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482nd Bombardment Group (P)
The 8th Army Air Force Pathfinders... They Led the Way...
Berlin Mission
812nd Bomb Squadron
813rd Bomb Squadron
814th Bomb Squadron
B-17's release their bombs on a flare from pathfinder aircraft. Cloud cover over Europe made visual bombing impossible. Radar led bombing changed that.
Radar, sometimes referred to as the "invention that changed the world" is a system that uses electromagnetic waves to identify the range, altitude, direction, or speed of both moving and fixed objects. The term RADAR was coined in 1941 as an acronym for “Radio Detection and Ranging. The term has since entered the English language as a standard word, radar, losing the capitalization in the process. Radar was originally called RDF (Radio Direction Finder) in Britain.
In its simplest form, a radar system has a transmitter that emits radio waves that are reflected by the target and detected by a receiver, typically in the same location as the transmitter. Although the radio signal returned is usually very weak, radio signals can easily be amplified. This enables radar to detect objects at ranges where other emissions, such as sound or visible light, would be too weak to detect.
The first to use radio waves to detect “the presence of distant metallic objects” was Christian Hülsmeyer, a German Physicist who in 1904 demonstrated the feasibility of detecting the presence of a ship in dense fog.
History of Radar
Radar was invented in 20th century and had been in existence three decades before the start of WWII. Its major developments happened during World War II as each country particularly Germany, Britain, and the U.S. understood the strategic importance of radar as an offensive and defensive weapon. It was the British who were furthest along in the development of radar and who contributed most to its military development.
Radar had many uses during the war mainly due to its ability to detect objects: this fact was utilized by ships, aircrafts and ground forces. Radars were mounted on ships and used to aim anti-aircraft guns due to its high accuracy. Ships also used radar for navigation during night and heavy fog conditions. Aircraft also used radar to aim at ground based targets. (the primary focus of this website) Ground based radar however, was also used. They could be used to detect enemy aircraft Also during the war; meteorologists in the military recognized the use of radar to track storms which ensured the safety of military aircraft and ships.
Winston Churchill knew that Britain needed American scientific, engineering, and manufacturing resources to win the war. He decided to unconditionally share the major development in the history of radar which was the British invention of the cavity magnetron by Randall and Boot of Birmingham University in early 1940. This was a small device which generated microwave frequencies much more efficiently than previous devices, allowing the development of practical centimetric radar.
At the beginning of August 1940, Churchill authorized Tizard to form a team to take Britain’s most promising new technologies and demonstrate them to the Americans. The Tizard mission was a party of seven, including Tizard himself. Loomis, Bush, and other NDRC officials realized that a civilian research lab had to be set up outside of military control, using NDRC funding, to ensure that cavity magnetron technology was developed and deployed as quickly as possible. It was the cavity magnetron which would allow the development and deployment of the of H2S "Stinky" and H2X "Mickey" radar units that would lead to the establishment of Bomb Through Overcast (BTO) and the Pathfinder Forces (PFF) of the 482nd Bomb Group.
8th Army Air Force and the need for Radar
As the U.S. 8th Army Air Force continued its build up in England during 1942 and 1943, it became obvious to VIII Bomber Command (BC) that the success of an offensive strategic bombing offensive would be contingent on the ability of the VIII BC to operate above the weather and bomb through overcast. In December of 1942 the VIII BC had an average of 72 heavy operational bombers available to strike at enemy targets. The weather in Dec of 1942 did not permit one operational day and the first 15 days of January 1943 did not allow the 8th to complete a mission. England and Western Europe experienced a storm on average every three days. In addition, fog and low hanging clouds created early morning delays and challenges in aircraft forming up over England for the trip across the channel. It was a very complex problem for VIII BC. Estimates by 8th Army Air Force Meteorologists suggested that visual bombing opportunities against targets in Germany would exist on average between 20 and 30 % of the time.
Ira Eaker, commanding General of the 8th Army Air Force, proposed that there were only 75 days per year where the weather would ground all aircraft. What was needed was the ability to Bomb through Overcast (BTO) on days when visual bombing was not an option. The U.S. 8th looked to the British who had developed "Oboe" and "Gee". Although both Oboe and Gee would become very effective navigational aids they did not solve the problem of BTO as the Germans had discovered ways to jam them and their range was limited during day light hours. Eaker turned instead the British H2S "Stinky" unit.
Development of "BTO" – Bomb through Overcast Radar
In March of 1943 Ira Eaker formally requested the RAF for eight H2S units for installation in 8th Army Air Force B-17’s. In March of 1943 four radio mechanics and two officers were sent the British Telecommunication Research establishment (TRE) at Great Malvern to learn about H2S Radar. That same month B-17 F # 42-5793 was sent to RAF Deford for installation of H2S. It was with that first H2S installation that America’s Army Air Force entered the radar age. The scanner and radardome were placed under the nose and was shielded by a bath-tub shaped plastic cover. The radar scope and navigation unit was placed on the left side of the navigator’s station and required some equipment movement. The radar units were found to be temperamental during early test flights. With patience hard work and reseilinancy the first Pathfinder equipped aircraft were about to lead their first mission.
H2S - "Stinky"
B-17 equiped with British "Stinky" radome under nose.
H2S Stinky was the RAF’s primary air to ground radar system utilizing a 10 centimeter frequency for airborne terrain scanning radar. It was developed for the RAF bomber command and was utilized on the Halifax, Sterling and Lancaster bombers. Command for night time bombing of German targets. The H2S set transmitted energy through a high frequency electrical energy impulse downward through a revolving antenna; these impulses were reflected back to the aircraft and converted the images to a cathode ray tube. The reflections on the scope would allow the specially trained H2S operator to determine contrast between land, water and cities. H2S could be used at 25,000 feet and had a 50 mile radius.
H2X - "Mickey"
Designed at the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – H2X radar was the American version and an improvement upon the British H2S unit. H2X utilized a 3 centimeter micro-wave versus the British 10 CM. Often referred to its official designation of the AN/APS-15. It was more commonly known as "Mickey". The first 12 H2 X set was installed on one B-17 F model and the remaining eleven were installed on the newer B-17 G equipped with a chin turret. The installations took place in Rome, NY and the unit was placed in under the nose similar to the H2S in placement. The H2X was semi retractable and cylindrical in shape. It was Major Fred Rabo who was responsible for bringing the first 12 B-17’s equipped with H2X back to Alconbury. Major Rabo arrived in Alconbury on September 21, 1943 with the first H2X B-17’s.
B-17 with H2X, "Mickey", radar.
How H2X "Mickey" – Got its name ...
In 1942 and 1943, it became evident that a major problem in completing 8th Bomber Command missions to Europe successfully were the poor weather conditions existing over England and Europe, especially in the winter months. Before WWII started, Gen. Hap Arnold had stated that the U.S. Army Air Corps needed a way to carry out bombing missions in bad weather conditions.
H2X – Mickey Unit – Located opposite the radio operator station.
"As our navigators sit today hunched over their scopes, studying the flickering light and dark images that flash over its surface, they must realize they are pioneers and that the equipment they are using compared to what they will someday use, is as the blunderbuss compared to the modern M1 rifle as an instrument of warfare. Yes, gentleman, I repeat we are the beginning of a new era ..." - Colonel Baskin R. Lawrence C/O 482nd Bomb Group
Actual H2X Radar Scope shot from April 4, 1944. Note the B-17 clearly visible to the radar operator below his aircraft.
© Copyright 2022 – 482nd.org – All Rights Reserved. | This web site designed and hosted by: Mediacurrent
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Doctor Who: The Card Game, Card Game Review
Posted on April 12, 2018 by emma
Doctor Who holds the Guinness record for the longest-running science fiction television show in the world, airing from 1963 till today. For those unfamiliar with the show (really inexcusable I might say!!) Doctor Who (or The Doctor) is a humanoid alien, a Time Lord, whose planet has been destroyed and is travelling through space and time with a time machine called TARDIS, exploring the universe and helping the helpless. TARDIS looks like a blue British police box, a common sight in Britain during the 60s when the show first appeared. Through the years, it has become a trademark of the show. Doctor Who has faced many enemies through the course of the show, the oldest and most significant ones being the Daleks, an alien race whose sole purpose is to destroy all beings inferior to them. Martin Wallace, a well-known independent board game designer from U.K., undertook the challenging task of recreating the atmosphere of the show in a rather simple card game. Let’s see how the game measures up to its theme and how appealing it is in general as a card game.
Although I am a huge sci-fi fan, I’ve seen very little of the renowned show. However as I sat down to play this game I had in my mind the general concept of “The Doctor”, his time-travelling machine and the atmosphere that the game should have. In my point of view, the fact that I’m not a hardcore fan of the game neither totally ignorant of the theme, makes me more suitable to write an objective review of the game. Let’s go through the basics of the game for starters:
In Doctor Who: The Card Game, players take the role of Doctor Who and his companions, trying to defend locations from various enemies but they also take the role of the “bad” guys, by sending enemies to attack other players’ locations. During each of their turns, players will have the opportunity to perform a number of actions, which involve playing cards. There are four different types of cards in the game:
Locations. Players will have to fight for the control of their own locations as well as their opponents’. Each location is worth a number of victory points at the end of the game.
Defenders. Defenders will be used to defend a player’s locations. There are actually 4 defenders, all based on the Doctor Who TV-series, each one with their own defense strength: The Doctor, Amy Pond, Rory and River Song
Enemies. Players send enemies to their opponents locations, trying to gain control of them. The enemies are well known races and monsters from the Doctor Who universe like The Daleks, Cybemen, the Sontarans and Davros. Each enemy has a different attack value.
Support cards. These are allies, special gadgets or events that will help a player or hinder his opponents.
At the beginning of the game, each player must pick a color and get 10 counters of the appropriate colour (5 DALEKS and 5 TARDIS). Daleks are used to indicate that we have placed an attacking enemy at an opponents’ location, whereas TARDIS are used to show that we have successfully defended a location of our own. Each player also gains a starting location which is chosen randomly. The player having the highest value starting location becomes the first player. All cards are shuffled in a face-down pile and 5 cards are dealt to each player except the player sitting to the right of the first player, who receives only two cards. There are also thirty time tokens in the game, which are set by the side of the draw deck.
Each player, during his turn, may play as many actions he wants, limited only by the fact that at the end of his turn he must give to the player on his right 3 cards. Extra cards may be bought during a player’s turn using time counters, that can be gained with a number of ways. Available actions a player may do during his turn are:
play a location card in front of him. He receives a number of time counters as indicated on the card
play one or more defenders on a location owned by him. The defender cards are played face-down on a location, leaving part of it uncovered so as the value of the location is not hidden. You cannot play two or more of the same Defender card on a given location
play an enemy card on an opponents’ location. In contrast to defenders, in general, only one enemy may be placed on each opponents’ location (exceptions do exist). The enemy card is placed face down near the location under attack and the attacking player puts a DALEK counter on the location under attack
play a support card
discard one or two cards to gain a time counter for each card discarded
buy cards by paying five time counters for each one
put one or more cards in the reserve. Players may put up to 2 cards in the reserve (face down in front of them) in order to use them in a later round. The size of the reserve may increase using certain support cards
There is no cost for playing any of the cards a player owns and players can perform any number of the above actions. A certain action can be performed more than once. At any case, the active player must end up with 3 cards which he must give to the player on their right. At the end of a player’s turn, he draws 2 cards from the supply and puts them in his hand. After the first player, play continues clockwise as usual.
The most interesting point in the game is combat, which occurs whenever a defender and an enemy card have been played at a given location. All defender and enemy cards are then revealed and their strength is compared. If the defender’s total strength is equal to or greater than the attacker’s, the defender wins. All attackers and defenders are discarded and the defending player puts a TARDIS counter on the location card to indicate that it is under the Doctor’s control. If the enemy wins, all defenders are discarded and the attacker must discard one or more enemy cards with total strength less or equal to the total strength of the defender.
The game ends when a player has all of his DALEK or TARDIS counters in play or when the Game End card is revealed (it is initially put on top of the 20 last cards of the draw deck). In the first case, the game ends immediately, while in the second one an “End Game” period starts, during which players continue to take turns but are obliged to take a single action and they don’t draw cards at the end of their turn. They don’t pass cards to the player on their right either of course. This period ends when a player cannot perform an action. Then all players count the victory points on their locations that are not under attack plus the enemy locations they have their DALEK counters on. The player with the most victory points is the winner.
The game’s components are cards and tokens. The tokens are standard cardboard ones with nothing special to be comment on. The cards however deserve a special mention as they are all beautifully illustrated with much attention to detail. The colors used in the illustrations carry the feel of the game and all pictures are of high detail. All cards enhance the theme of the game and the artwork is so awesome that truly captures the eye and sets a unique atmosphere, especially the location and monster cards. Design of the components leaves really nothing more to be desired. 9/10
Usually one has not many expectations regarding gameplay when it comes to such “small” games. And when I say “small” I mean having few components and a short duration, usually called “filler” games. It is truly a big accomplishment when a game designer manages to produce a game of enough complexity and depth that can appeal to hardcore gamers out of so little material, while also keeping the mechanics simple enough for more casual gamers. From this aspect I find Doctor Who: The Card Game a rare gem that deserves a place in everyone’s game library, no matter if he is a Doctor Who fan or not or if he is a casual or hardcore gamer. The game starts aggressively right from the start, when everyone’s put down his starting location. The concept of playing cards for free, that means without having to pay a cost as it is usually done in most drafting games, gives a refreshing tone to the gameplay and allows players to develop their strategy with more freedom.
Choices are hard in every round as during each turn players have 5 cards in hand but must hand out to the player on their right, 3 of them. That is the core of the gameplay and the mechanic that gives the game a strategic aspect and depth that you will all appreciate. Which cards should you play and which should you pass? The idea of having a reserve is also interesting and adds to the depth, giving you the opportunity to set your game up the way you want in future turns. Another aspect of the game that I liked is the way conflicts are resolved. Enemies and defenders are placed blindly and are revealed only when both are present on a given location. Very clever idea that maintains a feel of suspense, as you never really know if you have won a location until the conflict is resolved. It feels that Martin Wallace has hit the nail on the head with this one, reminding us how talented he truly is! 9/10
Despite the many interesting mechanics of the game, rules are kept simple as they should be for a game of this category. The 12-page rulebook can be read within about 10 minutes (in reality the rules are only 9 pages and there a lot of pictures too). At first the mechanics of the game may seem a bit strange but after playing your first game, you will have it all figured out. 7/10
The game’s theme is supported in every way in the game. From the intuitive TARDIS and DALEK counters to the characters used as Defenders and Enemies and the support cards. The locations all reflect the theme of the game, some set on earth and others on alien planets. Characters from the most recent episodes of the famous TV show are used as the defenders, while the biggest enemies of the doctor have been chosen to serve as the enemies in the game. Support cards feature objects used by the Doctor throughout the years along with special characters and events that boost the thematic character of the game. During my first play, I constantly felt being a part of the Doctor Who universe, I was completely drawn to it. The only thing that felt a bit strange is the fact that you are playing with the “good” guys in general but when you send enemies to opponents’ locations, you take the role of the “bad” guys. That feels a bit strange, disorients you and takes back some of the immersion. I think it would be better if roles were more distinct but that would probably lead to a whole new game. The fact remains that after playing for the first time, it really made me want to catch up with the TV show, maybe try to find some of the older episodes too.
Doctor Who: The Card Game has enough depth and strategy that will ensure that you will have the desire to play it at any given time. It could surely act not only as a filler game but as the main game at the table, with consecutive plays. It’s that addictive! 8/10
Fun:
I really had a lot of fun, playing Doctor Who. There is enough player interaction through attacking your opponents locations and defending your own from attacks and there is a lot of suspense too as you wonder what enemies / defenders your opponents have placed on locations. Every aspect of the game seems to contribute to the fun factor, from the intuitive drafting mechanic to the illustrations on the cards and the feel of the theme. Time will pass fast, with this game, as you constantly have hard choices to make, endless unknown enemies to fight and control of the various locations will change many times during the game. Pure fun if you ask me! 8/10
A Doctor Who game
Excellent support of the theme
Awesome artwork
Gameplay with depth and strategy
It feels strange to play both as the Doctor and his enemies
Recommended for: Everyone including hardcore “Doctor Who” fans (Whovians)!
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged unique review games, unique reviews. Bookmark the permalink.
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Tag: Detroit
KICK OUT THE JAMS! An EXCLUSIVE Interview with Director Tony D’Annunzio and MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer
The Detroit Rock ‘n’ Roll scene in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was unlike anything else happening in the world at the time. New York was certainly tough, but there was an artistic flair that added a touch of respectability to it. The West Coast scene certainly had its moments, although the hippy-dippy flower-power movement took away some of its thunder. But Detroit? It was a hotbed of unbridled energy, attitude, and bravado. While Motown was in many ways the soul of Detroit, the Rock ‘n’ Roll rumble in the streets was loud and often frightening. But it was also invigorating and electrifying. It was raw and pure. It was Garage Rock with the power of Punk and Metal (neither of which were musical genres at the time!) yet it could also be artsy like the East Coast, and hippy-dippy like San Francisco and L.A. It was a melting pot of attitudes and ideas. And it was where the Grande Ballroom was born.
