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With Dick Cheney and the infamous torture memos making headlines, President Obama and our nation face a choice. Should they prosecute or protect those responsible for the torture of detainees in secret CIA detention centers? If our leaders wish to steer our country back to the right side of the law, they must act immediately and unequivocally to prosecute. The problem is that leading senators want the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to complete its investigation into the treatment and interrogation of detainees (which could take between four and six months), before any prosecution is launched. Yet such a delay would potentially risk running out the clock on certain types of prosecution. The federal Anti-Torture Act, for example, is subject to a statute of limitations after only eight years. For the prosecution of crimes committed in the months leading up to September 2002 – when Bush administration lawyers produced the first of the "torture memos" that purported to make torture legally permissible – that expiration date is spring 2010. But there is no need to wait that long. There is already ample evidence that shows the previous administration concocted, approved, and implemented a torture policy. What's more, there is no legal imperative holding the Department of Justice or federal prosecutors back from launching a criminal investigation, beginning with the task of identifying who is responsible for the crimes that have already been documented. Although the Senate Intelligence Committee report may eventually provide some insights, it cannot be a substitute for the criminal investigations required for prosecution. But given the committee's possible complicity in allowing torture to continue despite multiple Central Intelligence Agency briefings, we should not expect its report to break much new ground. When Mr. Obama rescinded the torture memos upon taking office, he took an important first step toward repairing the damage wrought by the previous administration on our country's commitment to human rights and rule of law. But his statement in April to forgo prosecution of those CIA agents who carried out torture is a breach of international law. Some critics argue that a full investigation might lead the US public to ultimately side with torture and thus prosecution could be politically counterproductive. Others argue that prosecuting hundreds of people would waste resources during a war on terror, and that it should stay focused on going after terrorists. However, the International Convention Against Torture, adopted by the United States in 1994, compels the US to prosecute everyone who is responsible for torture, all the way up the chain of command to top government officials who authorize it. Obama himself said in April that he's "a strong believer that it's important to look forward and not backwards, and to remind ourselves that we do have very real security threats out there." At the same time he also said that "nobody is above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen." The law allows no exceptions. Congress also has an urgent and important role to play: It must eliminate a loophole written into the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act. That piece of legislation contains provisions that were crafted to provide legal cover to torturers. This includes the defense that those who committed torture believed the acts were legal at the time, since they had been interpreted as such by the White House torture memos (none of which carried the force of law). Legislators must also attend to the back end of the accountability process by eliminating or extending the statute of limitations beyond 2010, as Rep. John Conyers (D) of Michigan has proposed. Efforts to hold torturers and torture enablers accountable have been launched abroad, most notably in Germany, Italy, and Spain. Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón, a central figure in the prosecution of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, is an example of a quick, effective actor. He recently launched an investigation into the Bush administration last month over the alleged torture of four Spanish nationals at Guantánamo under the legal principle of universal jurisdiction. He also has ordered an inquiry into whether or not six former Bush administration lawyers created a legal framework to permit torture. Should the Spanish court ultimately indict anyone pursuant to these claims, it is unclear whether the Obama administration would extradite former US officials. But such a development might, at the very least, prevent those former officials from traveling anywhere in the European Union and further discredit their already tainted legacies. The Obama administration promised a new era of international cooperation and respect. It now faces the first major test of its rhetoric. If the US fails to prosecute those responsible for torture, we can take our place alongside countries we have long criticized for privileging politics over justice and accountability by letting criminals go free. Beyond the United States' global standing, the former administration's policies also made Americans less safe by providing recruiting tools for terrorists. The Obama administration must show that such abuses won't stand. Larry Cox is the executive director of Amnesty International USA. |
Israel passed a law earlier this week that bans local advertisers from using overly thin models in their campaigns. It also requires publications to disclose when images are altered to make models appear thinner. The law's supporters hope it will promote healthier eating habits among models and stop glamorizing extreme thinness among the general population. Adi Barkan, an Israeli fashion photographer and modeling agent who has long championed this legislation said over the past 20 years, television and advertising have been overrun with overly skinny, unhealthy some would argue, looking women. "Now, it's too skinny, and no one knows the difference between skinny and too skinny," Barkan said. Barkan said the law will save lives by changing the perception of what is normal among young women, and men, in Israel. Barkan said the government had to step in and tell society what was too skinny — because no one else was and it was costing people their lives. "Too skinny is not sexy. Too skinny is going to make you die. Too skinny, nobody wants too skinny. A guy wants a woman," Barkan said. |
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. Dec. 2, 2017, 2:52 AM GMT / Updated Dec. 2, 2017, 2:59 AM GMT By Associated Press MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama Democrat Doug Jones is trying to shore up support among black voters in his U.S. Senate race against Republican Roy Moore by appealing for an end to the divisiveness that has long been part of the state's politics. Speaking at an event held at a predominantly black church Friday night after stops in heavily black areas of east Alabama during the day, Jones said he hoped Election Day will be historic for the state. His remarks came on the anniversary of the arrest of black seamstress Rosa Parks in 1955 for her refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus. The resulting Montgomery Bus Boycott helped spark the modern civil rights movement. "We have more in common than we have to divide us," Jones said. "We cannot let people, candidates and public officials continue to divide us the way this state has been divided in the past." On Saturday, Jones plans to participate in the Christmas parade in Selma, a landmark city of the civil rights movement. Related: Roy Moore blames 'malicious' allegations on gays, liberals and socialists Jones' outreach to African-American voters comes ahead of the Dec. 12 election where he faces Republican Roy Moore. Jones is attempting to be the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama in 25 years, but it's an uphill fight. An attorney with working-class roots, he's a white Democrat in a state controlled by conservative white Republicans. To win against Moore, Jones must energize the state's Democratic base, composed mainly of black residents, who account for 23 percent of the state's registered voters. A poor turnout by African-American voters could sink Jones. He also needs to peel away moderate GOP support from the deeply conservative Moore, who has a dedicated evangelical following. Aware of the odd dynamics of a special election held during the holiday season — when voters' minds are more often on football or shopping than politics — Jones' campaign has launched an effort to get out the vote that includes radio, billboards and neighborhood canvassing. At the church event, Sandra Gamble said Jones "doesn't stand a chance" if his backers don't vote. U.S. Senate candidate Doug Jones speaks to the media about his role in the prosecutions of two Ku Klux Klansmen charged in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Sunday, Nov. 26, 2017, in Birmingham, Ala. The bombing occurred in 1963 and killed four girls. Brynn Anderson / AP "We are really trying to get everybody to really consider how serious this matter is," she said. Partly to reach black voters, Jones has emphasized his role leading the prosecution against the two Klansmen who bombed Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963, killing four little girls. The campaign has also specifically targeted millennial African-Americans with ads emphasizing positions on education and the economy. The Alabama chapter of the NAACP and a collaboration of a majority black fraternities and sororities also have launched a drive aimed at getting those younger voters to the polls. Related: Roy Moore campaign touts support from dubious Indiana group Chiriga King Vinson already is sold. An African-American woman from Decatur, Vinson said she plans to vote for Jones in part because she believes he could help the state's reputation. "Since I've lived in other states, I know the images people outside of Alabama have. A lot of those images are negative," Vinson said. On the campaign trail, Jones has portrayed himself as a bridge builder. "Elections have consequences. I think we are at a pivotal time in our state where we can either take steps forward or we can go backwards. We can either take steps that can unite us behind the issues that we have in common a divisive way that we are seeing far too much of in this country," Jones said at a recent stop. Jones recently made an appearance with young progressive Randall Woodfin, inaugurated this week as the new mayor of mostly black Birmingham. Beneath blue and white balloons, Woodfin urged people to get to the polls to support Jones. "People keep asking: Can Doug Jones win this race?" Woodfin said to the crowd. "My answer is the exact same every time: Yes." Meanwhile, after a fish fry at a Baptist church here, Jones encouraged Republican Alabamians to follow Sen. Richard Shelby’s example and not vote for Roy Moore no matter what. “I think more people should follow Senator Shelby’s example, whether they write in somebody or not vote for Roy Moore,” Jones said. |
President Obama’s belated defense of his infamous “you didn’t build that” comment has turned Clintonesque: it depends on what the meaning of the word “that” is. But it doesn’t, really. Regardless of whether Obama said that entrepreneurs didn’t build their own businesses, or whether he said they didn’t build the roads and bridges to which the president presumably thinks they owe their success, he has once again taken a revealing and gratuitous swipe at small business owners. Speaking to supporters in Roanoke, Virginia on July 13, the president channeled Elizabeth Warren in a riff on how small business owners owe their success to others — primarily the government. “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help,” said the president. “There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Republicans pounced on the last two sentences: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” In other words: If you started a business, the credit belongs not to you but to the collective efforts of society that made it possible. That was certainly the most logical interpretation of the president’s remarks, and for over a week the Obama campaign appeared to acquiesce in that interpretation through its silence. It appears to have finally dawned upon the president that his remarks were highly offensive to the millions of hard-working small business owners upon whom we depend to create jobs. His campaign has belatedly come out with an ad in which the president declares: “Those ads, taking my words about small business out of context, they’re flat out wrong.” Obama clearly expects the public to respect his expertise on the subject of taking words out of context: his own campaign has displayed its virtuosity by stringing together, in a single ad, 13 deceptively edited clips of Romney remarks that they have purposely taken out of context. “Of course Americans build their own businesses,” Obama continues in his ad. “Every day, hard-working people sacrifice to meet a payroll, create jobs and make our economy run. And what I said was that we need to stand behind them, as America always has.” Fine. Those are apple pie sentiments. Anyone who cannot bring himself to utter such things should not be taken seriously as a candidate for president of the United States. But were the president’s remarks in Roanoke really mischaracterized? Here are those remarks again, with the added context of the words that preceded them: “Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hard-working people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” It is irrelevant whether “you didn’t build that” refers to an entrepreneur’s business (which, again, is the most logical interpretation) or to the roads and bridges that were used by that business. The president’s remarks were clearly a contemptuous put-down of small business owners who, in the president’s view, want to take too much credit for their own success. He mocks small businessmen who have the gall to think they succeeded because they were “so smart” or “worked harder than everybody else.” The point of the president’s remarks was not to celebrate the courage, hard work and vision that it takes to make a business successful. Rather, the point was to admonish successful small business owners not to get too full of themselves, not to think that they’re so special. And along the way, he managed to denigrate the importance of intelligence and hard work. The president has consistently displayed a scornful attitude toward businesses, including during his much-hyped jobs speech last year before a joint session of Congress: “[F]or everyone who speaks so passionately about making life easier for ‘job creators,’ this plan is for you,” said the president, unable to hide his disdain for Republican concerns even while purporting to be solicitous of them. “Job creators” was actually placed within dismissive quotation marks in the prepared text. He might as well have sneeringly referred to entrepreneurs as “so-called job creators.” Obama’s antipathy toward business is deep-seated. Before finding his true calling as a community organizer, Obama spent a very brief amount of time in the private sector. He took an entry-level job out of college where he wrote reports on economic conditions in foreign countries. According to David Maraniss’s biography entitled Barack Obama: The Story, Obama told his mother that the job was like “working for the enemy.” In his own book, Dreams from My Father, Obama described himself as being “[l]ike a spy behind enemy lines” during his brief tenure in Corporate America. As a former liberal, I recognize these sentiments; they have long been fashionable in the circles I used to run in. Obama is now a successful politician, and hence knows enough to pay lip service to the virtues of the entrepreneurial spirit. During his remarks in Roanoke, he went on to say the following: “The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.” This is fairly typical of Obama. When he extols the virtues of something like “individual initiative,” it is invariably followed by a “but,” which is in turn followed by his real point. In this case, his real point is that the successful owe their success to the government. As usual, the president is engaged in a passionate argument with a straw man. Who is against using public funds (which are raised disproportionally from successful individuals and businesses, by the way) for public infrastructure? The president is running against the Republicans, but he seems to think that he’s running against the anarchists. And does the president really think that “this unbelievable American system” is based upon the fact that we use public funds to build roads and bridges? If I may respond to the president by paraphrasing his own words: “Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of countries out there that use public funds to build roads and bridges. All of them do, actually. But none of those other countries has been as successful as the United States of America, so it must be something else that accounts for this unbelievable American system.” Imagine if a presidential candidate were to say the following about, say, war heroes: “I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so brave. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of brave people out there.” If someone felt the need to put war heroes in their place by making such a statement, what would it suggest about that person’s respect for war heroes? The same thing that President Obama’s remarks in Roanoke suggest about his respect for small business owners. David B. Cohen served in the administration of President George W. Bush as U.S. Representative to the Pacific Community, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior, and as a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. He is the author of Left-Hearted, Right-Minded: Why Conservative Policies Are The Best Way To Achieve Liberal Ideals. |
BOSTON — The Chinese military is putting the finishing touches on its first aircraft carrier, which could set sail later in 2011. What will its first mission be? Officials aren't saying. But its neighbors worry that the vessel’s putative name may provide a not-so-subtle hint. The ship is rumored to be called the Shi Lang, after a Qing Dynasty admiral who in 1681 conquered the Kingdom of Tungning — a territory better known today as Taiwan. If it is christened as such, the political implications would be "obvious," said Tsai Der-sheng, head of the Taiwanese government’s National Security Bureau. Shi Lang’s historic parallels run deep. One of China’s staunchest strategic priorities is to bring Taiwan — which it regards as a rogue province — back into its fold. The island has essentially been independent since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s ragtag communist army overthrew China’s Kuomintang government. The Kuomintang's supporters fled across the China Straits (carrying an eye-popping fortune in national treasure) and have largely run the island since. Likewise, in the 17th century, Taiwan served as a refuge for the derelict Ming Dynasty after it was vanquished by a starving, neglected peasantry. Ultimately, Adm. Shi Lang finished the job, conquering the last Ming elite and claiming Taiwan for China. So will the aircraft carrier enable Beijing to repeat the historic admiral’s feat? Or will the real winners be the weapons merchants as Asia’s arms race heats up? On thing is certain: China has devoted an enormous amount of energy to the project, now over two decades in the making. Beijing purchased the warship’s hull in 1998 for a mere $20 million from Ukraine, where its construction had halted when the Soviet Union collapsed. Officials suggested it would be used as a floating casino in the gambling mecca of Macau, along China’s southern coast. Lacking engines, steering or electronics, the hull was reportedly towed by tugboats through Turkey’s treacherous Bosporus and around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope in an epic, multi-year journey to China. The ship eventually found its way to a dry dock in Dalian, north of Shanghai. There, it was painted sea gray and is now being refurbished with modern military hardware. The question is whether it’s worth the effort, given the realities of 21st-century warfare. True, the carrier could eventually enable China to exercise air power around the world. The U.S. operates eleven such floating airports — which currently enable it to attack Libya from the Mediterranean. The Pentagon has come under criticism domestically for ordering as many as seven new ones over the next three decades, at a cost of more than $12 billion each. Several other nations — including France, the United Kingdom and Russia— maintain the massive vessels. But some argue that smaller, more nimble (and less pricey) ships, or even long-range bombers with global reach, would be more effective. Operating a carrier is both costly and complicated. In the near term, China will have to develop and test aircraft that can serve on a carrier. Beijing recently unveiled photos of its new J-15 Flying Shark attack jet, which has the necessary features, such as folding wings and a shortened tail cone, needed to accommodate tight quarters. The plane will soon be ready for test flights, the New York Times reports. That’s just a first step, however. “An aircraft carrier requires not just a functioning air group — itself composed of not only fighters and strike aircraft — but anti-submarine, airborne early warning and in-flight refueling aircraft, but also a variety of escorts to provide additional air, surface and sub-surface protection,” writes Dean Cheng, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. It could take as long as a decade before China can deploy a functioning aircraft carrier group, according to Cheng. There are also tactical limitations that render carriers somewhat obsolete against major powers. China is well aware of this: it is currently developing an anti-ship ballistic missile that could threaten U.S. carriers. Senior U.S. and Asian naval officers “regard the [Chinese] carrier as a manageable threat,” writes Douglas H. Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, formerly the unofficial U.S. ambassador to Taiwan (unofficial because Beijing prevents the U.S. from officially recognizing the island’s government). “Some [military experts] joke that they hope China will acquire five more battle groups and waste even more money that could go into other, more threatening systems,” Paal writes. Taiwan, which appears to be most immediately in China’s crosshairs, is not taking any chances. Next year, its military will begin building 10 stealth warships armed with guided missiles, to prepare for the threat from the Chinese carrier, Defense News reports. "The defense ministry has been closely monitoring the construction of [the aircraft carrier], so of course we are abreast of all the latest developments and the carrier's potential threat to the Republic of China [on Taiwan]," said defense ministry spokesman Lo Shau-ho, according to Radio Tawian International. "We have carefully devised strategies as a response, but as they are military secrets I'm afraid I cannot give you any details." Other Asian militaries will likely choose to bulk up their own defenses against their huge neighbor’s more mobile air power. The only other option would be to rely for defense on China’s biggest debtor: the U.S. Follow writer David Case on Twitter: @DavidCaseReport |
