened by scientific evidence, they interpret the science in a biased manner. One issue where this influence is strongest is climate change. For supporters of an unregulated free market, regulating polluting industries to reduce global warming is so unpalatable that they are far more likely to reject that climate change is happening. The mechanism by which ideology such as this influences our scientific views is confirmation bias. We place greater weight on evidence that confirms our beliefs, while ignoring or resisting conflicting evidence. This can be a challenge when confronted with a convergence of evidence and a scientific consensus, but confirmation bias is up to the task. Let’s look at some examples. The most common manifestation of confirmation bias is cherry picking, where one carefully selects a small piece of data that paints a friendly picture and overlooks any inconvenient evidence. How do we spot cherry picking? It’s important to remember that there is no “their evidence” versus “our evidence”. There is only the full body of evidence. If someone arrives at a conclusion from carefully selected evidence that contradicts the conclusion drawn from the full body of evidence, that’s cherry picking. Cherry pickers ignore the fact that our planet is currently building up heat at the stunning rate of around 3 Hiroshima bombs per second. Instead, they focus on short periods of the surface temperature record. This record bounces up and down from year to year as the ocean exchanges heat with the atmosphere, meaning that it’s possible to find any short period during a long-term warming trend where temperatures fall briefly. Meanwhile the planet continues to build up heat – around 250 Hiroshima bombs worth since you started reading this article. Confirmation bias also influences which sources of information we put our trust in. People tend to attribute greater expertise to people who share their values and beliefs. We’re drawn to those who tell us what we want to hear. So what happens when 97 out of 100 of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming? Those who reject the scientific consensus lavish their attention on the 3% minority, magnifying their significance and turning a blind eye to the 97% of scientific experts. If one’s world view is strongly free-market, the notion that our lifestyle might be damaging the planet is unpalatable. AAP/Tony McDonough So how can ignoring the 97% be justified? Two words: conspiracy theory. There are a range of conspiracy theories out there, from sinister attempts to control the planet with a one world government to claims that virtually every climate scientist on the planet is falsifying their data for financial reasons, a form of global groupthink. Roy Spencer, one of the minority of dissenters remaining in the climate science community, said: If scientists are promised a career of financial support to find evidence of manmade climate change, they will do their best to find it. Let’s look at Spencer’s claim in greater detail, keeping in mind the key characteristic of a conspiracy theorist: exaggerated claims about the omnipotence of the conspirators. For human-caused global warming to be falsely manufactured, scientists would have to falsify the satellite data finding less heat escaping to space and fudge the measurements of downward infrared radiation that confirm an increased greenhouse effect. Both the satellite and weather balloon records that find a cooling upper atmosphere along with a warming lower atmosphere (a signature of greenhouse warming) would have to be doctored. The fact that winters warm faster than summers and nights warm faster than days, both fingerprints of greenhouse warming, would have to be fabricated in a number of different temperature records. What drives Roy Spencer to espouse the implausible theory that thousands of scientists spanning dozens of countries are engaged in a global fabrication of data? His job at the University of Alabama in Huntsville is to analyse satellite measurements of the atmosphere, but he sees himself a little differently, describing his role as: … a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government. Spencer personifies the principle that ideology biases the way we process evidence. One of the loudest contrarian voices in Australia is Ian Plimer, a geologist who has not published a single peer-reviewed paper on climate change. Nevertheless, he is the go-to guy for public voices such as Gina Rinehart, Cardinal George Pell and Tony Abbott. Why do these public figures favour a non-peer reviewed non-expert who has a long history of self-contradiction? The psychological research on which experts we prefer tells us why. Confirmation bias sways us towards those voices that tell us what we want to hear. Another method of avoiding the consensus of evidence is through the use of logical fallacies. The straw man fallacy is confirmation bias applied through logical argument, misrepresenting an opponent’s position by focusing on their weaker arguments while ignoring their stronger points. Arctic sea ice reached record lows in 2012. Arguing that this is meaningless because sea ice has been low before is an example of non sequitur – it does not follow. NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre An example is the accusation that climate scientists in the 1970s predicted global cooling. When you look at the actual peer-reviewed research in the 1970s, the papers predicting global warming from greenhouse gases far outweighed papers predicting cooling. Somehow, the warming papers escape the attention of those who reject climate science. A common logical fallacy employed by climate contrarians is the “non sequitur”, Latin for “it does not follow”. This applies to arguments where the stated conclusion is not supported by its premise. The most cited example is “climate has changed naturally in the past therefore current warming must be natural”. A recent variant argues, in response to this year’s record low in Arctic sea ice, that ice has been low in the past. This is logically equivalent to investigating a corpse with a gunshot wound and ruling out murder because people have died from natural causes before. To reduce the influence of those who reject the science, confirmation bias and misleading rhetorical arguments need to be exposed. Now is as good a time as any to start practising so I recommend beginning with the inevitable deluge of comments to this article. Look for cherry picking, conspiracy theories, comments magnifying the significance of dissenters (or non-experts) and logical fallacies such as non sequiturs. You might think those who reject climate science would refrain from employing these methods in such an obvious fashion. But consider the Arctic sea ice example. On one contrarian climate blog, a commenter predicted five ways that people would avoid the inevitable implications of the precipitous drop in Arctic sea ice. Climate sceptic blogger Anthony Watts fulfilled all five predictions. Such reactions go to show that science rejection is an instinctive, emotional and ideological response to evidence that appears to threaten certain deeply-entrenched worldviews. If you would like to discuss the psychology of accepting or rejecting the science of climate change, please feel free to comment below. Off-topic comments will be removed. John Cook does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations. This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article. 1 thought on “How do people reject climate science?” Pingback: How do people reject climate science? (Post) \| Better Nature: commentary by Geoff Davies	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line6
__label__wiki	0.644584	0.644584	Main Index : Bible Dictionaries : Easton's Bible Dictionary : Search Easton's Bible Dictionary Search Easton's Bible Dictionary The following is the results of your search for EGYPT. River of Egypt Sin, a city in Egypt, called by the Gree Stream of Egypt Torrey's Topical Textbook Egypt: The land of the Nile and the pyramids, the oldest kingdom of which we have any record, holds a place of great significance in Scripture. The Egyptians belonged to the white race, and their original home is still a matter of dispute. Many scholars believe that it was in Southern Arabia, and recent excavations have shown that the valley of the Nile was originally inhabited by a low-class population, perhaps belonging to the Nigritian stock, before the Egyptians of history entered it. The ancient Egyptian language, of which the latest form is Coptic, is distantly connected with the Semitic family of speech. Egypt consists geographically of two halves, the northern being the Delta, and the southern Upper Egypt, between Cairo and the First Cataract. In the Old Testament, Northern or Lower Egypt is called Mazor, "the fortified land" (Isaiah 19:6; 37:25) where the A.V. mistranslates "defence" and "besieged places"); while Southern or Upper Egypt is Pathros, the Egyptian Pa-to-Res, or "the land of the south" (Isaiah 11:11) But the whole country is generally mentioned under the dual name of Mizraim, "the two Mazors." The civilization of Egypt goes back to a very remote antiquity. The two kingdoms of the north and south were united by Menes, the founder of the first historical dynasty of kings. The first six dynasties constitute what is known as the Old Empire, which had its capital at Memphis, south of Cairo, called in the Old Testament Moph (Hosea 9:6) and Noph. The native name was Mennofer, "the good place." The Pyramids were tombs of the monarchs of the Old Empire, those of Gizeh being erected in the time of the Fourth Dynasty. After the fall of the Old Empire came a period of decline and obscurity. This was followed by the Middle Empire, the most powerful dynasty of which was the Twelfth. The Fayyum was rescued for agriculture by the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty; and two obelisks were erected in front of the temple of the sun-god at On or Heliopolis (near Cairo), one of which is still standing. The capital of the Middle Empire was Thebes, in Upper Egypt. The Middle Empire was overthrown by the invasion of the Hyksos, or shepherd princes from Asia, who ruled over Egypt, more especially in the north, for several centuries, and of whom there were three dynasties of kings. They had their capital at Zoan or Tanis (now San), in the north-eastern part of the Delta. It was in the time of the Hyksos that Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph entered Egypt. The Hyksos were finally expelled about B.C. 1600 by the hereditary princes of Thebes, who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty, and carried the war into Asia. Canaan and Syria were subdued, as well as Cyprus, and the boundaries of the Egyptian Empire were fixed at the Euphrates. The Soudan, which had been conquered by the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty, was again annexed to Egypt, and the eldest son of the Pharaoh took the title of "Prince of Cush." One of the later kings of the dynasty, Amenophis IV., or Khu-n-Aten, endeavoured to supplant the ancient state religion of Egypt by a new faith derived from Asia, which was a sort of pantheistic monotheism, the one supreme god being adored under the image of the solar disk. The attempt led to religious and civil war, and the Pharaoh retreated from Thebes to Central Egypt, where he built a new capital, on the site of the present Tell-el-Amarna. The cuneiform tablets that have been found there represent his foreign correspondence (about B.C. 1400 He surrounded himself with officials and courtiers of Asiatic, and more especially Canaanitish, extraction; but the native party succeeded eventually in overthrowing the government, the capital of Khu-n-Aten was destroyed, and the foreigners were driven out of the country, those that remained being reduced to serfdom. The national triumph was marked by the rise of the Nineteenth Dynasty, in the founder of which, Rameses I., we must see the "new king, who knew not Joseph." His grandson, Rameses II., reigned sixty-seven years (B.C. 1348 and was an indefatigable builder. As Pithom, excavated by Dr. Naville in 1883 was one of the cities he built, he must have been the Pharaoh of the Oppression. The Pharaoh of the Exodus may have been one of his immediate successors, whose reigns were short. Under them Egypt lost its empire in Asia, and was itself attacked by barbarians from Libya and the north. The Nineteenth Dynasty soon afterwards came to an end; Egypt was distracted by civil war; and for a short time a Canaanite, Arisu, ruled over it. Then came the Twentieth Dynasty, the second Pharaoh of which, Rameses III., restored the power of his country. In one of his campaigns he overran the southern part of Palestine, where the Israelites had not yet settled. They must at the time have been still in the wilderness. But it was during the reign of Rameses III. that Egypt finally lost Gaza and the adjoining cities, which were seized by the Pulista, or Philistines. After Rameses III., Egypt fell into decay. Solomon married the daughter of one of the last kings of the Twenty-first Dynasty, which was overthrown by Shishak I., the general of the Libyan mercenaries, who founded the Twenty-second Dynasty (1 Kings 11:40; 14:25,26) A list of the places he captured in Palestine is engraved on the outside of the south wall of the temple of Karnak. In the time of Hezekiah, Egypt was conquered by Ethiopians from the Soudan, who constituted the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. The third of them was Tirhakah (2 Kings 19:9) In B.C. 674 it was conquered by the Assyrians, who divided it into twenty satrapies, and Tirhakah was driven back to his ancestral dominions. Fourteen years later it successfully revolted under Psammetichus I. of Sais, the founder of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. Among his successors were Necho (2 Kings 23:29) and Hophra, or Apries (Jeremiah 37:5,7,11) The dynasty came to an end in B.C. 525 when the country was subjugated by Cambyses. Soon afterwards it was organized into a Persian satrapy. The title of Pharaoh, given to the Egyptian kings, is the Egyptian Per-aa, or "Great House," which may be compared to that of "Sublime Porte." It is found in very early Egyptian texts. The Egyptian religion was a strange mixture of pantheism and animal worship, the gods being adored in the form of animals. While the educated classes resolved their manifold deities into manifestations of one omnipresent and omnipotent divine power, the lower classes regarded the animals as incarnations of the gods. Under the Old Empire, Ptah, the Creator, the god of Memphis, was at the head of the Pantheon; afterwards Amon, the god of Thebes, took his place. Amon, like most of the other gods, was identified with Ra, the sun-god of Heliopolis. The Egyptians believed in a resurrection and future life, as well as in a state of rewards and punishments dependent on our conduct in this world. The judge of the dead was Osiris, who had been slain by Set, the representative of evil, and afterwards restored to life. His death was avenged by his son Horus, whom the Egyptians invoked as their "Redeemer." Osiris and Horus, along with Isis, formed a trinity, who were regarded as representing the sun-god under different forms. Even in the time of Abraham, Egypt was a flourishing and settled monarchy. Its oldest capital, within the historic period, was Memphis, the ruins of which may still be seen near the Pyramids and the Sphinx. When the Old Empire of Menes came to an end, the seat of empire was shifted to Thebes, some 300 miles farther up the Nile. A short time after that, the Delta was conquered by the Hyksos, or shepherd kings, who fixed their capital at Zoan, the Greek Tanis, now San, on the Tanic arm of the Nile. All this occurred before the time of the new king "which knew not Joseph" (Exodus 1:8) In later times Egypt