Unlike any venue before or since, the Grande was not just a concert hall – it was a meeting place for creative minds, disenchanted youth and people of all race, class, and creed. It may have promoted shows by local and touring bands, yet it also embraced the sexual revolution, psychedelia, the drug culture, and, most importantly, freedom of expression. The club Detroit bands like MC5, The Stooges, The Frost, The Third Power and SRC were regulars, while The Who, Pink Floyd, B.B. King, Led Zeppelin and many other major bands would always play there while on tour. The Grande became THE venue to play for every major Rock band once they had already conquered the East and/or West Coast. For some, it was even more important! The Grande was the brainchild of Russ Gibb, who some remember as one of the instigators of the ‘Paul Is Dead’ hoax of the late ‘60s (or was it a hoax?). Along with controversial counter-culture figure John Sinclair, they turned an old 1920s dancehall into something truly mind-blowing. Although the Grande shut its doors more than four decades ago, it remains one of Rock’s most iconic venues.
The power and glory of the Grande Ballroom may be part of Detroit’s – and Rock ‘n’ Roll’s – history, yet the larger-than-life venue’s tale remained largely untold. Director Tony D’Annunzio has addressed that situation with Louder Than Love: The Grande Ballroom Story. An emotional rollercoaster-ride of a documentary, Louder Than Love opens up the doors of the Grande and allows the main players to tell their story with passion and honesty. This is not just a documentary about a Rock ‘n’ Roll venue; this is a film about how music and art can make a difference in the world. Alongside members of the Grande’s inner circle and Detroit icons (Russ Gibb, John Sinclair, MC5’s Wayne Kramer, Alice Cooper, The Amboy Dukes’ Ted Nugent), there are also interviews with legendary artists like Roger Daltrey (The Who), Lemmy (Hawkwind/Motorhead), B.B. King, Don Was and many others. This is a story that needed to be told and Louder Than Love is a triumph in every way.
Stephen SPAZ Schnee was able to chat with director Tony D’Annunzio and MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer about Louder Than Love and the Detroit Rock ‘n’ Roll scene…
June 6, 2016 Steve SchneeBallroom, D'Annunzio, Detroit, documentary, DVD, exclusive interview, Grande, Kramer, Louder Than Love, MC5, MVD, Rock, Stephen SPAZ Schnee, Stooges, Tony, Wayne
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Home Entertainment News Interim Prime Minister Jean Michel Lapin meets the staff of the Prime...
Interim Prime Minister Jean Michel Lapin meets the staff of the Prime Minister’s Office
THE ECONOMIC PLIGHT OF THE AVERAGE YOUNG WORKER IN TODAY’S HAITIAN ECONOMY
The President of the Port-au-Prince bar association confirms the death of one of its members but not the cause of death
Haiti-Coronavirus: Two new cases of people infected with Covid
Haiti’s episcopal conference cancels Easter celebrations
The Delly Fuel. Introducing Carl Craig
Following his presentation to the nation by the President of the Republic, Mr. Jovenel Moïse, during an extraordinary cabinet meeting held this Thursday morning at the National Palace, Interim Prime Minister, Jean Michel Lapin, also Minister of Culture and Communication, met this Thursday afternoon with the Prime Minister’s office’s heads of units, directorates and staff of the Prime Minister’s Office. He was accompanied by General Secretary Hugues Joseph who welcomed him.
The new chief a.i. of the resigning government reiterated the instructions given to him by the President of the Republic, Mr. Jovenel Moïse, which consisted in managing the day-to-day affairs of the State, with priority given to restoring security in the country, work for social appeasement and to prepare the entry into office of the next Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister has invited the staff of the Primature to return to work without delay and to support him in the accomplishment of his delicate mission.
Source: Prime Minister’s Office Communication Bureau
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Perceptions of Individuals on The Concepts of Radiation and Radioactivity
Nurhan Gümrükçüoğlu & Didem Sarımehmet & Selcen Uzun Duran
Radiation can be defined as energy that is both naturally occurring and used in scientific, medical and industrial wide perspectives. While it can provide many benefits with proper use, it can cause irreversible damage if necessary precautions are not taken. The biggest concern with radiation in societies is the possibility that in people exposed to radiation, cancer and inherited diseases will occur in future generations. The aim of this study is to examine the perceptions of individuals about radiation and radioactivity concepts. The study group consists of 134 individuals selected by systematic sampling method. An open-ended questionnaire form was used to collect data. At the end of the research, the datas were analyzed by using frequency analysis, percentage analysis and descriptive analysis. Although there are factors such as the type, dose, distance from the source of radiation and duration of action to effect the radiation to affect human health and to create a lasting effect, the majority of the people who participated in the study regardless of these factors, it is seen that all kinds of radiation will cause disability, mental retardation in humans and will affect children to be born.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Individual, Perception, Radiation, Radioactivity
Gumrukcuoglu, N., Sarimehmet, D. & Duran, S.U. (2020). Perceptions of Individuals on The Concepts of Radiation and Radioactivity . Gelecek Vizyonlar Dergisi, 4(2), 16-22. doi: 10.29345/futvis.113
Gumrukcuoglu, N., Sarimehmet, D. and Duran, S. (2020). Perceptions of Individuals on The Concepts of Radiation and Radioactivity . Gelecek Vizyonlar Dergisi, 4(2), pp. 16-22.
Gumrukcuoglu, Nurhan, Didem Sarimehmet and Selcen Uzun Duran (2020). "Perceptions of Individuals on The Concepts of Radiation and Radioactivity ". Gelecek Vizyonlar Dergisi 4 (2):16-22. doi:10.29345/futvis.113.
Baran, M. (2013). The effect of life-based problem-based learning method on the teaching of thermodynamic subject. Unpublished Doctorate Thesis. Atatürk University, Institute of Educational Sciences, Erzurum.
Bolus, N. E. (2017). Basic review of radiation biology and terminology, Journal of Nuclear MedicineTechnology, 45(4), 259-264.
Cleveland, R. F., & Ulcek, J. L. (1999). Questions and answers about biological effects and potential hazards of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields. Office of Engineering and Technology Federal Communications Commission, Washington, D.C. 20554.
Dural, G., & Ruacan, Ş. (2001). Electromagnetic waves and human health (Frequently asked questions and answers). Ankara: Tübitak- Bilten.
Eijkelhof, H., & Millar, R. (1988). Reading about chernobyl: the public understanding of radiation and radioactivity. School Science Review, 70(251), 35-41.
Eijkelhof, H. M. 1990. Radiation and risk in physics education. Universiteit Utrecht. Retrieved from http://www.cdbeta.uu.nl/tdb/fulltext/199003-duit.pdf.
Eijkelhof, H. M. (1996). Radiation risk and science education. Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 68(3-4), 273-278.
Fastman, S. M. (1988). Understanding radiation. Best’s Review, 89(3), 74-76.
Hammick, M., Tutt, A., & Tait, D. M. (1998). Knowledge and perception regarding radiotherapy and radiation in patients receiving radiotherapy: A qualitative study. European Journal of Cancer Care, 7(2), 103-112.
Henriksen, E. K. (1996). Laypeople’s understanding of radioactivity and radiation. Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 64 (3-4), 191-196. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.rpd.a031863
Henriksen, E. K., & Jorde, D. (2001). High school students’ understanding of radiation and the environment: Can museums play a role? Science Education, 85(2), 189-206.
Janssen, J. H., & Wellens, H. J. (1989). What do medical students know about in-hospital radiation hazards? Angiology, 40 (1), 36-38. https://doi.org/10.1177/000331978904000107
Kilinç, A., & Salman, S. (2007). Developing an attitude scale towards the lessons of school experience. Gazi University Journal of Gazi Educational Faculty, 27(1), 23-35.
Lijnse, P. L., Eijkelhof, H. M., Klaassen, C. W., & Scholte, R. L. (1990). Pupils’ and mass media ideas about radioactivity. International Journal of Science Education, 12(1), 67-78.
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Matsuura, T., & Iiri, Y. (1994). The importance of making right knowledge about radiation popular-activity of “radiation education forum”. Tokyo, Japan: Radiation Education Forum.
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Millar, R., & Gill, J. S. (1996). School students’ understanding of processes involving radioactive substances and ionizing radiation. Physics Education, 31(27), 27-33.
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Nakipoğlu, C., & Bülbül, B. 2000. Teaching the “Core Chemistry” unit in the framework of constructivist learning theory in secondary chemistry courses. Journal of Balıkesir University, Institute of Science and Technology, 2(1), 76-87.
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5th “Kharibulbul” International Folklore Festival opened in Shusha, cultural capital of Azerbaijan
The 5th “Kharibulbul” International Folklore Festival has today opened in Shusha, the cultural capital of Azerbaijan.
President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva attended the opening of the festival.
The 5th “Kharibulbul” International Folklore Festival, held in the “Year of Shusha” on the occasion of the 270th anniversary of the city of Shusha, has been organized by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, the Ministry of Culture and the Shusha City State Reserve. The 5th festival, which will end on 14 May, is attended by musicians and dance groups from different countries, as well as folk groups from different regions of Azerbaijan.
The opening concert of the festival began with the “Motherland suite” composition performed by the Azerbaijan State Song and Dance Ensemble named after Fikrat Amirov.
Then the sounds of “Karabakh Shikastasi” performed by honored artists Ilkin Ahmadov, Babak Niftaliyev and Sabina Arabli reverberated through the Shusha mountains.
Turkey, which supported Azerbaijan in the Patriotic War, is represented at the festival by the Turkic World Music and Folk Dance Ensemble. The folk dance “Van Yoresi” performed by the ensemble was met with tremendous interest and applause.
People's Artist of Azerbaijan Polad Bulbuloglu sang the folk song “Chal oyna”, the “Jangi” Variety Folk Dance Ensemble performed “Tanzara” and Honored Artist Shirzad Fataliyev accompanied by wind instruments group “Turaji" performed folk dances.
Mali's “Cheick Tidiane Seck” ethno-jazz musician performed the “Sanga Bo” dance, “Pakistan Colors” group performed the “Bhangra” dance and the Georgian Folk Dance Ensemble “Melitassi” performed “Svanuri”.
The Azerbaijan State Dance Ensemble performed the Avar folk dance, the Tunisian duo “Yuma” performed the “Smek” composition, and the Uzbek State Dance Ensemble performed the “Bayot” folk dance.
Then, Honored Culture Figure and ashig Samira Aliyeva and Ashug Ali Tapdigoghlu sang the “Karabakh Gaytaghisi”, while People's Artist Polad Bulbuloglu and “Kharibulbul” dance ensemble of Baku Choreography Academy sang the song “My Karabakh”.
The opening concert ended with the song “Homeland is inseparable" performed by Honored Artist Aybaniz Hashimova and the “Bulbullar” group.
Back on 8 November 2020, President Ilham Aliyev addressed the nation on the occasion of the liberation of Shusha, noting that this city, the crown of Karabakh, would soon be revived and restore its former glory. At the opening ceremony of last year's festival, the head of state said, “We have restored this wonderful tradition, and from now on the “Kharibulbul” festival will be held in Shusha every year.” The holding of the Fifth Kharibulbul International Folklore Festival is a clear confirmation of the President’s words.
The first “Kharibulbul” festival was held in Shusha in 1989 in connection with the 100th birthday anniversary of the famous singer, pedagogue and People's Artist Seyid Shushinsky (1889-1965). The event was organized in May of that year in Shusha during the flowering of kharibulbul (Ophrys caucasica). Along with local performers, the first festival was attended by music groups from the former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia (Bashkortostan), Lithuania and Belarus.
In 1990, the “Kharibulbul” festival gained international status. The invitation of folk groups from the Netherlands, Germany, Israel and Turkey to the second festival also aroused great interest. Due to the difficult situation in Shusha in the aftermath of the start of the Karabakh conflict, the concerts were organized in Aghdam. A number of concerts of the festival were also held in Barda and Aghjabadi. In total, the second festival was attended by about 170 delegates from different countries.
About 300 delegates from 25 countries took part in the third “Kharibulbul” festival held in 1991. Artists from the United States and Australia also attended the festival. Due to the large number of spectators, the main concerts of the festival were held in stadiums. The final concerts of the second and third festivals were held at the Heydar Aliyev Palace in Baku.
The fourth festival was to start in Baku on 15 May 1992, and was supposed to be the most spectacular event ever held. Five hundred people from more than 30 countries were expected to attend. However, due to the occupation of Shusha by Armenian troops on 8 May of the same year, it was not possible to organize the “Kharibulbul” festival. The festival was held only briefly at Imarat complex in Aghdam.
After the glorious victory of the brave Azerbaijani Army in the Patriotic War under the leadership of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Victorious Commander-in-Chief Ilham Aliyev, the traditional “Kharibulbul” festival was organized in Shusha again. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva and family members also attended the opening of the festival organized by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation on the Jidir Duzu in Shusha on 12-13 May 2021.
The festival featured national dances, mugham and performances by folklore groups from different regions of the country and national minorities, videos of Azerbaijani singers filmed in Shusha in different years, as well as classical music.
14 MAY, 2022 / Rəsmi xronika President Ilham Aliyev arrived in Turkiye for working visit
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Vase and Cover
During the 18th century, another example of the phenomenon of chinoiserie, the European interpretation or imitation of Chinese art or other traditions from East Asia, was this vase. The Yuan dynasty experienced technological developments in the creation of porcelain in the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen in the 14th century. It is worth noting that “taste for underglaze blue porcelain may have been both stimulated and enabled by the international connections of the Yuan regime,” which flourished under the Mongol rule and allowed for the importation of the particular blue glaze from Persia (Vinograd and Thorp 299). The technique of making porcelain required specific materials and firing techniques that Europe did not have access to, and they set about making their own imitations like Delftware and Meissenware, and this soft paste porcelain vase is decorated in the underglaze blue and white style with a Chinese landscape design on the vase that highlights elements of nature with swathes of blank space for the water and air. The shape itself is also an elongated version of a Chinese vase (V&A description). In England, these type of ceramics “were first encountered as ‘curiosities’ and then altered to make them less curious,” and after that they appeared as tableware and decoration, and as chinoiserie developed as fashionable, Chinese ceramics continued to be copied in European ceramic shops as well as collected (Stacey 23). This vase, then, emerges out of a long history of cultural hybridization to appeal to a European consumer.
Richard Chaffers Factory, England
ceramics, China, England
Richard Chaffers Factory, England, “Vase and Cover,” HIST 139 - Early Modern Europe, accessed February 1, 2023, http://earlymoderneurope.hist.sites.carleton.edu/items/show/313.
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Kathirgamam Temple
February 24, 2021 editor அறிவியல், சமயம், வரலாறு 0
Kathirgamam temple is a temple complex dedicated to Buddhist guardian deity Kataragama deviyo and Hindu War God Murugan. It is one of the few religious sites in Sri Lanka that is venerated by the Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and the Vedda people. For most of the past millennia, it was a jungle shrine very difficult to access; today it is accessible by an all-weather road. The shrines and the nearby Kiri Vehera are managed by Buddhists, the shrines dedicated to TeyvÄṉai and Shiva are managed by Hindus and the mosque by Muslims.
The shrine has for centuries attracted Tamil Hindus from Sri Lanka and South India who undertook an arduous pilgrimage on foot. Since the latter half of the 20th century, the site has risen dramatically among Sinhalese Buddhists who today constitute a majority of the visitors.
The cult of Kataragama deviyo has become the most popular amongst the Sinhalese people. A number of legends and myths are associated with the deity and the location, differing by religion, ethnic affiliation and time. These legends are changing with the deity’s burgeoning popularity with Buddhists, as the Buddhist ritual specialists and clergy try to accommodate the deity within Buddhist ideals of nontheism. With the change in devotees, the mode of worship and festivals has changed from that of Hindu orientation to one that accommodates Buddhist rituals and theology. It is difficult to reconstruct the factual history of the place and the reason for its popularity amongst Sri Lankans and Indians based on legends and available archaeological and literary evidence alone, although the place seems to have a venerable history. The lack of clear historic records and resultant legends and myths fuel the conflict between Buddhists and Hindus as to the ownership and the mode of worship at Kataragama.
The priests of the temple are known as Kapuralas and are believed to be descended from Vedda people. Veddas, too, have a claim on the temple, a nearby mountain peak and locality through a number of legends. There is a mosque and a few tombs of Muslim pious men buried nearby. The temple complex is also connected to other similar temples in Eastern Province dedicated to Murugan which are along the path of pilgrimage from Jaffna in the north to Kataragama in the south of the island; Arunagirinathar traversed this pilgrimage route in the 15th century.
Archeological Evidence
The vicinity of the temple has number of ancient ruins and inscriptions. Based on dated inscriptions found, the nearby Kiri Vehera is believed to have been built or renovated around the 1st century BCE. There is an inscription, a votive offering to the Mangala Mahacetiya, apparently the former name of Kiri Vehera on the orders of one Mahadathika Mahanaga, a son of king Tiritara who ruled in 447 CE. There is also an inscription of Dapula I dated to the 7th century CE who built a sanctuary for Buddhist monks, but the inscription does not mention Kataragama by name. Nearby Tissamaharama was a trading town of antiquity by the 2nd century BCE, as indicated by Prakrit and Tamil Brahmi legends in coins and potsherds unearthed on the site. The region was part of the ancient kingdom of Ruhuna which played an important role in the political history of the island.