British lawmakers have debated banning his entry to their country. A former Australian prime minister said the prospect of his presidency made him “tremble.” Piñatas in his image, complete with his signature coif, have become all the rage in Mexico. The unorthodox march of Donald Trump toward the Republican nomination has transfixed audiences from London to Latin America. The world has looked on with confusion, consternation, and a few congratulations at the prospect that a brash billionaire with no political experience, who says whatever he wants, could possibly find his way to the White House. Any US presidential race is hot-ticket international news. But this one comes at a time of deep global insecurity. Mr. Trump’s status as an unknown quantity feeds nations’ worries about everything from the continuation of their trade deals to military ties. Yet the rise of Trump is also seen in many corners as a gauge of Americans’ concerns about their diminishing role on the world stage. In Europe, this is something of a familiar phenomenon as populists gain at the polls, fueled by frustration over migration, globalization, and social change. If there is an optimistic side, it lies in the hope of many that, whether he wins or not, Trump’s candidacy will have jostled political elites and forced them to address the gap between a widespread sense of malaise and the simplistic, often outrageous solutions of straight-talking populists. “It is quite clear that people are not happy with the establishment, and they are so unhappy that they are willing to overlook some pretty serious xenophobia,” says Christine Harlen, who teaches US politics and international political economy at the University of Leeds in England. “Maybe it could be a wake-up call that something has to change.” Like that of other populists gaining footholds around the world, Trump’s rise is seen as first and foremost a protest. While Trump’s plans to build a wall along the US-Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it, or temporarily bar Muslims from visiting the United States – which prompted the extraordinary debate in Britain’s Parliament – have attracted a fair share of racist voters, his appeal ripples wider. His supporters like his style as the anti-politician: muscular and even vulgar in speech, deriding the political dysfunction in Washington that has allowed everyday problems to mount. ‘A new face and a new force.’ As Zhu Feng, an analyst of South China Sea issues at China’s Nanjing University, puts it: “He is a real American. I do not see Trump as below the standards of American politics. He is a new face and a new force, and he carries a lot of the real hopes of American people.” The desire for change is apparent to US neighbors north and south, from the industrial hubs in Canada to the towns along the US-Mexican border. “Americans are overall just angry in a lot of ways,” says Brian Hogan, who works in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit. “There’s a lot of rancor in that country.” Mr. Hogan says his American friends feel unstable in their jobs and shaken by racially charged violence and gun crime. “When people have personal challenges they look for answers,” says Hogan, who leads a local teachers union. “If someone is a racist but he’s going to get you a job, you’d be interested.” But this is more than just a story of disillusioned individuals. To America’s allies, Trump’s appeal is also an expression of a nation that can’t find its way amid new geopolitical currents, from the rise of China to that of the so-called Islamic State to the country’s own isolationist mood. Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, Australia, says a substantial number of Americans are accommodating the US’s changing place in the world instead of resisting it. But others are angry and resentful about America’s inability to sway the Syria conflict, for example, or what they see as disruptive changes at home, such as the legalization of gay marriage, and a conviction that they aren’t making headway in a system skewed against them. Trump’s backers, Mr. Hamilton says, feel vulnerable to invasion: “I’m not talking of military invasion. I’m talking of invasion by economic powers, by financial powers, by immigrants coming up from the south and across the seas – a generalized sense of insecurity that’s taken root in the American populace, which is at the heart of the Trump phenomenon.” In Asia, this can seem like déjà vu. In Tokyo, Trump’s angry words toward Japan have revived memories of the 1980s trade tensions with the US, provoking puzzlement among those who have witnessed Japan’s struggle with economic stagnation and being overtaken by China in the intervening decades. Trump has also questioned the validity of the US-Japan security alliance, the bedrock of relations between the two countries since World War II. He accuses Tokyo of not paying enough for the protection it receives from the US. “If Japan gets attacked, we have to immediately go to their aid,... if we get attacked, Japan doesn’t have to help us. That’s a fair deal?” Trump asked at a rally in Iowa last August. Many in the world understand his rise through their own country’s political experiences. That includes similar public figures who have made headlines, from former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to businessman Kevin O’Leary in Canada to former Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto in Japan. But it also touches on populism and a desire for a strong, independent – and rich – leader. This has been a feature of public life in Latin America for decades. Independent, wealthy leaders attractive “Urbanization, industrialization brought modernization that challenged traditional norms, and that made people feel scared about their position in society,” says Christopher Sabatini, an associate professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York. In the Latin American context, independently wealthy leaders always get a second look from voters who feel they’ll be less prone to corruption by businesses or drug traffickers. In today’s world, insecurity is fueling what might be described as the global appeal of the “strongman.” Motti Chaimovitz, a Tel Aviv cafe owner, says he has to look no further than home to understand Trump’s gains: It’s like the dynamic that swept Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into office. “There is a prevailing fear in the Western world. People are looking for strong candidates,” he says. “Those that put [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan and Netanyahu in power are the religious and rural vote.” Perhaps the most apt comparisons today, however, come from Europe, where populists are gaining from France to Finland – putting some European leaders on the defensive. European-American relations were strained under former President George W. Bush, but the prospect of a Trump presidency has been viewed with a degree of panic. Germany’s influential weekly magazine Der Spiegel wrote in a Jan. 2 headline that “Donald Trump Is the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” and elaborated in the subhead. “George W. Bush’s America,” it reads, “would seem like a place of logic and reason in comparison.” And The Economist Intelligence Unit ranked a Trump presidency as one of the top 10 risks facing the world, on a par with jihadi terrorism and more threatening than a military conflict in the South China Sea. The mainstream parties have been faulted for underestimating the appeal of populism. Steven Ekovich, a professor of comparative politics at The American University of Paris, says they continue to denigrate populist supporters instead of looking in the mirror. “One similarity between the US and France is the French elite have been disdainful and mocking of anyone supporting Marine Le Pen,” he says. “They are essentially verbally spitting on them, which has only reinforced Marine Le Pen’s support.” Tapping populism Some of Europe’s populists have publicly supported Trump. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called him “brilliant” – after Trump said he believes he could get along with the Russian leader. From Moscow’s vantage point, such leaders taking hold of Western public imagination is no surprise. “I think Trump is the product of the same kind of ferment we see happening in Europe. People are disillusioned with the status quo and the standard answers issued by old-line politicians, and they want change,” says Andrei Klimov a member of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament. “He obviously appeals to a lot of people out there, who maybe say, ‘I don’t know where Ukraine is. I don’t understand what we’re doing in Syria. I don’t want to feed refugees. Why can’t we just look after our own?’ ” While many voters may identify with this sentiment analysts warn that the promises of populism are too simplistic. Mark Triffitt, a lecturer in public policy at the University of Melbourne in Australia, argues that the insecurity people feel “lends itself to a mind-set that America should retreat and go back to a world which is very difficult to reconstruct, one that is built around a dominant manufacturing sector, one centered on an unambiguous sense of American power.” No one is predicting the shape that US foreign policy would take under Trump – mostly because he is unpredictable, either not detailing his positions or changing them rapidly. But many are already worried. Iranians, for example, are eager to know if the landmark nuclear deal painstakingly negotiated for years and finally agreed to last July between Iran and six world powers will be “torn up,” as some Republican candidates have promised. Kayhan Barzegar, director of the Institute for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, Iran, says Trump could endanger US interests “considering the reality that US power ... requires engaging others [in] solving the world’s common problems.” Daniel Friedrich, a teacher in Berlin, has faith that if Trump is elected the American democracy would restrict him so that the world order would remain much as it is now. “In the end, no matter who the president is, the president is constrained in all kinds of ways by other institutional factors,” he says, “so I think that the effect might not be as bad as one might think at first sight, just as the effect of [President] Obama was not as good as one might have hoped for.” But Josefina Ponce, a waitress and college student of psychology in Mexico City, says Trump is changing her view of the US. “I have gone from feeling ‘he doesn’t represent all Americans’ to feeling like ‘maybe I don’t understand the US like I thought [I did],’ ” she says. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy US global leadership could suffer a similar image problem, which, according to Andreas Schwab, a German member of the European Parliament, would have untold consequences for mutual trust. He goes so far as to say a Trump victory would be “a big blow to the unity of the Western world. “In comparison to other world powers, this has always been the US’s biggest strength: keeping like-minded countries together with a very soft approach, linking them one to the other. I do not think that it would be the same with Trump,” he says. |
The history of patents and patent law is generally considered to have started with the Venetian Statute of 1474.[1] Early precedents [ edit ] There is some evidence that some form of patent rights was recognized in Ancient Greece. In 500 BCE, in the Greek city of Sybaris (located in what is now southern Italy), "encouragement was held out to all who should discover any new refinement in luxury, the profits arising from which were secured to the inventor by patent for the space of a year."[2] Athenaeus, writing in the third century CE, cites Phylarchus in saying that in Sybaris exclusive rights were granted for one year to creators of unique culinary dishes.[3] In England, grants in the form of letters patent were issued by the sovereign to inventors who petitioned and were approved: a grant of 1331 to John Kempe and his Company is the earliest authenticated instance of a royal grant made with the avowed purpose of instructing the English in a new industry.[4][5] These letters patent provided the recipient with a monopoly to produce particular goods or provide particular services. Another early example of such letters patent was a grant by Henry VI in 1449 to John of Utynam, a Flemish man, for a twenty-year monopoly for his invention.[5] The first Italian patent was awarded by the Republic of Florence in 1421.[6][7] The Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi received a three-year patent for a barge with hoisting gear, that carried marble along the Arno River in 1421.[8] Development of the modern patent system [ edit ] Patents were systematically granted in Venice as of 1450, where they issued a decree by which new and inventive devices had to be communicated to the Republic in order to obtain legal protection against potential infringers. The period of protection was 10 years.[9] These were mostly in the field of glass making. As Venetians emigrated, they sought similar patent protection in their new homes. This led to the diffusion of patent systems to other countries.[10] The Venetian Patent Statute, issued by the Senate of Venice in 1474, and one of the earliest patent systems in the world. King Henry II of France introduced the concept of publishing the description of an invention in a patent in 1555. The first patent "specification" was to inventor Abel Foullon for "Usaige & Description de l'holmetre", (a type of rangefinder.) Publication was delayed until after the patent expired in 1561.[10] Patents were granted by the monarchy and by other institutions like the "Maison du Roi" and the Parliament of Paris. The novelty of the invention was examined by the French Academy of Sciences.[11] Digests were published irregularly starting in 1729 with delays of up to 60 years. Examinations were generally done in secret with no requirement to publish a description of the invention. Actual use of the invention was deemed adequate disclosure to the public.[12] The English patent system evolved from its early medieval origins into the first modern patent system that recognised intellectual property in order to stimulate invention; this was the crucial legal foundation upon which the Industrial Revolution could emerge and flourish.[13] By the 16th century, the English Crown would habitually grant letters patent for monopolies to favoured persons (or people who were prepared to pay for them).[14] Blackstone (same reference) also explains how "letters patent" (Latin literae patentes, "letters that lie open") were so called because the seal hung from the foot of the document: they were addressed "To all to whom these presents shall come" and could be read without breaking the seal, as opposed to "letters close", addressed to a particular person who had to break the seal to read them. This power was used to raise money for the Crown, and was widely abused, as the Crown granted patents in respect of all sorts of common goods (salt, for example). Consequently, the Court began to limit the circumstances in which they could be granted. After public outcry, James I of England was forced to revoke all existing monopolies and declare that they were only to be used for "projects of new invention". This was incorporated into the Statute of Monopolies in which Parliament restricted the Crown's power explicitly so that the King could only issue letters patent to the inventors or introducers of original inventions for a fixed number of years. It also voided all existing monopolies and dispensations with the exception of: ...the sole working or making of any manner of new manufactures within this realm to the true and first inventor and inventors of such manufactures which others at the time of making such letters patent and grants shall not use... The Statute became the foundation for later developments in patent law in England and elsewhere. Important developments in patent law emerged during the 18th century through a slow process of judicial interpretation of the law. During the reign of Queen Anne, patent applications were required to supply a complete specification of the principles of operation of the invention for public access.[15] Patenting medicines was particular popular in the mid-eighteenth century and then declined.[16] Legal battles around the 1796 patent taken out by James Watt for his steam engine, established the principles that patents could be issued for improvements of an already existing machine and that ideas or principles without specific practical application could also legally be patented.[17] This legal system became the foundation for patent law in countries with a common law heritage, including the United States, New Zealand and Australia. In the Thirteen Colonies, inventors could obtain patents through petition to a given colony's legislature. In 1641, Samuel Winslow was granted the first patent in North America by the Massachusetts General Court for a new process for making salt.[18] Towards the end of the 18th century, and influenced by the philosophy of John Locke, the granting of patents began to be viewed as a form of intellectual property right, rather than simply the obtaining of economic privilege. A negative aspect of the patent law also emerged in this period - the abuse of patent privilege to monopolise the market and prevent improvement from other inventors. A notable example of this was the behaviour of Boulton & Watt in hounding their competitors such as Richard Trevithick through the courts, and preventing their improvements to the steam engine from being realised until their patent expired. Consolidation [ edit ] The modern French patent system was created during the Revolution in 1791. Patents were granted without examination since inventor's right was considered as a natural one. Patent costs were very high (from 500 to 1500 francs). Importation patents protected new devices coming from foreign countries. The patent law was revised in 1844 - patent cost was lowered and importation patents were abolished. The Patent and Copyright Clause of the United States Constitution was proposed in 1787 by James Madison and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. In Federalist No. 43, Madison wrote, "The utility of the clause will scarcely be questioned. The copyright of authors has been solemnly adjudged, in Great Britain, to be a right of common law. The right to useful inventions seems with equal reason to belong to the inventors. The public good fully coincides in both cases with the claims of the individuals." The first Patent Act of the U.S. Congress was passed on April 10, 1790, titled "An Act to promote the progress of useful Arts."[19] The first patent was granted on July 31, 1790 to Samuel Hopkins for a method of producing potash (potassium carbonate). The earliest law required that a working model of each invention be submitted with the application. Patent applications were examined to determine if an inventor was entitled to the grant of a patent. The requirement for a working model was eventually dropped. In 1793,[20] the law was revised so that patents were granted automatically upon submission of the description. A separate Patent Office was created in 1802.[21] The patent laws were again revised in 1836,[22] and the examination of patent applications was reinstituted.[23] In 1870 Congress passed a law which mainly reorganized and reenacted existing law, but also made some important changes, such as giving the commissioner of patents the authority to draft rules and regulations for the Patent Office.[24] Criticism [ edit ] Under the influence of the ascendant economic philosophy of free trade economics in England, the patent law began to be criticised in the 1850s as obstructing research and benefiting the few at the expense of public good.[25] The campaign against patenting expanded to target copyright too and, in the judgment of historian Adrian Johns, "remains to this day the strongest [campaign] ever undertaken against intellectual property", coming close to abolishing patents.[25] Its most prominent activists - Isambard Kingdom Brunel, William Robert Grove, William Armstrong and Robert A. MacFie - were inventors and entrepreneurs, and it was also supported by radical laissez-faire economists (The Economist published anti-patent views), law scholars, scientists (who were concerned that patents were obstructing research) and manufacturers.[26] Johns summarizes some of their main arguments as follows:[27] [Patents] projected an artificial idol of the single inventor, radically denigrated the role of the intellectual commons, and blocked a path to this commons for other citizens — citizens who were all, on this account, potential inventors too. [...] Patentees were the equivalent of squatters on public land — or better, of uncouth market traders who planted their barrows in the middle of the highway and barred the way of the people. Similar debates took place during that time in other European countries such as France, Prussia, Switzerland and the Netherlands.[28] Based on the criticism of patents as state-granted monopolies inconsistent with free trade, the Netherlands abolished patents in 1869 (having established them in 1817), and did not reintroduce them until 1912.[29] In Switzerland, criticism of patents delayed the introduction of patent laws until 1907.[28][29] In England, despite much public debate, the system wasn't abolished - it was reformed with the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1852. This simplified procedure for obtaining patents, reduced fees and created one office for the entire United Kingdom, instead of different systems for England and Wales and Scotland. In France as well, a similar controversy erupted in the 1860s and reforms were made.[30] See also [ edit ] Notes [ edit ] References [ edit ] Kenneth W. Dobyns, The Patent Office Pony; A History of the Early Patent Office, Sergeant Kirkland's Press 1994. [1] Howard B. Rockman, Intellectual Property law for Engineers and Scientists. Bugbee, Bruce W. Genesis of American Patent and Copyright Law. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press (1967). Christine MacLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution: The English patent system, 1660–1800, Cambridge University Press. Galvez-Behar, G. La République des inventeurs. Propriété et organisation de l'innovation en France, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2008. First patents American |
THE "WHY" PRECEDES THE "HOW." THIS, I BELIEVE, SHOULD BE THE GOAL OF ALL ART. -pg. 439 The Economics of Seeing I am at a loss for a quick way to describe Dan Winters' just-shipped book,. That's because it defies nearly any category of photo book I have seen to date.It's nearly 700 pages long, and is far and away the deepest journey into the photographic process I have ever read. It includes technique, but in the context of the journey covered in this book technique is almost an afterthought. And appropriately so.Best way I can put it:is not so much a book as it is a mentorship. __________Part of me wants to do the standard run-though of, to give an idea of its breadth and depth. To talk about the huge number of images it contains—only about half of which were shot by Winters himself.About how it is a wonderfully detailed manual——of one man's life path to becoming of on the greatest illustrative portraitists of his generation.About its significant nod to the history of photography and to so many influential photographers who have come before.About its deep journey into the internal process of photography and creativity and craft.But another part of me says to just keep it vague and to not ruin the reader's experience by mapping out the book before they begin it.So instead I'll just say this. The book starts in Winters' childhood and from there explores the decades of layers and experiences that made him into the person he is today. Like anyone's path, his has its moments of randomness. But there is also serendipity, conscious decisions and significant risks taken along the way.The narrative is, for the first portion of the book, mostly chronological. From there, Winters wanders down the occasional side path looking in-depth at assignments or other types of projects. But he always comes back to the core of who he is, and in that forces you to examine your own core beliefs as a photographer.Or to recognize that maybe you have not yet discovered your own core beliefs and that it is high time you got started doing so. The thing that leaps out at you throughout, is that this is not randomness at all. It is his continually, consciously chosen path as a photographer.is not a book you blow through and exit with a new bag of techniques. It is a book you absorb over time. In fact, I wonder even what percentage of young photographers will possess the mental wherewithal to realize exactly what they are holding in their hands.I'd like to think this book would have significantly altered my path had I read it as a 20-year-old. But I have to wonder. I was having a lot of fun shooting for newspapers at that age, and probably would not have been ready to hear what it has to say. But boy, does it resonate at 48.It is very possible that people of different ages (and different points along their own paths) will read this as entirely different books. And will go back to it five years later and see it completely differently.So in that sense I think it is appropriate for a serious college student. Or a 48-year-old student, as the case may be.__________First, a warning: this book is not going to be around for a long time. At least, not in hardback form.That's because it is lengthy and lavish and damn expensive to produce. As much as it was a labor of love for Winters, it was just as much a commitment for editors Ted Waitt and James Hughes. To say that they blew the budget on it is a laughable understatement.Ted repeated to me more than once while were talking about the process of birthing this thing. Winters just kept adding pages and photographs from others who had influenced him and more pages and more pages. What are you gonna do? Say "no?"Internally, the book became known as. But to their credit, they stuck by Winters and fought the battles (and, let's be honest, in many ways bet their jobs) that the end result would be worth it to produce. Having now held it in my hand, I can't tell you how much respect I have for them for that.But here's what all of that means: there will be a first edition. There might be a second printing. But this book is going to go away. It is super expensive to print a book like this, and at one point you just aren't gonna justify running off another 10k copies.It'll exist in E-form, I am sure. But won't be the same. And to predictable economic result for those who did not get their hard copy when the getting was good.I'll tell you this much. I am buying more than one copy. I want to have them for photographer friends who are (or who become) very special to me. And I do not want to kick myself later for not getting them when they could be had for ~$50.It feels strange to speak this highly of landmark photo book so soon after another book hit the shelves this fall. I guess 2013 was just the year lightning struck twice in the same place.Please don't miss this one.__________::, by Dan Winters :: ( Amazon |
Update at the end of post. According to reports that we’re seeing on Twitter, a military coup against the Ben Ali regime and President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali has erupted in Tunisia. However, it appears that mainstream media attention to the events of the past few weeks in the embattled country have been minimal, with the notable exception of a 26 year old protestor who set fire to himself and later died. It’s worth noting immediately, however, that every bit of information that we have here is based on reports via Twitter and thus not confirmed by any official source, government or otherwise. While writing this, we’re seeing nearly equal reports of a coup happening as well as a coup not happening. What happens, then, without mainstream media coverage? The revolution is being tweeted. The cause of the unrest, according to an article on the Al Jazeera (an English-language news channel headquartered in Doha, Qatar) website, appears to be related to high unemployment rates and costs of living in the country. Despite the promise of more jobs, protests have continued and security forces have been accused of using excessive force against the protesters. In answer to the protests, schools and universities have been closed until the fighting subsides. The most recent reports from those within Tunisia state and from what we’ve seen on Twitter are that the Ben Ali regime has been brought down by a military coup and that General Rachid Ammar has been given temporary status as President. However, it’s again worth noting that these are rumors. The latest update from the only news source that we’ve seen covering anything about Tunisia comes again from Al Jazeera and does not mention anything other than unrest: We’re gathering more details as we can. In the mean time, you can follow along on Twitter with the #SidiBouZid hash tag. While we here at TNW do not claim to be war correspondants or political reporters, it’s simply worth noting that there is a decided lack of mainstream media coverage for an event that could be catastrophic to those involved. Update #1 Jan 12 08:20 GMT : According to Jillian C York at GlobalVoicesOnline the rumor has been refuted by its source: “I was wrong relying on @SBZ_NEWS on a coup of #tunisia. #sidibouzid my mistake. No coup. Stay tuned.” This post is part of our contributor series. The views expressed are the author's own and not necessarily shared by TNW. Read next: Microsoft Challenges Apple's 'App Store' Trademark Filing |
