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Any self-respecting fan will want a copy for the living-room table.December 2009 (Indianapolis Monthly)
The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies is like a roller coaster ride. And, like the amusement park for children, there are no disappointments. Each one of the essays in the collection is original, unexpected in content and elegant in writing, skilled in the difficult art of intertextual references, intriguing conclusions and always theoretically founded....the authors of this enthusiastic, passionate and rigorous book question Lebowski with the same care with which we read the works of the most representative of contemporary intellectuals…January 6, 2010 (Sara Antonelli L'Unità [translation])
This book is the Dude's joint. The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies proves that academics can be very funny and even sometimes smart. (Percival Everett author of Erasure and American Desert)
Fantastic . . . not just a book to be passed around among film studies majors. It manages to be deeply smart and serious about its ideas without become stuffy and impenetrable. It’s also not one of those hokey knock-off, cash-in books that you see trying to jump on the coattails. If you’re holiday shopping, this should definitely make the cut.11/11/2009 (http://condalmo.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/dude-i-know/)
What could be more ridiculous than the application of Marxist, feminist, and other Very Serious theories to the orgy of goofiness that constitutes the Coen brothers' film? But the thing is, after reading the book's 21 essays, you can't help yourself. You find yourself thinking, Dude, it really is all in there: the updated Western, the Arthurian romance (think pee-stained rug as Holy Grail), the homage to Raymond Chandler, the critique of petro-capitalism, the riff on Rip Van Winkle (bowling, duh!).March/April 2010 (Indiana Alumni Magazine)
The essays are complex, evocative, approachable, and attentive to the film’s ironies and nuances. There is something here for the slacker as well as the scholar, for all Lebowskis, big and small, for film specialists, 90s fanatics, scholars of American studies, and the ever-growing assemblage of Lebowski cultists worldwide. (Patrick O'Donnell Michigan State University)
Dudely interesting. . . . Comentale and Jaffe have mixed up a provocative, truly strange cocktail of cultural studies and cultural theory. (Simon Critchley the New School for Social Research, author of The Book of Dead Philosophers)
If you're a 'Big Lebowski' collector . . . you may want to acquire this . . . illuminating book.December 31, 2009 (Washington Post)
More than a few of this book’s essay titles will make you groan and laugh out loud at the same time. . . . But just as often, the writing here is a bit like the film: amiable, laid-back and possessed of a wobbly Zen-acuity.December 30, 2009 (New York Times) |
About
The main purpose for this Kickstarter is to raise funds to publish my new book, 'A Drawing a Day: 365.' Any type of donation is appreciated, but the more you spend, the more you receive. There are plenty of cool rewards including the actual book, drawings, prints, posters, and comic strips.. so check them out, donate some $, and let's get this book made!
Below you will see some images showing examples of what the inside of this book is going to look like. The format will be pretty simple. Each page will showcase illustrations from each of the 365 days. There will be short descriptions attached to some of the drawings. The book will be roughly 300 pages, softcover, and be 9"x9".
Example of interior pages in 'A Drawing a Day: 365' book
More examples of interior pages in 'A Drawing a Day: 365' book
I have provided some examples of images of the prints, comics, drawings and posters available at the different reward tiers. Use these visual aids to get an idea of what you will be paying for:
$300 reward, 17x22 Poster, 'Robot vs. Monster'
$300 reward, 17x22 Poster, 'Mayan Apocalypse'
$200 reward, commissioned drawings, 11x14, example of style
$100 reward, example of 1 of 5 'Tiki and Pig' comic strip prints
$130 reward, example of random ORIGINAL drawing of the day (day 335 shown)
$80 reward, 11x17 Kal'Teka the Elephant God print (day 37 drawing)
$60 reward, 11x17 print of final drawing of the day (day 365) |
Over the years, Arvind Kejriwal has been bestowed many names – anarchist, upstart, populist, rebel, U-turn master, dictator, cough syrup enthusiast – but I never thought he’d be accused of making porn more accessible. That’s right, a BJP spokesperson, Nalin S Mehta, writing an op-ed for NDTV.com, points out that if AAP stick to their plan to give Delhi free wifi, it might encourage youngsters to watch porn on the streets of Delhi which will in turn will affect safety and security. I mean electricity and water is fine, but free porn, no one will ever vote him out of power, no matter how many intellectuals call him a tyrant.
Mehta wrote in the piece criticising the 100-day AAP government: ‘The first 100 days of the AAP in government are now over. The easiest part, of doling out subsidised water and electricity, have been implemented. Where the funds to maintain machinery and mechanisms will come from is not clear. Another populist promise of free Wi-Fi in public spaces across Delhi is said to be on the cards in the near future. What effect that will have on safety and security, with free porn available to watch for idle youth at every street corner, is yet to be even considered.’
Now it’s a time-honoured political tradition for opposition parties to be critical of the party in power. Congress led by Rahul Gandhi have been lambasting the Narendra Modi government after it completed a year (conveniently forgetting they have been the ruling party for the last decade), while the BJP is doing the same for the 100-day AAP government but the accusation of making porn more accessible is as flimsy as it gets!
This is seriously one of the daftest things that anyone from the BJP has said this year and this includes some very, very stupid comments. Of course we can understand the conundrum because politicians do get caught viewing porn in parliament, but for most normal people, we like to watch porn in the confines of our home, not random street corners! (Read: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who said the stupidest thing of them all?)
Porn and Sunny Leone – destroying India’s moral fabric!
It’s hilarious how many members of our upright society are so bothered about porn when the nation struggles to deal with more pressing issues like female foeticide, malnutrition, poverty, Saajid Khan making movies and Kamaal R Khan tweeting. This paranoia exists without any real research to back it up. Despite the lack of causal connection, people are convinced that the biggest problem that our society faces is porn (marital rape, on the other hand, is still A-okay)!
How else do you explain the sudden spate of FIRs filed against former adult star Sunny Leone? Like Hrithik Roshan’s sudden realisation about The Dress after three months, members of the public and some right-wing groups suddenly woke up to the fact that Miss Leone is alive and kicking in India. One of them was Arinjay Jain in Ajmer City who filed an FIR against Miss Leone, Google’s CEO and a Bollywood magazine for spreading obscenity. According to the allegedly upright Mr Jain, he bought a magazine which had obscene photos of Miss Leone, and he actually followed a website link given in the magazine and found more obscene pictures of the actress of the internet, following which he registered an FIR with the police (say what you will but you have to give Mr Jain credit for his perseverance, because as digital marketers will tell you, no one, no one follows a link which is mentioned offline).
Earlier, Sri Ram Sene leader Pramod Muthalik (whose organisation is best known for beating up women who drink in pubs), claimed that Miss Leone’s videos were the reason for an increase in rapes, kidnappings and murder. He was quoted saying: ‘Her (pornographic) videos are more popular than today’s item songs; she is more popular than Narendra Modi and has a larger fan base.’ Is that what this is really about, that dear leader is less popular than Miss Leone?
Earlier, a Mumbai housewife filed an obscenity charge against Sunny who claimed that she found pornographic material on her website while surfing the net. The Dombivali woman claimed: ‘Such posts poison the minds of people and especially children. This actor is coming here and displaying vulgarity. Bollywood films could earlier be watched with families. Today we cannot see them with our families. When I visited her website I found that it was not fit for viewing. That’s why I lodged this complaint’.
Is porn actually bad for you?
It has been, for a while, fashionable to blame everything from the rise of sexual assaults to impotency on porn (this is not just an India-specific problem). However, researchers are of the opinion that there’s nothing to suggest that porn addiction is any way, a real illness, similar to say drug or alcohol addiction. David Ley, a clinical psychologist was quoted saying: ‘There was no sign that use of pornography is connected to erectile dysfunction or that it causes any changes to the brains of users.’ But India seems to be convinced that porn is a big problem and the Supreme Court actually asked the Centre to ban porn (April 28, 2014) to which the Centre replied: ‘No-can-do’s-ville, baby doll.’ (Ok, I might be paraphrasing). But the Centre did say that banning porn would be very, very hard (particularly given its popularity with the political class).
Now speaking from a personal perspective, watching porn was a rite of passage to adulthood, similar to smoking a cigarette, and despite what some might think, we turned out fine. The only side-effect seemed to be that we want silly things like freedom of expression et al (and like the people who claim porn is bad, I have no statistics to back up this statement).
PS — I will leave you with a hilarious take on the porn ban by AIB. |
No one is saying leftists shouldn’t be allowed to speak on campus. It’s the double standard which is the problem.
Mediaite reports:
Berkeley Said No to Ann Coulter But Yes to Radical Leftist Sunsara Taylor
The University of California, Berkeley essentially barred Ann Coulter from speaking on campus at the end of April; but just over a week later, an admitted Communist will be hosting an event on campus, who’s asserts it’s “right…to drive fascists off campus,” as the sponsor put it.
Sunsara Taylor of “Refuse Fascism,” who is also a writer for the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA’s Revolution publication, will be speaking on Thursday at Berkeley’s Hearst Field Annex. Her publication’s Twitter account advertised the “drive fascists off campus” theme of the planned lecture.
An e-mail advertising the radical leftist’s event also disclosed her argument about the now-cancelled Coulter lecture: “The issue is not ‘free speech.’ the issue is fascism being imposed on America. Ann Coulter is a fascist operative with close ties to the Trump/Pence Regime.” |
Mark Starr
Communism and an International Language
Source: The Communist Review, February 1922, Vol. 2, No. 4.
Publisher: Communist Party of Great Britain
Transcription/Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2007). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
THE backwardness of Englishmen in the acquirement and use of foreign languages is well known. Centuries of island insularity, coupled with British economic world dominance, which brought language dominance in its train, made the English tongue the only one that Britons in general cared to know. Even now some of our comrades think that Uncle Sam will carry on where John Bull left off, and that English will become the world language. But even the British Association for the Advancement of Science decided, recently, that English or any other national tongue would be too likely to excite national jealousies to make its success possible. In view of the Revolution in Russia, and the awakening of Asia, this opinion will arouse no dissent—least of all in the ranks of Communists.
Attempts to remove language barriers can be traced back in England to that of Urquhart in 1653, while earlier Descartes and Leihnitz devoted some thought to the problem. But these attempts were in the direction of an a priori or philosophical universal language, while the recent protects take as their basis the material furnished by the great languages of Europe. It is easy to recognise that only capitalism produced the objective conditions which made the practical application of the idea possible. When Latin was the common language among the scholars of medieval Europe, it could hardly be said to be an international or universal language, because nations had no existence in the modern sense and Latin was merely the monopoly of the cultured few. Needless to say the solution which has stood the test and triumphed over ridicule, and is breaking down the barriers of apathy and opposition and winning acceptance in every land, did not fall from heaven. The author of Esperanto, Dr. L. Zamenhof, saw in his native town, Bialystok, in the sixties of the last century, the evil resulting from the language differences of the four races living there. Being a keen student of language after years of study and many attempts, he took from each language not only the roots for the construction of the words, but also the best features of the grammars. Thus resulted the ease of acquirement and the wonderful simplicity of the grammar with its sixteen rules without exceptions.
But the most splendid effort of the most brilliant of linguists, though he might be imbued with the loftiest idealism, would not secure the adoption of an international language if economic forces were not at work creating the conditions favourable to its growth. Modern capitalism does this in several ways.
(a) By the introduction of an uniform system of education within each country which lessens the effects of local dialects and gives to the written word a fixed form.
(b) By the advancement of the technique of transport and the facilities of communication within and without each nation which tends to annihilate the former barriers of distance.
(c) By increasing international trade relations. This is at first the cause of (b), but that factor reacts in turn.
Here, then, are the conditions which make an international language no longer a Utopian proposal. To say that economic supremacy will decide which language will triumph is to fall into the “deadening fatalism ” which our opponents so love to pass off as Marxism. As well say that man need not have invented the steam engine, but left it to evolve itself. That the Comintern does not share this error is proved by the fact that at the last Congress it set up a commission to enquire into the practical possibility of an international language and how best the Third International could put it into use. Our comrades of the ESKI (Esperantist section of the Communist International) will have an easy task to prove that Esperanto fills the bill, and from every point of view answers to the demands that Communists are likely to make upon an International language. Unfortunately the previous decision of Soviet Russia itself to make Esperanto a compulsory subject in the schools has never been fully put into operation because of lack of teaching facilities due to the Whites, although many teachers and much financial help have been officially provided. (Let me say in passing that Ido, the only language with any pretensions of being a rival to Esperanto, buys its very dubious “improvements ” at too great a cost in complication. While it appears easy to read, it is most certainly more difficult to write, speak, or understand when spoken. The super-signs in Esperanto—one practical objection of the Idists—can easily be procured from type-makers or be placed upon the type-writer, and they are the means by which the perfect alphabet of Esperanto exists. One is almost inclined to think that Lord Northcliffe, in writing a foreword to the primer of Ido, did so, not so much in the hope of advancing any one particular international language, as of discrediting Esperanto—the progress of which seems to him inimical to his Imperialist hopes.)
In the past Esperanto has been chiefly an interesting hobby for linguists, travellers and for stamp and other type of collectors, although there has always been a certain amount of “humanism” in its supporters. These “humanists” believed that if men only understood each other then universal peace would result. That phase is passing. The business world, Chambers of Commerce, Scientific Associations, the League of Nations and other bodies are beginning to use and enquire into it. The International Labour Office has issued several leaflets in Esperanto. And while the success of Esperanto on neutral grounds has never been so great as note, wherever the workers are sufficiently strong they organise themselves separately and regard Esperanto as a weapon in the class struggle (e.g., Paris has its own revolutionary Esperanto classes, and is the seat of the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, and in Germany there exists the G.L.E.A.). For reasons of efficiency the language question is of vital importance to the international working-class movement. If we want effective organisation we must have a common language. The time, energy and clearness lost in translation at Congresses are very obvious. Think how the literature of the movement would be enriched if each book by a single translation, or written originally in the international tongue, would be available at once to every speaking section of the working-class. The “neutral” Esperantists already have a weekly newspaper in Esp. (Esperanto Triumfonta, published in Cologne.) Why should not Communists follow suit? The pictures that Keynes gave us of the Supreme Council with only Clemenceau independent of interpreters must not be duplicated by anything in the Third International.
Granted that English stands a greater chance of adoption than French, German or Russian, this solution of the difficulty, even if it were technically possible, would not be the best way out. Why should we make others learn our language? Why not let each nation come half way to a neutral language and neither make the other stutter in a foreign tongue? After its simplicity, the neutrality of Esperanto is its greatest advantage. The result is that when Esperanto is used at International gatherings it is difficult to tell the nationality of the speaker; the experience of freely discoursing thus with comrades of other lands is an experience never to be forgotten. Apart from these considerations the adoption of English is impossible for technical reasons. Consider our spelling—the dead letters and irregular pronunciation—from the point of view of a foreigner who would need years of laborious effort to become proficient. The experts tell us that “our imperfect alphabet of 23 effective letters (c, q and x have no value of their own) have to represent about forty sounds. Compare this with the alphabet of Esperanto, in which each of the 28 letters has its one particular sound.” Spelling and pronunciation are never in conflict.
Ease of acquirement in Esperanto is secured by the fact that its grammar is the simplest imaginable. English suffers from its numerous irregularities. Esperanto has no “irregular” verbs, but by means of twelve unchanging endings the expression of every shade of time is attained. Then there is the system of word building, which by the use of unalterable prefixes and suffixes enables a dozen or more words to be constructed from one root. The roots themselves are taken from existing languages and all words already international, e.g., hotel, telegram, etc., are readily absorbed. A fairly well read person would recognise either by sight or sound seventy-five per cent. of the words used.
The practical successes of Esperanto are too great to be given here. After a debate in the Finnish Parliament, 25,000 marks were voted in aid of the Esperanto Society of Finland. Its introduction into the schools was favoured and is being further investigated by the League of Nations. The Chamber of Commerce of Paris, with those of other French towns, favours it. It is already being taught in day schools in Britain at Eccles, Keithley, Barry, Leeds, Rutherglen and Worcester and elsewhere. [Incidentally in these schools it has been found to greatly improve the English of the students and helps as an introduction to other languages.] Abroad it is making still faster progress. It is being taught in day schools in twenty towns in Germany; and the Canton of Geneva has introduced if into its schools; in Bulgaria twenty-nine Real-gymnasia have Esperanto classes. These successes are quoted merely to show that we are not endeavouring to interest Communists in a new fad which has not stood the test of experience. Our Party is out to achieve an international aim for which an international consciousness is necessary. The matter cannot be left merely to party leaders, to polyglots, linguists, or to Conferences. The rank and file must come in. The classes already started in our movement must be increased. Here is scope for practical activity. The Communist Youth Movement can here not only talk about internationalism and indulge in flag-wagging, but help to prepare the way for direct international contact. Why not an ESKI section in Great Britain? Cannot we in England contribute something to the culture of the future?
The herd group had its inarticulate cries which, with man, grew later into articulate speech. By language thought was transmitted from man to man and from age to age, and a great chasm in due time divided man from the beast. Again the conditions are ripe for another leap—man’s horizon is again to be widened by increasing his means of understanding. We need and shall need the weapon of an auxiliary language in the class struggle. |
Anthony Comegna: History is the grand catalog of human action in the past. At its broadest, it encompasses everything that everyone everywhere has ever done. No doubt, this makes for a large subject. Few historians however practice the biggest history there is. Rather, we tunnel down, often as far as we can go. We follow the lives of individuals and groups, in usually very specific time periods. [00:00:30] At the root of it all, whatever the subject matter, there is human action. The constant stream of choices made by historical actors are the fundamental building blocks of larger narratives.
This is Liberty Chronicles, a project of Libertarianism.org. I’m Anthony Comegna. Too often, however, historians forget that only individuals act, and they fail to assign agency to particular people. “France, China, or America does X, Y, or Z. The Church launches crusades. The Nation charges forward to war.” I’m not on some semantic crusade of my own here. There is room for these terms, but we have to pair our use of collectives with a more fundamental practice of methodological individualism. Only individuals have ever acted, and for every action, [00:01:30] there was someone or several someones responsible.
If all history is about individual actions, and all individual actions are based on some sort of perceived self-interest on the part of the actor, one may conclude that chronicles of an historical actor’s life would reveal patterns about how they expected to fulfill those interests. Over days and weeks, we make perhaps millions of economizing decisions, many of which are social in nature, and include [00:02:00] one or more other individuals. Each person who willingly associates with the group does so because they prefer participation to nonparticipation. Individual interests are served by creating and supporting some sort of group interest, through which each person involved can benefit from the coordination.
Those individuals or groups with benevolent or even neutral ends pose no threats to peaceful libertarian folks, but almost inevitably, there seem to emerge social groupings whose individual and by extension group motivations appear to be positively malevolent. The classic example is Spectre, from the James Bond series, but real-world examples abound. Social groups serving the interests of individual members take on enumerable different forms of appearance, serving a variety of purposes, and they are by no means equal in their abilities to unjustly wield [00:03:00] accumulated power. Whatever the case may be, whatever the situation you’re investigating though, there is a certain important sense in which all history is conspiracy. It is the story of individuals and groups operating solely for the advancement of individual ends. I first encountered this idea as a tool for historical interpretation in an article by Murray Rothbard from Reason Magazine, April 1977.
Reader:The Conspiracy Theory of History Revisited, by Murray N. Rothbard. Anytime that a hard-nosed analysis is put forth of who our rulers are, or of how their political and economic interests interlock, it is invariably denounced by establishment liberals and conservatives, and even by many libertarians, as a conspiracy theory of history, paranoid, economic-determinist, and even Marxist. These smear labels are applied across the board, even though such realistic [00:04:00] analysis can be and have been made from any and all parts of the economic spectrum, from the John Birch Society to the Communist Party.
The most common label is conspiracy theorist, almost always leveled as a hostile epithet rather than adopted by the conspiracy theorist himself. It is no wonder that usually, these realistic analyses are spelled out by various extremists who are outside the establishment consensus, for it is vital to the continued rule of [00:04:30] the state apparatus that it have legitimacy and even sanctity in the eyes of the public, and it is vital to that sanctity that our politicians and bureaucrats be deemed to be disembodied spirits solely devoted to the public good. Once let the cat out of the bag that these spirits are all-too-often grounded in the solid earth of advancing a set of economic interests through use of the state and the basic mystique of government begins to collapse.
Let us take an easy example. Suppose [00:05:00] we find that Congress has passed a law raising the steel tariff, or imposing import quotas on steel. Surely, only a moron would fail to realize that the tariff or quota was passed at the behest of lobbyists from the domestic steel industry anxious to keep out efficient foreign competitors. No one would level a charge of conspiracy theorist against such a conclusion, but what the conspiracy theorist is doing is simply to extend his analysis to more complex measures of government, [00:05:30] say, to public works projects, the establishment of the ICC, the creation of the Federal Reserve System, or the entry of the United States into a war.
In each of these cases, the conspiracy theorist asks himself the question, “Cui bono? Who benefits from this measure?” If he finds that measure A benefits X and Y, his step is to investigate the hypotheses, “Did X and Y in fact lobby or exert pressure for the passage of measure A?” In short, [00:06:00] did X and Y realize that they would benefit and act accordingly? Far from being a paranoid or a determinist, the conspiracy analyst is a praxeologist, that is, he believes that people act purposively, that they make conscious choices to employ means in order to arrive at goals. It is the opponents of conspiracy analysis who profess to believe that all events, at least in government, are random and unplanned, and that therefore, people do not engage in purposive [00:06:30] choice and planning.
There are of course good conspiracy analysts and bad analysts, just as there are good and bad historians or practitioners of any discipline. The bad conspiracy analyst tends to make two kinds of mistakes which indeed leave him open to the establishment charge of paranoia. First he stops with the cui bono. If measure A benefits X and Y, he simply concludes that, “Therefore, X and Y were responsible.” He fails to realize that this [00:07:00] is just a hypothesis, and must be verified by finding out whether or not X and Y really did so.
Secondly, the bad conspiracy analyst seems to have a compulsion to wrap up all the conspiracies, all the bad guy power blocks, into one giant conspiracy, instead of seeing that there are several power blocks trying to gain control of government, sometimes in conflict and sometimes in alliance. He has to assume, again, without evidence, that a small group of men controls them all, and only [00:07:30] seems to send them into conflict. These reflections are prompted by the almost blatant fact, so blatant as to be remarked on by the major news weekly, that virtually the entire top leadership of the new Carter administration, from Carter and Mondale on down, are members of the small semi-secret Trilateral Commission, founded by David Rockefeller in 1973 to propose policies for the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, and/or members of the board of the Rockefeller Foundation. [00:08:00] The rest are tied in with Atlanta corporate interests, and especially, the Coca Cola Company, Georgia’s major corporation.
How do we look at all this? Do we say that David Rockefeller’s prodigious efforts on behalf of a certain statists public policies are merely a reflection of unfocused altruism, or is there pursuit of economic interest involved? Was Jimmy Carter named a member of the Trilateral Commission as soon as it was founded because Rockefeller and the others wanted to hear the wisdom of an obscure Georgia governor, or was [00:08:30] he plucked out of obscurity and made president by their support? Was J. Paul Austin, head of Coca Cola, an early support of Jimmy Carter merely out of concern for the common good?
Were all of the Trilateralists, and Rockefeller Foundation, and Coca Cola people chosen by Carter simply because he felt that they were the ablest people for the job? If so, it’s a coincidence that boggles the mind, or, are there more sinister political/economic interests involved? I submit that the knaves [00:09:00] who stubbornly refuse to examine the interplay of political and economic interest in government are tossing away an essential tool for analyzing the world in which we live.
Anthony Comegna: Though it is today derided, history as conspiracy has a long and respected pedigree. With Rothbard, we can add most of the progressive historians, many of their New Left descendants, and a great number even of today’s historians from below. Richard Hofstadter famously [00:09:30] wrote about the paranoid style in American politics. From the Puritans, who saw Satan’s minion behind every tree, to the revolutionaries, who blamed the king for everything, to the Jacksonians, who elevated paranoia and conspiracy theory to a way of life and even a national mythos, for many generations of Americans, the Conspiracy Theory of History was part of a larger world view, according to which some elite few have always exploited the great [00:10:00] masses.
Despite the colonists attempts to escape Old World power, the beast sprouted New World heads to torment the people still. The Progressive generation’s interpretation of the so-called Founding Fathers is perhaps best represented by Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, 1913. Beard built upon Carl Becker’s argument that the American Revolution was really two struggles. It was the contest over whether [00:10:30] there would be home rule in the Americas, and a fight over who should rule at home once the trans-Atlantic dust settled. While the 1783 Treaty of Paris resolved the question of home rule, who shall rule at home remained an open and explosive subject.
According to Beard, colonial elites circled their collective wagons and orchestrated the coup we lovingly call the Constitutional Convention. There, they constructed a document which protects a variety of interests, [00:11:00] landed, moneyed, planter, manufacturing, and on and on, while denying the states or the people any real ability to constrain Leviathan. If the Constitutional Convention was a coup, its participants were all conspirators of one stripe or another. Beard diligently detailed the personal interests of each delegate, and either uncovered or inferred direct causal links to the document produced. Cold War-era historians were right to note that not all decisions are made on the basis [00:11:30] of mere economic self-interest, but even conspiracies between ideologues are conspiracies.
There they were, in Philadelphia, plotting to replace the government with one of their own creation. Once put to popular votes, the Constitution received the suffrages of only about 6% to 8% of the population. Whose law is it then? Should every single one of us be forced to live under this particular Constitutional regime [00:12:00] because a small cabal of merchants, bankers, slave holders, slave traders, speculators, and otherwise unscrupulous figures duped 6% to 8% of the people into being accomplices? America did nothing to produce the Constitution. It was the product of particular men and their particular interests. I asked the Cato Institute’s other resident historian, Jason Kuznicki, “Is history really all about conspiracy?”
Jason Kuznicki: Conspiracy [00:12:30] theory, it’s sort of a motte-and-bailey domain in history. There’s a famous way to characterize arguments as having a motte-and-bailey approach. The motte is the defended position. It’s the castle in the middle of the town, where nobody can assail it. This is the argument at its very strongest form. The bailey is where there are no defenders around, there are no opponents around, and you can run around, unsecured, [00:13:00] and make wild accusations. Conspiracy theory I think has a motte-and-bailey character to it.
In a sense, there have been very real conspiracies in history. There have been. Lincoln’s assassination was a conspiracy. It actually was a group of people meeting together in secret with a plan that involved killing the president, and they did it. That was a conspiracy. September 11th was a conspiracy. A group of people got together to commit [00:13:30] acts of terrorism. They all agreed that it would happen in a certain way, and for the most part, they executed their plan. These are real conspiracies.
Now, there are other conspiracies that are much less real, that the CIA is using mind control by way of cellphone towers, or fluoride in the drinking water, or whatever. This is the bailey of conspiracy theories. You can begin with the observation that conspiracies [00:14:00] have happened, which is true and unassailable, and then you can progress from there to increasingly wild and unsupported conspiracies that are less and less and less credible. It’s not necessarily clear, by the way, where the motte ends and the bailey begins, if you will, because there are some conspiracy theories that have varying degrees of plausibility to them.
Is Vladimir Putin assassinating his political rivals? [00:14:30] Well, yeah. It really, really looks that way, even if, in every single case, we don’t necessarily have all of the evidence that we might need to convict him in an American court. It still looks like he’s doing it. That’s relatively plausible, but it’s not as well-evidenced as, say, the Lincoln assassination.
Anthony Comegna: Have you encountered in your personal research any conspiracy theories that were the real, classic, smoke-filled room, or scheming court aristocrat-style conspiracy?
Jason Kuznicki: Well, [00:15:00] one of my favorites is an old classic, which is that Thomas Jefferson and his Freemason associates planned the French Revolution and caused it to happen. What makes this one very interesting is that there is a kernel of truth to it no matter how much you want to deny it. There were, in fact, Freemasons who were very active in the French Revolution, and they were some of the key players [00:15:30] in the revolution. Lafayette was a Freemason. Jefferson himself was a Freemason. Can you say that they planned the French Revolution?
Well, Lafayette was one of the key players in the French Revolution. In a sense, yes, but were they really pulling all the strings? Were they the ones who made it happen in all of its particulars? That’s impossible to say. You cannot say that. That’s completely unfounded. If it were not for the ordinary people of Paris, if it were not [00:16:00] for the ordinary people of the countryside, the French Revolution would not have happened. It would have been crushed, and it would have been remembered as a momentary incident. It would not have been remembered as this great, world-changing event, which it actually was.
Yes, there was a Masonic element to the French Revolution. That’s well-evidenced. That’s undeniable. Did the Freemasons get together and say, “Hey, we’re going to have a revolution. It’s going to be in France. This is what’s going to happen.” No. [00:16:30] That is not supportable.
Anthony Comegna: What I hear you saying is that tens of thousands of average French men and women were also devil-worshiping, Luciferian communists. Is that correct?
Jason Kuznicki: No. They were hungry. They were scared. They were tired of being oppressed. They had political ideas, which historians still debate the degree to which the Enlightenment had percolated down to the ordinary people, but they had political ideas that were in many senses new, [00:17:00] and they wanted to act on them. It was a big, messy, complicated thing. As I often say about history, there are few truly world-changing events like the French Revolution that don’t arise from multiple causes. The French Revolution certainly did. It had lots of different causes.
Anthony Comegna: Catherine Williams was one of many women historians writing for a popular audience in the Jacksonian era. Among her many volumes [00:17:30] with an historical cast is the Neutral French, or, the Exiles of Nova Scotia, 1841. As was the style at the time, Williams blamed Great Britain and diplomatic court intrigue for the French Revolution, and an unknowable number of other historical events. She writes, “When the secrets of all men shall be disclosed at the Great Day, it is presumable that the exposé of court diplomacy will reveal the greatest mystery of iniquity [00:18:00] the whole assembled universe can produce. If the real origin of many of the disturbances that have deluged Europe in blood, divided the councils, and destroyed the resources of nations could be known, in 19 cases out of 20, the intriguers of foreign courts would be found at the bottom of them, and in 9 cases out of 10, during the last 500 years, England has been the intriguer.”
Okay, maybe Catherine Williams was one of those over-eager [00:18:30] amateurish historians Rothbard was talking about when he said, “The conspiracy theorist’s big mistake is lumping everything into the same conspiracy.” The British monster wasn’t the only creature stretching its tentacles across the globe, after all. Nonetheless, you have to admit, she has a point. Even the history of great national events comes down to the decisions made by particular people. Liberty Chronicles is a project of Libertarianism.org. [00:19:00] It is produced by Tess Terrible. To learn more about Liberty Chronicles, visit Libertarianism.org. |
For all the talk about the surging yen as the biggest threat to Japan's embattled economy, the truth is that there is another soaring currency (and asset) that is far more troubling for Shinzo Abe.
Gold.
While in past decades, the natural instinct of Japanese savers when faced with financial uncertainty has been to rush into the "safety" of cash (after all why allocate funds to government bonds that yield almost, or less, than nothing) as we recently showed in Safes Sell Out In Japan and Demand For Big Bills Soars As Japan Stuffs Safes With 10,000-Yen Notes, now something has changed. That something is increasing loss of faith in Japan's currency.
Take the case of Tetsushi Kudo, a 50-year-old office worker, who as Bloomberg writes, bought a one-ounce gold coin this month for the first time. With stocks slumping and zero percent interest on savings, he says it won’t be the last.
"I want to buy gold every year as a birthday present for my daughter,” Kudo said at a store in Tokyo’s posh Ginza district where he made the 162,000 yen ($1,600) purchase. “She will thank me for the gift when she grows up because gold will have value wherever she goes.”
What a delightful epiphany: if ordinary, 50-year-old Japanese citizens can get it why not Nobel-prize winning economists?
Ignore that please.
Individual investors like Kudo drove a 60% jump in sales of the precious metal in June from May at Tanaka Holdings Co., the operator of Japan’s largest bullion retailer, as the yen’s rebound against the dollar made it more affordable. Why the surge into gold? Because far behind the glitzy facade of Abenomics, which is really just the BOJ intervening daily in the USDJPY via trust banks, and manipulating the Nikkei to give the impression that all is well, the people have checked out. According to Bloomberg, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling party scored a convincing victory in July 10 upper house elections, confidence in his economic policies is crashing. A July 2-3 Asahi newspaper poll showed 55% of those surveyed support a new direction versus 28% for maintaining course.
While both gold and the Yen have soared in 2016, it has been for oddly similar reasons. The yen’s 20% gain this year, slightly less than that of USD-denominated gold, has been a reflection of Japanese investors fleeing from overseas markets due to pessimism about global growth rather than confidence in their own economy. As for the reason why Japanese interest in gold has soared, it is an even simpler one: fear that the days of the Yen as a stable currency are numbered. Gold in yen terms has risen 7.5% this year, compared with the 28% jump in the dollar-based price of the metal
Gold sales more than tripled at Tanaka’s shops on June 24, when the Japanese currency jumped to an almost three-year high against the dollar after the U.K. decided to exit the European Union. Japan’s Topix stock gauge dropped the most in five years the day after the Brexit referendum, while 10-year sovereign bond yields tumbled further below zero.
"For investors, buying gold is similar to casting a no-confidence vote," saidItsuo Toshima, 68, an investment adviser and former regional manager for the World Gold Council in Tokyo. "Gold is the unprintable currency, unlike the yen. The yen’s appreciation in spite of the adoption of the negative-rate policy has kindled skepticism about the policy’s benefits. It’s also led to investors seeking to protect their assets in case Abenomics fails.”
Another traditional lament said about gold is that it pays no dividend. Well, when the return on other "safe assets" is negative - as it the case in Japan - gold does have a relative real return. Indeed, gold’s lack of yield isn’t a big draw-back for investors at a time when almost 90% of Japanese government bonds have yields below zero, according to Eiichiro Kato, a general manager at Tanaka’s precious metals retail department. The benchmark 10-year JGB yield was at minus 0.28 percent on Monday.
And then there are the philosophical questions.
“We don’t know who will take responsibility for reducing Japanese government debt,” said Akihiro Morishige, a senior economist at Mitsubishi Research Institute.
What reduction in Japanese government debt?
“If trust in Japan’s fiscal policy decreases, Japanese long-term interest rates may soar towards 5 percent by 2030.”
Make that 500%.
What makes Japan's gold rush more unique than in most countries is that many are not only buying gold as protection against a crash, they are storing it abroad as protection against confiscation as we reported last week. Japanese buyers of gold to store in Switzerland jumped 62% in the first six months from the second half of 2015 because of negative interest rates and concern the yen will eventually weaken, according to BullionVault Ltd., an online trading and storage company. Also: due to fears that Abe will pull an "Executive Order 6102", and force gold confiscation from the population.
Meanwhile, as they flood into gold, Japanese investors are retreating from riskier assets as the nation’s shares plunge. Households’ holdings of equities decreased 9.9% from a year earlier at the end of March and investment trusts fell 3.7 percent while their cash and bank deposits rose 1.3 percent to 894 trillion yen, the second-highest amount on record, according to BOJ data.
“Gold is attractive because its prices don’t move much, compared with other assets,” said Kudo, the buyer of the coin in Ginza. “I may lose lots of money if I buy stocks without doing much research on them."
Come to think of it, he is 100% right; making things worse, he may - and likely will - lose lots of money even if he buys stocks having done lots of research on them.
The good thing about gold: no research required for it to "work." Only lots and lots of stupid politicians and economists. Luckily, we have more than enough of those. |
Women’s waiting area at the Sixty Dome Mosque in Bangladesh. (Photo: Flickr/joiseyshowaa)
This past week, Scandinavia’s first women-led mosque opened in Denmark, joining a small community of newly-established mosques intended for and led by women, including the Women’s Mosque in Los Angeles and a planned mosque in the United Kingdom.
These efforts might be taking their cues from a surprising source: China.
In Denmark, Sherin Khankan, an author and commentator, spearheaded the effort, making the motivations behind the mosque’s establishment clear to The Guardian,”We have normalised patriarchal structures in our religious institutions. Not just in Islam, but also within Judaism and Christianity and other religions. And we would like to challenge that.
The new mosque has not been without controversy. The Guardian reports that prominent Danish imam Waseem Hussein asked a Danish newspaper, “Should we also make a mosque only for men?”
Some might respond that the majority of mosques essentially are only intended for men—women are frequently segregated by a partition or in a separate room, and some women argue that the women’s spaces tend to be inferior. Activists also point out that because imams are overwhelmingly male—in 2011, there were no female imams (imama) in America—khutbah (sermons) rarely speak to women’s spiritual lives. Women also may not feel comfortable consulting a male imam on religious or personal matters.
These issues and others mean that Khankan is not the only Muslim feminist seeking to challenge Islamic patriarchy. Journalist Asra Nomani, who in 2003 demanded the right to pray in the main prayer hall (musallah) of her mosque, has drafted an Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in Mosques, and prominent Muslim feminists were sharply critical of President Obama’s decision to visit a gender-segregated mosque earlier this month. Scholars such as Latifa Akay argue there is no religious reason for gender segregation, attributing such practices to subjective interpretation influenced by cultural norms. Instead, Akay and others believe that gender equality is very much a part of the Islamic tradition, telling Quartz, “Having women as leading figures in Muslim communities and mosques should not be seen as something new or surprising.”
Indeed, while there is generally accepted religious law prohibiting imama from leading mixed-gender groups in prayer, other practices such as excluding women from the musallah or limiting women’s roles as religious leaders are more debatable. In fact, in Chinese Muslim (Hui) communities, women’s mosques and female religious leaders have existed for quite some time.
Xiaotaoyuan Women’s Mosque, Shanghai, China. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Chongkian)
In China, women’s mosques are called nüsi, and records indicate they have existed for over 300 years. The oldest nüsi still in existence—Wangjia Hutong Nüsi in Henan province—dates to 1820. Women and girls attending the nüsi are lead by female religious leaders known as ahong. The ahong’s role is varied and can include providing education, leading religious ceremonies, or providing moral guidance and counseling. Hui women even have their own religious chants—jingge—although they fell out of practice during Mao Tsetung’s harsh Communist crackdown on religious activity. Ethnologist Maria Jaschok documented how jingge are beginning to re-emerge in nüsi in a working paper:
Everyone was enthralled, particularly as none of the younger women and girls had ever heard jingge. From this unexpected beginning, when the elderly Muslim woman Li Xiangrong recalled a chant known as kuhua (Grieving Song), women together with researchers have begun to collect chants, sometimes mere fragments, which were once the staple of women’s mosques. Li Xiangrong, from the famous Wangjia Hutong Women’s Mosque in Kaifeng, has stirred rememberings in others of her generation, and the elderly women have begun to teach kuhua to young girls and have started to talk of what life was like for earlier generations of women, particularly the years before the 1949 Communist government, when jingge were at their height of popularity.
Although the Communist government curtailed religious activity for many years, some Chinese Muslim women feel other aspects of Communist doctrine are what have allowed women to retain their roles as religious leaders. In an interview with the Women’s UN Report Network, Wu Yulian explained:
The Chinese Communist Party liberated us from the kitchen and it gave us the same duties and obligations as men. I believe that men and women are equal by nature and that the practice of restricting women in some parts of the Middle East, like not allowing them outside, not allowing them to drive or be seen by men is really unfair and excessive.
Yao Baoxia, an ahong at Wangjia Hutong, echoed this sentiment in an interview with NPR: ”The status is the same. Men and women are equal here, maybe because we are a socialist country.”
However, as the Women’s UN Report Network notes, the Hui community’s growing interaction with the rest of the Islamic world may invite controversy over the nüsi. When WUNRN asked Zhao Hongmei, a student at Yinchuan’s Institute for the Study of Islam and the Koran, if she would like to become an ahong, she bluntly replied, “Women aren’t allowed to be ahong.” Similarly, Guo Baoguang, of the Islamic Association of Kaifeng, told NPR that he has received complaints over including ahong in religious education forums. “There were some criticisms that women ought to be in the home, and ought not take part in social activities.”
But it’s possible that the increased dialogue could have the opposite effect. As Guo points out, China’s rising economic power comes with political and social clout. “The developments Chinese Islam has made, like the role played by Chinese women, will be more accepted by Muslims elsewhere in the world,” she says. |
By
BURLINGTON, Vt. — Staffers working on the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., say they are thrilled after having broken a new fundraising record for the longtime congressman, raising four colorful Volkswagen buses and nearly half a pound of top-tier marijuana after only one week. This beats his previous coffer of four hemp necklaces and a six-pack of local microbrew that he raised for his senatorial bid in 2006.
Campaign manager Lisa Paulson says that she is “totally stoked,” and that with four working vehicles and ample pot, volunteers will be able to fan out and win the support of the nation’s college students who are vital to spreading the message that Sanders is the best candidate because he’s into “Scandinavian-style democratic socialism or whatever.”
While the four VW buses and drugs are enough to get the campaign off to a good start, Sanders will need much more if he wants to be a serious contender for the Democratic nomination in 2016.
“We’re hoping someone will donate a converted school bus with a Bernie-sized bed in it, and we’ll also need at least a ton of really good skunk so Bernie can spend all of next spring meeting voters, getting stoned with them, and giving factoids like how by law, women in Sweden can’t be fired, and they have 382 weeks of paid maternity leave,” Paulson said. “And in Denmark, there are six teachers for every student.”
“Also, free healthcare in Norway is so good that a child born today will grow to be seven feet tall and live to be 145 years old,” she added. “And Scandinavians have found a really good solution for dealing with growing prison populations. Did you know that jails in Finland have been replaced with wallless Montessori-style preschools where inmates are allowed to play out their frustrations?”
A source from inside the Sanders team said that their most ambitious fundraising goal is to acquire 100,000 clean pieces of cardboard and hundreds of new markers to make “Philadelphia or Bust” posters for volunteers who are expected to need transportation to the Democratic National Convention in July of next year.
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Mr Steinbruck has not minced his words Germany's finance minister has strongly criticised Gordon Brown's plans for reviving the UK economy, describing them as a "breathtaking" and "crass". But sources close to the British government hit back, saying Berlin was "out of step" with most nations on how to handle the crisis. Peer Steinbruck had criticised the UK's decision to cut VAT and raise the national debt to record levels. His attack came before EU leaders met for an economic summit in Brussels. The two-day meeting on Thursday and Friday has been billed as one of the most important summits for years. In addition to seeking agreement on a new climate change deal, leaders are trying to agree backing for the European Commission's planned 200bn euros ($267bn; £178m) Europe-wide economic stimulus package. Diplomatic breach French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who will be chairing the talks, said in a letter to fellow leaders: "We shall be required to take a series of decisions with highly significant implications for the future of Europe." Germany is less than happy with the direction being taken in the UK, and was expected at the summit to question the European Commission's recovery package along similar lines. Mr Steinbruck's comments, in an interview with Newsweek magazine, represented an unusual breach of diplomatic conventions. He questioned the effectiveness of the decision to cut VAT from 17.5% to 15%. "Are you really going to buy a DVD player because it now costs £39.10 instead of £39.90?" he said. "All this will do is raise Britain's debt to a level that will take a whole generation to work off." 'Tossing around billions' Mr Steinbruck questioned why Britain was "tossing around billions" and closely following the high public spending model put forward by 20th Century economist John Maynard Keynes. "The switch from decades of supply-side politics all the way to a crass Keynesianism is breathtaking," he said. Shadow chancellor George Osborne said the comments shattered Labour's charge that only the Conservatives oppose the VAT measures. BBC political correspondent Jo Coburn said sources close to Downing Street and the Treasury were unhappy about the comments. But she said they dismissed them by saying that Germany "was in a minority position and out of step with most other countries on how to deal with the looming recession". Downing Street also pointed out that Germany has already introduced its own package of extra spending. Chancellor Alistair Darling announced in last month's pre-Budget report that the government would inject an extra £20bn into the UK economy in a bid to get it moving again. Rescue package And combined with the impact of the downturn on tax receipts, the chancellor said that the UK's total annual public sector deficit would soar to £118bn next year. While Mr Steinbruck has accused the UK of over-spending on the economic recovery, the German government has put 480bn euros (£370.4bn; $645bn) into a rescue package for its banks. Most other European governments have also increased public spending to try to ease the impact of the economic downturn. France recently announced plans to spend 26bn euros. A Treasury spokesman said: "There is a broad international consensus that a fiscal stimulus is the right thing for economies now."
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Tomorrow was Hearth's Warming, and all through the tree,
Not one creature stirred in that library.
The socks had been hung on the one fireplace,
In hopes that the princess would soon show her face.
In his bed sleeping sound was baby dragon Spike,
He was looking forward to tomorrow, the scaled little tyke.
Now I in my covers & Owlowiscious on his perch,
Both settled our brains from a day of research.
When out in the village a ruckus arose,
One that awoke me from my comfy doze.
I arose from my slumber and went to the window,
and looked out on the town that was covered in snow.
The moonlight gleamed bright on our quiet town,
All signs of yesterday the snowfall did drown.
When, what do my wondering eyes soon spy,
But a pure black sleigh pulled by eight pegasi!
The snow started swirling in a blinding typhoon,
And I knew it must be the princess of the moon.
Going into a dive they started their run,
With Luna now shouting the name of each one.
"On Flitter, on Chaser, on Soarin' and Surprise,
On Snowflake, on Rainbow, on Derpy and Blue Skies!
To the top of the branches, to the top of the leaves,
We must visit the house of everypony that believes!"
As she gave her blessings the group did proceed,
Flying low to the snow at a breakneck speed.
They came to my tree and began to ascend,
Complete with Luna and the toys her sister would send.
Though it seemed to take no longer than one sec,
I soon heard their hooves stomping out on my deck.
As I whirled around I saw her hop off her ride,
And grabbing her toys in my place she did stride.
She was dressed in her garb from her hoof to her head,
White fluffy trim with the rest velvet red.
A bundle of toys she'd suspended in the air,
And a smile crept up as she got ready to share.
Her eyes were like pools of the deepest shade of blue,
And only her mane could match that kind of hue.
She had a long face and was lacking her crown,
But her new red cap held even more renown.
Her smile had turned to a full-fledged grin,
And pulling out a ruby she prepared to begin.
She stifled her noise as she gingerly trotted,
Before making sure Spike received the gifts she'd allotted.
Her garb was quite silly and I muffled my laugh,
She was doing all this on the children's behalf.
We did not speak, but that was her choice,
The princess was not known for her softness of voice.
She filled up our socks as quiet as she could,
Before turning to face me right where I stood.
She looked me in the eyes and gave me a wink,
And I knew in that moment that we were in sync.
She flew out to her sleigh and motioned to her team,
And they began flying to keep up Luna's scheme.
But I heard her exclaim, as she prepared to leave,
"Cheers from your princess and merry Hearth's Warming Eve!" |
I came to England for a fresh challenge: Zlatan Ibrahimovic Posted: Mar 18, 2017 • 06:04 PM by Akshay Somani
Manchester, March 18 ( ) Manchester United striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic has said that he shunned big money on offer in the Chinese football league for a fresh challenge in English Premier League with his current club Manchester United.
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"It's a challenge. A challenge to change the history of a club which already has a great history. In order to raise my level a little, I had to come to England and show to everyone who I am," he told former Juventus, AC Milan and England head coach Fabio Capello in an interview with FOXSports Italia on Friday.
Ibrahimovic, 35, joined Jose Mourinho-coached United on a free transfer last summer from French giants Paris Saint-Germain.
"It's a different challenge that I like because I'm assuming even more responsibility. If I can win in a situation like this, it means I've done my job well," he felt.
"Plus I already knew Mourinho and what he wants. He motivates you, he tells you things to your face if you're not doing well and must give more. He works you so that when you are on the pitch, you give 200 percent, and this is what I needed at my age."
Ibrahimovic, who also played for Ajax, FC Barcelona and AC Milan, said that the competition existing in the EPL also attracted him.
"I could've gone to China and put my feet up, but I need a challenge that will motivate me. If you can't keep up with a certain rhythm here, then it's hard. This league attracts a lot of attention, but it's beautiful because there are always lots of fans. You can be leading 3-0 and then concede a goal and the atmosphere can change everything," he said.
"There isn't one dominant club here, like Juventus in Italy, PSG in France, Bayern Munich in Germany or Barcelona in Spain. Here it is the team who make the fewest mistakes who win.
"I train every day and Mourinho has given me a fantastic programme. I like training."
Ibrahimovic, who is having a great run with United and is the main scorer for the team, hinted he might stay in Manchester for another season.
"Next year? The situation is I've signed here for a year with an option for another year. I don't have many years left as a footballer and I want to enjoy myself, I want to make the difference," he reflected.
"I want to quit while I'm at the top too. I don't know what will happen. If I can still make a difference, it's down to my teammates." |
Fair warning: this post is what we’d call “hil-orrible.” It’s hilarious. But it’s horrible. And if you have a weak stomach, you may want to opt out. Consider that before you continue….
Jesse Newton is a dog owner. And a Roomba owner. His Roomba has been reliable in cleaning his floors for awhile now. And Evie, his dog, has been reliable in not soiling them with steaming piles of what we dog owners know is just a part of dog ownership. Even the best of hot streaks is occasionally broken, however, and alas, Evie left her master a present in the living room. Not long after, the Roomba began its dirt patrol.
What happened next was the stuff of nightmares. Hilarious, disgusting nightmares.
Naturally, the Roomba was undeterred by the dog poop, plowing through the obstacle with ease and summarily spraying, dragging and trailing it throughout Newton’s apartment.