Buddhist Legends
One of the Sinhala legends tells that when Skanda-Kumara moved to Sri Lanka, he asked for refuge from Tamils. The Tamils refused, and he came to live with the Sinhalese in Kataragama. As a penance for their refusal, the deity forced Tamils to indulge in body piercing and fire walking in his annual festival.[26] This legend tries to explain the location of the shrine as well as the traditional patterns of worship by Tamils. Another Sinhala legends attest that Kataragama deviyo was the deity worshipped by Dutugamunu in the 1st century BCE, before his war with Ellalan, and that Dutugamunu had the shrine erected to Skanda-Kumara at Kataragama after his victory. This legend has no corroboration in the Mahavamsa, the historic annals about Dutugamunu. Another Sinhala legend makes Kataragama deviyo a deification of a Tamil spy sent by Elara to live amongst the Sinhalese or a Tamil juggler who made the locals deify him after his death. Yet another legend says that Kataragama deviyo is a deification of the legendary king Mahasena, who is born as a bodhisattva or Buddha in waiting.
Vedda Legends
The Veddas who have kept out of the mainstream culture of Sri Lanka do not subscribe to Kataragama deviyo as their deity. Unassimilated Veddas consider Kande Yakka or Gale Yakka (Lord of the Rock) as their primary deity to be propitiated before hunts. They propitiate the deity by building a shrine made out of thatched leaves with a lance or arrow planted in the middle of the structure. They dance around the shrine with the shaman becoming possessed with the spirits of the dead ancestors who guide the hunting party in techniques and places to go hunt.
Although since the medieval period Hindus, Buddhists and even Muslims have tried to co-opt the temple, deity and its worship as their own, the rituals maintained by the native priests are still intact. The main festival is known in Sinhalese as Esela Perehera. It is celebrated during the months of July and August. About 45 days before the festival begins, the priests go into the forest and find two forked branches of a sacred tree. The branches are then immersed in the local river and kept at the shrines dedicated to Kataragama deviyo and Vali. When the main festival begins, the Yantra representing the deity is retrieved from its storage location, paraded through a street on top of an elephant, and carried to the Valli shrine. After two hours it is returned. On the last day of the festival, the Yantra is left overnight at the Valli shrine and brought back to the main shrine. The priests conduct the rituals in silence, covering their mouths with a white cloth. Associated with the main festival is fire walking arranged by a master of the ritual. Hundreds of devotees participate in fire walking, yet others participate in ecstatic dance forms called Kavadi and body piercing. Many of the pilgrims exhibit signs of being possessed.
Sri Lanka’s Four Guardian Deities Vishnu, Kataragama, Saman and Pattini have Banished the Known Goblin and Installed the Unknown Seraph as President
By Don Manu
A new dawn has broken upon these island shores. With the New Year, Lanka has a new president, a new prime minister, even a new saint; and reflected upon the now sunlit countenance of her people is a new air of freedom, a new smile of hope.
Though once trumpeted from the rooftop by the previous regime that it was the best of times, it was in reality the bleakest of times. It was an evil era when a nation’s brainwashed people were getting closer and closer to embrace the notion that the three blessings that historically protected Lanka did not emanate from the Triple Gem of the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha but instead flowed from the triumvirate of the three Rajapaksa brothers whose attitude, action and conduct conveyed the impression, relentlessly fostered upon the mass Sinhala psyche, that they and their descendants were anointed by a divine right to rule the land forever; and that, if their omniscient, omnipotent selves were not omnipresent to wield the throne, the crown and the sceptre, then Lanka and her people would be condemned to a conflagration of terrible destruction.
Ramayana’s Hanuman, symbolising the foreign conspiracies said to be at work, would burn the house down; with Ravana vanquished, it would be curtains for Lanka, the prophecy held.
Unscrupulously exploiting the entire state propaganda machinery, this was the sinister message hammered home day in and day out into the collective conscience of the Sinhala masses. The war victory was wrung dry to its last remaining drops of glory; and even the tiniest rivulet that flowed bearing the splendour and the triumph was directed in the direction of one man who, claiming sole credit, publicly bathed in its waters, without a blush. While synthetic wreaths were laid to fade upon the grave of the Unknown Soldier, evergreen flowers freshly adorned and scented the towering pedestal of the kudos baggers.
Fortunately, the Four Guardian Deities of Lanka, Vishnu, Kataragama, Saman and Pattini seem to have exercised their benign influence by coming to the fore to banish the self-styled known goblin and instead instal the unknown seraph in the seat of Presidency through the power of the ballot last week. Thankfully, the 2,500-year-old status quo of Buddhism’s protection to the thrice-blessed land has now been restored. If more benedictions were called for, the nation’s talisman was further fortified with the welcome blessings of Jesus Christ brought aboard the Alitalia flight on Tuesday by His Holiness Pope Francis.
Now it’s time for the new President to start his own road show and keep the promises he made in his quest for the Holy Grail. Chief amongst the reason that led to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s downfall was the total breakdown of law and order and the odious practice of selective law enforcement.
This enabled corruption to rise to unprecedented levels. As long as it were the kith, kin and cronies plundering the nation’s coffers to finance the ruling elites’ orgy of lust and greed, power and gratification, the resulting debauchery hardly raised an eyebrow.
The Rajapaksa regime can boast of infrastructure development and ending the war, but what has it done to ensure law and order in civil society?
During the election campaign, Maithripala Sirisena painted the breakdown of law and order, selective law enforcement and gross corruption as the dominant stars that blazed on his flag of change. The opportunity has now dawned to keep his manifesto promise to the letter. The dynamics of politics may dictate to the present leadership to compromise on certain issues for political expediency. If so they would be committing the same mistakes as their predecessors and the promised change would be but another mirage in the oasis of a people’s hope.
Horse deals done behind closed doors to provide for any exception to the cardinal rule that the law is equal and that each one is levelled in its dust, cannot and should not be tolerated by the people who voted for genuine change in the belief that the pristine credentials of the new president made him the ideal harbinger of promised change. Each and everyone, no matter their exalted stations, against whom any allegation of corruption exists must be subject to the due process of the law and must, if a competent court finds the person guilty, receive the full punishment for the crime committed without any presidential clemency showed before or after the trial.
The charge against the Rajapaksa regime is not only for being responsible for the gross corruption that raged unchecked but also for being responsible for the debasement of the traditional values any society, if it wishes to exist and thrive, cannot do without, cannot afford to have trampled in the mud. At the heart of any society lies the fundamental foundation stone of law. All roads built, however well carpeted it may be, will not lead to prosperity but to anarchy for without the rule of law reigning supreme and applying equally to all, even platinum carpeted roads would lead to the chaos caused by social implosion.
The Rajapaksa regime can well boast that they built Chinese-funded roads, a Chinese funded harbour, a Chinese funded airport, a Chinese funded coal plant, that they ended a terrorist war by meeting force with an even greater force but what have they done to ensure law and order in civil society and to promote the respect that must be accorded to the rule of law for laws to have any efficacy? Did the Rajapaksa government even discharge its constitutional duty of promoting the Buddha Sassana when they turned a blind eye to the violent acts of a small group of renegade monks, the nefarious Bodu Bala Sena that degraded the sublime ‘ahimsa’ message of the Buddha and brought dissension within the Sassana itself?
Even communist China is stable and functions competently because it is governed by Chinese laws which, no matter its reddish hue or rancid taste, apply equally to all its citizens. There is no one law that applies to the followers of Chinese President Xi Jinping; and another that damns those who do not swear by him and hail him as God King of China. Today with the edifice of law brought to the ground and the respect lowered to its nadir it is vital, before all else, that the new government first resurrects it to its pristine state. In the long run, development depends on it. Thankfully the people had realised this salient truth; and, when they got the opportunity on January 8, demonstrated their conviction that what was indispensable was not a Rajapaksa to rule over Lanka but an impartial rule of law to preside over the affairs of all Lankans.
Maithripala Sirisena now faces the Herculean labour of cleaning up the Augean Stables. However hard it is, he must start at the beginning, from scratch. But this task must be done and shown to be done. During the election campaign, he and his fellow members alleged gross corruption in the Rajapaksa ranks. This was the signature tune of the entire campaign, the rhapsodic song which held the masses gripped in enthusiasm to dawn change when it sang of how a people, lashed to submission, were being systematically robbed and their legitimate inheritance blatantly used by their political masters to finance the stupendously luxurious lifestyles of an unworthy few.
And now, after the allegations had waxed lyrical and had become the moving music that served to bring down a falsetto regime from its prolonged crescendo, the demand must be made from the new government to produce the proof, to substantiate the charges made against the previous regime, to indict them in court and allow the due process to punish the guilty for the crimes committed under the existing laws.
If the Government fails to do so, for whatever reason, it will stand indicted before the bar of public opinion for making false allegations against innocent men, for deceiving the public by casting calumnies against their rivals and deceiving the masses to gain their votes to come to power. The absence of action to bring the culprits to trial will cast doubts on the Government’s own bona fides and enable members of the previous regime to later claim that they are innocent men whose innocence has been proved by the Government’s own failure to come up with a shred of evidence of corruption. If the Government does not pursue the investigations to its logical conclusions it will be indirectly handing over good character certificates to those whom they once labelled as rogues.
Secondly, it must apply to all. Maithripala Sirisena and the then opposition decried the breakdown of law and order and bemoaned the repugnant practice of selective law enforcement. With the former president dividing the nation into two communities, declaring there were only patriots and traitors it soon became apparent that the patriots were those who were loyal to the Rajapaksas while all those who showed even the slightest difference of opinion were branded as traitors.
The patriotic stooges could run amok, tie men to trees, storm media offices, kidnap suspects in police custody from police stations while the police looked askance, attack Muslims wantonly, attack Christian churches, kill a British tourist and gang rape his Russian girlfriend, brandishing pistols and run on public streets in broad daylight to attack visiting opposition Parliamentary members without the police conducting their duties of law enforcement which was a subject directly under the former president as Minister of Defence. They could amass large fortunes, buy up valuable properties, own expensive sports cars, flaunt opulence and display wealth far greater than their legitimate incomes revealed without the tax department, which came under the direct purview of former President Rajapaksa as Minister of Finance, being prodded to make even an inquiry, let alone ordered to take action.
The traitors or those not flaunting the Rajapaksa colours were, on the other hand, hounded repeatedly and were subjected to the full force of the law and faced its wrath repeatedly. White vans ceased to be identified as vehicles carrying children to schools in the morning but as phantoms of the night bearing another ‘traitor’ to meet an unknown tryst with the grim reaper. And very often the victim of an extrajudicial attack by a Rajapaksa patriot became persecuted. Many remained silent nursing their wounds rather than make complaints to the police and face even greater injury. Some even fled the country in fear of death whilst the patriotic cronies of the Rajapaksa clan ambled across the land as sacred cows of the Rajapaksa barn.
No wonder then that respect for the law, coupled with interference in the judiciary, became nonexistent in the eyes of all right-thinking men and women. Remember the famous President Rajapaksa comment when asked why he was taking action against a person who had turned against him when earlier he had appointed him to a top position in a bank even though he faced an allegation of corruption, “He was one of us then and I tried to ‘shape’ it up.” The efficacy of the law ceases to exist when people find that it is not their actions but their political colours that determine whether the law of the land applies to them or not.
In the event of the present Government taking action to prosecute those suspected of corruption and bribery, President Sirisena must not commit the same fatal error as Mahinda Rajapaksa did and spare those on the basis that immunity has been granted to them as a result of secret deals made to facilitate a smooth transition of government or to strengthen his position in the SLFP party as president of the party. He must ensure and publicly demonstrate by his action that in his legal textbook on criminal procedure no exception section or subsection exists to excuse anyone, however, exalted the position may be, from criminal prosecution for criminal acts done during the tenure of office. If Maithripala succumbs to the expediency trap and allows a few big sharks to slip through the net, he too will be guilty of selective law enforcement and will be no different from his predecessor.
Like the rain that falls, the provisions of the law must fall on all, with no umbrella offered for a still powerful few to shield themselves from the falling rain of justice. Lanka’s wealth is the property of her people, not the personal inheritance of even the president and thus no one has the right to grant a dispensation to those who stand in the dock, accused of plundering the nation’s coffers.
Thirdly the guilty must not go free if only to convey a potent message to the new ministers that their actions, too, will be minutely scrutinized and allegations of corruption and bribery will be effectively probed and charges filed against them in court by this government or by a future government. The precedent that will be set by prosecuting all the culprits in the Rajapaksa regime will bring about this change. The era when this land was treated as one furrowed and made fertile for the benefit of politicians on both sides of the fence will then be over.
Lanka’s first agriculturalist President Maithripala Sirisena must ensure that the field is not one used by the UNP in the Maha season and the SLFP in the Yala, with both expropriating the harvest with a mutual understanding not to reveal the others thievery on account of concealing one’s own fraud while the Lankan people, the true owners of the land are robbed of their dues and left with only a handful of grain.
Finally, it must be made clear that taking action against the traitors of Lanka, some of whom have already fled the country to take up residence in countries they are citizens of and to enjoy the spoils of their treachery undisturbed, is not one designed to wreak revenge but a vital necessary exercise to give justice to the victims of The Great State Robbery of all time, justice to 20 million victims, the hoodwinked, cheated pauperised citizens of Lanka who have had their treasure trove plundered in by those who paraded the roads as the true patriots of the nation. The Lankan Government must not rest until the last rogue in the cave of thieves is hunted down and swiftly brought to justice,and ensure that the last stolen cent is returned to the national coffers.
Until this Monday the entire facade of the ICC drug store building at Bambalapitiya junction in Colombo was covered with the billboard proclaiming in banner headlines the statement in Sinhala, “I awoke the nation – (sgn) Mahinda Rajapaksa.” Now that the former president has roused us from our deep slumber, it is perhaps time that the new President Maithripala Sirisena awoke us to the Truth.
Courtesy: Sunday Times
The Long Reach of Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa Dynasty
சிறை செல்லும் சீமாட்டி
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Turkey's Emergency Election: The Primacy of Raison d'etat
It is not President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “power hunger” that accounts for Turkey’s snap presidential and general election. Instead, raison d’état is behind this event, which will enshrine presidential rule. The abolition of parliamentary rule and the concentration of all executive powers to the presidency are designed to neutralize the Kurdish challenge. It is also intended to refurbish the authority of the state and lend it a renewed aura of strength after it was torn apart by the Gülenists. Reactions to Turkish developments should not be based on interpretations that neglect the primacy of the state’s interests and the impact of the Gülenist threat and Kurdish challenge.
BACKGROUND: On April 17, Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the far right Nationalist Action Party (MHP) called for an urgent, snap presidential and general election. Bahçeli’s party forms an alliance with the ruling, Islamic conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP). On April 18, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Devlet Bahçeli met for a brief meeting after which the former declared that snap elections are going to be held on June 24.The decision set in motion a two week long high-suspense political drama, as the main opposition party, the social democrat Republican People’s Party (CHP), and the Islamist Felicity Party moved to form a united opposition front with former president Abdullah Gül as its presidential candidate, which put “regime change” within reach. However, the bid was unsuccessful. CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and the leader of the Felicity Party Temel Karamollaoğlu, two unlikely political bedfellows, failed to bring along the leader of the newly formed rightist Good Party, Meral Akşener, who refused to abandon her own presidential bid.
On April 28, Abdullah Gül, who had not made any public appearance during the preceding two weeks during which his name was at the center of the political game, stated that he was not going to run for the presidency, as no broad consensus had been reached to endorse him. “If there had been a broad agreement, then I would have assumed my responsibility. The contacts of Temel Bey (the leader of the Felicity Party) have shown that no such agreement exists. I’m thus not a candidate,” Gül said.
However, there is also another and more important reason why Turkey is not going to see the two former close colleagues, the two main co-founders of the AKP, contest the presidency. The bid to launch Gül as the common opposition candidate triggered dissuasive counter-measures. The chief of the General Staff, General Hulusi Akar, together with İbrahim Kalın, the spokesman of President Erdoğan, was reported to have paid a late night visit to Gül’s Istanbul residence. The news was reported at the website of the daily Haberturk, but was quickly removed, after which the web editor was fired. The suggestion that Gül was dissuaded from running for president by the chief of the General Staff and the office of the presidency conjures memories of earlier military-civilian interventions in Turkish politics. In 1997, the civilian president and the military had jointly forced the resignation of the democratically elected government, and ironically, in 2007, the chief of the General Staff had made an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the election of Gül -- who was then the candidate of the AKP -- to the presidency. The attempt little more than a decade ago failed because the candidacy of Gül was in harmony with ascendant social and political dynamics that the state establishment ultimately also realized was in the interest of the state to accommodate. Today, however, Gül represented an unacceptable challenge to raison d’état.
IMPLICATIONS: Speaking on April 17, MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli emphasized the urgency of enshrining the presidential system which was approved in a referendum 2017, but which will not come into formal effect until after a new presidential and general election has been held. Bahçeli said that Turkey cannot afford to wait until November 2019, when a new president was going to be elected according to the ordinary schedule, suggesting that societal and political dynamics are at work that risk jeopardizing the cohesion of the alliance of the MHP and AKP. Bahçeli’s cryptic allusions suggest that the MHP leader is not taking his alliance partner’s long-term adherence to their common policies for granted.
In numerical terms, the MHP is the “junior” partner, but it is the nationalist ideology of the MHP that shapes government policies since 2015. The snap election pre-empts any attempt by the AKP to veer off the nationalist course in order to secure the Kurdish vote. A few weeks before the snap elections were called, the governing party was reported to be considering a new “opening” to the Kurds, in order to stem the rapid defection of Kurdish voters – not least as a result of Turkey’s recent military intervention against the Kurds in Syria. Turkish commentators speculated that Bahçeli forced Erdoğan’s hand before worsening electoral prospects for the AKP had put another Kurdish “opening” back on the table.