Data East's Burger Time the Card Game takes you back to the arcade of the 80's. When we were all young and had pockets full of quarters! Burger Time is a 2 player (can be played by 1 player) card game in which each "chef" tries to build the burgers from their menu first. Players draw cards from the deck and build their burgers in order. Each burger is different and requires unique ingredients! Watch out for the bad guys... Mr. Egg, Mr. Pickle, and Mr. Hot Dog will try to steal your ingredients and slow you down! Each "chef" starts the game with 3 pepper cards in their arsenal to shake away the baddies. If a player runs out of pepper cards they are in danger, unless they can get their hands on a bonus! A cup of coffee, an order of french fries, and an ice cream cone will restore a used pepper card to keep them cooking! The Story Burger Time the Card Game was developed by Mike and Casey (with a lot of help from Jeremy, Aaron, and Josh) who founded Oniichan Games in 2016. In early 2017 they were making games and play-testing the heck out of stuff at their local game shop/pub where they host a weekly live stream that involves anyone on the internet in their process. Looking for a big break they happened upon a Japanese company that held the licenses to many of the Data East titles from the 1980's. Remembering a time when he would hold up in his room with his trusty intellivision, Eliminator blasting from his headphones, and playing Burger Time...Mike latched on to the opportunity and began wheeling and dealing. In early 2017 a deal was struck and a contract was signed! Today they present to the world Data East's Burger Time the Card Game! (picture if you will, arcade sounds, 80's metal riffs playing in the background, lasers shooting in the sky, and aviator sunglasses being lowered to expose a wink) Whats in the box? The game includes a deck of 54 cards. You get the following: 2 double-sided menu cards (Short-Order Menu for a shorter game, and Full Menu for the complete game) 6 Pepper cards 8 Bottom Bun cards 7 Top Bun cards 6 Meat cards 4 Tomato cards 5 Cheese cards 4 Lettuce cards 2 Coffee Bonus cards 2 French Fry Bonus cards 2 Ice Cream Cone Bonus cards 2 Mr. Egg cards 2 Mr. Pickle cards 2 Mr. Hot Dog cards Rule-book *EDIT - $20, $40, and $100 levels ALL include a New Sealed Copy of the game! ($100 receives 2 copies) $20, $40, and $100 levels get FREE shipping in the US! Extras after Kickstarter: The items below are a few that are to be produced for pledge levels. They will also be for sale after the Kickstarter is over on our website. At Oniichan Games we can not wait to work with you to deliver the best tasting card game you've ever played! (Note: Please don't eat the game) |
WC Vision announced today that Circuit of The Americas will host the rained out CTMP Round 4 of the Pirelli World Challenge SprintX division, set for Labor Day Weekend (Aug. 31-Sept. 3). After a heavy rain storm washed out the May 21 SprintX Round 4 at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, officials were forced to reschedule the 60-minute event for later in the season. After discussions with the SprintX teams, the majority of the series’ squads voted for COTA as the make-up location for Round 4. PWC officials then determined that the 3.4-mile, 20-turn circuit would be the site for the CTMP rained out event. The Labor Day weekend schedule for the PWC weekend at COTA will now feature three SprintX events with the actual dates and times for the 60-minute races to be determined in the near future. “Our VP of Competition, Marcus Haselgrove, and his PWC staff talked with all of the SprintX teams to receive feedback on the most logical site for the Round 4 make-up race,” said Greg Gill, President/CEO of WC Vision. “After discussions and feedback from the participating teams, the majority elected, that the COTA PWC headliner weekend would serve best for the Round 4 race. We believe the COTA venue is a spectacular facility to host a three-race SprintX weekend finale.” The Round 4 qualifying grid will remain the same with a 31-car starting lineup. The No. 54 Black Swan Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3, driven by Jeroen Bleekemolen won the pole for Round 4 at CTMP. Alongside on the front row will be the No. 58 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R, driven by Patrick Long. SprintX Rounds 9 and 10 will be competed on Saturday (Sept. 2) and Sunday (Sept. 3) on the PWC Labor Day weekend at COTA. |
Purpose: When you visit a file, point goes to the last place where it was when you previously visited the same file. To use it, turn it on in the options menu - “Save place in files between Sessions”. Alternatively, you could add the following to your InitFile: For GNU Emacs 25.1 and newer versions (save-place-mode 1) Note that saveplace is auto-loaded by save-place-mode . So you do not need to explicitly require it. For GNU Emacs 24.5 and older versions ( require ' saveplace ) (setq-default save-place t) Note that using setq will not do because the variable is buffer-local. Options Your saved places are written to the file stored in the file specified by save-place-file . This defaults to ~/.emacs.d/places in newer emacs versions (25.1+) and to ~/.emacs-places in older emacs versions. In the latter case, you might want to change it to keep your home directory uncluttered. For example: (setq save-place-file (locate-user-emacs-file "places" ".emacs-places" )) If emacs is slow to exit after enabling saveplace, you may be running afoul of save-place-forget-unreadable-files . On exit, it checks that every loaded file is readable before saving its buffer position - potentially very slow if you use NFS. (setq save-place-forget-unreadable-files nil) will restores emacs exit to nearly instantaneous. SessionManagement CategoryPersistence |
Real-time view data is not available at this time. Learn more. Jon Snow is dead. Or so it seems. Stabbed to death by the Night’s Watch, we watched our hero bleed out on the snow. But is he dead for good? Everything on the show is deliberate, with the show’s producers teasing and foreshadowing every single detail. And if you’ve watched carefully, there have been plenty of clues that could predict Snow’s fate. Here are the most popular rumors. That Jon Snow is actually a Targaryen, which would prevent his body from burning and potentially spark a rebirth if the Night’s Watch choose to torch him. Melisandre, always a fan of blood (BIG FAN), will resuscitate him. He will come back next season as “Johnny Ice,” a bad boy who chain-smokes cigarettes and wears sunglasses and doesn’t care what any parents think. He will return for the climax of the story, back but in regular clothes as actor Kit Harrington, just like in the books. Returns as a tan, blonde Swedish boy named Morkel. He’s definitely staying dead but now every time it snows all the characters will point at the falling snow and be all like, “This reminds me of someone who was very special,“ (and then they’ll wink). His consciousness enters the body of Ghost, his direwolf, and he immediately starts licking his own balls for all of season seven. Comes back as himself at the beginning of the day he died. Forced to Groundhog Day it until he gets it right. Dramatic cutaways where we see him excelling in his new role as “Handsomest boy in Heaven.” Sam and Gilly try to convince everyone that everything’s cool, Weekend at Bernie’s style. |
Oscar Lopez House prices fell over three per cent in April, following a 1.6 per cent rise in March, according to the latest research from UK bank Halifax. In the last three months to April, house prices were up 2.2 per cent compared to the same three months last year, but were still down from the 2.7 per cent annual growth recorded in March. House prices between February and April were also 0.1 per cent lower than in the last three months of 2017, the third consecutive drop in monthly prices, the data showed. Russell Galley, managing director at Halifax said: "Both the quarterly and annual rates have fallen since reaching a recent peak last autumn, with these measures providing a more stable indication of the underlying trend than the monthly change." Galley also said that housing demand had decreased in the first few months of 2018, with both mortgage approvals and completed home sales edging down. Housing supply also remains very low, Galley said. Jeremy Leaf, north London estate agent and former residential chairman at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) called the figures “disappointing.” “There is a market of sluggish growth and transactions, despite still showing modest price rises,” said Leaf. “And yet we are entering what is supposed to be the busy spring buying season, which tends to set the tone for the rest of the year.” Howard Archer, chief economic adviser at EY ITEM Club was less optimistic, however, pointing out that the Halifax figures show “the sharpest monthly decline since September 2010 and was a much sharper-drop-than-expected”. According to Archer, even allowing for poor March weather to have impacted house prices, “the underlying performance over the first quarter points to the housing market remaining muted as it pressurized by still limited consumer purchasing power, fragile confidence and likely further gradual Bank of England interest rate rises”. The Bank of England is scheduled to reveal its latest monetary policy decision on Thursday, however, following poor economic indicators this month including sluggish GDP growth, an interest rate hike has begun to seem highly unlikely with investor bets only indicating a seven per cent chance of a rate rise. |
The Fourth of July was America’s 241st birthday, celebrated across the country with parades, barbecues, and fireworks. But to some on Twitter, including Chance the Rapper, think it would be better to celebrate the date as the birthday of Barack Obama’s older daughter, Malia. The website The Fader reported on the phenomenon on Tuesday. Happy Malia Obama Day 🇺🇸 — Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) July 4, 2017 “It’s no secret that there’s a lot political turmoil in the United States right now,” the article said. “It’s actually probably the opposite of a secret.” “The current political climate has left some people feeling uneasy about celebrating America this 4th of July,” the article posted on Tuesday said. “Instead, people on Twitter are celebrating the birthday of Malia Obama, who turned 19 years old on Independence Day.” Those taking to Twitter included Chance the Rapper, “who is close to the Obama family,” the article said. InStyle picked up the story, casting more aspersions on the cherished American milestone. “While July 4 signifies the beginning of the country’s independence, or ‘freedom,’ longstanding inequality and current events have some folks seeing the celebration in a different light,” Instyle reported. “Hard-pressed to find one thing (or person) all Americans can band together behind, Twitter elected birthday girl Malia as the face of an upgraded Independence Day.” Until this country treats people of color the same, it's national bbq & Malia Obama day pic.twitter.com/Z9Q9QBO8Qg — T♛ (@tayyy_renne) July 4, 2017 today is Malia Obama's birthday and nothing else — Error 404 (@1800SADDAD) July 4, 2017 https://twitter.com/blackgirlicon/status/882278941888831488 |
In my mind, Vancouver's downtown east side has always spoken for a suffering that is particularly—even if not entirely—female. When the neighborhood comes up in conversation, I mentally lock in on women like Dianne Rock, a Robert Pickton victim. Or I remember Lincoln Clarkes's devastatingly beautiful photo series, Heroines. So when I learned that recent photojournalism grad Matthew Desouza spent some time documenting the daily affairs of Diablo, a 32 year-old meth addict and dealer on East Hastings street, I became eager to see the neighborhood from a man's perspective. So, I called up Matt to talk about cigarettes as currency, East Hastings' McDonald's, and the vivid photographs he shot while hanging out with Diablo and his pals. VICE: How did your friendship with Diablo start? Matt Desouza: I was hanging out in the Hastings area, trying to figure out how I could get involved in a story down there. I stopped by this McDonald's that's on the outside corner of the area. I was sitting there minding my own business, and in walks Diablo. He pointed to the chair across from me that was empty and he's like, "Hey, do you mind if I sit there?" so I'm like, "Buddy, I'm going to be done in like three minutes." He's like, "Alright," and he sits down anyway. One of the first things he said to me is: "Do you need any jib?" I'm like, "Jib, what the hell's that?" He's like: "Crystal." I said, "No, bro. That's not for me." And then he asked me if I wanted to see [the crystal meth]. I'm sitting there, so I said, "Sure, I guess," and he pulls it out. That was one of the first photographs I took. He went on about how he's a dealer in the area, he buys and he sells, and I asked him what he was doing for the rest of the day. He's like, "Oh, I'm waiting here for my buddy, I'm buying some, I'm selling some; I got a couple errands to run." So I said, "Yo, do you mind if I follow you around and take pictures of you?" And he's like, "No, that's cool." So, Diablo and his pals were cool with you photographing them? I don't want to say Diablo was showing off, but he was totally down with it. Everywhere I'd go with him, he'd introduce me. He'd say, "This is my buddy Matt, he's a photographer, he's cool." One kid smoking a cigarette thought I was an undercover cop, and Diablo's like, "No, he's cool, he's cool." This girl came into McDonald's, and Diablo's two buddies were in the background. I think she was asking if she could get some crystal off him. For one reason or another, he didn't sell it to her, but he's like: "Oh, here, you can have a cigarette." The photograph is of him passing her a cigarette. He called her by her first name so I'm assuming he knew her. Diablo handing over a cigarette in the McDonald's he operates out of. What did you and Diablo get up to while hanging out? The first day, I think I spent four or five hours hanging out with him. I've gone back three or four times now. The McDonald's there, it's a 24-hour McDonald's. It's his home. So, while we were hanging out, I took his portrait up against the wall. He had just traded a cigarette for an extra pair of glasses, the ones hanging around his neck from the big chain he has going on [laughs]. Cigarettes are currency down there. People would come up to him and ask for a cigarette and he'd say, "I want your sweater." One cigarette gets you a sweater. On the Hastings strip there's a whole bunch of people who set up and sell random junk. Later on, Diablo took the bag, laid out all the T-shirts, all the clothes, all the shoes, and he started selling everything. So for two cigarettes he got that whole bag of shit he was selling. Were people paying him in cigarettes or money? Quarters, a T-shirt—basically anything. What do you know about the McDonald's where Diablo lives? Diablo's like: "This is my McDonald's, I run it." He hangs out there, he sells there, he buys there, he does his drugs there. Him and his boys are doing drugs inside, right around the corner. The employees come out to clean tables, and they don't even bat an eyelash. It was pretty wild in there, I gotta say. Whenever he's selling, he tells people to meet him there. If I need to find him, I go right down to that McDonald's and nine out of ten times he's there. I saw him sell his crystal in there a handful of times. Sometimes he sleeps there. He showers in the sink in the washroom. When I was in there, there were a couple of addicts hanging out in there. One guy smoked a full cigarette, threw it on the ground, and then stepped on it. I was like, "Oh my God, we're going to get in trouble here," but no. No one came around. There were people eating McDonald's meals a couple spots over. No one said anything. They run the McDonald's. Is McDonald's Diablo's only home? He doesn't have another home. The photograph of stairs, that's from what he calls blood alley. That's his home. He sleeps in the alley way. He calls it blood alley because it used to be an alley way with a whole bunch of butcher shops in it and all the blood would run into the alley. That's his spot, right underneath the set of stairs. You see the two cracks in the cement? He usually gets cardboard and puts it down, and that's his house. Blood alley. What did you learn about Diablo by hanging with him? Aside from his addiction, he's actually a pretty smart dude. He's fluent in French and Spanish and he's from Montreal. If he wasn't an addict he'd be a solid guy. He started speaking fluent Spanish, fluent French for me. Did he talk to you about how he got started with meth? I don't think I really touched on how he got into the drugs. He just said he wanted a change of scene from Montreal so he hopped on a bus and came out to Vancouver. I think he's been here for a few months, I don't think it's been a full year yet. What does he think about East Hastings so far? He loves it. Something he said to me was, "Most people that come down here, they think this is a garbage area. To me, this is home." What are you taking away from your time with Diablo and his pals? As messed up as some of these addicts are, they're genuine people. It's a shame that they're addicts, but at the same time they're nice, they're friendly, they'll talk to you. They're sometimes coherent. Diablo took me in, he allowed me to photograph him, it's shit you don't see every day. I live by the beach in Vancouver, where everything is nice. On East Hastings, it's like Skid Row. @kristy__hoffman Matt Desouza Matt Desouza Matt Desouza Matt Desouza Matt Desouza Matt Desouza Matt Desouza Matt Desouza Matt Desouza Matt Desouza |
For weeks at a time this summer, parts of the Krog Street tunnel will be closed daily for construction of the Atlanta Beltline. In addition to general construction of the Eastside Trail extension, the closure will allow for the installation of handrails and lighting, Beltline officials said. The northbound closure is slated for June 12-30, and the southbound closure for July 1-21. The lanes will be closed between 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. The Krog Street tunnel closures may bring back some painful memories for locals. When a Halloween masquerade ball closed the beloved tunnel for some 30 hours in 2014, many Cabbagetown residents were unhappy about the intrusion. The graffitied walls of the tunnel, which is about 400 feet long, were even whitewashed by protesters of the event. Before the tunnel closures commence, more repairs on Irwin Street will require a closure between Sampson Street/Auburn Avenue and Krog Street from June 5-10. That stretch was initially closed from March 20 to April 24. Like Atlanta News Now on Facebook | Follow us on Twitter VIDEO: |
A Federal Court judge is expected to release a decision today on whether medical marijuana patients have the right to grow their own cannabis. The constitutional challenge was launched by four British Columbia residents who argued that legislation introduced by the previous Conservative government violated their charter rights. The Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulations were introduced in 2013 and required patients to buy cannabis from licensed producers instead of growing their own. Sarah Stuive, biological control consultant, checks for bugs at Bedrocan Canada, a medical marijuana facility, in Toronto in August 2015. (Darren Calabrese/Canadian Press) An injunction has allowed those who already held licences to continue growing marijuana until the Federal Court decision, which is set to have national impact on medical cannabis users and the new Liberal government. The Liberals have committed to regulating and legalizing recreational marijuana but have said little about their plans for medical marijuana since being elected. Neil Allard, who launched the case with three others, said he expects to bring it to the Federal Court of Appeal if today's decision is not in their favour. "If we don't win our rights to grow our own cannabis at home, you can pretty much guarantee that there's going to be an appeal," he said. Injunction protected plants Lawyer Kirk Tousaw said the Crown has argued the injunction allowing licence holders to continue growing their own should immediately end if the judge upholds the law. Tousaw said he has asked the judge to give people time to remove their plants. "If we lose, we will appeal, and we will attempt to, as quickly as possible, get a hearing on either continuation of the injunction issued by the trial court or a new injunction," he said. "Obviously, it's going to be incredibly difficult for patients who have been protected by the injunction to be criminalized overnight, and I think that that's fundamentally unfair to them." Judge Michael Phelan heard the case between February and May 2015 in Vancouver's Federal Court. Federal government lawyers argued that the new regime ensures patients have a supply of safe medical marijuana while protecting the public from the potential ills of grow-operations in patients' homes. But the lead counsel for the plaintiffs, John Conroy, told court that the legislation has robbed patients of affordable access to medicine. Some people were left with no choice but to run afoul of the law, he argued, either by continuing to grow their own or by purchasing on the black market. Watch our twitter feed for live reaction to the decision |
National political reporter for Axios, Jonathan Swan, reports that President Trump has been discussing a replacement for Sean Spicer after the White House Press Secretary appeared to have fumbled yesterday's announcement concerning the dismissal of FBI Director James Comey. I can independently confirm reporting that President Trump has been sounding people out about removing Sean Spicer as Press Secretary. 1/2 — Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) May 11, 2017 The President feels his press team poorly served him yesterday. He believes it was incompetence on their part, not lack of time. 2/2 — Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) May 11, 2017 As Newsweek and the Washington Post tell it, Spicer had planned to email a statement announcing Comey's termination Tuesday afternoon - however he was apparently having technical difficulties. Unable to send the announcement, Spicer stood in the doorway of the press office around 5:40 p.m. and ended up "shouting a statement to reporters who happened to be nearby." At 5:41 or so, reporters began to tweet the news - and nine minutes later at 5:50 pm EST, Spicer issued a tweet with the announcement: Then, Spicer stepped outside After a brief interview with Fox's Lou Dobbs, Spicer apparently stepped over to some bushes and ordered reporters to turn their lights off - allegedly refusing to be filmed and "hiding in among the bushes." “Just turn the lights off. Turn the lights off,” he ordered. “We'll take care of this. ... Can you just turn that light off?” WH Press Secretary Sean Spicer speaks to reporters about the firing of FBI Director Comey as he walks into the West Wing. #FBIDirector pic.twitter.com/c2SNG63lIr — Doug Mills (@dougmillsnyt) May 10, 2017 (A correction from WaPo on Spicer's spatial relationship to the bushes) For about 10 minutes, Spicer answered questions surrounding Comey's firing - repeatedly circling back to the fact that Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein had made the assessment and recommendation to fire Comey in light of how he handled the Clinton email investigation during the 2016 election. Spicer then thanked reporters for their time and reentered the White House. Spicer's gettin' dissed on Twitter Now that blood is in the water, Spicer's detractors are piling on... Out the rest of the week Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders filled in for Spicer today - and is expected to address journalists throughout the rest of the week. Is this the end of the road for Sean Spicer? Will the Spice stop flowing? Or is all of this simply WaPo and Newsweek piling on a Press Secretary caught flat footed by a President who stayed mum on Comey's firing until the last minute in an effort flush out leakers? Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com * Follow on Twitter @ZeroPointNow |
At about 6:10 PM on Thursday, May 14, 2015, members of the District A-1 (Downtown) Drug Control Unit were conducting surveillance in the area of 172 Tremont Street. While monitoring the area, an officer in an unmarked cruiser parked in front of the above address was alerted to the sound of a motor vehicle horn honking loudly behind him. The officer realized that the operator of the motor vehicle was actually honking his horn at him. The operator then pulled up to the side of the officer’s cruiser and began shouting obscenities and displaying his middle finger at the officer. When the officer advised the operator to pull over, the operator displayed a black colored firearm towards the officer and threatened, “You don’t want any of this.” The operator then sped away in his car. The officer requested additional units to respond to conduct a stop of the motor vehicle. Upon stopping the car, officers observed the above firearm (a black loaded Glock 17 9mm firearm) on the driver’s side seat. The operator, 35-year-old Aaron Jesky of Canton, was placed under arrest for Assault by Means of a Dangerous Weapon to wit: Gun, and his License to Carry was immediately placed on suspension by the chief of police in the issuing town. An inventory search of the motor vehicle prior to towing revealed a loaded black Heckler & Koch P30 9mm firearm with additional magazines and ammunition. Jesky was additionally charged with Improper Storage of a Firearm. |