Newton illustrated its journey in this phenomenal, modern-art-meets-Arthur Murray diagram of a travelogue.
—————————————————————————————————————————————-
He also captured the experience in a colorful Facebook post:
“It will be on your floorboards. It will be on your furniture legs. It will be on your carpets. It will be on your rugs. It will be on your kids’ toy boxes. If it’s near the floor, it will have poop on it. Those awesome wheels, which have a checkered surface for better traction, left 25-foot poop trails all over the house. Our lovable Roomba, who gets a careful cleaning every night, looked like it had been mudding. Yes, mudding – like what you do with a Jeep on a pipeline road. But in poop.
Then, when your four-year-old gets up at 3am to crawl into your bed, you’ll wonder why he smells like dog poop. And you’ll walk into the living room. And you’ll wonder why the floor feels slightly gritty. And you’ll see a brown-encrusted, vaguely Roomba-shaped thing sitting in the middle of the floor with a glowing green light, like everything’s okay. Like it’s proud of itself. You were still half-asleep until this point, but now you wake up pretty damn quickly….”
And of course, after finally absorbing the extent of the horror show, the cleanup must begin.
“Then you get out the paper towel rolls, idly wondering if you should invest in paper towel stock, and you blow through three or four rolls wiping up poop. Then you get the spray bottle with bleach water and hose down the floor boards to let them soak, because the poop has already dried. Then out comes the steam mop, and you take care of those 25-ft poop trails.”
Unbelievably, Newton actually tried to save his $400 appliance but the poop had completely permeated its insides. The silver lining was that catalog retailer Hammacher Schlemmer, from which Newton had purchased the Roomba, offered to replace it free of charge.
Hopefully Evie will refrain from leaving any more gifts of this nature! |
IMF: Unionization, Higher Wages Reduce Income Inequality
The notion that unionization and higher wages decrease income inequality is a fundamental premise of the Solidarity Center and our allies. But now a surprising source has reached the same conclusion: the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“The decline in unionization is related to the rise of top income shares and less redistribution, while the erosion of minimum wages is correlated with considerable increases in overall inequality,” the IMF concludes in a newly released “staff discussion note.”
According to Inequality and Labor Market Institutions, a steep decline in union density is followed by a 1.8 percent increase of top incomes and a 3 percent decline for workers’ share over the ensuing five years. Further, “if de-unionization weakens earnings for middle- and low-income workers, this necessarily increases the income share of corporate managers and shareholders.” The study examined 20 advanced economies between 1980 and 2010.
Declining union strength “appears to be associated with less income redistribution, likely through a reduced influence of unions on public policy,” says Florence Jaumotte, an economist and co-author of the publication. Not to mention another fact: unions help raise wages, both for members and the community at large.
Long a bastion of pro-employer policies, the IMF is not willing to go so far as to recommend the obvious. Acknowledging its findings can “suggest that higher unionization and minimum wages can help reduce inequality,” the IMF dodges the logical conclusion to pursue such policies, saying its data “do not constitute a blanket recommendation for more unionization or higher minimum wages.”
The IMF study notes that such decisions should be made on a country by country basis—leaving the reader to presume that countries supporting shared prosperity among all citizens will enable their workers to form unions, and ensure a living wage for all. |
A Minnesota bar near the Wisconsin border is accused of selling a popular Wisconsin beer, a felony offense.
Spotted Cow is made by a New Glarus, Wis., brewer, and it is illegal to sell it in Minnesota.
A search warrant filed in Hennepin County says an employee of Maple Tavern in the Twin Cities suburb of Maple Grove made beer runs to a liquor store in Hudson, Wis., to buy kegs of Spotted Cow.
Investigators went to the tavern and ordered a glass of Spotted Cow beer, then busted the bar.
New Glarus Brewing is not a licensed alcohol manufacturer in Minnesota. Also, no Minnesota alcohol distributors are authorized to legally distribute Spotted Cow to retailers in that state.
New Glarus is one of the top craft breweries in Wisconsin. Its website declares, "You know you’re in Wisconsin when you see the Spotted Cow."
Brandon Hlavka, a manager at the tavern, says it was a mistake to bring the beer to Maple Tavern -- but it was with the best of intentions.
Associated Press |
It’s a central tenet of Objectivism that its adherents are obliged to put its claims into practice. In rejecting what she called “the theory-practice dichotomy,” Ayn Rand implicitly affirmed a positive thesis about what might be called the unity of theory and practice. In answer to the old catch phrase, “This may be good in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice,” she writes:
What is a theory? It is a set of abstract principles purporting to be either a correct description of reality or a set of guidelines for man’s actions. Correspondence to reality is the standard of value by which one estimates a theory. If a theory is inapplicable to reality, by what standards can it be estimated as ‘good’?[1]
Since theories are constituted by propositions, whether descriptive or prescriptive, the value of a theory is in part a matter of the truth of the propositions that make it up. Ceteris paribus, the greater the proportion of truths, the better the theory. But a theory doesn’t consist of just any old truths, and its value isn’t just an algorithmic inference from the proportion of the true to false claims it makes. Theorizing is an action, and on Rand’s view, life is the ultimate aim of action.[2] A desideratum for a good theory, then, is that it help promote the good in practice: the better a theory is, the more it helps its adherents flourish. So a good theory, on Rand’s view, consists neither of trivial truths nor of pragmatic fictions. It’s an integrated set of truths, or approximate truths, self-consciously structured so as to serve the lives of those it affects.[3]
The unity of theory and practice, so conceived, has important implications for inquiry and the academic enterprise more generally. On Rand’s view, inquiry is not just constrained by practicalities, but is obliged to be practical. There is thus, on the Objectivist view, no such thing as “purely theoretical” inquiry completely disconnected from practical concerns, or “purely pragmatic” concerns completely unregulated by theoretical considerations. Every legitimate theoretical aim, however abstract, bears some relation to “practical life,” whether by describing something of significance to practice or more directly by guiding it. And every legitimate practical endeavor, however apparently pedestrian or tedious, requires guidance from claims whose ultimate justification derives from theory. Counterintuitive as it may at first seem, cosmology, meta-logic, and paleontology, properly conceived, have practical implications. Conversely, janitorial work, farming, and childcare, properly executed, are theoretical endeavors.
The unity of theory and practice has implications for what we do at IOS as well. On the main page of our website, we suggest that the ideal graduate seminar in philosophy—the sort of seminar we plan to run at IOS—is “relatively insulated from activist concerns.” A seminar on, say, the epistemology of concepts is fundamentally a seminar in epistemology, not a workshop on political activism (even if some of the concepts it discusses are political ones). The “relatively” is there to signal the fact that, all things considered, theorizing never takes place in a practical or political vacuum. No theorist, however “insulated from activist concerns” in a given context, can pretend that his or her theorizing is literally irrelevant to or disconnected from practice. IOS is by design not an activist organization, but we don’t disavow an interest in the practical implementation of the ideas we study. Having said that, our approach to this topic is, we think, very different from the one common among Objectivists.
For decades now, Objectivists have come to believe that the unity of theory and practice requires the existence of an “Objectivist movement” for its effectuation. Objectivists may disagree about the ideal nature of this movement, some favoring a relatively “Catholic” institutional model (e.g., the Ayn Rand Institute), others favoring a relatively “Protestant” one (e.g., The Atlas Society). But they agree that some version of a movement is the best exemplification of the normative claims of the philosophy. In telegraphic form, the argument may be represented as a hypothetical syllogism: (1) if you’re committed to Objectivism, you’re committed to the unity of theory and practice; (2) if you’re committed to the unity of theory and practice, you’re committed to the need for an Objectivist movement. Conclusion: if you’re committed to Objectivism, you’re committed to the need for an Objectivist movement, and by an apparently modest inference, to “the” movement itself.
It’s a little-discussed fact that Ayn Rand herself repeatedly rejected (2) in the argument above. In “A Statement of Policy” in the June 1968 issue of The Objectivist, she wrote:
I regard the spread of Objectivism through today’s culture as an intellectual movement–i.e., as a trend among independent individuals who share the same ideas–but not as an organized movement. The existence (and later policies) of NBI [the Nathaniel Branden Institute] contributed to certain misconceptions among some of its students and the public at large, which tended to put Objectivism in an equivocal position in this respect. I want, therefore, to make it emphatically clear that Objectivism is not an organized movement and is not to be regarded as such by anyone.[4]
A more emphatic rejection of the Objectivist movement could hardly be imagined. Judging by the activity of the last few decades, a more emphatic rejection of Rand’s advice could hardly be imagined, either. We’re thus led to an odd situation in which the founder rejects “her” movement, and the movement rejects the demands of “its” founder. It seems like something out of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.[5]
Rand’s statement raises three obvious questions to which she gives no explicit answers. (a) What, exactly, is the difference between an “intellectual” and an “organized” movement? (b) Which policies of NBI contributed to what misconceptions, and what was so problematic about them? (c) Was Rand’s rejection of an “organized movement” a contingent rejection or a categorical one? In other words, was she condemning the very idea of an “organized” Objectivist movement, or was she saying that an “organized” movement may have been premature in 1968 (“today”) but might become appropriate at some later date?
There is (to our knowledge) no precise or explicit answer to question (a) in Rand’s work, but implicit answers to questions (b) and (c) can be found in her insightful 1972 essay, “What Can One Do?”[6]
Her answer to question (b) focuses on the relationship between philosophy and politics. Without mentioning NBI by name, Rand opens the 1972 essay by identifying a set of misconceptions about theory and practice common to Objectivists: insisting on the need for dramatic change on an epic scale, Objectivists often find themselves paralyzed by the inevitable mismatch between their aspirations and reality. A basic part of the problem, she suggests, is an obsession with political change. Having perhaps taken her novels too literally, Objectivists find themselves paralyzed with disgust at and contempt for contemporary politics, craving the kind of response to it that follows Galt’s Speech in Atlas Shrugged. But, she argues, politics is only “the last consequence, the practical implementation of the fundamental (metaphysical-epistemological-ethical) ideas that dominate a given nation’s culture,” and it makes no sense to fixate on the consequences of something while minimizing or ignoring its causes (273). The crux of Rand’s claim is that the desire for an organized Objectivist movement is inherently tied to the desire for a mass political movement. Eliminate the need for mass political organization, and the need for an organized movement evaporates with it.
Rand is quick to add that a rejection of an organized movement is not a rejection of the unity of theory and practice: as previously remarked, Objectivism as a doctrine demands its own implementation. But its implementation is not (she continues) fundamentally a matter of politics, and not fundamentally something that can be effectuated by means of a mass movement. In fact, on her view, the priorities of Objectivist practice, properly understood, are at odds with those of a mass movement. Objectivism emphasizes the priority (both epistemically and practically) of philosophy to politics (273); it demands qualitative conceptions of discursive engagement, not quantitative measures of political performance or “outreach” (273); it prioritizes self-training over proselytization or polemics (274); and it valorizes personal virtue (independence, honesty) over the imperatives of partisan solidarity, group-think, and “team play” (275).
Furthermore, and perhaps counterintuitively, the activist strategy that Rand recommends is self-consciously at odds with the grandiosity and epic-scale characteristic of so much political discourse and activism within the Objectivist movement. Rand recommends membership in and activism involving “ad hoc groups organized to achieve a single, specific, clearly defined goal,” not the political theatrics of a mass movement like the Tea Party (276-77). The right kind of change (she suggests) will come from the reform of discrete institutions and policies within the social system, not by direct political action designed to effect revolutionary change of the system itself (as the iconography of the Tea Party implies).[7] The essay ends with the following enigmatic claim: “It is too late for a movement of people who hold a conventional mixture of contradictory philosophical notions. It is too early for a movement of people dedicated to a philosophy of reason” (278).
In saying that it’s “too early” for an organized movement, Rand implicitly answers question (c) above: her objection to an organized movement is a contingent rather than categorical one. An organized movement would be a legitimate endeavor under the right conditions, but the right conditions aren’t in place, and won’t be for the foreseeable future. Two conditions are particularly important.
The first is the (much) fuller development of Objectivism as a philosophical system. Rand’s most dogmatic followers have made colossal claims for the comprehensiveness and completeness of her philosophy, but Rand herself was more modest than that. She wrote almost nothing on metaphysics. She tells us that her book on epistemology is a “summary” of a single element of her epistemology—her theory of concepts—presented as “a preview” to a (never-written) forthcoming work on the subject, and presented outside of the “full context” of the epistemology as a whole. Her single book on ethics, The Virtue of Selfishness, is a “series of essays” amounting to an FAQ on ethics, “not a systematic discussion” of moral philosophy. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, her major non-fiction book of political theory, is “a collection of essays on the moral aspects of capitalism,” not a systematic treatise on political philosophy or politics. The Romantic Manifesto is just that—a manifesto in defense of Romantic art, not a treatise on aesthetics.[8] As far as philosophy is concerned, Rand doesn’t say that all relevant work has been done; she says that “it’s earlier than we think”[9]—that is, that less has been done than has been left undone.
The second condition is the translation of a developed philosophy into what Rand calls an “ideology.” “A political ideology,” she writes, “is a set of principles aimed at establishing or maintaining a certain social system; it is a program of long-range action, with the principles serving to unify and integrate particular steps into a consistent course.”[10] It should be obvious that Objectivism not only lacks an ideology in the relevant sense—it lacks a “program of long-range action”—but is a very long way from developing one. Rand herself was candid about how little she knew about “technical” political issues. She professed to be neutral or agnostic, among other things, about the propriety of the Allies’ military strategy in World War II, about gun control, about the ethics and politics of voting, about the schedule of punishments in an ideal code of criminal justice, and about the proper method of financing government. Almost none of the essays in her non-fiction works is genuinely ideological by her own standards.[11] Since her novels were not meant to be ideological blueprints for politics, either, it’s clear that no ideology (in her sense) emerges from her writing per se. Hence the prematurity of mass political action, at least circa 1972.
Have things changed since 1972? If it was too early for an organized Objectivist movement in 1972, one might think, perhaps the time had come for a movement after Rand’s death a decade later. Or if even that was too early, the objection might continue, surely the time has come for a movement four decades later? But such claims miss the point. The phrase “too early” in Rand’s essay denotes a qualitative criterion, not a merely chronological one. The point is not that Objectivism will become movement-worthy with the sheer passage of time—be it the passage of ten, forty, or a hundred years—but that it will become movement-worthy when Objectivists make it so. And there is ample room for doubt that they have made it so, or will, within the foreseeable future. In the early 1990s, David Kelley complained in a public lecture that the output of Objectivist scholarship had up to that point been “pretty thin.” Unfortunately, the decades since then have seen much less philosophical or intellectual productivity than Objectivists would care to admit.
Consider politics itself. Since the 1990s, orthodox Objectivists have produced just two short book-length works of political philosophy: Tara Smith’s Moral Rights and Political Freedom (1995), and David Kelley’s A Life of One’s Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State (1998). In addition, they’ve published two ambitious works of political economy: George Reisman’s Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996), and M. Northrup Buechner’s Objective Economics: How Ayn Rand’s Philosophy Changes Everything About Economics (2011). In legal studies, David Mayer has published a short defense of liberty of contract, and Timothy Sandefur has published a sustained defense of “the right to earn a living.” Beyond that, Objectivists have published a few derivative works in political economy, a few popular defenses of capitalism, and maybe a dozen or so major journal articles or book chapters. We might charitably add to the list a polemical book or two on issues in warfare. In other words, in three decades, the total output of the entire Objectivist movement has equaled the average output of a scholar (or a scholar-and-a-half) at a Carnegie R1 institution over the same period. Put that way, the Objectivist politics is not even a competitive academic research program, much less the stuff of a comprehensive political ideology.
And whatever the merits (or demerits) of the preceding work, even taken together it leaves huge swatches of the Objectivist politics entirely undiscussed. So far, Objectivism lacks a sustained exposition or defense of the most important element of the Objectivist politics: the non-initiation of force principle. It lacks a theory of property rights—even one adequate to the task of governing a single low-rent neighborhood, much less of governing a twenty-first century nation engaged in high-tech, multinational trade in a globalized economy. It lacks a theory of self-defense, and by implication any settled view of gun control and related issues. It lacks a theory of government even at the level of an introductory textbook, much less at the level of a major treatise like John Rawls’s Political Liberalism or the Federalist Papers.
It lacks settled accounts of bread-and-butter policy issues like transportation and housing (or even ordinary local services like trash collection, fire departments, rescue squads, sewer maintenance, and sidewalks). It lacks serious discussions of the many policy-level hard cases that are bound to arise under a laissez-faire regime (e.g., the structure of rights in emergencies, the enforcement of rights under conditions of poverty and extreme scarcity). It lacks a distinctive historiography and social science. It has no worked-out theory or program of political reform for any important political issue, much less for the political system as a whole. And it has no constituency of adherents with sufficient experience in any branch of government—at any level of government—to know how to run even the smallest government agency in the real world. There is something both frightening and preposterous about the idea of a mass political movement crusading to revolutionize politics on so feeble an intellectual and experiential foundation.
Most discussions of Objectivism, whether friendly or hostile, take for granted that a commitment to the philosophy entails a commitment to the movement, or at least to a movement. We are skeptical of that idea, but we think the issue well worth discussing. To that end, we’d like to invite discussion of the relationship between theory and practice in Objectivism, and by implication the relationship between Objectivism as a philosophy and Objectivism as a movement. The topic prompts questions like the following (not an exhaustive list):
What exactly did Rand mean by the difference between an intellectual and an organized movement? Why did she regard those as exclusive categories? Why can’t an intellectual movement be organized, or an organized movement be an intellectual one?
Was Rand right about the illegitimacy of the idea of an organized Objectivist movement? If so, was she right categorically or contingently? In the latter case, what contingencies would justify the existence of such a movement? When would we know that it was “time” for one to appear?
How exactly does one uphold the unity of theory and practice while rejecting the idea of an “organized” movement? Is that idea coherent? Feasible?
What are the pros and cons of the Objectivist movement as it exists today? What, if anything, has the movement accomplished in a positive vein? What, by contrast, has it undermined, subverted, or destroyed? And how does one compute the result?
A loaded question: What are the distinctive pathologies of the Objectivist movement and what explains them? Is the Objectivist movement any better or worse than comparable movements (whatever “comparable” means)?
Postscript on the Kelley-Peikoff dispute: What, if anything, have we learned from this dispute over the last quarter of a century?
Finally, the preceding issues are not unique to Objectivism; analogues have arisen not just for Objectivists, but also for Thomists, Rousseauists, utilitarians, Marxists, Freudians, Existentialists, and others. That prompts the broadest question: what exactly is a “movement,” and what relation should movements bear, if any, to the practice of philosophy?
We’ll periodically be posting our own responses to some of these questions under our “Commentary, News, and Reviews” tab, but we’d like to invite readers to send us their own answers, and/or pose some questions of their own. Candidate responses or queries can be sent to our email address at instituteforobjectiviststudies@gmail.com (with subject line: “Comment: Objectivist Movement”). We’re open to any sort of on-topic essay—however friendly or hostile to our point of view—as long as it’s well-written and well-argued. Please be patient in waiting for your comment to go up, or in waiting for us to respond to your email.
Irfan Khawaja and Carrie-Ann Biondi
Founding Directors, Institute for Objectivist Studies
[1] Ayn Rand, “Philosophical Detection,” in Philosophy: Who Needs It (Signet, 1982), p. 19. Rand’s discussion of this catch-phrase is usefully compared and contrasted with Kant’s in his 1793 essay, “On the Proverb: That May be True in Theory, But Is of No Practical Use,” in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays (Hackett, 1983). As is often the case with Rand and Kant, Kant’s view at first seems identical to Rand’s, but eventually proceeds in a direction incompatible with hers. For a description of the same pattern in a different context, see George Walsh, “Ayn Rand and the Metaphysics of Kant,” Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 2:1 (Fall 2000), pp. 69-103. [2] Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (Signet, 1964), p. 17. [3] Cf. Michael R. DePaul, Balance and Refinement: Beyond Coherence Methods of Moral Inquiry (Routledge, 1993), ch. 2. [4] Ayn Rand, “A Statement of Policy,” The Objectivist, June 1968, p. 471. [5] Rand’s interpretation of Frankenstein is worth recalling: The best fantasy fiction, she points out, involves stories about people “with contradictory premises,” in which the “bad premises” are “at first…hidden or controlled,” but “if unchecked…take control of a personality.” An example is “Frankenstein, the story of a man who creates a monster that gets out of his control. The meaning of the story is valid: a man must bear the consequences of his actions, and should be careful not to create monsters that destroy him. This is a profound message, which is why the name Frankenstein has become almost a generic word (like Babbit)” (Ayn Rand, The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers [Plume, 2000], p. 170). A comment of Victor Frankenstein’s in the novel is worth recalling as well: “Learn from me,” he tells a friend, “if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow” (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein [New American Library, 1983], p. 52). [6] Ayn Rand, “What Can One Do?” in Philosophy: Who Needs It, pp. 272-78. All further references to this essay in the text are by page numbers in parentheses. [7] Rand’s views on this topic are usefully compared and contrasted with those of Alasdair MacIntyre. See the interview with MacIntyre in Giovanna Borradori, The American Philosopher (University of Chicago, 1994), especially p. 151. The MacIntyre comparison/contrast is briefly suggested by Chris Sciabarra in Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (Penn State, 1995), p. 378, and explored at length in Ron Beadle, “Rand and MacIntyre on Moral Agency,” Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 9:2 (Spring 2008), pp. 221-43. [8] Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology expanded second ed. (Signet, 1990), pp. 1, 3; The Virtue of Selfishness, pp. xi-xii; Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (Signet, 1967), p. vi; The Romantic Manifesto, rev. ed. (Signet, 1975), p. v. [9] Ayn Rand, “The Chickens’ Homecoming,” in The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, rev. ed. (Signet, 1975), p. 108. [10] Ayn Rand, “The Wreckage of the Consensus,” in Capitalism, pp. 250-51. Emphasis added. [11] On the Allies’ strategy in World War II, see Rand’s HUAC testimony, reprinted in David Harriman, ed., The Journals of Ayn Rand (Plume, 1997), pp. 378-81; on gun control, see the comments reprinted in Robert Mayhew, ed., Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A (New American Library, 2005), p. 19; on aspects of the ethics and politics of voting, see the comments on voting in Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz, Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed (Lexington, 2009), p. 46; on punishment, see her discussion with John Hospers in Michael Berliner, ed., The Letters of Ayn Rand (Plume, 1995), p. 559; on financing government, see “Government Financing in a Free Society,” The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 135. Thanks to Robert Campbell, Alexander Cohen, Marsha Enright, David Kelley, Roderick Long, Kirsti Minsaas, Rick Minto, David Potts, Chris Sciabarra, Will Thomas, and Michael Young for helpful conversation on the topics discussed in this essay. None of the preceding indviduals necessarily agrees with the claims we make here.
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Anthony Fantano is a music vlogger who posts video reviews of albums under the moniker The Needle Drop. Like most people who dare to have an opinion about music on the internet that may differ from the opinions of others, he is somewhat divisive. Some people dig his up-the-nose video style of candid reviewing. Others think he should… well, you can just read the comments, I guess. Sometimes he even gets in the middle of it with us here at Vice. (Fantanooooo!!!) But however you feel about him, please know that he is NOT the armed gunman responsible for the tragic mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon yesterday.
SBS News, the Australia-based news organization, made this error yesterday in their television reporting on the shooting, accidentally using a photo of Fantano in their broadcast, instead of Chris Harper Mercer, the gunman who was killed in a firefight with police. The mistake was likely a result of dozens of Twitter and 4chan users noticing that the actual photo of Mercer, below, sort of resembles Fantano and flooding the internet with side by side shots of the two.
Oregon shooter Chris Harper Mercer, not Anthony Fantano.
Many caught the error:
Pretty sure that @SBSNews just used a photo of @theneedledrop to identify the gunman in the Oregon college shooting. pic.twitter.com/eUBnmca5vH — tom mann (@Grattan_) October 2, 2015
@SBSNews Just a heads up, this is Anthony Fantano @theneedledrop, not the shooter Chris Mercer. pic.twitter.com/WaKU3UuBuB — Ryan Galbraith (@RGalbs) October 2, 2015
@theneedledrop Your picture was used in an Australian news program as the face of the school shooter. It's not you, right? — Kevin Nguyen (@Thstasiankid) October 2, 2015
Here’s a screenshot of the video from SBS’ website.
And a video of the broadcast for international users.
An unfortunate mistake for Fantano, to say the least.
UPDATE: Fantano has addressed the incident, obviously, in video form. "Let's hope tomorrow's a little better," he signs off. Agreed. |
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For more than a decade Alchemist watched "Alchemist Drum Kits" floating around the Internet. Having nothing to do with these joints, Alchemist says "They probably just snipped a few open snares and kicks here and there".The drums sounded close, but were never officially from The Alchemist.
Enter The Official Alchemist Drum Kit - The Alchemist 'Secret Sauce'
"Recently my man DJ Skizz and Marco Polo came though the lab and Marco gave me the idea to do an official drum kit and go back to the old beats from the ASR-10 that people might recognize and give them drum patterns and sounds from the classics.", says Alchemist.
Inspired by this unique approach to creating a drum kit, Alchemist went back to his old ASR-10 disks, solo'ed the drums, recorded 4 bars , then solo'ed each drum sound. "It gives people a chance to find the samples that accompany the drums and remake the classic beats or use them on new beats", says Alchemist.
Alchemist Secret Sauce features the drums from these classics:
Tick Tock, Different Worlds, Mobb Niggaz, Air It Out, For The Record, Desire, Living The Life, NB, Latin Thug, Of Rhymes, Stuck To You, Crushed Linen, Luce, Worst to Worst, Lose Ya Life, Pointer, Neighborhood Watch, On Stage, Definition, Craze, Essence, Professional, D Elite, Feel Me, Still Feel Me
Plus a bonus folder of sounds from Alchemist personal drum stash & ASR-10 including Kicks, Snares, Hats, & FX.
Own a piece of Hip Hop History with Alchemist's - Secret Sauce |
John Hillerman, who won an Emmy for playing Tom Selleck’s foil Jonathan Higgins on the long-running CBS hit Magnum, P.I., died today at his Houston home. He was 84. His rep Lori De Waal confirmed the news on social media, adding that a cause of death has not been determined.
Warner Bros Pictures
Born on December 20, 1932, in Denison, TX, north of Dallas, Hillerman was in his late 30s when he began to score bit roles in such high-profile films as They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970), The Last Picture Show (1971) and What’s Up, Doc? (1972), High Plains Drifter and Paper Moon (both 1973). He then landed a small but memorable role as Howard Johnson in Mel Brooks’ 1974 classic Western spoof Blazing Saddles. He’s the one who was charged by the people of Rock Ridge to welcome their newly appointed sheriff (Cleavon Little). Who can forget his brief speech? “As honorary chairman of the welcoming committee, it’s my privilege to present a laurel and hearty handshake to our new…” — well, you probably know the rest. He re-teamed with Brooks for the underappreciated 1981 yarn History of the World, Part I, playing a rich Frenchman.
Hillerman continued to work in film and TV throughout the decade, including Roland Polanski’s Chinatown (1974) and John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust (1975) and recurring roles on Ellery Queen, The Betty White Show and One Day at a Time. But everything changed in 1979, when he landed the role of his career.
CBS’ venerable Hawaii Five-O was heading into its final season, and the network already had a crew working on the islands, so many of them were recruited for a new crime drama set on Oahu. Selleck starred in Magnum P.I. as Thomas Magnum, a quirky, multilingual ex-jock who solved crimes out of his beachfront villa called Robin’s Nest. Sounds idyllic, right? Enter Hillerman as Jonathan Quayle Higgins III, a British Army vet who was caretaker of the estate. Often accompanied by the menacing Dobermans he called his “lads,” Higgins was stuffy, stubborn, argumentative — and, ultimately, lovable.
Alongside co-stars Roger E. Mosely and Larry Manetti, Selleck and Hillerman continued their characters’ back-and-forth shenanigans through the series’ entire eight-year, 158-episode run, Premiering in December 1980 — in Five-O‘s old time slot — Magnum P.I. was an out-of-the-box hit. It ranked among the top 20 programs in its first two seasons, before catapulting up to No. 3 for the 1982-83 season (tied with fellow CBS hit M*A*S*H)..While the series never equaled its peak audience as NBC’s Must-See TV lineup began dominating Thursday nights, the lighthearted crime drama remained popular until its run ended in 1988.
Hillerman earned four consecutive Emmy nominations for the role from 1984-87, finally winning the last time. He also won a Golden Globe on his first nom for the role in 1982 and followed it with nominations the next four straight years.
After Magnum ended in 1988, Hillerman appeared in the 1989 miniseries Around the World in 80 Days and recurred on sitcom Valerie. His final credit was the 1996 feature A Very Brady Sequel. He also appeared in a trio of short-lived Broadway shows in the late 1950s and early ’60s. |
Citing unnamed Western officials, the Wall Street Journal said the European-Iranian Trade Bank AG (EIH) had done more than a billion dollars of business for firms subject to US, UN and EU sanctions.
The German finance ministry said Monday it was not aware of any such infringements but that the country's financial regulator, Bafin, and the Bundesbank central bank were looking into the claims made by the newspaper.
"At present we are not in possession of any information ... about these reported infringements. But the Bafin and the Bundesbank are currently investigating all allegations against this bank," spokesman Michael Offer said.
Contacted by AFP, the bank, known in Germany as the Europaeisch-Iranische Handelsbank AG, declined to comment.
The UN Security Council slapped a fourth set of sanctions against Iran in June for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment work, the most sensitive part of Tehran's atomic drive.
They authorise states to conduct high-seas inspections of vessels suspected of ferrying banned items to Iran and add 40 entities to a list of people and groups subject to travel restrictions and financial sanctions.
Meanwhile, the US administration added Iranian individuals and firms to a blacklist as part of US and European efforts to tighten the screws on Iran.
The new US sanctions target insurance companies, oil firms and shipping lines linked to Iran's nuclear or missile programmes as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Iran's Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi.
The Journal said that EIH's business partners include units of Iran's Defense Industries Organization, the Aerospace Industries Organization and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
In 2009, EIH appears to have been involved in a broad sanctions-evasion scheme, conducting transactions on behalf of Iran's Bank Sepah that has been sanctioned for facilitating Iran's weapons trade and proliferation activities, the paper said.
EIH was founded by a group of Iranian merchants in Hamburg in 1971, according to The Journal. It operates openly under the supervision of German bank regulators, but the US Department of Treasury blacklisted it for alleged illicit business with Iran, the report noted. |
Crash that smashed 600 years of history: Historic wattle and daub cottage faces demolition after 174mph Audi RS4 car careers through living room
Damage to Andy and Karen Rattray's cottage in Over Peover, Cheshire
Car went into 600-year-old oak-framed wattle and daub section of room
Audi RS4 driver tried to evade driver allegedly going wrong way on A50
Nestled in tranquil countryside, Nixon’s Cottage was a treasured landmark for 600 years.
Now it is facing demolition after a 174mph Audi estate car careered off the road – smashing straight into the living room of owners Andy and Karen Rattray.
Structural engineers are examining the locally-listed wattle and daub thatched cottage to see if its ancient oak frame was twisted in the smash.
Even if it is salvageable, the couple will have to move out for up to a year while the front of their home is rebuilt.
Fortunately, Mrs and Mr Rattray were not in at the time of the crash at their home in Over Peover, Cheshire, and the driver of the £55,000 Audi RS4 car was uninjured.
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Inspection: Structural engineers attended to assess the damage before the Audi car could be removed
Damage: Andy, 46, and Karen Rattray, 44, were out at the time of the crash in Over Peover, Cheshire
Smashed: The Audi car went into a 600-year-old oak-framed wattle and daub section of the living room
No injuries: The driver of the Audi - worth £55,000 - and the couple's three cocker spaniels were unhurt
Long wait: Mr Rattray said it will be up to 12 months before the couple can go back into their cottage home Somewhere to stay: Mrs Rattray said the driver 'gets to go home to his nice warm house and we don't'
The Audi driver had been going along the A50 towards Knutsford just before 9.40am on Monday, when a Volkswagen appeared to be travelling on the wrong side of the road in the opposite direction.
Cheshire Constabulary officers said the Audi driver took evasive action, mounting the grass verge before going across the road, through the hedge and coming to a halt in the lounge of the building.
The driver of the 2012 Audi and the couple’s three cocker spaniels - who were inside the house - were unhurt.
The couple's living room is completely destroyed however, along with several antiques including a grandfather clock which Mr Rattray said is still standing but beyond repair.
Police are now trying to trace the driver of the Volkswagen, which was a dark blue car.
Mrs Rattray said: ‘This is the third time we have had a car come through the hedge but this is by far the worst - we live in fear. Thank God we weren’t in the living room.
WHAT IS WATTLE AND DAUB?
The method of constructing buildings using the wattle and daub technique dates back to the Neolithic period and is thought to have helped develop later methods of construction including lath and plaster and even cob. Wattle and daub was used in parts of central Europe, western Asia, and north and south America. It involves woven lattice strips of wood, called the wattle, being daubed with a sticky paste to hold it together. The paste was traditionally made from materials at hand, including animal dung and straw or mud and clay.
‘If we were we would have all been in the lounge and we had a great big unit in front of the window. That’s obliterated and there are bricks embedded in the wall.
‘We have to find somewhere to stay now and that’s hard with three dogs. The driver gets to go home to his nice warm house and we don’t.’
Fortunately for the couple and their dogs, a local farmer has offered to rent them a house while work continues on theirs.
Structural engineers attended the scene to assess the damage before the car could be removed.
Mr Rattray said: ‘It is going to be six to 12 months before we can go back in - we don’t know yet if the house will have to be knocked down.
‘The part the car went into is 550 to 600 years old - it’s just wattle and daub, and we don’t know if the oak frame has been twisted.’
‘We heard a noise the night before and my dogs had been going mad. We thought a car had gone through the hedge so I went to look the morning after and there was a hole in it.
‘I got there and just saw this car sticking out of the hedge and the driver was just stood there looking very pale and shaken. I thought it had happened the night before but it had happened literally a few minutes before.’
Whatever happens to the old house, Mr Rattray may have a job on his hands persuading his wife to move back to the property.
Historic: The part of the Cheshire cottage that the Audi car went into is an astonishing 550 to 600 years old
Evasive action: Cheshire Constabulary officers said the Audi driver mounted the grass verge before going across the road, through the hedge and coming to a halt in the lounge of the building
Crash: Mrs Rattray said it was the third time the couple have had a car come through the hedge in Cheshire
Shock: Mr Rattray (left) said he 'just saw this car sticking out of the hedge' next to the property in Cheshire Accident: The Audi RS4 was driving along the A50 towards Knutsford at around 9.40am on Monday Carnage: The cottage was an absolute mess following the crash which took place on Monday morning Worry: Mr Rattray said the couple were unsure as to whether the house will have to be knocked down
AUDI RS4: THE SPECIFICATIONS
Price : £54,925
Top speed : 174mph
Engine : 4.2-litre V8
Weight : 1.98 tons
Economy : 26.4mpg
Power : 450bhp at 8,250rpm
Acceleration : 0-62mph in 4.7 seconds
Stereo : Ten-speaker Bang and Olufsen
Transmission : Seven-speed twin-clutch automatic, four-wheel drive
He told MailOnline: 'If the building has to be knocked down, it would be nice to rebuild further back from the road as it's a lovely area.
'But my wife is afraid to live here again, so I don't know if we'll return.'
Mr Rattray described the dangerous stretch of road as 'crazy' with several motorists killed in crashes since he moved in to the house 14 years ago.
He said that the road is particularly busy when the motorway is closed and large lorries use the route as a diversion.
'A truck would have gone straight through the house,' he said.
The last serious incident on the road before the Audi crash saw an 18-year-old girl killed in a crash close to Mr Rattray's home.
Danger spot: A previous crash at the cottage saw a car come over the hedgerow upside down. It was only stopped from hitting the property by another parked car
The house came close to suffering serious damage last year when another car came over the hedgerow.
Mr Rattray said: 'It came through the hedge upside down and it was going to hit the property, but fortunately we had a car parked there and it hit that and was pushed along the side of the house instead.'
The technique of wattle and daub dates back 6,000 years. Wattling is the building of walls by weaving sticks in and out of upright posts - and daubing is the weather-proofing with manure, earth and clay.
The house, known as Nixon's Cottage, is thought to have been home to local prophet Robert Nixon.
Born in the 15th century, he became known as the Cheshire Ploughboy Prophet and is said to have predicted the Battle of St Albans and the outcome of the Battle of Bosworth field.
He is even said to have foretold his own death. Nixon was summoned to the court of Richard III but refused to go saying that he would be 'clemmed' - or starved - to death.
King Richard ordered that he be keep in the court's kitchens but he was caught stealing food from the pantries and locked in a cupboard by the cook.
He was left in the cupboard and starved to death when the cook was called away.
Close call: A previous crash saw a car land on its roof just inches from the house Before: The interior of Nixon Cottage before the car plowed through the wall Ruined: The car came through the wall into a 600 year old part of the house
No protection: The historic cottage is hidden behind a row of bushes, but it isn't enough to stop cars ploughing through it |
TV personality Kim Kardashian, right, and her then-fiance, NBA basketball player Kris Humphries, arrive at the Kardashian Kollection launch party on Aug. 17, 2011 in Los Angeles. While Humphries's height may have made him more attractive to her, their marriage did not last. (Matt Sayles/AP)
There is already a growing body of research suggesting that tall men are generally paid better and are viewed as more masculine and competent. A new paper suggests that their height advantage also spills over into their personal lives.
“There seems to be an almost universal agreement among men and women that they would prefer to be in a relationship where the man is taller,” said Abigail Weitzman, lead author of the study published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit organization that focuses on how the economy works.
That leaves short men with a smaller pool of women to date and marry. But it’s not all bad news for them. Their relationships tend to last longer, although that may have more to do with their partners’ choices.
Shorter guys -- less than 5-foot-7 -- "get divorced at lower rates,” Weitzman noted. “This probably means that women who don't want to be in a relationship with short men are more likely to leave before they get married, rather than after.”
The study found that tall men -- guys over 6-foot-2 -- marry at higher rates and are more likely to date and wed older, well-educated women. Short men, on the other hand, get married at the lowest rates, and they marry women who are less educated and younger than they are. They also marry women who are closer to their height — or taller.
The study also examined what happens in the course of these relationships and found --somewhat paradoxically -- that tall men, though they are viewed as more masculine, are more likely to be in egalitarian relationships. They do more housework than shorter men and their income is more likely to be similar to their spouse's. Shorter men have relationships that more closely mirror traditional power dynamics: the man as breadwinner, the woman spending more time on housework.
“Our findings portray a pattern in which short men compensate for their status disadvantage by enacting other types of stereotypical masculinity,” Weitzman said.
If tall men have advantages when it comes to desirability, why do they do more housework than shorter men? Weitzman suspects that there could be two explanations.
“It may just be that housework is less threatening to tall men, that is, if they believe their tallness confers them a certain degree of masculinity,” Weitzman said. On the other hand, short men compensate for the masculinity “perception gap” by displaying other behaviors—such as making more money outside the home and contributing less to housework.
The other explanation could simply be that the amount of money a man makes relative to his spouse is inversely related to the amount of housework he does. The spouses of short men also tend to be less educated, which could also contribute to that result. |
Description
Human Planet is an award winning (2 Baftas) eight-part landmark BBC natural history series about the most amazing species of them all. An epic record of man's survival in the most extreme environments; with each episode focusing on one environment and how the people and tribes who live there adapt to their surroundings: oceans, deserts, arctic, jungles, mountains, grasslands, rivers and cities.
Kiss My Pixel were commissioned to design the brand identity for Human Planet; creating the series brand guidelines (distributed to press, developers and investors) and applying these concepts to the opening sequences, interstitials, astons & credits of each film. Kiss My Pixel were also commissioned to design and produce a new considered approach to subtitling.
The opening titles sequences were bespoke for each episode, reflecting the specific environment of each habitat. The title premise was continued through "the making of" films aptly called Behind the Lens.
Kiss My Pixel worked closely with the production on the series use of subtitles. Traditionally, translated subtitles have been placed onto the lower sections of shots, drawing the viewers eyes away so that little appreciation can be made of the visuals.
The approach for Human Planet was to sympathetically frame the type within each shot so that a natural synergy takes place between the words and the moving image.
This technique also allowed us to distinguish between multiple characters, or enhance the mood or emotions of a scene, further reinforcing the Human Planet series approach of epic stories intimately told.
www.bbc.co.uk/humanplanet |
After purchasing Clearwire three years ago, Sprint is shutting down the WiMAX network that powers Clearwire’s CLEAR internet service so it can focus on LTE, the 4G network that has emerged victorious over WiMAX. Sprint plans to shutter CLEAR on Nov. 6.
If that was too much telecom jargon for you (it was for us, too), keep paying attention because the news means two important things for Philadelphia, including what could be a major blow to efforts to close the digital divide in the city.
1. One less broadband option for an already sparse market.
It’s tough news to CLEAR customers like Rachael Spotts, 27, who lives in Chester with her three-year-old and her partner. Spotts, who recently got her master’s at Widener University, said she chose CLEAR for wireless internet at home because she didn’t feel comfortable signing a contract, the way Comcast and Verizon require you to. She was worried that she would miss a payment and get slapped with late fees. With CLEAR, you pay month to month and if you miss a month, you don’t get the service.
“It felt safer,” she said.
Plus, CLEAR is cheaper in the long run. (Comcast and Verizon start out cheaper but increase their prices after six months.) Spotts paid between $50 and $55 per month for the service.
"It's completely devastating." Kelly Anzulavich, JumpWireless
Sprint spokeswoman Stephanie Vinge said she did not have numbers on how many CLEAR customers there were in Philadelphia, though Sprint spokeswoman Adrienne Norton did confirm that in Philadelphia, there aren’t any comparable services to CLEAR (at the same price point, unlimited data and no contract option). When Sprint sent notices about the shutdown, it notified customers about other broadband options in the area. In Spotts’ case, Sprint sent her the number for Comcast’s Xfinity service.
2. Ten thousand low-income Philadelphians could lose access to the internet because of a dispute between Sprint and two nonprofits that provide them access. (The number of those affected is 300,000 nationally, according to the nonprofits.)
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It gets a little convoluted here — Ars Technica has a good breakdown of both sides, but basically, the nonprofits — Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon — own parts of that WiMAX network and leased it out to Clearwire (now Sprint) and offered their customers CLEAR internet at a lower rate.
Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon haved sued Sprint, saying that after the WiMAX shutdown, the company will slow their customers’ internet speeds after they use 6GB of data.
“For schools and nonprofits,” said Mobile Citizen spokeswoman Kristen Perry, “this isn’t feasible.”
Sprint spokeswoman Vinge called the issue “a contract dispute” and said that Sprint has successfully transitioned its other partners over to LTE.
“We have been very successful at transitioning the majority of these accounts,” she wrote in an email. “But the transition cannot take place without the cooperation of each licensee.”
Whatever the case may be, what’s certain is that if it doesn’t get straightened out by Nov. 6, customers in Philadelphia will lose access to their home internet.
That includes the 2,300 local customers of JumpWireless, a two-year-old Mobile Citizen reseller who provides internet to those affiliated with nonprofits like Philadelphia FIGHT, which supports those living with HIV/AIDS, and Career Wardrobe, which helps women get into the workforce. They also have customers who are residents of the Philadelphia Housing Authority.
“It’s completely devastating,” said JumpWireless spokeswoman Kelly Anzulavich, noting that some of JumpWireless’ customers connect their home internet to their MedAlert emergency response devices.
Unlike Internet Essentials, Comcast’s low-cost internet option, JumpWireless doesn’t require customers to have a school-age child who qualifies for free or reduced lunch. Their service costs around $15/month.
Since JumpWireless is a Mobile Citizen reseller, its hands are tied while Mobile Citizen and Sprint hash it out, Anzulavich said. In the mean time, they’re cobbling together affordable cellphone plans that their customers can use for internet. But that’s not a sustainable solution in the longterm, Anzulavich said.
Read a letter from JumpWireless Executive Director Rachael L. Ulmer about the impact of the WiMAX shutdown, as provided by Mobile Citizen.
Another initiative that will be at a loss is Drexel University’s mobile computer labs. Drexel has four carts that are outfitted with about ten laptops each and Mobile Citizen hotspots that they lend out to organizations like the Free Library of Philadelphia and the city’s Office of Mental Health. In 2014-2015, more than 7,500 residents used the carts, according to a letter from Drexel project manager Maria Walker about the importance of Mobile Citizen’s service.
“In order to provide poor people with 21st Century skills and tools to combat poverty, they need fast,
high-quality Internet access that starts when they are in school and is not restricted after 6GB,” Walker wrote in the letter. “In a city that continues to battle high unemployment and poverty, unrestricted access to broadband in Philadelphia is one of the means to overcoming economic inequality.”
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An large area of forest three times the size of Inverness has been surveyed as part of a project to restore ancient woodland in the north of Scotland.
The Woodland Trust Scotland’s Ancient Woodland Restoration project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Scottish Forestry Trust and the MacRobert Trust.
Since 2013 two specialist project officers have surveyed 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres) of plantations on ancient woodland (PAWS) sites in the north of Scotland, and nearly 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) are now in a process of restoration.
Peter Lowe from the Woodland Trust Scotland said: “Ancient woodland restoration is one of the Trust’s top priorities. It’s a long-term process that can take decades to achieve because our approach involves gradual and selective change to the existing woodland over several years.
“It’s particularly important to ensure that these woods are in a process of restoration now because so many plantations on ancient woodland sites are coming to maturity and we need to agree their future management before they are felled.
“There has been a lot of interest from landowners who are interested in ensuring that these sites are well managed, both on ecological grounds and also because it is an important part of certification for sustainable forestry.
One group working with the Trust is Cawdor Forestry Ltd, which manages woodland on Logie, Altyre, Dochfour and Cawdor Estates. 2,000 hectares of plantations on ancient woodland sites across these estates are being surveyed for potential restoration.
Steve Conolly, managing director of Cawdor Forestry Ltd said: “Restoring ancient woodland where there is the potential to do so and it is compatible with other objectives is an important part of achieving forest certification. Certification demonstrates sustainable management and helps to ensure that estates can continue to market timber effectively.
“We’re pleased to be working with the Woodland Trust Scotland to benefit from their expertise and advice on restoration.”
Through its Ancient Woodland Restoration project the Woodland Trust Scotland is working with RDI Associates Ltd to engage woodland owners in two priority areas in the north of Scotland, the Great Glen and Three Firths, and the Cairngorms and Hinterland.
1,600 hectares of plantation on ancient woodland sites in each area will be in a process of restoration by the end of a four year project, which has been supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Scottish Forestry Trust and the MacRobert Trust.
Landowners can access impartial support and guidance to enable them to sustainably manage and restore plantations on ancient woodland sites. |
Freedom of speech is an increasingly rare commodity it seems.
Israel’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan has just announced he wants to set up an international consortium to monitor “hate speech.”
Hate speech, like so-called free-speech zones and other forms of censorship, is part of a 21st century evolution of linguistic sophistry. The concept is only supportable because of a larger confusion about what law is and what crimes are.
Perhaps libertarian congressman Ron Paul said it best in an article entitled “Crazed Hate Crime Laws.” Here’s an excerpt:
Instead of increasing the effectiveness of law enforcement, hate crime laws undermine equal justice under the law by requiring law enforcement and judicial system officers to give priority to investigating and prosecuting hate crimes. … Why should an assault victim be treated by the legal system as a second-class citizen because his assailant was motivated by greed instead of hate?
Good points. Crimes are actions taken, what one DOES. The concept of hate speech, or even a hate crime, is logically insupportable. A crime is no more or less heinous because of what one is THINKING. That’s extremely difficult to ascertain anyway.
Libertarian publisher Anthony Wile is concerned about how “hate” is being redefined and criminalized. It’s a process he’s regularly tracked.
”Some of the West’s largest and most powerful countries are at the forefront of these ‘hate’ precedents,” he said. “In the United States, for instance, the Department of Homeland Security is moving past what’s historically been considered crime to now criminalize even constitutionalism.”
Correct. Homeland Security’s fusion center in Utah recently issued a report listing “visual indicators” to help police understand whether they are potentially dealing with domestic terrorists.
According to Reason magazine, which posted an article on the subject, these indicators may include logos or images associated with “specific political groups, such as the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters.” Also listed was the “more generic patriotic symbol, the Gadsden flag—a famous Revolutionary War banner featuring a coiled rattlesnake and the slogan Don’t Tread on Me.”
In another article published at Alt-Market.com, libertarian commentator Brandon Smith expanded on Homeland Security’s plans:
While scanning the pages of mainstream propaganda machines like Reuters, I came across this little gem of an article, which outlines plans by the U.S. Justice Department to apply existing enemy combatant laws used against ISIS terrorists and their supporters to “domestic extremists,” specifically mentioning the Bundy takeover of the federal refuge in Burns, Oregon as an example.
“This is an international trend,” Anthony Wile noted. “Western-style justice is increasingly common around the world and hate-crime precedents are part of that.”
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, Israel’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan has unveiled plans to create an “international coalition” that would monitor the Internet’s worldwide social media platforms.
According to the Times of Israel, Erdan is “aiming to build an international coalition to force the world’s leading social media giants to prevent their platforms from being abused to peddle incitement to terrorism. … The move … aims at requiring Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and other social networks to take greater responsibility for such content.”