The presidential system is generally taken to be an expression of Erdoğan’s power hunger, yet it is Devlet Bahçeli who has pushed for it. It was the MHP leader who called for its rapid introduction after the failed Gülenist coup attempt in 2016. Indeed, the presidential system is a response to the dual challenge to the authority of the Turkish state that Gülenists and the Kurdish political movement, respectively, represent. It is explicitly designed to be a rampart against the latter.
In his April 17 speech, Bahçeli named the “presidential government system” – the official name of the new order – “the most important state reform during the history of the republic.” The abolition of parliamentary rule, and the concentration of all executive powers to the presidency, is effectively going to marginalize the Kurdish political movement and its party, whose presence in parliament will henceforth be inconsequential. Bahçeli has earlier explicitly argued this case, as when he said that the presidential system is not about Erdoğan and that it is in the interest of the state since the new order will ensure that Kurdish aspirations are checked by curbing parliamentarianism. (See February 3, 2017 Turkey Analyst)
Furthermore, the concentration of all executive power to the presidency serves the need of rehabilitating the Turkish state after it was torn apart by the Gülenists. The “presidential government system” is supposed to refurbish the authority of the state and lend it a renewed aura of strength. Yet this institutional arrangement will not in itself safeguard the state against a Gülenist return, unless the individual who exercises the presidential functions can be counted on to be vigilant and resist them. After the failed Gülenist coup of 2016, even many Turks who otherwise dislike Erdoğan have come to view him, the erstwhile Gülenist ally, as the only leader who has the strength and determination to keep the scheming sect at bay. Gül, meanwhile, has a reputation of “softness” toward the Gülenists; he has also maintained the “openness” to the Kurds that used to distinguish the AKP. Devlet Bahçeli accused Gül of “running the errands of FETÖ (the Fethullah Gülen Terror Organization),” for good measure adding that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) would welcome him.
As president 2007 to 2014, Gül did indeed demonstrate a pro-Gülenist bias in his appointments to the Constitutional Court and to the universities. Neither is Bahçeli’s claim that the PKK would welcome Gül as preposterous as it would seem. Gül has lately been sounding out Kurdish community leaders, and his presidential candidacy enjoyed strong support within the pro-Kurdish (and moderately leftist) Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), where one faction wanted the party to endorse him. Fundamentally, Gül rejects the presidential system. In his speech on April 28, he advocated the principle of separation of powers, and a restoration of parliamentary rule would benefit precisely the Kurdish political movement.
Aydın Ünal, an AKP parliamentarian and a former presidential chief advisor, noted that Gül had a winning strategy: with the combined opposition vote, the Gülenists and their families, some of the pious/conservative voters, and backed by the good will of the West, the financial circles and international media, Gül would likely have beaten Erdoğan. In fact though, Gül’s candidacy elicited strong opposition among the secularist supporters of the CHP and many were outraged that their party was offering up an “Islamist” as its candidate. On the other hand, Gül would have easily won the Kurdish vote, which is estimated to represent eighteen percent of the electorate, and would also have carried the religiously conservative middle class that wants to enjoy good and prosperous relations with the West, and which is uncomfortable with the present image of Turkey in the West. In a sense, Gül would have resurrected the original bourgeois and cross-ethnic coalition that carried the AKP to power a decade and a half ago.
CONCLUSIONS: The “intervention” of the presidency and of the General Staff against Abdullah Gül’s presidential bid has revived the liberal historical narrative about how military tutelage prevents democracy from taking root in Turkey. Turkish liberals interpret this as yet another example of how the forces of the state prevent a democratic “middle class revolution.” In fact, historically, raison d’état and dominant social and economic dynamics have combined to keep Turkey authoritarian. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called the snap election a “preparation for a coming earthquake,” indicating that tough measures can be expected in order to deal with what is a worsening economic situation and to attract foreign capital back to Turkey. Austerity measures are inevitably going to hurt the working class, but with the new presidential system, the state will be well-equipped to cope with any ensuing societal unrest.
Turkey’s Western partners need to recognize that Erdoğan’s “power hunger” does not account for the introduction of the presidential system, for the urgency to enshrine it or for the prevention of Abdullah Gül’s candidacy. Reactions to Turkish developments cannot be based on interpretations that neglect the primacy of raison d’état and the impact that the Gülenist threat and the Kurdish challenge have had and continue to have on the Turkish state.
Halil Karaveli is Editor of the Turkey Analyst and Senior Fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, who forms a Joint Center, affiliated with, respectively, The American Foreign Policy Council and the Institute for Security and Development Policy. His book, Why Turkey is Authoritarian: From Atatürk to Erdogan (Pluto Press) will be published in June.
Picture credit: Turkish General Staff accessed on May 2, 2018
Read 7770 times Last modified on Friday, 04 May 2018
Devlet Bahçeli
Abdullah Gül
Hulusi Akar
The President’s Man: Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Turkey's Changing Foreign Policy
The İmamoğlu sentence: Will Istanbul Share the Fate of Diyarbakır?
More in this category: « Can Turkey Change? Social Democracy - The Way Out of Turkey's Impasse? »
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© by Gary Vey exclusive for viewzone.com
The Shape of the Future
In my younger days I was a "HAM" radio operator, K1FJS. My hang out was the 20 meter band. Since we used crystals that were made to a specific frequency, it was easy to make a perfectly tuned antenna with some copper wire. You divided the speed of light (299,792,458 meters per second) by the frequency you wanted to target (in Hz). The result was in meters and you could make your piece of wire by using a quarter of this length.
That being said, the best antenna I ever used was the metal drainpipes and gutters on my family's Cape Cod house. I contacted over 100 countries using this odd configuration and just 50 watts... as long as it didn't rain or get covered by snow. The point here is that antennae have a way of combining their contorted radiating surfaces that can sometimes perform better than a straight piece of wire.
If you've ever broken a cell phone, you have no doubt seen the strange shaped antenna that makes communication between the phone and the tower possible. These oddly shaped conductors are designed by computers and usually can radiate signals on a broad range of frequencies, instead of just one. It's a fairly new technology which only became viable in the last decade -- about the time when your mobile phone became your cell phone.
A pioneer in this field is Nathan Cohen, the inventor and patent holder of fractal antennae. Nathan had his "drainpipe" moment when he fabricated an aluminum foil antenna using a fractal pattern to hide it from his landlord, who prohibited antennae on his property. Nathan was surprised that it worked at all, yet he successfully communicated with another "HAM" operator on the 2 meter band.
[Above left:] An example of a fractal shape being used by HAM operators in square, or "quad" formation. [Right:] The HAARP installation in Gakona, Alaska.
The idea blossomed and today, fractal antenna systems are the cutting edge of radiant communication systems. And this brings us to HAARP -- or I should say, "ionosphere heaters" like HAARP.
Those of us familiar with "dark technology" like HAARP are used to seeing football size antennae farms with hundreds of towers and aluminum dipoles. But that's an era of the past.
Enter the new era:
Something weird, yet familiar, can be found at 43°04'51.75"N/92°48'26.85"E.
First, notice the scale. Those little rectangular things are big trucks.
The staff there must get pretty bored because there is evidence of joy-riding on the tarmac. The "embedded conductors" are used like an obstacle course, leaving signs of tire wear on them -- especially in tight turns. Those illuminated figure "8" shapes are puzzling. We sometimes see truck tracks in them also.
At first we thought this site was a runway. Perhaps it was designed to look that way, but some professional pilots who reviewed these photos noticed several oddities that would appear to discourage that assumption. There are no approach lights, no traces of wheels striking the runway -- and the runway itself is far too small with many obstructions (like the huge saucer shaped thing) to allow all but a light drone to land here... No, it's not a runway. But then, what is it?
Then there are those weird shapes on the "arms" of the structure. They are oddly symmetrical, like the new antennae designs. We ran this by Nathan Cohen and he agreed.
"What it is is two banks of three arrays for two separate bands, and one bank of two arrays for another. You can't tell the operational frequencies from the spacings. The panels are many wavelengths across, but we dont know how many. It is a multiband array antenna farm with flat array panels. If we knew the operational frequencies I could tell you the gain. Not an Arecibo but still not too shabby would be my guess. Could be an imaging radar for satellite monitoring."
The surrounding area reveals no power sources for the complex, but there is reason enough to believe that the works are hidden underground. The nearest village is called "Jiefang" (Liberation) "Kan'erjing" (underground caverns).
The idea of high gain, cutting egde antennae, aiming up towards the ionosphere, seems to imply that this facility is designed for a purpose similar to Alaska's HAARP facility. It's not that far fetched. China has numerous and amazing things that can be seen from studying google-earth. There are cities -- huge and so modern that they look like something out of Star Trek -- that are all empty and far removed from any other civilization. There are thousands of square miles of wind generators, weird Area-51 like places that we reported on back in November 2011.
Take a look. Check it out on google-earth. We have more surprises coming. For now... what do you think this is?
Viewzone Magazine || Comments?
Thanks for revealing this. It's obvious that this facility is designed to send/reflect some type of electromagnetic energy into space. I suspect that the focusing effect of the phased array system has been incorporated in this advanced design. This is more support for the theory that it is an ionospheric heater (i.e. like HAARP in Alaska).
That being the case, it seems that many nations are either preparing to use these systems for war, or, maybe even more frightening, that they know something about the collapse of the ionosphere and are acting in a "get ready" mode.
The ionosphere is a fragile layer of our Earth's atmosphere that screens out the ultraviolet radiation, allowing life to function. It is vital to life. It can potentially be depleted by strong extra-terrestrial radiation as we might experience with a strong x-flare or coronal mass ejection.
To restore the ionosphere, it may be possible to activate ionospheric heaters if they are placed around the globe in some configuration that is known to "jump start" this type of energy field. I suspect this research has been done and demonstrated to the degree that these systems were implemented on a global scale. We must look for more. Then we will know.
W.G.
I was asked to look at these images and to explore the google-earth data. I think your comment about the "joy riding" truck drivers may to wrong. The black stains that you notice may be the result of ionization, attracting impurities in the air, dust etc. The same phenomenon sometimes happens when you have a home air ionizer. The area surrounding this device (walls, linnens) often become darkened by the static charge, which attracts soot.
This further supports the view that this is an antenna system, with pretty high wattage. I note that this entire site seems to have been constructed as far back as 2006. Before that the area is censored. Keep looking for more.
Wow. I've never seen anything as futuristic as this stuff in the US of A. What about those empty cities you wrote about... would love to see them.
T.J.H.
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Return to Broadcasting House…
So I don’t know where to start really so I’m just going to come out and say it. After several weeks of organisation, negotiation and discussion I find myself cheerfully back in gainful employment. My new job has almost intimidating potential and at the moment is a little large a concept to easily digest, but as of ten o’clock this morning I became once more an employee of the BBC – more specifically working in Radio & Music as part of a new live research and development team.
But it’s not just the job that’s fascinating – it’s also the environment. For the first time I’m actually going to be working in and around Broadcasting House, and (even though the whole area is being ripped asunder and rebuilt and even though I’m based in an extension to the main building) just being there feels like it connects me to a larger and messier tradition of people who have worked at the BBC in Broadcasting House over the last seventy years. From the origins of television through the Blitz right through until the present day, Broadcasting House has been a key element of the legacy of the BBC and there’s ludicrous amounts of history saturating every surface.
Last year I had a chance to visit the bomb shelters from the second world war – walls of concrete six/eight feet deep covered with faded remnants of sixty years of use and disuse. It was fascinating, atmospheric, almost haunting… The BBC Radio Theatre that was in the core of the oldest part of the building has been the scene for some of the countries greatest comedic performances – from the Goons and Round the Horne right through to (almost) the present day. When George Orwell was working for the BBC writing propoganda, he was based in Broadcasting House. There’s a Room 101 in the building, and it’s widely believed to have been the basis for the Room 101 in the novel 1984. Pretty much concurrently with his work, one of the so-called Cambridge Spies – the drunken, gay, apparently sybaritic Guy Burgess was also working in the building. That is, of course, when he wasn’t working for Russia…
But it’s not just what happened inside the building that makes it vibrate with such potent historical energies. Even the sculptures on the front of the building (which are unfortunately covered up at the moment by scaffolding and screening) are significant. They were designed by Eric Gill – most familiar to graphic designers and typographers today because of his creation of Gill Sans. I heard a rumour from a friend of a friend once that the male statue originally had prominent genitals that were removed by a censorious establishment. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it would fit with Gill’s aesthetic and with what I know about the political life of the nineteen-thirties.
There’s so much more that the building has been a silent witness to over the years. It’s coped with direct-hits from Nazi bombs, coped with generations of creative revolutionaries over eight decades and now is coping with a radical rebuilding to make it a home for the BBC for decades to come. It’s going to sound cheesy, but it’s a genuine honour to work there.
← Oskar & Apple… → Okay, so I'm trivialising it…
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Nowadays, Everyone Is a Potential Target in Ukraine
Veronika Pehe and Tom Rowley May 3, 2017, 9:37 am May 15, 2017
We spoke to journalist Aliona Liasheva about the recent attacks and the situation of left-wing activists in Ukraine.
Photo courtesy of Sergey Movchan
On 20 April, activist Stas Serhijenko was brutally attacked and stabbed near his home in Kiev. He suffered serious wounds and was taken to hospital. This incident was only one of a series of violent attacks on left-wing activists and institutions. But as Aliona Liasheva explains, it is not only those associated with the left who have become the victims of attacks, anyone who is seen as challenging mainstream pro-Ukrainian and pro-war views can easily become subject to repressions of different sorts.
VP: On April 20, activist Stas Serhienko was stabbed near his home in Kyiv. Who was behind the attack?
AL: It is difficult to be completely sure. The police only started working on the case three days after the attack. But we can make some basic assumptions. For one, Stas was not robbed. The people who attacked him filmed the incident. Stas had received a lot of threats before. It makes sense to assume this was an attack from a far-right group. The leader of one such group called C14, which has been active since the 2010s, published a blog post in one of the mainstream Ukrainian media, in which he approved of the attack. It’s quite likely the attackers were associated with this or a similar group, but Stas didn’t recognize any of them.
TR: Has Stas suffered attacks before?
AL: Yes, he was beaten after the 1 May demonstration in 2016, and he identified the attackers as members of Azov. He was also threatened at another anti-fascist demonstration last year, so this attack was not unprecedented. But the latest incident was certainly one of the most horrible we’ve seen for a long time in Kyiv.
VP: Several other violent incidents have also occurred in the past weeks and months. Recently, an exhibition of artist Davyd Chychkan at the Visual Culture Research Centre was vandalized. In February, activist Taras Bohay was attacked in Lviv. Are these attacks connected in any way? Are the same people behind them?
It’s hard to say for sure whether these incidents are connected, but it’s clear that part of the far right are going wild right now. These are people who did not make it either into mainstream politics or other state structures, such as the police. They are not controlled by any institution and I can only hope the attacks are not systematically organized. The difficulty in assessing the situation is also a result of these attacks often being “covered” by the police.
VP: So what is the role of the police? Are they making any efforts to investigate?
The rather half-hearted investigations into these crimes could be explained by the fact that the police are completely disorganized, or that they do actually have an interest in covering up these incidents. There have been cases when they simply stopped the investigation. What’s important to highlight is that attacks on activists like Stas are a small part of a bigger process. For instance, media are being attacked. Take the case of Inter, a TV channel, which was accused of being pro-Russian in September 2016. It was not attacked by the state, but by a group of thugs who set the station building on fire.
TR: There are signs that far-right groups and other actors, such as oligarch groups or elements of law enforcement, link up at points where they can be of mutual benefit. How do you see these interests aligning?
During the Maidan, these groups were instrumentalized by the elites, part of them are now in the volunteer battalions of the army.
AL: I completely agree that there are a whole host of different groups and interests involved. The situation certainly changed after Maidan. In the past three years, we have witnessed an increase in far-right violence, though of course it’s not something completely new. These far-right groups existed already before Maidan and were also financed by oligarchs in certain cases. They were also very much associated with the Dynamo Kyiv football team. During the Maidan, these groups were instrumentalized by the elites, part of them are now in the volunteer battalions of the army. Others, especially leading figures, received positions in the police and secret police institutions. The head of the police has far-right connections. Those who were beating LGBT people on the streets are now sitting in offices. And those who didn’t get a position in the army or security services are now out and about and ready to spark violence at any point.
VP: Who or what exactly are the targets of far-right attacks?
AL: Attacks on media and activists are just a small part of what’s going on, because in general there’s a broad nationalist consensus in the country. Its main criteria are being anti-Russian and pro-war. By anti-Russian, I don’t just mean being critical towards Putin’s politics, but rather a general Russophobic attitude, which hates everything connected to Russia, including its language, though one half of Ukrainians speak Russian as their mother tongue. This consensus also dictates that if you want to be part of the nation, you have to be militaristic, support the army and far-right battalions no matter what sort of war crimes they are committing. The moment you break this consensus in public, you pay for it.
VP: Does this mean that those who break this consensus are automatically defined as being on the left?
AL: No. Usually they are labelled as being pro-Russian or pro-Soviet. Of course, some of those who criticize this consensus do so from leftist positions, like researchers, journalists, or activists. But there are also some nationalist journalists doing the same. Take the case of Ruslan Kotsaba, whose views are far away from the left – for example, he is openly anti-Semitic. He published a video blog in which he said he didn’t want to be drafted into the army, because the Ukrainian army is defending the interests of oligarchs. He was arrested for that, sentenced to three years in prison and later released. It also affects people who have pro-Russian views. This was the case of Oles’ Buzina, the journalist who was shot dead in 2015. It is still not clear who did it, but there are reasons to believe that right-wing groups were involved. Or take the radio station Vesti. It published a range of different opinions, from pro-Ukrainian pieces to positions slightly sympathetic to the current direction of Russian politics. They lost their broadcast license in March this year.