As a serious cartoonist, one secretly hopes to create “That Book”: a book that can be passed to a literary-minded person who doesn’t normally read comics; one that doesn’t require any explanation or apology in advance and is developed enough in its attitude, humanity and complexity that it speaks maturely for itself. Comics have come a long way in the last 25 years, finding a grown-up audience with the memoirs Maus, Persepolis and Fun Home, the cartoonists of these works writing about real human life in a flexible visual language that for decades was a medium of puerile adventure pamphlets and daily newspaper gag-administration. But for some reason, serious comics fiction doesn’t appear to have announced itself in the way that serious comics autobiography has. It’s not for lack of trying; along with the equally important experimental art-cartoonists (who are just as, if not more, obscure), we comics-novelists can list dozens of our fellow cartoonists drawing their lives away under the influence of writers such as Anton Chekhov, Raymond Carver, Alice Munro and Zadie Smith. I’m not talking about comics “for” adults, but comics about adults. New Yorker illustrator Adrian Tomine: 'My inner voice says 'You suck!'' Read more Adrian Tomine’s Killing and Dying may finally be That Book, and I’m amazed and heartened by it. Tomine began his career as a formidable teenage prodigy, first self-publishing his sophisticated mini-comic Optic Nerve before shifting it to the flawless roster of the Canadian publishers Drawn and Quarterly, then becoming a regular cover artist for the New Yorker. His 2007 graphic novel, Shortcomings, was a complicated and emotionally nuanced work that made the rest of us cobwebbed cartoonists look up and take notice. Since then, Tomine has married, had two daughters and continued to produce Optic Nerve, the pages of which have previewed the stories in his latest book as he has completed them. But Killing and Dying is no hastily cobbled collection of short pieces assembled simply because they’re done; it’s the most mature and sharp work of Tomine’s career. Over six stories that vary in length, visual approach and narrative tone, Tomine subtly deploys conceits and approaches specific to his plots, balancing the basic cartoon qualities of facial simplification, background information and colour against each other to suit the particular timbre of each piece. From the densely packed eponymous fifth story to the seemingly light-hearted “Hortisculpture”, Killing and Dying is a varied but consistent bundle of actual, real-life content delivery. A desperation for understanding runs throughout, not only in the way Tomine presents his characters but the way they treat one another. In “Go Owls”, a drug-dealing alcoholic sports fan offers his abused girlfriend the opportunity to hit him back “fair and square”. A mother tries to make sense of a culture and a husband in a letter to her child in “Translated, from the Japanese”. In “Hortisculpture”, when an exasperated wife reassures her gardener-cum-artist husband that he is talented (he’s not), her desperation is laid bare: “I just love you and want you to be happy.” Empathy rolls quietly through this book, sometimes dipping so low beneath the action you’ll fear it might be lost, then suddenly raising the characters so high above their lives you’ll feel it constrict your throat. There’s a certain alchemical balance required when planning a comics story, unpredictable yet based on a few measurable quantities – such as how characters are drawn, move and act around one another – which can either open up avenues of possibility in the author’s mind or set up roadblocks and shut down all dramatic throughways. Clearly, Tomine has found the former passage, especially in “Amber Sweet”, a story about a girl frequently mistaken for an internet porn star. Here we see an all-too-rare use of the unreliable narrator in a visual medium that, until only very recently, has unimaginatively taken things at face value. The spaces between Tomine’s panels connect with the mature cartoonist’s electromagnetic spark; he knows exactly which facial expressions and gestures to string together as his characters try to convince others of their authenticity or aims. It’s the reader, however, who must make the largest connections, such as between the narrator of “Amber Sweet” and the sudden appearance of a daughter in another story. Tomine’s omissions are not devious or artsy, but the work of a confident writer mirroring how we conveniently edit out events and people from our memories to suit the narratives we wish had happened. The cumulative leanness and efficiency of these stories have a sharpening effect on one’s own mind. Tomine is impressively assured in his shifts between people and their varying socioeconomic circumstances. Shrewd portrayals of race are dropped like little bombs, with phrases such as “that Oriental was really on to something!”, “You speak English?”, and “Wrong black dude!” exposing characters’ prejudices without condemning them. Tomine seems always to try to find the good in someone, whether it’s that alcoholic drug-dealing sports fan or the suffocating, constricting father of a suffocated, constricted and stuttering daughter who, unpromisingly, wants to try her luck as a standup comedian. This fifth story, “Killing and Dying”, is the collection’s finest, and may even be the finest short story ever written/drawn in comics. The reader goes through emotions of sympathy, revulsion, love, anger and frustration for all three of the characters as Tomine crams more real, actual human life into 22 pages than most novelists get into 200. Just like life, the best stories don’t provide “closure” but open outwards, and “Killing and Dying” does just that. Few works of art in any medium have brought tears to my eyes, but the last four panels of this one do. It’s a story that gets down so deeply to the heart of where stories come from that there’s no way to get back out without tearing something inside. It will also make you want to hug your child or your spouse. And that, of course, is the best story of all. • Chris Ware’s latest book is Building Stories (Jonathan Cape). |
25 July 2016 This article was originally published in The Times, authored by Maajid Nawaz. For years in Britain there has been a pernicious trend to shy away from making a case for our liberal values among minority communities. As these values continued their march unabated among the mainstream, certain multiculturalists assumed that to assert them among minorities would be deemed offensive, perhaps racist, and in the Muslim context even Islamophobic. The successful turnaround of the “Trojan horse” school Park View — now Rockwood Academy — couldn’t have proved this view more wrong. Two years after the scandal, the school has surpassed expectations, with cadet recruitment, after-school drama classes, counterextremism workshops and trips to Wimbledon. Those who worried about a more active integration policy alienating the Birmingham school’s predominantly Muslim students really needn’t have. So why did they? Our 1990s-era multiculturalism was intended to bring about diverse communities. Instead, it brought about monocultural ghettos that gave rise to state schools such as Park View broadcasting the Muslim call to prayer from their loudspeakers. Two complementary trends arose together that culturally disintegrated Britain. Within my own Muslim communities, Islamism, a theocratic ideology, which sought to impose a version of Islam over society, emerged practically unchallenged to insist that we were Muslims to the exclusion of every other identity. Meanwhile, among mainstream liberals, multiculturalism came to mean diversity between, rather than within, groups. Due to these two trends, as a country we celebrated our cities as they self-segregated into isolated cultural ghettos. Division in areas such as Dewsbury and parts of Bradford was hailed as diversity. Self-segregation was supported as cultural tolerance. Disintegration was championed as integration. Those of my fellow liberals who promoted such policies believed they were doing so to help us Muslims. Yet this “help” couldn’t have been more disempowering. Failing to advocate for liberal values within groups and not merely between groups led to a stifling of creativity and a lack of diversity among Muslims. Rebel voices who needed our support inside these communities suffered the most, and feel betrayed by liberals to this day. I call these the minority within the minority: feminist Muslims, gay Muslims, ex-Muslims, secular Muslims and anyone else deemed to be heretical or not Muslim enough. With progressive Muslim voices being abandoned by wider society, while simultaneously being stifled within by the Muslim “community leaders”, it is no wonder that by 2015 a BBC survey of British Muslims found that 11 per cent expressed sympathy with fighting against the West. Twenty per cent said that a western liberal society could never be compatible with Islam, and a quarter sympathised with the Charlie Hebdo “blasphemy” attacks. Meanwhile, Muslims in today’s Britain find it difficult to gain employment, are falling behind educationally, are disproportionately represented in prisons and among terrorist groups, while also remaining behind the rest of the country in our attitudes to civil liberties. Instead of integrating with wider society, many Muslims in Britain turned in on themselves, integrating more with their co-religionists globally while pulling away from the society into which they were born. British Muslim attitudes on key cultural milestones such as homosexuality, blasphemy and religion in politics now have more in common with global Muslim opinion than with liberal Britain. As a country we ended up living together, apart. By allowing minorities to isolate themselves, the very people my fellow liberals wanted to help were suffering the most. It is no surprise then that such disintegration created a breeding ground for Isis recruiters. The liberal values that we came to expect from everyone else we shied away from advocating among Muslims. It is as if we Muslims were simply incapable of embracing secularism. And as we weren’t even expected to be liberal, or in many cases as our illiberalism was celebrated, we naturally grew further and further apart from wider society. I call this the bigotry of low expectations. If mainstream society had woken up to this earlier, much more could have been done to prevent this polarised and incohesive state in our communities. And though I emphasise that it is not only Muslims who may be isolated in today’s Britain, and obviously not all British Muslims live like this, too many do. Culture is never homogenous, and has always been a hybrid. Any artificial desire to preserve the past was not only bound to fail but was destined to fail minorities primarily. Instead of defining communities primarily by their religious identity, we must support policies that encourage diversity not only between groups but within and among groups too. The success at Rockwood Academy highlights that it never had to be this way. Identities are by definition multiple. So yes I am a Muslim, but I am also English, a secular liberal democrat of Pakistani descent, I was born in Essex and I am British. When a chance was given instead of denied, when aspiration was encouraged instead of withheld, when integration was expected instead of disparaged, and when social mobility was promised instead of rubbished, the children and parents at Rockwood Academy rushed to it, and excelled. They embraced it all. Indeed, why wouldn’t they? There was finally an expectation that they could be just like anyone else. Maajid Nawaz is an author and the founding chairman of Quilliam To read this article as originally published in The Times, please click here. 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Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe on Tuesday proposed forming an independent ethics commission to oversee elected officials and their staff. McAuliffe, seeking to capitalize on news that the FBI was investigating Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s financial ties with a wealthy donor, said that, as governor, he would tighten ethics standards for all elected officials and create an independent eight-member commission to enforce them. McAuliffe said the bipartisan panel’s members would be chosen by the governor, the speaker of the House of Delegates and the Senate Majority Leader. The chief justice of the Virginia Supreme Court would also select two members, who could be a retired judge, active member of the bar or a law professor. “Virginians deserve better than to have their leaders just say ‘Trust me’ while having no real accountability,” McAuliffe said in a written statement. McAuliffe’s ethics commission proposal comes a week after he also proposed a gift ban that he said he would enforce on himself even if the Virginia General Assembly failed to pass such a law. The timing also coincides with a story in The Washington Post saying that the FBI has been conducting interviews about the relationship between McDonnell, his wife, Maureen, and a major campaign donor who paid for the food at the wedding of the governor’s daughter. The Post, citing four people familiar with the questioning, said Tuesday that agents have been inquiring about gifts the family received from Star Scientific chief executive Jonnie R. Williams Sr. and actions the Republican governor and his wife have taken to promote the company. Democrats have also been calling for an investigation into Williams’s relationship with Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II and urging him to resign. On Friday, Cuccinelli (R) revealed that he had received more gifts from Williams than he had previously reported. Cuccinelli, who said the oversight was inadvertent, amended his disclosure forms and asked the Richmond commonwealth’s attorney to review his disclosure filings. As a candidate, McDonnell also pledged to establish an independent ethics commission. But PolitiFact Virginia, labeling the pledge a “Broken Promise,” said the governor decided such a commission was no longer necessary because he had improved government oversight of Virginia’s government by establishing an inspector general’s office to root out waste and fraud. The Virginia General Assembly also took a run at reforming ethics oversight after then-Del. Phillip A. Hamilton (R-Newport News) was snared in a federal corruption investigation for seeking a job at Old Dominion University while securing money for the school as one of the legislature’s dozen budget negotiators. But even some modest reform proposals failed to advance. Hamilton was convicted of bribery and extortion and sentenced in August 2011 to nearly a decade in prison. Last year, a broad assessment of government accountability – conducted by the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity, Public Radio International, and nonprofit Global Integrity – gave Virginia a failing grade and ranked the commonwealth 47th nationwide. McAuliffe’s Republican opponents said they agreed with the need for ethical oversight but suggested that McAuliffe was hardly the person to propose such a panel. “As Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli has taken numerous steps toward a more ethical and transparent government, including setting up the Inspector General’s office to investigate fraud, waste and abuse and putting the Office of the Attorney General’s budget online for public view,” campaign spokeswoman Anna Nix said in a written statement. “Virginians don’t need an ethics lesson from Terry McAuliffe considering he played a major role in a contribution swap scheme with the Teamsters that resulted in four convictions and was deposed about his role in selling access to the Lincoln Bedroom. This is just another example of Terry McAuliffe having no shame and attempting to insult the intelligence of Virginia voters.” Republicans have also been badgering McAuliffe to release his full tax returns. Days after Cuccinelli opened eight years of tax returns to inspection by the media, McAuliffe provided three years’ of tax summaries. The summaries showed that McAuliffe had earned $16.5 million in three years, including $6.9 million in capital gains. But the six pages McAuliffe released revealed nothing about the sources of his income or whether he has benefitted from overseas tax shelters. The GOP argued that McAuliffe should meet the same standard for transparency as he had demanded of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. McAuliffe’s campaign batted away accusations that the proposal was a cynical ploy coming from McAuliffe. “In other words, Ken Cuccinelli is refusing to support an independent ethics commission just like he refused to support a gift ban for elected officials,” McAuliffe spokesman Josh Schwerin said in a written statement. “When it comes to ethics reforms, thousands in unreported luxury gifts, and his conflict of interest with a company under federal investigation, Ken Cuccinelli’s answer is ‘just trust me.’” |
Peter Sloterdijk, In the Shadow of Mount Sinai: A Footnote on the Origins and Changing Forms of Total Membership, Cambridge and Maiden MA: Polity Press, 2015. ISBN 10: 9780745699240. Hardcover, paperback, Kindle, 80 pages. Peter Sloterdijk, Stress and Freedom, Cambridge and Maiden MA: Polity Press, 2015. ISBN 10:9780745699295. Paperback, 80pp. The English reception of Peter Sloterdijk has been ambivalent at best, relying largely on hearsay from European interlocutors (Žižek especially) or gossip about the weird world of the German philosophical scene (cf. the Habermas-Sloterdijk affair). In 1988, Sloterdijk’s star briefly rose among English readers with the translation of his 1983 text Critique of Cynical Reason, which established him as a unique contributor to sorting through the problems of “postmodern” culture and the psycho-political dimensions of societies west of the Iron Curtain. Apart from a few interruptions and stray essays, however, almost nothing new appeared in English until 2009, which inaugurated a steady stream of translations, special journal issues, and edited volumes engaging Sloterdijk’s work. Since Sloterdijk himself is a prolific and public intellectual, who does not wait around to be translated, putting together his general themes and filling certain gaps in his translated ouevre has been a difficult task for English readers. While one might be cynical about the seemingly opportunist publication of small books, pulled from long-form essays or conference addresses like the two up for review here, their appearance in English helps to continue filling out the picture of Sloterdijk’s thought. Sloterdijk writes two kinds of books. Either he produces a long, sustained pastiche made from the flotsam and jetsam of the philosophical “tradition,” resulting in a creative treatment of a particular theme (like globalization, religion, space) almost ad absurdum, with the consolation prize of making for a good door stop or paper weight for those unmoved by the wanderings of the text itself. Or he writes a brief and punchy piece honing in on one contentious point, often expanding or summarizing some of the arguments in his longer texts. Stress and Freedom and In the Shadow of Mount Sinai, both published in English in the fall of 2015, are books of this latter kind. The first considers the relationship between the terms that form its title and the second extends and clarifies Sloterdijk’s work on “religion”, which I put in quotes here. Though he uses the term colloquially to try to avoid confusion throughout In the Shadow of Mount Sinai, Sloterdijk challenges its ambiguity in his earlier book You Must Change Your Life. While their angles are different, both essays continue to develop Sloterdijk’s thoughts on social groups and bonds, making them a worthy publishing pair. In the Shadow of Mount Sinai picks up two major threads in Sloterdijk’s consideration of religion – an examination of the cultural mechanisms by which violence functions as a social solidifer in religious texts and communities and an exploration of how religion might reinvent or change itself in order to contribute to alternative forms of social solidarity. These questions are grounded in an investigation of what Sloterdijk calls “ethnogenesis,” the creation of “a people.” In particular, Sloterdijk traces the creation of the Jewish people, textually formed by the recurring Blblical motif of the creation of a covenant, its transgression, and its restoration. Sloterdijk finds this structure paradigmatically in Exodus, keying in especially on the events at Mount Sinai, where, after worshiping the Golden Calf, Moses demands a brutal punishment for the Israelites including a violent thinning of idolaters, carried out by the priestly Levites, after which the remainder of the community is permitted to go on. Sloterdijk calls this drama of covenant, transgression and its consequent self-culling, as well as the restoration of covenant by the remainder of the “Sinai schema.” The Sinai schema, Sloterdijk suggests, is a logical structure that works as a cultural adhesive responsible for the constitution and maintenance of the early Jewish “people.” Here the title of the book becomes clear – religions borne out of this Biblical history (Sloterdijk discusses Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, along with certain “secular” inheritors of these dynamics in the early twentieth century) are formed from the violence at Mount Sinai, an event that casts a long shadow over their history and expression. But this shadow, argues Sloterdijk, is not wholly determinative or exhaustive of these religions or their futures. There are alternative ways in which, despite their intimate relationship to the Sinai schema, religious discourses and practices might contribute to social bonds that are not determined by purifying violence. Sloterdijk identifies five models of such ways, in particular. They include Erasmus’s domestication of zealotry, a Spinozist sublation of religion into philosophy, an empiricist approach demonstrated by William James, attention to heresy via Scholem, and a look at the dual sides of religion as identified by Egyptologist Jan Assmann. Sloterdijk goes on to suggest theology generally, long ago released from its role as cultural adhesive by alternative modern institutions and media, should split into two major foci: one dealing with “theopoetics,” the theatrical and symbolic features of theological inspiration, and the other dealing with training regimens and spiritual practices (not unlike the kinds identified by Pierre Hadot). By extending and clarifying some of his past work on religion along these lines, In the Shadow of Mount Sinai is Sloterdijk at his best. He does not hold back an unsettling criticism of Western religions, here adding the identification of the Sinai schema, but he also offers trajectories of possibility beyond a pattern of violence that give those still formed by, or sympathetic to. religious traditions a way of relating to them creatively for the sake of participating in and transforming a broader social context in their own ways. Stress and Freedom also deals with social bonds, but, beyond the formation of a particular people and a recurrent pathology, it looks instead at cultures as a whole. Channeling systems theory a la Niklas Luhmann, Sloterdijk argues cultures survive insofar as they are capable of mustering rage and pride energies, forms of integrating stress, among their participants when threatened with the dissolution of their culture. This observation gives way to a discussion of two freedoms that Sloterdijk considers to be of primal importance for Western society, explored through a look at ancient Greece and a curious writing of Rousseau. For the Greeks, Sloterdijk argues freedom is found in the collective’s ability to be run by its own conventions, rather than the conventions of another people group, as illustrated by the rebellion of Rome against the Etruscans. Sloterdijk says this is best understood as a battle for freedom, for the right to impose social codes on oneself, where freedom is tied to mobilizing social stressors and collective self-determination. This freedom from foreign rule sets in motion the drama of revolution and independence that continues through to modernity. But Western modernity discovers another kind of paradigmatic freedom as its political situation changes, as emancipative collective freedom emerges as a more widespread phenomenon. This is not the freedom of modern subjects embarking on projects, which are long deconstructed and pilloried in our day by critical theory and post-60s thought, but something more profound, an emancipation from collective stress (even the stress of projects) altogether. In his Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Rousseau reflects on the experience of rowing out onto a placid lake and drifting inwardly in a profound feeling of detachment and self-sufficiency. Sloterdijk calls this a freedom from reality itself, from all projects and identities, where Rousseau is no longer the European celebrity of his day but a site of availability for new possibilities. While this freedom is necessarily individual, Sloterdijk suggests it is infectious and contagious, radiating out like a nuclear reactor loosening others from attachment, even the post-rebellion social stress, freedom in the first sense, imposed by a culture on itself. Sloterdijk polemicizes about the attempts of society and even philosophy (notably German Idealism) to rein this anarchic freedom in by giving the subject tasks, specifically imposing the demands to accept the freedom of necessity and to embark on constructing reality. Here the regime of the real takes over where the regime of the social fails to integrate, though still in the interest of keeping a social system alive when threatened by Rousseau’s discovery of a social free radical. Yet Sloterdijk says these efforts only made the curious modern freedom of Rousseau more difficult to find (which Sloterdijk shows through a reading of Beckett’s little known play Eleutheria). At this point the text turns contemporary and political, where Sloterdijk suggests the majority of the world has yet to rebel for the right to form its own stress collectives, and somewhat paradoxically, everyone, due to globalized homogenization, remains oppressed by the