was conquered by the Persians (B.C. 525) and by the Greeks under Alexander the Great (B.C. 332) after whom the Ptolemies ruled the country for three centuries. Subsequently it was for a time a province of the Roman Empire; and at last, in A.D. 1517 it fell into the hands of the Turks, of whose empire it still forms nominally a part. Abraham and Sarah went to Egypt in the time of the shepherd kings. The exile of Joseph and the migration of Jacob to "the land of Goshen" occurred about 200 years later. On the death of Solomon, Shishak, king of Egypt, invaded Palestine (1 Kings 14:25) He left a list of the cities he conquered. A number of remarkable clay tablets, discovered at Tell-el-Amarna in Upper Egypt, are the most important historical records ever found in connection with the Bible. They most fully confirm the historical statements of the Book of Joshua, and prove the antiquity of civilization in Syria and Palestine. As the clay in different parts of Palestine differs, it has been found possible by the clay alone to decide where the tablets come from when the name of the writer is lost. The inscriptions are cuneiform, and in the Aramaic language, resembling Assyrian. The writers are Phoenicians, Amorites, and Philistines, but in no instance Hittites, though Hittites are mentioned. The tablets consist of official dispatches and letters, dating from B.C. 1480 addressed to the two Pharaohs, Amenophis III. and IV., the last of this dynasty, from the kings and governors of Phoenicia and Palestine. There occur the names of three kings killed by Joshua, Adoni-zedec, king of Jerusalem, Japhia, king of Lachish (Joshua 10:3) and Jabin, king of Hazor (Joshua 11:1) also the Hebrews (Abiri) are said to have come from the desert. The principal prophecies of Scripture regarding Egypt are these, (Isaiah 19:1)ff (Jeremiah 43:8-13; 44:30; 46:1)ff (Ezekiel 29-32,) and it might be easily shown that they have all been remarkably fulfilled. For example, the singular disappearance of Noph (i.e., Memphis) is a fulfilment of (Jeremiah 46:19; Ezekiel 30:13)	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line8
__label__cc	0.692687	0.307313	The Middle Ground (Pop Culture) Studies of Popular Culture, such as Stacy Takacs’ ‘Interrogation of Popular Culture’, frequently focus on the roles ‘incorporation’ and ‘excorporation’ play in the way texts are produced, received, and used by those involved in such processes. Whilst both of these stages are vitally important to a text’s ultimate use, the middle ground between these two stages is often undermined, where third parties can acquire and alter a text, then broadcast it in a way other than its original producers had intended. It’s this area that is of paramount importance, as the foundations of popular cultures are derived from the text it originates from, and if this text is able to be acquired and altered by a third party, they stand to fundamentally change the beliefs and uses of the culture it creates. Someone like Edward Snowden allows for a glance at the immense power available to those who occupy and utilise this middle ground. Snowden, through his leaking of classified government documents, completely compromised the incorporation process that American authorities underwent to ensure avoidance of any substantial scrutiny and questions over their methods of ensuring government security. Furthermore, his altering of the content made available to the public drastically altered the process of excorporation, with the majority of consumers outraged at the violations of their privacy at the hands of a government that was supposedly protecting them. While this is one of the more large-scale examples of the power of those occupying the middle ground, instances of such alteration are evident throughout everyday life, and it’s in this area that culture finds itself at its most malleable, able to be taken beyond the confines that its original creators intended for it, be it for better or for worse, and proving decisive in the way its eventual consumers will likely view and use it. Interrogating Popular Culture: Key Questions – Stacy Takacs – Google Books. [ONLINE] Available at: http://tinyurl.com/l236gcq. [Accessed 20-23 March 2015] Edward Snowden Biography [ONLINE] http://www.biography.com/people/edward-snowden-21262897. [Accessed 20-23 March 2015] Originally published on davidzita.net on 24th March, 2015 Previous Post Social Relations + Social Relationships Next Post Legality Triumphs Over Ethicality – The Bayley Revelations CategoriesUniversity	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line9
__label__cc	0.502226	0.497774	Asia's Sex Trap Fallen Angels: The Sex Workers of South Asia, edited by John Frederick and Thomas L. Kelly (photographs). Lustre Press, Roli Books, New Delhi. $40 (Contact angels@rayhope.org) SOUTHEAST ASIA'S booming sex industry has been described by numerous authors and journalists, but the outside world has paid scant attention to the same problem in South Asia, where hundreds of thousands of young women and men are trapped in squalid brothels in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Part of the reason could be that it is mainly an internal problem. Apart from paedophiles in Sri Lanka, few Western tourists are involved in South Asia's sex industry, unlike Thailand and the Philippines where there are many. Also, in countries such as Pakistan, official tolerance of prostitution is zero, which means that prostitutes are usually well-hidden. Only Mumbai's sleazy Falkland Road and Kamathipura and some areas of Calcutta have an open commercial sex scene. This makes the tragedy even worse, and, as the authors of this remarkable book point out, the South Asian sex industry involves more children than perhaps anywhere else in the world. In Bangladesh, for instance, bonded female children and the daughters of sex workers "often begin work at 11 or 12, and 16 is over the hill." In Pakistan, most prostitutes are under-age boys, many of them refugees from Afghanistan. The girls usually come from Bangladesh. But, as one of the contributors to the book writes, "The provocative word 'paedophile' is applied almost solely to pot-bellied foreigners, a negligible proportion of consumers in the region." Lawmakers and non-governmental organizations might be encouraged by Fallen Angels, edited by John Frederick, with pictures compiled by Thomas Kelly, to rethink their efforts to curb South Asia's sex industry. Fallen Angels may unsettle some readers, with its horrid tales of suffering, together with its compelling and sometimes shocking pictures. The book quickly gets to the heart of the problem: poverty, such as that in the hills of Nepal and in Bangladesh's flood-hit plains. But the 14 authors-most of whom are South Asians-do not moralize. They describe how some sex workers in Calcutta want to be treated with dignity, and protected for their right to work. A doctor working with sex workers in Calcutta states quite bluntly that "providing Aids awareness and condoms isn't going to be successful because sex workers have no power compared to the clients, the pimps or the madams. Without strengthening them, you cannot change this power equation." Frederick, who lives in Nepal, caused a stir three years ago with a long article in Himal, a local news magazine, in which he argued that most young women from the hills of Nepal were not "tricked" into prostitution by crafty outsiders, or drugged and kidnapped by Indian gangsters only to wake up several days later in a Mumbai brothel. He said that many villagers knowingly sold their daughters to sex-industry recruiters because they had no other means of survival. In other words, prostitution in South Asia is not primarily a criminal issue, but a social problem caused by extreme under-development and caste discrimination in a strictly hierarchical society. Fallen Angels describes, in text as well as pictures, that social tragedy brilliantly. The book is sold through a Nepalese-based non-governmental organisation, Ray of Hope Foundation, that helps rehabilitate sex workers and works with young villagers in Nepal to teach them about the dangers of entering the sex industry. This review first appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review, March 21, 2002	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line12
__label__wiki	0.560609	0.560609	The Resource Miracle The rock star and activist explains why Africa could be this century's success story By Bono Monday, May 28, 2012 Lionel Healing / AFP / Getty Images Gold miners brave a cliff in mineral-rich Congo Follow @TIME It's become the go-to cliché of modern economics. Natural resources are a "curse." When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals. Happy the country that lives on nothing but its wits; cursed be the one that thinks it can get rich by planting or digging or drilling for wealth. Such is the collective wisdom. So we must ask the collectively wise, How did the U.S. avoid the curse? And what might that tell us about other countries' chances of doing the same? When European settlers arrived in North America, they found a continent groaning with abundance--soil in which anything would grow, stands of timber marching to the horizon. Under the land were vast reserves of gold and silver, coal and oil. Over time, Americans learned how to harvest this natural endowment--not just to build a modern society but also to feed and supply the world. The story, of course, wasn't always a happy one. The extraction of oil, coal and minerals brought, and still brings, a cost to the environment. Still, the bounty didn't and doesn't belong only to the barons. And that, unlike finding oil in your backyard, has nothing to do with luck. Americans put in place laws regulating how those resources get extracted and how good fortune gets shared. This summer the world has a chance to work that miracle a second time--and without the worst parts of the American story. As they gather at the G-8 summit at Camp David this month and again in June at the G-20 in Mexico, international leaders focused on the euro and Iran should make time to ensure that a new resource boom benefits the many, not the few. This new boom won't be in the U.S. It will be in developing regions like Africa. In many ways, Africa is to this century what North America was to the 19th. It has 60% of the world's undeveloped arable land and vast reserves of coal, oil and minerals, together with enormous renewable-energy resources. Sub-Saharan Africa is also home to 400 million of the world's poorest people. These resources should be theirs. Get the development of them right and the forthcoming financial resources--invested well--can transform the lives of countless numbers of people. Food and agriculture are the place to start. At Camp David, the G-8, led by President Obama, will work on an ambitious plan for global food security, centered on commitments made and costed by 30 nations in the developing world. By partnering with such leadership, there is a very real chance of lifting 50 million people out of extreme poverty over the coming decade and sparing 15 million children the cruelty of severe malnourishment. This isn't about the G-8's committing massive new aid increases. It's about continuing present investment and making it smarter. Beyond food, Africa's vast oil and mineral reserves can be a pipeline to investments in health, education and roads. Mineral extraction is an expensive enterprise, and those who invest in it deserve to make a profit. But they should pay what they owe to governments. Transparency is the vaccine to prevent the biggest disease of them all--corruption, which any African will tell you is killing more kids than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined.	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line15
__label__cc	0.721454	0.278546	Famous Artist Leonardo da Vinci Maybe the greatest genius ever? Leonardo da Vinci is considered to be one of the greatest minds of all times. His genius was driven by his insatiable curiosity, and his intuitive sense of the laws of nature. At age 17, Leonardo and his father moved to Florence where he had contact with other great Florentine artists including Michelangelo. In 1481 Leonardo left Florence for Milan to offer his service to the local Duke. During this period he painted the Virgin of the Rocks and the Last Supper. In 1499 Leonardo left Milan, traveling through Mantua, to the court of Isabella d'Este; to Venice, where he consulted on architecture from 1495 to 1499; and in 1502 and 1503 he was military engineer for Cesare Borgia. After his service to the Borgias, Leonardo returned to Florence. It was during the period between 1503 and 1506, while working primarily in Florence, that he had his greatest following and painted such classics as the 'Mona Lisa'. After the death of Giuliano dei Medici, Leonardo accepted an invitation from French friends and moved to the castle of Cloux near Amboise, where he stayed with his faithful pupil Melzi until the end of his life. Leonardo helped set an ignorant and superstitious world on a course of reason, science, learning, and tolerance. "Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind." "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death." "You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." "Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold." "In order to observe the nature of the planets, open the roof."	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line18
__label__cc	0.635792	0.364208	The abandonment of warfare and killing was an ancient covenant handed down from the earliest Moriori ancestors. The covenant was reaffirmed in the times of the Moriori karāpuna, Mu, Rongomaiwhenua, Pākehāu and Nunuku. The covenant forbade killing; “It was passed down to Mu and Wheke, and from them and their descendants to Rongomaiwhenua, and from him to his descendants. You may continue to fight; the meaning of his word was, do not kill. By abandoning warfare and placing their weapons on the tūahu, Moriori entered into a tohinga or covenant with their gods. It was a unique declaration that from henceforth, only the gods would have power over life and death and not the people. Fighting became ritualised – upon first blood being drawn, fighting was to cease. The law of Nunuku and his predecessors thus permitted an outlet for aggression and revenge but stopped short of inflicting the ultimate sanction of death. From earliest childhood, male children were imbued with the significance of these laws. During the baptismal rites, or tohinga of male children, the father or male elder would perform a ceremony by removing the old weapons from the tūahu and returning them once the ritual was complete. In this way, the covenant was renewed and passed on from one generation to the next. This was and is a very tapu covenant to Moriori. It reaffirms and acknowledges that tuakana (senior) status of the gods as the final arbiters of life and death over the teina (junior) status of human beings. In 1836, Moriori made the ultimate sacrifice for their beliefs following the invasion by Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama. Moriori leaders, Torea and Tapata urged the gathering at Te Awapatiki to hold fast to the teachings of Nunuku and not to break with the covenant. Like their illustrious forbears, Torea and Tapata were reaffirming and renewing the ancient injunction “Do not kill”. To break with it would have been a betrayal of their gods, of their ancestor’s wisdom and a complete loss of mana for Moriori as a people. Instead, they offered peace, friendship and sharing of the Island’s resources, as was their custom. Despite the great suffering and loss that Moriori endured as a consequence of this decision, their legacy of peace and hope lived on. The covenant has since been renewed at the following occasions; the opening of Kōpinga Marae (2005), the blessing for the World March for Peace and Non-Violence (2009) and at the inaugural Me Rongo Congress for Peace, Sustainability and Respect for the Sacred (2011).	