TR: The different elements of the attacks against particular people or institutions connected to Russia are part of the “hybrid war” discourse, where everything is securitized and everyone is seen as a potential threat. It doesn’t matter if you say something against the consensus in public or are engaged in activism outside permitted frames, if you are a platform hosting someone with views outside the mainstream — potentially, this can be perceived as a threat to national unity and sovereignty, a source of defeat or treachery. Nowadays, it feels like everyone is an amateur detective.
Absolutely. If you want to find something to compromise someone, you will. And this also affects people who are not directly involved in politics. Take the example of the music band ONUKA. The leader of the band has mild patriotic political opinions. One of their tracks was sold to a Russian filmmaking company. Because of that, the band was accused of being separatist by another artist and this accusation was quickly spread around social networks. It’s an example of how these repressions have no logic.
VP: Which makes everyone into a target, because anyone can be labelled as disrupting the national(ist) consensus.
Exactly. For example, Stas is a very obvious target for the far right. He has left-wing views and doesn’t hide it, he supports LGBT and minority rights. He doesn’t fit into this consensus at all, yet there are also people very close to this consensus, like this musician, who has nothing to do with politics, but whom these repressive processes affect nevertheless. This doesn’t concern just explicit attacks of the right, but also the state policy of decommunization. The recent decommunization laws are very contradictory. Street names have been changed, but also books, activities and organizations have been banned. Basically, the definitions are so broad, that if you really want to, you will find a reason to put anyone in prison. As Tom said, everyone is a detective.
TR: A classic instance of this took place in May last year, when a group of hackers released the personal information of roughly 7,000 people who work in the media and more or less accused them of state treason. Ukraine’s liberal commentariat was generally in favour.
Many felt the need to discuss Stas’s political beliefs and evaluate if they are good or bad.
AL: And indeed, the debate that was sparked on the internet after the attack on Stas shows that people really believe that being a communist is reason enough to be stabbed. For example, on the informal social network page of his university, people were literally saying with a lot of sarcasm that this is what he deserves as a “commie”. Disgusting, really. Many felt the need to discuss Stas’s political beliefs and evaluate if they are good or bad. And if they’re bad… Well, then the attack was basically justified in their view. But of course, many people also reacted from a human rights perspective and condemned this act of violence, even if they themselves do not support left-wing views.
VP: What is the mood among activists in Ukraine at the moment? What kind of impact are these attacks having?
AL: As I said, it’s hardly all that new. We have been aware of the ongoing violence and the danger it poses for a long time. In general, left-wing activists understand the fact that any article they publish in a journal might be a reason for being attacked. Many activists have internalized a code of security rules, like hiding their real names, the place they live, extra internet security, being very careful at demonstrations. At every rally, there’s a plan of how to get to where the event is taking place and how to leave. It’s become an everyday practice, you don’t really notice it anymore. But I won’t hide that I am scared.
TR: What about the media? How have they reported on the incident?
The media also completely support the consensus we’re talking about. Although some media did share a statement written after the attack, there is not a lot of interest in covering this in Ukraine. We were, however, contacted by Russia’s Channel One. Of course, we refused to talk to them. Surprisingly, Stas’s university was actually very supportive, also in terms of media coverage.
Aliona Liasheva is editor of the journals Commons and September, as well as the book “Left Europe” about social movements in the European Union. She is a a PhD candidate in urban studies at the University of Milan-Bicocca.
Veronika Pehe and Tom Rowley
Veronika Pehe is editor of A2larm.cz. Tom Rowley is lead editor at openDemocracy Russia.
May is getting closer, what’s out there to do?
Orbán, keep your hands off our universities!
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Home The Story The Witnesses The Storytellers The Government FOIA Majestic-12 Site Map Links Credits
Project Mogul
The Air Force Report
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Missing Documents
MJ-12 Briefing Paper
The SOM-01-1 Manual
Synopsis of Balloon Research Findings
1st Lt James McAndrew
This report by 1st Lt. James McAndrew is a summary of the Air Force's findings on Project MOGUL, the top secret project that some believe is the answer to the Roswell mystery. The document is a key portion of the 1995 Air Force publication "The Roswell Report: Fact Versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert."
On July 7, 1947, W.W. (Mac) Brazel, a rancher from approximately 75 miles northwest of Roswell, NM, contacted the local sheriff and reported that some metallic debris had come to rest on the ranch on which he worked near the town of Corona, NM. This was during the "UFO Wave of 1947," and he told the sheriff that he thought this debris may be part of a "flying disc." (1) The sheriff contacted Roswell (Army Air Field) AAF, which in turn sent intelligence officer, Maj Jesse Marcel, and two Counterintelligence Corps Agents, Capt Sheridan Cavitt and MSgt Lewis Rickett, to evaluate the debris. The officers collected a portion of the material and brought it back to Roswell AAF on the evening of July 7. (2) The following day, the Public Information Office released a statement saying that the Army Air Forces had recovered a flying disc. This press release was provided to local newspapers who sent it out to wire services. Meanwhile, Brig Gen Roger Ramey, Eighth Air Force Commander, ordered that the debris be flown to Eighth Air Force Headquarters at Fort Worth AAF, TX, for his personal inspection. Upon viewing the debris, he and his staff recognized parts which looked similar to a weather balloon. He then summoned the base weather officer, who identified the debris as the remnants of a weather balloon and its attached metallic radar target. (3) General Ramey then invited the local press to view and take photographs of the materials and he declared the episode to be a misunderstanding (Atch 1).
The above summarizes the previously reported information of what happened on July 7 and 8, 1947. Before now, however, a larger portion of the story was never told. Recent research indicates that the debris recovered from the ranch on July 7, 1947, was a weather balloon -- but it was not being used strictly for weather purposes; its real purpose was to carry classified payloads for a Top Secret US Army Air Forces project. The project's classified code name was MOGUL.
The current investigation discovered that an experimental balloon project was being conducted at nearby Alamogordo Army Airfield (now Holloman AFB, NM) during the summer of 1947. (4) An examination of unclassified technical and progress reports prepared by the balloon project revealed that a highly classified program, Project MOGUL was the ultimate reason for the balloon experiments. Project MOGUL was classified Top Secret and carried a priority level of lA. (5) It is Project MOGUL that provides the ultimate explanation for the "Roswell Incident."
1. Roswell Daily Record, Jul 9,1947, p.1.
2. Intvw, Col Richard L. Weaver with Lt Col Sheridan Cavitt, USAF (Ret), May 24,1994.
3. Intvw, Lt Col Joseph V. Rogan with Irving Newton, Jul 21,1994.
4. Ltr, Lt Col Edward A. Doty to Mr David Bushnell, Mar 3, 1959.
5. Ltr, Brig Gen E. O'Donnell, Deputy Chief, Engineering Division, HQ AMC, to Commanding General, USAAF, subj: Change in Classification of MOGUL, Item 188-5, Jul 8,1946.
Project MOGUL was first conceived by Dr. Maurice Ewing of Columbia University, NY, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, MA. Dr. Ewing had conducted considerable research for the Navy during World War II, studying, among other things, the "sound channel" in the ocean. He proved that explosions could be heard thousands of miles away with underwater microphones placed at a predetermined depth within the sound channel. He theorized that since sound waves generated by explosions could be carried by currents deep within the ocean, they might be similarly transmitted within a sound channel in the upper atmosphere. The military application of this theory was the long-range detection of sound waves generated by Soviet nuclear detonations and the acoustical signatures of ballistic missiles as they traversed the upper atmosphere. He presented his theory to General Carl Spaatz, Chief of Staff of the Army Air Forces, in the fall Of 1945. (6) The project was approved, and research was begun by the scientific research agency of the US Army Air Forces (USAAF), the Air Materiel Command (AMC), early in 1946 The project was assigned to HQ AMC, Engineering Division, Electronics Subdivision, which in turn assigned the project to AMC's Watson Laboratories, Engineering Division, Applied Propagation Subdivision, located in Red Bank, NJ.
Project MOGUL initially focused on three areas of technology: (1) an expendable microphone, capable of detecting, at long range, low-frequency sound transmissions generated by explosions and missiles; (2) a means of telemetering these sounds to a ground or airborne receiver; and (3) a system from which to suspend the microphone and telemetering device in the upper atmosphere for an extended period of time. To meet these criteria, contracts were awarded by AMC to Columbia University (AMC contract no. W28499-ac-82) for the acoustical equipment, and to New York University (NYU) for the development of constant-level balloons (AMC contract no. W28-099-ac- 241). After the initial contracts were awarded, Project MOGUL branched out into many areas related to the geophysical properties of the upper atmosphere, including radiowave propagation, radar propagation, ionospheric physics, solar physics, terrestrial magnetism, meteorological physics, and weather forecasting. Considerable resources were devoted to Project MOGUL which included numerous bomber and transport aircraft and two oceangoing vessels. At one point the staff, exclusive of contractors, numbered over 100 persons. To accommodate this sensitive, high-priority project, facilities of the secluded Oakhurst Field Station of Watson Laboratories were used. Balloon operations associated with Project Mogul were conducted at various locations throughout the United States and the Pacific, the latter in reference to acoustical detection research associated with the Sandstone atomic tests at Entiwetok Atoll in April and May 1948. (7)
6. Rprt, Maurice Ewing for General Carl Spaatz, "Long Range Sound Transmission in the Atmosphere," n.d.
7. Rprt, HQ Fitzwilliarn Fwd, "Sonic Balloon Test Kwajalein," May 17, 1948 (hereafter "Sonic
By December 1948, serious concerns had arisen regarding the feasibility of the project as first conceived. Even though the principle on which the project was based was determined to be sound, questions concerning cost, security, and practicality were discussed-that ultimately led to the disbandment of the project, and Project MOGUL as first conceived was never put into operational use. However, MOGUL did serve as the foundation for a comprehensive program in geophysical research from which the USAF and the scientific community have benefited to the present time. These benefits included constant-level balloon technology, first developed by NYU for Project MOGUL.
WATSON LABORATORIES
The organizational structure of Watson Laboratories Applied Propagation Subdivision, which was established primarily for MOGUL, as it appeared in January 1947, is shown in Attachment 2. Over the course of the project, MOGUL had three military project officers, or "chiefs": Maj Robert T. Crane, spring 1946-July 1946; Col Marcellus Duffy, August 1946-January, 1947; and Capt Albert C. Trakowski, January 1947-May 1949. Major Crane had been personally recommended by Dr. Ewing, originator of the project, but by June of 1947, MOGUL had not met the expectations of HQ USAAF, and Colonel Duffy replaced Major Crane. (8) Colonel Duffy was a respected, highly capable career Army Air Forces officer. During World War II, Colonel Duffy had reported directly to General Hap Arnold, Chief of Staff USAAF, as the Army Air Forces Liaison Officer to the US Army Signal Corps, with primary duties for securing meteorological equipment from the Army for use by the USAAF. Colonel Duffy had a reputation for accomplishing difficult assignments by getting the most out of his personnel exactly what was desired by HQ USAAF to solve the numerous administrative and personnel problems that had arisen in Project MOGUL under Major Crane. In a short period, Colonel Duffy was able to make the necessary corrections and was reassigned to become the Assistant Chief, Electronics Plans Section, Electronics Subdivision, HQ AMC, at Wright Field, OH. Colonel Duffy also continued to monitor "the upper air research program" (i.e., Project MOGUL) in addition to his duties as the Assistant Chief of the Electronics Plans Section. (9) The primary scientist for MOGUL was Dr. James Peoples, assisted by Albert P. Crary, the Field Operations Director. Both scientists had previous associations with Dr. Ewing: Dr. Peoples at Columbia, and A.P. Crary at Woods Hole. Both scientists were assigned to MOGUL for the entire length of the project.
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY "BALLOON GROUP"
From September 30, 1946, until December 31, 1950, the Research Division of the College of Engineering of NYU conducted research under contract for the Army
Balloon Test Kwajalein").
8. Memo, Brig Gen Tom C Rives, Chief, Electronic Subdivision, Engineering Division, AMC, to Maj Gen Curtis LeMay, subj: Relief of Major crane as Project Officer MOGUL and TORRID, Jun 8,1946.
9. Memo, Maj Gen Curtis E. LeMay, Deputy Chief of Air Staff for Research and Development, to Maj Gen L.C. Craigie, Chief Engineering Division, AMC, Apr 16,1947.
Air Forces, in conjunction with Project MOGUL. (l0) The NYU "balloon group" was to develop and fly constant-level balloons while simultaneously developing telemetering equipment to transmit data obtained in the upper atmosphere. (11) Group members launched, tracked, and recorded data only in regard to constant-level balloon flight and telemetering of information. They did not have access to observations and measurements that had military applications. MOGUL, in other words, was conducted as a compartmented, classified project in which participants knew only what they needed to know, and no more. Due to the compartmentations balloon flights made by NYU were divided into two categories, "research" and "service. (12) Research flights tested balloon controls and telemetering systems and were fully reported in the unclassified NYU reports. (13) A total of 110 research flights were flown during the contract. Service flights were flown at the direction of Watson Laboratory personnel, but the military purpose was Top Secret. These flights carried classified equipment, which could not be fully reported in the unclassified NYU documents. Further evidence of the exclusion of classified information from the reports is the lack of data for balloons flown in association with the Sandstone nuclear tests held in April and May of 1948. (14) In recent interviews with former NYU personnel, Dr. Athelstan F. Spilhaus, NYU Director of Research, and Professor Charles B. Moore, NYU Constant-Level Balloon Project Engineer, stated that they were never informed of the classified name, MOGUL, nor did they ever have access to the scientific data that was obtained by the USAAF as a result of their efforts. In response to inquiries, professional or casual, project personnel simply said that they were engaged in balloon research. (15)
The first balloon launches associated with Project MOGUL were carried out at several locations on the east coast of the United States. (16) However, unfavorable winds, conflicts with commercial air traffic, and the need to gather data on the V2 flights currently being conducted at White Sands Proving Ground, NM, led the NYU group to conduct further tests from Alamogordo AAF. (17) The NYU group would make three "field trips" during the summer of 1947 for test and evaluation, labeling them Alamogordo I, II, and III. The majority of the balloon flights over the next four years originated from Alamogordo AAF.
10. Research Division, College of Engineering, NYU, Technical Report No. 93.03, Constant Level Balloons, Final Report, Mar 1, 1951 (hereafter NYU, Final Report), p. 3.
11. Research Division, College of Engineering, NYU, Technical Report 93-02, Constant Level Balloons, sect 1, General, Nov 15, 1949, p. 5.
12. NYU, Final Report, p. 13.
13. Research Division, College of Engineering, NYU, Technical Report No. 1, Constant Level Balloon, Apr 1, 1948, Table VII, summary of NYU Constant-Level Balloon Flights" (hereafter NYU, Technical Report No. 1, Table VII); ibid., Technical Report No. 93.02, Constant Level Balloons, Sect 3, Summary of Flights.
14. "Sonic Balloon Test Kwajalein."
15. Athelstan E. Spilhaus, C.S. Schneider, C.S. Moore, "Controlled-Altitude Free Balloons," Journal of Meteorology, 5 (Aug 1948): 130-137.
16. NYU, Technical Report No. 1, Table VII.
17. Research Division, College of Engineering, NYU, Progress Report No. 6, Constant Level Balloon, sect II, June 1947 (hereafter Progress Report No. 6, sect II), p. 4
New York University, in accordance with contractual requirements, produced monthly progress reports, technical reports, and final reports detailing the various aspects of the balloon and telemetering research. In addition, Crary maintained a detailed journal of his work throughout his professional career to include the summer of 1947. The following discussion is based on these two documents and interviews with Moore, who was present on all three of the Alamogordo field trips, and, with Trakowski, who was present at the Alamogordo II and III field trips.
NOTE: Technical Report No. 1, Table VII, "Summary of NYU Constant-Level Balloon Flights," and Technical Report No. 93.02, Constant Level Balloons, Section 3, "Summary of Flights," do not fully account for all balloons flown during the initial stages of the contract to include the Alamogordo I field trip. Absent from the reports are service flight nos. 2, 3, and 4. Flight no. 2 was flown on April 18, 1947, at Bethlehem, PA, in an attempt to obtain acoustical data from the explosion of 5,000 tons of TNT by the British on the German island of Helgoland. (l8) NYU flight no. 3 was flown on May 29, followed by NYU flight no. 4 on June 4. Both launched from Alamogordo AAF.
ALAMOGORDO I (May 28, 1947-June 7, 1947)
The first NYU "field trip" departed Olmstead Field, Middletown, PA, by C47 for Alamogordo AAF on May 31, 1947, arriving on June 1, 1947. (l9) Present on this flight was C.B. Moore, NYU Project Engineer, Charles S. Schneider, NYU Project Director, and other supporting staff members from both NYU and Watson Laboratories. A.P. Crary, along with other personnel from Watson Laboratory, were already present in Alamogordo, but they did not conduct any balloon operations. During this time, Crary and several technicians detonated ground explosives, or "shots," for sound-wave generation purposes, on the nearby White Sands Proving Ground. These detonations were monitored by ground-based GR3 and GR8 sound ranging equipment at locations in New Mexico and West Texas. (20) On May 28, the advance party of the balloon group arrived by S17. (2l) On May 29, the advance team made the first launch for Project MOGUL from Alamogordo (NYU flight no. 3). The equipment carried on this flight was identified as essentially the same as that carried on NYU flight no. 2 (Atch 3 ). (22) NYU flight no. 4 was launched on June 4, with a configuration the same as on flight nos. 2 and 3. Crary's diary indicated that flight no. 4 consisted of a "cluster of (meteorological) balloons" and a "regular sonobuoy." (23) Presumably, flight no. 3 was configured the same.