demand of the real, which aims to domesticate the total availability of Rousseau’s freedom. What we need today, Sloterdijk argues provocatively and playfully, is a new form of individualistic “liberalism,” understood as a principle of free self-sufficiency, unburdened from the demands of global capitalism and capable of exercising its own detached mode of being-in-the-world through liberally giving what it does not need to keep. Sloterdijk says this is not what we often call “neoliberalism” today, nor a capitulation to the victory of the capitalist class or European values via “neoconservatism.” What Sloterdijk advances is a kind of “liberality” that is always available for new possibilities and excessive gift-giving, beyond the imposition and burdensome weight of social codes and the demand of allegedly objective reality. Like In the Shadow of Mount Sinai, Stress and Freedom gives us both critical and creative coordinates to interrogate our present situation and imagine how we might inhabit it otherwise. While both of these texts help to fill gaps in Sloterdijk’s thought, neither get him “off the hook” for certain persisting problems or problems newly introduced. Though Stress and Freedom shows, explicitly, that Sloterdijk is no neoliberal or neoconservative (as is often assumed), it is admittedly hard to imagine that his idiosyncratic “liberalism,” a kind of French Gelassenheit that continues the project of funding a “Heideggarian Left” announced early on in Critique of Cynical Reason, is actually capable of resisting those currently hegemonic trends. While Sloterdijk argues his liberalism cannot be entrusted to either liberals or conservatives, he affirms that many parties deserve a place at the table in sorting out how to fund this new kind of liberalism, which is beyond liberal-conservative attachments—but this dialogical commitment is precisely the undergirding ideology of contemporary neoliberalism, leading to a certain ambiguity as to how Sloterdijk’s position ultimately offers a different mode of social organization. The dangers of a political quietism, impotency, and counter-intuitive strategies remain, and those with an aversion to Heideggerian motifs and attempts to politically integrate rather than separate (despite Sloterdijk’s individualism) will find the text frustrating. As for In the Shadow of Mount Sinai, though it goes a long way in adding to some intriguing possibilities for scholarship in religious and even theological studies, Sloterdijk’s five suggested avenues fail to include and might even nullify the religious voices of those oppressed by violence themselves, e.g. liberation theologies (to take just one example), which again threatens to limit his account and suggestions to the neoliberalism he attempts to distance himself from in Stress and Freedom. In fact, In the Shadow of Mount Sinai evinces an even more favorable disposition to modern liberalism as a means of pacifying religions than one might expect after reading Stress and Freedom—to treat religion as a special problem warranting suspicion is a hallmark of neoliberalism, as authors like Talal Asad, Saba Mahmood, and Hussein Ali Agrama regularly show. On the contrary, forms of religious life and thought as expressed in discourses like liberation theology and, in many cases, simple practice, are not regressive or latent rebellious freedom in an ancient sense, but often contribute something like a politicized contemplation or parrhesiastic freedom unnoticed by Sloterdijk; at the very least, it is hardly the time to silence these discourses and practices through more theological and normative criteria derived solely from scholarly, white, Euro-American males (the architects of all five of Sloterdijk’s proposed approaches to religion). Two problems also manifest with respect to Sloterdijk’s reading of the Bible. First, though the Sinai schema is undoubtedly a pathology in Western monotheisms, one wonders why other paradigmatic schemata, say the emancipation of Exodus or patterns of gratuitous mercy (to take just two), could not have as much of a recurring and competing influence on their traditions (as suggested, for example, by Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas, among many others). Sloterdijk gestures toward those attempts as an ecumenical occluding of problems faithful believers do not want to face, but while that might often be true, the gesture is not ultimately convincing. Second, and related to this, Sloterdijk uncritically assumes a largely modern, German, Protestant hermeneutic approach to the Bible, but his insights might be both challenged and expanded by the work of more complex inter-/intratextual approaches to the biblical canon, noting the ways in which the Bible is a dialogue of multiple competing voices, not a simple, univocal means of solidifying the identity of an exilic community. More complaints could be raised, and the texts themselves likely open up more problems than they solve. For all their faults, however, these little books serve to complicate the picture of Sloterdijk’s conceptual environment and help to push aside all-too-easy dismissals and partial reckonings that present themselves as final reckonings. Sloterdijk remains a provocateur, and these texts might not win him much more sympathy. Read carefully, however, they help to crystallize and clarify his larger collages, showing deep continuities in Sloterdijk’s winding career, which spans topics from critical theory to media studies to the history of religions to social systems theory. Indeed, one might even summarize Sloterdijk’s work by combining the titles of the texts: “Stress and Freedom in the Shadow of Mount Sinai.” And beyond a simple exegetical help, despite their blindspots and their brevity these books add to a repertoire of discourse and training methods that might open us up to alternative social worlds, outside the need for rage and violence as necessary social binding agents, making us available, instead, to the (im)possibility of living generously and liberally. It might be that Sloterdijk’s approach to such an opening up remains unsatisfactory for many, but he deserves at least a modicum of praise, and close scholarly attention, for getting the issues on the table in the ways that he does, providing fodder for still more productive extensions and dissents alike. Dean Dettloff is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Christian Studies, where he works on the intersections of media theory, religious studies, and critical theory. His MA thesis, also at ICS and examined by Robert Sweetman, James Olthuis, and Eduardo Mendieta, considered Peter Sloterdijk’s early work on cynicism and later work on religion. In doctoral work he continues to explore the ways in which philosophy of design and technology, as expressed by Régis Debray, Paul Virilio, Vilém Flusser, and Sloterdijk in particular, illuminate “religious” phenomena and practice in a way that might contribute to more liberating expressions of spiritual traditions foreclosed both by static dogmatism and the impositions of political secularism. |
The American hunter unmasked yesterday as the killer of Cecil the lion has gone into hiding as the angry response spread across the internet and to Walter Palmer's Minnesota hometown. On the practice door of Dr Palmer’s dental surgery in Bloomington, Minnesota, a protestor has fixed a flysheet with a picture of a beaming Dr Palmer and another hunter behind the body of a dead lion. “Dr Walt Palmer – doesn’t he look proud of himself?, the flysheet read, before describing the demise of the “beloved Cecil”. In comparison to much of the vitriol which has accompanied the unmasking of Dr Palmer, the small shrine of toy animals that greeted visitors outside the practice's door to was a pretty gentle rebuke. The little gaggle comprised of a moose, two toy lions, a bear, a leopard, a tiger and a chimp. But the message of condemnation was clear. A sign and stuffed animals left outside Walter Palmer's dental practice Press inquiries, meanwhile were directed to a Public Relations consultant, who later did issue a statement on the cosmetic dentist’s behalf. Over the road from the surgery, a non-descript building on the outskirts of Minneapolis, a police officer kept an eye on proceedings, in case anger was demonstrated in a more forceful manner. • Trophy kills: how tourists go safari hunting for lions • Cecil the lion: Zimbabwean hunter appears in court But there was little doubt that Dr Palmer is facing something of a backlash, even in his backyard. Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources boasts of the state’s rich hunting heritage, but the death of Cecil seems to have been too much for people to stomach. Through his public relations consultant, Dr Palmer expressed his regret at killing Cecil and insisted that he believed he was on a legal hunt. "I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt," he said in a statement on Tuesday. He said he had not been contacted by authorities in Zimbabwe or the US but said he "will assist them in any inquiries they may have". • Big game hunting of yesteryear: From Roosevelt to George V "Again, I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion," he added. Walter Palmer's Eden Prairie home This was not the first time Dr Palmer’s sporting interests have caused him some difficulty. In 2008 he pleaded guilty to lying to the authorities over where he had shot a black bear during the 2006 hunting season. Last night he was not to be found, either at the surgery or his five-bedroom 4,007 square feet home, estimated as being worth just over $1 million (£640,000) in a leafy Minneapolis suburb. Ben Goldsmith, 26, and Leah Kilpatrick, 27, protest outside Dr. Palmer's Eden Prairie home Dr Palmer’s neighbours, who professed to not knowing him personally, voiced their displeasure at his role in the death of Cecil. "I find it very disturbing. I think to shoot a beautiful creature like that and have a hunt arranged so you can mount a trophy on the wall is something which should be consigned to history,” said Jodie Root,62, a neighbour was upset by Mr Palmer's trophy hunting. "My husband is a fly fisherman, but he catches and releases. He still enjoys the hunt, but then he sends it back to nature. "If you have enough money you can play any game you want." • 'There was blood in the sand. My immediate response was anger' • Cecil the lion's final photograph • The African safari hunting trade by numbers Laura Robbins, 49, who lives next door added: "I am shocked. I don't like anything like that, I think is is awful. It breaks my heart." Lynda Johnson, 69, who had been a patient, said she was outraged. “I have been a vegetarian for more than 30 years. God has given us enough to eat without killing animals. “I don’t have words to describe how I feel. There are no words I can use and still remain a lady.” A web page that appears to belong to Dr Palmer has been flooded with angry comments from people who accuse him of being immoral and an egotist. The Google profile of a Walter Palmer, who appears to be a dentist from Minnesota, now includes comments condemning his actions. Among the angry commenters was Blake Rutherford who wrote: "You have stolen this animal from the world Dr Palmer. The repercussions of your actions will haunt your business and reputation. I feel bad for your family and hope you can find a way to correct your actions. May I suggest free dental work for life at the local zoo." Dr Palmer in his day job • The real scandal of killing Cecil the lion: the price Another poster, Venu Dayana, wrote: "Walter, you should be ashamed of yourself for what you did. Your conscious knows what a horrible sin you committed. Your karma will get back to you." Others called him "pathetic", "miserable" and "a scum bag". Mr Palmer has apologised for killing Cecil, saying he didn't realised the lion was so well-known. |
RIEGL is excited to announce the release of the RiCOPTER! RIEGL is the first major LiDAR manufacturer to develop its own unmanned aerial system. The RiCOPTER is a high-performance UAV equipped with the RIEGL VUX-1 survey-grade LiDAR sensor to offer a fully integrated turnkey solution. Stop by the RIEGL booth to see the VUX-1 integrated into several other UAS systems, such as SARAH by Flying-Cam or Aeroscouts UAS, demonstrating the versatility of the instrument! Moreover live demonstrations of RiCOPTER will be performed Tuesday – Thursday in Intergeo’s UAV flight zone. RIEGL is also launching a brand new airborne LiDAR system. Come by our booth to see the new VQ-880-G, a fully integrated turnkey LiDAR solution for topo-bathymetric surveying applications. On the terrestrial side, RIEGL is adding a new terrestrial laser scanner to its portfolio. The VZ-2000 is RIEGL’s fastest terrestrial laser scanner. It comes with a 1MHz pulse repetition rate and up to 400,000 effective measurements per second, with range performance of more than 2,000 meters. The VZ-2000 is a great surveying tool for both static as well as mobile mapping with the VMZ hybrid mobile mapping solution. In addition to all of the new hardware that RIEGL will have on display at INTERGEO, there are also several software introductions. RIEGL is releasing the RiSCAN PRO 2.0, a major update to RiSCAN PRO with significant improvements and new 64-bit architecture. Learn more about other significant software improvements directly at the booth. RIEGL is looking forward to welcoming visitors to its booth A3.104 and FG.002 at INTERGEO this year! |
Beyond: Two Souls is one of the year's most anticipated games featuring Oscar nominee Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes. Today Sony announced that Page will be joined by Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe; best known for his roles in Platoon and Spider-Man. Dafoe plays the role of Nathan Dawkins, a government scientist who helps Jodie interpret her supernatural powers. Sony hasn't revealed many details about their relationship but promises to reveal more stating, "they form a compelling bond and together deliver some of the most unique and powerful scenes yet seen in gaming." Take a look at the gameplay trailer, released today, featuring an early scene from the game: Included in today's announcement is the games official release date. Beyond: Two Souls will release on the PlayStation 3 on October 8, 2013. It is now available for pre-order with a free upgrade to the special edition. For more information on Beyond: Two Souls visit the official website. Source: PlayStation.Blog Megan Bethke, NoobFeed. (@XboxBetty) |
Image copyright EPA Image caption There was a protest against a similar law in Lebanon at the weekend, involving hanging wedding dresses on Beirut's seafront A law which protected Jordan's rapists from punishment if they married their victims looks set to be scrapped. The Jordanian cabinet revoked Article 308 on Sunday, after years of campaigning by women's activists, as well as Muslim and Christian scholars and others. The law had meant rapists could avoid a jail term in return for marrying their victim for at least three years. Its supporters said the law protected a victim's honour and reputation. 'A dream come true' But last year, it was amended so a rapist could only use the loophole to marry his victim if she was aged between 15 and 18 and the attack - which it would be classed as due to the girl's age - was believed to have been consensual. Then in February, a royal committee suggested the law should be scrapped in its entirety - which the cabinet has now done. At the time, the move was welcomed by activist Lailla Naffa as a "dream that has come true," according to the Jordan Times. However, the cabinet's decision must now be voted through by MPs, and could still be blocked. 'My only hope from marrying him was to make my baby safe' Noor - not her real name - was just 20 when she was raped by a 55-year-old man. He was her boss when one day, she complained of a headache. After taking the two pills he offered her, she lost consciousness. "I couldn't remember what happened next; I wake up and find myself naked and raped," she told women's rights campaign group Equality Now. "I couldn't tell my family what had happened. I cried and cried not knowing what to do. At that moment, I realised that my family will be devastated." It was only after Noor discovered she was pregnant, that she found the courage to report the rape - but then her attacker offered to marry her under Article 308. Noor was given no choice in the matter. "With all the hatred I have in my heart, my family forced me to marry him so as to save the 'family's honour'," she said. "My only hope from marrying him was to make my baby safe; I was keen to register him in his father's name, but I failed. He started to negotiate by offering to recognise the baby while divorcing me. I accepted that because I could not bear living with my rapist. "We went to court and I asked for a divorce giving up my legal rights. Still to date, I could not register my baby in his father's name." As Jordan's cabinet took steps towards abolishing Article 308, Lebanese activists were hanging wedding dresses along Beirut's famous sea front, in protest against Lebanon's version of the law. They are hopeful it will be scrapped in May, and activists hope the repeal in both countries could lead to change in countries like Iraq, the Philippines and Tunisia, where similar laws exist, according to Equality Now. A spokesman for the human rights group, which fights for women and children across the world, told the BBC: "With rape and sexual abuse impacting nearly a billion women and girls over their lifetimes, a repeal in Jordan and Lebanon would be crucial examples showing how change is possible in the Arab region, and around the world, for countries with similar exemptions. "Morocco, Egypt and Ethiopia have closed similar loopholes, and amendments are pending in Bahrain." |
It might have been something as simple as a portion of white asparagus. Peeled, steamed and served with a delicious sauce, as Germans traditionally eat it. And with real butter, a scarcity in wartime. While the rest of the country struggled to get even coffee, or had to spread margarine diluted with flour on their bread, Margot Wölk could have savored the expensive vegetable dish -- if not for the fear of dying, that is. Wölk was one of 15 young women who were forced to taste Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's food for some two and a half years during World War II. The 24-year-old secretary had fled from her parents' bombed-out Berlin apartment in the winter of 1941, traveling to her mother-in-law's home in the East Prussian village of Gross-Partsch, now Parcz, Poland. It was an idyllic, green setting, and she lived in a house with a large garden. But less than three kilometers (1.9 miles) away was the location that Hitler had chosen for his Eastern Front headquarters -- the Wolf's Lair. "The mayor of the little nest was an old Nazi," says Wölk. "I'd hardly arrived when the SS showed up at the door and demanded, 'Come with us!'" Sitting in the same apartment in Berlin's Schmargendorf area where she was born 95 years ago, she carefully eats tiny pieces of crumb cake from a silver fork. "Delicious," she says. Wölk has learned to enjoy food again, but it wasn't easy. Hitler's thugs brought her and the other young women to barracks in nearby Krausendorf, where cooks prepared the food for the Wolf's Lair in a two-story building. The service personnel filled platters with vegetables, sauces, noodle dishes and exotic fruits, placing them in a room with a large wooden table, where the food had to be tasted. "There was never meat because Hitler was a vegetarian," Wölk recalls. "The food was good -- very good. But we couldn't enjoy it." Trapped at the Wolf's Lair There were rumors that the Allies had plans to poison Hitler. After the women confirmed that the food was safe, members of the SS brought it to the main headquarters in crates. Each morning at 8 a.m., Wölk was rousted from bed by the SS, who shouted "Margot, get up!" from beneath her window. She was only needed if Hitler was actually at the Wolf's Lair, though she never actually saw him. Thus a young woman who had refused to join the League of German Girls (BDM), the girl's version of Hitler Youth, and whose father had been hauled off for refusing to join the Nazi party, became Hitler's helper. Each day, her life was on the line for a man she deeply despised. Flight, however, was not an option. Allied bombs had damaged her Schmargendorf apartment, which stood in knee-deep water. Her husband Karl was at war, though having heard nothing from him in two years, she had long since assumed he was dead. "Where was I supposed to go?" she asks. At least in Gross-Partsch she had her mother-in-law and her own bed. Then July 20, 1944 arrived. A few soldiers had invited women from the area to a film showing in a tent near the headquarters, when Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg's bomb exploded. "The explosion ripped us off the wooden benches," Wölk says. Then someone yelled, "Hitler is dead!" But the assassination plot had failed. "He walked away with a few bruises," Wölk says dryly. After that, the Nazis tightened security around the Wolf's Lair, and the tasters were no longer allowed to live at home. Instead, they were boarded in an empty school nearby. "We were guarded like caged animals," Wölk says. Escape to Berlin Then one night an SS officer used a ladder to get into the room where she was sleeping and raped her. She says that she remained silent during the attack. "The old pig," Wölk says, adding that she had never felt so helpless. "The next morning the ladder was still lying in front of the building." She remains quiet and matter-of-fact, saying it's important to her that her story be taken seriously. When the Soviet army was just a few kilometers away from reaching the Wolf's Lair, a lieutenant took her aside and told her, "Go, get out of here!" He put her on a train to Berlin, and it saved her life. After the war she saw him again there, and he told her that all of the other food tasters had been shot by Soviet soldiers. Her life was saved a second time by a Berlin doctor who took her in after she fled the Wolf's Lair. When SS soldiers showed up at his practice searching for the fugitive, he lied to them and they left. As she returned to Schmargendorf, however, she fell into the hands of the Soviet army. For two weeks, they raped her repeatedly, inflicting such brutal injuries that she was never able to bear children. She pauses at the painful memory. "I was so desperate," the 95-year-old whispers. "I didn't want to live anymore." A Survival Trick It wasn't until she was reunited with her husband Karl in 1946 that she began to have hope again, Wölk says. He was marked by years of war and imprisonment, but she nursed him back to health, and the couple spent another 34 happy years together. Wölk smiles when she thinks of her husband. After all of her experiences, she is not a bitter woman. Quite the contrary, in fact. She's dressed up in a royal blue sweater and a necklace of wooden beads. She's also put on makeup, or "painted herself," as she calls it. Despite the past, she says she has always tried to be happy. "I didn't lose my humor," she says. "Though it got more sarcastic." Instead, she decided not to take it all too seriously. "That was always my trick to survival," she says. But for a long time, Wölk didn't want to even think about what happened in Gross-Partsch, much less discuss it. The experience came to her often in dreams, however. It wasn't until this winter, when a local journalist paid her a visit for her 95th birthday and began asking questions, that she spoke about what she calls the worst years of her life. At that moment, she suddenly decided to break her silence. "I just wanted to say what happened there," she says. "That Hitler was a really repugnant man. And a pig." This article originally appeared in German on einestages.de, SPIEGEL ONLINE's history portal. |
I just found out about Google's Treasure Hunt Challenge. They say that "it's a puzzle contest designed to test yer problem-solving skills in computer science, networking, and low-level UNIX trivia." Apparently I have missed the first three puzzles (first, second and third) but I'll give the fourth puzzle a shot. The fourth problem is about prime numbers and it's formulated as following: Find the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of 7 consecutive prime numbers, the sum of 17 consecutive prime numbers, the sum of 41 consecutive prime numbers, the sum of 541 consecutive prime numbers, and is itself a prime number. For example, 41 is the smallest prime number that can be expressed as the sum of 3 consecutive primes (11 + 13 + 17 = 41) and the sum of 6 consecutive primes (2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 = 41). The Solution Here's how I approached and solved this problem. I had no desire to generate lists of prime numbers myself as it's been done thousands of times already. I didn't even want to copy any existing prime generating code. I decided to just use a publicly available list of prime numbers. Here is a list of first fifty million primes that I found. Next, I used my Unix-fu to find the solution. I noticed that the primes are zipped and split into chunks of million primes per file. The file names were like "primes1.zip", ... "primes50.zip". A quick loop from 1 to 50 and wget got all these files to my hard drive: $ for i in $(seq 50); do wget "http://primes.utm.edu/lists/small/millions/primes$i.zip"; done Next, I unzip'ped all these files, and removed those zips to save disk space: $ for i in $(seq 50); do unzip "primes$i.zip" && rm -f "primes$i.zip"; done After doing that and looking at what I got, I realized that they were in some strange format, 8 primes per line, space padded and with some text on the first two lines. Here is an example of how the first five lines in primes1.txt file looked like: The First 1,000,000 Primes (from primes.utm.edu) 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71 73 79 83 89 This is not great. I wanted all my primes to be in one file and one prime per line so I could extract N-th prime by looking at N-th line. I used the following command to merge all the files into a single file: for i in $(seq 50); do (awk 'BEGIN { OFS=" " } NR > 2 {print $1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8}' primes$i.txt >> primes.txt) && rm -f primes$i.txt; done A quick verification that I didn't lose any primes: $ wc -l primes.txt 50000000 primes.txt Now I created four files which contain sums of 7, 17, 41 and 541 consecutive primes, not exceeding the biggest prime in primes.txt file. I did that with the following AWK one-liner: $ last=$(tail -1 primes.txt) $ for N in 7 17 41 541 do awk 'BEGIN { prev[0] = 0 } NR < '$N' {prev[NR] = $1; sum += $1 } NR >= '$N' { psum += prev[NR-'$N']; delete prev[NR-'$N']; prev[NR] = $1; sum += $1; if (sum - psum > '$last') { exit } printf "%d ", sum - psum }' primes.txt > primes$N.txt done The command created primes7.txt, primes17.txt, primes 41.txt and primes541.txt files. These files contained sums of prime numbers but only some of them were primes. The solution, if it existed in the given data set, was the intersect of all these files. If there were multiple items in the intersect, the smallest should be chosen and checked if it really was a prime. $ sort -nm primes541.txt primes41.txt | uniq -d | sort -nm primes17.txt - | uniq -d | sort -nm primes7.txt - | uniq -d 7830239 $ grep -m1 7830239 primes.txt 7830239 And I found the solution! It was 7830239. I submitted the answer and after a few minutes it was confirmed to be correct. Your question: [7, 17, 41, 541] Your answer: 7830239 Time received: 2008-06-06 23:33:26.268414 UTC Correct answer: 7830239 Your answer was: Correct Awesome! Now tell me how you solved this problem. |