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line19
__label__wiki	0.680424	0.680424	Vietnam vet finally meets daughter after 50 years of not knowing he was a father For decades, Gary Barnes didn’t know he had a daughter in the world. But when he received the news, it changed his life in the most beautiful way. Life has surprising ways to catch up on you, and for this 78-year-old veteran, it was the best gift he could ever hope for. Gary Barnes, a Vietnam veteran living in California, had vowed to never have children. He stayed true to that vow until he got a call that would change the rest of his life. Soon after, he welcomed a daughter in his arms in a reunion he will never forget. Barnes, much like most of the young men in his time, was asked to serve in Vietnam. During his service in the Southeast Asian country, he spent his time in the neighboring nation of the Philippines for rest and respite. Naturally, for a lonely soldier and a man in his prime, he sought out the company of women. This led him to a lovely Filipina who he, unfortunately, had to leave when he was called back to service. It would be the last time he’d ever see or hear from her again. Fifty years later, a woman is on a mission of her own. It all started when she submitted her DNA test to Ancestry.com. Olivia Robles’s only intention was to learn her true ethnicity. While she knows that she was born in the Philippines, she never knew much about her family’s life or the lineage before her. However, her submission snagged an unexpected match to a “distant cousin”. After some exchanges, Robles and her cousin traced her connection back to a man living on the other side of the country. It was then that Barnes received a proposition through a phone call – undergo a DNA test to see if Robles is the daughter he never had. “For individuals who have always had their parents all their lives, it’s just something a lot of people really take for granted,” Robles said to WTSP. “You have that longing.” After the results came in, Barnes and Robles didn’t waste any time. They met the first time in person when Robles flew to California. Nervous and a bit emotional, Barnes hugged Robles tightly as she exited the gates. With Robles at 50 and Barnes at 78, he didn’t just gain a daughter, but three grandsons and a great-grandson as well. The newly reunited family was keen on making up for lost time and spent Christmas together with Robles’ family in Tampa. The retiree was leading a quiet life, but now, he’s included in a bigger picture of a family that welcomed him. He even joined Robles in New York where her youngest son was finishing up his first year at West Point. He was given the honor of pinning his grandson’s first badge – grandfather to grandson, one soldier to another. Fortunately for them, Robles has taken a job out west, as her sons are all grown up. Her new career near Los Angeles is only a few hours drive to Barnes who was living at Grass Valley. And while his life has changed drastically, Barnes was still thankful for what the “divine providence” has given him. “More important than anything in life there is family,” he said to WTSP. He might be late to the party, but he’s willing to be part of it especially in the years to come.	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line20
__label__cc	0.667782	0.332218	DAILY MESSAGE ARCHIVES JANUARY 2021 Dec 02, 2020 - 04:54 Leave a CommentArts and Entertainment, Relationships, Self Improvement 611 views Written by Neil Meyers Arts and Entertainment Self Improvement Writing and Speaking For more Elysium''s Passage Blog Posts, go to https://digitalbloggers.com/arts-and-entertainment/ep-blog-posts for over 130 post links or https://digitalbloggers.com/articles/elysiumspassage for the host site LIVE VS EVIL This last year, and especially the last months, it seems the gates of hell have been thrown open. And now, as Shakespeare says, “all the devils are here.” The lying MSM, the Big Tech social media censors, governments, tyrannical health officials, Big Pharma, Big Business, Fascist Billionaires… the list goes on; all weaponizing fear to control the masses. So far, they have been overwhelming successful because we have allowed this. But rather than go on a rant about all that, I’d like to look at the nature of evil in this post. I feature Aleksander Solzhenitsyn here because he had the courage to stare down evil. By telling the truth, even while imprisoned in the Gulags of Russia, his books and had much to do with bringing the Soviet regime down with his books One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), Cancer Ward (1968), August 1914 (1971), and The Gulag Archipelago (1973). I consider him one of the world’s greatest warriors against evil. Solzhenitsyn’s books reveal that even in the darkest reaches of humanity, the indomitable spirit of good remains even in the perverse presence of evil. We can recognize evil for what it is because it always shuns the good of what it means to live. If we look at the English spelling of evil and spell it backwards, we get LIVE. Reverse image E V I L - L I V E L I V E - E V I L Even if that's just a quirk of the English language, I think that says a lot. What we considered to be evil might be regarded as the inversion of good. That’s because evil has little or no awareness. It is in the dark. If we take a look at those qualities associated with what it means to LIVE, and then consider what we’re left when it's gone... looks much like evil to me. But its what the world seems to be getting a lot of these days. I won’t go into a rant on the specifics of what events I consider evil in our world since it’s rather obvious. The following statements illustrate the opposite of what LIFE means. What is it to LIVE without freedom: Enslavement, disempowerment. What is it to LIVE without happiness: Depression What is it to LIVE without contact: Isolation, loneliness. What is it to LIVE without Love: Fear What is it to live without Light: Darkness What is it to live without Creativity: Mediocrity What is it to LIVE without Laugher: Sadness What is it to Live without Affirmation: Cancelation, denial What is it to Live without Awareness: Ignorance, stupidity What is it to live without Goodwill: Cruelty, Shaming What is it to live without Movement: Shackling, Prison What is it to live without Hope: Despair What is it to live without Breathing: Suffocation What is it to live without Generosity: Greed What is it to live without Openness: Hiddenness What is it to live without Beauty: Ugliness What is it to live without Respect: Disregard What is it to live without Productivity: Barrenness What is it to live without Abundance: Scarcity, want What is it to live without Expression: Censorship What is it to live without Giving: Taking, confiscation What is it to live without Discipline: Laziness, incompetence What is it to live without compassion: Indifference, callousness What is it to live without Reward: Disappointment, disillusionment What is it to live without Power: Force, imposition What is it to live without Truth: Lies, Fraud, Deception. In sum, evil may come to exist in the void of what it means to LIVE: Freedom, Happiness, Social, Abundance, Creativity, etc. Consider how many of these unfortunate qualities have taken over our culture today. Most; all? As Evil is the opposite of Life, so is Fear the opposite of Love. LIVE is based on LOVE EVIL is based on FEAR It’s no mistake, therefore, why evil people have universally implemented fear to achieve their ends in their pursuit of power and control. Look no further than governments because that's where the power lies. By propaganda, legislation and enforcement, they have the means to exploit the fears of the masses. When combined with the willful ignorance of their subjects, they can get away with murder, even if it doesn’t seem that way, all presumable for the common good. What’s astonishing is that so few question authority. They want to believe the government has their best interests at heart and so would never deceive them, no matter how obvious it becomes. Sound familiar? Of course, we see it every time we go out our door. Some say there is no such thing as good or bad, ‘it just is.’ Well, then I guess this means there is no such thing as a polarity between Love/Light and Fear/Darkness. Obviously, I’m not convinced. When it comes to evil, it sure the hell feels real. Quite literally, the difference between heaven and hell. And yet, what if it’s just a matter of how things appear to play out in the third-dimensional field of reality? If so, how would things appear from a higher dimension should that be our set-point for consciousness? Would evil still appear as it does to us here, or would we even notice it? I’ll let you know when I get there. If it helps, let's look at life from another perspective. The Proverb above suggests that evil can’t exist for long, ostensibly because it naturally self destructs since it has no live (LIVE) substance of its own. Even the union of evil people can’t exist for long, no matter how united they seem to be as Solzhenitsyn suggested. And even when they get their way, it’s not long before they implode by destroying each other. History illustrates this over and over. The philosophical question is whether it is necessary for evil to exist so that good can be known and experienced, just as the darkness allows stars to appear in the dark sky. Perhaps, as some say, we are now going through an ascension process in human consciousness where earth's evil is surfacing that it might be purged by the light of truth. I don't know but would like to think that might be true, and that we are entering into a high consciousness often referred to as the Age of Aquarius or the 'second coming' of Christ Consciousness among the collective of humanity. But for now, are those who continue to cause so many problems for us nothing but undeveloped, unconscious, ‘young’ souls birthed on the planet to experience the consequences of their errant thoughts and deeds? Furthermore, are they here to provide a crucible for humanity’s evolution and perfection as we learn how to forgive in grace to become the gods we are meant to be or become, instead of the devils we often are? Perhaps we’re all actors on the stage of human conscious evolution, all playing our parts... and what play doesn’t need villains to keep things interesting? “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances.” To further pursue this topic of good and evil in the universe would be a whole new topic of cosmological significance, which I plan to write about at a later date. Meanwhile, I've included below a number of quotes on the topic of evil, each illustrating profound wisdom. The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don't do anything about it. Albert Einstein The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Edmund Burke For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing. Simon Wiesenthal All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil. Percy Bysshe Shelley A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. Matthew 12:34 Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Blaise Pascal I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power. Patricia Cornwell Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough. Bede Jarrett False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Socrates Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil. Plato Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good. Thomas Aquinas He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. Martin Luther King, Jr. For other posts, go to https://digitalbloggers.com/arts-and-entertainment/ep-blog-posts REALITY: WHAT A CONCEPT Often materialist and physicalists (not to be confused with 'physicists') hate this kind of talk about spirit. One of my best friends, an engineer, but educated as a physicist, was always taking swipes at Heisenberg and Superstring theorists. Recently he, or at least his body, died, and so now I'm dying... to find what his perspectives on spirit and matter are these days. Should be an interesting conversation when I do my 'step-up' in about another 50 years or so. (It might take that long for me to finish all the writing I intend to do.) In any case, I have included some dialogue of this subject from some of my yet 'unpublished' Elysium's Passage book series. From Chapter 1 Book 2, Elysium’s Passage: The Summit ‘It all started with Descartes,’ Mo said, ‘but as I said before, it was not long after his arrival on our side, he recognized the folly of creating, unwittingly, a dual distinction between matter and spirit. After that, it was only a matter to time before intellectuals in philosophy and science dropped the spiritual, and embraced the material. As I’m sure you realize, that’s why no one speaks of spirit in your philosophy and science departments anymore.’ ‘So, are you telling me matter doesn’t matter?’ I said, wishing to take Mo in a less political direction. ‘Let me jump in to answer that,’ Eli said. ‘Matter does matter, depending on how it's understood. That’s what really matters,’ he grinned. ‘When we think of it as something inert and separate from spirit, we banish ourselves from Eden’s garden. However, when it’s rightfully understood to be a vibratory manifestation of spirit, then Spirit is rightly understood to be the substrate of what’s material, and that is. Your spirit body appears to have physical existence because it does, albeit in a higher vibratory octave than your earth plane body.’ ‘You often say that,’ I said, ‘but isn't that something we might find in the Bhagavad-Gita?’ ‘And why should that be a problem,’ Mo said, ‘as if the West has the only valid perspective on reality. But if you prefer the Western bias, let’s use an analogy from empirical science. Think of the iceberg that sank the Titanic. Can you see it? Icebergs are like floating concrete blocks. And yet, in truth, the ice is only an aggregation of crystallized hydrogen and oxygen atoms which at one time were just vapour mists in the air having no material form. ‘But notice what this invisible electromagnetic pattern can do when it becomes dense while colliding with another electromagnetic pattern called the Titanic. When the vapour form is altered to a liquid form and eventually a solid form after freezing, we sudden call this collection of molecules physical. Which, of course, it is. In fact, physical enough to sink ships! And yet, it was just H2O vapour that manifested into a dense electromagnetic pattern of molecules, much like your body in London is a manifested pattern of your soul.’ ‘Likewise,’ Mo said, continuing, ‘thought-patterns, when perceived through the filter of our conscious awareness, crystallizes, by analogue, like an electromagnetic pattern of dense ice. It’s what we do, whenever we collapse the wave into what many still believe are particles of material substance. ‘So now, if you will, try to imagine matter as being these patterns of crystallized thought-forms derived from our divine Source through the agency of our minds, which in turn, are of the divine Mind. When you think about this, it’s the only logical explanation that explains empirical reality. Not surprisingly, that’s because only it is true. And so, there’s no need for turtles all the way down. ‘Unfortunately, the world is in the habit of interpreting material manifestations as tangible particles, inherently real, independent and separate. Anything to the contrary seems too ridiculous to consider from the earth plane’s perception of reality. And yet the New Physics, with its tentative understanding of conscious entanglement, is beginning to take the world beyond its fixation with material solidity.’ For more on this discussion, go to these related posts: PHYSICISTS’ QUOTES https://digitalbloggers.com/arts-and-entertainment/quotes DIMENSIONS, DENSITY AND SPACE https://digitalbloggers.com/arts-and-entertainment/dimensions-density-and-space WHAT’S THE MATTER? https://digitalbloggers.com/book-reviews/matter BREATHE THE SWEET AIR OF FREEDOM In this post, I’ve lifted a few quotes from A Course of Love, one of my favourite inspirational books (channelled by Mari Perron). After years of meditatively reading short daily portions, I recommend it to every serious student of philosophy and spirituality. It’s l ike an onion; each time I read its chapters, I find deeper layers of meaning that continue to become more enriching, both intellectually (mind) and spiritually (heart). One of the chapters, contained in Book 2, (The New You,) repeatedly uses the analogy of prison to illustrate where we often find ourselves in life. Not necessarily in an institution, but within our inward being. The chapter begins with this challenge: “I tell you truthfully that until you are living as who you are and are doing what you love, you are in prison. Further to that, it states: “Just as an actual prisoner, when released from prison, must adjust to freedom… your life has been artificially restricted by the prison you have created of it. The thought of time in prison fills the mind with fear… and yet those who are in prison often become so acclimated to prison life, that life on the outside is no longer seen as a desirable.” Here, I think, is what Gurdjieff is getting at when he states that man: “begins to become fond of his slavery, proud of it.” How many people, especially these days, have grown fond and proud of their prisons of fear often lashing out at all who refuse to participate in their smug nightmare. But then, with the ego and fear being close to synonymous, that shouldn't be too surprising. Unfortunately, it’s easy enough to drift into this prison through various circumstances, such that we don’t even realize where we have locked ourselves. I think many, or perhaps most of us can relate to that at one time or another when we feel constricted by life. In case you are wondering if you are in a prison of your own making, here are some subtle, or perhaps not so subtle ways we might imprison ourselves: "Become aware of what imprisons you... what you think imprisons you may not be what imprisons you at all. What you think is what imprisons you." “You might find it is attitude that imprisons you more than circumstances. “An internally structured life will quickly replace the life of the inmate if you will but let it do so. Breathe the sweet air of freedom. Be aware of the sky above your head and desire no more ceilings to shield you from it. "Even those who actually are incarcerated... are free to follow and internally structured life to a greater extent than many who call themselves free." And so, just for fun... On the other hand, for those of us who are 'free' but haven't 'breathed the fresh air of freedom:' “If, by doing work that brings you no joy and allows you not to be who you are, then you are called to walk away. “If you are tempted by a relationship in which you cannot fully be yourself because of the security it will provide, you are tempted by a false security. “If you are lured away from who you are by a drive to succeed… if you fear doing what you want to do because you might fail… if you follow another’s path and seek not your own, then you have imprisoned yourself for ‘three meals a day.’ So what is it that can make our life feel like a prison when we are outwardly free? Here are some thoughts on that: “Your prison was created by your separated thought system. These systems are the results of your attempts to externalize the patterns contained within. So, these systems of externalized thought patterns, it says, are created by our ego. Then what is the ego? “The ego is quite rightly seen as a system in and of itself. It is thought externalised and given an identity you but falsely believes to be yourself. From this one externalised thought pattern came most of your false ideas.” I’m interested in what others think about the subject of the ego, so have posted an article containing several meaningful quotes by writers. I included this above quote in it, which is most insightful. Go to The Ego Mask https://digitalbloggers.com/relationships/the-ego-mask In the quotes below, this is what is suggested we do about our ego-prison problems. “A life of artificial structure is all any of you have known. Turn your back on the prison of your former existence and do not look at it again. Do not long for its old structure or the false security you seem to feel at times within it. “Do not look for a new structure with barred windows and windows to keep you safe. Do not seek someone to tell you anew what to do with who you are now that you are no longer a prisoner. Do not give keys to a new jailer and ask to be taken care of in exchange for your new newfound freedom. “Become the author of your own life. Live it as you feel called to live it. We cannot build the new upon prison walls of old. Whatever imprisons you, you must now leave behind. You cannot keep your old prison and have the new life that you long to have.” “Its is up to you to accept that your release is possible, to desire it without fear, to call it into being. ‘If you are not willing to claim your freedom, it will not claim you. “Release from prison through death is not the answer, but rather release through life. Do not wait death’s release but find release while still living in form.” DIMENSIONS, DENSITY AND SPACE There has been some talk these days about the earth ascending in space to a higher dimension. I explored this topic briefly a few weeks ago just as many astrologers were alleging that the Age of Aquarius was to begin on December 21st, that being the winter solstice. Also, this was the day of the Great Convergence when Jupiter and Saturn aligned for the first time in almost 800 years. Many say that this means the earth has moved or is moving, into the Fifth Dimensional frequency which might be understood as an energetic step-up into a higher, more refined zone of reality. Since we remain physically in the third dimension and emotionally in the fourth, this would suggest our earth still has a way to go, especially if there are eleven or twelve dimensions in this universe as some physicists suggest. But maybe that’s about to change to earth’s higher field of energy. I hope so since that would mean peace, love and happiness on earth… with or without a VW bus. I make some speculations about the Age of Aquarius in a couple of other posts that you may wish to review. Ascending into 5D https://digitalbloggers.com/relationships/are-we-moving-to-5d and The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius https://digitalbloggers.com/arts-and-entertainment/dawning As I understand it, each dimension is an octave on the spectrum of reality that experiences physicality differently since energy crystalizes in its own holon frequency. For more information on the topic of holons, go to the post: What's a Holon? https://digitalbloggers.com/arts-and-entertainment/what-is-a-holon This brings us to the enduring questions of the relationship between matter and spirit. Some of the most insightful quotes I have come across on this are by Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), Nobel Prize in Physics (1932). Here are some of my favourites by him. I assert the nature of all reality is spiritual, not material or a dualism of matter and spirit. The hypothesis that its nature can be, to any degree, material does not enter into my reckoning, because we understand now that matter, the putting together of the adjective material and the noun nature does not make any sense. Is the nature of reality material or spiritual or a combination of both? I will first ask another question. Is the ocean composed of water or waves, or of both? Interpreting the term material (physical)… corresponds to the waves, not to the water of the ocean of reality. The solid substance of things is another illusion. It too is a fancy projected by the mind into the eternal world. We have chased the solid substance from the continuous liquid of the atom, from the atom to the electron, and there we have lost it. Actualities have been lost in the exigencies of the chase. Insofar as supernaturalism is associated with the denial of strict causality, I can only answer that that is what the modern scientific development of the quantum theory brings us to. In comparing the certainty of things spiritual and things temporal, let us not forget this: mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, all else is remote inference. There are several other quantum physicists who had statements similar to this. I have collected a number of these quotes in this blog post. Physicist's Quotes https://digitalbloggers.com/arts-and-entertainment/quotes In this post, I have included an excerpt from one of my yet unpublished Elysium’s Passage novel series to illustrate how density is relative to the dimensional field energy exists. As indicated in The Summit below, water is a good analogy, where it might be experienced as either vapour, liquid or solid. But rather than restate these observations, I will leave these considerations to the discussions below. For those not familiar with Elysium’s Passage (novel series), let me clarify that most of these discussions happen in an alternative Sixth Dimension reality. James, the protagonist, finds himself in this world with a couple of others, even while his physical earth plane body remains in a coma in London. You may read this and the remainder of this post at DIMENSIONS, DENSITY AND SPACE https://digitalbloggers.com/arts-and-entertainment/dimensions-density-and-space If you find such topics as spirit, matter and dimensions interesting, there are several other posts similar to these on the Elysium’s Passage Blog site. Find the URL links at Blog Post Links to Elysium's Passage https://digitalbloggers.com/arts-and-entertainment/ep-blog-posts SUMMARY OF ELYSIUM'S PASSAGE: THE SUMMIT This the first in a series of five Elysium narrations regarding a young British philosopher named James Phillips, who finds himself living in an altered state of reality while still remaining on earth. After experiencing a near-fatal fall while climbing to the summit of a remote mountain in the Andes, James awakens in a new dimension. He soon encounters two mysterious beings who provide him with a very different perspective on the nature of his existence. Over the next year, before his body recovers from the coma, he is challenged to re-examine his understanding of life’s meaning and purpose far beyond anything he previously believed or could believe. An engaging and sometime surreal adventure with intimations of impending romance, the narrative explores the most important questions about life, death, reality, and our ultimate destiny. The Plains of Elysium (Champs-Élysées) was described by Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, and many other poets as the paradisiac afterlife realm reserved for heroes. As the title suggests, this is about a journey through a passage that leads towards Elysium’s exciting realm of existence. To read a sample press review at https://www.prweb.com/releases/2018/05/prweb15515775.htm The following comments are excerpts from among the first readers, including a number of Amazon five star reviews. To read the full reviews, go to READER REVIEWS on www.elysiumspassage.com or directly at https://digitalbloggers.com/arts-and-entertainment/reader-reviews "A delightful mix of fantasy, reality, conjecture, and humour; Mr Meyers draws the reader into the story with a gentle narrative that captures the imagination, leaving one anxious to get to the next page drawing you into his exceptional world.” "Quietly, gently, and without imposition, the Author unfolds the pages, creating an intricate, interlocking bridge spanning the chasm between mind and heart. Renewing, refreshing, restoring. In my bereavement, it was vigil and light…" “Excellently written with an exceedingly deep understanding of this world and the next. The characters are very well written and engaging. I can't wait to complete this book!" “Takes the reader on both a philosophical and spiritual journey, a journey that at times is both disquieting and tranquil. James, a British Philosopher, can be irreverent and caustic, traits that should have left me cringing, but instead made me laugh out loud. Elysium’s Passage is a fun, enlightening and remarkable book.” “This is a masterful fantasy, becoming a real possibility, as the reader is drawn into the story. The Summit leaves you anxious for the next book in the series, yet also leaves you totally satisfied with the world you have just visited. Genius! An exciting yet calming experience that is not to be missed." "There was hardly a page on which I did not find at least one sentence worthy of hi-lighting for future reference. In addition, I thoroughly enjoyed the main character, James, whose personality and passionate verbal exchanges with the other characters, kept me coming back for more. I am reading the book for a second time while I wait for the next one in this series to be made available." “N.G. Meyers has clearly put a great deal of research and thought into what the afterlife may look like and I like his perspective. It’s an altogether welcoming and exciting vision. The book gives one a great deal to think about and a reassuring confidence that the end of our lives is truly the beginning of life in the next. I highly recommend it." "I am really enjoying your book, it’s fantastic! It is so incredible and diversified that I can’t really explain it to other people, so what I say is just read this book. Thank you so much for the blessings that you’ve given the world!" “The humour interjected into a serious discussion makes me laugh out loud. Totally unexpected....l may be in the presence of at least a master, if not a genius. A fair ride into reality... seeking that which is unseen, yet absolutely real.” “An engaging story of adventure embracing man's deepest desire to search for meaning and purpose, N.G. Meyers takes the reader on an adventurous thought-provoking journey. This book has substance. It is a perfect blend of adventure and fantasy combined with spiritual philosophy. It ignited my imagination. The author magically weaves a good story laced with wit and humour together with deep philosophical wisdom. This book has it all!” “An evolution in thought is triggered by many fresh philosophical themes which could inspire readers to re-think their reality and former ideologies that have dictated their lives… the author fires readers’ imaginations to view what could be possible when spirit vacates the body.” “This is the book spiritual seekers have been waiting for. For me, it granted a great read as well as increased inspiration to live every day with a heightened sense of purpose. I highly recommend it. “The Summit is capable of hooking readers and luring them to search for Book 2 to discover more about Dr. Philip’s surreal trek into the mysterious unknown universe. This thick book is well worth the read and to share…” “Mind-blowing statements and speculation (‘…everyone is a non-physical thought form conceived in the Mind of God, preserved for all eternity because God’s thoughts never die…’). Many will find Meyers’ journey up the Mountain intriguing—and possibly even life-changing.” (BLUEINK REVIEW) “In its effort to grapple with fundamental questions about the meaning of life, it raises questions that have echoed throughout the ages, including about where we come from, where we are going, who we are.” (CLARION REVIEW) PENDING PUBLICATIONS IN THE SERIES The Summit is now available for purchase. With the exception of the last novel, the other three have been written but still require more editing before publication. The following titles in the Elysium's