18. Research Division, College of Engineering, NYU, Special Report No. 1, Constant Level Balloon, May 1947 (hereafter NYU, Special Report No. 1), p. 27.
19. Personal journal of Albert P. Crary, p. 13.
20. Ibid., pp. 4-16.
21. Ibid., p. 13.
22. NYU, Progress Report No. 6, Sect II, p. 5.
23. Crary personal journal, p. 12.
The objective of this trip, so far as NYU was concerned, was to perfect the handling of large flight trains of meteorological balloons and to evaluate the operations of altitude controlling and telemetering devices. (24) Already established before the trips to Alamogordo was that the use of the standard, 350-gram meteorological balloons, constructed of neoprene, was, at best, a "stop gap" method of achieving constant-level flight. (25) Balloons most suitable for this type of work were made of polyethylene, a very thin, translucent plastic. These balloons, however, had just been developed, and, although the NYU group had contracted for some of them, the balloons had not been received until after the group departed for Alamogordo. (26) For Watson Laboratory scientists Peoples and Crary, the purpose of this trip was to experiment with different types of equipment to collect and transmit sound waves in the upper atmosphere. Therefore, just as the "balloon group" was using meteorological balloons as a stopgap method in attaining constant-level flight, the Watson Laboratory scientists utilized an AN/CRT-1A Sonabuoy while awaiting the delivery of acoustical equipment specifically designed for Project MOGUL. (27) The NYU personnel developing the telemetering equipment experimented with components of the sonabuoy, which was cylindrical, nearly 3 feet long and 4 3/4 inches wide, and weighing 13 pounds (Atch 4). The sonabuoy contained both the acoustical pickups, known as hydrophones, and the means of telemetering the sounds by use of a FM transmitter, the T-lB/CRT-1.
Soon after arriving at Alamogordo AAF, a problem developed. Dr Peoples, Project Scientist, decided not to bring the radiosonde recorder (an AN/FMQ1 weighing approximately 500 pounds), due to the weight and space limitations of the B-17 aircraft originally scheduled to transport the equipment from Olmstead Field. Radiosondes were a widely used and accurate method of tracking weather balloons consisting of a transmitter, which was carried aloft by the balloon, and a ground-based receiver/ recorder. Radiosondes, along with aircraft, were to be the primary method to track the Project MOGUL balloons. (28) Dr. Peoples, however, believed that the radar currently in place at Alamogordo for tracking V-2 firings would be sufficient for tracking the balloons trains. However, this radar did not work well and often lost contact with the balloon while it was still within visual range. Accordingly, Moore, the project engineer, experimented with an "unorthodox" method, in the absence of a radiosonde recorder. He tried to track the balloons using multiple radar targets. (29) A radar target was a multisided object, which, in appearance, resembles a box kite constructed of balsa wood and metallicized paper (Atch 5). Moore and his technicians conducted test flights, attempting to obtain a better radar return by attaching additional targets. They
24. Research Division, College of Engineering, NYU, Progress Report No. 7, Constant Level Balloon, sect II, Jul 1947 (hereafter NYU, Progress Report No. 7, sect II),p.5.
25. NYU, Special Report No. 1, p. 26.
26. NYU, Progress Report No. 7, sect II, p.6.
27. Research Division, College of Engineering, NYU, Progress Report No. 4, Radio Transmitting, Receiving and Recording System for Constant Level Balloon, sect I, Apr 2, 1947,p.1.
28. Intvw, Col Jeffrey Butler and 1st Lt James McAndrew with Professor Charles s. Moore, Jun 8,1994.
29. Moore intvw, Jun 8,1994.
received satisfactory results when the number of targets was increased to between 3 and 5. (30) Interestingly, during July of 1948, a similar test would be made at Alamogordo AAF by another organization. (31) This test confirmed Moore's theory that when targets were increased to at least three, satisfactory returns were received by the radar. This procedure, according to Moore, was employed on flight nos. 3 and 4, but it was only marginally successful. This prompted Moore and his associates to configure the two remaining flights of Alamogordo I, flights #5 and #6, with radiosonde transmitters.
For these two final flights, Moore devised a method of manually determining azimuth and elevation, in the absence of a radisonde recorder, by counting clicks as pressure-sensitive contacts closed. NYU Technical Report No. 1 shows two "interpretations" of the data which confirm that manual calculations were used. In regard to flight no. 5, it appears there was a typographical error in Technical Report No. 1, Table VII, for the time of launch which is erroneously listed as 1517 MST, contrary to figures 32 and 33 in Technical Report No.1 and Crary's diary (Atch 6). The correct time of launch for flight no. 5 appears to be 0516 MST. With the launching of flight no. 6 at approximately 0530 on June 7, the NYU group departed Alamogordo via a B-17 for Newark AAF, NJ. NYU flight nos. 14 are summarized below:
* Depictions of flight nos. 3 and 4 are not provided in the NYU reports. According to NYU Progress Report No. 6, Section II, p. 5, the equipment to be used for the Alamogordo field trip in June was consistent with the depiction of flight no. 2. This information also concurred with Crary's partial description of flight no. 4 in his diary.
Note: An attempt to launch a balloon-train assembly which would have been NYU flight no. 3 was made on May 8,1947, but due to strong winds, restraining lines failed before the acoustical payload was attached. Since the launch was unsuccessful, no flight number was assigned.
31. Rprt, Holloman AFB, "Progress Summary Report on U.S.A.F. Guided Missile Test Activities," Vol 1, Aug 1,1948.
ALAMOGORDO II (June 27, 1947-July 8,1947)
On the morning of June 28, 1947, personnel from NYU and Watson Laboratories arrived at Alamogordo AAF to resume balloon flights. Present during this field trip were Dr. Peoples, A.P. Crary, Captain Trakowski, C.B. Moore, and Charles Schneider. The objective during this trip was to experiment with the newly developed polyethylene balloons which replaced the neoprene meteorological balloons used on the previous field trip. Also tested was an improved aluminum ballast reservoir that had been developed to replace the plastic tubes used during the June field trip. (32) Another improvement that resulted from the experiences in June was the presence of a radiosonde receiver/recorder for improved balloon tracking and plotting. This eliminated the need for radar "corner reflectors" on the balloon train since radar was not to be used as a primary method of tracking the flights. This is confirmed by Technical Report No. 1, Table VII, "Radiosonde Reception %," which indicates the use of the radiosonde recorder on all flights except for no. 7. Flight no. 7 was not recorded by radiosonde because the equipment was not operable. (33) Also Figures 36, 39, 42, and 44 in Technical Report No. 1, corresponding to the July flights, do not depict corner reflectors. All numbered flights (except for no. 9) flown during the July field trip were summarized in NYU Technical Report No 1, Table VII. Flight no. 9 appeared to have been launched on July 3. (34) On July 8, their work completed, 23 members of the combined NYU and Watson Laboratory group boarded a C-54 aircraft at 1030 AM and returned to the east coast. (35)
Based on the above, it appeared likely that the debris found by the rancher and was subsequently identified as a "flying disc" by personnel from Roswell AAF was, with a great degree of certainty, MOGUL flight no. 4, launched on June 4, 1947. This conclusion was based on the following:
1. Descriptions of the debris provided by Brazel, Cavitt, Crary's diary, and the photos of the material displayed in General Ramey's office. These materials were consistent with the components of a MOGUL service flight, with neoprene balloons, parchment parachutes, plastic ballast tubes, corner reflectors, a sonabuoy, and a black electronics box that housed the pressure cutoff switch (Atch 3).
2. According to Brazel's July 8 statement, the debris was recovered on June 14, obviously eliminating any balloons launched in July.
3. Only two flights launched in June were unaccounted for, i.e., flight nos. 3 and 4. Flight no. 3, most likely would not have had the "unorthodox" configuration of corner reflectors devised by Moore, who did not arrive until June 1, three days after flight no. 3 was launched.
35. Ibid., p.16.
On July 7, as the NYU group members were winding down their work and preparing to return to New York City, a train of events began to unfold at Roswell AAF, 60 miles away. Roswell AAF was home of the 509th Bomb Group of the Strategic Air Command's Eighth Air Force, the only unit in the world capable of delivering nuclear weapons. It now appears that the debris from MOGUL flight no. 4 had come to earth on the plains east of the Sacramento Mountains, about 70 miles from the launch point at Alamogordo AAF (Atch 7). The fact it descended there was not unusual. Over the course of Project MOGUL, several balloons had landed and been recovered from that area. In fact, in August 1947, the NYU group had to receive special permission from the Civil Aeronautics Administration to continue to launch balloons from Alamogordo AAF since "balloons have been descending outside of the area [White Sands Proving Ground] in the vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico." (36) According to the sole living participant in the recovery, Sheridan Cavitt, he, Major Marcel, and MSgt William Rickett gathered some of the material, which appeared to resemble "bamboo type square sticks, one quarter to one half inch square," that was "very light" -- reflecting material -- and a "black box, like a weather instrument." Cavitt believed this material to be consistent with what he knew to be a weather balloon. This debris, would soon become, for a short time, the focus of national and even worldwide attention when it was thought to be a "flying disc."
On July 8, the same day that the NYU/Watson Laboratory group departed Alamogordo, the Public Information Office of Roswell AAF announced the recovery of a "flying disc" and that it would be flown to Fort Worth AAF for further examination. How could experienced military personnel have confused a weather balloon for a "flying disc"? The answer was this was not an ordinary "weather balloon." Typical weather balloons employed a single, 350-gram neoprene balloon and a radiosonde for measuring temperature, atmospheric pressure, and humidity, housed in a cardboard box. If it was to be tracked by radar for wind-speed measurement, a single corner reflector was added (Atch 8). The balloon that was found on the Foster Ranch consisted of as many as 23 350-gram balloons spaced at 20 foot intervals, several radar targets (3 to 5), plastic ballast tubes, parchment parachutes, a black "cutoff" box containing portions of a weather instrument, and a sonabuoy (Atch 3). After striking the ground, the radar reflectors, constructed of very light materials for minimum weight, would tear and break apart, spreading out over a large area when pulled across the ground by balloons that still possessed some buoyancy. It should also be understood that the term "flying disc" was not at this time synonymous with "space ship," It denoted a disc-shaped flying object of unknown (or suspected Soviet) origin.
Before the announcement was made, the "disc" was flown to Fort Worth AAF, at the direction of Brig Gen Roger Ramey, Commander, Eighth Air Force. General Ramey personally inspected the "disc," became skeptical, and summoned the base
36. NYU, Technical Report No. 1, Table VII, p.43.
weather officer, Warrant Officer Irving Newton, to make an identification. Newton positively identified the debris as the remnants of a balloon and RAWIN target. (37) With this identification, the incident officially closed.
THE "COVER STORY"
From research, it appears that the wreckage displayed on July 8 consisted of unclassified components of a MOGUL balloon assembly. Possibly withheld, if it was indeed recovered, was the AN/CRT-1 Sonabuoy, which could have compromised Project MOGUL. Although the Sonabuoy was not itself classified, its association with a balloon would have exposed a specific military purpose, an obvious violation of project classification guidelines (Atch 9). A device described in "crashed disc" publications as "a giant thermos jug" was allegedly transported from Fort Worth AAF to Wright Field. (38) This description is consistent with the appearance of an AN/CRT-1 Sonabuoy such as was used on flight no. 4 (Atch 4). At some point General Ramey decided to forward the material to Wright Field, home of AMC, the appropriate agency to identify one of its own research devices or a device of unknown origin. If the debris was determined to be from an unknown source, the AMC, T-2, Intelligence or Analysis Division, would conduct scientific and/or intelligence analysis in an attempt to discover its origin. But since the balloons, reflectors, and Sonabuoy were from an AMC research project, the debris was forwarded to the appropriate division or subdivision, in this case the Electronics Subdivision of the Engineering Division. There, it was identified by Colonel Duffy, under whose purview Project MOGUL operated. Colonel Duffy, a former project officer of MOGUL with specific directions to "continue to monitor upper air programs," was the appropriate headquarters officer to make an identification, which he apparently did. According to Captain (now Colonel) Trakowski, the officer who succeeded Colonel Duffy as project officer on MOGUL, after returning from the Alamogordo II field trip, Colonel Duffy contacted him by phone at Watson Laboratories and informed him that the "stuff you've been launching at Alamogordo," had been sent to him for identification. He described the debris to Captain Trakowski, and Trakowski agreed that it was part of his project (MOGUL). (39)
Another occurrence sometimes said to "prove" that General Ramey was part of a cover story is that portions of the debris were flown to Andrews AAF, MD. Andrews would have been a probable location to send the debris since it had components of weather observation equipment. Andrews AAF was headquarters of the Army Air Forces Weather Service. It is also interesting to note that the commanding general of the Weather Service, Brig Gen Donald N. Yates, was quoted in wire service newspaper articles on July 9, providing his opinion of the
37. Rawin is short for radar wind, a technique in which a single comer reflector is towed aloft by a single neoprene balloon to measure wind speed by radar.
38. Kevin Randall and Donald Schmitt, UFO Crash at Roswell (New York, 1991), p. l03.
39. Intvw, Col Jeffrey Butler and 1st Lt James McAndrew with Col Albert c. Trakowski, USAF (Ret), Jun 29,1994, p.4.
incident. Additionally, in 1949, General Yates received a full briefing of the projects, including constant-level balloons, that made up Project MOGUL. (40) While crashed disc proponents claim that General Ramey ordered a "colonel courier" to transport portions of the debris in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist for the inspection of his superior, Maj Gen Clement McMullen, Deputy Commander of Strategic Air Command, it is more likely that any forwarding of such debris was another attempt to identify the research agency to which it belonged. If it did go to General McMullen, it would not have been difficult for him to have obtained the opinion of the Weather Service, since SAC and the Weather Service were located in the same building (no. 1535) at Andrews AAF.
"HIEROGLYPHICS"
One of the most puzzling aspects of the reports that a "UFO" crashed near Corona in 1947 were the later descriptions of "hieroglyphic-like" characters by seemingly reliable, firsthand witnesses. Research has revealed that the debris found on the ranch and displayed in General Ramey's office probably did have strange characters. These, however, were not hieroglyphics, but figures printed on the pinkish-purple tape used to construct the radar targets used by the NYU group.
The witnesses have recalled small pink/purple "flowers" that appeared to be some sort of writing that couldn't be deciphered. These figures were printed on tape that sealed the seams of the of the radar target. The radar targets, sometimes called corner reflectors, had been manufactured during or shortly after World War II, and due to shortages, the manufacturer, a toy company, used whatever resources were available. This toy company used plastic tape with pink/purple flowers and geometric designs in the construction of its toys and, in a time of shortage, used it on the government contract for the corner reflectors. A depiction of these figures, as described by C.B. Moore, is shown in Attachment 10.
Allegations have also been made that the debris displayed to the press on July 8 and subsequently photographed was not the original wreckage; i.e., a switch had occurred sometime after the debris left Roswell AAF. However, statements made by Moore and Trakowski attested that the corner reflectors they launched during that period had the same flowers and figures that were later reported by Marcel, Cavitt, and Brazel as being on the debris found on the Foster ranch in Corona. In fact, Trakowski distinctly remembered the figures on the tape because, when the targets first were produced, much fanfare was made over the use of a toy manufacturer for production. He related that a fellow USAAF officer, John E. Peterson, monitored the procurement of the targets and "thought it was the biggest joke in the world that they had to go to a toy manufacturer" to make the radar targets and an "even a bigger joke when... the reflecting material on the balsa frames was some kind of a pinkish purple tape with hearts and flowers
40. Rprt, Carnbridge Field Sta, AMC, "Review of Air Materiel Command Geophysical Activities by Brigadier General D.N. Yates, and Staff, of the Air Weather Service," Feb 10, 1949.
designs on it." (41) Furthermore, the Fort Worth Army Airfield Weather Officer, Irving Newton, who was called in to identify the wreckage, also remembers the purple/pink marks. Newton stated that when he was called to General Ramey's Office he remembers meeting Marcel, who attempted to convince him that the wreckage on the floor of the office was a crashed "flying disc." Newton, having seen many weather balloons and targets, positively identified the debris as a weather device. (42) In short, descriptions of the wreckage found on the ranch near Corona and of the wreckage displayed in General Ramey's office are entirely consistent with each other.
THE REAL COVER STORY
On July 10, 1947, a newspaper article appeared in the Alamogordo Daily News displaying for the press the devices, neoprene balloons, and corner reflectors which had been misidentified as the "flying disc" two days earlier at Roswell AAF (Atch 11). The photographs and accompanying article quoted Maj Wilbur D. Pritchard, a Watson Laboratory Project Officer (not assigned to MOGUL) stationed at Alamogordo AAF. This article appeared to have been an attempt to deflect attention from the Top Secret MOGUL project by publicly displaying a portion of the equipment and offering misleading information. If there was a "cover story" involved in this incident, it is this article, not the actions or statements of Ramey.