Early indications are that UFC 207 was a major success even going against the Orange Bowl game, and being on a less familiar Friday night, the numbers for television stacked up among the tops in company history. The prelims, headlined by Johny Hendricks vs. Neil Magny, did 1,511,000 viewers, which would have been the fourth-best of the year and the eighth-best on FS 1. The numbers trailed UFC 196 (the first Conor McGregor vs Nate Diaz fight), UFC 200 (which was one of the most loaded shows in company history) and UFC 205 (the Madison Square Garden show). They did beat the 1,300,000 figure for the Aug. 20 UFC 202 show, which was the second McGregor-Diaz show, which set the all-time company PPV record at about 1.5 million buys. All of the aforementioned shows did in excess of 1 million buys on pay-per-view. The Orange Bowl game, pitting Florida State against Michigan, did 11,461,000 viewers. In particular, the show did well above normal with teenagers, particularly teenage girls and 18-49 women to the prelims before a usual major UFC show, indicating Ronda Rousey's ability to bring in a different audience than those who usually watch big UFC events. The Hendricks vs. Magny fight peaked viewership with 1,848,000 viewers in the final rounds. The pre-fight show did 572,000 viewers and post-fight show did 404,000 viewers. It was the fifth-most watched pre-fight show and fourth-most watched post-fight show. The weigh-ins on Thursday did 216,000 viewers live, and another 222,000 for a repeat showing in prime time three hours later. For a comparison, the second McGregor vs. Diaz fight did 523,000 for the pre-fight show, 320,000 for the post-fight show, and 173,000 for the weigh-ins. Television viewership doesn't always correlate with pay-per-view numbers, but more often than not it gives a good indication. |
Alabama senior Ryan Kelly is the nation's top center. The fifth-year senior was announced as the winner of the Rimington Trophy on Thursday night. Kelly beat Michigan State center Jack Allen and Iowa center Austin Blythe. Kelly is Alabama's offensive line caller and has been a critical part of the Crimson Tide's offensive success this season. The Alabama center hasn't given up a sack all season and graded out at 88.4 percent this season. He deserves at least a share of the credit for Derrick Henry's record-breaking season, too. "Ryan deserved it," Derrick Henry said. "He's a great leader and the heart and soul of the offense. I'm excited to see him get an award." Kelly was named the SEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year and won the Jacobs Blocking Trophy on Wednesday. Kelly is the first of what could be multiple Alabama players to win awards Thursday night in Atlanta. Linebacker Reggie Ragland is nominated for the Bednarik Award, A'Shawn Robinson is a finalist for the Outland Trophy and running back Derrick Henry is a finalist for the Maxwell Award and Doak Walker Award. This post will be updated. 5 Alabama players named Walter Camp All-Americans Alabama is 12-1 and the No. 2 seed in the College Football Playoffs Alabama RB Derrick Henry wins Walter Camp Player of the Year Award Henry leads the nation in rushing yards and rushing touchdowns |
Aussie beaches a 'disaster zone' after toxic spill Agence France-Presse Published: Friday March 13, 2009 Print This Email This SYDNEY (AFP) -- Dozens of popular tourist beaches on Australia's northeast coast were on Friday declared a disaster zone, with their once-pristine sands fouled by a massive oil and chemical slick. Queensland state's marine safety authority said up to 100 tonnes of fuel were now believed to have spilled from the Hong Kong-flagged ship Pacific Adventurer amid cyclonic conditions early on Wednesday. Moreton and Bribie Islands, and parts of the popular Sunshine Coast, were declared disaster zones. "This may well be the worst environmental disaster we have seen in southeast Queensland," the state's leader, Anna Bligh, said. Initial estimates put the spill at 30 tonnes but authority spokesman John Watkinson said up to 100,000 litres could be washing up along a 60-kilometre (40-mile) stretch of the region's beaches, sickening local wildlife. The ship's owners, Swire Shipping, said they had sent a diver to inspect the hull late on Friday. "This shows that the damage suffered as a result of Cyclone Hamish is greater than initially understood and it is likely that substantially more oil has spilled than the earlier estimate of 42.5 cubic metres," Swire said in a statement. Swire faces 1.5 million dollars (977,000 US dollars) in fines if found guilty of environmental or maritime breaches. "The company very much regrets the environmental impact caused as a consequence of the vessel being caught in Cyclone Hamish," it said. "The company and its insurers will meet all their responsibilities." Swire had to launch a separate clean-up effort on Friday afternoon after leaking more oil into the river which runs through Brisbane, the state's capital city. The "small" spill, contained by barriers surrounding the ship, took place during testing to determine how much oil was lost in the first leak, Swire said. Describing it as a "potential environmental tragedy", Prime Minister Kevin Rudd pledged full government support for the clean-up effort, which could cost millions of dollars. Officials warned the situation was likely to worsen, with sludge expected to wash ashore for weeks. A team of 130 specialists was on Friday mopping up the mess and attempting to prevent it from spreading into nearby mangrove swamps and waterways. The oil flooded Moreton Bay after wild seas whipped up by Cyclone Hamish toppled 31 containers of ammonium nitrate fertiliser from the ship's deck. As they fell, the containers punctured the hull, before taking 620 tonnes of the explosive chemical to the ocean floor. Experts fear the fertiliser, a nutrient-rich chemical, could cause harmful algal blooms, suffocate fish and kill natural habitats. Moreton Bay, a marine sanctuary, is home to a range of sea birds and other creatures, including turtles, dolphins and pelicans. A dozen sickened animals had been discovered, but the environmental protection authority said that was likely to rise. "The flow-on effects of oil spills can be substantive," an authority spokesman said. "The longer-term impacts are yet to be realised." This video is from CNN.com, broadcast Mar. 13, 2009. Download video via RawReplay.com Get Raw exclusives as they break -- Email & mobile Email - Never spam: |
Women allegedly forced into prostitution Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com September 15, 2015 An explosive document released by top social welfare organizations in Germany reveals evidence that migrants at a refugee camp in Hessen are raping women and children, while also allegedly forcing women into prostitution. The document was made public by LFR (Landesfrauenrat) Hessen, Der Paritätische Hessen, Pro Familia Hessen and the Landesarbeitsgemeinschaft Hessischer Frauenbüros. It asserts that women and children at a migrant camp in Hessen are being sexually molested by Muslim “refugees” on such a regular basis that they are afraid to go to the bathroom at night and have to remain fully clothed when they sleep. Women who are not accompanied by men are considered easy prey, with some allegedly being forced into prostitution. The groups behind the letter are calling for women and children to be segregated from male migrants. Infowars talked to German correspondent Alexander Benesch who translated the document and confirmed its content. “This is an open letter from a few big organizations to the government of Hessen (one of the 16 regional parts of Germany),” wrote Benesch. “It is about an internment facility in Hessen where they initially put the refugees for further processing. It mentions a lack of security for women and children, leading to rape, molestation and (reportedly but not verified) forced prostitution.” Benesch added that the groups who released the document, “count among the biggest organizations of their kind,” and that Pro Familia Hessen is a “household name” in Germany. “Mainstream media coverage of this is scarce, because it embarrasses the government of Hessen and it embarrasses Berlin,” said Benesch. The story has been covered by Hessenschau.de and Deutschelandfunk.de. The document directly challenges the media narrative behind the refugee crisis, which has refused to acknowledge any of the negative aspects of allowing potentially millions of Muslim migrants to settle in Europe. Last week, a 7-year-old girl was raped by a north African migrant in a German park, a story that has received little media attention. Since nearby Sweden opened its doors to mass immigration, the country has become the rape capital of the west, with cases skyrocketing by 1400%. Around 77.6% of the rapists are identified as “foreigners”. As we reported last week, a school in Germany which turned over its nearby gymnasium to house migrants is warning girls not to wear shorts or skirts so as not to offend migrants and provoke “attacks”. Germany plans to accept 800,000 migrants before the end of the year. In what many complained was a measure that should have been implemented weeks ago, the country re-imposed border controls yesterday. The video below, which has received over a million views on YouTube despite being “age-restricted,” reveals a dark side to the behavior of the migrants that is not being broadcast on major western TV networks. SUBSCRIBE on YouTube: Follow on Twitter: Follow @PrisonPlanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watson.71 ********************* Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. This article was posted: Tuesday, September 15, 2015 at 6:46 am Print this page. Infowars.com Videos: Comment on this article |
In a world where high-rise condos are king and big box stores reign, a run-of-the-mill strip mall in Scarborough stands alone. It’s a land where small businesses triumph, and owners still know their customers’ names. This is Wexford Heights Plaza. That’s what a trailer for a film set at a Scarborough strip mall might sound like — and now, there actually is one. Betty Reid Asselstine plays Betty in the film Wexford Plaza. ( levelFILM photo ) Babar Malik is the owner of United Computer Business in the plaza. ( Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star ) Fred Saboohi is the owner of Casco Signs in the plaza. ( Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star ) Rakesh Kaul, left, and Patrick James, right, are co owners of Electrolux Service Centre in the plaza. ( Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star ) Owner of Wexford Heights Plaza and the Wexford Restaurant Tony Kiriakov. ( Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star ) The glamour of the big screen has cast its spotlight on the nonchalant strip mall at Warden Ave. and Lawrence Ave. E., thanks to Wexford Plaza, an offbeat independent comedy bearing its name. “It’s a kind of nostalgic, romantic love letter . . . to the esthetic of strip malls in Scarborough,” filmmaker Joyce Wong said. “That ’50s and ’60s idealism, but then intersected with this kind of immigrant American dream.” The film is set in a “dilapidated but beautiful” strip mall in Scarborough, and stars a lonely female security guard who has a misunderstood sexual encounter with a makeup salesman. Article Continued Below Wong said the idea of being the underdog is part of the movie’s appeal. “While growing up in Scarborough, you kind of always felt like you were left behind,” she said. “You were kind of outside of what was really going on, outside of the main — whatever the main was. So I feel like that was what was appealing to a lot of the people . . . who have connected with this.” Wexford Plaza premieres in Canada next month, a nostalgic love letter to strip malls in Scarborough, filmmaker Joyce Wong says. ( Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star ) The comedy about the well-meaning romance plays out at a place called Wexford Plaza. While sharing the same name, Wong said her movie wasn’t based on the real-life version, and that it could have been any strip mall in Scarborough. “I was just kind of playing around with different names, like Bridlewood, Agincourt, Tuxedo Court,” she said. “I felt that Wexford, as a general area, kind of fit the most.” The real Wexford Heights Plaza is filled with scenes of ordinary life at small retailers like a vacuum store, computer repair shop and bakery among others. In 1958, the Kiriakou family purchased the plaza’s Wexford Restaurant. They bought the entire plaza decades later. Today, Tony Kiriakou says business is booming in Scarborough. Article Continued Below “Everybody says Scarborough is a bad town, a bad neighbourhood,” Kiriakou said. “Scarborough is a good neighbourhood.” About 20 tenants make up the strip mall community. In a shop overfilling with computers and tech equipment, Babar Malik of United Computer Business Inc. called his 4 ½ years at the plaza “very good.” A few businesses down, Fred Saboohi of Cas Co. Sign & Print took a break from working in the back of his store to call the plaza “perfect,” with good people and a good owner. It’s an old plaza with a history, he said. “Most plazas, like this plaza, they destroy it and make it condominiums,” Saboohi said. “But this is still here.” Patrick James, co-owner of the plaza’s Electrolux Service Centre, said the business has been there for 14 years. “There was a vacuum store in this plaza before, and they had closed down,” James said when asked about his store’s beginnings. “They were here for about 20-something years. So we wanted to come in, because people are accustomed to that store. “So that’s why we came here. And you find that people are coming back now.” He added that he thought the Wexford Plaza film would be good for business. Wong, who grew up in Scarborough and now lives in Toronto’s west end, studied film at York University. In her youth, she had starkly different experiences at Scarborough strip malls. A woman is seen walking through Wexford Heights Plaza this week. ( Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star ) There was the strip mall she walked to with friends in Grade 8, to buy lunch and cigarettes. “It was kind of a cool space for us to hang out, outside of our super conservative Catholic schoolyard,” she recalled. “And then there’s this other plaza, where when my mom picked me up and we went home, that she would always stop at to do dry cleaning and stuff,” Wong said. “That plaza, I remember just sitting there and waiting in the car and reading my math homework or whatever. It was just kind of this draining, like, ‘ugh, I’m in Scarborough.’ ” The film wasn’t shot in Wexford for logistical reasons — instead it was filmed at a plaza in North York, and other sites around the city. The film has received rave reviews, with the Los Angeles Times describing it as “a fascinating perspective swap” with a “unique approach to storytelling and character building.” It has played at numerous film festivals across North America. The performances of lead characters Betty, played by Reid Asselstine, and Danny, played by Darrel Gamotin, are described as “excellent,” the writing and editing as “careful,” and Wong “a major talent to watch.” Wexford Plaza will be screened at Toronto’s Carlton Cinemas from Dec. 1 to 7. |
UNIONDALE, NY - MARCH 03: John Tavares #91 of the New York Islanders scores the winning shootout goal against Robin Lehner #40 of the Ottawa Senators during their game at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on March 3, 2013 in Uniondale, New York. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images) John Tavares (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images) By B.D. Gallof, WFAN.com At the beginning of this season, I predicted the Islanders would finish on the outside looking in at the playoffs, somewhere between 10th to 12th place in the Eastern Conference, mostly because the franchise, despite arena certainty in the coming years, was to remain in cost-cutting mode, forsaking true free agency. Owner Charles Wang wasn’t and isn’t about to lose more money when the move won’t officially happen until the summer of 2015. So with glaring flaws, a push to make young players earn their spots, and with an incomplete defense, the Isles went forward, warts and all. I think the fans need to understand the following element more succinctly: General manager Garth Snow operates based on a budget, not on the whims of supporters who refuse to accept that fact. Would he have wanted to keep P.A. Parenteau over signing Brad Boyes? Would he have liked to tinker some more with the offense and get some more serious talent on defense? We’ll never truly know because the reality of the world Snow has been forced to operate in is a very real reality due to the fact that the Islanders still lose tons of money. Wang is still against the idea of losing more. As I have said, this could change as soon as this coming summer, but as far as this season goes, it’s par for the course of the last several seasons. Parenteau’s case was a bit more dramatic than simply giving him a fair raise. He wanted to be paid more than Matt Moulson, the same player who has 25 points in 23 games this season and would be well on pace to shatter his previous career high for production over a full 82-game season. One can understand Snow’s need to keep the team’s pay structure intact and try to avoid throwing things out of reality-based balance. However, it still makes one wonder how much better the Isles would be had he had more free reign to spend. But before you assume the Islanders would be a lot better, just know that Snow in fact did replace Parenteau. Boyes has done a very good job, with 18 points (Parenteau has 19 with Colorado). This team’s problem now offensively is the same as it was last season with Parenteau, developing consistent scoring beyond the top line. Even when playing well this season there have been legitimate concerns about 5-on-5 production. The Isles’ special teams magic has not buoyed the team enough. Despite a power play that is among the best in the NHL and a penalty killing unit that is often fairly stout, scoring and defending at even strength has remained a serious issue. So let’s look at the whole picture in terms of progress. The offense, actually, has been better overall than it was last season, but the fact remains: When John Tavares, a player that would be on pace for 90-plus points over a full season, is shut down, so, too, is Moulson. And when these events go hand in hand, the Isles struggle and invariably lose because they lack consistency from the other three lines. As scouts from other teams have discovered, the key to defeating the Islanders is shutting down their best player. What makes Tavares so dangerous is not just his scoring, but also his underrated passing. He makes great passes, even under heaping loads of pressure. He also is difficult to knock off the puck. His speed with the puck actually increases, and he makes good decisions on the ice at all times, regardless of the physical pressure thrown his way. So, what about everyone else you ask? Well, you cannot speed up youth. So sources have told me talents like Nino Niederreiter and Ryan Strome will be left to grow and develop correctly in the minors and juniors. You also can’t manufacture trades, especially when trying to deal from positions of weakness. This is why silly deals pushed by fans involving Josh Bailey or Kyle Okposo are so pointless. Instead, rewarding or punishing a player with playing time is the key tool to light fires and hold people accountable. For all the complaining about Okposo, when he has been threatened we have seen signs of life and consistent play. Maybe that dreaded word “patience” is indeed the order of the day and the season, because when the Islanders show a lot you get results like the last two games of this current seven-game home stand, and you ultimately see the Isles playing like many think they are capable. Realistically, this team is right where it is supposed to be, considering the talent, experience and coaching. Through 24 games, or officially half the shortened season, the Islanders needed to be at around 27 points to be on a realistic playoff pace. At 23 games and with only 22 points, as is the case now, they have some catching up to do, but remain relevant due to other teams, specifically the Rangers and Flyers, going through lulls. And just because the Islanders are just a few points out of the eighth spot, looks can be deceiving because teams battling for the same coveted eight spots have games in hand. The Rangers have two in hand, as does Winnipeg, which is just behind the Isles. The homestand presented itself as an opportunity to gain some traction, but that has not happened. However, beating Ottawa on Sunday and then East-leading Montreal on Tuesday were steps in the right direction.The Islanders still have to play the Rangers on Thursday and the Capitals on Saturday at the Nassau Coliseum before they head out on the road again. If they can win those two, well, things will look decidedly different yet again. But it’s important to note that what you see from the Islanders is possibly what you are going to continue to get. Are they capable of putting a winning streak together? Maybe, but their calling card has been consistent inconsistency. They are fourth in the East in goals scored, but next to last in the NHL in goals allowed. Though their special teams have remained solid, their defense still disappears from time to time and their goaltending is on again, off again. Tradable assets The deadline is now less than a month away, April 3. In speaking to both NHL and Islanders sources, this might be a very active trade period due to several big money teams struggling. Remember, the salary cap ceiling will drop next season. That means big money players might have to be dealt for less value due to cap needs and breathing room. As far as the Islanders tradable assets go, as I have said on Twitter numerous times, if they are to deal a forward it will likely be Michael Grabner, who, despite his dangerous speed and wonderful transition game, really as an all-around forward is no better than a third liner. Inconsistent production and a failure to play a full three periods remain his biggest shortcomings. Another movable option could be Frans Nielsen. Despite online fan outrage over the very notion of trading Grabner or Nielsen, if both are always banished to the third line, with players like Sundstrom, Persson, Brock Nelson, Anders Lee, Strome, Niederreiter, and perhaps Kabanov seemingly ready to make the jump to the NHL, where do these vets fit in down the line? It is something that needs to be asked, and it is certainly being asked by the Isles’ brain trust, which would love to package some of these coveted forwards with some picks or prospects to gain a key talent. On defense, do not expect Lubomir Visnovsky, who is still not happy to be on Long Island, dealt for anything less than a first-round pick. His play has been very good, and anything less than a first rounder will not be accepted because the Islanders are still in reaching distance of a playoff spot. He’s been as advertised on the ice and could be a great commodity for those teams needing some defensive scoring/assists come the deadline. But only at the value Snow could set. As we have seen at subsequent trade deadlines, either teams meet Snow’s price or no deal gets done. That is not a bad thing, considering some GMs, due to the financial issues I illustrated earlier, might get antsy. We might see Anders Lee signed and playing on Long Island if the Islanders can entice him with playing time opportunity this very season. Here is a guy with top 2 line potential. Meanwhile, waiver wunderkinds like Keith Aucoin have fallen to Earth. Aucoin has shown to be more of a fourth line quality. Defensemen Thomas Hickey and Joe Finley have been a mixed bag compared to the consistency and ability of currently injured Brian Strait. However, they have been getting better. Meanwhile, Radek Martinek is starting to heat up and show he can be counted on in a pinch, which was why the Isles signed him in the first place. The real question going forward is which of the cap-heavy teams blink first before the ceiling drops next season? Could a team like the Calgary Flames, Tampa Bay Lightning, San Jose Sharks, or even the Flyers start to panic? If things shake out like I figure, cap relief will become a desire and talent will start changing hands as the wheeling and dealing ramps up. One looks at the Tim Thomas bookkeeping deal and has to wonder if the Islanders anticipate a possible major deal with the assurance of remaining above the cap. Or, was that trade made in case they fall into the non-playoff abyss? It all remains to be seen, but the Islanders are actually in a good position with Thomas. They could move him for a second-round pick or keep him should Evgeni Nabokov move on and they don’t view Kevin Poulin as NHL ready. What about Rick DiPietro you may be asking? Well, he’s getting shelled in the AHL with a .798 save percentage and a 6.00 goals-against average, so it’s fair to say we may never see him again. Of course, if he gets his save percentage closer to .900 and proves he can stay healthy there’s always the possibility of him returning, but the odds are definitely against him. For those eternal pessimist and optimists, I leave you with this: When Thursday’s game against the Rangers is over, the Islanders will be at the half-way point of their season. The pace they are currently on will likely not be good enough to get into the playoffs. Some things will have to change, but with trades and the like probably not being the order of the day to help make the change happen. If they can just find some kind of positive consistency, they could very well be in the hunt until the end. But the Islanders right now are who they are. They are improved over last season, albeit slightly, but unless they find something to bring it all together and reach the maximum potential of what this group can be, this season is likely going to end like the five previous — with this team watching the playoffs after having taken yet another baby step. Read more columns by B.D. Gallof and follow him on Twitter at @BDGallof Do you think the Islanders can sneak into the playoffs or is the rest of this season just more time to evaluate the future? Please offer your thoughts in the comments section below … |
Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now A mass brawl and gunfight over a girl at a Moscow strip club left 15 people in hospital. Club-goers and strippers fled in terror after rival gangs clashed in scenes "like the Wild West". The violence was triggered when a girl who was with one of the gangs joined strippers on stage for a dance. One gangster is said to have "tried moving in on her" causing another thug to attack a rival before pulling out a gun and shooting him in the stomach. The violence then escalated as the two gangs piled into each other with more shots being fired and chairs slammed over heads. Regular Vladlen Uspensky, 45, said: "It was absolutely terrifying. "I’ve been going to these clubs for years and although you sometimes get a little trouble because people have had too much to drink, I have never seen anything like this. "It was like something out of the Wild West. "There were gunshots, fist fights, chairs being thrown, it was mental." (Image: CEN) Club owner Andrei Bolshakov nicknamed 'Mi Mi' said: "The incident involved 15 people. "One of the groups had just arrived and they had a girl with them who joined the strippers on the stage for a dance, and one of the men from the other group tried moving in on her. The first group took offence to that, and fight started. "Shots rang out, and all hell broke loose. We immediately called the police and an ambulance." When emergency services arrived they found the bodies of the wounded men littering the club floor. A police spokesman said: "Three men had gunshot wounds, five had severe head injuries and another 10 had varying degrees of injuries. "Fortunately, no one was killed." The men were taken to hospital where they are said to be recovering. The police spokesman said: "The club was quite badly damaged during the incident but the owner says he will not be pressing charges. "We will be though as they endangered the lives of the staff and other guests." |
At this point some 1,377 game cartridges for the Atari 2600 have been rescued from the New Mexico landfill where they were unceremoniously dumped over 30 years ago. Of those, 700 will be appraised, certified and eventually sold, some of which will pass through the New Mexico Museum of Space History. While many carts will go to the film's producers and museums like the Smithsonian, some will be sold to the public along with a certificate of authenticity. The details are still being worked out by city officials, but you could soon own a piece of gaming garbage history. The carts that will be commanding the most money will clearly be the 171 copies of E.T. that were unearthed, but titles like Centipede, Missile Command and Asteroids have also been dug up. There are still over 700,000 games buried the in landfill outside of Alamogordo, NM, but they'll stay there... for now. The hole has been refilled, and the cartridges going on sale will be priced to reflect their rarity. Of course, if the city decides it needs more cash, that could always change. |
FRENCH NOTES: We are deluding ourselves if we believe winning the Heineken Cup means the Irish national team will have success HERESY – ANY belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs. We are deluding ourselves if we believe winning the Heineken Cup means the Irish national team will have success. The facts don’t support this assumption. Here is the statistical relationship between winning major provincial trophies and performing on the international stage, world wide from the inception of professional rugby in 1995-96. The French have won five Heinekens, seven Six Nations and made two world cup finals. The English have won six ERC finals, won the Six Nations five times and they have won the World Cup and played in one final. The Scots, have “never bothered the scorer” in Europe but have won one Six Nations Championship in 1999. They have never been past the quarter-finals of the World Cup. New Zealand have won the Tri-Nations nine times and Super rugby 10 times. They have won the World Cup and made the semis all but once. The Springboks have won the Tri-Nations twice, Super Rugby three times and won the World Cup twice. The Wallabies have won both competitions three times, won the World Cup and made the final. The Welsh have never won the Heineken but they have won three Six Nations and made the semis of the World Cup. Ireland have won the ERC five times but won the Six Nations only once and have never progressed past the quarter-finals of the RWC. The facts are irrefutable. All countries except Ireland and Wales win roughly the same number of international competitions as they do provincial competitions. Wales have not won at provincial level yet have performed at international level. Ireland have performed in Europe but by far have the worst record internationally. Here is the question that I need you to answer honestly. Would the rugby public of Munster accept their provincial teams performing on par with Glasgow since 1996? No. Yet at national level that is exactly what Ireland have done. Scotland and Ireland have both won the Six Nations once since professionalism. Get the steak out and fire up the barbie, I am ready to be burnt, there will be no recanting. Here is my first statement of heresy. Winning the Heineken Cup is not a real indication of the international standing of Irish rugby. A country’s international record is the only true reflection of a nation’s rugby prowess. Australian and Irish rugby are very similar in structure and the number of players involved. Why has Australian rugby been able to hold its own against the two rugby giants in the south? In the Australian rugby system the Wallaby cause comes first. The provinces serve the national team. There are fights between the provinces and the national team but the needs of the Wallabies win and so it should. Winning the Heineken Cup is a sensational achievement. I am not belittling its value. However, provincial success has created the rugby equivalent of the Celtic Tiger. The numbers are undeniable but we are all choosing not to notice the national team is not winning trophies. At provincial level all our talent is distilled into three teams. England and France have their talent spread over 12 teams, Wales over five. As long as Leinster finish above another Irish province they qualify for Europe. No matter how bad a season a PRO 12 team has they are never relegated. If a French or English team finishes below sixth in the Top 14, they are out of Europe and financially penalised. If they are relegated to Pro D 2, they lose €1 million in funding. This environment forces the elite French and the English players to be selected every week and allow the leading Irish players to be rested and play almost exclusively in the Heineken. All this means that the dice are loaded in Ireland’s favour when it comes to being successful in the Heineken Cup. That is the great delusion. The Heineken Cup is not a true reflection of our national success because the playing field is not level for all the countries involved. There is nothing wrong with this. This is a major advantage for the provinces. I personally benefited from it when I was coaching. The provinces are providing great entertainment and have attracted a new audience to rugby and are making a lot of money for rugby in Ireland. However, the reason Irish professional rugby exists in Ireland is for the Irish national team to win. In my opinion, this has been lost on all but a few. I have come to another heretical conclusion. The majority of supporters are not as passionate about Ireland winning as they were 10 years ago. They get their winning feeling from the provinces. The Aviva does not crackle and spark with Irish passion like it did at Lansdowne Road. All the supporters want Ireland to succeed but they know their province will win on the Heineken Cup stage. The edge has come off the fever. If Ireland don’t perform in the Six Nations there is little said in the media. If Munster or Leinster miss out on the ERC play-offs, there is war. It is out of balance and it is not good for the national team’s cause. The entire Irish system was established by the IRFU for the national team to succeed. That is correct and I totally support it. The proof of history is that the system has produced wonderful provincial results in the European Cup and sub-standard results for the national team. No one planned this. There is no conspiracy theory, but this is the reality the system has created. The incredible talents of the golden generation and our deep collective loyalty to them have masked the needs for a dramatic injection of rugby intellect and a major change of direction for the national team. They have to be empowered to win trophies. The next major match for Ireland is against New Zealand in June, not the Heineken Cup quarter-finals. We all need to reaffirm in our hearts that a successful green jersey is more important that a Heineken Cup win in one coloured blue, red or white. |
The Xbox One will not require gamers to pay a fee to reactivate a used game, but it will require a regular online spot check to verify the authenticity of games being played, according to sources familiar with the system. While an internet connection will be required for the console, the company is also experimenting with special exemption codes that could be given to select people in very particular, internet-free situations, like active-duty soldiers serving in war zones, sources tell Polygon. Microsoft "will disclose more information in the near future" The ultimate system that Xbox One will use for used games and online authentication sounds like it is still in open debate on some level internally, which may explain the company's reticence in more directly clarifying the matter this week. Microsoft executives have been discussing the reaction to the confused messaging surrounding used games and internet requirements and plan to detail the console's take on both sometime before E3, according to our sources. During this week's Xbox One unveiling, Microsoft officials gave conflicting answers to questions about used games and online requirements. According to an official Q&A from Microsoft, the Xbox One does not "have to be always connected, but does require a connection to the Internet." Speaking with Kotaku, Microsoft's Phil Harrison said that the console would require an internet check every 24 hours. Microsoft officials later said that was one potential scenario. According to Polygon's sources, Microsoft officials haven't yet settled on the specific amount of time that can pass between checks, but that some form of regular check will be required to play games. The Xbox One will automatically authenticate a game using an encryption code built into a game's disc, when it is installed on the machine. That authentication on the console's hard drive tied to the game is then verified regularly through an internet connection. When a person sells the game or it is installed and played on another system, the game is deauthenticated on the original machine until the disc is brought back and used to re-authenticate the installation. Our sources also said that there are no plans to charge gamers a fee to sell or reactivate a used game. Earlier today, Microsoft's Larry Hryb touched on the topic of used games on his blog, but didn't say whether fees will be required. "The ability to trade in and resell games is important to gamers and to Xbox," according to the official statement he included in his post. "Xbox One is designed to support the trade in and resale of games. Reports about our policies for trade in and resale are inaccurate and incomplete. We will disclose more information in the near future." We reached out to Microsoft for comment and representatives pointed us to Hryb's statement. |
They talk about Texas, and they talk about Memphis, and they talk about Kansas City. But none of those places matter. Barbecue is a country five feet wide and twenty feet long, and it's filled with darkness, smoke, and meat. The place that surrounds that sacred space might be technically Texas, or Alabama, or North Carolina. It doesn't really matter; all that matters is the meat. I was in Columbus Ohio, on a research mission for the American Food and Drink Awards, when I stumbled across Ray Ray's Hog Pit. Ray Ray's isn't even a restaurant—it's a truck in a random parking lot in a city considered dull even by some Ohioans. You wouldn't know it was there unless you were parking next to it, or if somebody told you. But somebody is telling you, and that somebody is me. Ray Ray's pit is a home-welded black barbecue bomb; all it lacks is a funny name and a Vargas girl drawn on its side. It's scarred and sticky, and the jet-black creosote coating it an abyssal plane of dark matter absorbing light and reflecting back only flavor. Ray Ray is actually a man named Jamie Anderson, and he uses black hickory and white oak to power his cooker. Most days he has brisket in there, and pork butts, and baby back ribs, and jerk chicken, and spare ribs. The brisket is especially beloved by locals, and it is good, but transcendently good brisket comes along about as often as amicable divorces. In most cases the best you get is some smoke, some texture, and the sauce bearing the rest of the load. That's true at Ray Ray's to some extent, but that's fine—pork is the name of the game at Ray Ray's—his pork is coarse and irregular, slathered in smoky orange pork fat and mixed with dark smoky crust. Even the pulled pork is relatively coarse—"it's not chopped up so fine that it's like cat food," Anderson told me, using my own favorite simile. His baby back ribs are deep pink half way down, which is hard to do without drying them out. (Being pork loin, they start out dry, after all.) I'd also like to say a word here for Ray Ray's macaroni and cheese, which is deep and stiff with real cheese, instead of the usual phosphorescent off-brand Velveeta you see so often. And his collards are wonderful too, soft but not slick, porky while still looking like actual leaves. But the spare ribs are the things that haunt me. I don't know if I ever ate better spare ribs in my years in thrall to barbecue addiction. Even when I was supporting a $300-a-month rib habit, it was rare that I found one that was served at that perfect steak-like temperature, that yielded easily to teeth without just giving it all up like a rattled snitch under questioning, that blended the taste of pork and wood so intimately that you couldn't tell where one pickued up and the other left off. Also, these ribs are juicy. Soup-dumpling juicy. You could dress wounds with their fat. I could go on and on about these ribs, but I won't; I can't really do justice to them, or to the man himself. But I hope Eat Like a Man readers will take heart from the fact that the best ribs I can remember eating were made in a stick-burning oil-drum style smoker, in a city that barely knows what barbecue is. |
A surface parking lot in downtown Portland. (Photo by J.Maus/BikePortland) It looks like Portland is finally ready to think long-term about its auto parking policies. The City of Portland is preparing to embark on an 18-month study of its future auto parking needs, thanks to a $225,000 state grant. The result of the work, which the city said seems to be the first project of its kind in the country, could shape residential and commercial development patterns and on-street parking policy in the city for decades to come. And for people who care about fixing Portland’s chronic shortage of low-car-friendly housing, or who those who want the city to reduce the tax-funded handout of so much free auto parking, the tea leaves look good. “We, as a City, need to decide what parking access and convenience level we find acceptable given our other city goals (mode split goals, air quality, housing affordability, etc.).” — City of Portland grant application The idea of the study is to force the city to ask itself, “Given what we say we want this area to develop into, what will parking look like then?” said Sara Schooley, parking policy analyst for the Portland Bureau of Transportatation. To that end, the project will study the current auto parking needs of five different “corridors” and five different “centers,” which Schooley said will be scattered throughout the city. Then Schooley and her colleagues will estimate how much or how little space should be available for parking for the city to develop that area as it wants to — and compile a list of policy options to make that work; such as whether paid parking permits, meters, or better bike, foot and transit access are needed. “We, as a City, need to decide what parking access and convenience level we find acceptable given our other city goals (mode split goals, air quality, housing affordability, etc.),” the city wrote in its grant application (PDF). That’s a smart take. It’s true that Portland streets are getting more crowded and annoying to park in. But it’s just as true that in a city where 25 percent of renters already get by without a car, mandatory auto parking rules drive up housing costs and make dense, walkable development illegal. The former ‘streetcar suburb’ at NE 28th Avenue: Scarce parking, abundant commerce. (Photo by M.Andersen/BikePortland) Here are some other relevant passages from the city’s grant proposal, emphases mine: Building parking is an expensive venture and, if built excessively, can burden both the developer and future residents or customers. When parking is built, the costs of building and maintaining the space or garage is passed to the user, thus increasing the costs of rent. This increase in costs can lead to residents and businesses being “priced out” of an area; given the concentration of services in Portland’s centers and corridors, these are exactly the areas where those who are at risk of being “priced out” should be living to increase their access to housing types, services, transit, and community. “A successful parking environment will not have an oversupply of parking and instead look to create a supply based on actual and future demand.” — City of Portland When looking at parking and potentially planning parking requirements and infrastructure for the future, it is important to provide access to transportation options so that residents can live the low‐car lifestyles that the City looks to encourage. The parking policy toolkit will also offer recommendations of how active transportation should complement parking strategies to create access into and out of the centers and corridors, as well as support the economic growth of each center and corridor. Even while Portland aims to reduce VMT, driving remains the most used form of transportation in the City. Therefore, driving (and its associated parking) is integral to the economic success of the City and region. That said, a successful parking environment will not have an oversupply of parking and instead look to create a supply based on actual and future demand. The aim of this project will be to set guidelines to determine what adequate supply for the future looks like as transportation patterns change. Like every project of this size, the devil will be in details such as the precise meaning of “adequate.” But reading the way the city has framed its big goals here made me want to start handing out halos. The Real Estate Beat is a weekly column. Read past installments here. We are looking for a sponsorship partner. If interested, please call Jonathan at (503) 706-8804. Front Page The Real Estate Beat |
Concept Archtop: Hollowbody Electric Guitar is our next-generation virtual instrument sampling a customized Sadowsky Jim Hall model with dual pickups. This library is ideal for many genres, from jazz, funk, and R&B, to ambient, rock, pop, and beyond. With stunning realism and detail, you can write or perform virtually any rhythm or lead part you can imagine! NOTE: Already own Shreddage II? Archtop has a lot to offer! While Shreddage is all about heavy, thick tones, rock, and double-tracking, Archtop specializes in more clean and dynamic playing. Interface & Engine Archtop also includes an advanced, but highly intuitive, scripted interface. This interface follows the same model as our Shreddage II: Absolute Electric Guitar, so if you've gotten comfortable with that interface, you'll feel right at home in Archtop! The Perform page allows for editing and loading articulations, adding effects like chorus and reverb, and adjusting parameters like monophonic mode, round robin, and the special strumming mode. The Fretboard page allows for visual feedback and selecting parameters of the virtual guitarist, such as the hand size andextreme fret preferences; these parameters are translated into real behavior for the string selection algorithm, where Archtop will map MIDI notes onto certain frets and strings appropriately as if a real performer were playing them. The Articulations page exposes all of the Archtop articulations to the user in a fully customizable mappingscheme. The user can either activate articulations via keyswitches or velocity ranges. The Engine page reveals the back end of Archtop for users seeking to tweak Archtop into the ultimate performance tool, exposing parameters such as velocity response, transposition, pitch bend, resonance controls, pedal behavior, and control over noises such as release and pick. |
Amid a spate of high court verdicts that the vote-value disparity in the December Lower House election was either unconstitutional or invalid, the opposition camp on Wednesday rejected the ruling coalition’s plan to rectify the problem. The rejection could lead to more Diet gridlock. The ruling camp-held Lower House could possibly override a vote on the matter in the opposition-controlled Upper House. At a meeting of the ruling and opposition secretaries general, all of the opposition parties except Shinto Kaikaku (New Renaissance Party) opposed the Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito plan to cut five single-seat Lower House districts from the current 300 to bring down the vote disparity below 2-1. “Our plan to rectify the constituency allocation is based on the legislator-sponsored legislation that was passed in the Diet last year. It’s puzzling why they are opposed to it,” LDP Secretary General Shigeru Ishiba said after the meeting. Instead, the opposition camp demanded a drastic seat reduction in the Lower House. “We could not agree on the plan as the LDP toned down its willingness to reduce the number of seats from a ‘promise’ to ‘best effort,’ ” said Yorihisa Matsuno, acting secretary general of Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party). Despite the breakdown in negotiations, the ruling camp, which holds more than two-thirds of the seats in the Lower House, could resort to steamrolling the legislation through the chamber if no compromise is struck before the LDP-sponsored package is submitted April 12. Ishiba said both camps agreed to continue the discussions. The LDP plan was initially compiled based on the agreement last year between Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of the then-ruling Democratic Party of Japan and LDP President Sadakazu Tanigaki that they would first correct the vote disparity before working on fundamental changes to the number of seats, following the Supreme Court’s decision in March 2011 that the 2009 general election was “in a state of unconstitutionality.” |
A St. John's woman has written city councillors, calling for better sidewalk snowclearing and salting, after a senior woman fell into a snowbank at a downtown bus stop. Cara Lewis says this is her first winter in many years as a full-time pedestrian and safety has been on her mind. Demanding better snow clearing after witnessing a frightening fall. 7:54 Even more so, Lewis said, since she saw a woman had fallen into a snowbank, while a man in a wheelchair struggled to get off a Metrobus at the Long's Hill and Harvey Road stop. You could tell he was embarrassed and apologetic and just struggling with his one leg and his wheelchair. It was absolutely outrageous. - Cara Lewis She thought the man was struggling to get on the bus's accessibility ramp, but then realized the man was actually trying to help his partner, who Lewis said was "lodged" in slush. "She was struggling and not able to get up from the snowbank which she fell into," Lewis told CBC's St. John's Morning Show of the Jan. 21 incident. Lewis and the bus driver helped the woman get up and then also helped clear snow and slush out of the way for the the man in the wheelchair to get off the bus. "I just started digging — I had to dig around the ramp so that he could shimmy himself off," said Lewis, who added she didn't get the names of the two people she helped, but asked for permission to share the story. "You could tell he was embarrassed and apologetic and just struggling with his one leg and his wheelchair. It was absolutely outragoues." 'It just needs to be addressed' On Merrymeeting Road, one obstacle to sidewalk snowclearing include poles in the middle of the sidewalks. (Cecil Haire/CBC) The incident inspired Lewis to write a letter to the city councillors, as well as share the content of that letter on Facebook. In the letter, Lewis makes the case to councillors to establish an immediate response to maintain sidewalks on main arteries, including where she lives on Merrymeeting Road, as well as a strategic plan to tackle the issue. "It's good to explain your situation, your motivation, and then to just make some clear and also reasonably reachable goals to address the problems that you are expressing," said Lewis. "I would go for at least one sidewalk a street, I think that's reasonable." Since posting it on social media, Lewis said she's received support from other people looking for better sidewalk clearing. In addition, Lewis said she's heard back from most of the councillors by Monday morning, at least acknowledging her complaint. "I'm not sure if the squeaky wheel kind of got the results and we did eventually get a sidewalk [cleared] on our road," she said. "But it's days that you see families and people with disabilities struggling from supermarkets … and just in the middle of the street, it just needs to be addressed." |