Passage series are projected to be released as follows: THE ASCENT soon to be available THE SUMMIT soon to be available QUANTUM LEAPS summer 2021 SURREAL ADVENTURES summer 2021 MYSTICAL ROMANCE spring 2022 HE ELIXIR spring 2022 THE RETURN sometime in 2023 CONTACT INFORMATION & SOCIAL MEDIA SITES EMAIL: nmeyers@shaw.ca FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/neil.meyers.1 or www.facebook.com/elysiumspassage/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Neil1113 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/meyersneil/ PINTEREST: https://www.pinterest.ca/neilmeyers/ LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-meyers For more blog postings click: https://digitalbloggers.com/articles/elysiumspassage YouTube: Elysium Passage Channel AMAZON: Elysium's Passage: The Summit and is now available View more articles by Neil Meyers (178) BE THOU MY VISION SOWING HAPPY SEEDS OF GRATITUDE DAILY MESSAGE ARCHIVES FEBRUARY 2020 'PRINCE OF PEACE' PAINTING BY 8 YR OLD IS FREE WILL FREE? View all articles by Neil Meyers More Arts and Entertainment Articles Click here to get notified every time Neil Meyers posts new articles... Neil Meyers	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line23
__label__wiki	0.607032	0.607032	On Marianne Moore’s “Silence” The mishmash of the poet (author) with the speaker of the poem (fiction), in verse or prose, is a misprision often attacked by the greats, whether William Gaddis, via one of his characters (“They think if something happened to them that it’s interesting because it happened to them”), or Geoffrey Hill, writing on the late 20th century dependence on “the quotidian and how it has been, with significant exceptions, overvalued as the authenticating factor in works of the imagination. The poem itself, assessed in this way, becomes the author’s promise to pay on demand, to provide real and substantial evidence of a suffering life for which the poem itself is merely a kind of tictac or flyer.” The collocation has become so radioactive in our culture, one searches for a foothold along the slippery rocks near pop parlance’s viscous lagoon. Luckily, Marianne Moore detailed her “borrowings” in the notes sections of her various books. The first one held the caveat, “acknowledgements seem only honest,” adding the proviso that more fanciful readers might “take probity on faith … and disregard the notes.” In “Silence,” a poem published almost 100 years ago in The Dial (October 1924), Moore paints a picture that can easily be consigned to the confessional poet realm that came to dominate English-language poetry from the 1950s onward. My father used to say, “Superior people never make long visits, have to be shown Longfellow’s grave nor the glass flowers at Harvard. Self reliant like the cat— that takes its prey to privacy, the mouse’s limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth— they sometimes enjoy solitude, and can be robbed of speech by speech which has delighted them. The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.” Nor was he insincere in saying, “Make my house your inn.” Inns are not residences. All but two and a half lines are in quotations marks, Moore’s quotation marks. I can hear the murmurs of interpretation — e.g. “To have had such a bilious paterfamilias as he … someone who would talk in tedious epigrams” — but something happens within the long block of the speaker’s father’s speech: his thought patterns don’t match anything said from “Self reliant like the cat—” to “The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.” It is a more lyrical voice, concomitant with the detours and witticisms of the speaker’s voice in many Moore poems. It is maybe how the speaker’s father would like to describe himself, if he had imagination, but he can’t — and wouldn’t — because if he understood the tenure of those lines, he would object, except for the last one, “not in silence, but restraint,” which seems a retort to the speaker’s (not the father’s), “The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;” with the semi-colon being the net between the two sparring family members. It is unimaginable the father could believe such a sentiment. He is caught up in pontificating to the “silent” people, like his spawn, whether male or female, who is “self reliant” and certainly has a higher propensity to be “robbed of speech / by speech which has delighted them,” as most poet types, whether poetasters or the real thing, do. Even if the poem can be read this way — more about the reaction of the progeny and less about the buffoonish father — it becomes even more confessional. And if one takes associative pleasure in it, such as thinking, My father or mother was a hard-ass, too, so much the better. Poetry can comfort and assuage, it just doesn’t comfort and assuage everyone — at least that’s what those people claim. Although, the father of Marianne Moore never said the things set out in the poem. He wasn’t a success like the figure here. Moore never met him; he suffered a psychotic episode before she was born and her parents separated. In fact, according to Moore’s notes, Miss A.M. Homans, Professor Emeritus of Hygiene at Wellesley said, “My father used to say, ‘superior people never make long visits, then people are not so glad when you’ve gone.’” “Self reliant like the cat” and beyond, up until “Nor was he insincere in saying,” is all Moore, until philosopher Edmund Burke makes an appearance with the line, “’Make my house your inn,’” from A Life of Burke by James Prior, before the coup de grace “Inns are not residences,” which is, again, Moore, infusing more pomposity into the situation: the joke’s on the father, even if he thinks he’s a good citizen. So the poem is a construct, like much of Moore’s work. As Guy Davenport writes, “Her subjects are those of a mind intent on seeing things not only for what they are precisely, but how they act in and with the imagination.” Her methodology demonstrates a good exercise in creativity: listen to people, read some old books, think, and presto, poetry. Is there a sense of being robbed out there? I can imagine a few of the people who were outraged by the James Frey scandal might feel a little swindled here, especially if they repeatedly stoke their cognitive experience on identifying with the author’s pain. Perhaps the penultimate line is most telling: “The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence,” which is the truest of all the epigrams and is probably a version of something Moore read, forgot, but engrafted into her thought — that synthesizing in artistry called “Putting wisdom in your own words.” The expected emotional discharge — on the order of “I hate my father” — is never stated, but forwarded obliquely to give the poem’s tragedy more potency: the speaker won’t talk directly to the father. Silence is very far from restraint, it is a glorious weapon and often the only one available. Sometimes masques or personas are very close to the source (the writer), and the closer they seem, the more latitude one has with the audience, more trust; and the audience is happy to comply, even to be played. In the spirit of Moore’s infamous line describing poetry as “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” here her artistry says, “Make my poem your inn.” To those invested in pari-mutuel pain, the poem magically adds, Take what you need, there’s enough to go around. And perhaps it’s fitting to end with Wallace Stevens’s shrewd take-away on the many-faceted Moore from a review, further imbricating the relationship of the poet and the speaker of the poem, with a third entity, the person: Miss Moore’s form is not the quirk of a self-conscious writer. She is not a writer. She is a woman who has profound needs. In any project for poetry … the first effort should be devoted to establishing that poets are men and women, not writers.	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line25
__label__wiki	0.890358	0.890358	The Crucible by Arthur Miller The Crucible by the American playwright Arthur Miller, is a powerful drama of intolerance, prejudice and the dangers of religious fundamentalism. Miller sets the play in Salem, a small town in Massachusetts, U.S.A., in 1692. As a result of some amateur dabbling in the supernatural by a group of adolescent girls the local jails were eventually filled with men and women accused of witchcraft Twenty of them were hanged at Gallows Hill in Salem after lengthy and dubious trials in which the girls were encouraged to make accusations against their elders. Much of the evidence was discredited later as malicious and false. These are the historical facts used by Miller. To understand this phenomenon we have to remember that the inhabitants of Salem believed in witches and the Devil, and also believed that the Bible instructed them that witches must be hanged. The seeds of this terrifying event had grown in an isolated society under great pressure to defend it's Christian way of life in a new continent and to protect their society against attacks by Indians in the unknown land behind them. The characters in the play are based on real life people who took part in the events portrayed. Miller altered some details, for example John Proctor was a tavern keeper and not a farmer. After the fever died down the Rev Parris was voted from office. He walked away and was never heard of again. Legend has it that Abigail turned up later in Boston as a prostitute. Elizabeth married again four years after John Proctor's death. Twenty years after the last execution the government awarded compensation to the victims still living, and to the families of the dead. However, some people were unwilling to admit their guilt for some of the beneficiaries were not victims but informers. In solemn meeting in March 1712, the congregation rescinded the excommunications on the orders of the government. The jury wrote a statement praying forgiveness of all those who had suffered. Certain farms which had belonged to the victims were left to ruin, and for more than a century no one would buy or live on them, but to all intents and purposes the power of theocracy in Massachusetts was broken. Three centuries later, on October 31st 2001, a pardon for the final five "witches" was signed into law by the State Government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts after a protracted campaign by descendants of the victims. It is generally considered that Miller meant the play as an attack on McCarthyism, the political "witch-hunt" in America in the 1950's. However, the play was first produced before McCarthy's hearings began. In the present situation in today's world the play seems even more relevant. John Hester November 2001 <BACK Review from the Magazine of the Parish Church St. John-at-Hampstead Arthur Miller wrote of The Crucible that it portrayed 'one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history'. We who have lived through the twentieth century have supped full of horrors, so these are strong words - especially as he underlines the historical accuracy of the play. It was not surprising therefore that from the moment we were confronted with the skilful and menacing set which John Risebero had designed for the play we knew we were headed for dark and unlovely places. The Hampstead Players [note the exhibition of their twenty-five years of achievement] have never shirked a challenge, and here was a challenge of a particular kind. The play gives us little respite from the onward surge of fear and persecution until the final fall on the scaffold. John Hester and Pat Gardner brought to this a profound understanding and a production that gave full weight to the drama of conflict [conflict, it has been said, is a man trying to get through a locked door.] The locked door here is between those who are blindfolded by their beliefs and those who can see. Through scenes of what has been called 'scorching drama' we were led to the heart of the conflict, by means of acting of an exceptionally high standard. In so long a cast I cannot [though I would like to] name them all. Mark Young as the dubious Samuel Parris led us into the troubled complexities of the play with just the right air of profound apprehension. Inevitably John Proctor takes centre stage as a troubled man who makes his journey through this jungle of superstition finally to his resolve when he tears up his confession. In what was surely one of his best performances David Gardner brought him clearly before us with convincing strength. [Certainly the final scene where he wrestles with his conscience, and with Hale and Danforth, and like a note of doom, the cry goes "the sun is up" has great tension and force.] In Bill Risebero's moving and sensitive performance John Hale was a true and arresting personality - it seemed right that he should be found kneeling at the end when Elizabeth Proctor lives through her husband's execution. And here, as earlier, Angela Bates was extremely moving as Elizabeth. I found that the play gained even greater power and pace in the second act, and I was much impressed by John Willmer as Danforth. He spoke with such authority that I almost felt he had come to set all to rights, but of course life - and The Crucible - isn't like that, and Danforth was amongst the blind. Most impressive too were the girls, especially Abigail and Mary Warren. Emily Paine gave us a very real Abigail - she had a fine quality of stillness. Georgina Cox made the pitiful hysteria of Mary Warren painfully moving. And I cannot forget Gaynor Bassey as Tituba - she was the nearest we came to a light touch and as always wonderfully at home in her part. All of these - and those others who played with them - were given sure help by Joan Barton and her assistants. The severe Puritan dress gave the right dimension to the play and made it a pleasure to the eye. The sound [music, being the food of love would have been out of place here] was perfectly overseen by Matthew Risebero. This, it seemed to me, was a craggy mountain of a play, which the Hampstead Players - both those on stage and behind it - triumphed in climbing, and in so doing gave us a haunting experience which it will be hard to forget. Diana Raymond December 2001 Act Four	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line30
__label__cc	0.743686	0.256314	Traditional Governance and the Theology of Law Document Type : Original Article Davood Feirahi Faculty of Political Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran 10.22081/jips.2020.69372 If governance is to be designated into two respective categories, namely the traditional and modern periods, the foundations of political thought in Shiite Iran have assuredly been established on the traditional governance approach. Monarchy and Sharia constitute the two fundamental elements in the traditional governance archetype. The connotation of law in this concept is defined as the same as Sharia, and the monarchy is in fact the implementation of the law. This concept, which culminated in the Safavid period (1501-1736 AD) and later prevailed as a valid belief in this land, is the basis of Iranian political thought in the contemporary period. The jurists likewise attained a remarkable position in the traditional governance parallel with the perceived significance of Sharia as the law, and in some cases, shifted the political power balance in their favor. Nevertheless, the entirety of traditional governance fell into a state of turmoil and decline and underwent many transformations in the face of the emerging and potent rival of modernity. This article strives to study this occurrence of great magnitude in the most remarkable works of this period's intellectuals, including Mullah Sadra and Mullah Mohsen Fayz Kashani, and assess the relevance and consequences of this occurrence on the current presumed new situation. Ijtihad al-Ghazali. (1973). Ihya’ ‘ulum ad-din. Tehran: Elmi Farhangi Publishing Co. al-Qaradawi, Y. (January 26, 2003). Ash-Shariah wal-Hayat; al-Fiqh-il-Islamia-fi-Muvajih-il-Tatour. al-Jazeera. al-Shahid al-Thani. (1988). Haqa'iq al-iman. Qom: Awwal. al-Shahid al-Thani. (2000). Rasa'il al-Shahid al-Thani (Vol. 2). Qom: Islamic Propagation Office. al-Taftazani. (1988). Sharh al-Maqassid. Qom: Offset. al-Tawq al-Qatifi, A. (2001). Risala al-Tawq al-Qatifi (Vol.3). Dar al-Mustafa li Ihya al-Turath. Ashtiani, M. H. (2009). Bahr al-Fawaed Fi sharh al-Faraed (3rd ed., Vol. 3). Qom:n.p. Bahrani, Y. (1984). Al-Hadaiq al-Nazira fi Ahkam Al-'Itrat Al-Tahira. Qom: Islamic Publications Office. Fadhil Toni, M. A. (2002). Risala fi Salat-il-Juma’ (R. Ja’fariyan, Ed.). Qom: Ansarian. Fayz Kashani, M. (1996). al-Mahajjat al-baydaʾ fī tahdhib al-iḥya’ (Vols. 1, 7). Qom; Islamic Publication Office. Fayz Kashani, M. (1997). 