Attorneys quoted by the Times stated that Erdan’s ideas could not be applied judicially because hosting companies have clear contracts drawn up that absolve them from responsibility regarding the actions of entities that use their services.
However, the Times also quotes attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of the Israel Law Center, who believes a coalition could rupture the legal defenses of hosting companies.
“Erdan is seeking to build this international coalition,” she told the Times, “There’s safety in numbers; if Facebook et al. know they are going to have to face the music in a dozen countries, they will be much more amenable to being proactive on this matter than if they were just contending with Israel.”
Erdan’s spokesperson said, “The legislation would have common features, such as defining what constitutes incitement and what the responsibilities of social networks regarding it are.
Social media giants “make millions but claim they are not responsible for content, and that they only provide a platform,” he told the Times. “That is not going to wash. We are planning to put a stop to this irresponsibility, and we are going to do it as part of an international coalition that has had enough of this behavior as well.”
Anthony Wile is correct about the expansion of hate-crime precedents. Soon Erdan and “most” European countries that “are very interested in this idea,” as Erdan’s spokesperson indicated, may decide who is a terrorist and why.
“Hate crimes are troubling of themselves,” Wile said, “but there’s a larger agenda as well.” The real intention, Anthony Wile said, was not to catch “terrorists” but to blunt the effectiveness of the Internet as a truth-telling tool.
“The idea is to intimidate people,” Wile observed, “and force them to think in certain ways. The most effective censorship, of course, is the kind that the individual applies to himself.”
The Internet is a tremendous communications tool, shedding light on authoritarianism and fascist abuse around the world. But the same actors that are exposed by the Internet can attempt to use it for their own purposes.
This is a great battle and the outcome is by no means clear.
“It’s a struggle that we’re all involved in,” Anthony Wile concluded, “whether or not we wish to be. I’d suggest that individually and communally we try to become aware of what’s happening to our ability to communicate freely and build systems – informal ones, anyway – that can counteract this sort of institutional censorship. We need to ensure that, for ourselves anyway, our ability to communicate is not compromised.” |
E-commerce major Snapdeal has announced its foray into financial services with the acquisition of a majority stake in RupeePower, a leading digital financial products distribution platform. Snapdeal will now offer consumers a financial services marketplace – a first of its kind initiative in the e-commerce industry.
Through this marketplace, Snapdeal and RupeePower will endeavor to digitally organize the fragmented financial services market by integrating these services onto the Snapdeal platform.
RupeePower is a digital distribution platform for loans, credit cards and other personal finance products. With its credit comparison, matching and processing infrastructure and strong affiliation with banks and NBFCs, RupeePower will now join forces with Snapdeal in building a collaborative ecosystem to provide customers with a host of financial products.
The Softbank funded company has a nationwide reach, robust technology platform and deep consumer insights, and with RupeePower’s deep technical integrations in information systems of the financial services industry will create a powerful combination.
Commenting on this, Kunal Bahl, Co-founder & CEO, Snapdeal said, “Our aim is to create life changing experiences for our buyers and sellers and all our efforts at Snapdeal are in line with meeting this objective. Realizing the various difficulties that consumers face while deciding and purchasing financial products/services and the challenges that companies face while reaching out to the ‘right’ audience, we have brought RupeePower into our family to help solve the distribution challenges of the financial services ecosystem and make it more inclusive. The same way Snapdeal has democratised retail in India, we now aspire to democratise access to credit.”
Founded in 2011, RupeePower has enabled Rs. 1,500 crores of credit disbursal through its platform in the current financial. “The share of digital origination of credit is poised to grow from today’s 7.5% to 40% over the next four years in an INR 400,000 crore (USD 67bn) retail credit market growing at 20% annually.
“With this investment and by partnering with Snapdeal, we aim to become the #1 originator of financial products over the next couple of years. Our emphasis will be on scaling RupeePower into the top match-making platform between lenders and borrowers, providing consumers with the best targeted offers & a super-simplified loan process, while ensuring lower opex & smarter credit match for lenders,” said Tejasvi Mohanram, Founder & CEO, RupeePower.
The marketplace will include a wide range of financial services like personal loans, educational loans, credit cards (co-brand – B2B & B2C), auto loans, home loans and extended warranties amongst others.
With this launch, financial services companies will now be able to leverage Snapdeal’s nationwide reach across 5000+ towns and cities. Often resolving to follow up on cold leads, these companies will be able to market and target their products and services to a captive audience on Snapdeal implying higher conversion vis-à-vis the traditional offline channels.
According to some media reports, Snapdeal also acquired e-commerce management software and fulfillment solution provider Unicommerce, however, the company has not confirmed this as yet. Earlier this month, New Delhi-based company made an undisclosed amount of funding in logistics startup GoJavas.
Snapdeal which recently turned five has acquired five startups over the last five years. The company has acquired Grabbon.com, sports marketplace eSportsbuy, handicraft-focused marketplace Shopo.in, Doozton and Wishpicker.
This move from Snapdeal comes as a surprise following speculations of a possible acquisition of Mumbai-based Freecharge and Komli Media. Indian e-commerce is going through an interesting phase and e-commerce majors are exploring new avenues to turn profitable. |
A BRITISH man who stole more than $700,000 from the bank account of an Australian business spent the money in just two days as he funded a highrolling lifestyle.
James Molloy used a malware infection to transfer the money from UXC Connect Pay Limited.
Following an Australian Federal Police tip-off, authorities in the UK began investigating and seized CCTV from Porsche, Harrods, Watch Gallery, De Beers, and Prestons, which showed Molloy trying to spend the money as fast as he could.
media_camera Convicted UK fraudster James Molloy stole more than $700,000. Picture: City of London Police
Last July Molloy, from Liverpool in England’s north west, opened a National Australian Bank (NAB) personal bank account using his British passport and UK driving license as forms of identification.
Three months later NAB was alerted to a malware infection, in which $711,757.20 had been debited from the business account of the company, which has offices across Australia.
The money was credited to Molloy’s account.
Investigators discovered that Molloy was spending the money on expensive cars and jewellery in Surrey and west London, with the account emptied of all its funds.
Between October 7 and 9 last year, he bought a number of Rolex watches, a diamond engagement ring for $65,500 and a number of items in department store Harrods, including two Chanel handbags priced at $7,560 and $6,530 and ‘Billionaire’ clothing to the value of $9,300.
He also tried to buy a Mercedes E220D AMG for $74,700, an Audi Q5 for $64,000, a BMW 440i M Sport for $60,000, a Porsche Cayenne for $176,000 and a Volkswagen Golf GTI for $58,500.
But after they were contacted by NAB, the retailers did not release the vehicles.
Detectives from the City of London’s Money Laundering and Investigation Unit (MLIU) carried out a warrant in St Albans, 30km north of London, and found one of the Chanel handbags and $45,000 in British cash.
media_camera Molloy also bought two Chanel handbags (not pictured) with the stolen cash. Picture: Patria Jannides
Police tried to get Molloy to hand himself in when they contacted him over the phone but he refused.
He was eventually arrested on March 24 this year at a passport office in Liverpool. He was in the process of applying for a passport in another name.
Two men and a woman have also been arrested and the investigation is ongoing.
Molloy pleaded guilty to nine charges of converting criminal property and was jailed for two years and eight months when he appeared at Southwark Crown Court this week.
Detective Inspector John Ellis said: “Motivated by money and greed, Molloy’s foolish actions have been exposed and we hope (the) sentencing serves as a warning to others.
“I would like to thank the Australian Federal Police for their co-operation and involvement in the case.
“We are committed to putting a stop to money laundering and recovering the proceeds of crime. “This case highlights the point that justice will be served to those who commit crime.”
david.hurley@news.com.au
@davidhurleyHS |
Technology company Oculus has been gradually shipping out final developer kits for its Kickstarter-funded Rift head-mounted display to more than 9,000 backers. While we haven't been able to do extensive in-home testing yet, we did manage to get some hands-on time with the final developer unit at a recent event. Our first impressions suggest that this device easily sets a new high water mark for virtual reality, but it could still stand to see some improvements before it's ready for consumers' hands.
The shipping-ready developer unit I tried has come a long way since the prototype I first sampled at PAX East last year. For one thing, the Rift is now making use of a big 7-inch diagonal display, up from the 5.6-inch display found on prototypes. While the early units had a roughly 110 degree viewing range, the new display was enough to cover my entire field of vision, even when I shifted my eyes left or right to try to make out the edges of the view. The new display also provides smoother pixel switching than earlier demos did, resulting in less blurring and streaking when I moved my head about. I was told that there was about a 60 millisecond delay between an input and the resulting pixels on the demo running on an Nvidia 680 graphics card.
These improvements came at some expense to the weight of the unit, which is now 90 grams heavier than it was before the screen was expanded. Frankly, I didn't find the added mass to be distracting. Putting the unit on felt comparable to donning a pair of sleek ski goggles. After a quick adjustment with some twistable knobs, I was able to get rid of an annoying nose pinch, and I found it quite easy to forget the unit was on my head at all.
The Oculus team was showing off a demo of Hawken, which was an inspired choice to highlight the Rift's features. Hawken is a game in which your character is actually sitting in the seat of a giant mech, so it feels natural to be sitting in a seat and looking at a perspective from inside the cockpit. Even when the mech turns with the push of an analog stick, the cockpit housing stays fixed in relative space, providing a bit of a psychological anchor that prevents the nausea I felt playing Doom 3 on an earlier unit (the improved latency also likely helped on that score).
Hawken also does a great job of showing off the incredible sense of stereoscopic depth you can get when playing the Rift. I usually have to close my eyes and blink away a headache after a few minutes of looking at a simulated 3D image on a screen, whether it's shown with or without glasses. I didn't have this problem with the Rift, though, possibly because each eye was actually getting a distinct, unfiltered image. There were none of the interference or flickering issues that often show up when using 3D glasses or pixel-grated LCD displays.
The result was an incredible sense of apparent distance between the surrounding cockpit and the buildings in the hazy distance. It only got more convincing thanks to the excellent head tracking, which refused to get confused no matter how fast or oddly I shook my head about. It all combined into an amazing sense of freedom and immersion when I flew into the air with a jet pack, and a strong sense of vertigo as I went into free fall and saw the ground rushing up to meet my feet.
Unfortunately, the Hawken demo also highlighted what's currently the biggest problem with the Rift: resolution. The 1280×800 display sounds like it would be decent enough for a 7-inch screen. But when that display is sitting just a few inches from your face—and it's split down the middle into separate images for both eyes—it doesn't quite cut it. The short viewing distance makes it pretty easy to make out individual pixels, including the thin black lines that surround each one. People used to retina displays and high-def PC monitors will probably find everything just a bit muddy. This is more than a purely cosmetic concern, too; when I looked down at my cockpit in Hawken, the ammunition readout looked like a blurry, unreadable blob. When I took off the headset briefly and looked at the source image on the monitor in front of me, however, it was crystal clear.
Improving the resolution is one of the top priorities as Oculus continues to tweak the hardware from its current development kit to an eventual consumer version, Oculus VP of Product Nate Mitchell told Ars. "Resolution is at the top of my humble list, only because the Rift is all about a visually immersive experience," he said. "We're trying to trick your brain purely with visuals that you're in the game. The higher the resolution of the panel, the higher fidelity the visuals, the better everything's going to look."
Mitchell compared the effect he was looking for to going from an original iPhone to one with a retina display that packs more pixels in the same space. "I'm not saying that's the jump we're going to make, but that level of quality. It's hard to go back. We're not quite there, and we think that's really key to making an awesome consumer experience."
Balancing that desire for extra resolution with all the other things that make for a high quality head-mounted display is key. The Oculus team has evaluated dozens of LCD displays for everything from latency and pixel switching time to power consumption, weight, contrast, and brightness, Mitchell said. To evaluate which elements are worth trading for improvements in other areas, Mitchell said each specification goes into a weighted spreadsheet for each potential display. That spreadsheet then spits out a single number that can be used to guide Oculus' decision on a display with the best balance between affordability, wearability, and immersion.
"Price is the number one factor... You can't have a panel that costs $300 that you're putting in a product that costs $300, and we definitely want to stay in that range for the consumer version," he said.
While Oculus has been looking to off-the-shelf cell phone displays for its materials, there have been some issues that manufacturers aren't really equipped to handle. "So many of the cell phone devs aren't worried about the same problems we are," Mitchell said. "Every one is unique in some weird way."
The dream would be to get a panel manufacturer to make a customized display just for the Rift, but that's just not possible at this point. "The best panels are very expensive and just not in the price range, and some of them aren't available to us; they're only available to the people manufacturing them," Mitchell said. "It's tricky, because we walk up and we're tiny Oculus and we say, 'Hey, we want to make this product—can we get some of your panels...' and they say, "How many are you making?" and we say, '10K,' and they boot us out of the room. As we scale up, a big part of this whole process is slowly becoming a more credible company in the sense that we can talk to the biggest display manufacturers like Sharp and LG and say, 'We really want to do this and is there any chance that your best panels might be available to us?'"
I was duly impressed with the Rift's current head-tracking abilities, and Mitchell said he'd love to have full positional tracking in a future version of the Rift. That would let the Rift track you as you move around the room, but Mitchell admitted he's more concerned with simply tracking how your head changes position slightly as you tilt and bend in place. "Right now, if there's a [camera] in the world, and you bend down, the world moves with you, because your orientation hasn't changed, so the Rift's image doesn't change." The team is looking into using ambient magnetic fields (like the Razer Hydra controller) and other potential solutions to get this feature. While they'd like to have it for the consumer launch, Mitchell admitted he "can't say if it will be there." |
COURT OF APPEAL FOR ONTARIO
CITATION: Awan v. Levant, 2016 ONCA 970
DATE: 20161222
DOCKET: C59810
Feldman, Simmons and Rouleau JJ.A.
BETWEEN
Khurrum Awan
Plaintiff (Respondent)
and
Ezra Levant
Defendant (Appellant)
Iain MacKinnon, for the appellant
Brian Shiller and Angela Chaisson, for the respondent
Heard: May 16, 2016
On appeal from the judgment of Justice Wendy M. Matheson of the Superior Court of Justice, dated November 27, 2014, with reasons reported at 2014 ONSC 6890.
Feldman J.A.:
A. Introduction
[1] The appellant published nine posts to his online blog, which the trial judge found were libellous of the respondent. Any defences that might have been available were negated by the trial judge’s finding that the appellant was motivated by malice. She awarded $50,000 in general damages and $30,000 in aggravated damages. The appellant appeals both the finding that the blog posts were libellous and the quantum of the damages award.
B. FActs
[2] The statements that form the basis of this litigation arose out of a hearing before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal (“BCHRT”), which itself arose out of a protracted dispute between Maclean’s magazine on one side, and the respondent and some of his colleagues on the other. To understand the defamation claim, it is first necessary to set out the history leading to the human rights complaint.
(1) The Maclean’s Article and Meeting
[3] On October 23, 2006, Maclean’s magazine published a cover story entitled “The future belongs to Islam”. The article was an excerpt from a book by journalist Mark Steyn entitled America Alone. The sub-headline captures the central theme of the piece: “The Muslim world has youth, numbers and global ambitions. The West is growing old and enfeebled, and lacks the will to rebuff those who would supplant it. It’s the end of the world as we’ve known it.”
[4] The respondent became aware of the article shortly thereafter from a press release by the Canadian Council on American Islamic Relations, which expressed concern about the content of the article.
[5] At the time the article was published, the respondent was a student at Osgoode Hall Law School. Following discussions with some friends and colleagues, a group of four law students (Naseem Mithoowani, Muneeza Sheikh, Ali Ahmed and the respondent) decided to approach Maclean’s with their concerns.
[6] The students contacted various Muslim organizations for support, and ultimately decided to work with the Canadian Islamic Congress (“CIC”).
[7] The respondent had prior involvement with the CIC. He had served as a Youth Chapter President, written papers, and testified before government committees on behalf of the CIC. He had also received a modest scholarship from the organization, in exchange for performing 150 hours of community service for the CIC.
[8] When one of the students requested a meeting to discuss their concerns, Maclean’s agreed.
[9] Prior to the meeting, the students met to discuss their strategy. They decided to ask for publication of a reply article in Maclean’s by a mutually acceptable author. The students also planned to ask for a donation to a charitable organization in the area of race relations. They discussed an amount between $5,000 and $10,000.
[10] The meeting took place on March 30, 2007. In attendance along with the students were Julian Porter, Q.C., counsel for Maclean’s, Ken Whyte, Editor-in-Chief, and Mark Stevenson, Deputy Editor.
[11] The meeting began with the students presenting their concerns and their proposal for resolving them. After a few minutes, Mr. Whyte spoke up and disagreed with the students’ characterization of the article. He noted that the author was a reputable journalist and the article itself was nuanced. He also added that after the article was published, Maclean’s published several letters to the editor in response.
[12] The meeting ended abruptly after Mr. Whyte said that he would rather go bankrupt than print an article by an author of the students’ choice.
(2) Subsequent Events and Media Coverage
[13] Following the meeting, the students regrouped and discussed how to respond.
[14] The students’ first response was in April 2007. Since Maclean’s was a Rogers publication, they wrote to Ted Rogers. Brian Segal, President and CEO of Rogers, responded, indicating that Rogers would not interfere with the editorial views expressed by its magazines. He also stated that the article raised issues that were legitimate matters for publication in a national magazine.
[15] The students responded to Mr. Segal, stating that they would go public with their concerns if attempts to resolve the matter were unsuccessful.
[16] Believing their concerns had not been addressed, the students launched a series of human rights complaints. This decision proved to be controversial and resulted in significant criticism in the media. Many commentators were of the view that the Maclean’s article was well-suited to public dialogue and if the students were concerned about its contents, they ought to have entered that dialogue.
[17] The complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Commission was prepared by the respondent and was brought by the four students as complainants. The other two other complaints, to the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the British Columbia Human Rights Commission, were brought by Dr. Mohamed Elmasry who was the President of the CIC at the time, as a complainant. The students were not complainants in those two complaints.
[18] Faisal Joseph, a lawyer at the London office of Lerners LLP, agreed to assist by acting pro bono for the complainants at the Ontario and British Columbia tribunals.
[19] On December 4, 2007, Mr. Joseph spoke at a press conference about the failed attempt to resolve the issue with Maclean’s. He said that the students were seeking equal space to respond to what they perceived as an Islamophobic article.
[20] Maclean’s responded immediately with a statement on its website by Mr. Whyte to clarify what occurred at the meeting. It stated that Maclean’s was willing to consider a reasonable request for a response, but did not consider the students’ proposal for an article written by an author of their choice to be a reasonable request for response.
[21] It was at this point that the students realized there were different perceptions of what happened at the March 2007 meeting. According to the students, they were unaware that Maclean’s was willing to consider a reasonable response.
[22] The students responded with a press release on December 7, 2007, released under the auspices of the CIC, which said that at the meeting with Maclean’s, they asked for a “balanced response from a mutually acceptable author” and attempted to discuss a resolution. The respondent was quoted in the press release as saying that “Mr. Whyte’s recent statement suggesting that he offered to consider a reasonable request, but we wanted to pick an author of our choice, is a complete fabrication.”
[23] In the following months, the respondent co-authored several letters to the editor and articles that appeared in major Canadian newspapers: the Globe and Mail (December 8, 2007); the National Post (December 20, 2007 and May 10, 2008); the Ottawa Citizen (December 21, 2007); the Montreal Gazette (February 24, 2008); and the Waterloo Record (April 18, 2008).
[24] In these letters, the students discussed the meeting with Maclean’s. They emphasized that at the meeting, the students proposed that Maclean’s publish a response from a mutually acceptable author. According to them, Maclean’s rejected this proposal.
[25] The students held another press conference on April 30, 2008, and issued a press release the same day where they reiterated their position that in the meeting, Maclean’s had refused to publish a response of any kind, and they also offered to settle the matter with Maclean’s if it would publish a mutually acceptable response from an agreed-upon author.
(3) Human Rights Proceedings
[26] Both the Ontario and Canadian Human Rights Commissions decided against proceeding with the complaints. The British Columbia Human Rights Commission held a hearing, but it dismissed the complaint.
[27] The British Columbia hearing took place from June 2 to 6, 2008. The witnesses who testified for the complainants were the respondent, one of the complainants, Dr. Habib, and three expert witnesses. Dr. Elmasry did not testify. The respondents (Rogers Publishing Ltd. and Maclean’s publisher Ken MacQueen) called no evidence.
[28] At the time of the hearing, the respondent was working as a law clerk to the Ontario Superior Court, and had secured an articling position at the Lerners firm in Toronto.
[29] It was at this stage that the appellant entered the picture. The appellant attended the hearing for the first two days and live-blogged its events. These blog posts form the subject matter of the respondent’s libel claims.
[30] At the time of the hearing, the appellant was known to be a harsh critic of human rights commissions. His publication, the Western Standard, had been the subject of two complaints under Alberta human rights legislation, both of which were ultimately dismissed.
[31] As a result of the appellant’s experiences with human rights commissions, he commenced a campaign to, in his words, “denormalize” them. He published a book in 2008 describing his “ordeal” with the Alberta human rights commission, and at trial, called human rights commissions “kangaroo courts”. The appellant was particularly critical of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.
[32] The appellant also had connections to the subject matter of the Maclean’s complaint. He knew Mr. Steyn and held him in high regard. Mr. Steyn wrote regularly for the appellant’s publication and ultimately contributed the foreword of the appellant’s book. The appellant also admired Mr. Whyte of Maclean’s.
[33] Further, the appellant held strong views about one of the complainants in the British Columbia proceeding, Dr. Elmasry. Dr. Elmasry was a controversial figure who, in 2004, had made a televised statement suggesting that all adult Israelis were valid targets of violence. The appellant frequently wrote about Dr. Elmasry and referred to him as a “Jew-hating bigot”.
[34] At the beginning of the hearing, the Tribunal chair asked counsel to introduce themselves. Mr. Joseph identified himself as counsel for the complainants and no one else was so identified.
[35] The respondent was the first witness who testified. His testimony began on the first day of the hearing and finished on the second. With one exception, the respondent did not return to the hearing after his testimony.
[36] According to Mr. Joseph, the respondent was a fact witness who was there to testify about what happened at the Maclean’s meeting since neither of the complainants in the British Columbia proceeding had been present at the meeting.
[37] In cross-examination, Mr. Porter, who was acting for Maclean’s at the hearing, suggested to the respondent that the students had never said “mutually acceptable” during the meeting. The respondent agreed, saying that they were unable to raise this during the meeting because it ended abruptly.
(4) June 2008 Blog Posts
[38] It was during Mr. Porter’s cross-examination of the respondent that the appellant posted the majority of the blog posts that form the subject matter of this action. The first post, entitled “Khurrum Awan is a Serial Liar”, was published on June 3, 2008, the second day of the BCHRT hearing, at 2:56 p.m. It was shortly followed by six other blog posts:
· “Awan the liar, part 2” (3:01 p.m.)
· “Awan the liar, part 3” (3:04 p.m.)
· “Awan the liar, part 4” (3:08 p.m.)
· “Awan the liar, part 5” (3:12 p.m.)
· “Awan the liar, part 6” (3:17 p.m.)
· “Awan the liar, part 7” (3:28 p.m.)
[39] The blog posts were all fairly short. Although the content varied, they generally stated that the respondent was lying about whether the students asked Maclean’s at the meeting to publish a response from a mutually acceptable author. They also stated that the respondent was engaged in a “shakedown”.
(5) The Libel Action
[40] The respondent did not sue for defamation in 2008. However, the controversy was resurrected the following year. On June 4, 2009, the appellant wrote another blog post entitled “Awan the liar, part 8”, following a letter to the editor that the respondent and Ms. Mithoowani wrote to the Toronto Star in response to an article written by the appellant. This blog post was longer than the ones posted during the June 2008 hearing before the BCHRT and included links to the previous seven posts.
[41] Some of the content of this post (particularly the accusations that the respondent was a liar) was similar to the earlier posts. However, in this post, the appellant made additional remarks. He referred to Dr. Elmasry as an “anti-Semite-in-chief” and said the respondent was Dr. Elmasry’s protégé. Near the end of the post, the appellant discussed the respondent’s testimony before the BCHRT. He wrote that the respondent was co-counsel for the complainant and a witness. The appellant described this behaviour as “the definition of conflict of interest.”
[42] The respondent served a libel notice, dated July 14, 2009. Following that, he commenced the present action.
[43] On January 21, 2010, the appellant published a ninth blog post. This post is entitled “Mark Steyn’s would-be censor sues me -- and I’m going to fight back”. The statement of claim was amended to include this blog post in the libel action.
[44] This blog post repeats many of the earlier statements about the respondent’s purported lies and “shakedown” of Maclean’s. The appellant refers to the respondent as a friend of “the notorious anti-Semite Greg Falton”. The appellant said he would “quote a Jew now, just because it will irritate Awan.” He also wrote of “illiberal Islamic fascists” who were “waging war against our values.”
C. Decision BELow
[45] The trial judge began by rejecting the appellant’s argument that because of his reputation as someone who is provocative and controversial, none of the words complained of were defamatory. She held that an ordinary, right-thinking member of society would readily regard several of the statements as defamatory.
[46] The trial judge then reviewed each of the nine blog posts that formed the subject matter of the action. She concluded that the posts included many defamatory statements, including:
· The respondent was a dishonest person and a liar;
· The respondent tried to “shake down” Maclean’s;
· The respondent was incompetent, unethical, and unfit to be a lawyer;
· The respondent was an anti-Semite;
· The respondent was in a conflict of interest at the BCHRT hearing;
· The respondent used the courts to bully his opponents; and
· The respondent had extreme, intolerant views.
[47] Having established that the blog posts were defamatory, the burden shifted to the appellant to establish a defence. At trial, the appellant relied to varying degrees on the defences of justification, fair comment, and qualified privilege. His main defence was fair comment on a matter of public interest.
[48] In WIC Radio Ltd. v. Simpson, 2008 SCC 40, [2008] 2 S.C.R. 420, at para. 28, the Supreme Court of Canada set out the requirements for the fair comment defence:
(a) the comment must be on a matter of public interest;
(b) the comment must be based on fact;
(c) the comment, though it can include inferences of fact, must be recognisable as comment;
(d) the comment must satisfy the following objective test: could any [person] honestly express that opinion on the proved facts?
(e) even though the comment satisfies the objective test the defence can be defeated if the plaintiff proves that the defendant was [subjectively] actuated by express malice. [Parenthetical notes in original; emphasis removed.]
[49] The respondent conceded that the blog posts were on a matter of public interest. The other factors were in dispute.
Findings by the Trial Judge
[50] First, with respect to the repeated statements calling the respondent a liar, the trial judge held that these were statements of fact, rather than comments. She noted that the words were stated as fact in a purported report of the hearing and were not recognizable as comment. Further, the word “liar” appeared in the headlines and people might read only the headline, which contained no supporting facts. Further, a number of the underlying facts that would support the liar comment were not proved to be true, so that the defence of fair comment could not succeed in any event.
[51] Alternatively, the trial judge held that even if these statements were comments, the defence of fair comment would fail because the appellant failed to prove that the respondent lied deliberately, which was necessary to prove that he was in fact a liar.
[52] Similarly, the trial judge found the accusations of anti-Semitism were not stated as matters of opinion but as a fact. She held that based on the evidence at trial, the appellant failed to prove that the respondent is or was an anti-Semite.
[53] Third, the trial judge determined that the appellant’s statement that the respondent was in a conflict of interest and co-counsel at the BCHRT hearing arose from factual errors, and that the respondent was not counsel at the hearing. As the factual underpinnings of the allegation must be true for the defence of fair comment to apply, the trial judge concluded that the defence was not established.
[54] Next, the trial judge found that the references to a “shakedown” could be defended on the basis of fair comment. She concluded that the public interest requirement was established, the imputation was based on true facts, the comment was recognizable as such, and it was a view that could be honestly held.
[55] Any defence of fair comment is defeated by malice on the part of the person making the comment. The trial judge found that there was ample evidence demonstrating malice by the appellant. She found that the malice arose from the appellant’s strongly held animus towards Dr. Elmasry, which was visited on the respondent in the blog postings. She noted that the appellant made little or no effort to check his facts or with one exception, make corrections when he learned of his mistakes. She found these considerations supported a finding of malice.
[56] Since malice defeats the defences of fair comment and qualified privilege, the trial judge concluded that the defence of fair comment that had been established with respect to certain statements was defeated.
[57] In awarding damages, the trial judge noted that the respondent was in a vulnerable stage of his career when the posts were published. She held that the statements were extremely serious as they went to the heart of the respondent’s reputation as a lawyer and member of society. She also considered the lack of mitigation by the appellant. On the other hand, she noted that the readership could have been quite modest and there was other negative media coverage at the time the blog posts were published which could also have affected his reputation.
[58] After assessing all these considerations, the trial judge awarded $50,000 in general damages.
[59] With respect to aggravated damages, the trial judge found that the appellant’s behaviour was motivated by malice, which increased the injury to the respondent. She awarded $30,000 in aggravated damages.
[60] The trial judge declined to award punitive damages. She ordered that the defamatory words be taken down from the appellant’s website.
D. Issues
[61] The appellant challenges a number of the trial judge’s findings and asks that this court set aside the judgment or reduce the amount of damages awarded. He raises the following six issues:
1) Is less deference owed to a trial judge’s findings of fact when a Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms right such as freedom of expression is at stake?
2) Did the trial judge err in holding that when the appellant called the respondent a liar, that was a statement of fact and not opinion and that the appellant had to prove that the impugned lie was made deliberately by the respondent?
3) Similarly, did the trial judge err in holding that the allegation that the respondent is one of a group of anti-Semites is a statement of fact and not comment or opinion?
4) Did the trial judge err in finding that the respondent did not act as co-counsel at the BCHRT hearing?
5) Did the trial judge err in law by finding that the appellant was actuated by malice against Dr. Elmasry and that that malice vitiated the fair comment defence?
6) Did the trial judge err in the calculation of general damages and in also awarding aggravated damages?
E. Analysis
(1) Standard of Review
[62] The appellant makes the overall submission that a less deferential standard of review of a trial judge’s factual findings should be accorded on appeal where the Charter right to freedom of expression (s. 2(b)) is engaged. He refers to the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Grant v. Torstar Corp., 2009 SCC 61, [2009] 3 S.C.R. 640, at paras. 47-51, where the court commented on the relationship between the Charter protection of free expression and defamatory communications on matters of public interest:
The guarantee of free expression in s. 2(b) of the Charter has three core rationales, or purposes: (1) democratic discourse; (2) truth-finding; and (3) self-fulfillment. These purposes inform the content of s. 2(b) and assist in determining what limits on free expression can be justified under s. 1.
…
Of the three rationales for the constitutional protection of free expression, only the third, self-fulfillment, is of dubious relevance to defamatory communications on matters of public interest. This is because the plaintiff’s interest in reputation may be just as worthy of protection as the defendant’s interest in self-realization through unfettered expression. We are not talking here about a direct prohibition of expression by the state, in which the self-fulfillment potential of even malicious and deceptive expression can be relevant, but rather a means by which individuals can hold one another civilly accountable for what they say. Charter principles do not provide a licence to damage another person’s reputation simply to fulfill one’s atavistic desire to express oneself. [Citations omitted; emphasis in original.]
[63] This guidance from the Supreme Court explains that the protection of free speech is not intended to be at the expense of a wrongfully defamed person’s ability to obtain a civil remedy for the tort of libel. The two rights live together under our law and are to be interpreted and applied by judges at both the trial and appeal levels. I cannot see any basis for applying a less deferential standard of review to the findings of fact of a trial judge in this context than in any other.
(2) Statements of Fact versus Opinion or Comment
[64] The appellant’s main defence in this action was fair comment on a matter of public interest. The appellant was blogging from a human rights tribunal hearing on a matter that had been the subject of much public comment: Mark Steyn’s article in Maclean’s, the backlash to it coordinated by the respondent and his colleagues, and Maclean’s response to that backlash. The appellant used an aggressive, no-holds-barred writing style. The trial judge found that a number of things the appellant said about the respondent were defamatory. On appeal, the appellant submits that the trial judge erred by rejecting his defence of fair comment.
a) Fact versus Comment - Calling the Respondent a Liar
[65] One of the defamatory statements made in every blog post was the description of the respondent as a “liar” or a “serial liar”. The trial judge found that those words were factual statements, not comments, and that the appellant was therefore required to prove that the respondent had an intention to deceive. She also stated that even if those words were comments, the appellant was required to prove as a foundational fact that the respondent made an incorrect statement deliberately. The appellant challenges these findings.
[66] The trial judge made the finding in the context of the first blog post, which reads in full:
Khurrum Awan is a serial liar
Julian Porter himself was at the meeting where Khurrum Awan and his junior Al Sharptons tried to shake down Ken Whyte and Maclean’s for cash and a cover story.
Porter asked Awan point blank if the CIC’s proposed “counter-article” was to be “mutually acceptable” to Whyte or of the CIC’s own choosing.
After obfuscating for a few rounds, Awan acknowledged that he never in fact offered a “mutually acceptable” article -- that was simply an after-the-fact lie, a little bit of taqqiya that Awan et al. has told the press.
Awan admitted that he made no such offer of a mutually acceptable author. It was to be the CIC’s own choice.
[67] The word “taqqiya” was hyperlinked in this blog post to an article entitled “Islamic Tactics of Taqqiya teaches [sic] Muslims to Practice Deception, Fraud and Double Standards to Spread Islam”. The trial judge accepted that on the evidence before her, “taqqiya” at least means deception, and is defamatory.
[68] The appellant’s position at trial was that his characterization of the respondent as a liar was based on the respondent’s testimony at the BCHRT hearing, compared to the prior signed or by-lined publications by the group of students, including the respondent. In those letters to the editor and press releases, the students stated that at the meeting their request was that Maclean’s publish a responding article written by a “mutually acceptable author”. They refuted Mr. Whyte’s version of the Maclean’s meeting where he said that the students’ proposal was for a five-page article by an author of their choice.
[69] However, on his cross-examination at the BCHRT hearing, the respondent agreed with Mr. Porter that the students never said “mutually acceptable” at the meeting. The respondent said they never had a chance to propose the terms of a response because both Mr. Whyte and Mr. Porter made it clear that Maclean’s was not interested in publishing one.
[70] It was in response to this testimony that the appellant called the respondent a liar in his first blog, and repeated it in his subsequent blog posts.
[71] In her reasons, at para. 124, the trial judge concluded that:
[T]he reasonable reader of this blog post would regard the use of the words “liar” and “lie” as statements of fact. Quite simply, they are stated as fact. They are stated as fact in a purported report of an ongoing hearing. Those words are not recognizable as comment in the blog post, readily distinguishable from facts, as would be required to assert that they are comment.
[72] As support for her conclusion, the trial judge relied on two further factors. She noted that while not determinative, it was relevant that the appellant did not preface his remarks by saying “in my view” or “I come to the conclusion that”. She also found it relevant that the word “liar” was used in the headline, which might be the only thing some people would read. The headline contained none of the supporting facts that were in the blog post itself.
[73] Finally, the trial judge concluded that because the statements were fact and not comment, or alternatively, as the basis for the statement if it was a comment, the appellant had to prove that the respondent’s incorrect statements in all the press releases and letters had been made deliberately. On that issue, she found, based on the trial evidence, that it was only upon being cross-examined by Mr. Porter at the BCHRT hearing, that the respondent’s “memory (or lack thereof) crystalized on this point.”
Discussion
[74] In WIC, under the heading, “Distinguishing Fact from Comment”, Binnie J. outlined the test to be applied and explained his conclusion, at paras. 26 and 27:
In Ross v. New Brunswick Teachers’ Assn. (2001), 201 D.L.R. (4th) 75, 2001 NBCA 62, at para. 56, the New Brunswick Court of Appeal correctly took the view that “comment” includes a “deduction, inference, conclusion, criticism, judgment, remark or observation which is generally incapable of proof”. Brown’s The Law of Defamation in Canada (2nd ed. (loose-leaf)) cites ample authority for the proposition that words that may appear to be statements of fact may, in pith and substance, be properly construed as comment. This is particularly so in an editorial context where loose, figurative or hyperbolic language is used in the context of political debate, commentary, media campaigns and public discourse.
[75] In the leading libel decision of Keays v. Guardian Newspapers Ltd., [2003] EWHC 1565 (Q.B.D.), Eady J. explained that as motives are generally incapable of proof, a statement on a matter of public interest that suggests a motive will likely be a comment rather than a fact, at paras. 49 and 50:
Anyone who chooses to enter the public arena invites comment and often this will include scrutiny of and comment about motives. Such persons cannot expect as of right to be taken at face value. It is sufficient protection in such circumstances for personal reputation that any adverse comments should be made in good faith, and that the words should be subjected, at the appropriate stage, to the objective test of whether the inferences or deductions could be drawn by an honest person with knowledge of the facts. [Emphasis in original.]
[76] In my view, based on these principles, calling someone a liar when discussing a matter of public interest or discourse would more likely be found to be a comment rather than a fact. However, in this case it was open to the trial judge to conclude that the appellant’s characterization of the respondent as a liar was stated as a matter of fact, not comment. She properly instructed herself that the distinction between what is fact and what is comment must be determined from the perspective of a “reasonable reader” (WIC, at para. 27). She was also mindful that context is important to the analysis. She concluded that the appellant’s description of the respondent as a liar was stated as a fact in the context of a report of a hearing, and that it was not recognizable as comment. Nor did the appellant add words such as “in my view” to suggest that the words were intended as comment. I see no basis for this court to interfere with the trial judge’s conclusion.
[77] In any event, even if the appellant’s characterization of the respondent as a liar was comment, not fact, the defence of fair comment would fail. As the trial judge found, the appellant failed to prove the truth of many of the underlying statements contained in the blog post, such as the reference to “taqiyya” (deception), and the statement that the students said at the meeting that the author of the proposed response was to be of the CIC’s own choice. Also, any potential defence of fair comment was defeated by the finding of malice. The trial judge found that the appellant was motivated by malice. As I will explain, there is no basis for this court to interfere with that finding.
b) Fact versus Comment - Calling the Respondent an Anti-Semite
[78] The eighth blog post came about a year after the BCHRT hearing, following a back-and-forth exchange between the appellant and the respondent in the Toronto Star. This blog opened with the following three paragraphs:
I’ve been blogging for about a year and a half, and by far the most enjoyable days of it were the ones I spent live-blogging Mark Steyn’s show trial at the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal last June.
I didn’t enjoy the trial, of course -- it’s not joyful to witness the Canadian legal system be brought into disrepute. I sat in a court house crowded with journalists who were stunned by the sham they were watching. As the Vancouver Sun’s Ian Mulgrew wrote at the time, “The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal is murdering its own reputation”. Yet the three kangaroos running the show were oblivious to the scandal they were participating in. Or they knew, but they just didn’t give a damn.
One of the reasons I enjoyed blogging from that trial was that it was the first time that the anti-Semites at the Canadian Islamic Congress had to face cross-examination for their conduct. Their anti-Semite-in-chief, Mohamed Elmasry -- who had boasted on national TV that all adult Israelis were legitimate targets for terrorist murders -- refused to take the witness stand, the coward. But bizarrely, his young protege, a Toronto law student named Khurrum Awan, took the stand in his place.
[79] The trial judge found that calling the respondent an anti-Semite was defamatory. In a brief paragraph in the reasons, the trial judge found that the statement was not stated as a matter of opinion, and that the appellant had not proved at trial that the respondent was an anti-Semite. She noted that in cross-examination, the appellant did not say that the respondent was an anti-Semite but relied on his connections to Dr. Elmasry and the CIC, although the words complained of were specific to the respondent.
[80] The appellant submits that the trial judge erred by finding that calling the respondent an anti-Semite in the context of the human rights proceeding, because of his association with Dr. Elmasry, was a statement of fact that had to be proved true, rather than a comment or opinion to which the defence of fair comment could apply.
Discussion
[81] I accept this submission. Unlike in her fact versus opinion analysis of the “liar” statements, the trial judge did not apply the reasonable person test, nor did she consider whether the statement was a conclusion or judgment formed by the appellant based on the respondent’s association with Dr. Elmasry. She also did not consider that it was stated in an editorial blog discussing a controversial matter of public interest.
[82] Applying that test, in my view, it is clear that a reasonable reader of the appellant’s blog would understand that the appellant was stating his view of the respondent, based on his association with Dr. Elmasry and Dr. Elmasry’s public statements, including that all adult Israelis are legitimate targets of violence. The respondent had numerous connections with the CIC, and coordinated with the CIC and Dr. Elmasry to prepare for the meeting at Maclean’s and to bring the BCHRT complaint with Dr. Elmasry as a complainant.
[83] A similar conclusion that the characterization of comments as anti-Semitic was a matter of opinion, was reached by the court in Shavluk v. Green Party of Canada, 2010 BCSC 804, aff’d 2011 BCCA 286, at paras. 71-72. The defendant characterized comments made by the plaintiff as anti-Semitic and the court concluded the characterization was an opinion.
[84] Calling someone prejudiced will normally be a conclusion or opinion based on the person’s conduct or statements. Justice Binnie observed in WIC that “the cases establish that the notion of ‘comment’ is generously interpreted” (para. 30). A defendant must then prove that the comment could be honestly expressed, that it was based on true facts and that it met all the other criteria for the defence of fair comment on a matter of public interest. The characterization as comment gives the greatest scope for freedom of expression and the preservation of Charter values, while giving full legal protection to the important interest of individuals in their reputation as part of their dignity and self-worth.
[85] Although the trial judge erred in her characterization of the appellant’s blog statement that the respondent was an anti-Semite as a statement of fact rather than opinion, the defence of fair comment cannot apply if the statement was made, as the trial judge found, with malice. I will discuss that issue after addressing the third ground of appeal.
(3) Asserting that the Respondent was Co-Counsel at the BCHRT Hearing and a Witness and Therefore in a Conflict of Interest
[86] This ground of appeal relates to the allegation in the eighth post that the respondent was in a conflict of interest by acting as an articling student and co-counsel at the BCHRT hearing, while also being called as a witness. The appellant relied on the evidence that the respondent was seen sitting at the counsel table with Mr. Joseph and the trial judge’s finding that the respondent was briefly at the counsel table helping with photocopies, as the factual basis for his comment that the respondent was in a conflict of interest.
[87] However, the trial judge found that the underlying fact of the comment was that the respondent was acting as co-counsel, and that fact was not true. The trial judge found that the respondent was not co-counsel. She based that finding on the evidence that at the opening of the hearing, Mr. Joseph identified himself as the only counsel on the record. The two other students were identified as assisting, but the respondent was not. The trial judge did not consider the respondent’s role helping with photocopies as elevating him to the role of co-counsel. She also found that because the appellant was a lawyer, his readers would understand him to be using the term co-counsel with its legal meaning. In any event, even as only a descriptive term, co-counsel would not have only the limited role of helping with photocopies.
[88] The standard of review accorded by a court of appeal to a trial judge on findings of fact is a deferential one. The appellant is effectively asking the court to find that the trial judge made a palpable and overriding error in her finding on this issue or misperceived the evidence. In my view, the trial judge was entitled to come to the conclusions she did based on the record. There is no basis to interfere.
(4) Finding of Malice
[89] The trial judge’s finding of malice was critical to her conclusion that the appellant libelled the respondent, and to her assessment of damages.
[90] First, the finding of malice defeated the defence of fair comment to the extent it was available on the findings of the trial judge or where it potentially could have applied to the statement that the respondent was an anti-Semite.
[91] In Hill v. Church of Scientology of Toronto, [1995] 2 S.C.R. 1130, the Supreme Court described malice in the context of a claim for libel as follows, at para. 145:
Malice is commonly understood, in the popular sense, as spite or ill‑will. However, it also includes, as Dickson J. (as he then was) pointed out, “any indirect motive or ulterior purpose” that conflicts with the sense of duty or the mutual interest which the occasion created. Malice may also be established by showing that the defendant spoke dishonestly, or in knowing or reckless disregard for the truth. [Citations omitted.]
[92] The trial judge also referred to WIC, where Binnie J. noted that proof of objective honest belief will not negate a finding of malice if the trial judge finds that subjective malice was the dominant motive of a particular comment (para. 53).
[93] The trial judge found that the appellant was motivated by express malice against Dr. Elmasry, and that he viewed the respondent and Dr. Elmasry “for all intents and purposes, as one and the same.” The trial judge referred to the eighth blog post as intrinsic evidence that the appellant equated the respondent with Dr. Elmasry. Here, although the appellant had a reason to dislike Dr. Elmasry and to believe that the respondent was aligned with his views, the trial judge concluded that the appellant’s dominant motive in making the disparaging comments was malice.
[94] The trial judge also found that the appellant made numerous errors in his blog posts that spoke to malice by showing a reckless disregard for the truth. He did little or no fact-checking, his reports of the hearing were not accurate, and with one exception, he did not correct inaccurate facts that he learned about.
[95] The appellant challenges the trial judge’s conclusion that he was motivated by malice against the respondent. First, he says that it was an error for the trial judge to transpose any ill-will he might have borne against Dr. Elmasry to his feelings regarding the respondent, whom the appellant did not know. Nor did the respondent plead in his statement of claim that the appellant’s malice against him was transposed from Dr. Elmasry. Second, the trial judge ignored the appellant’s testimony that his purpose or motive in publishing his blog was to give his unique perspective on human rights commissions. This was substantiated by his history of criticism of them. Third, the trial judge erred by finding that his negligence in failing to correct the blog posts amounted to malice when he had an honest belief in what he said.
[96] The force of the appellant’s submission is that the trial judge was mistaken when she concluded that he was motivated by malice. However, this was a finding of fact. The respondent pled malice. Based on the record, the trial judge concluded that the appellant transferred his animosity toward Dr. Elmasry to the respondent. The trial judge was entitled to make that finding. She was well-aware of the appellant’s long-held view that human rights tribunals should not be adjudicating issues of free speech and that he wanted to report on the BCHRT hearing on his blog from that perspective. However, she concluded that his dominant motive was ill-will. Finally, the trial judge’s finding that the appellant’s failure to correct errors was evidence of malice reflected her conclusion that this conduct was not a mere mistake or negligence on his part. Although the appellant may believe that the trial judge misunderstood his motives, her findings were based on her view of the record. There is no basis to interfere.
(5) Damages
[97] As the respondent brought this action under the simplified rules, the trial judge was cognizant that the maximum possible damage award was $100,000. She also noted that awards of general damages in libel cases should be relatively modest.
a) General Damages
[98] The trial judge awarded $50,000 in general damages. She took into account: that the respondent was at an important juncture in his legal career and that his job search after his articling term was up may have been impacted by the online posts that were easily accessible through Internet search tools; that the defamatory statements were serious, undermining his reputation both professionally and personally; and that the extent of the publication could not be known because the posts were made online.
[99] She also considered the appellant’s argument that the respondent’s reputation could also have been harmed by the public criticism of his role in approaching Maclean’s, but rejected it as an important factor because the other criticism mainly focused on freedom of the press, not dishonesty or the other imputations the appellant made. The trial judge also took into account the appellant’s reputation as a right-wing provocateur as a factor favouring a lower damages award because it would affect the impact of his statements. The trial judge also noted that the appellant had done nothing to mitigate or reduce the respondent’s damages, such as publishing an apology or retraction.
[100] On this appeal, the appellant argues that the damage award was too high, challenging some of the findings by the trial judge. In particular, he argues that the respondent in fact enjoys an excellent reputation in the community, having won a Saskatchewan Future 40 award in 2013 recognizing “up and comers” in various fields.
[101] I would not give effect to this ground of appeal. A trial judge’s assessment of damages is accorded significant deference on appeal. She is not required to mention every factor that may have affected the calculation. She was well-aware of the respondent’s circumstances and cautioned herself to make a relatively modest award.
b) Aggravated Damages
[102] The trial judge also added $30,000 for aggravated damages. The appellant submits that the trial judge erred by awarding aggravated damages, which duplicated the general damages award and resulted in double counting.
[103] The trial judge recognized that like general damages, aggravated damages are also compensatory in nature. In Hill, at paras. 188-189, Cory J. explained the rationale for an award of aggravated damages as follows:
Aggravated damages may be awarded in circumstances where the defendants’ conduct has been particularly high‑handed or oppressive, thereby increasing the plaintiff’s humiliation and anxiety arising from the libellous statement. The nature of these damages was aptly described by Robins J.A. in Walker v. CFTO Ltd., supra, in these words at p. 111:
Where the defendant is guilty of insulting, high‑handed, spiteful, malicious or oppressive conduct which increases the mental distress ‑‑ the humiliation, indignation, anxiety, grief, fear and the like ‑‑ suffered by the plaintiff as a result of being defamed, the plaintiff may be entitled to what has come to be known as “aggravated damages”.
These damages take into account the additional harm caused to the plaintiff’s feelings by the defendant’s outrageous and malicious conduct. Like general or special damages, they are compensatory in nature. Their assessment requires consideration by the jury of the entire conduct of the defendant prior to the publication of the libel and continuing through to the conclusion of the trial. They represent the expression of natural indignation of right‑thinking people arising from the malicious conduct of the defendant.
[104] Justice Cory also acknowledged the likelihood of some overlapping factors when assessing both types of damages. He stated, at para. 183, “[t]here will of necessity be some overlapping of the factors to be considered when aggravated damages are assessed.”