The article in the Alamogordo Daily News stated that the balloons and radar targets had been used for the last fifteen months for the training of long-range radar personnel and the gathering of meteorological data. The article lists four officers -- Maj W.D. Pritchard, Lieut S.W. Seigel, Capt L.H. Dyvad, and Maj C.W. Mangum -- as being involved with the balloon project, which was false. Moore and Trakowski could not recall any of the officers in the photograph, with the exception of Dyvad, whom Moore identified as a pilot who coordinated radar activities. (43) Additionally, some of the details discussed (balloon sighting in Colorado, tracking by B-17s, recovery of equipment, launching balloons at 54 AM, and balloon altitudes of 30,000-40,000 feet) relate directly to the NYU balloon project, indicating that the four officers had detailed knowledge of MOGUL. (44) Moore's unorthodox technique of employing several balloons and several radar targets was shown in one of the photographs. Other techniques unique to Moore,
41. Trakowski intvw, Jun 29, 1994.
42. Newton intvw, Jul 21, 1994.
43. Moore intvw, Jun 8, 1994
including the boiling of balloons before launch (which he personally developed during World War II) and a stepladder used to launch balloons, could not all have coincidentally been used by other organizations. (45)
The details may have been provided to the radar officers by Crary, Project MOGUL Field Operations Director, who did not depart by C-54 with the rest of the NYU/Watson Laboratory group on July 8, but who later left by car on July 9, the day the staged launch took place. Additionally, three of Crary's staff, Don Reynolds, Sol Oliva, and Bill Edmonston, resided permanently in Alamogordo. It was apparent from Crary's diary that he had worked very closely with Major Pritchard and reported to him on occasion (twelve documented meetings from December 1946-April 1947). One instance, on April 7, 1947, Crary gave Pritchard a "progress report for MOGUL project to date," indicating that Major Pritchard had access to MOGUL information. (46) Another statement which appeared to confirm a cover story appeared in the caption below the balloon picture and described a typewritten tag stapled to the target identifying it as having come from Alamogordo AAF. Moore believed this not to be true because any equipment found was not to be associated with the USAAF, only with NYU; therefore flights carried "return to" tags identifying NYU as the responsible agency. (47)
Many of the claims surrounding the events of July 1947 could be neither proved nor disproved. Attempts were not made to investigate every allegation, but rather to start with what was known and work toward the unknown. To complicate the situation, events described here took place nearly 50 years ago and were highly classified. This Top Secret project appeared to have utilized the concept of compartmentalization very well. Interviews with individuals and review of documents of organizations revealed that the ultimate objective of the work, or even the name of the project, in many instances was not known. It was unlikely, therefore, that personnel from Roswell AAF, even though they possessed the appropriate clearances, would have known about project MOGUL. In fact, when the NYU/AMC group returned to Alamogordo in September, their first trip since the "incident" occurred, one of the first activities of the project scientists, Peoples and Crary, who were accompanied by Major Pritchard and Captain Dyvad, was to brief the commanding officer of Alamogordo AAF and the 509th Bomb Group Operations Officer, Lt Col Joseph Briley, on MOGUL. (48)
45. Moore intvw, Jun 8, 1994.
47. Moore intvw, Jun 8, 1994; Research Division, College of Engineering, NYU, Technical Report No. 93.02, Constant Level Balloons, sect 2, Operations, Jan 31,1949, pp. 36-38.
48. Combined Hist, 50th Bomb Grp and Roswell AAF, Sep 1-30, 1947, p. 79; Untranscribed journal of Albert P. Crary, p. 64.
When the civilians and personnel from Roswell AAF (Marcel, Cavitt, and Rickett) "stumbled" upon the highly classified project and collected the debris, no one at Roswell had a "need to know" about information concerning MOGUL. This fact, along with the initial misidentification and subsequent rumors that the "capture" of a "flying disc" occurred, ultimately left many people with unanswered questions that have endured to this day.
JAMES McANDREW, 1st Lt, USAFR
Declassification and Review Officer
SAF/AAZD
1. 4 Photographs of Balloon Debris
2. Organizational Chart -- Watson Laboratories
3. Drawing -- New York University Flight No. 2
4. 2 Depictions of AN/CRT-1 Sonabuoy
5. Drawing of Corner Reflector
6. New York University Technical Report No. 1, Table VII
7. Map of New Mexico
8. Typical Employment of Weather Balloon and Corner Reflector
9. Project MOGUL Classification Letter
10. Drawing of "Hieroglyphics" by Prof. C.B. Moore
11. Alamogordo Daily News Article
[document ends]
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CFP: Nasty Women in Popular Culture
Nasty Women in Popular Culture
Dr Alexia L. Bowler/ Swansea University
Editors: Dr Alexia L. Bowler, Dr Adele Jones & Dr Claire O’Callaghan
Donald Trump’s now infamous phrase ‘such a nasty woman’, uttered about his then rival Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential debates, was rudely used to patronise and belittle Clinton, who is known for being a strong, independent (and feminist) politician.
In reality, Trump is not the only figure to characterise today’s women in this manner. Indeed, the alt-right commentator and Trump supporter, Milo Yiannopoulos, argues that feminism is ‘a cancer’ and suggests that fixing the so-called online gender wars is merely a matter of women exiting public space. Similarly, in the ‘community beliefs’ section of his Return of the Kings site, the neo-masculinist, self-styled pick-up artist and infamous internet misogynist, Roosh V, suggests that the elimination of traditional sex and gender roles increases female promiscuity and diminishes the rightful centrality of the nuclear family, for which he blames, among other things, women and feminism.
Nonetheless, in a demonstration of the power of the internet, the phrase was rapidly taken up (and continues to be used) by social media as a rallying cry for feminists, women’s rights groups and their supporters. The result of Trump’s comment was a spectacular subversion of his attempts to discredit Clinton and marginalise women’s voices. Alongside existing feminist slogans such as the Fawcett Society’s ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ and Laura Bates’s the #everydaysexism project, the ‘nasty woman’ slogan has gone viral; used in Twitter hashtags, on a range of merchandise, and as memes. It has inspired poems, theatre, exhibitions, music and collected responses, as well as sparked political activism, visible in the global Women’s Marches that took place across the globe in 2017 at which banners celebrating feminist ‘nastiness’ could be seen: ‘Stay Nasty’, ‘The Future is Nasty’, and ‘I am a Nasty Woman’
Alongside this, the rise in visibility of strong, complex and vocal women in popular media, including television and film, suggests that the time of the ‘nasty woman’ is not over but about to begin. This collection will interrogate and contribute to this ongoing debate by bringing together new scholarship focusing on the idea of the ‘nasty woman’, and the embrace of this label, in late 20th and 21st century popular media and culture. The collection will ask how can we best theorise ‘the nasty woman’? What characterises or who is the ‘nasty woman’ and where can we find her? Is her central characteristic anger, strength, crudity, power, or all of these things? Finally, it will consider the question of whether she bears responsibility for others and what, if anything, makes her different to previous iterations of the arguably feminist female figure?
The collection will both celebrate and problematise the application and endorsement of the term, considering recent debates, responses and trends in popular culture and feminist scholarship.
We seek contributions that engage with the notion of the ‘nasty woman’ in all forms of media (including recent film and television) and popular culture in late 20th and 21st century sex and gender politics.
Possible topics could include but are by no means limited to:
Theorising the ‘nasty woman’
Television and Film (e.g. Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, Claire Underwood in House of Cards, Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag)
Relationship with other feminist movements such as ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ movement and everyday sexism projects, among others
Nasty women and bad language
The ‘nasty woman’ of comedy (e.g. Amy Schumer, Melissa McCarthy, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Sharon Horgan, Phoebe Waller-Bridge)
Nasty women of pop (e.g. Madonna, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus)
Nasty women of fashion, TV, film, theatre, gaming
Nasty women of history as viewed by contemporary culture
Issues of responsibility and shared identity
Politics, the media and the nasty woman
Controversial commentators and the idea of the nasty woman (e.g. Roosh V, Milo Yiannopoulos, Katie Hopkins, Ann Coulter, Camille Pagilia)
Nasty women in different global contexts
Please address any enquiries and expressions of interest to the editors, Dr Alexia L. Bowler ([email protected]), Dr Adele Jones ([email protected]), and Dr Claire O’Callaghan ([email protected]).
Abstracts of 500-600 words, for chapters of between 6,000-7,500 words, along with a short biographical note, should be emailed to both editors by 1st August 2017. Successful proposals will be notified by 1st September 2017. Completed chapters will be due by 31st January 2018.
A full proposal will be submitted to I.B. Tauris’s Library of Gender and Popular Culture series in autumn 2017.
from UPennCFPs
Author Dr DavisPosted on June 6, 2017 June 12, 2017 Categories Call for Papers
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Dozens die in stadium accident
Web posted at: 11:10 p.m. EDT(2310 GMT)
GUATEMALA CITY (CNN) -- At least 40 people died and more than 150 were injured in an accident in Guatemala City just before a World Cup qualifying match Wednesday night between Guatemala and Costa Rica, authorities said.
The accident occurred when spectators tried to jam into a tunnel, authorities said. There were reports that the accident occurred after a gate collapsed.
Many panicked spectators were trampled or suffocated in a general seating area of the stadium, witnesses said.
Radio reports said scores of bodies were laid out on the field.
Guatemala and Costa Rica were about to begin play at Mateo Flores National Stadium when the accident occurred.
President Alvaro Arzu of Guatemala and President Jose Maria Figueres of Costa Rica were scheduled to attend the game, but neither was in the stadium at the time.
CNN sources at Channel 6 Costa Rica confirm 40 people were crushed to death. Channel 6 reported that the stadium was filled with at least 47,000 fans. It was built to hold 36,000.
The match was canceled.
FIFA - Guatemala
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Terms under which this service is provided to you.
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全球电竞直播赛事统计
全球电竞直播,全球电竞直播战队排榜手机版,全球电竞直播赛事统计 全球电竞直播,全球电竞直播战队排榜手机版,全球电竞直播赛事统计
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Brock researchers awarded more than $3 million in NSERC grants
Thursday, June 23, 2022 | by Cathy Majtenyi
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Ian Patterson is among more than a dozen 全球电竞直播 researchers who were awarded funding under the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s 2022 Discovery and Research Tools competitions.
It’s well known that mosquitoes transmit viruses that cause Zika, dengue and West Nile, but do all viruses that infect mosquitoes cause disease? Can some viruses be used to manipulate mosquitoes so they don’t spread such diseases?
Ian Patterson is aiming to answer these questions by exploring how a group of viruses that only infect insects, but not humans, animals or plants, can be harnessed to stop all mosquitoes from spreading diseases.
“There is an increased threat of disease caused by viruses transmitted by insects in Canada, and globally,” says the 全球电竞直播 Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences. “This problem will continue because of changes in climate and land use.”
Patterson is carrying out this work with funding he received from the federal government’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, announced the results of NSERC’s 2022 Discovery and Research Tools competitions Thursday, June 23. 全球电竞直播 was awarded funding in four grant categories — Discovery, Discovery Development, Research Tools and Instruments, and Launch Supplement — totalling more than $3 million.
“The investments made by NSERC speak to the quality and impact of research in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines at Brock,” says Vice-President, Research Tim Kenyon.
“Through this support from NSERC programs, Brock researchers will continue to make outstanding contributions, from fundamental science to applied problem-solving, while supporting and mentoring the next generation of international experts in their fields.”
In Patterson’s case, he and his team will be examining a group of insect-specific viruses called negeviruses. Patterson’s earlier research has shown that these viruses block the replication of disease-causing arboviruses when both viruses are present in an insect cell culture.
Using mosquito colonies and cell cultures, the research team will investigate if negeviruses can infect mosquito cells and mosquitoes when other viruses are present, how negeviruses are spread amongst mosquitoes, and if they cause disease in mosquitoes.
“These studies will underpin a strategy to deploy negeviruses in wild populations of insects, which could potentially reduce disease in humans, animals and plants in Canada and around the world,” says Patterson.
He is one of 16 Brock researchers awarded NSERC’s Discovery Grant , which supports ongoing programs of research with long-term goals rather than a single short-term project or collection of projects.
Three Brock researchers were awarded Discovery Development Grants , which provide recipients with resources to build their research programs.
Two Brock researchers received Research Tools and Instruments funds for the purchase of equipment, while nine were awarded the Discovery Launch Supplement , which supports early career researchers as they establish a Discovery Grant-funded research program.
Discovery Grants:
Paula Duarte Guterman, Assistant Professor, Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, “Modulation of neuroplasticity and behaviour through parental experience”
Ali Emami, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Can Machines Learn Common-Sense Reasoning?”
Stephen Glasgow, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Role of semaphorin 3A in synaptic transmission in the adult mouse hippocampus”
Tianyu Guan, Professor, Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Challenges and Models for the Analysis of Functional Data in Sports”
Martin Head, Professor, Earth Sciences, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Mid-Pleistocene paleoceanography during a low-eccentricity climate cycle”
Mei Ling Huang, Emeritus Professor, Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Semi-parametric and Nonparametric Inference”
Jasneet Kaur, Assistant Professor, Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Engineering of Two-Dimensional Materials for Clean Energy Conversion and Storage Applications”
Stephen Klassen, Assistant Professor, Kinesiology, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, “Exploring sympathetic neuronal discharge patterns communicating homeostatic cardiovascular adjustments in humans”
Dongchen Li, Assistant Professor, Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Principal-Agent Problems in Insurance Design”
Cheryl McCormick, Professor, Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, “Adolescence: A Sensitive Period for Shaping the Adult Social Brain”
Catherine Mondloch, Professor, Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, “Learning to Recognize Faces Despite Within-Person Variability in Appearance: A Developmental Approach”
Beatrice Ombuki-Berman, Professor, Computer Science, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Development and Analysis of Metaheuristics for Challenging Large-Scale Optimization Problems”
Ian Patterson, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Infection and maintenance of insect-specific viruses in insects”
Ganesh Ramachandran, Assistant Professor, Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Emergence: from nanomagnets to quantum spin liquids”
Pouria Ramazi, Professor, Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Analysis and Control of Decision Making Dynamics”
Maureen Reedyk, Professor, Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Novel Functional Materials — An Optical Perspective”
Discovery Development Grants:
Thad Harroun, Professor, Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Extreme protein stability and structure analysis”
Alexandre Odesski, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Algebraic and geometric structures related to classical and quantum integrable systems”
Newman Sze, Professor, Health Sciences and Canada Research Chair, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, “Understanding degenerative protein modifications as molecular mediators of biological aging”
Research Tools and Instruments Grants:
Gaynor Spencer, Associate Professor, Biological Sciences, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, “Essential upgrade to a cell culture imaging and recording rig to study the role of retinoids (Vitamin A metabolites) in nervous system function”
Cheryl McCormick, Professor, Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, “Molecular Tools for Behavioural Neuroscience Research”
Discovery Launch Supplement Grants:
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Tagged with: arboviruses , Department of Biological Sciences , department of computer science , Department of Earth Sciences , department of health sciences , department of kinesiology , department of mathematics and statistics , department of physics , department of psychology , diseases , Faculty of Applied Health Sciences , faculty of mathematics and science , faculty of social sciences , Ian Patterson , Insects , mosquitoes , Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada , negeviruses , Research
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Home Nation World Business Opinion Lifestyle China Focus ChinAfrica Multimedia Columnists Documents Special Reports
Five Years On
The significance of the Belt and Road Initiative extends beyond roads and railways
By Kerry Brown | NO.38 SEPTEMBER 20, 2018
An aerial view of the China-Egypt economic cooperation zone undertaken via the cooperation framework of the Belt and Road Initiative in Ain Sokhna, Egypt, on June 17 (XINHUA)
The Belt and Road Initiative has been with us for five years now. It first manifested itself as the new Silk Road in 2013 when Chinese President
Xi Jinping was traveling first in Central Asia and then in Indonesia. Since 2015, it has been known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Under that name it has been the focus of major conferences and summits in China, as well as across the rest of the world, including many countries and regions that were not originally associated with the idea. Everyone, it seems, wants to know about the Belt and Road Initiative and to work out what it means for them.
A fairer role
The practical impact of the Belt and Road Initiative has taken place in two primary domains. The first is that of actual realized projects, such as the construction of infrastructure and working in development schemes with various international partners. The rationale here is that after four decades of rapid industrialization and construction, China is in a position than before to show others how to undertake urbanization and build high speed railways and motorways, among other things. China, as a party to the exchange of knowledge, has usually been figured in ways which place it as a student, and the outside world—Europe, America and the developed world in particular—as its teachers. Now this situation has changed. No other country has lifted so many from poverty and built so much hard infrastructure in such a short period of time. It is now, therefore, the era of China the teacher, not China the student. The Belt and Road Initiative is one way that this is unfolding.
There is also the simple matter of mutual self-interest. China wishes to diversify and expand its overseas markets. It learned from the financial crisis of 2008 that over-reliance on one area for exports is a vulnerability. Since then it has sought to expand the focus of its trading relations within its own region. Some of these have been stymied in the past by the lack of proper logistical and infrastructural support for supply chains. So China, through Belt and Road Initiative projects, is helping to put these in place, and to meet the vast unmet needs of the Asia region in terms of roads, railways, ports and other assets. In this way, the famous "win-win" of Chinese discourse becomes clear—China gets a better quality market to sell into and source goods from, and the partners in the region get physical infrastructure that helps them build their own economies. That, at least, is the most ideal outcome.