'Ilm al-yaqin (M. Bidarfar, Ed.). Qom: Bidar. Fayz Kashani, M. (2004). Anwar Al Hikmah. Qom: Bidar. Fayz Kashani, M. (1944). Risala fi Tarjumat-il-Salat, al-Fatnameh and the Royal Mirror. Shiraz: Mousavi. Fayz Kashani, M. (2008 a). al-Usul al-asliyya (A. Naghibi, Ed.). Tehran: Shahid Motahhari High School. Fayz Kashani, M. (2008 b). Safina-to-nejat (H. Emami Kashani, Ed.). Tehran: Shahid Motahhari High School. Feirahi, D. (2017). Power, Knowledge and Legitimacy in Islam (5th ed.). Tehran: Nashr-e Ney. Ibn Sina. (1984). al-Shifa (S. Zaayed, Ed.). Qom: Library of Ayatollah al-Mar’ashi. Kaempfer, E. (1981). Kaempfer's travelogue to Iran (K. Jahandari, Trans.). Tehran: Khwarizmi press Mazandarani, M. S. (1968). Sharh-e Usul al-Kafi. Tehran:n.p. Mohaqiq Hilli. (1983). Ma'arij al-Usul (M. H. Razavi, Ed.). Qom: Aal al-Bayt Institute. Mulla Sadra. (1975). al-Mabda' wa l-Ma'ad (S. J. Ashtiani, Ed.). Tehran; Association of Wisdom and Philosophy. Mulla Sadra. (1984). Mafatih al-Ghayb (M. Khajavi, Ed.). Tehran: Cultural Research Institute. Muzaffar, M. R. (1996). Aqa'id al-Imamiyah (M. J. al-Tarihi, Ed.). Qom: Imam Ali Foundation. Shahrestani, M. (1985). al-Milal wa al-Nihal (3rd ed., Vol. 1). Qom:. Shaykh Ansari. (n.d.). Fara'id ul-Usul (9th ed., Vol. 2). Qom: n.p Feirahi, D. (2020). Traditional Governance and the Theology of Law. Journal of Islamic Political Studies, 2(3), 37-64. doi: 10.22081/jips.2020.69372 Davood Feirahi. "Traditional Governance and the Theology of Law". Journal of Islamic Political Studies, 2, 3, 2020, 37-64. doi: 10.22081/jips.2020.69372 Feirahi, D. (2020). 'Traditional Governance and the Theology of Law', Journal of Islamic Political Studies, 2(3), pp. 37-64. doi: 10.22081/jips.2020.69372 Feirahi, D. Traditional Governance and the Theology of Law. Journal of Islamic Political Studies, 2020; 2(3): 37-64. doi: 10.22081/jips.2020.69372	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line36
__label__wiki	0.562775	0.562775	This image of the Lesotho flag is in the Public Domain and can be used freely. If you use it on a webpage, a link to http://ourworldflags.com/Lesotho would be very much appreciated. The flag of Lesotho The current national flag of Lesotho, adopted on October 4, 2006, features a horizontal blue, white, and green tricolour with a black mokorotlo (a Basotho hat) in the center. National Flag of Lesotho: EPS vector format in both official proportions and a standard sized 3:5 ratio version. $4.95 - Lesotho - Macintosh - Download (. The first flag of Lesotho was introduced on October 4, 1966, the day of Lesotho's full independence from the United Kingdom. It featured a prominent white mokorotlo. The blue stood for sky and rain, the white for peace, the green for land, and the red for faith. The flag of Lesotho contains three horizontal bands colored blue, white and green. In the center of the white band is a black Mokorotio. The flag was adopted on October 4, 2006 in honor of Lesotho`s 40th year anniversary of independence. The flag of Lesotho consists of three horizontal stripes of blue (top), white, and green in the proportions of 3:4:3; the colors represent rain, peace, and prosperity respectively; centered in the white stripe is a black Basotho hat representing the indigenous people; the flag Flag of Lesotho: three horizontal stripes of blue (top), white, and green in the proportions of 3:4:3; the colors represent rain, peace, and prosperity respectively; centered in the white stripe is a black Basotho hat representing the indigenous people; the flag was unfurled in October	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line40
__label__wiki	0.831138	0.831138	The Concretes First there were three of them. Three teenage girls, three city girls, vaguely afraid of the outdoors, calling themselves The Concretes to befit such, wanting to start a band to show the boys in Stockholm that they could do it too. They had to learn how to play an instrument, any instrument; had to find one of them who wasn't too scared to sing, but they did this by taking their cues from The Ronettes, striving to embody such strutting sass as they picked up guitar/microphone/drumstick for the very first time. Then there were six of them, with actual boys roped in, wanting to indulge in extra instruments, with bass and analog organ and mandolin all brought on board, this beefed-up mix taking cues from Phil Spector as they sought to build a wall of sound as imposing as any of the city's concrete structures to which the group's nomenclature is forever indebted. Then there were two records, which became one album, which became Boyoubetterunow, which as debut signaled that something truly special was going on deep in the heart of the heart of Stockholm's city. Forget the urban jungle, though, because instead of going under, The Concretes were transcending all these limitations of structure and geography and pop-cultural stereotype, their disc at pirouetting play in some ungodly-good Elysian Fields of girl-group reverie and beautifully-recorded twang and pretty playfulness and light-headed romance and all of that good good-stuff. If Sweden had given up great girl-fronted groups in the recent days before them — Komeda, The Cardigans, Red Sleeping Beauty — The Concretes were without doubt, as the hip-hoppers say, some of that next level shit. Actually, forget the next level, forget the top floor, even, they were above all that, transcending the imposed ceilings of the city that is their (conceptual, even) home, going beyond all such limitations of place so often kept in place. After that album settled, and no one despite Bob Stanley (and me!) seemed to see the glory for how glorious it truly was, then The Concretes returned to their home and set out setting out all over again. First there were seven of them. Then eight of them. Now there are around 10 of them regularly, 12 most times they play live, 15 on a good night. Even more when they get any-friend-who-can-sing up on stage in some of the, like, choral moments. We're talking as many as can fit, minus the robes, minus the desire to make a marketing angle out of the size and scope of all of them, together; especially because it still really seems like, at core, The Concretes are still just three girl-group girls. Here, now, there's instruments sprawling out everywhere, strings and organs stacked up to the sky, vocals heading up to heaven on the holiness of this pop-cultural purity. An elephant's eye is an inappropriately low metaphor to imply the sky-high heights to which The Concretes' craft now soars as they now take cues only from themselves, feeding off the fact that they're, to these ears, the best pop band in the history of time. Or, well, uh, OK, at least the best pop band in the history of this moment; playing up a debut disc proper that's the best record in the history of 2003 as it stands so far. It's rare, for me, to meet a record even deserving of vague allusions to such hyped-up hyperbole, not to mention the fact that indulging in such, even if you see it as deserved, is the kind of shit that gives cats scrawling words about albums a bad name. But, my friend, this is the rarest of records, and, like, this purple prose comes from a heart swollen with a listener's love, love transcending the tacky nature of fandom, I hope, and being only as pure as the intent of this record. Oh, I do swoon.	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line43
__label__cc	0.536886	0.463114	Nick Enfield \| The Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia: The State of the Art The Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia: The State of the Art Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton (2015), Berlin The studies in this book represent the rich, diverse and substantial research being conducted today in the linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia. The chapters cover a broad scope. Several studies address questions of language relatedness, often challenging conventional assumptions about the status of language contact as an explanatory factor in accounting for linguistic similarities. Several address the question of Mainland Southeast Asia as a linguistic area, exploring new ways to imagine and define the boundaries, and indeed the boundedness, of a Mainland Southeast Asia area. Two contributions rethink the received notion of the ‘sesquisyllable’ with new empirical and theoretical angles. And a set of chapters explores topics in the morphology and syntax of the region’s languages, sometimes challenging orthodox assumptions and claims about what a typical language of Mainland Southeast Asia is like. Written by leading researchers in the field, and with a substantial overview of current knowledge and new directions by the volume editors N. J. Enfield and Bernard Comrie, this book will serve as an authoritative source on where the linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia is at, and where it is heading.	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line44
__label__cc	0.589692	0.410308	HMS Sirius Kavha Norfolk Island Museum Trust Pier Store No. 10 Quality Row Commissariat Store Tickets and Tours On the corner of Middlegate Road and Quality Row, in the lower level of All Saints Church. What’s on display The exhibitions here begin with the story of archaeological digs in the KAVHA area together with the islands fauna, flora and geology. The very first inhabitants on the island were the Polynesians and items including hearthstones and adzes recovered during digs in the area behind Emily Bay, help to tell the intriguing story of their time on the island. However the main displays here are on the First and Second Settlements as they bring Norfolk’s convict past alive. Objects include glass beads and ceramic pieces from the First Settlement and whips, leg irons and crankwheels from the cruel Second Settlement. The extensive building program of the Second Settlement is covered with many stone, timber and metal objects. An 8 metre photographic montage of the Kingston area taken in 1867 really allows an appreciation of the extent of the buildings, barracks and gaol area that existed. Finally, the ceramics exhibition is a magnificent display covering an extensive range of makers, styles and production types. When the Pier Store was flooded in 1834 Commandant Anderson decided to build a new Commissariat away from the waterfront. The Commissariat took only six months to build and was opened in 1835. It consisted of three floors and a basement. The first floor contained a glass partitioned office, a meal room, office and store. The second an engineer store, grain store and office. The third floor was used solely for the storage of grain. The basement originally housed the liquor and general store which in 1845 was converted to an issue room. The front steps were constructed after the main building masonry had been completed and are unusually positioned as they cover a part of two of the basement windows. After the Pitcairners arrival in 1856 the basement continued to be used for a store. In 1874 the main or lower floor ceiling was removed to create a double story space for All Saints Church. The basement level was opened as a Museum in the 1990s. TAG-A-LONG TOUR VISITS (INCLUDED IN THE MUSEUM PASS): Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Commencing at the R.E.O Bookshop at 9:30am NORFOLK ISLAND MUSEUM Phone and fax: (Int) + 6723 23788 \| Email: info@museums.gov.nf	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line46
__label__wiki	0.611892	0.611892	You are here: Home / News / Community News / Features / Thai king, longest-reigning monarch, marks 88th birthday — Seattle posts billboards honoring Bhumibol Adulyadej Thai king, longest-reigning monarch, marks 88th birthday — Seattle posts billboards honoring Bhumibol Adulyadej BANGKOK (AP) — The people of Thailand on Saturday marked the 88th birthday of their king, the world’s longest-reigning monarch – but with their once-vigorous leader in a hospital and unseen in public for three months, the celebrations were the most subdued in memory. However the Seattle Thai community posted billboards commemorating his birthday. King Bhumibol Adulyadej looked frail on his last appearance before the general public on Sept. 1, when he was taken on a brief tour of the Bangkok hospital where he has spent most of the last six years. His most recent ailment was a lung infection that required him to be fed intravenously and use a machine to aid his breathing. Many public activities were being held for the royal birthday, but there were no joyous celebrations of the type that used to be held before the decline of the king’s health. One major gathering point this year was outside the hospital that has become his de facto palace, where well-wishers came to offer their prayers. The king’s other medical issues in recent years have included excess fluid in the brain and an operation to remove his gallbladder. A somber reminder of his generation’s passing came Saturday morning with the death of 96-year-old former Foreign Minister Siddhi Savetsila, a member of the Privy Council, the king’s personal advisory board. While he is a constitutional monarch with no formal political role, Bhumibol — King Rama IX — has generally been regarded as Thailand’s unifying figure. His intervention during major political crises is generally seen as having been key to restoring the status quo. Before the decline in his health, Bhumibol’s birthday had also been the occasion for a much-anticipated annual speech in which he would speak his mind to exercise his authority as the country’s moral leader. Love of the monarchy is almost seen as the definition of Thainess. But it is not so clear whether the people’s strong devotion for the king will be transferred to his son and heir apparent, 63-year-old Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, who does not have his father’s record of public service. Social and political schisms that have sometimes led to violence over the past decade have added to the air of uncertainty about what may happen after Bhumibol’s reign is over. “I don’t know what to think,” said Thaweewat Chongsuanoiy, a banker. He was wearing a “Bike for Dad” T-shirt promoting a mass cycling event scheduled Dec. 11 under the prince’s auspices to honor the king. “He has been the person that holds the people together; without him, people would be lost,” Thaweewat said. (end) Filed Under: Features, Profiles, Community News Tagged With: 2015, Foreign Minister Siddhi Savetsila, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Privy Council, Seattle Thai, Thailand, Thaweewat Chongsuanoiy, Vol 34 No 51 \| December 12 - December 18	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line47
__label__cc	0.691668	0.308332	What The Internet Tells Us About Weight Loss Post author By Michael McGinnis Over the past decade, the Internet has exploded into a global marketplace for self-reported information about one’s health. In response, we have seen our attitudes about weight change radically, and as of October 2013, Americans are the fattest people on Earth. In this presentation I will explore these recent changes in our attitudes about weight, and explain how to use this information both negatively and positively (or less). An important change in weight perception occurred last year as the media was covering research showing that an increase in saturated fat levels were linked to an increased risk of metabolic syndrome. A growing group of doctors and other health experts were also coming out with similar findings. Many people became alarmed and began looking to diet rather than medicine to make sense of their bodies. And yet, as with everything else about being modern, the information didn’t sit in place very long, because the public conversation eventually went to weight loss. One result was the rise of the celebrity blogger who published weight loss books. The popularity of these books and celebrities is, ironically, a reflection of the growing interest in nutrition, weight and body image. At its heart, the diet book industry is built entirely around the idea that dieting will lead to weight loss. If people really believed in the power of dieting, why wouldn’t they buy a diet book that would help them lose weight? In my presentations there is a very common belief that people who are obese, and therefore have the same health risk factors as a normal person, have different diseases. So if I was a weight loss author and I could persuade one person to lose weight, and that person lost weight then I would feel more successful. But the fact is that our genes, our lifestyle, our diet, and a host of other variables all play a role in weight gain and loss and whether people gain or lose weight. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of the obese in this country are overweight or obese and yet live healthier lifestyles than normal weight people, even if it means that we now have more obese people than normal weight people. Because of this, diets don’t work. And, in fact, they can make things much worse and they can be very dangerous. To understand this, it is important to understand that diet and exercise don’t get at the same kinds of health problems – like heart disease — they are best at preventing and at addressing. Here’s an example: we all know that people who exercise often have greater health benefits than those who don’t. But how many people realise that people who exercise regularly tend to keep their weight down, too, and that people who exercise frequently tend to have very low risks of cardiovascular disease and diabetes than people who don’t exercise? We believe this is the case because we have a very clear understanding of the differences between exercising and sitting all day and the dangers of sitting all day. But what many do not understand is that the dangers of sitting all day don’t diminish with exercise. So, for example, people who walk to work have lower risks of diabetes and cardiovascular disease than people who drive to work. But people who sit to work have a higher risk of diabetes and heart disease. But people who don’t exercise and sit instead are at no greater risk of having diabetes or heart disease than people who drive to work. Even the difference in mortality between active and sedentary people is the same for walking vs. driving. So the risks of health problems for people who regularly exercise vastly exceed those of the same people who sit to work all day. So, not only do people not have to be overweight to prevent health problems, many people are significantly more healthful than they think they are What you want in a diet book is a book that helps you lose weight. But that’s just the beginning. Let’s look at the Internet for information about weight loss. A common myth is that the Internet tells people that diet books work. Not exactly: the Internet doesn’t “tell people about what they want.” Why Does Weight Loss Work? In The Secret to Weight Loss, Dr. Robert Atkins says it's possible for people to… How To Make Weight Loss A Habit The best thing you can do to lose weight is to start making it a… What You Need To Know About Eating For Weight Loss I am in a relationship where we're trying to lose weight. She's the only one… How It Really Feels To Feel The Weight Loss Burn Some of the people who I have been working with the longest are not the… ← How To Have It All: A Six-week Guide To Creating A Life Beyond What You Have Today → How To Become Emotionally Connected With My Daughter	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line50
__label__wiki	0.97076	0.97076	Home NHL NHL Buzz: Hoffman debuts with Canadiens against Sharks – NHL.com NHL Buzz: Hoffman debuts with Canadiens against Sharks – NHL.com Comments Off on NHL Buzz: Hoffman debuts with Canadiens against Sharks – NHL.com Mike Hoffman made his Canadiens debut against the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; RDS, TSN2, NBCSCA, ESPN+, NHL LIVE). The forward, who agreed to a three-year contract July 28, was injured during the offseason prior to arriving in Montreal and did not participate in training camp. Hoffman skated on the third line with Adam Brooks and Brendan Gallagher. “He’s a team guy and I think he proved it too,” coach Dominique Ducharme said Monday. “Like if you go back in Ottawa, they went to the conference final (2017) and he was playing with [Jean-Gabriel] Pageau and quite often against the best line on the other side. So he’s able to play. He’s a hockey player, he can play 5-on-5, and for sure he’s going to help us on the power play.” Brock Boeser made his season debut against the Buffalo Sabres (7 p.m. ET; SN360, MSG-B, ESPN+, NHL LIVE). The forward was activated off injured reserve. He has not played this season because of an undisclosed injury after leading Vancouver in goals (23) and points (49) in 56 games last season. Boeser, who said the injury was lingering during training camp, practiced on a line with Elias Pettersson and Alex Chiasson. “Just taking everything a day at a time,” Boeser said Monday. “First step today was to get through practice and I felt like I had a pretty good practice today so we’ll see what happens tomorrow.” Defenseman Travis Hamonic was placed on a temporary leave of absence Monday because of a personal matter. “We have to worry about the guys that are here and coach the guys that are here,” Green said. “But also there’s the human side of it, and we miss ‘Hammer.’ We want him to be back playing, but we also want to make sure he’s OK.” — Kevin Woodley Yanni Gourde made his Kraken debut against the New Jersey Devils (7 p.m. ET; MSG+, ROOT-NW, ESPN+, NHL LIVE). The forward, who was selected from the Tampa Bay Lightning in the 2021 NHL Expansion Draft, was expected to be out for the first two months of the season after having offseason shoulder surgery but missed the first week. He scored 36 points (17 goals, 19 assists) in 56 games last season and helped the Lightning win the Stanley Cup for the second straight season. “Yanni has worked extremely hard to get in this position,” Kraken general manager Ron Francis said. “He’s ready to go. There’s no question he will help our lineup.” As for why it’s time to join the lineup, Gourde said, “Just how I feel, the timing of the game, not playing a back-to-back and a few days in between this game and the next game (at home against the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday). All of that was in consideration and how I felt and how the team felt about putting me out there. That’s really how it went.” Gourde credited his ability to return earlier than expected to “great treatments. I don’t know. I put in the work and I feel good.” Coach Dave Hakstol said Gourde has full availability. “Now, it’s Game 1 so we will be cognizant of that in terms of the situations and the minutes,” Hakstol said. “With how hard he has worked and knowing the energy he has, we’ll pay attention to that, but I’m confident he’ll be ready to go.” Goalie Chris Driedger was placed on injured reserve with an undisclosed injury sustained during his Kraken debut Monday, when he made six saves on seven shots in 31:11 in relief of Philipp Grubauer in a 6-1 loss at the Philadelphia Flyers. Goalie Joey Daccord will start Tuesday after being recalled from Charlotte of the American Hockey League. Forward Kole Lind was assigned to Charlotte. Blake Wheeler is not playing for the Jets at the Minnesota Wild (8 p.m. ET; BSN, BSWI, TSN3, ESPN+, NHL LIVE) because of NHL COVID-19 protocol. “Obviously, he’s a big loss, the captain of our team, the guy we all look to, the guy,” forward Mark Scheifele said. “He’s always tough, but guys got to step up in that situation. We’ve got the guys to do it. We’ll all rally together and step up tonight, even though it’s going to be a tough test here against Minnesota, you just got to be ready to put our best foot forward tonight.” Wheeler, who was placed in protocol Monday, has one assist in two games this season. The forward tied for third on the team in scoring last season with 46 points (15 goals, 31 assists) in 50 games. — Jessi Pierce Evgeni Malkin skated for the first time this season Monday. The center wore a tracksuit and was on the ice about an hour before the Penguins practiced. He is expected to be out at least the first two months of the season after having knee surgery June 4. “Anytime a player goes back on the ice, I think it’s significant,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “Obviously he was in a tracksuit earlier today. It was his first step. He’s been working extremely hard off the ice, going through the rehab process. But certainly that’s a significant step for him.” Pittsburgh was without first-line center Sidney Crosby and right wing Bryan Rust against the Dallas Stars at PPG Paints Arena on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; ATTSN-PT, BSSW, ESPN+, NHL LIVE). Crosby missed his fourth straight game after having wrist surgery Sept. 8. He did not practice Monday. Rust is week to week with a lower-body injury sustained in a 5-4 overtime loss to the Florida Panthers on Thursday. He did not play in a 5-2 win against the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday. Jeff Carter is currently in Crosby’s spot on the first line, with Danton Heinen replacing Rust at right wing. Jake Guentzel remains first-line left wing. Defenseman Mike Matheson returned to practice Monday and played Tuesday after missing the first three games with a lower-body injury. Defenseman Mark Friedman sustained a lower-body injury in practice that Sullivan said is not expected to be significant but he will not play Tuesday. — Wes Crosby Previous article Bossy diagnosed with lung cancer, won Stanley Cup four times – NHL.com Next article NBA opening night: Stephen Curry posts 'trash' triple-double; Russell Westbrook flops in Lakers debut – CBS Sports 4 NFL Players Who Will Break Out on New Teams in 2020 – Bleacher Report Coronavirus and the 2020 NFL season: Answering frequently asked questions about how COVID-19 affects football – CBS Sports Colin Kaepernick NFL workout: Which teams will attend? – Yahoo Sports Everything you need to know about the 2020-21 NBA season – NBA.com How the N.B.A. Forgot Dwight Howard – The New York Times	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line53
__label__wiki	0.712493	0.712493	Right 2 Education Week 2013 shows growing international support for Palestinian... Prison Playground: the effects of detention upon children What about the Palestinian school children in Syria? Home » Education Denied » What about the Palestinian school children in Syria? Before civil war broke out in Syria, the situation for Palestinian refugee school children in the country was already close to breaking point. UN schools spill over into playground tents Nearly 70,000 young Palestinian refugees are registered in just 118 UNRWA schools, the UN agency dealing with refugee affairs. With the number of pupils growing yearly, resources had become severely stretched. Schools were often operating on a double, if not triple, shift in order to cater to the huge number of pupils – with very early starts for the first shift, late nights for the late shift, and exhausted pupils and teachers. With the outbreak of civil war in March 2011, the situation rapidly deteriorated for Palestinian refugees for a number of reasons. In terms of allegiance, Palestinians were caught in a tight spot, squeezed between staying loyal to a brutal government which had nevertheless supported them historically, and participating in the Syrian population’s rebellion. In terms of security, they also became one of the most vulnerable groups in Syria. To this date, over half have been displaced. Despite Israel bearing responsibility for both the Nakba of 1948 and the occupation of 1967, Israel has offered no safe haven for the twice refugee Palestinians. Of course, children have been among the worst to suffer. The civil war has disrupted their childhood and denied them their basic right to education. In September of 2013, the true situation became starkly clear. When the Autumn semester was due to begin again, UNRWA announced that only one third of all students had registered for school. A combination of damage to school buildings and general security fears had led to the closure of 69 of the 118 UNRWA schools, leaving the majority of children without education for the foreseeable future. Yarmouk camp today Perhaps the most fraught situation currently is in Yarmouk camp, Damascus, once home to the largest population of Palestinian refugees in Syria. Since 2012, it has been witness to intense fighting causing all but 15% of the population to flee. Gazans raise awareness of the plight of Yarmouk’s Palestinian children Currently, the 20,000 people remaining in the camp have been under siege by pro-Assad forces for over six months. According to the government, Yarmouk is a hot bed of rebel activity. Yet many of those left in the camp are children, women and old people. For the desperate children that remain in the camp, there is no prospect of learning. Most of the 28 schools in Yarmouk have been damaged structurally by sustained shelling and gun fire, and those still standing are acting as shelters for the besieged residents.uration of the seige, no humanitarian aid workers have been granted access and one resident reported that the food shortage meant one small meal a day was the best available. Reports of over 40 deaths from starvation are widespread. Vigils and protests have been held across the West Bank and Gaza, with one Palestinian claiming, ‘If just one Israeli lived in Yarmouk, the siege would be over.’ Despite UN calls for Assad’s forces to allow the evacuation of Yarmouk, the siege continues. Tragically, it may be years until the right to education for Palestinian refugees in Syria is fully restored. R2E visit to Abu Nuwar School Elementary school children from the Bedouin village of Abu Nuwar in the Occupied West Bank were left to study outside after Israel demolished their school. The village is located in an area... Application to participate in the 2016 Right to Education Tour... The Right to Education Campaign – Birzeit University is preparing for its second tour to U.S.A this year. The tour is being planned with “National Students for Justice in...	