[105] This potential for overlap and therefore double counting is controversial and has led some to call for the abolition of separate awards of aggravated damages in defamation actions. See Brown, at pp. 25-79 to 25-84, where the author states that “[a] separate award of aggravated damages is a pernicious development in the law; it is absurd in theory and mischievous in practice.” He notes that an overlapping of factors will necessarily occur where aggravated damages are recognized as just another aspect of compensatory damages, and there is also considerable overlap with punitive damages, which similarly require evidence of malicious conduct. See also Brown v. Cole (1998), 61 B.C.L.R. (3d) 1, leave to appeal to S.C.C. refused, [1998] S.C.C.A. No. 614 and Campbell v. Tremblay, 2010 NLCA 62, 305 Nfld. & P.E.I.R. 1.
[106] The Ontario Law Reform Commission also recommended abolishing a separate award for aggravated damages in all damage awards. Ontario Law Reform Commission, Report on Exemplary Damages (Toronto, 1991) at pp. 27-30, 103.
[107] In this case, the trial judge noted a number of factors that led her to increase the damages award under the heading “aggravated damages”, including:
· the appellant was motivated by malice;
· the respondent’s injury was increased because of the malice;
· the repetition of the word “liar” in the headlines of the blogs and the fact that the headlines would show up in Internet searches by potential employers;
· the references to lying in later blogs and including hyperlinks in the eighth blog back to the others;
· the failure to correct most of the errors; and
· the fact that the appellant was a lawyer himself made him more aware of the serious ramifications of his allegations on the professional reputation of the respondent.
[108] I agree that some of the listed factors were also the factors that founded the award of general damages, such as calling the respondent a liar, and doing so in the headlines, and the effect on his job prospects because of Internet dissemination. However, some overlap was contemplated by Cory J. in Hill. The trial judge made no error by awarding $80,000 to fully compensate the respondent for the damages she found that he suffered from the malicious conduct of the appellant, whether the amount included for aggravated damages is viewed separately or as part of the general damages award.
F. Result
[109] I would dismiss the appeal. As agreed by the parties, I award costs of the appeal to the respondent fixed at $15,000 inclusive of disbursements and HST. I would not interfere with the costs order made below.
Released: December 22, 2016 (“K.F.”)
“K. Feldman J.A.”
“I agree. Janet Simmons J.A.”
“I agree. Paul Rouleau J.A.” |
Internal emails reveal motivation behind decision to cut climate research and cast doubt on assertions made by executives to Senate committee
The CSIRO’s decision to sack about 120 climate scientists was motivated by an intention to move some of the organisation’s focus from science done in the public good towards science that makes money, internal emails suggest.
The internal decision-making process behind the CSIRO’s decision to cut its climate research has been revealed in a 700-page document dump, delivered as part of a Greens-Labor inquiry into federal government budget cuts. Many key emails sent from private accounts were not included in the disclosure, but the documents reveal a shopping-list of controversial internal decisions.
In March CSIRO executives told a Senate committee the organisation was not moving away from “public-good science”, but the emails appear to cast doubt on that assertion.
They show one of the central reasons climate science could not continue to make money for the CSIRO was the federal government’s decision to cut grants for environmental research.
They also contain a detailed analysis of all the climate research capabilities that would be scrapped, as well as surprisingly callous language in discussions about which researchers would be made redundant, with remarks from managers referring to employees’ age, their work hours and how strong their union links were.
CSIRO climate cuts attack a national treasure when we need it most Read more
In November 2015, the CSIRO leadership began a “deep dive” into the oceans and atmosphere business unit, which houses most of the CSIRO’s researchers that focus on monitoring and modelling climate change.
On 21 November, before a meeting at which that investigation was discussed, the deputy director of the oceans and atmosphere business unit, Andreas Schiller, sent an email summarising what CSIRO executives thought ought to be done.
The focus should be to “maximise impact on nation”, he said, and “not doing science for science sake”. He said “public good is not good enough, [it] needs to be linked to jobs and growth”.
The scientists who work on climate science at the CSIRO are among the global leaders in their field, regularly publishing research in journals such as Nature and Science. But Schiller wrote: “Nature papers alone don’t cut it.”
In March Alex Wonhas, the executive director of environment, energy and resources, told the Senate inquiry public good research was not being cut: “I want to categorically say that is not the case ... Public good research has been the absolute foundation of what the CSIRO has been doing over our very long history.”
But on 18 January, about two weeks before the cuts were announced, Schiller wrote to the director of the unit saying they should aim to cut 120 staff. That would “allow a clean cut in terms of eliminating all capability associated with ‘public good/government-funded climate research’”.
A draft plan from 19 February for the implementation of the restructure explored the impact of 100 redundancies and another 15 contracts that would be ended early in the oceans and atmosphere unit, and listed all the capabilities that would be affected. It included decisions that:
Research in “variability and weather extremes” would be reduced
Multi-year climate modelling and analysis would go: “We will no longer conduct research into multi-year, multi-decadal prediction, seasonal forecasting and impacts”
The organisation “will discontinue research in sea level rise, which means reduced scientific capability”
The CSIRO is “ceasing our research in greenhouse gas emissions”.
The first deep-dive process had produced a suggestion to cut 35 climate scientists and redeploy them in other areas.
But Schiller said if they aimed for fewer cuts, “we will inevitably face the problem of keeping some of the climate scientists”.
Ken Lee, director of the oceans and atmosphere unit, responded: “I agree – let’s overshoot first.”
The documents suggest the decision to shift focus was coming from chief executive Larry Marshall and others at the top of the organisation.
In an email from Mark Underwood, a research program director in the oceans and atmosphere unit, to Lee on 24 November 2015, Underwood noted that publications in important science journals “are (for better or worse) now being deprecated by Larry Marshall, Alex Wonhas and other [executive team] members”.
Why Malcolm Turnbull should reverse the destructive, clumsy, and dumb CSIRO cuts | Mark Dreyfus Read more
In the discussion notes from the deep-dive process, it is clear what has caused the shift in focus: “Changes in government funding for climate research ... have impacted [two climate research groups] who have traditionally relied on these funds to shore up their pipeline.”
In another document, the rationale for cutting back on climate science is explicitly linked to the amalgamation of two government funding programs. The document identifies that “climate change research” and “global sea-level rise” research would be affected.
On 15 January, weeks before the announcement was made, discussions began about who would lose their jobs. Lee wrote to Wonhas suggesting that those who would be made redundant should be told their fate from the start.
“Otherwise, all staff will be left wondering ‘Is it I?’ – productivity of the whole [business unit] will drop to zero. I’ve done this before. By not doing so, our top scientists will leave – as they are in demand; as well as post-docs who are looking for future opportunities within our organisation.”
But that practice appeared to be abandoned, with staff still not aware of who will be made redundant. In an email on 25 February, Peter Oke, an acting director in the oceans and atmosphere unit, defended that course of action. A staff member said: “The feeling is that, if there were even a rudimentary understanding of what we do, then the plan as put forward appears rushed, and illogical. This is further magnified by the fact that management is only now thinking about the full ramification and is not yet able to end the uncertainty.”
Oke replied: “Consider the alternative. There’s an announcement that there are 100 FTEs [full-time equivalent positions] lost and here’s a list. Or … there are 100 FTEs lost, and our leadership team will try to figure out the best way to retain a workforce that can function properly and deliver impact.”
When the managers began talking about which researchers could be made redundant, they discussed the employees’ ages, and whether they were working full-time or part-time.
One person mentioned was “approaching 60” and it was noted they could be transferred to another business unit. Another possibility was someone who “has increasingly gone part-timed [sic] not producing much”.
Another person was listed with the note “considering retiring but has strong union links”.
CSIRO spokesperson Huw Morgan said the options discussed in the documents were put forward at an early stage and were not all current, nor were they ultimately adopted.
Morgan said “public-good research” still had a key role within the organisation and the emails quoted were just a small selection of the more than 700 documents provided by the CSIRO to the Senate inquiry.
“Research for national benefit absolutely belongs in CSIRO, as it has done for almost a century. This is CSIRO’s mandate and that has not changed,” Morgan said.
“Our new strategy will see us continue to deliver research outcomes that benefit Australians and the international community. This includes in our key focus areas such as cybersecurity and digital disruption, business transformation, agriculture, health, and climate adaptation and mitigation.
“We have to make decisions about where we should invest our budget and we do this with a view to what Australia needs most. The Australian economy is in transition and CSIRO has a critical role to play in preparing people for climate change and for things like digital disruption that will change the way they work and live.”
A senior researcher in the oceans and atmosphere unit told Guardian Australia CSIRO executives were rethinking some of the plans after the enormous international response to the cuts. That reaction included hundreds of climate scientists signing a petition, a front-page story in the New York Times and a report arguing the cuts would breach international commitments.
In earlier comments, Marshall said the response was surprising and was “more like religion than science”. He said the climate science lobby appeared more powerful than the oil lobby was in the 1970s. Marshall later apologised for any offence caused by those comments.
“We appreciate this can be an uncertain and challenging period for affected staff and remain committed to supporting staff throughout this process,” he said. |
Outbreaks of tuberculosis in Europe are declining though not fast enough, international health agencies warned in a joint report released Tuesday.
As many as 1,000 people a day contract tuberculosis and newer, more drug-resistant strains mean the disease is becoming more difficult to treat.
"MDR-TB (multi-drug resistant TB) is still ravaging the European region, making it the most affected area of the entire world," Zsuzsanna Jakab, the World Health Organization's regional director, said Tuesday.
Globally, TB in different strains killed around 1.5 million people in 2013 and the WHO warned last year of "crisis levels" of MDR-TB.
The latest report - a collaboration between the WHO and European Center for Disease Prevention and Control - found infection rates falling in some high-priority countries, while the disease is fighting back in other low-incidence countries.
TB is a contagious bacterial lung disease that spreads through coughs and sneezes from the infected. Patients require months of antibiotic drugs making it difficult to treat, especially as drug-resistant strains gather pace.
The WHO's most recent data dating from 2013 reported around 360,000 cases in the 53-country Europe region which includes Turkey and the former Soviet Union. Within the 28-member European Union, some 65,000 cases were reported during the same time period.
European health officials had set 2050 as a target date to eliminate TB but at the current pace this seems unrealistic, the report warned.
"At the current pace of an annual 6 percent decline, the EU/EEA will only be free of tuberculosis in the next century," said Marc Sprenger, director of the Stockholm-based ECDC which monitors disease in Europe.
Eastern Europe and Central Asia accounted for most of the European region's 38,000 official fatalities.
"Our data show a Europe in need of tailored interventions which target each country's settings," Sprenger said.
The disease can also affect other parts of the body and is estimated to be the second deadliest infectious disease, after HIV/AIDS.
jar/kms (Reuters, AP, dpa) |
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MIDLAND councillors have unanimously backed controversial plans to heat a swimming pool with recycled energy from a nearby crematorium – and save nearly £500,000.
Councillors on Redditch Borough’s Executive Committee, backed the plans, which could save the council a massive £466,000 over the next 25 years.
If approved, the scheme will also reduce the council’s entire carbon footprint by four per cent per year.
The scheme will use energy from the crematorium, which would have otherwise gone to waste, to heat the pool and facilities at the nearby Abbey Stadium, which is due to open next year.
Experts predict that the changes could provide 42 per cent of the stadium’s energy needs.
Councillors said the plans had the backing of 90 per cent of residents.
They added they had received only one official objection.
Councillor Gay Hopkins said: “In a few years time we won’t be able to afford to waste heat and this could be normal practice.
“I think we are going to start something that others will follow and I am very proud that the council is so forward thinking.
Coun Juliet Brunner added: “I have not received a single negative response to this.
“Everybody talks about climate change, but not much is done about it. We should be really proud.”
Coun Malcolm Hall said he also supported the project and would only “think again” if there was a large public outcry against the plans.
Coun Greg Chance added: “There will be people with concerns and we have to respect that.
“But, from an environmental point of view I think this proposal is reasonable.”
The scheme will be the first in the UK to capture and recycle 100 per cent of crematoria waste energy.
A similar process in Sweden is used to warm people’s homes.
The final decision on the plans will be made on Monday. |
Tuesday Oct 7, 2014
The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health has been approved for an $813,000 funding award by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to study the sexual health of female-to-male (FTM) transgender people. The study is one of 46 proposals PCORI approved for funding on September 30 to advance the field of comparative clinical effectiveness research, and to provide patients, healthcare providers, and other clinical decision makers with information that will help them make better-informed choices.
Sari Reisner, ScD, will lead the research project, which will focus on innovations in preventive sexual health screening in sexually-active FTM transgender patients. This will include assessing the acceptability and comparative effectiveness of self-swab HPV testing compared to provider clinical swabs, as well as investigating the prevalence of other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in this group.
"This project will have a national and international impact on sexual health screening for FTMs, an underserved patient population," said Reisner, a transgender health researcher at The Fenway Institute and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health.
The project is designed to fill key gaps in clinical knowledge about sexual health in FTMs by comparing the effectiveness of alternative strategies for sexual health prevention, screening and diagnosis.
The award has been approved pending completion of a business and programmatic review by PCORI staff and issuance of a formal award contract to The Fenway Institute.
"Most FTM transgender men retain their natal reproductive organs,' said Reisner. "Our preliminary research suggests that more than one in three of FTM patients are not up-to-date on cervical cancer screening and many are not getting routine screening for STIs. We know that it is hard for FTM patients to find health care providers who are knowledgeable about health issues specific to transgender people, and can talk about sexual health in sensitive and gender-affirming ways. We hope that our research will find new strategies of care that could potentially lead to alternative screening strategies, as well as less invasive STI detection practices. Ultimately, our goal is to find ways to improve the health of FTM patients."
This study and the other projects approved for funding by PCORI were selected from 490 applications that responded fully to PCORI's funding announcements issued in February 2014. They were selected through a highly competitive review process in which patients, clinicians, and other stakeholders joined clinical scientists to evaluate the proposals. Applications were assessed for scientific merit, how well they will engage patients and other stakeholders, and their methodological rigor among other criteria.
"This project was selected for PCORI funding not only for its scientific merit and commitment to engaging patients and other stakeholders, but also for its potential to fill an important gap in our health knowledge and give people information to help them weigh the effectiveness of their care options," said PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby, MD, MPH. "We look forward to following the study's progress and working with The Fenway Institute to share the results."
PCORI is an independent, non-profit organization authorized by Congress in 2010 to fund comparative clinical effectiveness research that will provide patients, their caregivers, and clinicians with the evidence-based information needed to make better-informed health and healthcare decisions. PCORI is committed to seeking input from a broad range of stakeholders to guide its work. It has approved $671 million to support 360 research studies and initiatives since it began funding research in 2012.
For more than forty years, Fenway Health has been working to make life healthier for the people in our neighborhood, the LGBT community, people living with HIV/AIDS and the broader population. The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health is an interdisciplinary center for research, training, education and policy development focusing on national and international health issues.
Fenway's Sidney Borum Jr. Health Center cares for youth and young adults ages 12 to 29 who may not feel comfortable going anywhere else, including those who are LGBT or just figuring things out; homeless; struggling with substance use; or living with HIV/AIDS. In 2013, AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts joined the Fenway Health family, allowing both organizations to improve delivery of care and services across the state and beyond.
For more information, visit http://www.pcori.org |
Donald Trump’s supporters seem to feel that you can tell that Hillary Clinton is lying just by seeing her lips move. While their view might be dismissed, many people who favor Clinton also believe she has problems with the truth. She certainly has an image problem. Fact checkers such as The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler have identified far more misstatements by Trump than by Clinton, and the proportion of Trump to Clinton misstatements grows larger if one only considers four Pinocchio whoppers. Opinion polls nonetheless indicate that voters think Clinton is as likely as Trump to lie or more likely.
This election cycle, no allegation of lying has been more prevalent and done more to harm Clinton than the claim that she has repeatedly lied when discussing her email and, in particular, when denying or explaining away the presence of classified information on her server. The Post’s Kessler has given two of her statements four Pinocchios and accorded three Pinocchios to others. If Kessler meant to say that some of her statements were mistaken, he is correct. If he means to say her statements were lies, which is what that fourth Pinocchio implies, his judgments are at best unproven and in most cases wrong. Like other prominent fact checkers, he reports findings in ways that make it easy to confuse misstatements with lies. In evaluating a person’s honesty the distinction is fundamental.
A misstatement is a statement made with no intent to deceive that turns out to be untrue. A lie is an untrue statement made with intent to deceive or, if one wants to stretch the definition, with such little concern for accuracy as to constitute reckless disregard of the truth. If Donald Trump, despite seeing Obama’s long-form birth certificate, honestly believed that Obama had been born in Kenya, he would not be lying in the strict sense of the term, but he could be called a liar if we include in our definition statements made in reckless disregard of the truth. Misstatements are caused by knowledge gaps, faulty observations and memory problems. Lies bear on honesty. The reckless disregard of the truth, Trump's specialty, speaks not just to honesty but to integrity as well.
Clinton has made misstatements regarding the presence of classified information on her server. But did she lie? Not only is there no convincing evidence that she has lied, but there is also considerable reason to believe that Clinton thought she was telling the truth. I will use Glenn Kessler’s analyses to justify my point, but I could use claims by other fact checkers as well.
Consider the earliest Clinton email statement that Kessler examined: “I did not mail classified material to anyone on my e-mail. There is no classified material.” Clinton reiterated this claim later when attention was again focused on the issue, but soon after she said something a bit different: “I did not send classified material, and I did not receive any material that was marked or designated classified.” Kessler regards the latter claim as “careful and legalistic phrasing,” which “raises suspicions.” A more charitable view and a more accurate one is that her later qualification is the essence of honesty.
Put yourself in Clinton’s shoes. Some three to seven years earlier you had as Secretary of State received more than 30,000 business-related emails. Thinking back over these emails, you would try to recall whether any of them had been marked classified. (Classified documents are supposed to scream out their status with “can’t miss” markings on the top and bottom of every page.) You might also, without recalling any specific messages, be certain that if you had received a document marked classified on an unsecured account you would have made certain that the message was properly handled, and you would have spoken to the person who sent it. Recalling neither seeing a message with classified markings nor doing what you know you would have done had you received a message marked classified, you might confidently assert, as Clinton did, that there was no classified information on your server.
The next day, however, an aide might point out that you could not be sure that no message you received was classified. The most you could know is that to the best of your recollection no material you received was marked classified. If you were concerned with accuracy, you would correct the record by saying what you could be sure was true, namely, you “did not receive any material that was marked or designated classified.” Far from raising suspicions or being legalistic in a way that suggests deception, you have revised your statement to be sure that you say no more than you can honestly claim to know. Then a respected fact checker treats the revised statement as if it suggests dishonesty!
Michael Candelori/Creative Commons Opinion polls indicate that voters think Hillary Clinton is as likely as Donald Trump to lie or more likely. Here, Trump holds a rally in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on October 21, 2016.
Kessler’s analysis is wrong because he does not understand how the classification system works. (While working for the Department of Homeland Security, I was charged with working with DHS security to write our Division-specific classification manual.) The bulk of his column suggesting that Clinton was evasive or lying when she said there was no information marked classified on her server focuses on a message Clinton received from the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband reporting on what he learned on a trip he had recently made to Afghanistan. The message, sent from the Foreign Secretary’s own home email account through two aides indicated that it was meant for Clinton’s eyes only. One may suppose that the message contained classifiable information, and consistent with this State chose to classify the message after the fact. But contrary to Kessler’s impression, the message has no bearing on Clinton’s veracity when she said she had no classified email on her server. Miliband knew how to send a classified message between allies. He chose instead to send an unclassified missive.
Kessler writes as if Miliband’s desire that only Clinton read the message is tantamount to classification. It is not. Suppose, for example, that a State Department investigator discovered that State had ignored an urgent request to upgrade the smoke filtration in the safe room of the American consulate in Benghazi, and that if the filtration had been upgraded, the American ambassador who took refuge in this room would have survived. She might well have relayed this information to Clinton in a message marked “for your eyes only.” But far from implying that the message should be classified, the message could not be classified after the fact. Obama’s executive order on classification expressly excludes classifying messages to save agencies from embarrassment.
The only people who could have classified the message Miliband sent to Clinton, assuming no one else read the message, were Miliband and Clinton. Neither chose to do so. Moreover, when State later classified the message to preclude its release, it labeled it “confidential,” the government’s lowest classification level. Decisions on whether to classify information as confidential are often judgment calls, and errors tend to be in the direction of overclassification. Nevertheless, Kessler devoted most of his original analysis of Clinton’s truthfulness to discussing this message, although it tells us nothing about her veracity.
While Clinton’s receipt of the Miliband message should not have gotten her any Pinocchios, Kessler used it, together with the other post-classified messages, as the basis for awarding two of the nosey guys. Kessler apparently thought Clinton should have treated some unclassified messages as classified given their contents, and from this mistaken perspective he saw her attempt to state accurately what she knew—namely that no messages on her server were marked classified—as “wordsmithing.” Later, he reconsidered, not to correct his error but to upgrade his Pinocchio rating from two to four following FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that Clinton would not be prosecuted. Kessler found in the Director’s testimony strong evidence that Clinton had lied. On his scale, four Pinocchios equates to a “whopper,” a common name for a big lie.
Kessler’s decision to award four Pinocchios turned on two portions of Comey’s statement. First Comey testified that 110 emails on Clinton’s server contained classified information. This contradicted Clinton’s initial claim that there was no confidential information on her computer. It provides, however, no reason to think Clinton was intending to deceive when she made that claim. Classified information is recognized by its markings or by other circumstances that make its classified status clear. Only three of about 30,000 documents even arguably had such markings. These form the second pillar that Kessler used to support his view that Clinton had told a whopper.
Brookings Institution/Creative Commons FBI Director James Comey.
The three “smoking gun” documents contained a “C,” a marking which indicates that a portion of a document is classified “confidential.” Yet their presence does nothing to call into question Clinton’s honesty when she said she did not recall seeing any documents marked classified. If any portion of a document page is classified, the page must be marked as it would be if everything on the page were classified. A “C” would be placed on a document to indicate that only the words or sentences so marked are confidential, and that other information on the page is either not classified or classified at a higher level. Without page markings and given the innocuous nature of what is often classified confidential even if Clinton had, the day after reading the documents, said she had seen no messages that were classified it would be unlikely to have reflected dishonesty. Not only does the suggestion of dishonesty disappear entirely when we are talking of three message in 30,000 recalled years after they were read, but in fact in two of the three cases “Cs” had been inadvertently left on declassified documents. Indeed, when Director Comey was asked whether Clinton should have realized that the “C” markings meant that a portion of a document was confidential, he replied that while he once might have thought that, he was no longer sure and didn’t find Clinton’s denial incredible. If failing to recall that three of 30,000 messages on her server contained “Cs”, or failing to know that “C” stood for confidential, means that Clinton’s denial that information marked classified on her server is a “whopper,” one can only ask “Where is the beef?”
The other email-related four Pinocchio award that Kessler gave Clinton was for her suggestion that FBI Director Comey had said her public comments on her email had been truthful. Comey did not say that. He said that the FBI had no reason to believe Clinton had lied when they interviewed her. It is, however, hard to see in Clinton’s statement any intent to mislead. As she later explained, and as is clear from Comey’s statement before the House Committee that almost immediately challenged his decision to recommend against prosecution, the FBI interview covered the issues Clinton had addressed in her public statements and in talking to the FBI she reiterated what she had said to the public. If the FBI thought her statements to the agents who interviewed her were honest, then it is fair to suggest that the veracity of her public statements had been validated by the FBI even if her words were literally untrue.
Here are some questions asked at the House hearing the day following Director Comey’s conclusion that Clinton had committed no indictable offense, together with Director Comey’s answers:
Q. “Did Hillary Clinton lie?”
A. “We have no basis to conclude she lied to the FBI.”
Q. “Did Secretary Clinton know her legal team deleted those emails? [The reference is to emails that should have been turned over to State.]
A. “I don’t believe so.”
Q. “Was the reason she set up her own private server because she wanted to shield communication from Congress and the public?”
A. “I can’t say that. Our best information is that she set it up as a matter of convenience.”
Q. “Did Secretary Clinton or any member of her staff intentionally violate federal law?”
A. “We did not develop clear evidence of that.”
Q. “Was she evasive?”
A. I don’t think the agents assessed she was evasive.”
Q. “So if Secretary Clinton was an expert at what’s classified and what’s not and were following the [classification] manual, the absence of a header would tell her immediately that these three documents [marked with a “C”] were not classified. Am I correct in that?”
A. “That would be a reasonable inference.”
Q. “Did [Clinton] lie to the FBI in that interview?”
A. “I have no basis for concluding that she was untruthful with us.”
The Post’s Glenn Kessler was quick to raise Clinton’s claim that she had no classified information on her server from two Pinocchios to four based on a brief statement by Director Comey, but he has not revised his judgment downward based on Comey’s more detailed comments. Indeed, his website still gives Clinton three Pinocchio’s for claiming that she set up her personal server as a matter of convenience, although this is the conclusion the FBI reached.
I don’t mean to dump on Glenn Kessler. Other fact checkers have also found fault with Clinton’s statements regarding her email. Moreover, Kessler does a generally good job in ferreting out the truth and performs a public service. But I do think many people, Kessler apparently included, approach Clinton’s statements expecting they will find she lied. This colors their judgments. Also, too many people, fact checkers included, equate honest misstatements with dishonest lies. If we want to evaluate a candidate’s truthfulness, this distinction must be made. Calling misstatements Pinocchios makes for a misinformed rather than a better-informed public.
Don LaVange/Creative Commons Representative Jason Chaffetz.
I have discussed only a few evaluations of Clinton’s veracity on one narrow issue. She has, however, been accused of telling lies throughout her career. Consider Benghazi, Whitewater, and Vincent Foster’s suicide. Clinton has been accused of lying with respect to each of them. But each has been thoroughly investigated, and she has never been shown to have lied. Nevertheless, her image as a truth teller has been tarnished. Repeated charges, almost always by Republican opponents, have generated lots of smoke, and experience teaches us that if there is enough smoke, there must be a fire. Seldom do we realize that smudge pots can generate even more smoke than fire. Clinton would, no doubt, argue that her reputation for untrustworthiness is based almost entirely on smudge pot smoke, which I believe is a fair assessment.
However, not every false Clinton statement reflects an opponent’s vendettas. She may be criticized for a number of “unforced errors.” But even these are likely to be misstatements and not lies. All memory is a reconstruction based on traces of what we have experienced. Memory is malleable; memories change over time and they can be implanted. Experiences may be confounded. In particular, we may confuse things we were told or experienced second hand with what actually happened. On occasion Clinton appears to have done this.
Clinton, like all politicians, tries to say things in ways that will most help her. This can involve taking things out of context, clever wordsmithing, dodging questions, unjustly harsh attacks and, on occasion, lying. It is how the game of politics is played in this country. But Clinton is at a disadvantage. Because she has a reputation for lying and devious activities stoked by Republicans over the course of her career, people, including many journalists, are primed to attribute dishonesty to her when evidence is poorly understood or ambiguous. We saw this recently when mainstream media reported on a document in which an FBI staffer seemed to suggest that representatives of the State Department and the FBI agent were treating a State Department request to declassify a document on Clinton’s server as a quid pro quo for approving the assignment of extra agents to a foreign embassy. The Washington Post’s headlined this story, “Hillary Clinton’s email problems just came roaring back.”
This “Clinton is in trouble again” spin ignored some salient facts. The exchange occurred more than two years after Clinton had left the State Department; Clinton almost certainly did not know of the exchange, much less have input into it; Clinton had nothing to gain and may have had something to lose by declassifying the message and making its content public, declassifying one message would not have changed the narrative surrounding the presence of classified email on Clinton’s server, and if there was the suggestion of a quid pro quo it was the FBI that had requested it. Had a person other than Clinton been involved, a reporter might have noticed these facts. Rather than a front-page story, there would have been no story at all because there was no story there. A similar dynamic is at work in the readiness of the press and others to label Clinton’s misstatements “lies.”
We see further evidence of how image colors perceptions in reactions to FBI Director Comey's letter informing Representative Chaffetz that the FBI had discovered messages traceable to Clinton’s private server in the course of an unrelated criminal investigation, and that the Bureau would examine them to see if they had any bearing on the FBI's inquiry into Clinton's use of a private server. Chaffetz immediately characterized this as a reopening of the investigation into Clinton's behavior, and the immediate media reaction was to accept and spread widely this interpretation. Trump went even further suggesting that Comey never would have written his letter had there not been substantial evidence that Clinton had committed a crime. Neither interpretation is correct, yet many people, including originally too many reporters, find at least the first and perhaps the second interpretation plausible.
A fair reading of Comey's letter is that the most that can be said is that the FBI will examine the newly discovered email to see if there is any reason to revise its judgment about the innocence of Clinton's behavior. Moreover, Comey made clear that none of the emails had been examined, and that the FBI examination might show them to be of no significance. Yet with Clinton it seems to be guilty until proven innocent rather than innocent until proven guilty. Egged on by Republican politicians and the Trump campaign, many people seem willing to believe that this new email trove will contain as yet unrevealed classified information that will lead Comey to revise his decision not to recommend prosecution. The odds of this happening are, however, small. Even if previously unrevealed classified emails are found, unless they contain classification markings, nothing about them would change the basis for Comey's original judgment.
There is no reason to believe that Clinton is less honest or trustworthy than most politicians, and she may well be more honest in what she tells voters than many of her more trusted peers. One can accuse Clinton of misstating facts, but among her misstatements honest errors appear far more common than intentional efforts to deceive. Indeed, the latter are hard to find. Clinton’s remarks have been closely scrutinized by her political enemies for at least 25 years. Any fact she has gotten wrong is likely to have been labeled a lie. How many have there been? And how many people would appear consistently trustworthy if their every public comment for a quarter of a century were closely scrutinized by their enemies, and any mistakes they made derided as lies? Few people would survive the endless investigations and scrutiny as well as Clinton has. And that’s the honest truth. |
Add Taylor Swift to the Westboro Baptist Church's ever-growing list of people they've taken issue with.
The Topeka, Kansas-based hate group has announced plans to picket Swift's Aug. 3 concert at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo.
Swift is known for what sometimes seems like a revolving door of highly publicized romances, and the WBC apparently doesn't look too kindly on all her "fornicating."
"@TaylorSwift13 works her 'girl next door' country-singer shtick, while hopping from one young man to the next and strutting across the world stage like a proud whore," the group wrote in a press release, and went on to criticize the singer's own father, claiming:
"He has no compunction about her immodest vulgar appearance or serial fornication. With a hating hypocrite for a dad – who will jealously guard her income, while not giving a thought for her never-dying soul – no wonder she grew up to be the poster child for the young whores of doomed-america [sic]."
Poster child for the "young whores" or not -- the WBC also recognizes that the 23-year-old superstar has a massive Twitter following, and they believe that if she were only to tweet something like "Stop fornicating ladies, and obey God” to her 29.9 million followers, it would "rock the house."
Of course, according to the WBC, Swift uses her influence on Twitter to "warble about fornication, instead of warning her fellow man of the coming destruction."
Somehow we're betting Swift didn't know that was part of her job description, and in an interview with RadarOnline, WBC member Ben Phelps -- grandson of the group's leader, Fred Phelps Sr. -- further explains why Swift is their latest target.
“This girl is a whore. Who else is gonna say that if it’s not the church of the Lord Jesus?" Phelps told the website. "She’s coming into our backyard. We’re gonna go preach to her.”
Phelps claims that Swift tries to pretend she is a "good Christian, but she's not," and says that it's her duty to use her enormous influence on young women to “promote the standards of God," instead of what the group claims is "whoredom, fornication … that filthy lifestyle.”
While the WBC seems to be making a lot of noise about Swift, noise is all it may be in the end. The hate group has a history of threatening to picket various events and bailing on its plans when the time comes. |
It began as an environmental protest of about a thousand people a few weeks ago on Sunday, March 30 in Maoming, southern China. By day five it had grown to over twenty times its initial size, with about a dozen deaths, scores of arrests and images of dozens of unarmed protesters scattered across the streets, lying in pools of their own blood. The government blamed protesters for the tipping over of police vehicles and attacking official buildings, while the protesters in turn accuse the police of attacking unarmed, peaceful citizens.
In an authoritarian state like China, where people are unable to let off steam on election day, protests are common — albeit risky and usually illegal. But what was behind this particular environmental protest, and how did it get so out of hand? We start by looking at the production of a chemical that is common, but seemingly misunderstood: paraxylene.
Paraxylene, or PX for short, is made in large quantities for the production of plastic bottles and polyester. China is the world’s largest user of PX, and has to import about half of what it consumes. The government recently decided that a 500 million dollar factory would help make up the shortfall, and went into partnership with Sinopec, Asia’s biggest refiner, to open a factory near Maoming.
Paraxylene is dangerous to produce. It affects the nervous system if ingested through the skin or breathed in. Organs can be affected upon bodily exposure. It affects body development and reproduction — at least in mice. Pregnant women are told not go near it. It damages hearing, and can cause chemical pneumonia. And it is highly flammable, even explosive at warm temperatures. Local people became concerned that a dangerous behemoth on their doorstep could damage the environment and affect their health.
Still, the production of most chemicals carries an element of danger, and one might have thought that, if properly regulated, such a large factory would have enormous economic benefits for the community. Indeed, the local authorities believed just that, but when they sent ten thousand brochures to the public informing them of the economic benefits the factory would bring, it backfired — culminating in a popular protest shortly afterwards. Why the public didn’t trust the state to provide a safe, regulated factory is not difficult to see in the context of rapid capitalist development, widespread environmental irresponsibility and an authoritarian state apparatus.
Ahkok Wong is an activist and school lecturer from down the road in Hong Kong, potentially enjoying his last two days of freedom.
“Environmental problems are one of the main outcomes of a one party-ruled, corrupted, non-humane government,” he starts. “The citizens started discovering what harm the PX plant can bring, so there are [a lot] of protests, and then the police arrest and kill protesters, forcing people to sign agreements that they support PX plants,” he continues. “They control the media and the internet so the news cannot get across the country.”
Protesters like Ahkok are sentenced by a judiciary with links to the government, which in turn has links to big business — for example, the Maoming PX joint venture between Sinopec and the state. Ahkok is going to court in a few days, for his participation in a 300,000 person-strong anti-Chinese government protest in Hong Kong. Is he expecting a fair trial? “I’m expecting nothing, to be honest.”
The other context in which to see this disagreement is with regards to the catastrophic levels of pollution and environmental damage all over China, particularly in the north. For example, at any given moment the air in most Chinese cities is somewhere along a spectrum between mildly harmful and extremely unsafe. Furthermore, China produces nearly twice as much carbon dioxide as the second biggest emitter, the USA. On top of this, one quarter of China already is, or is rapidly becoming, desertified. This leads to silted rivers, floods, drought, dust storms and erosion. In addition, a wealthier population with a penchant for ivory, rhino horn and shark fin soup is leading to diminishing biodiversity, within its borders and beyond.
Most of China’s groundwater is so polluted that it can’t be used for drinking even if treated. Underground water supplies are also extremely polluted. Wildlife soon perishes upon contact with the water from many rivers. Last year thousands of dead pigs clogged up a river running through Shanghai which was contaminated by benzene through a factory spillage. Twenty people were hospitalized. Factories pollute rivers with impunity — and this has in many cases lead to cancer villages — areas so polluted as to now be uninhabitable. Animals in these villages die, the rivers change color, touching the water makes the skin itch, and as the name suggests, there are high levels of cancer.
With this in mind, it is not surprising that the state of the environment is up to fourth — and rising — on the list of Chinese public concerns, according to a Pew Survey carried out earlier this year, behind inflation, corruption and inequality. With growing environmental concerns comes a growing grassroots movement. No surprise, then, that environmental issues were at the heart of half of all the protests in 2013 that had over 10,000 participants. Meanwhile, the government is taking notice, and has taken steps to be seen to be paying attention.
“We shall resolutely declare war against pollution as we declared war against poverty,” Li Keqiang, China’s Prime Minister told parliament, live on state television, last month. This was followed by an increased budget to help prevent deforestation, a sizable clean water fund, and some modest pollution-culling targets. Fifteen thousand companies now have to declare all of their pollution levels to the environment ministry, which will make the information public.
This seems quite impressive, particularly as China didn’t even have an environmental ministry until 2008. Rules are all very well of course — the problem is implementation. Factory owners discharge waste at night, sabotage monitoring equipment, and easily skip around or bribe underfunded law enforcement agencies. They can quietly mix leftover chemicals with water and dump it into the nearest river. Still, the new laws show that the government is paying attention, so perhaps that ought to placate a restless public. Some give the government credit — others think it is mostly for show.
To understand where the government might really stand on this issue, we need to think in terms of how China values itself when comparing itself with the rest of the world. Economic indicators such as GDP seem to have a higher priority than harder-to-measure indicators of quality of living, especially when national pride vis-à-vis America comes into play. A paraxylene plant boosts business, jobs and output. As long as the state can be seen to be taking action with pollution, while doing relatively little, the government can help to maintain its position so long as the media remains compliant. And here seems to lie the Chinese contrast — what seems to be the case is sometimes quite the opposite.
Take the PX plant protests. At one point, authorities told the local newspaper that the building of the plant was being suspended. But it seems they told Sinopec no such thing, and work on the plant continued uninterrupted. While the authorities are now finally acknowledging the existence of cancer villages, they go into opaque partnerships with polluting industries. They allow protests in theory, but put so many restrictions into the ‘small print’ as to make them almost impossible in practice.
“If there are more than three people gathering in public and the police assume you are a threat to society, you can be arrested,” says Ahkok.
The government tell their own citizens they are listening to their environmental concerns. Meanwhile they block searches for “Maoming” or “PX” on search engines and on the popular social media site Weibo. People are told to trust the authorities. Meanwhile, on the very first day of the protests, seventy Maoming city officals were investigated for graft. A supposedly communist government represses the poor and benefits the wealthy. China starts to resemble a chemical spillage, public health deteriorates and those who speak out get arrested.
On a somewhat more optimistic note, however one may feel about the obvious human rights challenges that come with China’s one-child policy, there is no doubt it helped curb the country’s dangerously oversized population. With the help of a burgeoning economy and a strong inclination towards school success, an educated cadre is growing within the population; one that is more and more aware of the world, of their government, and of the quality of their lives. China’s hyperactive microblogger community are a byproduct of this, and are helping to heighten awareness for a lot of people.
But calling for the truth has its own risks. Xu Zhiyong, an anti-government activist, is halfway though a four-year prison sentence for calling on government officials to disclose their assets. “Those of you watching this trial from behind the scenes, or those awaiting for orders and reports back, this is also your responsibility. Don’t take pains to preserve the old system simply because you have vested interests in it,” he said as he was being sentenced. “No one is safe under an unjust system. When you see politics as endless shadows and reflections of daggers and swords, as blood falling like rain with its smell in the wind, you have too much fear in your hearts.”
Back to Ahkok Wong: “China does not have law and system,” he says. “They bribe, they arrest people who investigate truth, but there are no standards to follow. Only those who have absolute power and capital can change the situation, but then they benefit from all of this development and capital growth.”
“China is not meant to last,” concludes Ahkok. “It wouldn’t make any sense if this country could last.” |
Police have arrested three brothers in Minnesota for allegedly slaying their mother on Christmas because she wanted to play Yahtzee and they didn't.
The brothers are also accused of hiding their mother's remains, which were discovered buried in the family's backyard last week.
Jacob Cobb, 17, allegedly strangled mom Tamara Lee Mason on the living room floor when she suggested that her sons play the board game in the rural town of Alberta last Christmas, the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis reported.
Then he or his brother Andrew, 18, placed a plastic bag over her head and tightened a belt around her neck, TV station KARE said.
Their half-brother Dylan C. Clemens, 25, drove Mason's remains to South Dakota and back to Minnesota, hiding her body for months in a garbage can in a shed until the frozen ground softened enough to bury her in the backyard, police claimed.
"It is very strange," Stevens County Sheriff Randy Willis said Tuesday. "She wanted to play Yahtzee and they didn't. That seemed to be, in their minds, what expedited her sudden demise."
Jacob Cobb was held in juvenile court for second-degree murder while Andrew and Clemens were charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact, the Weekly Vice said.
The Cobbs were arrested on Friday. Police charged Clemens for his role on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.
Clemens told police that Mason was missing on Dec. 27 and allegedly claimed that she left the family on Christmas because no one wanted to play Yahtzee with her. |
Can we ever form meaningful relationships with robots? Bill Thompson doesn't think he is going to fall for a robot anytime soon. Much as I adore my MacBook I have no desire to form a life-long union with it or attempt to interface in any way that doesn't involve keys, trackpad and my fingers. Others seem to feel differently about the matter, like David Levy, who reckons that by the middle of the century our relationships with the machines that currently service our social lives will have grown significantly, and that intelligent robots will be sexual partners too. He even thinks that human/machine marriages will be taking place, as people find the companionship they are looking for in ultra-realistic robots who never tire of them, never get bored with their jokes and never leave the toilet seat up. Mostly because they never go to the toilet, being robots. Levy knows what he's talking about, as an International Master who was closely involved in the development of chess-playing programs and a former winner of the Loebner Prize for programs that can have human-like conversations. His recent book, 'Love + Sex with Robots', has attracted a lot of attention from computer scientists, psychologists and those just interested in the idea of having sex with a machine, so it was a real pleasure to have the chance to chair a discussion with him in front of a lively audience at London's ICA. In the end, however, I came away unconvinced. Machine brains Could robots replicate the complexity of human relationships? The problem isn't the humans, it's the robots. Levy points out that artificial devices have been used for sex for many centuries, so there is nothing intrinsically implausible about the idea that humans may want to engage in sexual acts with robots. He also argues that there is no fundamental reason why a human couldn't fall in love with an artificial intelligence, and I think he's probably right about this. I don't see why we shouldn't form deep bonds with other conscious beings if they are capable of communicating with us, empathising with us, and being physically intimate with us. Unfortunately this argument is entirely useless in practice because I can't accept Levy's sublimely optimistic view that we will be able to create such artificial intelligences within a 20-50 year time scale. In fact, I'm not sure we'll ever manage it. I don't have any philosophical objection to the idea of 'machine brains', I just think that creating them will always be beyond our human capabilities. The AI research community has spent fifty years and billions of dollars to give us fragile systems that can play chess but do not understand why someone might ever want to do so. I believe that this will always be the case and that 'strong AI' with human-level intelligence or above will simply not happen. Shouting at the screen I want my computers to be perfectly predictable because they are tools, extensions of my will
Bill Thompson And since Levy's entire case depends on our ability to create these artificial consciousnesses and not merely superfast computers that can be programmed to simulate the full range of human emotions and interpret behaviour appropriately, the discussion about whether we will want to sleep with or marry these machines is entertaining but irrelevant. It may be useful as a device with which to explore ethics, sexuality and human relationships, but we don't need to worry about the practical implications for our legal system or religious leaders. I am happy to project emotions onto my computer and see my laptop as trying hard to help me out when it struggles to render a video or run lots of programs at the same time. I will shout at the anti-virus software on my desktop when it kicks off a full system scan and slows the rest of the machine down to a crawl. And I've been known to plead silently with my phone to pick up a signal when I need to make an urgent call from a Welsh beach. But this is anthropomorphism, assigning human qualities to machines that have neither soul nor intelligence, and even as I am doing it I am aware of what is happening. It keeps me happy, but I know it is not really going to change the outcome. Real intelligence Just as we assign personalities to domestic pets despite their lack of consciousness, so we can attribute these qualities to the increasingly sophisticated robots that will soon be available in work and home settings. And if it makes an elderly housebound person happier to imbue their house robot with human qualities, and if the programming can reflect apparent emotions in the robot's behaviour that is fine. It may even help them live independently for longer. But it is a long step from this to genuine engagement or emotion, and that is what we need if we're going to have relationships with robots. It won't be enough to have programmable partners whose characteristics we can define in advance, setting the degree of argumentativeness or affection to their preferred levels, or choosing a robot that sometimes behaves 'unpredictably' in order to add some excitement. Chance and uncertainty are vital in any real human relationship. The lack of predictability, the contingency of love and the fear of rejection. The fundamental asymmetry of a relationship between a human and a machine must surely debase it to the point where it could never be called 'marriage' and will just be another form of ownership. If we want 'real' emotion we need 'real' intelligence. I want my computers to be perfectly predictable because they are tools, extensions of my will. A good computer is a slave to my desires, a servant that listens and obeys my every whim, whether it is to write this particular sentence or close that particular file. And I want my partners, whether for marriage or a night of passion, to have real feelings, real emotions and real needs and desires, not ones that have been put there to make me more easily tricked into intimacy. The world of computing is littered with the broken promises of AI researchers who assumed that vision, hearing, movement and even consciousness were all achievable with a bit of programming and a faster computer. We would be well advised to treat the current collection of 'imminent' breakthroughs with a degree of scepticism.
Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.
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November 2, 2015
Mysterious 'Substance' Falls From The Sky In Texas And Arizona - Exclusive Reader Photos
By Susan Duclos - All News PipeLine
Reports are coming in of a mysterious "fiber" like substance falling from the sky in Texas and Arizona, with one ANP reader submitting photographic evidence, including the image seen above.
Interestingly enough, while the popular claim is that these webs are simply "spider webs," in December of 2014 independent testing was done on this type of substance which showed the presence of Aluminum, barium and strontium, three substances commonly associated with chemtrails. (See reports here and here with original article by Intellihub here detailing the test results)
Our reader is planning to send the collected samples from October 2015 of the white substance out for testing as explained in the email transcript below:
Hey guys I took these pics other night these was falling from sky news in Dallas is reporting it spider webs. I have never seen a spider web float straight down from the sky. I collected a sample an going to send to Mike Adams[Natural News] to see if it really is spider webs. The same night they were floating they were chemtrailing hard.... this stuff was not drifting like if it came out of a tree, it was falling from high up. Maybe it is webs an it was uplifted an fell but everyone around here talking about it. Never saw anything like it before.
[UPDATE 11/3/15] Mike Adam's via Natural News just sent this over to ANP - Chemtrail fibers or something else? Health Ranger publishes microscopy lab photos of mysterious fibers falling out of the sky in North Texas
According to an article from October 31, 2015 over at Intellihub, this was also witnessed in Arizona by a a local FedEx driver named R. Dyved.
I was doing some research about this exact very article you posted on December 5, 2014. Well, I think this has happened again on Friday. About 11:00 a.m. or there about I saw three large military aircraft fly westbound over Cottonwood. I drive for FedEx and I was then making a delivery. Very unusual. Didnt think much of it later. Well after around 3:00 p.m. I started noticing web like strands in the air and also all over plants and trees along 89-A from Sedona to Cottonwood. I also later in between these times heard a lone helicopter and spotted it very high up flying west to east. Not sure if this is related, but since it was very high up and made sound it must have been a big one. Your article was almost a mirror incident on what happened today. As well as just about a year later. Strange indeed.
[ ]
So I woke up this morning to take my cats out in the fenced back yard. I believe I found some fibers on our tile. I grabbed some tweezers to collect it and tried to place it in a small baby food jar. Gosh, was it difficult to get off the tweezers and very small crochet hook. Managed. So I can see as any animal, human walking along can get this on them thinking it was a mere spider web. Not easy to get off once it is on something. It felt sort of like plastic and was very strong. [ ] Very disturbing indeed.
Recently ANP detailed some effects the chemical compounds found in chemtrails, physical flu-like symptoms, the association with mental degenerative conditions as well as behavioral changes, but another concerning aspect of these reports is the timing of them in conjunction with the recent MSM headline news about military scientists spraying spider webs with Ebola and the Plague.
Cobwebs tend to take on a particular menace at this time of year, but military scientists have been conducting research that turns them into something deadly.
Researchers working for the UK's Ministry of Defence have been spraying spider webs with diseases including Ebola and the Black Death.
Make no mistake, we are not saying these "webs" in Texas and Arizona are sprayed with Ebola or the plague, but the very fact that military scientists are using webs to experiment with Ebola and the Plague, is indicative of plans for a military application at some point.
We have seen much discussion about terrorists planning to weaponize both Ebola and the Plague, so it wouldn't be any great leap in logic to imagine that governments across the globe would be experimenting with the same type of biological weapon utilizing chemtrails in a manner to distribute a biological weapon over a vast area.
The video below was taken on November 1, 2015, in Texas, showing these "webs" falling from the sky.
The next video is from videographer Spiro, discussing the Daily Mail article regarding military scientists spraying webs with Ebola and the Plague.
Below more photos emailed by the ANP reader: |
The group's homepage. Yup, seems legit.
The group's homepage. Yup, seems legit.
In a letter to the Federal Election Commission, the independent political committee today cheekily dismissed regulators' assertion that it can't use the name of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in its title unless the candidate himself formally authorizes it. "This Committee ... is unaware that the late Ayn Rand, noted philosopher and author and of Atlas Shrugged, is seeking election to federal office," Stand with Rand PAC wrote.
Welcome to the official page for the Stand With Rand Political Action Committee (PAC). On March 6, 2013, Senator Rand Paul took the rare step of filibustering President Obama's pick for CIA Director. For 13 hours, Senator Paul literally stood up for American citizens' rights to due process as granted by the Bill of Rights. This PAC was formed in March 2013 to support candidates like Rand Paul who stand up for the Constitution and, more specifically, the Bill of Rights.