The second dimension of the Belt and Road Initiative is more abstract. This is the ways in which, not just for the region, but the wider world, it has served as the key idea for introducing ideas about why it is worth engaging with the Chinese economy, and how best to do so. A criticism made of China after its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 was that as its economy boomed and it grew in stature and importance, diplomatically the country seemed to lack a voice. In 2005, then U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick complained that China was not a stakeholder in the global order, and that it needed to step forward and play a greater role. Frustratingly, there were times when China did precisely this and received complaints and criticisms. This catch-22 situation—a country which evidently needed a far higher profile and global role, and an outside world willing to see it take that role only if wholly on its own terms—has been partially resolved by the Belt and Road Initiative. The Belt and Road Initiative, in essence, has started a huge debate about what a larger, fairer role for China, with its unique economic and political model, actually means for everyone else.
That was never going to be an easy process to engage with. After all, the rise of other powers to greater prominence in the past has often caused turbulence. This is something that plenty inside and outside China have noted. But there is one thing worse than enduring the discomfort of sometimes talking about these difficult issues, and that is not engaging with them and pretending that, without uttering a word, they will automatically sort themselves out. The Belt and Road Initiative is part of a major international communication process, where everyone takes part in working out what a new order looks like when China has a position, status and role that is much more commensurate with the size of its economy and geopolitical influence. At least now more people are focusing on this than ever before, and trying to work through these issues collaboratively and creatively.
A new consensus
After five years of the Belt and Road Initiative concept, we can now draw some provisional conclusions. The first, very obvious one, is that uptake for Belt and Road conferences in Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere shows that the wider world does want to think more about the role of China in their lives. The community of those that feel they have links with the country and need a conceptual framework to help them find the right ways to cooperate, work with, and think about China is increasing. Whatever people might believe, whether it is negative, positive or neutral, at least they feel that they now need to devote time to the issue. Complacent indifference toward what China is doing is no longer an option. That, broadly, is a good thing.
Secondly, the Belt and Road Initiative shows the complexity of Chinese influence and power, and the ways in which this has been interpreted by different audiences in vastly different ways. For some, the Belt and Road Initiative boils down to simply creating greater connectivity in terms of hard infrastructure, the Internet, people-to-people links and governance. For others, it is about introducing a Chinese philosophy, involving ideas like harmony, reciprocity and multi-polarity—a new set of geopolitical concepts harvested from the rich history of Chinese strategic thinking that reaches back millennia into the past. This could be an almost idealistic interpretation.
For a few, the Belt and Road Initiative is more about China finding its rightful global role in ways which play to its strengths—through economic prowess and performance—rather than in the areas where it might come into direct conflict with a United States increasingly wary and jealous of even the slightest perception that it is losing its global number one spot. This might be called the "grand strategy" approach.
All of these different aspects highlight one thing; that reaching consensus on what China and its new and increasingly global role mean for the lives of everyone else is perhaps the most urgent geopolitical discussion taking place at the moment, and one that cannot fail. A major misunderstanding between China and the United States, Europe, or anywhere else, would be in no one's interests. It would be the direct opposite of "win-win." Everything has to be done, therefore, to forestall this eventuality.
Discussion about the Belt and Road Initiative has created multiple discourses and competing attitudes and convictions. Some of these conversations have proved difficult, such as arguments about imbalance and debt increasing for some of its partners. Expectations have sometimes gone too far ahead. It is, after all, early days. But the whole Belt and Road concept has at least begun to help China understand what it wants from the world around it, and what it thinks the optimal relationship with that world might be. It has also prompted an increasing number of people in the wider world to work out how and why they might want to work with China. A famous Chinese saying used in the early years of the People's Republic talks of a journey of a thousand miles starting with a single step. The Belt and Road Initiative is the single step in the great journey of China achieving a global role that needs to be balanced, sustainable and truly collaborative. That is not an easy goal, but it is one worth everyone striving for.
The author is an op-ed contributor to Beijing Review and Director of the Lau China Institute at King's College, London
Copyedited by Laurence Coulton
Comments to yulintao@bjreview.com
• Five years on
• Belt and Road lifts off
• Xi pledges to bring benefits to people through Belt and Road Initiative
• One Year on, China-Singapore Rail-Sea Route Draws "Belt" and "Road" Closer
• China’s Top ODI Destinations Along the Belt and Road
CGTN | China Tibet Online | China Radio International | Beijing Today | gb times | China Job.com | Eastday | CCN
Chinese Dictionary:
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HISTORY OF CODE NAPOLÉON
Code Napoléon: 1804
The civil code of 1804, named after Napoleon himself in 1807, differs from other famous codes (such as Justinian's in the 6th century) in not codifying an existing body of law. Instead it sets out to provide a rational and general basis on which civil law may be established.
It of course confirms the main achievement of the revolution, finding feudal privileges contrary to justice, and it enshrines in broad terms the revolutionary ideal of individual liberty. But in principle this is a charter for the bourgeoisie; employers turn out to have more rights than employees. Jean Portalis, one of the lawyers drafting it, comments that 'the political and the social good is always found between two extremes'.
The first of its three books deals with the 'law of persons', meaning the rights of each individual and the relationships between individuals. The family is made the cornerstone of society, with the balance of advantage reserved for the role of husband and father. In the revolutionary years divorce has been easy for both partners; now much greater restrictions are placed on the freedom of the wife.
The second book is concerned with the 'law of things', dealing essentially with questions of property. The third covers the acquisition of rights, whether through wills or any form of contract.
The Code Napoléon is exported from France in its early years to the European territories already annexed by France (such as Belgium, the Rhineland, Savoy), to the 'sister republics' established in the Netherlands (Batavian Republic), Switzerland (Helvetic) and Italy (Cisalpine, Ligurian), and to the territories conquered by Napoleon in his campaigns from 1805. It is also taken as a model by many of the new nations in Latin America when they win their independence during the early 19th century.
Napoleon on St Helena, looking back on his achievements and failures, predicts that the civil code will be his most lasting memorial.
CODE NAPOLÉON
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You are here: Home / NEWS / Experts discuss the political legacy of Octavio Paz
Experts discuss the political legacy of Octavio Paz
by Leila Costa - published Jul 16, 2014 11:35 AM - - last modified Jul 30, 2014 11:08 AM
Rights: Carlos Malferrari (translator)
Octavio Paz: poet, essayist, translator
and Mexican diplomat whose centennial
is celebrated in 2014
On July 31, at 11:30 am, the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo (IEA), in partnership with El Colegio de México, will hold the conference Octavio Paz y la Política. The event will take place in the Ruy Leme Room, at USP’s School of Economics, Administration and Accounting.
Presented by historian Francisco Javier Garciadiego Dantán, president of El Colegio de México, the conference is a tribute to the birth centennial of Octavio Paz Lozano (1914-1998), the notable Mexican poet and essayist, internationally acclaimed as one of the greatest thinkers in Latin America in the 20th century.
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990, the only one awarded to a Mexico-born writer, Octavio Paz’s essays inspired broad reflections on Mexican politics and its international context. An editor, translator and diplomat, he was the author of major works such as The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950), Posdata (1969), The Philanthropic Ogre (1978), One Earth, Four or Five Worlds (1983) and Pequeña Crónica de Grandes Días (1990).
According to Garciadiego Dantán, the conference will seek to “reconstruct the path and evolution of Paz’ political thought, retracing the genesis and consolidation of a unique kind of political liberalism.”
Celso Lafer, president of FAPESP, will be one of the forum panelists. Professor emeritus at USP’s Institute of International Relations and member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, Lafer was a student of Octavio Paz at Cornell University, and, together with Haroldo de Campos, organized the first anthology of essays by the Mexican writer published in Brazil, a milestone in the dissemination of Paz’ works in our country.
Carlos Guilherme Mota, professor emeritus at USP’s School of Philosophy, Literature and Humans Sciences and director of the Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin Library, will also be a panelist at the event.
Doctor in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature from the University of São Paulo and Director of the Lasar Segall Museum, Jorge Schwartz will act as mediator.
The conference is open to the public and admission is free. Certificates of attendance will be issued to participants. The Ruy Leme Room is located at Av. Luciano Gualberto, 908, Cidade Universitária, São Paulo, SP (map). The event will also be broadcast live on the Web. For information and registration, please send a message to leila.costa@usp.br.
English revision by Carlos Malferrari
Filed under: El Colegio de México, Literature, Politics, Latin America
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Air Resources Board
The LA Times Gets Scooped on Climate (Because It Wasn’t Looking for the Scoop)
by William Yeatman on April 21, 2010
I’ve blogged before on the LA Times’s one sided coverage of AB 32, California’s first-in-the-nation climate change mitigation law. In a nutshell, the LA Times is a big cheerleader for the legislation, with a record of publishing favorable stories and ignoring negative ones.
Case in point: Today, the Times ran an opinion piece, “A Green Jobs Generator,” by two economists who claim that their economic analysis of AB 32 is being distorted by opponents of the legislation. The LA Times allowed them the space to set the record straight, and thus its editorial page again reassured readers that “doing something” about climate change will be easy because it will reduce energy costs and create “green jobs.” Of course, this is baloney-in fact, “doing something” about climate change will make energy more expensive and thereby kill jobs-but the LA Times has an agenda to push, so why sweat the details.
Also today, E&E ClimateWire broke the news that Larry Goulder, the lead author of a recent AB 32 economic analysis commissioned by the state, is on the board of directors of a non-profit that has given money to a political campaign to defeat a ballot initiative that would suspend AB 32. So it’s not surprising that he concluded that AB 32 would create jobs. Naturally, the LA Times covered Goulder’s favorable economic analysis when it was released a few weeks ago. But it has yet to report on his association with a pro-AB 32 political organization. Perhaps it will tomorrow, but I doubt it.
Goulder told ClimateWire that nothing is amiss, but it sure seems like a conflict of interest to me. If an Exxon staffer punched up an economic report suggesting that AB 32 would harm California’s economy, environmentalists would throw a hissy-fit. And the LA Times, no doubt, would try to discredit the report as “industry funded.”
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Blanche Lincoln
How the New Senate Ag Chair (Blanche Lincoln) Changes America’s Energy Policy
by William Yeatman on September 15, 2009
Last week Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) became chairman of the Agriculture Committee, after Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), the previous chair, accepted the gavel at the Health, Labor, Education and Pension Committee (vacated by the passing of Ted Kennedy).
Lincoln becomes the first female to chair this powerful committee, and her ascension to the top-spot will have a big impact on the country’s energy policy.
For almost a decade, the Senate Ag Committee has been the primary benefactor of ethanol, a fuel made from corn. Regardless whether the Ag chair was a Republican or a Democrat, the Committee, which is dominated by corn-belt politicians, showered ethanol with subsidies and give-aways-and even a Soviet-style production quota that forces consumers to use it. Government support for ethanol has been great for corn growers (they’ve seen demand increase by almost 50% since 2005), but it’s awful for livestock farmers, who have seen the cost of corn-feed skyrocket. Consumers have also been harmed, as the price of corn derivatives (meat, dairy, soda, etc., etc.,) has increased so sharply that inflation of the cost of food doubled the historical rate in 2008.
With Lincoln taking the gavel of the Ag Committee, however, the ethanol gravy train might be coming to an end. That’s because Lincoln doesn’t represent the corn-belt. To be sure, they grow corn in Arkansas, primarily in the eastern part of the state. But in western Arkansas, farmers raise chickens. In fact, the Natural State is the nation’s #2 producer of broiler chickens. America’s ethanol policy has seriously compromised the chicken industry, so we can expect Lincoln to take a more conservative approach with fuels made out of food.
Lincoln is also likely to affect the climate debate. The Ag Committee has some jurisdiction over climate change legislation, and Lincoln’s vote on cap-and-trade is a priority for her caucus leadership, which is having a tough time finding support for a climate bill among Senate Democrats. But Arkansas politics are decidedly unfavorable to global warming alarmism. Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Arkansas), who represents Little Rock and much of Pulaski County, was the only member of his State’s delegation to vote for the American Clean Energy and Security Act, cap-and-trade legislation that passed through the House of Representatives in late June, and he has been hammered over the airwaves by utilities, agriculture interests, and political opponents ever since. Now, there is considerable speculation that his seat is in jeopardy-all thanks to his vote for a cap-and-trade. No doubt Lincoln has noticed Snyder’s plight.
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Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church
Sermons/Podcasts
Worship Opportunities
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January 15, 2023 Sermon
Posted on January 15, 2023 by Mark Haefner
Isaiah 49:1–6 Jesus Appears as the Lamb of God
Click Here to Listen to Podcast.
For centuries the priests of Israel offered sacrifices to God for sin. Over and over blood flowed, testifying that the penalty of sin was death. But over and over a substitute stood in the place of the sinner. Countless animals died under the priestly knife as generations of the faithful brought lamb after lamb to the temple. This week we see the Lamb that God himself was bringing to the temple. This was the Lamb that God himself would sacrifice. In the great act that would remove our condemnation, the Messiah took our sins, stood in our place, and died as the substitute for sinful mankind. This was the fulfillment of the entire sacrificial system. Every lamb and goat and bird pointed to God’s Lamb who takes away our sin. The heart that sees his Savior willingly becoming the Lamb cannot help but take this news of salvation to the ends of the earth.
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Kenneth W. Klaassen
Klaassen, Kenneth W. Portage Age 78, passed away Sunday morning, December 11, 2022. Ken was born in Kalamazoo, on October 24, 1944, the son of Gerard and Maria (Frey) Klaassen. He was a lifelong resident of Kalamazoo. Ken proudly served his nation in the United States Army Reserves. Ken was a Public Safety officer for the City of Kalamazoo and was in the first class to cross train when the police and fire departments joined forces in the city. He was an avid collector of military memorabilia. In his retirement he worked for On Target Guns and Gun Smithing as a salesperson. Ken is survived by a brother, Gerard Klaassen of Kalamazoo; and his former wife and best friend, Debra Vorick of Mattawan; and many other friends. No services are being planned at this time. Memorial contributions may be given to Kalamazoo Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 98, in c/o the funeral home.
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Israel in 2025
“On the one-year anniversary of the independence of the Palestinian State, the newest member of the United Nations, the tension with its next-door neighbor, the State of Israel, is still there.
Sam Vaknin, an Israeli analyst answers our questions:
Q. Now, that the 2-states solution has been finally accepted and implemented by both nations, why the renewed tension between them?
A. In order to be able to sign the Hebron Framework Agreement in February last year (which transformed the Palestinian Authority into a state recognized by Israel), Prime Minister Netanyahu was forced to make concessions to the more extreme far right. The Constitution was changed to say that the State of Israel is the Jewish home of the Jewish people, excluding 1.5 million Arabs within its pre-1967 borders and fostering the current unrest and “resistance” among them. Additionally, Israel was effectively transformed into a theocracy with enhanced powers granted to the rabbinate and to other Jewish Orthodox structures in various fields of life, including the military, education, and housing construction. This alienated the secular majority of Israelis. Fractured and weakened, Israel is in no position to make further compromises.
Palestine is in no better shape: its economy is still heavily dependent on Israel: VAT returns, food supplies, electricity, water, the Internet, trade in goods and services - everything comes from or through Israel. More than half the Palestinian budget still relies on international and Israeli handouts.
Moreover, the 2 security corridors or cordons that Israel insisted on maintaining cut across Palestinian territory and effectively bisect the new country, rendering it mutilated and dysfunctional. Roads, neighborhoods, villages, and cities are rended in half; police forces cannot engage in hot pursuit of, for instance, Israeli settlers, who are involved in terrorist activities, protesting the Hebron Agreement; goods are stuck in the border crossings and left to rot. This cannot go on for long. The Hebron Agreement foresees the elimination of these 2 arteries in 20 years, but I think it should and will be sooner than that - or Israel will face a fourth Intifada.
Q. What happened to Hamas?
A. Hamas was totally discredited, even in the Arab street, when its close ties to certain intelligence agencies - including and especially the Israeli Mossad and Shin-Bet - were revealed. Still, it maintains its network of charities, schools, hospitals, and kitchens for the indigent throughout the Gaza Strip. Palestine right now has a technical government which is preparing all the necessary legislation, institutions, and Constitution prior to the elections in March next year. Fatah will remain in the lead, but Hamas may surprise with a comeback. The new political movement, al-Nahda, modeled after the successful party in Tunisia, may emerge as the third potent force in the territory.
Q. Five years ago, Israel was at war with Syria ...
A. Syria under al-Nusra and the remnants of ISIL was just the front. Israel was actually at war with the backers of the new Islamist regime there: Turkey, Iraq, Iran. But, in hindsight, this war was a “good” thing: it brought all the moderates in the region to their senses and made the Hebron Framework Agreement possible. The region was on the verge of nuclear war. It was a Cuba crisis moment. No one wants to see it happening again.
Q. Finally, how do Israelis feel about the Palestinian State on their doorstep?
A. they are skeptical. Israel and the Palestinians experimented with dozens of solutions over the decades. Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza 2005. It built a wall around the Palestinian territories in the West Bank to isolate itself. It agreed to a Palestinian autonomy and the establishment of a state-like Authority. In 2000, Israel offered to the Palestinians 95% of all their territories and half of Jerusalem. Arafat rejected the offer. An Israeli politician once said: “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. The Palestinian State may be no exception. It may end up embroiled in war from within (civil war, like in Lebanon 1975-1990) and without, with Israel and Egypt.
Israel, on the other hand, has never learned how to properly administer the territories it occupied. Its administration was illegal, mean-spirited, violent, harsh, and short-sighted. It has been paying the price ever since.
Posted by Sam Vaknin on 12/29 at 03:07 PM | Permalink
« IRS Is There A Certain Magic To Believing? Part 1 of 3 »
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