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line54
__label__wiki	0.733177	0.733177	Dates, Tuesday Race Schedule and How to Watch in the U.S March 10, 2020 - by mindfullmess To the majority of sports fans in the U.S., the words “Greatest show on turf” are normally associated with the St. Louis Rams team that dazzled the NFL between 1999 and 2001. Across the Atlantic, however, the monicker applies not to football or soccer but horse racing—and specifically to the Cheltenham Festival. NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS Close Locker Rooms amid Coronavirus Fears Britain’s biggest horse racing festival, Cheltenham is to jump racing what the Belmont Stakes or Kentucky Derby are to U.S. horse racing. The four-day festival gets underway on Tuesday and culminates in the Gold Cup on Friday, the day’s fourth race and one of the most prestigious events in jump racing along with the Grand National—which is scheduled for next month. While the Grand National remains Britain’s biggest single betting race, over four days the Cheltenham Festival dwarfs the amount of money staked on most racing events across the world. According to industry data published by bookmakers Ladbrokes, last year 25 of the bookmaker’s top 40 races of the year by turnover were among the festival’s 28 events. Over 250,000 spectators are expected to descend on the racecourse over the next four days, with the festival set to go ahead despite worries about coronavirus. As of Tuesday morning, over 300 cases of the virus have been reported in the U.K., along with five deaths and 18 people recovered, according to Johns Hopkins University. Organizers, however, have insisted the festival will go ahead, unlike 2001 when it was canceled amid the so-called “foot-and-mouth” crisis. Here’s all you need to know ahead of the Greatest Show on Turf. What is the Cheltenham Festival? The festival is arguably the biggest horse racing event of its kind in the U.K and is a staple of the British sporting calendar. The festival consists of 28 races across four days, half of which are Grade 1 events, and its prize money is second only to that of the Grand National—which will be run next month. For wanting of a better comparison, Cheltenham is the Belmont Stake to the Grand National’s Kentucky Derby. Unlike the three Triple Crown races, however, horses at Cheltenham compete on a course featuring either fences or hurdles, as opposed to a flat track. Additionally, horses race on turf as opposed to dirt, as is the case in the Belmont Stakes and the Kentucky Derby. When is the Cheltenham Festival? The 2020 edition of the festival gets underway on Tuesday, March 10, and runs until Friday, March 13. As usual, each day of the meeting features seven races, with the first starting at 1:30 p.m. local time (9:30 a.m. EDT) and the last getting underway at 5:30 p.m. (1:30 p.m. EDT). Each of the four days has its own name. Tuesday is Champion Day, Wednesday is Ladies Day, while Thursday and Friday are known as St. Patrick’s Thursday and Gold Cup Day. Where is the Cheltenham Festival? The festival takes place at the Cheltenham Racecourse in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, approximately 96 miles north-west of London. The 67,500-capacity racecourse first hosted the Cheltenham Festival in its current guise in 1911, although the event itself dates all the way back to 1860. The racecourse has two different courses—the Old Course and the New Course—both of which are used during the festival. Where to watch Cheltenham in the U.S. None of the traditional U.S. channels broadcast the festival on TV in the U.S., but a livestream of all the 28 races will be available via TVG.com. Cheltenham Festival Tuesday schedule (All times EDT) Champion Day features seven races, four of which are Grade 1 events 9:30 a.m. The Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle* 10:10 a.m. The Racing Post Arkle Challenge Trophy Steeple Chase* 10:50 a.m. The Ultima Handicap Steeple Chase 11:30 a.m. The Unibet Champion Hurdle Challenge Trophy* 12:10 p.m. The Mares’ Hurdle* 12:50 p.m. The Close Brothers Novices’ Handicap Chase 1:30 p.m. The National Hunt Steeple Chase Challenge Cup *Denotes Grade 1 races Riders compete in the Randox Health Country Handicap Hurdle Race on the final day of the Cheltenham Festival horse racing meeting at Cheltenham Racecourse in Gloucestershire, south-west England, on March 15, 2019. Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Previous Article No health emergency but virus hits politics in EU’s heart Next Article Coronavirus: China says disease ‘curbed’ in Wuhan and Hubei	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line56
__label__cc	0.663208	0.336792	Very Ladylike I hope you’re not reading this while eating. If you are, you might want to wait a bit. It gets rather rude. A few weeks ago, we were sitting at the dinner table when I burped. It was a little thing that just kind of urped out of me. The kids, however, thought it was hilarious. They both started laughing and making little “urp” noises. The cry of “Do it again! Do it again!” was quickly taken up. I’m not a good belcher. It’s just one of those talents that I’ve never nurtured. In particular, I don’t know how to belch on command. I had to plead inability. “Sorry, guys. I can’t make myself do it.” Just as they were saying “Aawwww… man!” J piped up with a quiet little “Actually, I can.” “Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it!” I think I might have joined them . J was grinning ear to ear, and looking a little sheepish. “I don’t know why I learned this, and I probably shouldn’t. It’s not something you do at the table – “ “Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it!” “Okay, okay!” And she let out a big old nasty belch. What can I say? Even after ten years of marriage, she still surprises me. The kids loved it. They laughed and immediately started shouting for more. She tried to protest that she couldn’t do it too many times, and C immediately shouted “Five Times! Do it Five Times!” “Okay, five times.” She said, and then did it, pushing out the belches one after another while the kids shouted out the countdown. By the end, however, she was blushing furiously. She looked over the table at me. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” The next day at dinner, of course, the kids remembered the burping. They asked me first, for some reason, but I reminded them that I just don’t know how and suggested that ”maybe mommy can?” Really, what else did she expect? I mean, when you show a talent like that, you have to expect to be asked for performances. Apparently, she disagreed: “No.” We had a little back and forth, with us trying to convince her, but she was steadfast in her desire to be a stick in the mud – er, I mean “to not belch like a trained seal”. Finally, N couldn’t take it any more. “I’ll do it!” he said. This stopped us. “What?” “Yep. 20 times.” He said with a definitive nod. He tilted his head back, closed his mouth, puffed out his cheeks, squinted his eyes, and then let a little air escape from his mouth, making a little whooshing noise. When it came out, he opened one eye to peek at his momma and see what she thought. She immediately said “hooray!” His brother, unfortunately, called out “1!” – sentencing the little guy to 20 of the things. I want to go on record here as saying that I’m not specifically planning to have the boys ask momma to belch the next time we’re out at dinner with friends. However, I’m pretty sure it’s going to happen. 1 thoughts on “Very Ladylike” Ha Ha Ha! And she is not really blood related to Grandpa!!!!	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line61
__label__cc	0.509692	0.490308	Following is a draft excerpt from The Politics of Universal Compassion It is sometimes assumed that either human nature or a set of permanent or relatively permanent socioeconomic conditions predetermine an upper limit to the potential social level of compassion and social concord--within nations and between nations, and in the world as a whole. This chapter challenges some of these assumptions, and argues that the potential degree of compassion reflected in the global polity is not determined by the level of compassion at present or in the past. In the excerpts linked below, I will examine and respond to certain commonly held ways of conceiving human nature and society that limit the potential for envisioning and realizing compassion on a more universal scale. Such conceptions tend to hinder the flow of logic and action in the direction of universal compassion. I will review several of these conceptions, beliefs and mindsets and respond to them. Specifically, three beliefs or social conceptions that need to be challenged and overcome for universal compassion to be more fully conceived and realized are: (1) cynicism about the potential for significant social change; (2) a belief in scarcity, that there are insufficient resources available to satisfy everyone's basic needs; and (3) a belief in the inevitability of violence. Each of these beliefs will be examined below. What is Realistic? By way of introduction, it will be helpful to reflect on the role of political beliefs in creating social reality, and thus in enabling or limiting the potential for social change. We live in a world that we have created. Society and politics are entirely a human creation. The present is determined to a great degree by adherence to the habits of the past. If we trace each present-day social norm or institution--whether religious, political, or cultural--to its historical origins, some of which occurred near the beginning of human history, we find that each is based on choices made by individual human beings. These choices of values, beliefs, logic structures and institutional and cultural norms are often institutionalized through their unconscious acceptance by those who receive them uncritically. By accepting the norms and social structures of the world, and by acting within them, we reproduce and reinforce those norms and social structures on a daily basis. But it is important to recognize that these norms were created and chosen at some earlier point in history and thus can be either re-chosen or abandoned in favor of better ones. The political world is based on a set of beliefs, ideas and values--and on a logic structure organizing them into a relatively coherent whole. However, if we change the logic structure--and act on the new logic--we can change politics. Fully recognizing that social reality is socially constructed is liberating, because it implies that what we have created we can change and transform. Part of the changeable logic structure of any given society--including global society--are what sociologist Alvin Gouldner, has called "background assumptions,' the "unpostulated and unlabeled" assumptions that underlie our conceptions of society. He labels these "background assumptions" because "they provide the background out of which the postulations in part emerge and, on the other hand, not being expressly formulated, they remain the background of the (people)'s attention." The background assumptions of a concept of social reality include theories of cosmology, physics and metaphysics, human nature and society, logic and justice, and so on. Background assumptions contribute in a large way to the acceptance or rejection of a social theory by its hearers or readers. A "social theory," he writes, " is more likely to be accepted by those who share the theory's background assumptions and find them agreeable." (Gouldner, 1970: 29) Such fundamental and "obvious" assumptions that define our worldview are sometimes quite difficult to analyze--or even to name--because they do not always appear in the form of political or philosophical arguments. Rather, they are more aptly characterized as a social mood or ethos than a political argument or philosophy. They take the form of unnamed, amorphous, undefined limits on our sense of possibility and reality that obscure our ability to see beyond them. Such beliefs and assumptions have a very powerful effect on those who hold them. How we think about the world can either limit or promote our ability to create social change in a number of ways. Beliefs influence (1) how we perceive the world; (2) how we feel about the world; and (3) how or whether we take action in the world to create change. Limiting Beliefs and Universal Compassion There are many beliefs about the nature of human beings and society that limit individual and collective initiative toward universal compassion. Three such beliefs will be addressed below: social cynicsm, the belief in the inevitability of violence, and a belief in scarcity of resources. It will be argued that currently-prevalent social cynicism is a choice along a social optimism-pessimism continuum and represents more a social mood than an accurate perception of social reality; that current levels of violence are not inevitable and can potentially be drastically reduced; and that scarcity is a social convention rather than a social reality. By helping to challenge limiting beliefs and social assumptions, it is hoped that these excerpts will encourage those who wish to work for the realization of universal compassion. Only when people believe that something is possible will they strive for it. Click on the links below to read responses to these attitudes and beliefs. Social Cynicism Universal compassion is believed to be utopian because of low expectations regarding the collective human potential for social change. The Inevitability of Violence History--especially recent events--lead many to believe that current levels of violence are an inevitable aspect of human relations. This excerpt challenges that belief. Scarcity It is widely believed that there simply aren't enough available resources--such as food--to sustain a truly universal compassion. Evidence is presented to suggest otherwise. © 2002 Joel Federman	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line65
__label__cc	0.522079	0.477921	CoastC 4:00 PM PT5:00 PM MT6:00 PM CT7:00 PM ET12:00 PM GMT8:00 PM 北京时间5:00 PM MST7:00 PM EST, Dec 1, 2021 HTC Center, Conway, South Carolina Attendance: 2,924 Mostafa, Coastal Carolina upset South Carolina 80-56 CONWAY, S.C. (AP) Essam Mostafa had 23 points and 13 rebounds and Coastal Carolina pulled away in the second half to upset South Carolina 80-56 on Wednesday night. It was Coastal Carolina's first win against a Power Five opponent since beating Utah early in the 2019-20 season. The Chanticleers had a one-point halftime lead and opened the second on a 24-4 run and cruised from there. Mostafa scored 12 points during the stretch. Mostafa, a sophomore center from Cairo, Egypt, was 6 of 13 from the field and 11-of-16 shooting at the free-throw line. He entered averaging 18.5 points and 10.5 rebounds while shooting 50% from the field. It was his third double-double of the season. South Carolina pulled to 64-52 with 8:21 remaining. Mustafa's layup and consecutive dunks from Vince Cole and Wilfried Likayi pushed the Chanticleer's lead to 18 with 4:42 to play. Rudi Williams added 19 points and six assists for the Chanticleers (3-2). Cole finished with 16 points. Erik Stevenson scored 12 points and Jacobi Wright had 12 for the Gamecocks (5-2), which ended a four-game win streak while playing in Conway for the first time. The Gamecocks shot 19% (6 of 32) from the floor and had nine turnovers in the second half. South Carolina forward Josh Gray was ejected with 1.6 seconds remaining in the game for shoving a CCU player. Coast Carolina beat the Gamecocks for the second time - an 88-74 victory in Columbia in 1993.	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line72
__label__wiki	0.695396	0.695396	Military Gays Discharges Former U.S. Army soldier Danny Ingram poses for a portrait at his home .Wednesday, June 22, 2016, in Atlanta, Ga. Ingram was one of the first to be expelled after “don't ask, don't tell” was enacted. He was given an honorable discharge from the Army and he doesn't want to change the narrative that references his sexual orientation. It's a “badge of honor,” he said. (AP Photo/John Bazemore) Creation Date: June 22, 2016 04:04:10 PM Submission Date: June 24, 2016 05:58:20 PM Photographer: John Bazemore Subject: Gays in the military, Military affairs, Military culture, Military and defense, Government and politics, Gays in the military, Gay rights, Human rights and civil liberties, Social issues, Social affairs Location: Atlanta, GEORGIA, UNITED STATES Transmission Reference: AX203 Caption Writer: JB	cc/2022-05/en_head_0033.json.gz/line76

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