They really don't even care anymore. Upon receiving word that FEC rules preclude naming your PAC with reference to a particular candidate, the already-sketchyish "Stand with Rand PAC" responded to the FEC by saying oh, no no no, they're not named after that Rand The implausibility of the argument is not lost on anyone, not that the PAC's spokespersons give a particular damn. On their website, mention of Ayn Rand is nonexistant. The homepage is devoted entirely to Rand Paul , including pictures of Rand Paul, a t-shirt featuring the silhouette of Rand Paul, and the touching history of how their PAC was formed in the wake of Rand Paul giving a speech one day.It also features a large screenshot of a Center for Public Integrity article on the new group, an article that specifically says of Stand With Rand PAC, " the name for which salutes Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
(I'm reminded here of an old Martin Short character on Saturday Night Live, the profusely sweating executive being interviewed by 60 Minutes guy. What an odd memory.)
Asked how his Ayn Rand argument squares with federal law, Stand With Rand PAC treasurer Dan Backer, who also keeps the Stop Pelosi PAC's books, replied, "You’re saying Rand Paul doesn’t stand with Ayn Rand?"
You know what? Let's give him that one. I have no doubt that Rand Paul supports every bitter inch of Ayn, from the vitriolic atheism to the unapologetic adultery to the collecting government welfare checks while writing books condemning the government for giving societal leeches like her welfare checks. That's our Rand Paul, the adulterous anti-God welfare queen. Stand proud, Rand.
In other news, I'm not sure there's any notable punishment for lying outright to the FEC. Presumably not. They must be confident of that themselves, but the Center for Public Integrity reports the PAC has apparently raised a total of only $200 during the first few months of their existence—so top-notch legal representation on these matters would appear to be well out of their price range. |
David Holmgren On The Social And Political Underpinnings Of Permaculture
My small family and I recently had the great privilege of attending the 13th Australasian Permaculture Convergence in Perth, Western Australia. Upon completion of the three day convergence, filling our brains with beautiful, challenging and enlightening ideas from our peers, friends, mentors and heroes, I was lucky enough to attend two of David Holmgren’s master classes. The first being Future Scenarios, the second being Advanced Principles and Reading Landscape. Once the more intensive phase of a few days of learning was nearing it’s end I was able to field David a particular question that’s been on my mind for at least a few years. Here’s the edited transcript of my initial question and David’s thoughtful, concise response:
Quinlan:
I recently wrote an article about the social and political underpinnings of permaculture, and we touched on the topic of competition versus cooperation in the advanced principles workshop, and within your [Permaculture:] Principles and Pathways [Beyond Sustainability] work you referenced Peter Kropotkin and his works Mutual Aid [a Factor of Evolution] and Solidarity. In this respect I’ve often wondered what other anarchist thinkers and/or social and political underpinnings influenced your own and Bill Mollison’s thinking in the creation and founding of permaculture?
Holmgren:
Well, I think the work of Murray Bookchin and his work in Social Ecology was definitely one of the contemporary ideas that was breaking out of those old leftist moulds that saw the resources that were available were something for humans to use at will, and that we could have control over things, and how we divide up the spoils – to actually say, “no we need to do that within an ecological framework”. Social justice could not exist without ecological sustainability. And people could argue the reverse.
I think that to some extent both for me and Bill Mollison, when we met we were at a point, for slightly different reasons, we’d both come to the conclusion that we didn’t want to fight against the world we didn’t want, but wanted to just actively create the world we do want. For him (Bill) he’d been involved in a series of environmental campaigns, I think starting in the late sixties as a fisherman and in the early days as an academic galvanising a campaign to stop a fish processing plant that was going to catch a vast amount of fish and export it for fishmeal to feed to livestock somewhere else in the world. Then there was the heavy involvement in the campaign to save Lake Pedder. Including him being a candidate for the senate in the nineteen seventy-two election for the United Tasmania Group, which is acknowledged as the first Green party in the world. So, before the Greens and before the German Greens. But when I met him in seventy-four he was already thinking this, ‘fighting against things’ was not so productive.
I’d come from a family of political activists, you know my parents were linked to the communist party and in my childhood they were both founders of the most radical political organisation in Australia opposed to the war in Vietnam. My mothers ASIO file says that this organisation was the most serious political threat of all the organisations that were against the war. (Smilingly) So that for me was just like normality, you know this act of trying to stop all these bad things. So in a way Permaculture was quite deliberately apolitical, and avoided that direct confrontation. But I think it was informed by a radical political view and it was never cast as being anarchism, but I think both myself and Mollison, if you were to just objectively analyse what our general attitudes were it mostly fit into the framework of anarchism.
Kropotkin was pretty special for me because it was so much in my environment, when I read Mutual Aid – by the way I got Mutual Aid as an old Penguin paperback off my parents bookshelf, you know it was (laughing)… which was long before, well, not long before but was before the science of ecology was sort of ‘recognised’. He is a sort of prototype of an ecologist, really, in his descriptions of nature as that of a predominant relationship of cooperation, mutualism, and competition. So it was an answer – a critique and answer – to the social Darwinists who used Darwinian selection and competition, therefore society, and laissez-faire capitalism that that is following the patterns of nature, and he showed that there was this huge lineage in nature of mutualism and then he looked through history and showed how mutualism and cooperative behaviour ran right through societies…
He was an absolutely brilliant thinker. And then his book Fields Factories and Workshops of Tomorrow is in someways a precursor of Permaculture because before the industrialisation of agriculture it was addressing the way in which the productivity could be increased to support the worlds growing population. It showed that garden agriculture could actually outproduce field agriculture. Though we didn’t actually end up needing that because fossil fuels ended up increasing the production of agriculture anyway… [interupted, for time constraints], (again, smilingly) And here we are.
Thank you again David for your time. I look forward to compiling more about the history and influences of the global permaculture movement. The next Australasian Permaculture Convergence will be held in and around Canberra in 2018. To find out about the upcoming International Permaculture Conference and Convergence, go to: https://ipcindia2017.org/
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People all over the world mail their broken iPhones to microsoldering specialist Jessa Jones. Aided by powerful microscopes and precision soldering irons, experts like Jessa pluck tiny chips off logic boards, swap them for new ones, and resurrect devices over which Apple’s Genius Bar would say a eulogy.
Jessa can fix practically anything. But these days, she spends most of her time fixing just one thing. Because every single month, more and more iPhone 6 and (especially) 6 Plus devices show up at her shop, iPad Rehab, with the same problem: a gray, flickering bar at the top of the display and an unresponsive touchscreen.
Turns out, Jessa’s not alone. Lots of repair pros are experiencing the same influx of faulty iPhones—most with flickering gray bars and all with glitchy touch functionality. Rami Odeh, a repair tech from New Orleans, sees up to 100 iPhone 6 and 6 Pluses a month that don’t respond well to touch. About half of the repairs sent to Michael Huie—the specialist behind Microsoldering.com—show symptoms of the same problem.
Of course, there’s no way to tell exactly how many phones are afflicted with what we’re calling Touch Disease, but every repair tech we spoke to told us that the problem is incredibly common.
“This issue is widespread enough that I feel like almost every iPhone 6/6+ has a touch of it (no pun intended) and are like ticking bombs just waiting to act up,” says Jason Villmer, owner of STS Telecom—a board repair shop in Missouri. He sees phones like this several times a week.
If pages and pages of complaints on Apple’s support forum are any indication, Apple’s aware there’s a hardware issue with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus—but they aren’t doing anything about it.
“I took [my phone] to the ‘Geniuses’ at Apple Store in Westfield Valley Fair mall (Santa Clara, CA),” one iPhone 6 Plus owner wrote on Apple’s support forum. “After a very long wait (~2 hrs) I finally met with a rep. He acknowledged the problem (he was very familiar with it), but said Apple doesn’t recognize it as an issue, and so there is not much he can do.” Another iPhone 6 Plus owner was apparently told by an Apple employee that people come in with this issue “several times per day.” “After talking to a tech, I got exactly what I expected ‘You’re out of warranty and you’re [sic] only option is to buy a new phone,” the user wrote.
Despite Apple’s white flag, some afflicted users have noticed that strategically twisting the phone a bit or putting pressure on the screen reverses the issue for a while. The gray flickering bar goes away. After a short remission, though, the iPhone illness gets worse. The insidious gray bar of death spreads. Touch functionality gets increasingly glitchier. Eventually, the phone loses touch completely.
Touch Disease Goes Deeper than the Screen
Here’s where the plot thickens: Replacing the touchscreen doesn’t fix the problem. The gray bar eventually shows up on the new screen, too. Because, according to repair pros, the problem isn’t the screen at all. It’s the two touchscreen controller chips, or Touch IC chips, on the logic board inside the phone.
These two chips translate your finger mashing on the display into information your phone can actually use. When the Touch IC chips go bad, you can jab, tap, and poke the screen all you want—your phone can’t correctly process the information. At least, not until the bum chips are replaced with new ones.
Apple’s repair Geniuses aren’t equipped to make specialized repairs to the logic board in-house, so they can’t actually fix Touch Disease. But skilled, third-party microsoldering specialists (most “unauthorized” to do Apple repairs, according to official company policy) can fix phones with symptoms of Touch Disease. And they can do it a whole lot cheaper than the cost of a new logic board or an out-of-warranty phone replacement. Which is precisely why so many of these damaged iPhones are finding their way into repair shops around the world.
“The issue is ridiculously widespread and Apple should’ve issued a recall or maybe a free warranty repair on this problem already,” Huie told me via email. “If you own an iPhone 6+ and haven’t experienced the problem yet, then I think the chances are pretty high that you’ll experience it during the lifetime of the phone.”
Bendgate 2.0: The Crackening
After fixing hundreds of broken iPhone 6 and 6 Pluses, many pros have developed theories about what causes Touch Disease in these two specific models. One microsoldering pro I spoke to speculated that the U2402 Meson chip—one of the two Touch IC chips on the board—has a manufacturing defect. But the most popular theory I heard is that Touch Disease is the unanticipated, long-term consequence of a structural design flaw: Bendgate.
Back when the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were first released, some owners discovered that the large, wide phones had a nasty habit of molding themselves to the shape of your rump if left too long in a back pocket. The phenomenon, known as Bendgate, was ostensibly put to bed when Apple apparently strengthened weak points in the rear case of the iPhone 6s.
“But the fact remains—compared to earlier iPhone models, the iPhone 6/6+ is kind of a ‘bendy’ phone. Its slim form factor and larger surface area subject the logic board within the phone to mechanical flexion pressure that no other iPhone has had to deal with,” Jessa explains in a detailed blog post. The iPhone 6 Plus—the wider of the two phones—appears to be especially susceptible to this kind of damage.
In both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the Touch IC chips connect to the logic board via an array of itty-bitty solder balls—“like a plate resting on marbles,” Jessa explains. Over time, as the phone flexes or twists slightly during normal use, those solder balls crack and start to lose contact with the board.
“At first, there may be no defect at all. Later you might notice that the screen is sometimes unresponsive, but it is quick to come back with a hard reset,” Jessa explains. “As the crack deepens into a full separation of the chip-board bond, the periods of no touch function become more frequent.” Any drops or heavy handling keep chipping away at the cracked solder balls. Damage enough of them, and the connections between the chips and the logic board are severed, signals are lost, touch gets glitchier, and then goes away altogether.
Size Matters—But the Devil’s in the Details
Of course, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are also big phones—so why doesn’t Touch Disease happen to them, too? It turns out that size matters—but it’s not the only thing that matters. In the iPhone 6s/6s Plus, Apple moved the susceptible Touch IC chips off the logic board and onto the display assembly, presumably sheltering them from most of the flexing forces the logic board is subjected to.
And repair professionals have singled out other problematic design elements of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. In other phones, a little blob of cured “underfill” beneath critical chips helps to keep solder balls secure—but there’s no underfill anchoring Touch IC chips to the board in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. In previous iPhone models, Apple also covered the Touch IC chips with a rigid, metal EMI shield. In the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the rigid shield was replaced with a pliable sticker shield.
“Since the Touch IC chip doesn’t have underfill, nor a metal backing, it seems to be the first to ‘break off’ the logic board,” Huie explains. “When I say ‘break off,’ I mean the solder joints break off from the chip, which causes the no touch.”
How Do You Fix Touch Disease?
So what do you do if you see a gray, flickering bar at the top of your iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus? That twisting trick we mentioned earlier? Turns out putting pressure on the screen allows the chip to make full contact with the board again, Jessa explained. But it’s not a permanent fix. It’s a bandaid—and a poor one, at that (don’t break your phone trying to fix it, please). The only permanent fix is to replace the phone (expensive), replace the logic board (also expensive), or replace both Touch ICs on the board (less expensive).
Watch our interview with Jessa to learn more:
So, if you’re experiencing symptoms of Touch Disease and you’re still in warranty—now might be a good time to take advantage of that warranty replacement option. Though, there’s no guarantee that your replacement phone won’t suffer from the same issue somewhere down the line, too.
If you’re out of warranty, you can take your phone to an electronics repair shop that offers board-level repairs. A good microsolderer can replace those two Touch IC chips on the iPhone’s logic board for less than the price of a new phone. (Make sure the shop you choose replaces the chips, and doesn’t just reflow them, warns Jessa. Reflowing—or heating up the chips until the solder melts and reconnects to the joint—doesn’t fix the loss of touch in the long run. The problem tends to come back.)
In order to ensure that Touch Disease is actually cured, some repair shops have been experimenting with ways to keep the logic board from flexing. After a Touch IC repair, iPad Rehab, for example, has been adding a strong metal shield over the top of the chips as an internal reinforcement.
“We have found that placing our own mod—a metal shield soldered over the sticker shield—seems to protect the phone from future recurrence of the problem. We (and others) have only recently started sending out our Touch IC jobs with the ‘futureproof’ shield on them,” Jessa says. So far, she says, none of her customers have reported any adverse effects from the hardware mod.
Of course, no option involving independent repair would be endorsed by Apple. In fact, Jessa and colleague Mark Shaffer have been censored and banned from posting on Apple Support Communities for explaining why touch fails and suggesting third-party repair as a solution.
So it seems like Apple is happy to sell people replacement phones, but they seem unwilling to point iPhone owners to the only people who can actually fix the problem: independent repair shops.
“[Apple doesn’t] tell customers they can get it fixed at an independent service center. They don’t offer repair of it at all. The only option that Apple offers to people who encounter this problem is ‘Would you like to buy a new iPhone?” says Louis Rossmann—a board repair expert from New York City—in a YouTube video on the topic.
Rossmann predicts that, eventually, the Touch Disease problem will probably explode into a class action lawsuit—at which point Apple will be forced to respond with some sort of extended warranty program. But only if customers start banding together and demanding more support from Apple for this problem.
If you’ll remember, it took an exposé and a massive public outcry for Apple to address Error 53—and that was a comparatively easy-to-fix software issue. Touch Disease is a hardware problem; Apple can’t fix this thing with an iOS update. Addressing Touch Disease is going to be more complicated, and more costly. But if the issue is as widespread as repair pros suspect, then Apple should start offering customers solutions instead of excuses. And they need to do it soon.
“Apple has designed phones better than this in the past. They need to design phones better than this in the future,” says Rossmann. “And they need to take accountability and responsibility for the devices that people have been paying for right now that don’t work the way they’re supposed to.” |
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Police say the suspects in a violent crime that took place in Brooklyn, are children.
Surveillance footage shows the four young suspects — accused of robbing and attacking a man — and police say one of them is as young as 8.
As CBS2’s Hazel Sanchez reported, a 30-year-old man was jumped outside of a co-op building on Willoughby Street off of Ashland Place in Fort Greene on the Friday after Thanksgiving around 12:30 a.m.
Police said four kids, two boys between the ages of 12 and 14, a girl between 12 and 14 and an 8 or 9-year-old boy, approached the man and demanded his phone.
They began punching him and threw him to the ground before taking off with the man’s laptop, headphones and a library book, police said.
People from the neighborhood were surprised to hear that kids so young were out so late without an adult.
“My son can’t be in the street at 12 o’clock and be in the house, and he’s 14.” Gabriel Alfredo said, “Maybe their parents don’t care about the kids.”
“I think that’s horrible, and I think the kids today, the parents need to actually have more control over them. Because that’s ridiculous, that’s their elder, and they should respect him and that should not happen,” Gylen Bryant said.
“It bugs me because I’m not a parent, but I’m about to be one and I wouldn’t want my kid outside at 8 years old at 12:30 at night. They have to get caught and they have to deal with the consequences. ” one man told 1010 WINS’ Glenn Schuck. “You’re not gonna put them in jail, but they have to be taught a lesson 100 percent.”
Police were still looking for the young suspects on Tuesday. It’s believed they are from the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. Anyone with information has been asked to call police. |
Dustin Lance Black’s “When We Rise,” a fact-based miniseries about the LGBT rights movement in the 1970s and ’80s, could not be more topical in this political climate, but the creator and executive producer wishes it weren’t so timely.
“I would give anything in the world for it to be less topical right now,” the writer said during the show’s Television Critics’ Association’s press tour Tuesday. “I never could have imagined that it would land in this moment. I’m not entirely surprised, because as a student of history, we know that history is not a straight line. History is a pendulum… It’s a necessary conversation to have right now. It’s a conversation about what it’s like to be a minority in this world and how important it is for us to work together for equality. So we can live lives that are more equal and that are safer.”
Black also addressed the backlash the show is already receiving online from extreme conservative groups.
Also Read: ABC Orders Gay Rights Miniseries From 'Milk' Writer, Director
“This show is under attack by the alt-right online,” he said. “We have been targeted. We will get absolutely zero ratings on every internet platform. But this show is not a war. We are not against anyone. Every single person in this world is a minority in one way or the other, it just depends on how you slice the pie. This show tells us how we are related.”
The Oscar-winning writer — who said he wrote “When We Rise” for people like his relatives in the South, where he grew up in conservative, religious communities — thinks even the president-elect might get something out of the show.
Also Read: Dustin Lance Black Wants Sam Smith to 'Stop Texting' His Fiance
“There’s an idea about the show out there in some small groups,” he added. “I think there’s a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump who will love this show. I don’t see this show as a show that’s only trying to speak to half this country. That’s not what this show is about. I didn’t write this show for half a country. I think if Donald Trump actually watched the show, he might like the show.”
“When We Rise” premieres Monday, Feb. 27. |
Iron Age hill fort in Dorset, England
For other places with the same name, see Maiden Castle
Coordinates:
Maiden Castle is an Iron Age hill fort 1.6 miles (2.6 km) south west of Dorchester, in the English county of Dorset.[1][2] Hill forts were fortified hill-top settlements constructed across Britain during the Iron Age.
The earliest archaeological evidence of human activity on the site consists of a Neolithic causewayed enclosure and bank barrow. In about 1800 BC, during the Bronze Age, the site was used for growing crops before being abandoned. Maiden Castle itself was built in about 600 BC; the early phase was a simple and unremarkable site, similar to many other hill forts in Britain and covering 6.4 hectares (16 acres). Around 450 BC it was greatly expanded and the enclosed area nearly tripled in size to 19 ha (47 acres), making it the largest hill fort in Britain and, by some definitions, the largest in Europe. At the same time, Maiden Castle's defences were made more complex with the addition of further ramparts and ditches. Around 100 BC, habitation at the hill fort went into decline and became concentrated at the eastern end of the site. It was occupied until at least the Roman period, by which time it was in the territory of the Durotriges, a Celtic tribe.
After the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century AD, Maiden Castle appears to have been abandoned, although the Romans may have had a military presence on the site. In the late 4th century AD, a temple and ancillary buildings were constructed. In the 6th century AD the hill top was entirely abandoned and was used only for agriculture during the medieval period.
Maiden Castle has provided inspiration for composer John Ireland and authors Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys. The study of hill forts was popularised in the 19th century by archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers. In the 1930s, archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler and Tessa Verney Wheeler undertook the first archaeological excavations at Maiden Castle, raising its profile among the public. Further excavations were carried out under Niall Sharples, which added to an understanding of the site and repaired damage caused in part by the large number of visitors. Today the site is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument and is maintained by English Heritage.
Before the fort [ edit ]
Maiden Castle from the north
Before the hill fort was built, a Neolithic causewayed enclosure was constructed on the site. Dating from around 4000 BC, it was an oval area enclosed by two ditches,[3] It is called a causewayed enclosure because the way the ditches were dug meant that there would originally have been gaps.[4] These gaps, and the bank being only 17 centimetres (6.7 in) high, indicate the site would not have been defensive. Instead the ditches may have been symbolic, separating the interior of the enclosure and its activities from the outside.[5] Archaeologist Niall Sharples, who was involved in excavating the hill fort in the 1980s, has identified the hilltop views of the surrounding landscape as a likely factor for the enclosure's position.[3] Situated on the side of the hill, it would have been visible from several miles away, and when first cut the ditches would have exposed the underlying white chalk and stood out against the green hillside. The interior of the enclosure has been disturbed by later habitation and farming. The site does not appear to have been inhabited, although a grave containing the remains of two children, aged 6–7, has been discovered.[6] The enclosure is the earliest evidence of human activity on the site.[6]
The purpose of Neolithic causewayed enclosures is unclear, and they probably had a variety of functions. In addition to the burials, which indicate the site at Maiden Castle was important for rituals related to death, pottery from the coast and areas to the east and west was found here, indicating that the site was a meeting place that attracted people over long distances.[7] Radiocarbon dating indicates that the enclosure was abandoned around 3,400 BC. Arrowheads discovered in the ditches may indicate that activity at the enclosure met a violent end.[8]
Within a period of about 50 years, a bank barrow was built over the enclosure. It was a 546-metre (1,791 ft) long mound of earth with a ditch on either side; the parallel ditches were 19.5 m (64 ft) apart.[9] Many barrows lie over graves and are monuments to the deceased, but as the barrow at Maiden Castle did not cover any burials, scholars have suggested that it was a boundary marker. This would explain the limited human activity on the hilltop for the 500 years after the bank barrow's construction.[10] Around 1,800 BC, during the early Bronze Age, the hill was cleared and used to grow crops, but the soil was quickly exhausted and the site abandoned. This period of abandonment lasted until the Iron Age, when the hill fort was built.[11] The bank barrow survived into the Iron Age as a low mound, and throughout this period construction over it was avoided.[12]
First hill fort [ edit ]
The white line across the hill fort where the ramparts deviate inwards marks the extent of the early fort. Photograph taken in 1935 by Major George Allen (1891–1940).
Hill forts developed in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, roughly the start of the first millennium BC.[13] The reason for their emergence in Britain, and their purpose, has been a subject of debate. It has been argued that they could have been defensive sites constructed in response to invasion from continental Europe, built by invaders, or a military reaction to social tensions caused by an increasing population and resulting pressure on agriculture.
Since the 1960s, the dominant view has been that the increasing use of iron led to social changes in Britain. Deposits of iron ore were located in different places to the tin and copper ore necessary to make bronze. As a result, trading patterns shifted, and the old elites lost their economic and social status. Power passed into the hands of a new group of people.[14]
Archaeologist Barry Cunliffe believes that population increase still played a role and has stated that
"[the forts] provided defensive possibilities for the community at those times when the stress [of an increasing population] burst out into open warfare. But I wouldn't see them as having been built because there was a state of war. They would be functional as defensive strongholds when there were tensions and undoubtedly some of them were attacked and destroyed, but this was not the only, or even the most significant, factor in their construction".[15]
There are around 31 hill forts in Dorset; archaeologist Sharples, who undertook excavations at Maiden Castle, proposed that hill forts were used to control agricultural land to support a large community. Those in Dorset were situated near expanses of fertile land. Monumental defences such as the ditch at Maiden Castle indicate that the land was disputed and communities fought each other for control.[16] This is supported by Cunliffe, who argues that the elaborate earthworks such as those around the entrances to Maiden Castle and Danebury were used to defend the weakest part of the hill fort. They increased the time the attackers took to reach the gateway, which would have left them vulnerable to defenders armed with slings. Hoards of carefully selected sling stones have been found at both sites.[17][18]
Constructed on a territorial boundary in about 600 BC, the first hill fort at Maiden Castle was a 6.4-hectare (16-acre) area surrounded by a single ditch.[19] The hill it sits on is part of a ridge on the north side of the South Winterborne valley, which feeds the River Frome. At the eastern end of the ridge and rising 132 m (433 ft) above sea level, the site of the first hill fort was not the highest point along the ridge. The highest point is the neighbouring Hog Hill, which is only 1 m (3.3 ft) higher.[20] The hill projects about 40 m (131 ft) above the surrounding countryside, which is about 90 m (295 ft) above sea level.[21] The defences were 8.4 m (28 ft) high and consisted of the V-shaped ditch and a rampart.[19] The rampart would probably have been timber-faced around just the entrances. Elaborate timber facing would have been used to impress visitors.[22] The site could be accessed by an entrance in the northwest and a double entrance in the east. The double entrance is unique in hill forts in the British Isles. The reason for a double entrance is unclear; however, archaeologist Niall Sharples has suggested that it was a form of segregation. It is likely that several farming communities lived in the hill fort and wanted different entrances.[19]
The defences of the first hill fort were rebuilt on at least one occasion; the ditch was deepened by 1.5 to 7 m (4.9 to 23.0 ft). The spoil from re-digging the ditch was deposited on the back of the rampart. At the same time, the defences around the eastern entrances were made more complex. A bank and ditch were built outside the two entrances, and a bank was erected between them. The bank had a wall faced with limestone, which was brought from more than 3 km (2 mi) away. Sharples believes this would have created an impressive entrance and was a demonstration of the settlement's high status.[23] The Early Iron Age archaeology has been largely destroyed due to later activity on the site. However, nearby Poundbury and Chalbury date to the same period, so through comparison it is possible to infer the Early Iron Age activity at Maiden Castle.[24] From parallels at these sites, Sharples deduces that it was probably densely occupied, with separate areas for habitation and storage.[24] Not much is known about the material culture and economy of the Early Iron Age, and the paucity of finds from this period at Maiden Castle makes it difficult to draw conclusions about activity on the site.[25]
Developed hill fort [ edit ]
Maiden Castle's southern defences were made up of four ramparts and three ditches
In the Early Iron Age, Maiden Castle was generally unexceptional; it was one of over 100 hill forts of similar size built around the same time in the area that is now Berkshire, Dorset, Hampshire, and Wiltshire. In the Middle Iron Age, Maiden Castle was expanded and in the process it became the largest hill fort in Britain[26][27][28][29] and one of the largest in Europe.[1][30] According to archaeologist Niall Sharples it is, by some definitions, the largest in western Europe.[26] In about 450 BC, Maiden Castle was expanded from 6.4 to 19 ha (16 to 47 acres). The area was initially enclosed by a single bank and ditch, with the bank standing 2.7 m (8.9 ft) high although the ditch was shallow. The hill fort's expansion was not unique; it was one of a series of "developed hill forts" in southern England. As some hill forts were expanded, many of the smaller hill forts that had proliferated in the Early Iron Age fell out of use, as was the case in Dorset. The developed hill forts in Dorset were spaced widely apart. This, and the abandonment of the smaller hill forts in the area when the developed hill forts were built, indicates that these developed hill forts were important.[31] The developed hill forts of Berkshire, Dorset, Hampshire, and Wiltshire were equally spaced apart, with roughly equal access to resources such as water.[32]
The emergence of developed hill forts has been attributed to Iron Age society becoming more complex.[33] The emergence of one dominant hill fort in an area indicates that the inhabitants of a particular hill fort became more important than their contemporaries, possibly through warfare. However, a general dearth of evidence for destruction and an increase of artefacts associated with crafts and industry suggest that the reason for change was economic. Hill forts may have become important as centres of trade.[34][35] This is supported by the possibility that the multiple rings of ditches often employed at developed hill forts (the technical term for which is "multivallate") were likely to be not just defensive; so many ditches and ramparts, such as those at Maiden Castle, were excessive for defence alone so were likely used as statements of power and authority.[36] Developed hill forts were generally densely occupied; this is best demonstrated at Danebury, where 57% of the site has been excavated.[36][37] While developed hill forts were of a higher status than their smaller predecessors, they were not all equal. Cunliffe states that the Maiden Castle's monumental defences probably indicate that it was of higher status than other developed hill forts.[38]
The ramparts and ditches of the developed hill fort.
Maiden Castle expanded westwards, and the ditch was extended to enclose the neighbouring Hog Hill. The peaks of the two hills encompassed by the new, larger hill fort were separated by a dry valley. A shaft dug into the valley was possibly used as a water source.[39] Almost immediately after the single ditch enclosure was expanded to 19 ha (47 acres), work began on making the defences more elaborate. The existing rampart was heightened to 3.5 m (11 ft), and more ramparts and ditches were added. On the south of the fort, four ramparts and three ditches were added, but because of the steepness of the northern slope of the hill, the fourth rampart did not extend all the way round, and only three ramparts were built on the northern side. At the same time, the eastern entrance was again made more complex through the addition of further earthworks, lengthening the approach to the site.[40]
The four-post structures common in hill forts throughout England are also found in Maiden Castle. Their purpose on this site is uncertain however, since at 2 m (6.6 ft) square they have been considered by archaeologists to be too small for dwellings; as a result, it has been concluded that these structures were probably granaries.[41] The presence of granaries suggests that the fort was used to control the area's food supply.[42] Little evidence has been discovered for houses in Maiden Castle during the site's reconstruction in the 5th century BC; this is probably because the site has not been fully excavated and a quarry used to provide material for the rampart may have obliterated the evidence.[41] It appears that houses were not built near the ramparts until after the defences were complete.[43] Maiden Castle was occupied throughout the Iron Age and its inhabitants lived in roundhouses. The later houses appear to be organised in rows, and to be roughly similar in size, a reorganisation which indicates the increasing power of the elites over Iron Age society.[44]
Bronze objects such as pins, jewellery, and rivets have been found on the site, dating from the Middle Iron Age. As there was no local source of tin and copper ore, this demonstrates long distance trade, probably with the southwest. Although bronze was not produced at Maiden Castle, there is evidence of it being reworked.[45] Good quality iron ore could be found in the surrounding area, but the hill fort does not appear to have been a centre for iron production in this period; this is not unusual as very few hill forts in Berkshire, Dorset, Hampshire, and Wiltshire exhibit traces of iron production.[46] Early in the Iron Age, most of the pottery found at Maiden Castle was produced locally – within about 15 km (9.3 mi) – however later on sources further afield became more important, and by the Late Iron Age 95% of the pottery came from the area around Poole Harbour, more than 35 mi (56 km) away.[47] This long-range trade has been taken as evidence for increasing relationships with groups of people over large areas and the emergence of tribal identities.[48] Although Sharples states that developed hill forts such as Maiden Castle are not towns and cannot be considered truly urban because they are so closely related to agriculture and storage,[49] Cunliffe and fellow-archaeologists Mark Corney and Andrew Payne describe developed hill forts as "town-like settlements", a form of proto-urbanism.[50]
Decline [ edit ]
Across Britain, many hill forts fell out of use in the 100 years around the turn of the millennium.[51] It has been suggested that this, and the contemporary change in material culture of the Britons (such as the introduction of coinage and cemeteries and an increase in craft industries), was caused by increased interaction with the Roman Empire. The developing industries may have resulted in a shift away from the hill fort elites, whose power was based on agriculture.[52] Such change is not as obvious in Dorset as it is in the rest of Britain, but there is a trend for abandonment of hill forts in the area and a proliferation of small undefended farmsteads, indicating a migration of the population.[53]
Around 100 BC, Maiden Castle's organised street pattern was replaced by more random habitation. At the same time, the western half of the site was abandoned and occupation was concentrated in the east of the fort.[53] Also during the Late Iron Age, some of the earthworks around the eastern gateway were filled in and settlement expanded beyond the entrance, and into the areas between the banks. Excavations by archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler in this area revealed several houses, storage pits, an area used for iron working, and a cemetery.[54] On the industrial site, more than 62 kg (137 lb) of iron slag was discovered in an area of 30 m2 (320 sq ft), and it is believed the site produced around 200 kg (440 lb) of iron. The amount of ore required could not have been supplied by local sources, so most likely originated from areas of specialist iron production such as the Weald, south west England, and Wales. Maiden Castle is one of the most important iron production sites from the Late Iron Age in southern Britain.[55]
There is little evidence for burial in the Iron Age until late on in the period, and it is believed that the prevalent method of disposing of a body was by excarnation. Wheeler's excavations on the cemetery in the eastern gateway revealed 52 burials, but only part of the cemetery was investigated, so the total number of burials is likely to be at least double this figure. One area of the cemetery featured burials of 14 people who had died in violent circumstances,[56] including one body with a Roman catapult bolt in its back. Wheeler used the "war cemetery", as he described it, as evidence of a Roman attack on Maiden Castle.[57]
Roman activity and abandonment [ edit ]
Site of the Roman temple at Maiden Castle
In AD 43, the Roman conquest of Britain began. Vespasian's subsequent campaign to conquer the tribes of the Atrebates, Dumnonii, and Durotriges in the southwest of Britain took place in AD 43–47.[58] Based on the discovery of a group of bodies in the Late Iron Age formal cemetery that had met a violent death, archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler created a vivid story of the fall of Maiden Castle to Roman forces. He believed a legion wreaked destruction on the site, butchering men, women, and children, before setting fire to the site and slighting its defences. However, there is little archaeological evidence to support this version of events, or even that the hill fort was attacked by the Romans. Although there is a layer of charcoal, it is associated with the iron works, and the main evidence for slighting of defences comes from the collapse of an entranceway to the fort. Although 14 bodies in the cemetery exhibited signs of a violent death, there is no evidence that they died at Maiden Castle.[59]
The eastern part of the hill fort remained in use for at least the first few decades of the Roman occupation, although the duration and nature of habitation is uncertain. Many 1st-century Roman artefacts have been discovered near the east entrance and in the centre of the hill fort. It has been suggested that Maiden Castle was occupied as a Roman military outpost or fort and the settlement discontinued, as there is no known fort in the area and it was not uncommon for hill forts in the southwest to have been occupied by Roman forces. This was a characteristic of Vespasian's campaign in the region; there was military occupation at Cadbury Castle in Somerset, Hembury in Devon, and Hodd Hill in Dorset.[60]
Maiden Castle had been abandoned by the end of the 1st century, a time when Durnovaria (Dorchester) rose to prominence as the civitas, or regional capital, of the Durotriges, a Celtic tribe whose territory was in southwest England.[61] However, in July 2015 archaeologists from Bournemouth University discovered the remains of the Iron Age settlement of Duropolis and believe that the abandonment of the fort may be connected with the new site.[62] According to the ancient geographer Ptolemy, writing in the 2nd century AD, Dunium was the main settlement of the Durotriges. Although Dunium has long been thought to refer to Maiden Castle, Hod Hill and Hengistbury have been identified as two other possible sites for Dunium.[63] Dunium may have derived from British duno- which meant "a fort".[64] Sometime after 367, a Romano-Celtic temple was built at Maiden Castle in the eastern half of the hill fort.[65] The date was deduced from a hoard of coins discovered beneath a mosaic floor in the temple. A central room, measuring 6 m (20 ft) square, was surrounded by a 3 m (9.8 ft) passageway, similar to many Romano-Celtic temples found in the south of England. Nearby were two other buildings: a rectangular building 7.9 m × 5.5 m (26 ft × 18 ft) with two rooms that may have been a house for a priest, and a circular building that may have been a shrine. At the same time as the temple was built, the fort's eastern gateway was refurbished; there was possibly another shrine inside the gateway.[66]
Later history [ edit ]
Excavations at Maiden Castle in October 1937. Photograph by Major George Allen (1891–1940).
The 4th-century temple gradually fell into disuse and Maiden Castle was used predominantly as pasture. There is evidence for activity on the site in the form of a few post-Roman or Anglo Saxon burials, some possibly Christian, but the hill fort was not reused as a settlement. In the 16th and 17th centuries, a barn was built over the "war cemetery".[67] The only other significant activity on the hill top after the Romans was a short period of cultivation in the 17th century, as demonstrated by traces of ridge and furrow caused by ploughing.[68]
The modern name for the hill fort is first recorded in 1607 as Mayden Castell; it is not unique to the site and occurs in several other places in Britain and is widely taken to mean a "fortification that looks impregnable" or one that has never been taken in battle.[64] Alternatively, the name may derive from the Brittonic mai-dun, meaning a "great hill".[69] A more recent explanation has been advanced by Richard Coates[70] suggesting that the name is only of medieval origin, and was applied simultaneously to the considerable number of identically named locations around the country.
Over the following centuries, the site was abandoned completely and became open pasture, although it was of interest to antiquarians. Thomas Hardy, who built his house within sight of it,[71] described the castle in a short story, "Ancient Earthworks and What Two Enthusiastic Scientists Found Therein" (1885) about a local antiquarian who spent much time investigating the site.[72] In 1921, composer John Ireland wrote Mai-Dun, a symphonic rhapsody, about the hill fort in Dorset.[73][74] John Cowper Powys wrote a novel titled Maiden Castle in 1936, which was set in Dorset.[75]
Archaeological investigations [ edit ]
The first widespread investigation of hill forts was carried out in the second half of the 19th century under the direction of Augustus Pitt-Rivers,[76] but it was not until the 1930s that Maiden Castle was methodically investigated, the first large-scale excavation of the interior of a hill fort.[77] Between 1934 and 1937, Mortimer Wheeler and Tessa Verney Wheeler excavated both the interior and the defences, work that was funded almost entirely by donations from the public. Wheeler's use of the media to disseminate information about the site resulted in Maiden Castle becoming well known.[78][79][80] It was one of about 80 hill forts to have been excavated by 1940, in a period known as "hill fort mania" during the 1920s and 1930s.[81]
Between 1985 and 1986 further excavations under Niall Sharples were prompted by the hill fort's deteriorating condition, partly caused by the large number of visitors to the site. Under the auspices of English Heritage, repair work and archaeological investigations were undertaken concurrently.[82][83] Techniques such as radiocarbon dating were available to Sharples that were unavailable to Wheeler, allowing the site to be dated.[84] The structure was made a Scheduled Ancient Monument in 1981, giving Maiden Castle protection against unauthorised change; it is now maintained by English Heritage.[1][85] With parking facilities and information boards for visitors, Maiden Castle is open to the public all year round.[30] Today, the site is in the civil parish of Winterborne Monkton at grid reference .[1]
Panorama of the interior of Maiden Castle
Cultural references [ edit ]
in 1921, the English composer John Ireland (1879–1962) wrote the tone poem Mai-Dun, A Symphonic Rhapsody about the place, adopting Hardy's name for it. In 1931, Ireland arranged his piece for piano four hands.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Notes
Bibliography |
The actress wrote that the disgraced mogul "would let me finish the film if I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman."
Salma Hayek shared on Wednesday the harrowing backstory of her dealings with disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein during the making of the acclaimed 2002 Miramax movie Frida.
In a New York Times opinion column, the actress gave a detailed account of her history with Weinstein, his insistent and allegedly inappropriate demands and being "approached by reporters, through different sources, including my dear friend Ashley Judd, to speak about an episode in my life that, although painful, I thought I had made peace with."
The demands she says she rejected included: "No to opening the door to him at all hours of the night, hotel after hotel, location after location, where he would show up unexpectedly, including one location where I was doing a movie he wasn't even involved with," Hayek wrote. "No to me taking a shower with him. No to letting him watch me take a shower. No to letting him give me a massage. No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage. No to letting him give me oral sex. No to my getting naked with another woman."
The actress wrote that she eventually gave in to an alleged demand by Weinstein that "he would let me finish the film if I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman." She wrote of being troubled the day of performing the scene: "It was not because I would be naked with another woman. It was because I would be naked with her for Harvey Weinstein. But I could not tell them then."
Frida, a biopic of the Mexican painter and artist Frida Kahlo, was released wide in November 2002. The Julie Taymor-directed film, which featured a cast that included Ashley Judd, Antonio Banderas, Diego Luna, Alfred Molina and Edward Norton, went on to be nominated for six awards at the 75th Academy Awards, claiming two honors, for makeup and music. Hayek was nominated for actress in a leading role but lost to Nicole Kidman in The Hours. The film ultimately grossed $56 million worldwide.
Hayek's recollection of her history with Weinstein follows reports in The New York Times and The New Yorker in early October that detailed a pattern of sexual harassment and assault taking place over the course of decades. Hayek's co-star Judd went on the record to the Times for an Oct. 5 bombshell story in which she claimed to have been harassed by Weinstein.
"I said no, a lot of ways, a lot of times, and he always came back at me with some new ask," Judd told the Times of Weinstein. "It was all this bargaining, this coercive bargaining." In the ensuing months, dozens of women have shared their accounts in numerous news outlets of being assaulted or harassed by Weinstein, who was ousted from the company he co-founded, The Weinstein Co., on Oct. 8.
Later on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Weinstein sent THR a statement rebutting some of Hayek's claims, in particular that he had not supported a theatrical release of the film, saying the "movie opened in multiple theaters and was supported by a huge advertising campaign and an enormous Academy Awards budget." Weinstein also "does not recall pressuring Salma to do a gratuitous sex scene with a female co-star and he was not there for the filming."
"All of the sexual allegations as portrayed by Salma are not accurate and others who witnessed the events have a different account of what transpired," the statement adds.
On Thursday, Banderas took to Twitter to say, "I am shocked and sad at the terrible events that my dear friend Salma Hayek has made public about producer Harvey Weinstein. Her integrity, her honesty as a woman and as a professional make me give absolute credit to her words." |
Image copyright Getty Images
German prosecutors have begun an investigation against former Volkswagen chief executive Martin Winterkorn.
The probe will look at "allegations of fraud in the sale of cars with manipulated emissions data", the prosecutor's office said.
Mr Winterkorn quit last week after almost nine years at the helm of VW, saying he had no knowledge of the manipulation of emissions results.
Regulators in the US had found "cheat" software in some diesel engines.
In the German legal system, anyone can file a criminal complaint with prosecutors, who are then obliged to examine them and decide whether there is enough evidence to open a formal investigation.
In this case, following the US revelations about the rigged tests, prosecutors in Braunschweig, near VW's headquarters in Wolfsburg, received about a dozen complaints, including one from Volkswagen itself, said spokeswoman Julia Meyer.
Over the weekend, German media reported that some of Volkswagen's own staff and one of its suppliers had warned years ago about the illegal use of so-called "defeat devices" to detect when a car was being tested and alter the running of its engines.
Volkswagen scandal 11 million Vehicles affected worldwide €6.5bn Set aside by VW
$18bn Potential fines
No. 1 Global carmaker in sales
I'm a VW owner - what should I do?
What next for VW?
Car emissions tests: Not fit for purpose?
VW boss Winterkorn's highs and lows
VW scandal explained
The head of VW's Porsche division, Matthias Mueller, was appointed on Friday as Mr Winterkorn's successor.
EU talks
VW has apologised for cheating emissions tests, but says that some 11 million cars across the group may can contain the computer code.
A top executive at Europe's biggest carmaker will hold talks in Brussels with a senior EU official. The scandal has cast a cloud over the whole European car industry, with other manufacturers facing demands to disclose if they ever attempted to manipulate emissions tests.
The EU's Industry Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska will meet Herbert Diess, the head of the Volkswagen brand and one of the executives tipped to replace Mr Winterkorn.
"Commissioner Bienkowska will meet the (chairman of VW brand) tomorrow," European Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso told a news briefing on Monday.
Image copyright EPA
The EC is the top regulator for pollution emissions in the EU and is under fire for dragging its feet against carmakers despite evidence of suspicious pollution testing.
However, the commission says national authorities have may not have enforced policies sufficiently.
Audi admission
On Monday, VW-owned Audi said 2.1 million of its cars worldwide were fitted with the software.
Some 1.42 million Audi vehicles with so-called EU5 engines are affected in western Europe, with 577,000 in Germany, and almost 13,000 in the US.
Affected models include the A1, A3, A4, A5, A6, TT, Q3 and Q5, a spokesman told the Reuters news agency.
Meanwhile, Reuters was among several media organisations reporting that VW had suspended senior R&D heads across the group, including from Audi and Porsche.
VW shares have plunged about 35% since it admitted cheating the US emissions tests. The company faces investigations and potential fines from regulators and prosecutors, as well as potential lawsuits from customers and shareholders.
Several countries, including Italy, France and South Korea have launched investigations, and Switzerland has temporarily banned the sale of VW diesel-engine models. |
The Obamacare debate has always been rife with myths, from the infamous "death panels" to the armed IRS agents that would arrest those who don't buy insurance (really, this was an actual myth).
But as the Affordable Care Act turns five, it appears one myth reigns above them all: the idea that the health-care law has gotten increasingly expensive over time.
A Vox poll conducted by communications firm PerryUndem shows that 42 percent of Americans think Obamacare has cost "more than expected." Only 5 percent got the right answer: that the Affordable Care Act has actually come in under budget, costing "less than what was estimated."
Yes, it's really true: Obamacare has come in under budget. Twice in the past year, the Congressional Budget Office has revised downward projected spending on the Affordable Care Act. In fact, the federal government is expected to spend less on health care now than it predicted in early 2010 — and those predictions didn't include any spending from Obamacare!
That isn't just about Obamacare — projections on what we'll spend on Medicare and Medicaid, the two other big federal health-care programs, went down, too. But it is pretty remarkable that health-care spending is now expected to be lower than projections made before Congress passed a massive health insurance expansion.
Forecasters have cut Obamacare's price tag five times since 2010
It happened for the first time in March 2011, a year after the health-care law passed.
And then again in 2013 — and 2014.
And already twice in 2015, the CBO has cut its expectations for how much the health-care law would cost.
What you see in all of these charts is that the estimated net cost of the Affordable Care Act has kept moving downward. Or as the budget wonks at CBO put it, "Estimates of the net budgetary impact of the ACA’s insurance coverage provisions have decreased, on balance, over the past four years."
These changes look tiny in a graph, but they're pretty significant: back in 2010, for example, forecasters estimated Obamacare's coverage expansion — the price of expanding Medicaid and private coverage, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of the law's spending — would cost $759 billion between 2014 and 2019 (a time frame covered by all three of the forecasts). But in April 2014, CBO revised its estimate to $659 billion — a 13 percent reduction.
Obamacare's subsidies are now project to cost 20 percent less than expected
CBO most recently revisited the health law's price tag earlier this month, and once again found the law would cost less than anticipated.
On March 9, the nonpartisan agency estimated that the federal government will spend 20 percent less than expected on subsidizing the coverage of low- and middle-income Americans who purchase coverage through the exchanges.
CBO also expects the federal government to spend less on Medicaid, the public program that covers low-income Americans and which the Affordable Care Act also expands. Medicaid spending will be $73 billion less than expected between 2016 and 2024.
The first reason Obamacare got cheaper: health costs are growing slowly
There are arguably two explanations for the Affordable Care Act essentially going on sale: a slowdown in the growth of health costs, and fewer people using the law than expected.
Typically, health-care costs grow really quickly, much faster than the rest of the economy. But since 2009, something unexpected has happened: health spending has grown at the same rate as everything else.
And that slowdown has been good for Obamacare's budget. When health-care costs grow more slowly, it's cheaper to buy millions of people health insurance.
There is a big debate in health policy right now about whether Obamacare has played a role in that slowdown — and whether the Obama administration can take credit for four years of record-low health-care cost growth. That debate is far from resolved, but what we do know for sure is that CBO analysts say this is the main reason they've reduced their forecasts on Obamacare spending. They attribute their March 2015 downward revision to "slower growth in premiums and, to a lesser extent, slightly lower exchange enrollment."
The second reason Obamacare got cheaper: fewer people signing up
This is happening in two ways.
First, there are 22 states not participating in Medicaid expansion after a Supreme Court ruling made it optional. Initially, this part of the law was supposed to be mandatory, so analysts assumed the federal government would be helping all 50 states buy public coverage for millions more Americans.
Now that the government is only helping 28 states and the District of Columbia expand Medicaid, it means it doesn't have to spend nearly as much money.
To a lesser extent, there's also been slightly lower-than-expected enrollment on the insurance marketplaces.
In its March 2015 estimates, the Congressional Budget Office reduced its estimates for how many people the exchanges will cover within the next decade from 25 million to 24 million.
Since Healthcare.gov's rocky launch in 2013, sign-ups have moved at a slightly slower pace than expected. This year, for example, the Congressional Budget Office had initially expected 12 million enrollees. Right now, the federal government estimates it has 11.7 million sign-ups.
Why does nobody know any of this?
Our new poll shows that of all of the Obamacare myths out there, the one about the law's price going up is the most pervasive. More of the public believes Obamacare's price has gone up, for example, than thinks there are death panels in the law (there aren't) or that undocumented workers can get financial help buying coverage (they can't).
What makes this myth especially pervasive? It might be that it feels intuitive: expanding coverage to millions of Americans just seems like an expensive endeavor. Most of us have had some experience buying insurance coverage, and we know it typically costs more than we want to pay. It seems like this would be true for the federal government, as well.
This also isn't a myth that gets debunked very much. There were lots of pieces written during the Obamacare debate about how death panels didn't actually exist. PolitiFact named death panels its "lie of the year" in 2009.