On Wednesday, West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee stirred up a storm after applying restrictive conditions on the immersion of Maa Durga idols this Dashami. According to ANI, immersion would only be allowed till 6:00 PM on Dashami and be resumed only from 2nd October due to the Muharram procession. This outraged many people online and one of them was Tajinder Bagga, who is the spokesperson of Delhi BJP. Bagga decided to protest against such clamping down on the Hindu festivals by the Mamata government: Bagga, who happens to be a Sikh, in his tweets reiterated that Hindus had the right to celebrate their festivals and dared the Mamata government to stop the visarjan. He also stated that he would personally stay present in Bengal this Dashami to ensure no disruption occurs. This vocal support for Hindus by a Sikh deeply pained a Newslaundry columnist named Jaspreet Oberoi, who decided to attack him and Hinduism: Jaspreet, who goes by the name of Jas Oberoi, was then given a befitting response by Bagga, who also tagged Newslaundry’s Editor-in-chief Madhu Trehan to make her aware about the antics of her columnist: The Hinduphobic and communal comment by the Newslaundry columnist was also bashed by other twitter users: But rather than apologising for his attack, the Newslaundry columnist made further personal attacks on Bagga and users opposing his bigotry. Rather than putting the troll columnist in the dock (who might just enjoy the attention), it might be more prudent to ask as to whether Newslaundry approves of his vicious trolling. And if not, does it plan to take any suitable action against him? People might also question as to what did Newslaundry see in the troll, that it decided to make him their columnist? Questions might be also raised as to why has Newslaundry chosen to give space to his articles such as this, where he demonises legendary police officer KPS Gill, who was one of the key persons responsible for stopping the Khalistani insurgency. It also remains to be seen if Madhu Trehan and Newslaundry condemn this unsolicited heckling by their troll columnist or whether they choose not to react, which some might consider to be a case of silent approval. |
SUMMERVILLE, S.C. (WCIV) -- Summerville police officers agreed that they "almost killed the coroner" after Dorchester County Coroner Chris Nisbet initially refused repeated demands to put down his weapon during a confrontation with his neighbor last month.{} The conversation can be heard on hours of dashcam and body camera footage obtained by ABC News 4 Wednesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.{} Nisbet is also on the tapes, joking with a black police officer about race, arguing with his black neighbor to the point he had to be restrained and telling officers he looks out "for my boys in blue" despite being handcuffed following the Aug. 25 incident. "You know I always got y'alls back," Nisbet told the officer. "You don't worry about that. I always got y'alls back. You do what you got to do. If someone pulls a gun on you, you (expletive) shoot the (expletive) out of them."{} The incident happened after a repo man told 911 dispatchers that Leroy Fulton, Nisbet's neighbor, pointed a gun at him when he attempted to repossess Fulton's truck. {} Nisbet, who lives across the street from Fulton, told police he saw his neighbor point an object at the tow truck driver. He then chased Fulton down in his county-owned vehicle, blocked Fulton's pickup and stood with the gun pointed at the ground for at least 20 seconds as officers arrived and repeatedly demanded he drop the gun.{} The officers are heard on the tapes explaining the situation to their supervisor while trying to decide who to charge. Nisbet was suspended by Gov. Nikki Haley Thursday after he was indicted on a misconduct in office charge following an investigation by the State Law Enforcement Division.{} First officer: "The coroner had a gun in his hand. He wouldn't drop it."Second officer: "When you walk up to him you can smell alcohol on him ..."First officer: "He wouldn't put the gun down. He's yelling at us and we're yelling at him and he's yelling at us."Supervisor: "So you almost killed the coroner?""Basically."{}"Pretty much."{} Fulton, who has not been charged, denied he ever pulled a gun. He called Nisbet a "racist mother(expletive.)"{} Nisbet has come under fire recently after he ruled that the death of Shamir Palmer on Aug. 8 was "suicide-by-cop" because Palmer, who is black, raised a gun at the officers. He was also criticized for using the word "thug" in a Facebook post about Palmer. The National Action Network has urged Nisbet be removed from office. The governor's office cannot remove an elected official unless they're indicted for a crime involving moral turpitude. {} In the repo man's 911 call, Nisbet is overheard calling his neighbors the n-word while on the phone with a Summerville police captain.{} In the recently released video, Nisbet referred to his neighbor as "homeslice." "Homeslice pulled the gun out on him. He pulled the gun out right in the repo man's face and I was like, 'Oh hell, no.' Because I don't put up with that bull----," Nisbet said. "The last guy who pulled a gun out on a cop - you know I ruled that (expletive) suicide-by-cop - because if you pull a gun out on me I'm going to shoot your a--." He repeatedly referred to the black officer, as a "little skinny black guy" and joked with the officer that he was the victim of racism.{} "You pull a gun on somebody I'm going to pull a gun on you, too," Nisbet said. "But I'm the poor little white man in cuffs. That's some racist (expletive) -- I'm just messing with you."{} While talking to someone else, Nisbet said, "Hey they've got me in (expletive) handcuffs. Bullsh--. Some skinny little black guy has got me in handcuffs. They've got me in handcuffs because I stopped the guy who pulled the gun on the repo man." At one point another officer told the officer to "tell him to stop referring to you as a skinny black guy" but the officer said he was OK with it.{} Nisbet told the officer that he was going to "look out for my boys in blue, just like that last suicide-by-cop bullsh--." At one point, Fulton overheard Nisbet talking about him and they started arguing as officers held Nisbet back. {} "This black guy is looking at me like he wants to eat me for lunch," Nisbet said on the tape. "I don't care. I'll (expletive) kill him and plant him in my garden." First Circuit Solicitor David Pascoe declined to speak about the case because it's active but the officers at the scene provide some insight.{} After talking to Nisbet, Fulton and the repo man, the officers discuss why they don't think they should charge Fulton. "I'm not comfortable locking him up."{}"That's kinda what I'm thinking.""Which one?""He's in his own freakin' house.""I'm comfortable locking the coroner up.""We're not gonna do that."The officers laughed.{}"No, we can.""Really?"I'd arrest anybody.""Like, it was a good 30 seconds of us screaming for him to drop the gun before..."Supervisor: "Just make sure you write detailed reports." The officers discuss possibly issuing Nisbet a courtesy summons but eventually decide to let everyone go for the night.{} "It's not against the law to carry a gun if you're drinking as far as I know. It's against the law to discharge a firearm when you're under the influence of alcohol. As far as I know.""I'm fine with whatever ..."{}Do you think what he did was smart?""No absolutely not, especially when he was chasing the guy with blue lights on." The officers allude to the state's Castle Doctrine, which authorizes the lawful use of deadly force, under certain circumstances, against an intruder or an attacker at a person's home or vehicle. Officer: "You good with that? Not locking anybody up?""But the guy is on his own property.""Just because you're on your own property doesn't mean you can be pulling guns on people.""If someone's at your door and they won't leave." The officers decide not to make an arrest, noting that they can always file charges later.{}In one of their last conversations with Nisbet, the officers gave Nisbet some advice. "For future reference, when the police show up it's time to put the gun down," the officer told him.{} |
Douglas Carswell, one of Ukip’s most senior figures, has called on the party to stop making “the mistake of blaming outsiders” for Britain’s problems and described disliking foreigners as “not merely offensive, but absurd”. The former Tory MP’s comments came as a damning new poll showed Ukip had failed to win the support of young voters ahead of the general election in May, who were found to be six times more likely to choose the Green Party. Mr Carswell, whose by-election victory over his former party in October made him one of Ukip’s most influential faces and one of their two members in the Commons, said it was “interdependence that put the Great into Great Britain”. We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras. His comments come after party leader Nigel Farage defended the language used by Ukip candidate Kerry Smith, who mocked gay party members as “p******s”, joked about shooting people from Chigwell in a “peasant hunt” and referred to someone as a “C****y bird”. Mr Farage also made headlines last month when he blamed his lateness to a paid-for party event on “immigrants” causing greater traffic on the M4. Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Mr Carswell said: “Far from being a party that tolerates pejorative comments about people's heritage and background, Ukip in 2015 has to show that we have a serious internationalist agenda. “Ahead of May's General Election, we now have to show the whole country that we have what it takes to win big. That means an optimistic, internationalist and inclusive agenda for the whole country.” Shape Created with Sketch. Ukip gaffes and controversies Show all 18 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Ukip gaffes and controversies 1/18 European elections poster Party's latest EU election posters branded 'racist' and compared to BNP campaigns Rex 2/18 Farage 'car-crash' interview Ukip spin doctor forced to intervene as Farage falters in disastrous radio interview 3/18 Neil Hamilton Picture Exclusive: The year is 1998. The venue is a Springbok Club meeting. The flag is a symbol for white supremacists in South Africa. And the speaker is Ukip’s deputy chairman, Neil Hamilton 4/18 Kerry Smith Kerry Smith resigned as would-be MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock after it emerged he had mocked gay party members as “disgusting poofters”, joked about shooting people from Chigwell in a “peasant hunt” and referred to someone with a Chinese name as a “Chinky bird” PA 5/18 Natasha Bolter Former Ukip member Natasha Bolter was suspected of not having the teaching qualifications she professed to, only days after it was revealed that claims of her having attended Oxford University were also false PA 6/18 Ukip Calypso song Mike Reid released a single in praise of UKIP trying to control the UK's borders, only to withdraw the single after being accused of racism for singing in a Jamaican accent 7/18 Janice Atkinson Janice Atkinson, Ukip's South East chair, pictured by protesters while campaigning in Ashford, Kent with local party chair Norman Taylor Facebook/Maria Pizzey 8/18 Ukip cancels Freephone Ukip cancels Freephone number after protesters repeatedly called to push up costs Getty Images 9/18 Farage 'car-crash' interview Mr Farage appeared to be caught out on a number of issues, from Romanian neighbours to people speaking foreign languages on the train 10/18 Ukip employs illegal immigrants Ukip criticised after European election candidate found employing illegal immigrants AP 11/18 Magnus Nielsen Ukip candidate: 'Take away the right to vote to improve election turnout' Getty Images 12/18 Poster model A “British builder” portrayed in a Ukip poster accusing EU workers of taking UK jobs turns out to be an Irish actor - aka a migrant worker 13/18 'Arrest protesters' Ukip called for police to arrest protesters ‘who call us fascists’ ahead of showdown with anti-fascist groups in Brighton 14/18 London Live make-up Ukip's Nigel Farage reportedly refused to go on London Live 'without professional make up-artist' Reuters 15/18 Andre Lampitt Ukip forced to suspend the "poster boy" of its European election broadcast, after it was revealed he had posted a series of vile racist comments on Twitter 16/18 Expenses Nigel Farage says he is taking taking legal advice over “outrageous” allegations that he is responsible for more than £50,000 of “missing” EU funding that was paid directly into his personal bank account 17/18 Have I Got News For You Nigel Farage appears in Have I Got News For You, spends the entire episode being ridiculed over expenses and party 'fruitcakes' BBC 18/18 Anti-gay comments Local branch chairman for Ukip defends a party's councillor candidate Douglas Denny who called gay people “abnormal” and said he wished “they stop trying to ram it down my throat”, all while discussing whether the word “sodomite” should be used 1/18 European elections poster Party's latest EU election posters branded 'racist' and compared to BNP campaigns Rex 2/18 Farage 'car-crash' interview Ukip spin doctor forced to intervene as Farage falters in disastrous radio interview 3/18 Neil Hamilton Picture Exclusive: The year is 1998. The venue is a Springbok Club meeting. The flag is a symbol for white supremacists in South Africa. And the speaker is Ukip’s deputy chairman, Neil Hamilton 4/18 Kerry Smith Kerry Smith resigned as would-be MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock after it emerged he had mocked gay party members as “disgusting poofters”, joked about shooting people from Chigwell in a “peasant hunt” and referred to someone with a Chinese name as a “Chinky bird” PA 5/18 Natasha Bolter Former Ukip member Natasha Bolter was suspected of not having the teaching qualifications she professed to, only days after it was revealed that claims of her having attended Oxford University were also false PA 6/18 Ukip Calypso song Mike Reid released a single in praise of UKIP trying to control the UK's borders, only to withdraw the single after being accused of racism for singing in a Jamaican accent 7/18 Janice Atkinson Janice Atkinson, Ukip's South East chair, pictured by protesters while campaigning in Ashford, Kent with local party chair Norman Taylor Facebook/Maria Pizzey 8/18 Ukip cancels Freephone Ukip cancels Freephone number after protesters repeatedly called to push up costs Getty Images 9/18 Farage 'car-crash' interview Mr Farage appeared to be caught out on a number of issues, from Romanian neighbours to people speaking foreign languages on the train 10/18 Ukip employs illegal immigrants Ukip criticised after European election candidate found employing illegal immigrants AP 11/18 Magnus Nielsen Ukip candidate: 'Take away the right to vote to improve election turnout' Getty Images 12/18 Poster model A “British builder” portrayed in a Ukip poster accusing EU workers of taking UK jobs turns out to be an Irish actor - aka a migrant worker 13/18 'Arrest protesters' Ukip called for police to arrest protesters ‘who call us fascists’ ahead of showdown with anti-fascist groups in Brighton 14/18 London Live make-up Ukip's Nigel Farage reportedly refused to go on London Live 'without professional make up-artist' Reuters 15/18 Andre Lampitt Ukip forced to suspend the "poster boy" of its European election broadcast, after it was revealed he had posted a series of vile racist comments on Twitter 16/18 Expenses Nigel Farage says he is taking taking legal advice over “outrageous” allegations that he is responsible for more than £50,000 of “missing” EU funding that was paid directly into his personal bank account 17/18 Have I Got News For You Nigel Farage appears in Have I Got News For You, spends the entire episode being ridiculed over expenses and party 'fruitcakes' BBC 18/18 Anti-gay comments Local branch chairman for Ukip defends a party's councillor candidate Douglas Denny who called gay people “abnormal” and said he wished “they stop trying to ram it down my throat”, all while discussing whether the word “sodomite” should be used Meanwhile, a poll of 502 17-22 year olds by Opinium for The Observer found that Labour enjoyed an eight-point lead over the Tories among the age group when it came to May's general election, ahead by 26 per cent to 18 per cent. But of the 17 per cent who said they would vote outside the main three Westminster parties, almost seven in ten (69 per cent) intend to give their support to the Green Party with only 16 per cent choosing Ukip. And young people were also found to be predominantly pro-European, with 67 per cent saying they would vote to remain a member state. Finally, they were unimpressed by Mr Farage as a leader, with only 13 per cent agreeing that he did a good job and 64 per cent disagreeing – a net negative rating that was even worse than Nick Clegg’s. We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads. Subscribe now. |
A major Downtown building is poised to follow a makeover similar to the one being undertaken at the LeVeque Tower, where residential and office tenants are being welcomed and a boutique hotel is on the way. Columbus apartment developer Edwards Cos. has bought the PNC Plaza building on the south side of Broad Street between 3rd and 4th streets with an eye toward adding housing and a boutique hotel, an industry term for a smaller hotel in a unique setting. A major Downtown building is poised to follow a makeover similar to the one being undertaken at the LeVeque Tower, where residential and office tenants are being welcomed and a boutique hotel is on the way. Columbus apartment developer Edwards Cos. has bought the PNC Plaza building on the south side of Broad Street between 3rd and 4th streets with an eye toward adding housing and a boutique hotel, an industry term for a smaller hotel in a unique setting. The purchase price was $24 million, according to records filed with the Franklin County recorder's office. The buyer is listed as 155 Spec LLC, with a mailing address that matches Edwards' offices on High Street. Edwards has been talking to other developers about taking on parts of the development in partnership with it. Representatives of Edwards declined to comment. The seller, Arthur Goldner & Associates of Chicago, bought the property in 2001 for $40 million from the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio. The commercial real-estate service CoStar estimated the property's value at $18.2 million. In a phone interview, Arthur Goldner said the buyer approached him about the property, which was never formally listed. The deal leaves Goldner with no other holdings in Columbus, but he said his company is "aggressively seeking" other investment oportunities in central Ohio and across the Midwest. At the LeVeque building a couple of blocks to the west, apartments (being built by Kaufman Development) were 30 percent leased before the first ones started to be turned over to tenants this week. The Autograph hotel, a boutique Marriott brand, is scheduled to open at the LeVeque this year, and the building's owners have started to market office space in the iconic building. The PNC building and attached Galleria don't have the same historic pedigree as the 90-year-old LeVeque, which was for decades the tallest building in Columbus. The 24-story PNC building opened in 1976 and does not feature the ornate touches that characterize the LeVeque. However, the PNC is considered attractive Class A space with a good location directly across from the Statehouse and bounded by three major Downtown thoroughfares. Its sleek marble-clad exterior and parking garage also make it attractive. According to Goldner and CoStar, the building is about 80 percent leased. Major tenants include PNC bank and the Ohio Hospital Association. OhioHealth has 114 employees in about 26,000 square feet in the building; they will be moving to OhioHealth's recently announced new headquarters by early 2019. It's unclear what impact the sale will have on occupants. According to CoStar, two floors are vacant, as is much of the main floor of the Galleria building on S. 3rd Street. Sources familiar with the plans say Edwards hopes to reserve the tower's upper floors for residential units. Michael Copella, managing director in the Columbus office of commercial real-estate firm CBRE, said the deal is a positive sign for the improving health of the Downtown market. New housing is being absorbed as fast as it's being built, and many are finding it hard to locate top-tier Class A office space, he said. "We think that these types of deals could continue to happen," Copella said. "Office tenants like the amenities of a mixed-use building, and there is strong demand for Downtown housing." mrose@dispatch.com @MarlaMRose jweiker@dispatch.com @JimWeiker |
Robin Hood Minor Asset Management Cooperative (http://www.robinhoodcoop.org/) is an innovative alternative to Wall Street banks and financial institutions. It’s also the world’s first cooperatively owned hedge fund. Founded in Finland in 2012, the main purpose of the Robin Hood Co-op is to use experimental investment technologies to expand the commons and public domain, while offering ordinary people access to income outside of paid work. Among its founding members are several former economics professors from Aalto University (who were fired for starting the Robin Hood Co-op). The co-op presently has over 350 members from 15 different countries and is valued at roughly half a million euros. Like a hedge fund, the fund’s growth is based on the principle of producing new financial assets by hedging existing ones. Fund managers employ a data mining algorithm called “Parasite,” which follows all the transactions of the US stock markets, identifies the spreads and the star investors and follows their “swarming.” In other words, Parasite is designed to imitate the emerging consensus actions of the world’s best investors. In the nearly three years since its formation, it has consistently kept pace with the S&P index. In its first year the value of its portfolio rose 30.75%. In the second year, it rose another 9.4%. Since June 2014 it seems to be performing slightly under the S&P index. Profits are primarily used to fund anti-corporate projects that expand the commons or public domain. How to Join To join the cooperative, people need to buy one share (30 euros) and pay a onetime membership fee (30 euros). They can buy as many additional shares as they want at any point. Every member has one vote independent of the numbers of shares they own. They use it to vote in on-line member meetings, where important co-op issues are decided. They can also suggest Robin Hood Projects, become part of the selection board and participate in the work of the cooperative. For examples of proposed projects for to 2015 go to Projects. When new members buy shares, they are given six options for how they want their net profits (profit minus co-op’s costs) between themselves Robin Hood Projects. If they choose to keep more than 50% of the profit, there is a onetime fee. Once a month, the new money invested in shares is exchanged for dollars and sent to the co-op’s broker, Interactive Brokers, in New York. This creates a new series, which is invested based on information from the Parasite algorithm. Thus, the performance of the investment fund depends both on the euro/dollar exchange rate fluctuations and the success of the co-op’s investment portfolio on the stock exchange. Robin Hood Co-op is a “slow” investment organization. Thus people must notify the co-op management if they wish to sell their shares. The actual value of each share is calculated after the end of the fiscal year (end of June) when costs of the co-operative are deducted from them. Finnish law allows them to transfer monies from sold shares six months after the end of the fiscal year. People can also sell their shares to other members. Avoiding Outrageous Bank Fees The co-op website is set up to use Transferwise, a low cost non-bank method of overseas money transfer. In countries (like Australia and New Zealand) that aren’t set up yet for Transferwise, Robin Hood Co-op encourages members to avoid exorbitant bank charges by paying their membership fee and buying shares in bitcoins (BTC). I paid my 60 euros by exchanging $NZ 97for 0.27248653 BTC at Coined (a New Zealand bitcoin exchange) and using Coinbase to transfer the bitcoins to Robin Hood Co-op. The Obsolete “Means of Production” Narrative Above is Max Keiser’s interview with Daniel Hassan about Robin Hood Co-op (starts at 11:42). In it they discuss how the leftist “means of production” narrative is obsolete in a global economy where most wealth is produced via financial transactions. They also discuss how the Parasite algorithm works and how the co-op chooses activist projects to support with their profits. *Bitcoins are a type of digital currency which operate independently of any central bank and in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds. **Kiwibank is a full service commercial banked owned and operated by the New Zealand government. |
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