Because Obamacare's price-tag myth isn't as heated of a debate as the subject of death panels, it gets less attention in batting back rumors. So it lives on today, despite all evidence that it's wrong — and that Obamacare has, over the past five years, gotten significantly cheaper. |
Texas Tosses Out Law Against Peeping Tom Photographs As A First Amendment Violation
from the the-first-amendment-is-tricky dept
The camera is essentially the photographer’s pen or paintbrush. Using a camera to create a photograph or video is like applying pen to paper to create a writing or applying brush to canvas to create a painting. In all of these situations, the process of creating the end product cannot reasonably be separated from the end product for First Amendment purposes. This is a situation where the “regulation of a medium inevitably affects communication itself.” We conclude that a person’s purposeful creation of photographs and visual recordings is entitled to the same First Amendment protection as the photographs and visual recordings themselves.
As the Supreme Court has explained, “Sexual expression which is indecent but not obscene is protected by the First Amendment,” and even some obscene sexual expression enjoys First Amendment protection if it occurs solely within the confines of the home. Of course, the statute at issue here does not require that the photographs or visual recordings be obscene, be child pornography, or even be depictions of nudity, nor does the statute require the intent to produce photographs or visual recordings of that nature. Banning otherwise protected expression on the basis that it produces sexual arousal or gratification is the regulation of protected thought, and such a regulation is outside the government’s power.
The government cannot constitutionally premise legislation on the desirability of controlling a person’s private thoughts. First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.
We also keep in mind the Supreme Court’s admonition that the forms of speech that are exempt from First Amendment protection are limited, and we should not be quick to recognize new categories of unprotected expression
The State asserts an interest in protecting the privacy of those photographed or recorded. Privacy constitutes a compelling government interest when the privacy interest is substantial and the invasion occurs in an intolerable manner. We agree with the State that substantial privacy interests are invaded in an intolerable manner when a person is photographed without consent in a private place, such as the home, or with respect to an area of the person that is not exposed to the general public, such as up a skirt.
But § 21.15(b)(1) contains no language addressing privacy concerns. The provision certainly applies to situations in which privacy has been violated, but that is because the provision applies broadly to any non-consensual act of photography or visual recording, as long as it is accompanied by the requisite sexual intent. It is obvious that the portion of the statute at issue is not the least restrictive means of protecting the substantial privacy interests in question.
there are narrower methods of reaching such situations that address more directly the substantial privacy interests at stake. For instance, subsection (b)(2) of the statute provides an alternative culpable mental state of “with intent to . . . invade the privacy of the other person.” If this culpable mental state were a conjunctive element of subsection (b)(1), it would narrow the provision at least somewhat to address privacy concerns. Subsection (b)(1) could also be narrowed by adding an element that requires that a person’s privacy interest be invaded as a result of the place of the person recorded or the manner in which a visual recording is made. Or the legislature could designate specific places and manners that are proscribed, such as specifically proscribing the taking of a photograph of a person inside his home there are narrower methods of reaching such or the taking of a photograph underneath a person’s clothing. Because less restrictive alternatives would adequately protect the substantial privacy interests that may sometimes be threatened by non-consensual photography, the provision at issue before us fails to satisfy strict scrutiny.
We've been somewhat concerned about various attempts to pass laws against revenge porn . While revenge porn itself is immensely troubling, the problem is that any law that seeks to carve out revenge porn almost certainly leads to dangerous unintended consequences . I recognize that many pushing for such laws have very good intentions, but I worry if, in the haste to "pass a law," the consequences of such laws are being ignored. And then there's the question of whether or not these laws are even constitutional. There's a good chance that many of them are not.And that's what makes this story interesting. The state criminal appeals court in Texas has just declared that state's "improper photography or visual recording" law an unconstituional violation of the First Amendment . This could have ramifications in a number of ways. First, some have argued that such laws (or, indeed that very law ) might represent an alternative to specific anti-revenge porn laws. But, even more to the point, some who have advocated in favor of anti-revenge porn laws have argued they can be accomplished by merely extending existing "peeping tom" laws, like the Texas one. In fact, that's how California did its anti-revenge porn law But the Texas court says it's a First Amendment violation. First, it notes that photography is, by definition, "inherently expressive," and thus there's certainly an expressive act which implicates the First Amendment.And then you run into some First Amendment problems, even if the photographs are sexual in nature:It then goes on to quote a Texas Supreme Court ruling (which in turn is quoting the Federal Supreme Court) in noting:That's to drive home the point that the fact that many of these laws focus on the person's intent is problematic.The court further points out:That doesn't mean there aren't possible solutions. The court notes that there is a legitimate interest in protecting privacy, but says that the current law is way too broad, and covers plenty of situations where privacy is not truly implicated.And thus, the ruling actually suggests a much more narrowly tailored law might pass muster.Thus, whether or not the State appeals this ruling to the state Supreme Court (as seems likely), it's possible that a more narrowly tailored law might be allowed, if it really focuses on situations that violate someone's privacy.In the end, it's good to see overly broad laws tossed out, even if there are extremely legitimate concerns about the nature of revenge porn. Some people have asked why we don't advocate for a specific solution, and the general answer is that it's not clear there's a good one that doesn't also entail significant consequences for other forms of speech (or innovation, in cases where these bills try to attack intermediary liability). Revenge porn sites are immensely problematic, but just because something is problematic does not necessarily mean that a new (often overly broad) law is the answer.
Filed Under: first amendment, free speech, improper photography, intent, peeping tom, photography, revenge porn, texas |
Cole Harbour, NS – Pittsburgh Penguins Captain Sidney Crosby has returned to work at a Nova Scotia Tim Hortons after a concussion put the two-time Stanley Cup winner out of regular season play indefinitely.
Crosby was spotted handling customer’s cash and distributing coffee at a Cole Harbour Tim Hortons location.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for me to develop my speed and agility in taking orders and handling the cash,” explained Crosby while placing 10 sour-glazed Timbits into a Timbits box.
“With enough heart and determination, my manager Sandra tells me I can make assistant manager.”
The All-Star hockey player says that despite his $12 million salary last year, many of his benefits were cut in the recent contract negotiations and relies this minimum-wage position to pay the bills.
According to sources, Crosby scored a big assist in helping with a large construction crew that arrived in the store. Before that play, Sid the Kid showed his patience with an irate customer who yelled at him for not having any cheese croissants. |
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At his death in 1984, Michel Foucault left a letter stating that he wanted no posthumous publication of his work. He should have known better: The hunger for further clarification and elaboration of the master’s positions would prove irresistible. So too has been the flow of posthumous publications, the most eagerly awaited of which have been the dozen or so book-length compilations of his annual lectures at the Collège de France, which began to appear in English translation in 2003.1 Ad Policy BOOKS IN REVIEW Foucault: The Birth of Power By Stuart Elden Buy this book Foucault’s Last Decade By Stuart Elden Buy this book
The shape of Foucault’s intellectual trajectory was already controversial during his lifetime. Readers asked, for example, whether his late turn to the ethics of self-care was a betrayal of his earlier Nietzschean prophecy that the concept of “man” was destined to disappear. How could he distinguish between right and wrong in human actions without a commitment to the self and the human? Had Foucault finally renounced Nietzsche, and if so, was that a good or bad thing?2
The lectures, diverging as they often do from the books that made Foucault famous, only added to the controversy. They are—along with various manifestos, unpublished drafts, interviews, and other miscellaneous writings—now also the subject of two fascinating new books by Stuart Elden: Foucault: The Birth of Power and Foucault’s Last Decade. In the former, Elden tries to soothe some of the long-standing tensions between Foucault and Marx, in part by displaying hidden continuities between Foucault’s early work on madness and knowledge and his later work on power. In the latter, Elden deals with the 10 years after Foucault finished the manuscript of Discipline and Punish and began (on the same day!) The History of Sexuality. He shows how much of Foucault’s interest in sexuality was actually an interest in governmentality, or technologies of rule. When Foucault talked about subjectivity, Elden argues, he was also talking about the formation of subjects in the political sense, or how human beings become subjected to power.3
Elden doesn’t claim that his answers are definitive. He notes that more than half of the 110 boxes of Foucault’s papers, classified by France as a national treasure and held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, remain closed to researchers, thus leaving all interpretations provisional. But one collateral payoff of his close look at Foucault’s career is what he reveals of Foucault’s own confusions and uncertainties about his project and what he was really trying to do.4
Reading Elden, one gets to watch one of the last century’s most celebrated thinkers in the unfamiliar role of a stumbling dissertation writer, hesitantly trying out different answers to that dreaded question: “What is your basic idea?”5
Thanks to Foucault, generations of students have been instructed that power is not what or where you might expect it to be. It should not be imagined sitting grandly at the top of a pyramid where the sovereign alone has the final say. The French Revolution having come and gone, it was finally time, Foucault declared, to cut off the king’s head in political theory. Power should no longer be imagined as residing only within institutions like the state and its police force. Power does not need to send tanks rumbling down the main arteries of the capital; rather, it flushes quietly and continuously through society’s capillaries, where it tends to pass unnoticed. Power can also be gentle and relatable. It doesn’t always tell you no; often it encourages you to pursue your desires. It doesn’t always shut you up; often it encourages you to talk, especially about yourself.6
In all these ways, power is more effective and more insidious. The opening of Discipline and Punish, a set piece by which many thousands of undergraduates have been initiated into the mysteries of higher education, contrasts the gory and excruciating public torture and execution of a would-be assassin in 1757 with a simple timetable of the activities at a reformatory in 1838. In the prerevolutionary world, power is explicit, crude, and violent; in the postrevolutionary world, it expresses itself through mere scheduling. Coercion, Foucault tells us, can be painless, nonpunitive, and apparently humane. All that microscopic scrutiny of your habits and activities can look as though it were motivated by nothing but a desire for your rehabilitation.7 Current Issue View our current issue
In retrospect, Foucault’s revised theory of power seems to have emerged out of the protests of May 1968. Foucault missed those upheavals; he was teaching in Tunisia. But they galvanized him, directing much of his energy in the 1970s toward activism and, through activism, toward theorizing the nature of modern power. Foucault’s early work, sometimes described as “archaeological,” focused on how what was known and said was constrained by invisible discursive structures. Foucault’s idols, in this phase, were literature, art, and madness, all of which could be credited with exposing the arbitrariness of existing knowledge, or at least standing outside its ordering categories. This early work was certainly subversive—if questioning the foundations of knowledge isn’t subversive, then what is?—but it was not self-evidently political in the sense of fighting for or against anything.8
Elden doesn’t dispute this narrative, but he does argue that Foucault’s writings became political earlier than is generally thought and stayed political to the end. A major object of his first book is to link up Foucault’s developing concept of power with his activism in the early ’70s, especially on psychiatry and the prison. The cover of Foucault: The Birth of Power is a photograph of Foucault speaking into a bullhorn at a post-1968 demonstration (the bullhorn is so close to the inclining head of the aged Jean-Paul Sartre that you tremble for his auditory well-being). This activism happened while Foucault was still in his archaeological period. In the second book as well, Elden shows that Foucault didn’t need to use the word “power” in order to address it.9
Interestingly, it appears that when Foucault did start focusing on power, the more strenuous forms of activism dropped out of his own timetable. Of course, he maintained the habits of petition-signing and name-lending—duties expected of all French intellectuals as the price of membership. But he directed most of his energy toward writing. A compulsive, meticulous scholar, Foucault was known to spend 12 hours a day sitting in the Bibliothèque Nationale. You can see why he developed a theory of the “specific” intellectual, whose political engagement is restricted to and shaped by his workplace.10
Born in 1926 in Poitiers, Foucault was the son and the grandson of highly successful provincial doctors. Given the medical thinking on homosexuality at the time, it is not surprising that despite his academic brilliance, his youth was not a happy one. Nor is it surprising that he revolted against his mother’s Catholicism and the bullying of his medical patriarchs. But Foucault’s ability to do well in school got him out: At the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, he professed himself lucky in the mentors he found, including the existentialist Jean Hyppolite, the physician and philosopher of science Georges Canguilhem, and the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser.11
While representing the French government abroad at several cultural centers—his animosity toward the state was clearly not unlimited—Foucault came upon the subject of his dissertation: He began to fashion out of his influences a unique and compellingly revisionist view of mental illness and how it had been defined by and against the Enlightenment. His 1960 thesis, published in English as Madness and Civilization, was celebrated by many but largely ignored by the French left. How the line between sanity and insanity was drawn had not (yet) become a leftist issue.12
This neglect wounded Foucault deeply. As he broadened his scope to other so-called abnormalities, he sometimes went out of his way to provoke his Marxist contemporaries. And yet, as Elden shows, there were many positive references to class and modes of production in the lectures—often more than in his books. Those who have found Foucault too anti-economistic, too literary, or too enamored of the powers of discourse, Elden argues, are missing Foucault’s own interest in the materiality of the world.13
That interest becomes particularly clear in Elden’s elucidation of the term dispositif, which rose to prominence in Foucault’s later work along with his innovative notion of power. Commonly translated as “apparatus,” “mechanism,” “organization,” or “infrastructure,” a dispositif is not just a collection of hidden rules governing what can be said or known; it’s a collection of “relations of power, practices, and actions.” In other words, it’s material, even materialist. Foucault’s vocabulary here, though, seems studiously neutral, as if he is suggesting that, embodied in infrastructures, power too might be neutral—not the enemy of those striving against injustice, but (as Marxists might say) something that had to be taken over and repurposed.14
For Elden, it was not just the latent materialism in Foucault’s early work that reveals its political implications: His interest in the mores around madness and sexuality was itself about power. When Foucault swings his attention from madness to sexuality, it’s not because the norms surrounding the body are more material than those of the mind. Foucault was interested in sexuality and the body less for their own sake than for their place in the larger history of subjectivity, which is itself part of power’s still larger and more important history.15
When Elden proposes that power is already present as a theme in “The Order of Discourse,” even if “the language is still largely absent,” he reveals a neglected continuity within Foucault’s thought. He is also making a delicate dig at Foucault’s embrace of the idea that history is fundamentally discontinuous: If period X has different names for certain concepts, the argument goes, isn’t it really dealing with different things? No, Elden replies, in effect Foucault was at work developing his idea of power even before he had the word for it.16
Elden’s argument is refreshing, but one wonders why he is so intent on giving Foucault the gift of consistency. There is an obvious irony in seeing Foucault treated here as an “Author” in the most reverential sense, as if the author of “What Is an Author?” had not taught us to be skeptical about scholarship’s habit of using an author’s name to impose consistency on a body of writing that often responded to different situations and therefore exploded off in different directions.17
On discontinuity, as on so much else, Foucault’s most powerful inspiration came from Nietzsche. Whether or not Foucault always saw “the will to know” as inextricable from Nietzsche’s “will to power” (Elden says the answer is yes, always), Nietzsche taught him to be wary of viewing any advances of knowledge in a progressive and linear fashion, an error that Nietzsche saw as characteristic of modernity. And like Nietzsche, Foucault also harbored an enormous tenderness for those natural, instinctive, not-yet-classified ways of being that exist outside a normalizing modernity.18
But Foucault and Nietzsche differ in their reading of who the deviants are: For Nietzsche, they are the strong (the infamous “blond beasts”), whereas for Foucault, they are the weak. And it is here that one begins to see a more significant political difference as well. For Nietzsche, slave morality was logical; it was a move in a class war. Though it involved a major sacrifice (of sensual pleasure and immediacy), it was also a winning move: The weak won out over the strong, bending the old aristocratic barbarians to an egalitarian morality that was alien to their nature. For Foucault, the ruling class did not invent the dispositif of sexuality in an act of class war against the working class; rather, he believed, they invented it for themselves.19
Foucault’s narrative is perplexing for a variety of reasons. Why would, for example, the ruling class want to do such a thing? And if the new regime of sexuality served no one’s interests, why has it prevailed? Like his somewhat ghostly understanding of power as something that exists even if no one possesses or enjoys it, Foucault’s vision of morality—in particular, sexual mores—seems to entail a war without a victor.20
Foucault’s more ecstatic followers have embraced his defiance of the logic of subject and object as a brilliant and unquestionable philosophical doctrine. In their reading of Foucault, no one is coercing or defeating or profiting; concepts like profit and victory are too crude. But these questions matter a lot right now because, in 1978–79, Foucault had the uncanny foresight to dedicate some of his Collège de France lectures to the subjects of neoliberalism and what he called “biopolitics.” At the time, “neoliberalism” had not yet become today’s clear favorite in the contest to name the dominant ideology, as it has in the past four or five decades. And biopolitics, or politics working at the level of bodily life, had not yet become a fashionable slogan for those on the left who did not see the point of politics in the old-fashioned sense—that is, politics at the level of the state. But, looking back from the vantage of 2017, one intriguing and, in any case, inescapable issue for Foucault’s followers is whether he should be considered a prescient critic of neoliberalism or an early adopter of its militant anti-statism. Did he help, from the left, the rise of the right’s dominant ideology? Or were his lectures—collected in the 2008 volume The Birth of Biopolitics—a source of prophetic and practically useful insight into the specific nature of power in our time?21
On the subject of neoliberalism, many of Foucault’s followers downplay the agency of corporations. For them, neoliberalism isn’t a set of powerful interests in pursuit of higher profits, but instead a vague and somewhat mysterious “rationality” or “governmentality” without any particular origin. No one would dispute that this rationality now pervades a great many institutions, but what gets missed by this train of thought is how neoliberalism is also nothing if not a strategy to increase capitalists’ share of the world’s resources by dismantling the regulatory agencies of the government. It is, therefore, a part of a more elaborate class war between ruling and financial elites and those who are disempowered.22
Thanks to Elden’s scholarship, we can distinguish between Foucault and many of his followers. An earlier version of one of the chapters of Foucault: The Birth of Power was published as “A More Marxist Foucault?” and in that chapter, Elden shows how Foucault, more the careful historian than the philosopher, filled his lectures with an acute consciousness of class interests and subordinated voices—voices “silenced in the book that follows.” Discipline and Punish may have featured a “curious absence” of “those subjected to power,” but his lectures did not. And yet the question remains: Why did his books diverge so significantly from the lecture courses and activist dossiers that he wrote around the same time? Elden doesn’t offer any answers, but it’s better to now have an understanding of the more Marxist Foucault, however inconsistent that makes him.23 Related Article A Starting Point for Politics Bruce Robbins
In the United States, Foucault’s readers have tended to assume that if he talked about neoliberalism, he was against it. That is at best a half-truth. Foucault showed some enthusiasm for the neoliberal economist Gary Becker, who wanted to take morality out of society’s treatment of crime. The fact that Becker’s motive was to cut government budgets (imprisonment is expensive for the taxpayer) was secondary in Foucault’s reading, though he would no doubt have had something to say about the irony that decades of neoliberal anti-statism, after his death, would result in intensified state coercion and a vast expansion of the prison population. Foucault’s target during much of his activist years was the moral norms that made psychiatric patients, gays, and others into so-called “abnormals,” and this would possibly have remained his primary focus even if he had lived to decide, with the feminist social philosopher Nancy Fraser, that the recognition of marginalized identities had become the basis for a “progressive” or Clintonian neoliberalism.24
On the other hand, Elden shows us a Foucault who, luckily for us, does not flee from inconsistency. Unlike Nietzsche, he didn’t always deplore the moral norms of democracy. If politics, as Foucault insists in one of his characteristic reversals, is merely war pursued by other means, it seems inconceivable that the side of the powerless (call it the left) has never won a victory or that the democratic reforms and improvements of the past two centuries are all scenes of defeat. Modernity cannot be all power, all the time.25
One advantage to pairing Foucault’s life with his ideas is that, in Elden’s biography, we are given ample evidence that Foucault was not wedded to this belief. As Elden observes, Foucault rejoiced in 1981 when the new Socialist government abolished the death penalty in France, which many commentators attributed to his and his friends’ work throughout the 1970s. He was also open to working for François Mitterrand’s government and was disappointed when he was passed over.26
The turn to ethics in Foucault’s final years, which Elden discusses in both books, is one more example of the productivity that Foucault derived from his inconsistencies. Here, too, he backs off from the premise that moral norms are nothing but weapons that power turns against the powerless. In one sense, Foucault is consistent in his earlier repudiation of knowledge: It’s better to care for the self, he says now, than to seek to know it. In another sense, he contradicts his earlier repudiation of humanism: The self and its freedom are no longer mere ideological illusions, and Foucault comes close to recognizing that, as a producer of knowledge, he himself has been exercising power. The moral is: The apparatus of knowledge—to which he so richly contributed—is only as good or as bad as the uses to which it is put.27
Elden doesn’t quite say so, but for the late Foucault, the turn to ethics also became something of a proto-politics. It’s as though he were proposing his “care of the self” as the one sure way not to tyrannize over others. Not to tyrannize—call it democracy—suddenly becomes the operative premise. Here is Foucault, the radical democrat, struggling to break free of his own brilliance.28 |
The New York Times Co. on Thursday reported better-than-expected revenue and profit for its fourth quarter, powered by a sharp increase in digital subscriptions.
"In Q4, we added 276,000 net new digital news subscriptions, the single best quarter since 2011, the year the pay model (was) launched," Chief Executive Mark Thompson said in a release
The newspaper’s success came amid the shocking election of President Trump, who has frequently targeted the media in general and the Times in particular with attacks.
The Times took to Twitter to share the news and thank its readers, using the hashtag #factsmatter in a jab at Trump.
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The newspaper said it had an increase of 41,000 paid subscriptions on both the print and digital fronts in the seven-day period following Election Day, and that it added more digital subscriptions in the last three months of 2016 than all of 2013 and 2014 combined.
Digital advertising revenue, which makes up about 42 percent of the Times’s total revenue, rose 10.9 percent to $77.6 million in the quarter.
Trump as a candidate and as president has repeatedly attacked the Times, often referring to it as "failing" and "fake news." |
Pradip R Sagar By
Express News Service
NEW DELHI: After 11 months of grueling military training, 38-year-old Swati Mahadik, a mother of two, and wife of Colonel Santosh Mahadik, who died during an encounter with militants in Jammu and Kashmir two years ago, was commissioned in the Army as an officer in the Army Ordnance Corps.
Express had reported first in April last year about the martyr’s wife’s future plans, when Swati Mahadik cleared the Service Selection Board test, considered a very tough test.
She had pledged at her husband’s funeral that she wanted to take forward the work of her husband Col Santosh Mahadik by joining the army.
Colonel Mahadik, son of a milkman in Maharashtra, died in an ambush on November 17, shot through the head and stomach, while hunting militants in the LoC forests. For his courage, Mahadik was given Shaurya Chakara, the second highest peace time gallantry award given to armed forces, during last year’s Republic Day.
While attending her husband last rites, Swati had said that she wants to wear the same uniform and carry forward his work. She believes that militants are provoked and misguided and in absence of proper education, they get into militancy.
On Saturday, Swati Mahadik was amongst 322 officers commissioned into Indian army after successfully completing their training from Officers Training Academy, Chennai.
Swati, a graduate from Pune University, was allowed to appear in the Army entrance test after being given special age exemption by former Defence minister Manohar Parrikar on the recommendation of the then Chief of Army Staff Gen Dalbir Singh. Swati cleared the written examination and then the interview and group discussions process after competing with candidates nearly ten years younger to her.
A determined Swati, had to admit both her kids in boarding schools in Dehradun to make herself available for nine months of rigorous training in the academy.
Santosh Mahadik, an officer from elite 21 Para of Special Forces was keen to develop tourism in the Kupwara, north of Kashmir valley. His colleagues describe him as a champion boxer, goalkeeper and runner; one of the fittest boys in school but in some ways he was more of an intellectual than a soldier, who used to invite writers, learned persons and thinkers to visit Kupwara, In fact, he would personally counsel ex-militants and show them the path to a new life, his colleagues say.
Another woman -- Nidhi Dubey -- was also commissioned as an officer today. Nidhi had also lost her husband who was a Naik in the Army. |
Texas remains in the mix with one of nation’s premier prospects as IMG Academy cornerback Houston Griffith named the Longhorns in his top seven on Wednesday, along with Florida State, Penn State, Alabama, Nebraska, Ohio State and Notre Dame.
T O P 7 pic.twitter.com/4ZC5lxv0Jb — Houston Griffith (@___HG3) June 14, 2017
A four-star target, Griffith holds 37 total offers to date, with programs including Georgia, Michigan, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee and USC among those now on the outside looking in.
Griffith’s Texas offer came in April and the elite defensive back is yet to visit the Forty Acres, but that will be key for the ‘Horns hopes of remaining in contention going forward.
At this point, Notre Dame is considered the favorite, which has been the case for some time now. If all goes as planned within the state, though, Texas may not need Griffith’s services. The Longhorns are currently in a great position to land any combination of, if not all of Anthony Cook, D’shawn Jamison and Jalen Green, as those three headline a tremendously stacked cornerback crop in the state this cycle. In any case, Texas will surely continue to gauge Griffith’s interest, which is clearly high at this point, but the addition of intriguing in-state options and the presence of Notre Dame may be the ‘Horns downfall in this recruitment.
At 6’1, 192 pounds, Griffith ranks as the nation’s No. 51 player, No. 8 cornerback and the No. 11 player in Florida, per 247Sports Composite. |
Through a series of events that seem more like the plot of a Marvel movie than real life, the world’s only colony of gentle killer honey bees, a hybrid of African and European strains, turned the island of Puerto Rico into their home. It all started in 1958, when a group of ragtag African killer bees escaped from an experimental breeding program in Brazil, traveled by ship, and eventually made it to the Caribbean territory in 1994. These very aggressive bees displaced most of the gentle European bees already living there, but eventually the population evened out into colonies of docile but hardy bees.
On Wednesday, the scientists behind a new article in Nature Communications explained how this mixed-trait bee population came to exist, noting that their findings offer hope to the global beekeeping community, which has witnessed the disquieting decimation of European honey bees around the world.
In their study of the bees’ genomes, the team of international scientists found that the “Africanized” bees of Puerto Rico are a result of rapid evolution. Within 30 years of the African bees coming to Puerto Rico, a new population emerged — one that retained genetic traits of the African bees but shared the DNA of European bees. These bees, which dominate the island today, are believed to primarily be a product of “positive selection.”
An Africanized honey bee.
The most likely scenario, they write, was that when the African killer bees arrived on the densely populated island, humans, refusing to live with such scary bees, eradicated the most aggressive individuals in the population. The African bees that survived the cull were the most docile of the group, and as these gentler individuals bred with the European bees, a genetically different new colony emerged.
To come to this conclusion, the scientists sequenced the genomes of 30 “killer” Africanized bees, 30 “gentle” European honey bees (captured in Illinois), and 30 mixed-trait Puerto Rican bees. Comparing the genomes of these populations, they discovered that the Puerto Rican bees most resembled the African ones, but specific regions of the Puerto Rican bee genome resembled that of the European bees.
“Evolution involves changes in the frequency of gene variants across a population, and that’s what we’re seeing in Puerto Rico,” co-author Gene Robinson, Ph.D., explained in a statement.
“Now we know that these gentle Africanized bees can be genetically distinguished from both other Africanized honey bees and from European honey bees.”
A European honey bee.
These gentle Puerto Rican bees, which were first identified in 2012, may play an important role in the ongoing bee crisis because they are genetically distinct from known populations. As such, they’re less susceptible to the parasites and pathogens that have decimated European honey bees, which have low genetic diversity, and can continue the crucial agricultural process of pollination as those populations continue to decline.
In general, populations that lack genetic diversity are more vulnerable to threats — without a variety of genes to offer protection, the whole population becomes susceptible to the same pathogens. Traditional bee populations, in particular, are threatened by specific parasites and pathogens.
African bees, however, have managed to maintain their numbers because they share a gene that makes them highly resistant to varroa mite — a parasite that undermines the health of bees and spreads diseases.
While pesticides are believed to be a major reason honey bees have died around the world, varroa mites are thought to be a contributing factor as well. Because Puerto Rican bees are genetically different than European bees but still have their gentle demeanor, they could serve as a useful alternative for humans whose crops rely on varroa-resistant bees.
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“Genetically diverse gentle honeybees could help secure agricultural production by providing pollinators more resistant to threats such as parasites and diseases,” the scientists write.
The need for strong pollinators is a huge one: Animal pollination drives five to eight percent of global agricultural production, and with bees in massive decline, much of the world’s crops are at risk.
If you liked this article, check out this video about reinventing beekeeping with flow hive. |
More apps, more users, and more upgrades for all kinds of phones—2010 was a good year for Android. We gave Google's smartphone operating system some in-depth, how-to attention this past year, too. Here's the most popular of our Android-centered stuff.
Photo remixed from an original by Matt Katzenberger.
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Android's Market for apps remains, to this very day, a pretty big haystack to sort through, with only a few official helpers and a few unofficial sorters to guide the newcomer. We hope our Lifehacker Pack for Android got new users off on the right foot, and gave experienced 'Droiders second thoughts about an app or two they'd overlooked.
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A precursor to the post above, back when you might have been able to say that there weren't that many unique and wonderful Android apps. Looking back, there were some typically nerdy picks (Secrets, AnyCut), one pick that was more about the future (Layar), and a few solids we still stand by (PDAnet and Shopper, in particular).
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Adam Pash is not afraid to tell you who the winner is, in each category of function and usability, across the two major smartphone platforms. Since he'd taken the time to declare all those winners, Adam Dachis also thought he'd go ahead and chart up the winners, so you get an idea of where each phone's strengths lie.
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If ever there was a better argument for the power of a relatively open mobile platform than Tasker, we haven't been able to write about it. Upon discovering Tasker, we were immediately taken with its potential uses. You can totally automate what happens when something else happens, in multiple steps, as complex or simple as you want to make it. Set up an Ultimate Morning Alarm, so that at 6 a.m. every day, your calendar app launches, a chosen song starts playing, and your phone says, in its robotic voice, "Good morning, Mr. Smith!" Or have that happen only when your battery level is above 20 percent—it's all up to you.
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For the most part, Gina's rundown of your options for connecting your Android 3G service to your laptop hold true. You can "root" your phone to get your tether going, run a somewhat complicated proxy app, or buy a solution like PDAnet and use caution with that "unlimited" data plan.
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"Let me preface all of this by saying that for many-not all-the switch from iPhone to Android will feel like being covered in band-aids and ripping each one off over the course of a few weeks. This is not because there's anything particularly wrong with either mobile operating system, but because they have different paradigms. Android and iPhone feel different, look different, and accomplish things in sometimes very different manners ... If you decide to ditch your iPhone and give Android a try, be prepared for a little culture shock."
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Whitson walked us through the process he undertook in rooting his original Droid, and in doing so provided a template and explainer for what "rooting" really is, what it can accomplish, and how anyone can go about finding alternative firmwares and root-oriented tools.
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Google must realize by now what a tease it is when it comes to Android versions. There are lots of early hints floating around the hardcore Andro-blogs, followed by an official unveiling, then a core group of developers and serious Android enthusiasts have the new thing on their phone. Then—months pass, and customized versions roll out only to the luckiest of a few phone owners. Regardless! We toured around Android 2.2 "FroYo" soon after its official debut, then updated the post when people started actually using it.
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What makes an Android app "evil"? Nothing so bad, really. But lots of apps, both officially available and otherwise, let users knock down the glass walls enacted around their favorite technology. Send SMS for free, sync to iTunes without an iPhone, replace your manufacturer's goofy "customized" interface, and get lots of other benefits you're artificially removed from with these apps.
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There was a time, early in Android's life, when a task killer seemed like something you'd need. But Google eventually got a reign on how third-party apps could act, and task killers became more harmful than helping. Still, many users seemed to swear by them, so Whitson explored just what they can and can't really do.
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Once you've taken the leap into rooting your phone, you're now free to install a new bootloader and load in any firmware you can find that works with your phone. And there are lots of them. We break down the unique features, and sad shortcomings, of the third-party ROMS available for Android.
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Your shortcuts, widgets, bottom-screen buttons, home screens and app tray can all be replaced. No, seriously—just because HTMotoLGsung decided your phone should look just so doesn't mean you need to stick with it. Whitson reviewed the three major home screen launcher replacements. How do you know they work? Read almost any post in which a shortcoming of Android is mentioned, or fixed, and you'll see in the comments a note that, of course, "LauncherPro/ADW already does this."
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Android's great for productivity—not just shuttling work documents and replying to emails, but automating and expediting the things you do every day. Things like send a text message in a busy situation, make and check off lists, opening links on your mobile browser, moving files around, and never, ever emailing yourself again. These are the apps we found most central to our mission in the Android ecosystem.
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You turn on an Android phone, enter your Google credentials, and then, what? All those icons, different screens a swipe away ... and it all seems to get slower, eventually. Here's our best tips for making your home screen efficient, packing in handy shortcuts, and keeping your apps organized and accessible.
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We know as well as you do that messing with a phone, any phone, while driving is a bad idea. So our car-centered app pack is all about apps that can work without much of your attention, and give you helpful information while you're traveling about. Navigation apps (including a clever alternative to Google Navigation), text-to-speech and speech-to-text helpers, apps that auto-respond and tell your friends you're driving, and more can be found in here.
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We told you we loved Tasker. After playing around a bit and learning its ways, we came up with a few ways to have your SMS read to you while driving, to scale back your data usage (and, in conjunction, battery drain) at night or idle periods, to pick from all your audio apps when headphones are inserted, and explained how to import and export profiles found on other sites and among geeky friends.
Quite a few apps claim to help you track and locate your stolen electronics, and incriminate those who stole them. Prey, however, is open source and free for most users. So we put it to the test by having Whitson "steal" a MacBook from Kevin. A ridiculous video involving old-timey titles and explanation ensued.
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"As Android's popularity grows, it's commonly compared feature-for-feature to the iPhone, and one of its biggest shortcomings (in the eyes of many users) is its lackluster Music app. For the most part, it works just fine ... Beyond that, it doesn't offer much. Luckily, quite a few other music players have surfaced, each with their own distinct niche and set of features. Here's a look at four of the best alternatives and what they have to offer."
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In some ways, straight-up phone comparisons like BillShrink's chart are exactly what you want to see. You get all the megabytes, megapixels, monthly charges, and other points of interest laid out in rows and columns. But the intangibles—cellular coverage, ease of use, compatible apps—are up to you to plot and choose.
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For most users, there are a few tools at their disposal to deal with the sluggishness resulting from a stuffed or just generally underpowered phone. Removing misbehaving apps, trying alternative home screens, and cleaning up your home screen (hey, covered above!) are a few of them. If you've gone ahead and rooted, well, you've got quite a few more avenues of improvement you can try.
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That's the year in Android at Lifehacker, at least as far as per-post popularity goes. What was your favorite post or topic this year? What would you like to see covered in the future? Give us your reflections and requests in the comments. |
This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website
Historical Flags Overview (Syria)
Last modified: 2013-11-08 by zoltán horváth
Keywords: syria | damascus | aleppo | sanjak | pan-arab colours | crescent: points to fly (white) | star (white) | triangle: hoist (red) | canton: france |
Links: FOTW homepage | search | disclaimer and copyright | write us | mirrors
Chronological Overview
(see detailed list below)
(click on flags or captions to view full information and image credits)
See also:
Other sites:
Sources and Credits
Sources: [Vexillinfo 81], [Hesmer 1992], Chronic Handbuch, Staaten der Weltgeschichte, Falko Schmidt (article in [DGF-Nachrichten]), Islamic Enciclopaedia and others.
Overview by Mark Sensen, Robert M. J. Czernkowski, Ed Haynes, Nathan Augustine, Nick Artimovich, Will Linden, Jaume Ollé, Jarig Bakker and Santiago Dotor.
Bibliography: [Musa 1987] and [Corre 2000] |
Donation mining to support open source software
This past weekend there was a popular article about The Pirate Bay using their visitors computers to mine cryptocurrency. They were using a service called Coin Hive on their site, it uses a javascript miner to mine Monero currency while users browsed the site. It happens seamless in the background, while just putting a little stress on the CPU as it processes hashes. This made the gears in my head start to turn a little bit. I finished my breakfast and went home to investigate this further and to see if I could hash out any possible uses. Then I had an idea!
Is this viable to fund open source?
Let me make it clear that I do not think a project can get 100% of their funding from their users mining, but I do think it has a chance to provide some of the funding for a project. With my gears turning, I played around with the code from Coin Hive a bit and found what I thought was a happy medium of hashes and performance. Then I installed the code on our site and forum and let it run for about 24 hours to see what kind of generation we got under our normal traffic. We made $1.24. Not a whole lot of money. But at the same time, we don’t get a ton of traffic either. Personally I considered it a success, sure, its not a lot of money, but it is something.
Having a proof of concept and some viability, it made me really want to try to test the theory in a different way. Merchants that run our software spend a lot of time in their back offices, sometimes they are just open, sometimes they are working on orders or products. What if we could harness that time to give back to our open source project? To keep everything above board, with a clear opt-in only strategy we decided not to release an update that had the Coin Hive miner in the core. I instead made a module, that is 100% optional to install in thirty bees, that will allow our users to give back and help support us if they choose.
About the module
The module is in the feed in the back office of thirty bees shops, and can be installed if you are a merchant that thinks thirty bees is awesome and you want to help the project along. Some quick facts about the module:
It is not used on the front of your site. It only affects users that are logged into the back office, not any of the front office customers.
The miner mines in the browser using javascript. It is NOT a server miner. So it will only mine when you are logged into your back office. It will not slow the server down or your site down in any way, it is 100% client side.
The module has settings in it where you can turn it on or off, and also choose how much CPU power you dedicate to mining.
With all of that being said, I think a wide release would be an awesome opportunity to measure the viability of helping to fund our project. It lets users help thirty bees out, with no out of pocket costs.
To us open source software is about growth and innovation. Breaking the standard molds of funding a project for the long run is innovative. Sure, this could be a huge flop as well. No one could install the module and we could be stuck with $1.24. But is it really a loss? I personally do not think so.
But why not other ways?
There are actually a ton of ways we can try to fund thirty bees, why would we look into cryptocurrency mining? That is a valid question that needs to be asked. When I look around at the other platforms in our market space and take a hard look at them, it bothers me. There are several big players, with widely read blogs that are all but a huge advertisement. Thin content posts about “5 modules you need to buy from us to be successful” or “Signup with this partner service so we can make money”. There are several platforms whose blogs consist solely of material like that. That is not what I want us to be. I want people to want to read our blogs. I don’t want us to have to constantly market and advertise to our community. I want to provide good content that people want to read, that will help merchants grow their businesses.
At the same time I want to start a dialog with our community, with our supporters and the whole open source community about innovative ways to fund projects. I think there are ways out there we have not even considered that could make free software more viable. Ways that do not include a constant barrage of advertisements, that do not include selling user information (something we strictly will not do).
Now for the module
If you are using thirty bees, there is a new module in your back office this morning. It is called the Donation Miner. It looks like the image below in your module feed.
If you want to support thirty bees by allowing your computer to mine cryptocurrency, install the module, then go to the configuration screen. The configuration screen looks like the image below.
In the settings panel you can enable and disable the mining from the module. The module also lets you choose the number of threads to mine with and also allows you to set an idle time throttle as well. This way you can tune the settings to cause the least disruption to your work as possible. Remember, this module will not slow down your site or server. It is only run on your local computer, so users will never experience any issues on your site.
Love this idea? Hate this idea? Let us know below. We care what our users and supporters think! |
Outgoing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
Outgoing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
“This kid was dealt a bad hand. I don’t know quite why. That’s just the way God works. Sometimes some of us are lucky and some of us are not,” he said.
@sarahljaffe We always knew he thought he was God, didn't we?
... more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression, in the most unequal metropolis in America.
With the economy growing in 2004, the Bloomberg administration adopted sweeping new policies intended to push the homeless to become more self-reliant. They would no longer get priority access to public housing and other programs, but would receive short-term help with rent. Poor people would be empowered, the mayor argued, and homelessness would decline. But the opposite happened. As rents steadily rose and low-income wages stagnated, chronically poor families like Dasani’s found themselves stuck in a shelter system with fewer exits. Families are now languishing there longer than ever—a development that Mr. Bloomberg explained by saying shelters offered “a much more pleasurable experience than they ever had before.”
Outgoing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg seems to be making an all-out push to be remembered as a heartless plutocrat (which he is). In response to the' heartbreaking, enraging five-part series on a homeless 11-year-old girl named Dasani, a series focusing on many ways Bloomberg's policies directly contributed to homelessness, Bloomberg had this to say To which one absolutely fair response was:Bloomberg fiercely defended his administration's record on homelessness, claiming that "it’s fair to say that New York City has done more than any city to help the homeless." But as the articles to which he was responding noted in their opening paragraphs, there are And:That "pleasurable experience" includes sexual assault by shelter staff, mice running in and out of holes in the walls of rooms in which children sleep, lead paint, and a wait of an hour or more to heat meals in one of two microwaves shared by hundreds of shelter residents.
Michael Bloomberg has for just two weeks short of 12 years been dealing New York City's homeless people, and its low-wage workers and their families more generally, a bad hand. And while it might be convenient for him to think that God is responsible for the disgusting conditions he created and refused to fix in the city's homeless shelters, he really needs to learn to look in the mirror. |
The White House has spoken on the ongoing Hillary Clinton email scandal, and it looks like President Barack Obama is taking the safe route when it comes to FBI Director James Comey – he’s staying neutral with regards to Comey’s decision to reopen an investigation involving thousands of emails purportedly connected to Clinton’s private server.
According to a report from the Washington Post, Obama still supports Comey in his position as FBI head following the controversial move. However, the language of his press secretary Josh Earnest suggests that the White House is less than thrilled that the investigation on the Hillary Clinton email scandal is a hot-button topic among the general public.
The new controversy started when Comey sent a letter to Congress on Friday, announcing that emails recently attributed to Clinton aide Huma Abedin may be “pertinent” to the FBI’s investigation. Abedin is the estranged wife of former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who is currently under investigation for allegedly sexting a 15-year-old girl. Her emails were found when FBI agents were analyzing the contents of the computers seized from Weiner in relation to the sexting allegations, and that’s what sounded alarms within the agency and convinced the Justice Department to seek a new warrant to have the newly-discovered emails probed.
null
All in all, Earnest is taking a neutral stance with regards to Comey’s publicizing the investigation, but doesn’t believe the FBI director is trying to skew the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential elections in favor of one candidate or another.
“The president doesn’t believe that Director Comey is intentionally trying to influence the outcome of an election,” said Earnest at a press briefing on Monday. “The president doesn’t believe that he’s secretly strategizing to benefit one candidate or one political party. He’s in a tough spot. And he’s the one who will be in a position to defend his actions.”
Earnest also made reference to how former senior Justice Department officials were not happy with Comey’s decision, regardless of whether they served under a Democratic or Republican administration. He added that legal specialists also frown on the move, as it may set a precedent for future investigations to come.
“The president believes that our democracy has been very well-served for more than two centuries by officials at the Department of Justice and FBI observing long-standing traditions that limit public discussion of investigations whether an election is around the corner or not,” he added.
The Hillary Clinton email scandal has come at an inopportune time for the Democratic presidential nominee, though the latest polls show her still leading over her Republican rival, Donald Trump. According to NBC News and SurveyMonkey’s Weekly Election Tracking Poll, Clinton still held a six-point lead over Trump in the days immediately preceding Comey’s announcement of the email discovery. Isolating data taken this past weekend, after the news had broken, Clinton was still up by six points, with 47 percent to Trump’s 41 percent. The NBC/SurveyMonkey poll had been updated on October 29 and 30 to include questions regarding the email discovery.
[Image by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]
Meanwhile, a report from ABC News noted that Obama is planning to “undertake a vigorous campaign” in support of Hillary Clinton, email scandal notwithstanding. The report also quoted Earnest as saying on Monday that he doesn’t expect any significant changes in Obama’s statements, but interestingly, the president wasn’t too concerned about the email controversy, even before Friday.
As of this writing, FBI officials remain unsure as to how many emails are the same as the ones they may have reviewed during the first Hillary Clinton email probe. And the scandal may very well keep heating up in the run-up to the elections, as noted by CNN; the new collection of emails may include those that were deleted from Clinton’s server prior to the FBI seizing it for the original investigation.
[Featured Image by Alex Wong/Getty Images] |
Our featured buses are usually available on our lot in Pedricktown, NJ. Check this box to limit your search to these.
Our featured buses are usually available on our lot in Pedricktown, NJ. Check this box to limit your search to these.
Anything you type here will be searched among the words in the descriptions of the buses. This is useful for finding things that don't have a specific search field.
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One of our most popular categories, double deckers stack two levels of passenger space on top of each other. This allows the bus to carry a larger number of riders than other buses of similar length. They are also highly favored for RV conversions since they allow two stories of space at a length similar to a regular motorcoach. If you are in the transportation business and want to gain an edge over your competitors, adding a double decker to your fleet can help you stand out in your local market.
We also have a very unique opportunity for people looking for an open top double decker bus: With our extensive industry connections, we are able to offer a highly unique custom build of an open top double decker, built on an International chassis and replicating classic early-mid 20th century Chicago double deckers. Check out this built-to-order double decker bus.
Whether you're looking for a closed or open top, custom built or classic, at BusesForSale.com you will find the very best double decker buses for sale in the USA. Browse buses from well known manufacturers like Neoplan and Van Hool, or even the famous British red double deckers. These highly sought after vehicles go quickly, so make sure to check back often! We look forward to helping you find the perfect double decker bus for you. |
1. Northland Capital Partners Limited (“Northland”) acts as Nominated Advisor and/or Broker to the company.
2. Northland) and/or its affiliates companies do beneficially own 1% or more of any class of the issuer’s equity securities, as of the end of the month immediately preceding the date of issuance of the research report or the end of the second most recent month if the issue date is less than 10 calendar days after the end of the most recent month.
3. The authoring analyst or any associate of the authoring analyst does maintain a long or short position in any of the issuer’s securities directly or through derivatives, including options or futures positions.
4. Northland, its affiliated companies, partners, officers, directors or any authoring analyst of Northland has provided services to the issuer for remuneration during the preceding 12 months other than investment advisory or trading services.
5. Northland or any of its affiliated companies has performed investment banking services for the issuer during the 12 months preceding the date of issuance of the report.
6. A partner, director, officer, employee or agent of Northland or any of its affiliated companies is an officer, director, employee or advisor of the issuer. Disclosures are applicable for all companies
7. The authoring analyst, or any associate of the authoring analyst, has viewed the material operations of the issuer.
8. The authoring analyst, or any associate of the authoring analyst, received reimbursement for travel expenses.
9. Northland makes a market in the securities of this company.
DISCLAIMER
This document is provided solely to enable clients to make their own investment decisions. It may therefore not be suitable for all recipients and does not constitute a personal recommendation to invest. It does not constitute an offer or solicitation to buy or sell securities or instruments of any kind. If you have any doubts about the suitability of this service, you should seek advice from your investment adviser. This document is produced in accordance with UK laws and regulations. It is not intended for any person whose nationality or residential circumstances may render its receipt unlawful.
The past is not necessarily a guide to future performance. The value of shares and the income arising from them can fall as well as rise and investors may get back less than they originally invested. The information contained in this document has been obtained from sources which Northland Capital Partners Limited believes to be re¬li¬able. The Com¬pany does not warrant that such information is accurate or complete. All estimates and prospective figures quoted in this report are forecasts and not guaranteed. Opinions included in this report reflect the Company’s judgement at the date of publication and are subject to change without notice. If the investment(s) mentioned in this report are denominated in a currency different from the currency of the country in which the recipient is a resident, the recipient should be aware that fluctuations in exchange rates may have an adverse effect on the value of the investment(s). The listing requirements for securities listed on AIM or PLUS markets are less demanding, also trading in them may be less liquid than main markets.
Northland Capital Partners Limited and/or its officers, as¬sociated entities or clients may have a position, or other material interest, in any securities men¬tioned in this report. Northland Capital Partners Limited does not provide recommendations on securities of firms with which it has a corporate relationship. More information about our management of Conflicts of Interest, Investment Research Methodology & Definition of Recommendations can be found at www.northlandcp.co.uk
Northland Capital Partners Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and a Member of the London Stock Exchange.
Published by/copyright: Northland Capital Partners Limited, 2013. All rights reserved |
Looks like Microsoft is in the process of launching a Selfie phone soon. Well, if the terminology of a selfie phone sounds new to you, these phones are answers of mobile phone manufacturers to the Selfie obsessed new generation users. Just kidding!
Well, Selfie phones have a very good quality front camera that lets you take good pictures of yourself and with your friends, also video calling. Anyways, nowadays even the not-specific Selfie phones are starting to have great front cameras along with the rear cameras.
According to sources of the Verge, Stephen Elop (Microsoft’s Executive VIce President for the Devices & Services business) has shared two new phones from Microsoft with certain employees of Microsoft at some internal meeting and one of the these phones is said to be the “Superman” Selfie phone.
The only specs we know about the device are that it will have a 5 megapixel front-facing camera and a 4.7-inch display. The phone will also run Microsoft’s latest Windows Phone 8.1. (via) |
This article is from the archive of our partner .
The next Marvel superhero to get his own movie is Ant-Man, a.k.a. Hank Pym, a genius and an Avenger with the ability to change the size of his body. The feat he's most known for however, is actually pretty unheroic: in the 1980s, Pym struck his wife—the single act that's defined Pym for many comic readers.
Pym hit his wife, The Wasp, during a story arc in which he was going to semi-betray the Avengers in an attempt to get back their trust (The Guardian's Ben Child has a recap of the complicated plot):
Originally, writers had not planned for Pym to be an abuser. Jim Shooter, who wrote the Avengers wife-hitting storyline, explained in a blog post that the backhand was supposed to be an accident:
In that story (issue 213, I think), there is a scene in which Hank is supposed to have accidentally struck Jan while throwing his hands up in despair and frustration—making a sort of "get away from me" gesture while not looking at her. Bob Hall, who had been taught by John Buscema to always go for the most extreme action, turned that into a right cross! There was no time to have it redrawn, which, to this day has caused the tragic story of Hank Pym to be known as the '"wife-beater” story.
Also fascinating is Shooter's psychological profile of Pym:
His history was largely a litany of failure, always changing guises and switching back and forth from research to hero-ing because he wasn’t succeeding at either. He was never the Avenger who saved the day at the end and usually the first knocked out or captured ... Meanwhile, his rich, beautiful wife succeeded in everything she tried. She was also always flitting around his shoulders, flirting, saying things to prop up his ego.
In other words, Pym is a failure, frustrated by his perfect wife. That by no means excuses Pym's actions, yet it does try explaining the roots of Pym's terrible act. We should also note that Pym and his writers have tried multiple times to say sorry for his actions. |
How many horses can claim to have galloped across the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, Mumbai's swanky bridge meant only for vehicular traffic?
But Payal, a 4-year old horse galloped across the bridge leaving the cars and people behind and stunning everyone including the bemused toll attendants.
Payal was all decked up to be wedding horse but some unfortunate groom was left without his ride as she ran away leaving her minder injured after being scared by a loud noise, reports the Indian Express. Her run was recorded by the various CCTV cameras on the sea link as seen in the video.
The runaway horse covered 413 feet in 8 minutes as she ran from Teacher’s Colony in Bandra to the end of the sea link where she was caught and subdued by the police and some Israeli tourists, continues the report.
The video shows Payal weaving in around the cars near the tool booth at the entrance of the sea link while the attendants watch helplessly. She then takes off across the length of the bridge, navigating through the rush-hour traffic properly and reaching the end of the winding lane.
“We didn’t want her to stop until she reached the end. That way, she wouldn’t get hit by a vehicle or cause damage to a car. We were more afraid that she would jump into the sea,” toll attendant Rajesh Kedar told Indian Express.
Payal was startled by by the noise of a BMC garbage truck came up from behind, according to her owner Vijay Chulaisa. Her vanishing act cost the owner not only the wedding job but also left the horse rider with a fractured leg.
Watch the full video here
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SEC Begins Soliciting Comments On Bitcoin Investment Trust
Just two short weeks after Barry Silbert filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to list the Bitcoin Investment Trust (BIT), the Commission is now soliciting comments from interested persons regarding the proposed listing.
Also read: Needham: Probability of Approval for a Bitcoin ETF ‘Very Low’
SEC Soliciting Comments
On January 20, Barry Silbert filed a registration statement with the SEC to list his flagship investment product, the BIT, on the NYSE Arca exchange. The following week, the exchange promptly filed with the Commission proposing “to list and trade shares” of the BIT.
Then, on Friday, the SEC published a notice “to solicit comments on the proposed rule change from interested persons”. The notice reads:
Interested persons are invited to submit written data, views and arguments concerning the foregoing, including whether the proposed rule change is consistent with the Act.
Comments may be submitted either online, by email, or on paper. File Number SR-NYSEArca-2017-06 must be referenced. All comments will be posted on the SEC website.
This is the second Bitcoin trust that seeks to list on the NYSE Arca. The first was SolidX Bitcoin Trust. According to the SEC, only seven comments were received for SolidX.
How Long Does the SEC Have?
The proposed rule change has not yet been published in the Federal Register, which is the next step of the process.
The SEC took two weeks to start soliciting comments for both SolidX and the BIT after their initial filings.
For SolidX, the Commission started soliciting comments on July 27, 2016, and published the proposed rule change less than a week later in the Federal Register on August 2, 2016. If SolidX is any indication, then the BIT’s proposed rule change should be published in the Federal Register sometime next week.
According to the Commission, once published in the Federal Register, it will have 45 days from the date of publication, or up to 90 days if it finds a reason for the extension. By that time, the Commission will make a decision to either approve or disapprove the proposed rule change, or it will “institute proceedings to determine whether the proposed rule change should be disapproved,” the SEC wrote about both the BIT and SolidX.
SEC Usually Needs Lots of Time to Decide
Regardless of the 45 or 90-day initial time frame, the Commission has extended the consideration period repeatedly for SolidX.
Finally, on January 3 this year, the Commission announced that it “finds it appropriate to designate a longer period within which to issue an order approving or disapproving the proposed rule change so that it has sufficient time to consider this proposed rule change.” It then designated March 30, 2017, as the date by which the proposed rule change for SolidX should either be approved or disapproved, which is 240 days from the date of the publication in the Federal Register.
As with SolidX, the Commission could take 240 days from the Federal Register publication date to decide on the BIT’s listing, which would likely be in early October.
However, experts are predicting little chance of any Bitcoin trusts being approved by the SEC. Needham & Company, for example, said that the chance is less than 25 percent.
Do you think the SEC will approve the Bitcoin Investment Trust’s listing? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of SEC Union, SEC, SolidX, and Bitcoin Investment Trust
Bitcoin.com is the most unique online destination in the bitcoin universe. Buying bitcoin? Do it here . Want to speak your mind to other bitcoin users? Our forum is always open and censorship-free. Like to gamble? We even have a casino . |
Twenty-three year-old Carlos has raced in 53 Formula 1 Grands Prix since making his debut at the start of the 2015 season in Australia. To date he has scored 100 points, with a best finishing position of sixth achieved four times. Prior to Formula 1, Carlos won the Formula Renault 3.5 Series in 2014 as well as the Formula Renault 2.0 NEC championship in 2011.
Cyril Abiteboul, Managing Director, Renault Sport Racing:
“Carlos Sainz is a very promising driver who has been on our radar for some time, especially after his successes in Renault junior formulae. It is positive news for us to be able to confirm Carlos for 2018. This choice is well aligned with our mid-term strategic plans. We feel that Nico and Carlos will complement each other on and off track and the combination should help us push forwards on the grid. I would like to thank Helmut Marko for loaning Carlos to us for this period. We must thank Jolyon for his ongoing hard work with the team and his efforts over the past two seasons. He is a dedicated driver and we wish him the best in the next steps of his career.”
Carlos Sainz:
“I’m very happy to be joining Renault Sport Formula One Team. To be a Formula 1 driver for a manufacturer team is an honour and I hope to reward Renault’s faith in me with my very best performances on track. The trajectory of Renault Sport Formula One Team is exciting and I’m proud to join at such an important time in their history. I am looking forward to working with everyone at Enstone and Viry, and driving alongside Nico Hülkenberg. I have worked closely with Renault in Formula 1 and previously in motorsport, so I know their motivation and capabilities. This is the start of a very exciting new chapter in my career. I would like to say thank you to Red Bull for all their confidence and support and for allowing me to take this opportunity. Last but not least, I specially want to thank all the people that work in Toro Rosso. They are a fantastic team of professionals and I wish them the best for the future.”
Dr Helmut Marko, Red Bull Motorsport Consultant:
“We are happy to have reached an agreement for Carlos to drive for Renault Sport Formula One Team in 2018. He is a tremendous talent and he will benefit from working with a manufacturer team alongside a highly experienced driver. This will give Carlos a different challenge and we will be keenly watching his progress there as he remains part of the Red Bull family. This is very good development for both Carlos and Renault Sport Formula One Team and will also allow us to bring a new talent into Formula One." |
TORONTO — After six years as a visitor, Chad Owens is about to enter Mark’s Labour Day Weekend with the crowd behind him.
In a very candid interview with ‘The Waggle‘, Owens talks about coping with leaving Toronto for Hamilton, the pressures felt during his NFL career and his brief foray into the world of MMA fighting.
Hosts James Cybulski and Davis Sanchez pressed Owens on the departure from the team he had become synonymous with and how the feelings he had in the off-season and the feelings he has now are quite different.
“They were looking to replace me, go younger, cheaper, I get it,” Owens said in the interview. “But I have an opportunity in Hamilton. I’m loving it and I love my teammates. I am in a good place mentally, physically and I am excited on where we are going as a team.”
For the full interview, stream the link below or click here to download from iTunes or Google Play.
Miss this week’s edition of ‘The Waggle’? Click here to subscribe and download Episode 11 where James and Davis grade the best and the worst from the first half with the Waggle Awards, and Chad Owens also drops by to talk about his first Labour Day on the other side of the QEW Rivalry. |
Our general interest e-newsletter keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics.
Which spread is better for my heart — butter or margarine? Answer From Katherine Zeratsky, R.D., L.D.
Margarine usually tops butter when it comes to heart health.
Margarine is made from vegetable oils, so it contains unsaturated "good" fats — polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. These types of fats help reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or "bad," cholesterol when substituted for saturated fat.
Butter, on the other hand, is made from animal fat, so it contains more saturated fat.
But not all margarines are created equal — some margarines contain trans fat. In general, the more solid the margarine, the more trans fat it contains. So stick margarines usually have more trans fat than tub margarines do.
Trans fat, like saturated fat, increases blood cholesterol levels and the risk of heart disease. In addition, trans fat lowers high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or "good," cholesterol levels. So skip the stick and opt for soft or liquid margarine instead.
Look for a spread that doesn't have trans fats and has the least amount of saturated fat. When comparing spreads, be sure to read the Nutrition Facts panel and check the grams of saturated fat and trans fat. Limit the amount you use to limit the calories. |
Amtrak has added a second Ski Train trip from Denver to Winter Park Resort later this month after overwhelming demand for what was originally planned as a one-time-only revival.
All 400 tickets for the first trip — created as part of the ski area’s 75th anniversary — on March 14 sold out in 10 hours. The second trip will run the next day, March 15, Amtrak announced on Tuesday.
Each round-trip adult fare will cost $75 and passengers will receive a $15 gift voucher for use at resort restaurants and retail stores. Discounted lift tickets are also available by calling the resort in advance.
The train leaves Denver’s Union Station at 7 a.m. and arrives at the resort at 9 a.m. It then leaves Winter Park at 4:15 p.m.to return to Denver at 6:15 p.m.
Beginning in 1940, the Ski Train carried skiers between Denver and Winter Park every ski season through 2009. The operation lost money, and investor Philip Anschutz, who acquired the Ski Train in 1988, sold the business in 2009, citing the rising cost of insurance coverage, declining profits and operating issues with freight trains on the line.
The 56-mile route — which reaches Winter Park’s slopes via the 6.2-mile Moffat Tunnel beneath the Continental Divide — played a vital role in establishing the Denver-owned ski area.
“The strong customer response for the Saturday (March 14) trip and the availability of the railcars and locomotives led Amtrak and the resort to make a second ski excursion train run that Sunday (March 15),” Mark Murphy, the Chicago-based Amtrak general manager overseeing the trip, said in a statement.
Gary DeFrange, Winter Park Resort president and chief operating officer, said the interest in the trip shows the momentum for the train and the interest in its return.
“We share the public’s passion for this train as well as its hope for regular rail service in the future,” he said in a statement.
Tickets for up to 460 passengers to ride on March 15 are available from Amtrak.com/WinterParkExpress or by calling the resort at 888-923-7275.
Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or twitter.com/JesseAPaul
Staff writer Jason Blevins contributed to this report. |
By Meg Wagner
A possible blow to the war on ISIS
President Donald Trump is reportedly working on a plan to lock up suspected members of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) inside the military prison at Guantánamo Bay —a move that could both force Congress to finally vote to authorize the use of force against ISIS, and add more detainees to the controversial facility.
The White House is said to be drafting an executive order that would direct the Department of Defense to use the camp in Cuba to hold suspected members of “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces, including individuals and networks associated with the Islamic State,” according to a copy obtained by the New York Times.
But Congress has never officially signed off on military operations against ISIS, as the Obama Administration argued in 2014 that actions against the violent Islamist rebel organization were covered by the 2001 authorization of force against al Qaeda. The draft Trump order, however, suggests that the war against ISIS is its own conflict, setting up a potential constitutional challenge.
National security officials have warned that the current wording in the document could allow ISIS members detained at Guantánamo to successfully challenge their detention by suing over the constitutionality of military operations against the group.
Congress could have explicitly authorized the Administration to use military force against ISIS, but declined to do so in 2015 and 2016. Congress also repeatedly stymied Obama’s efforts to close down the Guantánamo facility.
Downsized, but not shuttered
Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign included a promise to shut Guantánamo Bay down, which had been heavily criticized during the presidency of George W. Bush for its use of torture and for holding prisoners indefinitely without trial. On Obama’s second day in office, he signed an executive order vowing to shutter the camp within a year.
But the shut down never happened. Despite Obama’s failure here, the number of detainees declined under his administration, from 242 in January 2009 to 41 in January 2017.
During that time, 196 detainees were transferred to other countries, one went to a Supermax prison in Colorado, and four died in custody. Obama continued to transfer detainees up until his final weeks in office, approving 18 detainees’ release from Cuba in January — despite the then-president-elect’s protests.
There should be no further releases from Gitmo,” Trump tweeted. “These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.”
It’s not clear exactly how many new detainees affiliated with ISIS the U.S. could send to Gitmo under Trump’s proposed order. Currently, most ISIS fighters not killed in battle are held by the Iraqi National Police, and the U.S. military has had access to only a few of them.
In 2015, the U.S. military acknowledged the existence of a facility in Iraq at which captured ISIS combatants were being held, but has not confirmed how many are there.
Bringing back waterboarding?
Life for all Gitmo detainees — both the suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members incarcerated during the George W. Bush administration and any ISIS members added to the population as a result of Trump’s orders — could also become more tortuous. Trump previously said he’d reinstate waterboarding, a tactic that had been used at the prison during the Bush administration, only to be banned under Obama.
“I would bring back waterboarding, and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” Trump said at a 2016 Republican primary debate. He repeated the torture proposal in January — but his language seemed to soften after newly-minted Defense Secretary James Mattis voiced his opposition to the tactics.
“When ISIS is doing things that nobody has ever heard of since medieval times, would I feel strongly about waterboarding? As far as I’m concerned, we have to fight fire with fire,” Trump told ABC News in January, adding that he will rely on “Mattis and my group. And if they don’t want to do, that’s fine.”
There’s no word on when Trump may sign a finalized version of the Gitmo executive order. |
The National Hockey League on Wednesday announced the schedule for the first four games for both of the Stanley Cup Playoff Western Conference Semifinals.
The series between the third-seeded Phoenix Coyotes and fourth-seeded Nashville Predators will begin on Friday, April 27th at 9pm ET (NBCSN, TSN), and will continue with Game 2 on Sunday, April 29th, both games being played in Phoenix. Game 3, in Nashville, is scheduled for Wednesday, May 2nd and Game 4 will be Friday, May 4th, also in Nashville.
The series featuring the second-seeded St. Louis Blues and No. 8 Los Angeles Kings will begin on Saturday, April 28th, in St. Louis. Game 2 will be Monday, April 30th, also in St. Louis. Games 3 and 4 will be played in Los Angeles on Thursday, May 3rd and Sunday, May 6th, respectively.
The complete Eastern and Western Conference Semifinals schedule, including start times and television information, will be released upon conclusion of the Conference Quarterfinal round Thursday night. On that night, the top-seeded New York Rangers will face the No. 8 Ottawa Senators in a Game 7 contest and the No. 3 Florida Panthers will host the sixth-seeded New Jersey Devils in another Game 7, wrapping up the opening round of the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs. |
Note: I think I might have encountered a way in which NOE is distinguishing itself from the other regional subsidiaries, as I could not see this problem raised by U.S. owners or JPN ones (the system is not even out in that region).A few days ago, the thread starter here managed to destroy part of the PIN for NSMB U so I could not register it on my Nintendo Club account here in PAL land. I have the receipt, I have the game case, I have the PIN card slip with a bit of damage, but mostly in good conditions. So hey, let's scan it all and see if Nintendo's customers support could help me recover the code (and they did, so kudos to them as they kindly sent me the whole PIN number back in an e-mail... just telling this if you want the full story and would like a jab in the vein of "bite the hands which feeds you eh?").I decided to also try to get another answer from the same message, I added a P.S. inquiring about my problem with the eShop. I noticed I could not access some sections of the store and I found it weird. Nintendo's Customer Support did ask me to explain the problem in more detail, so I replied with the exact message I could see on my GamePad when trying to access the Zombie U page.I had found this thread on NeoGAF ( http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=44986488 ) dealing with it, but in the middle of the jokes about the OP's age the only thing coming up was something like "problem with their servers, must be a launch thing...".From the series of e-mails I have exchanged thus far, it turns out that no... it is not a glitch in their system, but a purposefully built filter to add another layer of protection to minors, so that they can be protected from watching bad sections of the eShop targeted at adults."Won't somebody please think of the children?"Here is part of the exchange of e-mails (the following images have been uploaded to Imgur, so I hope they do not disappear soon):Quick translation: "Dear customer, we would like to let you know that Nintendo has always aimed to offer gameplay experiences suited to all age groups, observing carefully all the relevant regulations regarding content access that are present in the various European countries.We have thus decided to restrict the access to content which is unsuitable to minors (PEGI) to the 11 P.M. - 3 A.M. time window [...]"Quick translation: "Dear customer, we would like to inform you that it is an additional precaution to make sure that minors cannot access content which is inappropriate for their age"Note: my birthday is correctly set in my NNID account, I did mention this fact to Nintendo's customer support and I also specifically asked if this measure should affect a console with no parental controls or parental controls without restrictions (tried both kinds of settings). I wanted to make sure that it was neither a glitch nor something due to a mistake I might have made configuring my account. It turn out, as you can see in their answers, that not... it is part of a clearly stated internal policy.Frankly, I think this is a paternalistic measure which does not instill confidence in their child accounts and the parental controls their platform offers. Also, it does not really respect me as an adult to be responsible and use them to make sure that a child (which my wife and I do not yet have) does not access contents which are not right for his age. |
Story highlights Man says people in room were "screaming and crying"
Passengers' families saw live video of the debris and a dead body
Some fainted, and stretchers were brought in
A news agency apologized to its viewers
Surabaya, Indonesia (CNN) For families of some people on board AirAsia Flight QZ8501, the devastating images came without warning.
Officials had just told them they were 95% certain they had found wreckage from the plane. But there was no word about their friends and loved ones.
Live video on TVs at an airport crisis center were showing coverage of the story when up popped pictures of debris, and a body in the water.
Until that moment, most of the people in the room had been watching stoically, one man told CNN's Andrew Stevens.
When the body appeared on screen, many were shocked.
Read More |
Last summer, near the end of my mother’s life, I woke up in my childhood bedroom in the middle of the night in a fever of panic. My heart was thrumming, my mind racing. In 1819, the English poet John Keats called anxiety a wakeful anguish, and so it was with me. Relief seemed impossible.
Then I had an idea. I wandered into the room where my mother lay dying and found the hospice nursea gentle, generous soulsitting quietly beside my mother as she slept. She looked up from her fat paperback.
Do you want to hold her hand? she asked.
No, I said. I’m looking for the Ativan.
The nurse went back to her book, and I went rummaging through the pill bottles. Point-five milligrams and fifteen minutes later, the anti-anxiety medicine prescribed to my mother had bound itself to my GABA receptors, and I was calm enough to sleep. Afterward, I felt the occasional twinge of regret about my priorities at that moment. Then a friend told me she had swiped drugs from her just-dead mother to cope with her own surging anxiety. I was glad for it, she said.
In my Brooklyn kitchen last December, not long after a report circulated about veterinarians using Xanax to treat post-traumatic-stress disorder in military dogs, a neighbor mentioned that she had begun to carry Xanax in her purse after her first child entered kindergarten, for relief from the uncontrollable separation anxiety she felt each time she boarded the subway and headed to work. It was just so obvious that time was passing, and I could never get it back, she told me. Another friend, the breadwinner in her family, started taking Xanax when she saw that she was about to get laid off, then upped her dose when she did. Around Thanksgiving, I found myself sitting on a plane next to a beautiful young FIT graduate in a rabbit-fur vest. Before takeoff, she neatly placed a pillbox on her knees, plucked out a small tablet, and swallowed it. Control issues, she said sweetly, giving me a gorgeous smile. As we became airborne, she reached out and clutched my hand.
If the nineties were the decade of Prozac, all hollow-eyed and depressed, then this is the era of Xanax, all jumpy and edgy and short of breath. In Prozac Nation, published in 1994, Elizabeth Wurtzel describes a New York that today seems as antique as the one rendered by Edith Wharton. In the book, she evokes a time when twentysomethings lived in Soho lofts, dressed for parties in black chiffon frocks, and ended the night crying on the bathroom floor. Twenty years ago, just before Kurt Cobain blew off his head with a shotgun, it was cool for Kate Moss to haunt the city from the sides of buses with a visage like an empty store and for Wurtzel to confess in print that she entertained fantasies of winding up, like Plath or Sexton, a massive talent who died too soon, young and sad, a corpse with her head in the oven.
This is not to say that clinical depression is ever a fashion statementit’s not. In the nineties, just as now, there were people who were genuinely, medically depressed, who felt hopeless and helpless and welcomed the relief that Prozac can provide. But beyond that, the look and feel of that era, its affect, was lank and dissolute. It makes sense in retrospect that Clerks, that cinematic ode to aimlessness, and Eddie Vedder (in his loser T-shirt) came along as the country started its two-decade climb toward unparalleled prosperity. In 1994, all the fever lines that describe economic vitalitygross domestic product, median household income, the Dowpointed up. Just as teenage rebellion flourishes in environments of safety and plenty, depression as a cultural pose works only in tandem with a private confidence that the grown-ups in charge are reliably succeeding on everyone’s behalf.
Anxiety can also be a serious medical problem, of course. It sometimes precedes depression and often gets tangled up with it (which is why Prozac-type drugs are prescribed for anxiety too). But anxiety has a second life as a more general mind-set and cultural stance, one defined by an obsession with an uncertain future. Anxious people dwell on potential negative outcomes and assume (irrational and disproportionate) responsibility for fixing the disasters they imagine will occur. What’s going to happen? or, more accurately, What’s going to happen to me? is anxiety’s quiet whisper, its horror-show crescendo the thing Xanax was designed to suppress. Three and a half years of chronic economic wobbliness, the ever-pinging of the new-e-mail alert, the insistent voices of prophet-pundits who cry that nuclear, environmental, political, or terrorist-generated disaster is certain have together turned a depressed nation into a perennially anxious one. The editors at the New York Times are running a weekly column on anxiety in their opinion section with this inarguable rationale: We worry. |
WASHINGTON - Today, Congressman Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1), Congresswoman Mia Love (R, UT-4) and Congressman John Ratcliffe (R, TX-4) authored a letter submitted this morning to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi detailing their serious concerns with the improper public communication of information by Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) investigation into the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Representatives Zeldin, Love, and Ratcliffe called for an inquiry into this matter and wrote that any Members or staff responsible for violating rules by improperly releasing communications to the media must be removed from this investigation.
“We write to you to address serious concerns regarding the integrity of investigations currently being undertaken by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Improper release of information to the media by committee members or staff is a serious violation of committee and House rules,” Members wrote. “Significant evidence that serious leaks have occurred in relation to the HPSCI investigation into alleged Russian meddling of the 2016 election must be immediately addressed. Members or staff who may have violated rules by leaking sensitive information to the press or other outside entities must be promptly removed from this investigation and proper inquiries undertaken without delay.”
A signed PDF of the letter is available here.
Full text of the letter is as follows:
Dear Speaker Ryan and Leader Pelosi,
We write to you to address serious concerns regarding the integrity of investigations currently being undertaken by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Improper release of information to the media by committee members or staff is a serious violation of committee and House rules. Significant evidence that serious leaks have occurred in relation to the HPSCI investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election must be immediately addressed. Members or staff who may have violated rules by leaking sensitive information to the press or other outside entities must be promptly removed from this investigation and proper inquiries undertaken without delay.
Our serious concerns center around but are not limited to the leaks of privileged information by HPSCI members and/or staff to the press regarding an interview of Donald Trump, Jr. that took place on December 6, 2017. Under committee and House rules, the details of this non-public interview were not to be released publicly unless the committee voted to do so. Even with such a vote, the rules still allow for a witness and his or her counsel to review the transcript before public release. On December 7, as the committee’s eight hour interview of Donald Trump, Jr. was still underway, information from this closed session of the committee was clearly being leaked to the press. This is evidenced in multiple tweets and online articles that contained privileged information that only members or staff present for the interview would have been privy to. The leaking of privileged information continued after the interview had concluded. These serious violations need to be investigated and any members responsible for such violations must no longer serve as part of this investigation . Any staff who have violated committee or House rules must also face appropriate disciplinary action.
The integrity of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is of critical importance to the whole House and to the nation we are all tasked with serving. Your immediate attention to this matter is needed to ensure that the credibility of this body is not at risk as it undertakes investigations and handles sensitive issues of importance to the United States. We thank you in advance for your prompt reply. |
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal
Since late 2007, more and more commentators have drawn parallels between our current financial crisis and the Great Depression. Nobel laureates and presidential advisors confidently proclaim that it was Herbert Hoover’s laissez-faire penny pinching that exacerbated the Depression, and that the American economy was saved only when FDR boldly ran up enormous deficits to fight the Nazis. But as I document in my new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, this official history is utterly false.
Let’s first set the record straight on Herbert Hoover’s fiscal policies. Contrary to what you have heard and read over the last year, Hoover behaved as a textbook Keynesian after the stock market crash. He immediately cut income tax rates by one percentage point (applicable to the 1929 tax year) and began ratcheting up federal spending, increasing it 42 percent from fiscal year (FY) 1930 to FY 1932.
But to truly appreciate Hoover’s Keynesian bona fides, we must realize that this enormous jump in spending occurred amidst a collapse in tax receipts, due both to the decline in economic activity as well as the price deflation of the early 1930s. This combination led to unprecedented peacetime deficits under the Hoover Administration—something FDR railed against during the 1932 campaign!
How big were Hoover’s deficits? Well, his predecessor Calvin Coolidge had run a budget surplus every single year of his own presidency, and he held the federal budget roughly constant despite the roaring prosperity (and surging tax receipts) of the 1920s. In contrast to Coolidge—who was a true small-government president—Herbert Hoover managed to turn his initial $700 million surplus into a $2.6 billion deficit by 1932.
It’s true, that doesn’t sound like a big number today; Henry Paulson handed out more to bankers by breakfast. But keep in mind that Hoover’s $2.6 billion deficit occurred because he spent $4.6 billion while only taking in $2 billion in tax receipts. Thus, as a percentage of the overall budget, the 1932 deficit was astounding—it would translate into a $3.3 trillion deficit in 2007 (instead of the actual deficit of $162 billion that year). For another angle, I note that Hoover’s 1932 deficit was 4 percent of GDP, hardly the record of a Neanderthal budget cutter.
The real reason unemployment soared throughout Hoover’s term was not his aversion to deficits, or his infatuation with the gold standard. No, the one thing that set Hoover apart from all previous US presidents was his insistence to big business that they not cut wage rates in response to the economic collapse. Hoover held a faulty notion that workers’ purchasing power was the source of an economy’s strength, and so it seemed to him that it would set in motion a vicious cycle if businesses began laying off workers and slashing paychecks because of slackening demand.
The results speak for themselves. During the heartless “liquidationist” era before Hoover, depressions (or “panics”) were typically over within two years. Yes, it was surely no fun for workers to see their paychecks shrink quite rapidly, but it ensured a quick recovery and in any event the blow was cushioned because prices in general would fall too.
So what was the fate of the worker during the allegedly compassionate Hoover era, when “enlightened” business leaders maintained wage rates amidst falling prices and profits? Well, Econ 101 tells us that higher prices lead to a smaller amount purchased. Because workers’ “real wages” (i.e. nominal pay adjusted for price deflation) rose more quickly in the early 1930s than they had even during the Roaring Twenties, businesses couldn’t afford to hire as many workers. That’s why unemployment rates shot up to an inconceivable 28 percent by March 1933.
“This is all very interesting,” the skeptical reader might say, “but it’s undeniable that the huge spending of World War II pulled America out of the Depression. So it’s clear Herbert Hoover didn’t spend enough money.”
Ah, here we come to one of the greatest myths in economic history, the alleged “fact” that US military spending fixed the economy. In my book I relied very heavily on the pioneering revisionist work of Bob Higgs, who has shown in several articles and books that the US economy was mired in depression until 1946, when the federal government finally relaxed its grip on the country’s resources and workers.
Sure, unemployment rates dropped sharply after the US began drafting men into the armed forces. Is that so surprising? By the same token, if Obama wanted to reduce unemployment today, he could take two million laid-off workers, equip them with arm floaties, and send them to fight pirates. Voila! The unemployment rate would fall.
The official government measures of rising GDP during the war years is also misleading. GDP figures include government spending, and so the massive military outlays were lumped into the numbers, even though $1 million spent on tanks is hardly the same indication of true economic output as $1 million spent by households on cars.
On top of that distortion, Higgs reminds us that the government instituted price controls during the war. Normally, if the Fed prints up a bunch of money to allow the government to buy massive quantities of goods (such as munitions and bombers, in this case), the CPI would go through the roof. Then when the economic statisticians tabulated the nominal GDP figures, they would adjust them downward because of the hike in the cost of living, so that “inflation adjusted” (real) GDP would not look as impressive. But this adjustment couldn’t occur, because the government made it illegal for the CPI to go through the roof. So those official measures showing “real GDP” rising during World War II are as phony as the Soviet Union’s announcements of industrial achievements.
If the Keynesians rely on bad economic theory, and misleading history, to justify their calls for huge government deficits, the Chicago School monetarists are hardly better when they call for interest rates at zero percent (or even negative!) and blame the Depression on the Fed’s lack of willpower.
In doing research for the book, what I noticed is that from the time it opened its doors in November, 1914, all the way through 1931, the New York Fed charged its record-low rates at the very end of this period. The “discount rate” was the interest rate the Fed banks would charge on collateralized loans made to member banks. For the New York Fed, rates had bounced around since its founding, but they were never higher than 7 percent and never lower than 3 percent, going into 1929.
This changed after the stock market crash. On November 1, just a few days following Black Monday and Black Tuesday—when the market dropped almost 13 percent and then almost 12 percent back-to-back—the New York Fed began cutting its rate. It had been charging banks 6 percent going into the Crash, and then a few days later it slashed by a full percentage point. Then, over the next few years, the New York periodically cut rates down to a record-low of 1½ percent by May 1931. It held the rate there until October 1931, when it began hiking to stem a gold outflow caused by Great Britain’s abandonment of the gold standard the month before. (Worldwide investors feared the US would follow suit, so they started dumping their dollars while the American gold window was still open.)
So far my story doesn’t sound unusual. “Everybody knows” that the Fed is supposed to slash rates to ease liquidity crunches during a financial panic. It helps to ease the crisis, and provides a softer landing than if the supply of credit were fixed.
But guess what? Throughout the period we are considering, the highest the New York Fed ever charged banks was 7 percent. And the only time it did that was smack dab in the middle of the 1920-1921 depression.
Although you’ve probably never heard of it, this earlier depression was quite severe, with unemployment averaging 11.7 percent in 1921. Fortunately it was over fairly quickly; unemployment was down to 6.7 percent in 1922, and then an incredibly low 2.4 percent by 1923.
After working on these issues for my book, it suddenly became obvious to me: The high rates of the 1920-1921 depression had certainly been painful, but they had cleaned the rot out of the structure of production very thoroughly. The US money supply and prices had roughly doubled during World War I, and the record-high discount rate starting in June 1920 was a pressure washer on the malinvestments that had festered during the war boom.
Going into 1923, the capital structure in the United States was a lean, mean, producing machine. In conjunction with Andrew Mellon’s incredible tax cuts, the Roaring ’20s were arguably the most prosperous period in American history. It wasn’t merely that the average person got richer. No, his life changed in the 1920s. Many families acquired electricity and cars for the first time during this decade.
In contrast, during the early 1930s, the Fed’s rate cuts “for some reason” didn’t seem to do the trick. In fact, they sowed the seeds for the worst decade in US economic history.
It’s actually easier to see what’s going on if you forget about a central bank, and just pretend that we were living in the good old days when banks would compete with each other and there was no cartelizing overseer. Now in this environment, when a panic hits and most people realize that they haven’t been saving enough—that they wish they were holding more liquid funds right this moment than their earlier plans had provided them—what should the sellers of liquid funds do?
The answer is obvious: They should raise their prices. The scarcity of liquid funds really has increased after the bubble pops, and its price ought to reflect that new information. People need to know how to change their behavior, after all, and market prices mean something.
But in more modern times, thanks not just to Keynes but more important to Milton Friedman, central bankers now think that during the sudden liquidity crunch, they are supposed to shovel their product out the door. But in order to do that, of course, they have to water down its potency. It’s as if a wine dealer suddenly has a rush of customers for a rare vintage of which he only has 3 bottles, and his response is to put the vintage on sale but then dilute it with 9 parts water to 1 part wine. That way he can sell to all the eager customers and not pick their pocket at the same time.
Let’s try a different example: If the owner of a trucking company experiences a huge rush for his services, he might decide to postpone essential maintenance on his fleet, to take advantage of the unprecedented demand. But during this period he will be charging record shipping prices to make it worth his while to deviate from the normal, “safe” way of running his business. He will only be willing to bear the extra risk (either to the safety of his drivers or just the long-term operation of the trucks) if he is being compensated for it.
The same is true for the banks. Just as every other business during a recession wants to bolster its cash reserves, so too with the business that rents out cash reserves. If there’s a hurricane, the stores selling flashlights and generators should raise the prices on those essential items, to make sure they are rationed correctly. The same is true for liquidity, the moment after the community realizes they are in desperate need of it.
Regards,
Robert P. Murphy
for The Daily Reckoning |
This week, NASA’s Planetary Science Division (PSD) hosted a community workshop at their headquarters in Washington, DC. Known as the “Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop“, this event ran from February 27th to March 1st, and saw scientists and researchers from all over the world descend on the capitol to attend panel discussions, presentations, and talks about the future of space exploration.
One of the more intriguing presentations took place on Wednesday, March 1st, where the exploration of Mars by human astronauts was discussed. In the course of the talk, which was titled “A Future Mars Environment for Science and Exploration“, Director Jim Green discussed how deploying a magnetic shield could enhance Mars’ atmosphere and facilitate crewed missions there in the future.
The current scientific consensus is that, like Earth, Mars once had a magnetic field that protected its atmosphere. Roughly 4.2 billion years ago, this planet’s magnetic field suddenly disappeared, which caused Mars’ atmosphere to slowly be lost to space. Over the course of the next 500 million years, Mars went from being a warmer, wetter environment to the cold, uninhabitable place we know today.
This theory has been confirmed in recent years by orbiters like the ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN Mission (MAVEN), which have been studying the Martian atmosphere since 2004 and 2014, respectively. In addition to determining that solar wind was responsible for depleting Mars’ atmosphere, these probes have also been measuring the rate at which it is still being lost today.
Without this atmosphere, Mars will continue to be a cold, dry place where life cannot flourish. In addition to that, future crewed mission – which NASA hopes to mount by the 2030s – will also have to deal with some severe hazards. Foremost among these will be exposure to radiation and the danger of asphyxiation, which will pose an even greater danger to colonists (should any attempts at colonization be made).
In answer to this challenge, Dr. Jim Green – the Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division – and a panel of researchers presented an ambitious idea. In essence, they suggested that by positioning a magnetic dipole shield at the Mars L1 Lagrange Point, an artificial magnetosphere could be formed that would encompass the entire planet, thus shielding it from solar wind and radiation.
Naturally, Green and his colleagues acknowledged that the idea might sounds a bit “fanciful”. However, they were quick to emphasize how new research into miniature magnetospheres (for the sake of protecting crews and spacecraft) supports this concept:
“This new research is coming about due to the application of full plasma physics codes and laboratory experiments. In the future it is quite possible that an inflatable structure(s) can generate a magnetic dipole field at a level of perhaps 1 or 2 Tesla (or 10,000 to 20,000 Gauss) as an active shield against the solar wind.”
In addition, the positioning of this magnetic shield would ensure that the two regions where most of Mars’ atmosphere is lost would be shielded. In the course of the presentation, Green and the panel indicated that these the major escape channels are located, “over the northern polar cap involving higher energy ionospheric material, and 2) in the equatorial zone involving a seasonal low energy component with as much as 0.1 kg/s escape of oxygen ions.”
To test this idea, the research team – which included scientists from Ames Research Center, the Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Colorado, Princeton University, and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory – conducted a series of simulations using their proposed artificial magnetosphere. These were run at the Coordinated Community Modeling Center (CCMC), which specializes in space weather research, to see what the net effect would be.
What they found was that a dipole field positioned at Mars L1 Lagrange Point would be able to counteract solar wind, such that Mars’ atmosphere would achieve a new balance. At present, atmospheric loss on Mars is balanced to some degree by volcanic outpassing from Mars interior and crust. This contributes to a surface atmosphere that is about 6 mbar in air pressure (less than 1% that at sea level on Earth).
As a result, Mars atmosphere would naturally thicken over time, which lead to many new possibilities for human exploration and colonization. According to Green and his colleagues, these would include an average increase of about 4 °C (~7 °F), which would be enough to melt the carbon dioxide ice in the northern polar ice cap. This would trigger a greenhouse effect, warming the atmosphere further and causing the water ice in the polar caps to melt.
By their calculations, Green and his colleagues estimated that this could lead to 1/7th of Mars’ oceans – the ones that covered it billions of years ago – to be restored. If this is beginning to sound a bit like a lecture on how to terraform Mars, it is probably because these same ideas have been raised by people who advocating that very thing. But in the meantime, these changes would facilitate human exploration between now and mid-century.
“A greatly enhanced Martian atmosphere, in both pressure and temperature, that would be enough to allow significant surface liquid water would also have a number of benefits for science and human exploration in the 2040s and beyond,” said Green. “Much like Earth, an enhanced atmosphere would: allow larger landed mass of equipment to the surface, shield against most cosmic and solar particle radiation, extend the ability for oxygen extraction, and provide “open air” greenhouses to exist for plant production, just to name a few.”
These conditions, said Green and his colleagues, would also allow for human explorers to study the planet in much greater detail. It would also help them to determine the habitability of the planet, since many of the signs that pointed towards it being habitable in the past (i.e. liquid water) would slowly seep back into the landscape. And if this could be achieved within the space of few decades, it would certainly help pave the way for colonization. In the meantime, Green and his colleagues plan to review the results of these simulations so they can produce a more accurate assessment of how long these projected changes would take. It also might not hurt to conduct some cost-assessments of this magnetic shield. While it might seem like something out of science fiction, it doesn’t hurt to crunch the numbers! Stay tuned for more stories from the Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop! Further Reading: USRA |
The British Museum is planning its first exhibition devoted to the horse, with a display tracing the animal's story across thousands of years of human history.
The exhibition will range from a stylised figure that decorated a 3,000-year-old harness, to the Georgian thoroughbreds Hambletonian and Diamond, immortalised on a gambler's gaming chip – appropriately since Hambletonian won a staggering 3,000 guinea prize when he beat Diamond by a short head at Newmarket in 1799.
Curator John Curtis said: "There are probably horses somewhere in every gallery in the museum, from Assyrian sculptures to coins. They're so familiar and ubiquitous they mostly go unnoticed. We want to bring them together and show their importance in history. The horse was an engine of human development and, until a generation ago, part of the everyday experience of life even in the heart of London."
There were so many horses in Victorian London that one solemn calculation concluded that the city would become uninhabitable by the turn of the 20th century, buried under a rising tide of dung. "And now they're gone completely in one lifetime," co-curator Nigel Tallis said sadly. "Many city dwellers will never see a horse in the street except police horses and the odd procession, and yet from mews to horse troughs, the city is still full of evidence of their day." The exhibition will bring together scores of horses from the museum's own collection, including a miniature gold chariot drawn by four horses, made around 2,500 years ago, part of the Oxus treasure hoard of ancient Persian gold.
The loans will include paintings by George Stubbs, newly excavated carvings of horses from Saudi Arabia, panoramic photographs of incised horses on rock faces which may be thousands of years old, clay tablets promising gifts of horses and chariots, and beautiful harness decorations, some in pure gold.
Until the development of artillery, a skilled archer on horseback was the most dangerous weapon in any war. The exhibition will include two complete sets of Islamic and western horse armour from the royal armouries.
The wild horse was domesticated at least 5,000 years ago and probably far earlier, initially for meat and later for transport, transforming how far a man could travel and how much he could carry. The exhibition traces the evolution of the elegant, swift Arabian horses, associated in legend with King Solomon and Muhammad. Said to have been created by angels or born out of the wind, they were prized more highly than gold, and made suitable gifts for princes and emperors.
Their distinctive, high-arched necks and tails can be seen in Assyrian sculptures, Egyptian wall paintings and ancient Greek vases, and the exhibition will also trace the bloodlines of all modern thoroughbreds back to three famous Arabian stallions imported into 18th-century England: the Darley Arabian, the Byerly Turk and the Godolphin Arabian.
Curtis, whose career as an archaeologist has been devoted to the ancient near east, can testify to their speed: when he turned back from a site visit in Iran and his horse sensed he was homeward bound, it bolted, leaving him clinging to its mane. Loans from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge will trace the history of the Crabbet Arabian Stud, complete with a bedouin tent for entertaining visitors, at Crabbet Park in West Sussex, where the writer and diplomat Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and his wife, Anne – granddaughter of the poet Byron – imported and bred Arabian horses, eventually dividing the collection when his string of mistresses led to their separation.
The free exhibition, which will open in May, has been timed to coincide with the Olympic Games, but has also been conceived as a diamond jubilee gift to another celebrated horse breeder, the Queen.
The Horse: Ancient Arabia to the Modern World, 24 May – 30 September |
“The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” – President Harry Truman, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (1974) by Merle Miller, pg. 26.
3-minute video: Police, Military – Was your Oath sincere?
3-minute video: US imperialism 1900-2010:
This article series is among hundreds in alternative media that explain, document, and prove that the United States continuously engage in the viciously destructive policies of a rogue state, with a required and obvious citizen response to call for arrests of those .01% leaders of these crimes centering in war, money, and corporate media lies. The eleven parts of this series are also from my paper on teaching critical thinking skills to high school students in classes of US History, Government, and Economics.
Eleven sections (hyperlinks to be updated as series is published, with original links now for your convenience):
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All US/Israel ‘reasons’ for war on Iran are known lies as they are told (11 of 11)
US “leaders” threaten more unlawful war (here, here, here, here) on Iran, and the following three points document that the ongoing “reasons” to war-murder Iranians are known lies as they are being told. In context, we know now from official US government reports that all “reasons” for war on Iraq were known to be lies as they were told:
This is textbook “guilt beyond reasonable doubt” because is is not at all reasonable under any spin to find the above “reporting” some kind of innocent mistake. In fact, claiming that the political leader of a nation threatened to destroy another nation is probably the worst lie than can be told. These deliberate and persistent lies of commission and omission killed up to a million Iranians in recent history, and threatens to kill millions more today.
As I’ve continuously reported as an independent journalist and wrote a comprehensive brief for publication and members of Congress beginning in 2006, this is criminal conspiracy between the .01% in politics and media, with both required for these paper-thin criminal lies.
This is appropriately analogous to checking the instant replay of a pitch at a baseball game that appeared ten feet over the batter’s head to make sure it really was so outrageously outside the strike-zone that an “official” call that the pitch was a strike is stating a known lie. If it was even possible to be an error when it occurred, it becomes impossible to be an error when it was not “corrected” after ten years of continuous telling.
I’ve written articles revealing similar obvious war propaganda identical to what we witnessed before the US attacked Iraq. An example from my article on CNN’s “reporting”:
“When we now know that all claims for war with Iraq were known lies as they were told (and verbally explained here), and CNN provides similar innuendo for war by an unsourced alleged report with concerns of what might occur in the future allegedly stated by an unnamed US source reporting on an unnamed foreign source, this is propaganda and not news.”
You might need to read the above twice to feel the impact of this lying sack-of-spin .01% choice of public communication thinly veiled as “news.”
For another damning example, Mike Wallace of the famed television show 60 Minutes won an Emmy for a contrived interview with President Ahmadinejad in 2006, where Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments encouraging democracy for Palestinians was edited to appear that he was hostile to Israel. You can verify this “emperor has no clothes” obvious lies and propaganda by watching the brief 5-minute clip for yourself:
Of course, this whole 11-part series of lie-supported wars are only possible through corporate media lies.
Corporate media “covers” obvious crimes in war and money with Emperor’s New Clothes’ lies
Three weeks before W. Bush’s election for a second term in 2004, his Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, chided Pulitzer-winning journalist, Ron Suskind. Rove said:
Guys like [Suskind] were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
The 1975 Church Senate Committee hearings had the cooperation of CIA Director William Colby’s testimony for the stunning disclosure that over 400 CIA operatives were controlling US corporate media reporting on specific issues of national interest in Operation Mockingbird. This game-changing testimony was confirmed by Pulitzer Prize reporter Carl Bernstein’s research. Of course, corporate media refused to publish Bernstein’s article; it became a cover-story for Rolling Stone. Bernstein provided additional information of CIA control in the Senate report and corporate media subsequent “reporting”:
“Pages 191 to 201 were entitled “Covert Relationships with the United States Media.” “It hardly reflects what we found,” stated Senator Gary Hart. “There was a prolonged and elaborate negotiation [with the CIA] over what would be said.”
Obscuring the facts was relatively simple. No mention was made of the 400 summaries or what they showed. Instead the report noted blandly that some fifty recent contacts with journalists had been studied by the committee staff—thus conveying the impression that the Agency’s dealings with the press had been limited to those instances. The Agency files, the report noted, contained little evidence that the editorial content of American news reports had been affected by the CIA’s dealings with journalists. Colby’s misleading public statements about the use of journalists were repeated without serious contradiction or elaboration. The role of cooperating news executives was given short shrift. The fact that the Agency had concentrated its relationships in the most prominent sectors of the press went unmentioned. That the CIA continued to regard the press as up for grabs was not even suggested.”
Consider this 5-minute video of Abby Martin walking you through recent and current history:
Importantly, US corporate media today is heavily concentrated in just six corporations, making the message much easier to control.
US corporate media lie to allow torture, a War Crime, as official US policy:
“Torture at Times: Waterboarding in the Media,” a paper published from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government that reviewed the US’ four most-read newspapers, found from the 1930s to 2004 that The New York Times reported waterboarding as torture 82% of the time, and The Los Angeles Times did so 96%. After stories broke that the US was waterboarding “detainees” in US unlawful wars, the papers’ reporting of waterboarding as torture dropped to 1% and 5%, respectfully. In addition, after the US admitted to waterboarding, The Wall Street Journal called it torture in just 1 of 63 articles (2%), and USA Today never called it torture.
US 1% corporate media lie to allow a million children to die excruciating deaths from poverty every month:
And check this “reporting” from the NY Times to bury after the comics the largest meeting of heads of state in world history. The topic was ending global poverty with proven solutions that, yes, was an investment of only 1% of the developed nations’ income. I had personal experience with this. Of course, the .01% in political “leadership” of both parties reneged on every promise to end poverty, with corporate media allowing the story, and a million children every month, to die.
Polling proves the 99.99% are waking to US corporate media lies:
Corporate media won’t report the following polling data, but the American public have noticed something is very wrong with their “news” both as reported by government and regular media.
In 2010, only one in five Americans reported trust and satisfaction with their government (and here). In 2014, Gallup reported Americans’ confidence in Congress at the historic low of 7%, while 7% reported their confidence level at “none” and half as “very little.”
According to a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center, the majority of the American public see the US major media news organizations as politically biased, inaccurate, and uncaring. Among those who use the Internet, two-thirds report that major media news do not care about the people they report on, 59% say the news is inaccurate, 64% see bias, and 53% summarize their view on major media news as, “failing to stand up for America.” In their 2009 poll, “just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate.” Gallup’s 2014 poll recorded the lowest ever US public confidence in accurate news reporting from corporate media’s television news: 18%.
A June 2010 Rasmussen poll found 66% of voters “angry” at the media, with 33% “very angry.” Rasmussen also found 70% “angry” at current federal government policies. The most current Gallup poll in 2012 shows Americans’ distrust at an all-time high in the reporting from “mass media — such as newspapers, TV, and radio”: 60% have either “not very much” trust and confidence or “none at all” to “reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly.”
And how long has corporate media been lying to the 99%….?
The genesis of oligarchic control of American major media was reported in the US Congressional Record in 1917. US Congressperson Oscar Callaway claimed evidence that J.P. Morgan had purchased editorial control over 25 of the nation’s most influential publications in order to create public support for US entry into World War 1 and his new banking legislative victory: creation of the Federal Reserve system. Mr. Callaway’s colleagues voted down an official investigation.
War pimps and sock puppets:
Importantly, disinformation programs infiltrate the comments of independent writers. Expect classic rhetorical fallacies such as slurs of the author’s character, straw-man arguments, denial of facts, lies of omission of central facts, and other BS (thank you, Professor Frankfurt, for your best-seller to help explain).
The discerning characteristic of all propaganda is non-factual bravado and specious argument in order to maintain manipulative control of an agenda to distract attention from damning facts.
You, the reader, are sharp enough to discern such propaganda. Or if not, you’d better learn if you want to end the killing of millions, harm to billions, looting of trillions, and US political collapse.
The public will win as Dr. King and Gandhi discovered: through trial and error. What we’ve learned through their process is broad public and political communication of the facts with simultaneous formal policy requests to honor what we’ve already won under the law. When the .01% ignore the law, it helps our cause because more of the 99.99% recognize these .01% are guilty of massive crimes centering in war and money.
Attributed to Gandhi (but unsourced) is today’s pattern we see from political and corporate media “leadership”:
“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. And then you win.”
How Mr. Gandhi and Dr. King saw their civic educational challenge:
“One thing we have endeavoured to observe most scrupulously, namely, never to depart from the strictest facts and, in dealing with the difficult questions that have arisen during the year, we hope that we have used the utmost moderation possible under the circumstances. Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt. Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding… can be removed.” – Mohandas K. Gandhi, Indian Opinion (1 October 1903)
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“‘A time comes when silence is betrayal.’ That time has come for us… The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”
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Note: I make all factual assertions as a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History, with all economics factual claims receiving zero refutation since I began writing in 2008 among Advanced Placement Macroeconomics teachers on our discussion board, public audiences of these articles, and international conferences. I invite readers to empower their civic voices with the strongest comprehensive facts most important to building a brighter future. I challenge professionals, academics, and citizens to add their voices for the benefit of all Earth’s inhabitants.
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Carl Herman is a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History; also credentialed in Mathematics. He worked with both US political parties over 18 years and two UN Summits with the citizen’s lobby, RESULTS, for US domestic and foreign policy to end poverty. He can be reached at Carl_Herman@post.harvard.edu
Note: Examiner.com has blocked public access to my articles on their site (and from other whistleblowers), so some links in my previous work are blocked. If you’d like to search for those articles other sites may have republished, use words from the article title within the blocked link. Or, go to http://archive.org/web/, paste the expired link into the box, click “Browse history,” then click onto the screenshots of that page for each time it was screen-shot and uploaded to webarchive. I’ll update as “hobby time” allows; including my earliest work from 2009 to 2011 (blocked author pages: here, here). |
Every Tuesday at 6 p.m., three dozen Coloradans from every corner of the state assemble in the windowless back room of a small Fort Collins coffee shop. They have met 16 times since March, most nights talking through the ins and outs of their shared faith until the owners kick them out at closing.
They have no leaders, no formal hierarchy and no enforced ideology, save a common quest for answers to questions about the stars. Their membership has slowly swelled in the past three years, though persecution and widespread public derision keep them mostly underground. Many use pseudonyms, or only give first names.
“They just do not want to talk about it for fear of reprisals or ridicule from co-workers,” says John Vnuk, the group’s founder who lives in Fort Collins.
He is at the epicenter of a budding movement, one that’s coming for your books, movies, God and mind. They’re thousands strong — perhaps one in every 500 — and have proponents at the highest levels of science, sports, journalism and arts.
They call themselves Flat Earthers. Because they believe Earth — the blue, majestic, spinning orb of life — is as flat as a table.
And they want you to know. Because it’s 2017.
“This is a new awakening,” Vnuk says with a spark in his earth-blue eyes. “Some will accept it, some won’t. But love it or hate it, you can’t ignore Flat Earth.”
The Fort Collins group — mostly white and mostly male, college-age to septuagenarian — touts itself as the first community of Flat Earthers in the United States. Sister groups have since spawned in Boston, New York, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Chicago.
In Colorado, Ptolemaic-science revivalists have lofty ambitions: raising $6,000 to put up a billboard along Interstate 25 broadcasting their worldview. A GoFundMe site quickly raised more than $400 but has recently stalled. Anyone can contribute funds or submit billboard ideas, and the group has promised $100 to the winning submitter.
“This is not something you can force down others’ throats,” Vnuk says. “They have to come to it on their own journey. A billboard is a nonaggressive way to introduce people to the idea.”
(All scientists and educators consulted for this story rejected the idea of a flat earth.)
At the Tuesday night meet-ups, dubbed “Flat Earth or Other Forbidden Topics,” believers invite fellow adherents to open discussions in which the like-minded confirm one another’s hunches and laugh at the folly of those still stuck in the Enlightenment.
“There’s so much evidence once you set aside your preprogrammed learning and begin to look at things objectively with a critical eye,” says Bob Knodel, a Denver resident and featured guest at a recent Tuesday meeting. “You learn soon that what we’re taught is mainly propaganda.”
Knodel worked for 35 years as an engineer and now runs the popular YouTube channel Globebusters, which has nearly 2 million views across more than 135 videos. “I’ve researched conspiracies for a long time,” he says. “I’ve looked very critically at NASA. Why is it that the astronauts have conflicting stories about the sky? Is it bright with stars, or a deep velvet black?”
His wife, Cami, shares his views. “Our YouTube channel gets people to critically think,” she said to the Fort Collins group. “The heliocentric model says that we’re spinning at 1,038 mph. They say you won’t notice it because it’s a continual motion. But you should be able to feel it. You shouldn’t be able to function allegedly spinning that fast.”
The weekly meet-ups also give forum to friendly lines of questioning. Some are straightforward (“What do you say back to people who call you stupid?”) and summon a ready-made answer (“You’re not stupid, period. They have to understand that there are deceptions going on at enormous levels”). Others stump even the experts. “How are we Flat Earthers supposed to explain to our friends the solar eclipse in August?” asked one attendee. The room fell silent. “We’ll have to do more research and get back to you on that.”
That research tends to fall on the shoulders of movement leaders, many of whom have backgrounds in related fields. Mark Sargent is the father of Flat Earth organizing in the United States. He worked as a software analyst in Boulder for 20 years before relocating to Seattle, where he sets up Flat Earth meet-ups through YouTube. His channel has amassed 7.7 million video views and almost 40,000 regular subscribers.
Like nearly every member of the movement, Sargent converted to Flat Earthism late in life. For most of his first five decades, he believed Earth to be a spinning globe. But something changed around the summer of 2014, when he stumbled upon a YouTube video contending that Earth is flat.
“It was interesting, but I didn’t think it was real,” he says. “I started the same way as everyone else, saying, ‘Oh, I’ll just prove the earth is round.’ Nine months later, I was staring at my computer thinking, ‘I can’t prove the globe anymore.’ ”
He remembers the date — Feb. 10, 2015 — when he took the plunge and started creating Flat Earth content of his own. To his surprise, the daily videos he had begun churning out ignited a firestorm online. The 49-year-old now devotes himself to Flat Earth propagation full time. He has made 600 YouTube videos and been interviewed more than 120 times.
His conversion to the cult of globe-busting follows a common pattern among proselytes: latent anti-authoritarianism, which first found outlet in popular conspiracy theories of the mid-aughts, that by the mid-2010s transformed into full-blown contempt for the global model. In most cases, the catalyst was YouTube, with its highly popular flat-earth videos that began proliferating in late 2014.
Sargent acknowledges that he didn’t found Flat Earthism, which has existed in some form since antiquity. But he and a handful of others combined communications technology with old-fashioned salesmanship to grow a shambolic rump of mostly silent believers into a fledgling movement that spans the country.
“Before I did the first few videos back in 2015, if you typed ‘flat earth’ into YouTube you’d get 50,000 results,” he says. “Now, you’ll come in with 17.4 million. That’s more than a 30,000 percent increase. And we’re growing.”
The Centennial State has been the cradle of the American flat earth renaissance since birth. The first Flat Earth International Conference, which will be in Raleigh, N.C., in November, features a number of Colorado-based Flat Earthers, including Sargent, Knodel and Matthew Procella, or ODD Reality, a Denver-based rapper and YouTuber with 75,000 subscribers and nearly 7 million video views.
The movement, though, is not a monolith. Differences of opinion divide the community on matters of scientific interpretation, cosmology, strategy and even the most fundamental questions of geology, such as: what shape is our planet?
Many subscribe to the “ice wall theory,” or the belief that the world is circumscribed by giant ice barriers, like the walls of a bowl, that then extend infinitely along a flat plane. Sargent envisions Earth as “a giant circular disc covered by a dome.” He likens the planet to a snow globe, similar to the one depicted in “The Truman Show,” a fictitious 1998 existential drama about an insurance salesman unknowingly living in an artificially constructed dome.
What then lies on the other side of the ice walls or beyond the glassy dome enclosing our world?
Flat Earthers don’t claim to know with certainty, instead paying lip service to “common sense” evidence they claim can be proved. When skeptics demand proof, though, Flat Earthers wield reams of figures from so-called curvature tests and gyroscope calibrations that seem to buttress their views. Leaders want Flat Earthism to be an accessible creed for the common man, an egalitarian movement that gives life meaning by punching back at scientific disenchantment.
“They want you to think you’re insignificant, a speck on the earth, a cosmic mistake,” Sargent says. “The flat earth says you are special, we are special, there is a creator, this isn’t some accident.”
The orthodox say their faith makes them a persecuted minority, mocked to their faces by friends and strangers for nothing more than First Amendment-protected beliefs. “We get accused of being idiots, of doing it for money,” Knodel said. “Believe me, there’s only humiliation in this. We do it because we believe it.”
He and other Flat Earthers can only speculate why the global conspiracy has had such staying power for more than 500 years, or why “the top” — the uber-elite heads of governments, universities and major corporations that allegedly know “the truth” — would continue to uphold a scheme that offers little in the way of riches or strategic power.
“It’s not about money. They want complete mind control,” Knodel says after the meeting in the lobby of the Fort Collins coffee shop. “They want to create two classes: the ultra rich and servants. At that point they would’ve taken over the world, and enslaved the population, and controlled everything.”
Until that dour day, billboards will be fundraised, meet-ups will be organized and the world will keep on spinning. Or not. |
We’re going to have to start calling Jamie Schaafsma “Mr. Game 7.”
His two goals tonight in the Komets’ 2-0 victory over the Cincinnati Cyclones is reason enough, perhaps, but in North American leagues he’s got a 7-0 record in Game 7s.
There was a Game 7 he played in Europe, Schaafsma said, but he lost that one. We’ll ignore it for our purposes.
“It’s always nice to contribute. I said earlier in the series that we had to get greasy goals. Those goals just show what happens if you go to the net. They were both easy tap-ins for me,” said Schaafsma, whose Komets face Utah in a series that starts Friday at Memorial Coliseum.
Fort Wayne’s Paul Crowder, who missed Game 6 with an upper-body injury and came in with a team-worst minus-5 rating in the playoffs, set up the first goal by leisurely carrying the puck into the offensive zone and dropping the puck for Troy Bourke, whose backhand pass put Schaafsma in position to score into an open net.
After Cincinnati’s goalie, Brad Thiessen, failed to cover the puck – that had been his weak point all series – Schaafsma made it 2-0 by poking the puck in at 13:38 of the second period.
And how about Pat Nagle? The Komets goalie stopped 33 shots for his second shutout of the playoffs. No other goalie in the ECHL has two shutouts. And Nagle led the league with five during the regular season.
“This was a huge team effort,” Nagle said. “It was great to get two big goals early in the game from our captain. He showed up in a big way for us and it was awesome. He got us that lead right away and we were able to play strong the rest of the way.”
The Komets have 11 players who had never been in the postseason before. They had to learn how to win in the postseason and they did, taking four of the last five games.
“We learned how to play a playoff style game,” Schaafsma said. “The first two games, we weren’t playing the right way and weren’t making the smart decisions on the ice. I called it. I thought we would be a team that had to learn how to play playoff hockey throughout the first round. We’ve accomplished that and I’m pretty happy about that.”
The Komets will have a light day Thursday, so they can rest after playing three overtime games among the last four. Utah, which ended its six-game series with Colorado on Tuesday, will travel Thursday. I heard the Grizzlies are flying into Indianapolis and then bussing up here.
While the Komets were very familiar with Cincinnati, they haven’t faced Utah this season. So there will be a lot of studying over the next two days by both teams.
In the other Game 7 tonight, Allen beat Idaho 3-2 in overtime. Former Fort Wayne player Tristan King had the winner.
“It takes awhile to get (chemistry). You need games,” said Komets coach Gary Graham, whose team lost the first two games to Cincinnati. “Sometimes pressure and adversity can makes guys come together as a group. What better way is there to do that than digging yourself a 2-nothing hole in the series?”
jcohn@jg.net |
Alleging religious conversion, a mob linked to a right-wing Hindu group attacked Catholic carol singers in Madhya Pradesh's and also set a priest's car ablaze.
The incident occurred on Thursday evening. Instead of taking action against the attackers, the police detained the Christian singers, a priest said.
Father Rene Verghese told IANS on Friday: "A group of students training to become priests was moving around Satna town, visiting Christian institutions and singing carols.
"Some 15 km from here in Dara Kalan village church they were getting ready for the celebrations, when a group of people attacked them, accusing them of carrying out the religious conversion."
Verghese said group raised slogans and called the Civil Lines police station.
All 32 carollers, accompanied by two priests, who were singing carols were picked up and taken to the police station. Eight priests who later went to the police station to enquire into the matter were also taken into custody, he said.
The agitating mob attacked the Christian students inside the police station, and set fire to the priest's car parked outside.
Verghese denied any attempt at religious conversion. He said singing carols is a common practice around the time of "We were just doing that and preparing for the celebrations."
However, City Superintendent of Police D.D. Pande told IANS: "One Dharmendra Dohad has registered a complaint with us that he was paid Rs 5,000 and converted to a Christian.
"He was given a holy dip in a pond and his name was changed to Dharmendra Thomas, the complainant said. They also asked him to pray to Lord Christ," he said.
A case has been registered against one identified person and five unknown persons in the conversion case, Pande said.
They are also investigating the vandalism carried out by the mob. |
A year is a very long time. It is not until the end of 2014 that Georgia and Moldova intend to sign the EU trade and association agreements that the two governments initialed last November in Vilnius, Lithuania. Both countries will need intensive EU help to stay the course over this long stretch.
In the run-up to November’s Eastern Partnership summit, Russia did everything possible to prevent Moldova from initialing the accord, which would create a framework for cooperation with the EU. Yet despite threats of trade embargoes and cuts to energy supplies, Moldova’s government held firm.
In the case of Georgia, there was far less Russian pressure. In fact, just before the Vilnius summit, Moscow finally lifted its embargo on Georgian wine, mineral water, and other products destined for the Russian market.
But don’t expect for one moment that Russia will give up its attempts to prevent both countries from cementing their ties with the EU. Once next month’s Sochi Winter Olympics are over, Russian President Vladimir Putin will turn his attention back to Moldova and Georgia in a bid to weaken public support there for the EU accords.
Moldova is already fragile and therefore susceptible to Russian pressure. Iurie Leancă’s pro-European government is far from united. In addition, the opposition Communists, who had previously supported EU integration, have turned their back on the project and are now increasingly anti-EU and pro-Russian in their stance. It will demand a huge effort by the EU to sustain support for the association agreement.
Russia’s leverage on Moldova is energy: this small country is completely dependent on Russian gas. There are plans to build a pipeline connecting Moldova to neighboring EU member Romania. But even if the project’s finances are sorted out, it will go on line in 2020 at the earliest.
Georgia is in trouble too. Last year’s co-habitation between former president Mikheil Saakashvili’s center-right United National Movement and former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili’s diverse Georgian Dream coalition destabilized the country’s politics. While the two men were in office together, Georgian Dream pursued a policy of political reprisals against the United National Movement. At the same time, top officials in Georgian Dream were accused of nepotism and corruption.
Since last fall’s presidential election, the co-habitation is over, and the presidency is now in Georgian Dream’s hands. But it is difficult to see that this will improve the country’s political climate.
All this is good news for Russia.
Although most Georgians continue to strongly support integration with the EU and NATO, Russia has plenty of scope to meddle. It could consolidate its grip over the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Russia occupied after a short war with Georgia in 2008. If Russia were to tighten its borders in the Southern Caucasus, that would inevitably disrupt traffic on the highway linking eastern Georgia with the capital Tbilisi, and the Georgian government would have to react.
So what can the EU do to maintain Moldova’s and Georgia’s support for the association agreements?
It could bring forward the signing of the accords, but several member states would balk at that. Both countries still have to implement many EU laws—though the same could be said of Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU seven years ago.
The EU could also launch a public campaign explaining the benefits of closer ties with the EU. The EU allocated €526 million ($715 million) to Moldova between 2007 and 2013. For a country of just 3.5 million people, that is a very large sum of money. The EU can surely publicize the benefits of those funds.
But what would matter more to Moldovans and Georgians, particularly young people, would be the freedom to travel to any EU country. Just as important would be wider access to the EU’s Erasmus higher education program, which should be extended to as many students as possible. Exchanges between schools, universities, and sports clubs should be stepped up. That is not easy, but it is possible.
The EU should also exploit mass media, especially television, radio, and the Internet. It should conduct lively interviews with young people, for example, from Poland and the Baltic states about what it means to be able to study, work, and travel in the EU.
Free movement can benefit all generations. Look at what has taken place in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which shares a border with EU members Poland and Lithuania.
After long negotiations between Poland and Russia, since 2012 citizens from Kaliningrad have been able to cross the border to Poland without a visa. “Can you imagine? Only 1.5 million people live in Kaliningrad,” a former Polish foreign minister, Adam Daniel Rotfeld, told Carnegie Europe. “But [there were] 6 million [visits] to Poland last year. Some come over for shopping, others to attend a concert, others just to see. It has been a huge success.”
Above all, the EU should give its diplomats on the ground in Moldova and Georgia free rein to reach out. This is not the time to preach to the choir, but to be inclusive. That means talking to and listening to the pro-Russian and anti-EU political parties and movements. The EU has to make every effort to sell the association agreements before it is too late. |
Men's cricket could return to the Commonwealth Games in 2026 if Birmingham wins the bid to be the host city.
While women's cricket will feature in the 2022 Games in Durban, men's cricket has appeared only once. On that occasion, in Malaysia in 1998, the format was 50 overs per side (South Africa defeated Australia in the final). This time it would be played in the T20 format.
Cricket is not currently one of the mandatory events incorporated into the Commonwealth Games but is on the list of optional sports that host cities have the power to add to their staging of the event as they see fit and with the support of the relevant sport's governing body.
While that cannot be guaranteed at this stage, the ICC agreed to the inclusion of women's cricket in 2022 and is already working with the Commonwealth Games Federation on the successful staging of the event. The ICC is understood to be open to dialogue over the 2026 Games.
Neil Snowball, the Warwickshire chief executive, is part of Birmingham's bid team and has confirmed to ESPNcricinfo that cricket would be of interest if they are successful. Snowball was previously head of sports operations at the 2012 Olympics and chief operating officer of Rugby 2015, the organising committee behind the 2015 World Cup.
The plan would be to stage the biggest games at Warwickshire's home ground of Edgbaston, which is only a mile or so from the centre of Birmingham. Other games could be played at Warwickshire's Portland Road ground (three miles from Edgbaston) and, perhaps, in neighbouring counties; Worcestershire's picturesque New Road ground is only 33 miles away.
Birmingham would also require ECB approval. But Andrew Strauss, the director of the England team, suggested the idea had his backing, though he did offer a note of caution. "Yes, I would be very supportive of that," he said. "But it would not just be the ECB involved in such a decision."
That signals a change of heart from the ECB. The Commonwealth Games Federation invited the ICC to participate in the 2018 Games (to be staged in Gold Coast, Australia), but were rebuffed largely on the basis of the reluctance of individual boards - not least the ECB - to compromise their own lucrative schedules.
Sixteen teams entered the 1998 Commonwealth Games, but England did not send a team as the competition clashed with the end of the domestic season. Seven of the then nine Test teams did, however, with Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and New Zealand among them. Scotland, Northern Ireland, Barbados, Antigua & Barbuda, Jamaica, Canada, Malaysia, Kenya and Zimbabwe were the other participants.
The current ECB management are more aware of the need to reengage the sport with a broader audience, however, and keen to spread the appeal of cricket both locally and globally.
The example of Rugby Sevens is intriguing. After featuring in the 1998 Commonwealth Games, the sport eventually progressed until it debuted in the 2016 Olympics. While many obstacles remain before cricket could be realistically considered for the Olympics, the ECB's change of heart would appear to have removed a substantial one and nudged the sport a little further in that direction. Rome had signalled a desire to host cricket at the 2024 Olympics, but has withdrawn from the bidding process.
What stance India will take on the issue remains unclear. Anurag Thakur, the recently jettisoned president of the BCCI, had been seen as an impediment to cricket's reintroduction into the Olympics (it was played in the 1900 Paris Olympics; Great Britain beat France in the only match) but is also a vice-president of the Indian Olympic Association and was recently elected as the Himachal Olympic Association president.
Other cities expected to bid to host the 2026 Commonwealth Games include Liverpool, Edmonton in Canada and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. A decision on whether Liverpool or Birmingham will be put forward as England's candidate will be made later this year. A final decision on the host venue is unlikely to be made before November 2019. |
Gun Club For Liberals Says More People Are Joining Post-Election
Lara Smith of the Oakland, California group The Liberal Gun Club, says interest in firearms is on the rise from left-leaning Americans after the election.
ALLISON AUBREY, HOST:
Since last month's election, it seems that gun sales have been on the rise. One indicator is that FBI background checks for gun purchases shot up to their highest level in two years on Black Friday, according to the gun control news site The Trace. And another group has been reporting a recent rise in the number of people interested in guns, The Liberal Gun Club. That's an organization for left-leaning gun lovers. It has nine chapters and members in all 50 states.
According to the group's spokesperson, Lara Smith, The Liberal Gun Club has seen a big spike in inquiries since the election and a 10 percent bump in membership. Lara Smith joins us from El Cerrito, Calif., to talk about some of these figures.
Hi there, Lara.
LARA SMITH: Hi. Thank you for having me.
AUBREY: So I want to begin by asking how The Liberal Gun Club is different from the NRA.
SMITH: The NRA has its political side. We are an organization strictly for education. We do not endorse candidates. And we're a place - many of our members have joined NRA boards, other gun forums and found that they weren't welcome there because they didn't follow lockstep with the NRA's support of nearly unanimously Republican and right-leaning candidates.
AUBREY: A lot of people may assume that liberal-leaning people are less likely to be gun enthusiasts. You're saying - and then the name of your club suggests - that this isn't necessarily so.
SMITH: This isn't necessarily so. Even long before this election, approximately a quarter to a third of people who identified in surveys as Democrats also identified that there were firearms in their homes. Democrats have always been and always will be gun-owners. It's just a perception in the media - and, I think, in the party - that Democrats aren't interested in guns.
AUBREY: Tell us what you have been seeing since last month's election.
SMITH: We've seen significant more interest in our group. More women are joining, which is great. I actually run a women's shooting league here in the San Francisco Bay Area, about the most liberal area of the country you could find. And it's definitely picking up, although that's been true for a while. We are seeing more women concerned about protecting themselves, specifically about protecting themselves in their homes.
The other group we are seeing more of - and I have to give a reason for that. There is a man named Maj Toure who has started a group called Black Guns Matter. And he has been going around to urban communities getting urban communities interested in their Second-Amendment rights. He's doing great work. We have seen some uptick from that as well. So yes, definitely people who are not the stereotypical middle-aged white male.
AUBREY: So why now? What do you think?
SMITH: I think, one, there's a very small subset who feel concerned about the new government. Specifically, is this new government going to take their guns because they've spoken out about an issue that Trump or the Republicans are seen as not supporting, whether it be LGBTQ rights, the environment, all sorts of issues. That's a small subset. More what we're seeing are people who are worried about their safety as a result of some of the rhetoric that was heard during the campaign - not so much from the campaign but from really fringe groups who have encouraged a rise in hate crimes or a perceived rise in hate crimes.
AUBREY: Lara Smith is a spokesperson for The Liberal Gun Club. She joined us from El Cerrito, Calif.
Thank you, Lara.
SMITH: Thank you so much, Allison, for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELEPHANT REVIVAL'S "THE PASTURE")
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Freshmen face tough future
The House Republican freshmen — raucous, unpredictable, unmanageable and hell-bent on changing Washington — are about to face their biggest test: becoming sophomores.
Now they have a trail of votes, have been privy to backroom Washington compromises and have to run on their actual records rather than on the anti-Washington stance that swept them into office in 2010.
Story Continued Below
POLITICO sat down for photo shoots and interviews recently with five of the highest-profile freshmen and discussed how they’ve approached their jobs and how they plan to run for reelection. Virtually all of them faced hurdles in the first 15 months in office — and they all have election challenges ahead.
Inside, a look at what they had to say.
MICHAEL GRIMM
Rep. Michael Grimm of New York was seen by many as a rising star in the Republican Party when the former FBI agent from Staten Island showed up in the Capitol in January 2011.
But over the past few months, he’s been under siege.
Reports of Grimm’s less-than-savory business ties and allegations that he was involved in a fundraising scandal have followed him around for months now, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has its sights squarely set on reclaiming his seat.
Grimm has called the allegations against him “deeply insulting” and has denied them. Despite the bad news consistently being printed about him, Grimm has focused on his constituent work, and it seems to be paying off a little. He has racked up a few key endorsements for reelection, including one from the New York State Independence Party.
“If I can’t do the job, then I shouldn’t be here, and I don’t want to be here,” he said.
( Also on POLITICO: McCarthy's finishing school for pols)
Grimm has found parts of his first term in office “frustrating,” due, in part, to some of the big partisan fights that have dominated this Congress.
“There have been some great times where you really feel like you are part of a solution and then some very frustrating times where the bureaucracy is just so difficult to overcome that you sometimes wonder if you are going backward or forward,” he said. “There’s way too much politics in Washington. People are more worried about their reelection than this country.”
A former FBI agent and Marine, Grimm credits the skills he learned in those positions with his ability to take on Washington and be a successful politician, and he says it gives him motivation to keep going.
“Having served overseas, having served in combat, I’ve seen some of the darkest places in the world, and I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes when there is no humanity, when there is no hope, when there is no liberty. … What we have is fragile; our liberty, our freedom is taken for granted everyday.” |
It’s 7:15 on a Friday night at Chartier, and according to restaurant owner Darren Cheverie, the whole restaurant is like a “ticking time bomb.” Virtually every corner of the popular 80-seat French eatery hums with guests.
Back in the narrow, crowded kitchen, lobster crackers for the $65 lobster poutine for two have disappeared, but that’s OK. The lobster has proven so popular, they’re now out. Cracker crisis averted! Meanwhile, in a kitchen pass-through, Cheverie confides to head chef Steve Brochu that a certain table is “difficult.”
“More bread? More poutine?” suggests the chef, who will be on his feet 12 hours today.
While this classic weekend night at Chartier may sound stressful, it’s routine in the restaurant business. The back-of-the-house staff — six cooks and a couple of dishwashers — thrive on the bustle.
The fact that the evening is satisfying for the kitchen staff speaks to the atmosphere created at Chartier by Cheverie, 33, and his co-owner and wife, Sylvia. When they launched the Beaumont eatery in early 2016, they were determined that their own restaurant would avoid the poor working conditions prevalent in many establishments.
While chef Gordon Ramsay’s tirades on television and chef Anthony Bourdain’s exposé on the corrosive culture of the professional kitchen are entertainment, to be sure, they also undeniably reflect the culinary underbelly. Talk to cooks and chefs, in Edmonton and elsewhere, and you will hear stories of hurled plates, unreasonable demands and abusive taunts experienced at some point in their kitchen careers.
And that’s just part of the sometimes-toxic mix that awaits the wannabe chef. Low wages and high expectations, unpaid overtime in a fast-paced and stressful environment, physical symptoms from carpel tunnel syndrome to back strain, lack of benefits including paid sick time, and non-stop shift work are the decidedly less shiny facets of the restaurant, bar and catering industry, which generated receipts in Alberta totalling $748 million in June 2016 alone, according to ATB Financial.
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Spending time in the pressure cooker of the commercial kitchen can, and does, lead to mental health problems for chefs and cooks, including depression and addiction to drugs and alcohol, according to participants at a recent fundraiser called Food for Thoughts. At least three veterans of Edmonton commercial kitchens — Stuart Whyte, Dan Letourneau and Cory Rakowski — are determined to raise awareness of poor mental health in the commercial kitchen, and to do something about it.
One thing about a gathering of chefs — the food’s always good. That’s the first thing a casual observer might have noted at the kick-off fundraiser for Food for Thoughts. Held in November at the Whyte Avenue bar and restaurant, Nightjar, the meeting was full of familiar faces who raised a glass or three while enjoying a range of trendy finger foods.
At first, the room burbled with upbeat chatter. But the mood dampened as a panel of chefs and mental health advocates rose to speak about something that rarely occurs to customers enjoying a night out at their favourite eatery.
Long hours in a hot, physically demanding and pressure-filled environment working at low wages with few, if any, benefits, leads to pain — physical, mental and financial. Also at play is easy access to alcohol, and late-night and weekend shifts that not only keep workers away from their friends and families, but set up potential conflicts at home.
Illicit drug use is not uncommon, in part fuelled by the infamous party culture of an industry dominated by youth. Forty-five per cent of the 120,000 restaurant employees in Alberta are under the age of 25, contributing to a workplace that can prove unhealthy, if not outright dangerous.
And if the body or mind becomes ill, there are few supports in place. Paid sick time is a rarity, prescription drugs or counselling are generally not covered by a workplace plan, and the culture of the kitchen is macho. Cooks who aren’t there to help when literally hundreds of plates must go out during a busy two-hour dinner rush don’t get much sympathy from their workmates, who grumble as they pick up the slack.
“We struggle as an industry with a lack of oversight and accountability,” chef Cory Rakowski told the roughly 50 folks assembled at the fundraiser. “We accept that not being paid overtime is the norm. We accept (that) abuse, emotional, mental, is the norm. These are things we are OK with, in the name of passion…
“We are taught how to fix a broken Hollandaise, but we’re not taught how to cope with the pressure, the lack of self-worth.”
Starbucks created headlines in October when it announced it was making generous counselling benefits available to its workforce, largely made up of young people with an average age of 24. Starbucks employees have to work 20 hours a week to get the benefit, but the company says this includes about three-quarters of their 19,000 Canadian employees.
But restaurant employers outside of chains and hotels offer little in the way of benefits. It’s the norm for restaurant staff at an independent eatery to not be paid for sick days. A 2016 labour market survey by government and industry in British Columbia noted that while cooks and chefs are driven by passion, they feel overworked and undervalued. The majority of the 450 surveyed would not recommend the career to friends or family.
David Grauwiler, executive director of the Alberta division of the Canadian Mental Health Association, says people working in the restaurant industry face stresses similar to other shift workers, including sleep issues and disruption to family life.
“When you work unusual hours, it places pressure on core relationships,” says Grauwiler.
He notes the “intensive pressure” of meeting service needs in a limited amount of time, and the rigours of teamwork add to the stress of restaurant life. One of his big concerns is that there is little help available for kitchen workers.
“For people who don’t have (supplemental insurance) benefits, Alberta continues to be a very difficult place to navigate their mental health,” he says. “When people have nothing in the toolbox, they are at greater jeopardy of serious difficulty.”
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When the Cheveries opened Beaumont’s Chartier last year, the couple was determined to create something different, and healthy. Darren had been in the service industry since the age of 14, and, as an adult, held general manager of food and beverage positions in a variety of large Canadian restaurants.
Darren also had his own struggles with drug use and alcohol in his 20s, exacerbated by workplace pressure. Though he is in a secure and loving relationship and blessed with a young daughter, he knows he will always struggle to avoid the quick and easy solution to the anxiety and depression that have plagued him his whole life.
Darren loves the hospitality business, the excitement, the passion, the personalities, and pleasures. But he knows it’s a rough business.
“There are not too many careers that are this stressful and demanding,” he says. “You are constantly onstage and constantly being judged. We want to make people happy and when you don’t make them happy, it’s a knife in the chest.”
He says the industry, infamous for chronic labour shortages, also suffers from a lack of leadership. Chain restaurants with bigger margins may offer training, support and mentorship to employees, and also set a higher standard for behaviour in the kitchen. But some people in charge of cooks on the line, in big and small establishments alike, may be in the same topsy-turvy boat as their staff.
This was driven home to Darren in 2014, when three chefs under his supervision — two of them rising stars who had achieved the level of sous chef — took drugs at home after wrapping up an intense quarterly meeting at the large restaurant at which they all worked. One died, another was in a coma for several days. The third called Darren when he was the only one to wake up the morning after the drug use.
It was 8 a.m. Darren was already at the restaurant when his cellphone rang. That Darren was the first call the distraught chef made came as no surprise; kitchen staff become like family to each other. He told the chef to hang up and call the police, and then prepared himself for the storm ahead.
“When you have two people in leadership roles, the waves that go through the restaurant and the company are pretty big,” says Darren.
The restaurant flew in replacement kitchen staff so nobody would have to work the line while colleagues processed the loss. They also provided significant human resources support.
Upon reflection, one of the things that disturbed Darren about the whole incident was its genesis. It wasn’t as if the quarterly meeting had gone badly, or that the chefs were coping with negative stress. No, it was the casual nature of the drug use, a hallmark of some sectors of this fast-paced industry.
He doesn’t know if those colleagues suffered from mental health problems or other issues that drove their drug use; nobody talked about that in the kitchen. In Darren’s experience, turning a blind eye to addictive behaviour is what people do in most professional kitchens.
“It’s bullsh** if (colleagues) say they don’t notice the guy who is the cocaine addict in the back, or the bartender who is abusing drugs and alcohol on a nightly basis,” he says. “We have to support those people and not just let them go.”
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It was kitchen culture that contributed to the psychological breakdown that drove NAIT graduate Danielle Job from her position as executive chef for the cafe in a Canadian department store chain. Her mental illness had its roots in a physical problem, an intestinal bacteria that was difficult to diagnose and kept her out of the kitchen because she was ill and doctors worried she would pass it on to others through food preparation.
She was off work for a couple of months, and when she returned, she was given the cold shoulder by fellow employees and her boss.
“It was like, ‘thanks for being gone so long and leaving everything to us’,” she recalls. “People said it was in my head because they didn’t have a name for what was wrong with me.”
It all wore away at her self-confidence.
“I thought, ‘I can’t be a chef, I’m not a good chef.’ My anxiety started to go up because every time I had to be off, there was a stigma. I felt I wasn’t good enough anymore. With being a chef, there is no coming in at eight and leaving at four. So that was really hard.”
At the time she became ill, Job was one of a small minority of chefs in the industry who did enjoy company benefits, including short- and long-term disability. (A 2003 report by Statistics Canada noted that only 13 per cent of workers in the accommodation and food industry have supplemental health insurance.) But Job struggled to access the benefits she was entitled to and was twice denied long-term coverage by the insurance company. She tried to kill herself in May 2016.
“I was 31, and I was in the psych ward for a suicide attempt. So many things had beaten me down. I had no fight left in me.”
She quit her job in August, and is still in a dispute with the insurance company. In quitting, she lost not only income, but benefits that covered her prescription drugs to help with the depression and anxiety.
Job knows that the stigma surrounding mental illness is not restricted to the restaurant industry. But she believes conditions in the industry make the stigma worse, and make workers vulnerable to the illness in the first place.
“The work is undervalued, now with so many people doing YouTube (cooking) videos, people think it’s so easy…it’s very hard for people to see that what you do is worth them paying you for it.”
The atmosphere in kitchens is “very much a boys’ club,” she adds.
“When it comes to running a restaurant or an event, being a woman, you are very much the minority. I do feel that I have to do something over and above, out of this world, just to compete with a male chef.”
It’s still unusual to see a woman in an executive chef’s position in an independent restaurant, or at the helm in a restaurant chain. But women in many male-dominated walks of life struggle with discrimination based on gender. And many people who aren’t chefs also work in high-stress environments — doctors, lawyers, oil rig workers, air traffic controllers, just to name a few.
But it’s not just the tough, physically stressful jobs, or easy access to alcohol that are the source of mental-health problems in commercial kitchens. It’s those factors in combination with poor wages, and lack of benefits.
In Alberta, according to 2015 provincial statistics, cooks and chefs made an average of $16 to $21 an hour, before tips (servers generally share a small portion of their tips with kitchen staff). Generally speaking, workers in hotels or chain restaurants make more money than those in smaller shops.
There are other ways in which restaurant workers are different from others in the labour force, says Bobbie Beeson, owner of the Alberta-based Cheesecake Cafe franchise and one of those attending the Food for Thoughts fundraiser.
“One of the things that might make us unique is that people who are lost tend to find themselves when they join a restaurant team,” says Beeson. “Maybe there are some people who come with pre-existing conditions, and … if you’re a business who nurtures partying and camaraderie through alcohol, that’s what you’ll get. But if you don’t have that culture, then they might find themselves another way.”
Indeed, Rakowski, 36, who has worked as a chef at Edmonton kitchens from 12 Acres to North 53, credits the restaurant industry for providing a place of refuge when he was young. A homeless teenager who was involved in drugs, he found the structure he yearned for in the kitchen.
Sure, there’s heat on every level, but there can also be teamwork, plus an openness, and a lack of judgment.
“It was a place I felt accepted,” recalls Rakowski, who began his career as a dishwasher at the age of 13. “I credit the industry with saving my life. I had an opportunity every day to reinvent myself.”
In the last few years, Rakowski found himself in the spotlight, competing at the prestigious Gold Medal Plates and lauded for his culinary talent. It became overwhelming, and this past summer, he found himself reverting to former bad habits. Back on track now, Rakowski sees the need for attention to be paid to the people in the industry who struggle with mental health issues.
That’s why he, along with Letourneau and Whyte, launched Food for Thoughts. At November’s fundraiser, the three organizers collected about $3,000, money that is currently sitting with Edmonton’s Momentum Counselling, a non-profit, walk-in counselling service. Food for Thoughts plans to work with Momentum to create a support group for food service professionals.
But they want to do more than just address the problems of kitchen staff here in Edmonton. Since the trio launched Food for Thoughts, they have been contacted by numerous interested parties, including at least one hotel chain, who want to get on board.
Though its early days yet, Food for Thoughts wants to work with knowledgeable sources, such as the Canadian Mental Health Association, to create materials and resources that could provide triage for affected kitchen employees. Perhaps, like an eyewash station, or a first aid kit, a mental health safety package could be made available for staff and employers alike.
“We want to build resources with people in the mental health field,” says Letourneau, 31, noting a second fundraiser is in the works for February. “But for now, it’s baby steps.”
Rakowski says he worries about the future for younger folks coming into the business. “We need to look at the kids coming into the industry and figure out how to help them out.”
This is critical not just to protect young people, but also to maintain the health and growth of the industry, which plays a major role in the economy coast to coast, generating nearly $53 billion in receipts a year, according to Statistics Canada.
Kitchen work is a young person’s game, at least in part because of its rigour. According to a B.C. study, 52 per cent of cooks are under 35 and 63 per cent of chefs are under 45. Fewer than 15 per cent of cooks or chefs are over 55. If older staff could be retained, it could help stabilize the industry, and alleviate chronic labour shortages.
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Barriers to change are significant. The industry has tiny margins: if an independent restaurant makes a profit of three to five per cent, that’s a triumph. Customers are sensitive to changes in prices on the menu, so upping prices to better compensate staff is risky. Some restaurant owners do their best.
“There are employers who do provide benefits and a listening ear. But this is the exception,” says Rakowski.
Asked if he can think of a good employer, Rakowski names the Sicilian Pasta Kitchen on the city’s south side, where he once worked. There, co-owners Steve and Jamie Maguire, and co-owner and chef Don Orchuk, have been running the show for 20 years. They have 73 workers, 20 in the kitchen. Steve Maguire acknowledges the restaurant industry is tough.
“Most of the business is condensed into short hours. Friday and Saturday nights you’re busy from 6:30 to 9, in huge pressure situations and you’re getting hit right, left and centre, within small cramped spaces. It’s very warm back there, and most places don’t pay very well, to be honest,” says Maguire.
“So you have the financial stresses, outside of the normal work stresses. This business traditionally does attract a type of person who is susceptible to drinking and other things.”
Maguire says his outfit pays “a little bit better than the industry,” plus offers a health plan with $500 for professional services such as counselling. The cooks who are on salary have access to paid sick days, but the hourly workers in the restaurant don’t.
“We are good to our people,” he says. “We close for three days at Christmas. We try to give bonuses to the kitchen staff, and they get a free meal at work.”
The owners at Sicilian Pasta Kitchen do something else to support their staff. At the end of a late-night shift, cooks and servers are encouraged to hang around the restaurant to wind down, and to enjoy an alcoholic beverage if they choose at a reduced price.
“We don’t allow drinking and driving — it’s a fireable offence,” notes Maguire. “Most of the staff are usually getting a ride with someone else.”
But staying behind to quaff a drink at a reasonable price means staff aren’t busting out at 1 a.m. to hit the nearest bar and to down as many drinks as possible before last call at 2 a.m.
“It’s easier for us to look after them if they are here. A lot of places are the opposite. They don’t want the staff to stay behind,” says Maguire.
At Chartier, staff are also free to stay behind for one discounted glass of house wine or beer, or a bite to eat at 50 per cent off, and to discuss the events of the day. Chartier’s executive chef, Steve Brochu, 30, says he’s never been happier since joining this crew, and credits the business model carefully crafted by the Cheveries.
The Chartier wage system is different. Tips are shared among all staff (except owners). This means that, in combination with their wages, staff make between $19 and $21 an hour. There are team building activities, such as canoe trips. It’s been hard to attract servers, the Cheveries admit, because they can make better money elsewhere by keeping most of their own tips. But the people who stay are committed to the concept.
The Cheveries also offer their salaried employees $150 a month to put toward mental health — for yoga classes, gym membership, or family counselling, whatever makes sense. But in the year the restaurant has been open, only one person has accessed the mental health account, and that was to buy a $35 ticket to the Food for Thoughts fundraiser. Darren is puzzled by the lack of uptake.
“I think it’s a little bit of damage from previous restaurant cultures,” he speculates. “If you say you need it, it’s a sign of weakness. We’ve had to book a massage for the executive chef and sous chef because they won’t take the time off.”
He says the industry runs lean teams, and there is a “culture of guilt” when it comes to taking care of yourself.
“And you wonder why it leads to drug and alcohol abuse. It’s such a high pressure, guilt-ridden industry.”
lfaulder@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/eatmywordsblog |
Arsene Wenger says he’d be happy to take a point from Bayern Munich on Wednesday, but says that the best way for his team to relieve themselves from pressure is to attack well when they have the ball.
With Per Mertesacker already warning that the German champions will be ‘angry’, Arsenal can expect something of an onslaught from Pep Guardiola’s side, and the manager would be happy if his team can take a draw – then look to get the points required from the Olympiacos and Dinamo Zagreb games.
“I would sign today to take a point but to sit off Bayern,” said WEnger. “But with their offensive quality, that would be difficult to maintain for 90 minutes.
“We have to relieve the pressure whenever we can and try to score goals. That is the structure of our team, to attack.
“If we set out our players only to defend then I don’t think we’ll be so efficient. We have to play every time we can.”
Arsenal have won in Munich before, goals from Olivier Giroud and Laurent Koscielny securing a 2-0 victory in 2013. |
Today Google announced details of its long-awaited Android 4.4 KitKat operating system for the first time, going beyond just the candy bar branding. KitKat is designed around three major tentpoles, Google told TechCrunch, including reaching the next billion (it previously announced 1 billion activations) Android users, putting so-called Google “smarts” across the entire mobile experience, and building for what comes next in mobile devices.
Google said that Android is growing at three times the speed of developed markets in developing countries; but the phones that are catching on in those markets are mostly running Gingerbread, a version of Android that’s now many versions out of date. These phones, however, have lower specs with only around 512MB of memory available, and Gingerbread is what’s required to fit within those tech requirements.
That presented a technical challenge Google was keen to tackle: How to build KitKat in such a way that it can bring even those older and lower-specced devices up-to-date, to help provide a consistent experience across the entire Android user base. That mean reducing OS resources, and then also modifying Google apps to stay within those boundaries, as well as rethinking how the OS manages available memory to make the most of what is present.
None of this was enough, however, so Google went further to help third-party developers also offer their content to everyone on Android, rather than just those with the top-tier devices. A new API in KitKat allows devs to determine what amount of memory a phone is working with, and serve a different version of the app to each, making it possible for the same application to run on even the earliest Android devices.
“People generally launch new versions of operating systems and they need more memory,” Android chief Sundar Pichai said at a Google event today. “Not with KitKat. We’ve taken it and made it run all the way back on entry level phones. We have one version of the OS that’ll run across all Android smartphones in 2014.”
That’s the single biggest feature being announced here: Google wants to get everyone on the same platform, and is doing more than it ever has to end the fragmentation problem. One version over the next year is a hugely ambitious goal, but if the company is serious about not only serving a growing developing market, but offering it something like software version parity, it seems like it’s finally figured out how to go about doing that. It’ll still be up to manufacturers to decide whether or not devices get the KitKat upgrade, Google notes, so we’ll probably still see a fair amount of older devices get left out via official update channels.
Here’s what’s coming with KitKat, which launched on the new Nexus 5 today.
Lock & Home Screen
Aside from making KitKat the One OS To Rule Them All, Google has also introduced a number of new features with this update. Album art is displayed full screen behind the lockscreen when music is playing, for instance, and you can scrub the track without unlocking. There’s a new launcher, with translucency effects on the navigation bar and on the top notification bar.
Long-pressing a blank space on any homescreen zooms out to allow you to re-arrange them all, and when you’re running an app that is written for full-screen, the navigation bar and the notification bar both now disappear entirely from view.
Launcher-specific stuff is Nexus-only initially, of course, and whether some of these elements make their way to manufacturer-specific home screens will depend on those OEMs.
Dialer
Android now offers up a new dialer, which incorporates search for easy reference. This means you can enter the name of a business even if you don’t know it’s number or have it stored in your address book, and then the dialer will retrieve it from the same database that powers Google Maps. It’s incorporating local data, as well as looking for the name used in your search. This also allows the phone to provide caller ID information for incoming calls, too, and there’s a new auto-populating favorites menu that builds a list of your most frequent dialled numbers.
Hangouts
Google has indeed consolidated the entire text/video/MMS experience with Hangouts, as predicted. It replaces the default messaging app, and allows you to send an SMS just as you would’ve before, to a number or to someone in your contact book. There’s also a new Places button for sharing map locations, and emoji support is finally built-in to your software keyboard.
This is the iMessage equivalent that Android has been lacking thus far. It’s going to be a tremendously useful feature, especially for those who are transitioning to Android from BlackBerry in that next 5 billion Google is adamantly pursuing.
You can now attach photos to communications not only from your local library, but also from Google Drive, and from Box, as well. Any third-party provider can provide a hook to be included, according to Google, which is impressive considering that Google isn’t limiting things to its own ecosystem.
Camera
New HDR+ software is built-in to Android KitKat, which has no apparent changes to the surface user experience – a device owner just snaps the shutter button. Behind the scenes, however, Google’s mobile OS is taking many photos at once, and fusing the best parts of each together seamlessly to come up with a better end product. Lights appear more natural, faces are visible even when backlighting threatens to overwhelm, and moving objects are more in focus.
HDR+ is Nexus 5-only to start, but Google says they’re looking to bring it to other devices later on, too.
Wireless Printing
Developers can now add printing to individual apps, and Google will work with building it out for additional manufacturers, too, something it says is “easy” to accomplish. Right now, any HP wireless printer works with the system, and any printer that already supports Google Cloud Print will also be able to take advantage of the new feature.
Google Search
Search is at the core of Google’s overall product experience, the company explained, so it’s doing more to make that accessible on mobile. Search is now on every homescreen by default in Android, and it supports hotwording, so that you can just say “Okay, Google” to get search up and running at any time, much like you would on Glass.
Speech is crucial to Google with this update, and it said it was proud of its improvements so far; the error rate of speech recognition dropped 20 percent last year, and there’s been a 25 percent increase in overall speech recognition accuracy over the past few years, according to Pichai. Using voice recognition also now allows you to tap a word and bring up a list of alternatives to select from. The system also now asks more clarifying questions, using natural language, to ensure better service overall.
Google Now
Google Now has been updated to be accessed via a swipe form the left side of the screen, which is a tweak from when it was accessed via swiping up in previous versions of Android. Google also focused on answering questions like “How can we help users in more ways, and bring up the most relevant content?” with this update, which means new types of cards.
Now can now figure out that The Walking Dead is a favorite show of the user, for instance, and offer up articles related to it and its progress. So not only is Google Now aware of your surroundings and schedule, but also what type of content you’re interested in. It can also note which blogs you check regularly, and provide you info about when new posts appear; in other words, Google is adding some of the features that were core parts of Google Reader to Now, and making them more contextually-aware.
It can also incorporate crowd-sourced data to make better recommendations. For instance, it could know that people often search for geyser times at Yellowstone National Park, and provide a card with those if it sees you’re in the area. If you’re near a cinema, it’ll present movie times and a link to the Fandango application for purchasing tickets.
Another example Google provided is that Stanford students, who often search for the academic calendar in fall, will now receive that data automatically when the correct season arrives, provided they’ve informed Google of their student status previously in some way. These types of Cards will roll out in mid-November, Google says.
Deep App Linking For Google Search
Now when you Google things, results can link into apps directly – and not just to the app generally, but to specific content within the app. Some results will have “Open in App X” next to them, and those will take you directly to a relevant section within, like a recipe for example. Partners at launch include Expedia, Moviefone, OpenTable and more. This is a Nexus-only feature at launch, but Google says it will be available for all KitKat devices in time.
Availability
Android 4.4 KitKat is available today via the Android Open Source Project, and it’s available on Nexus 5 hardware immediately, which also goes on sale today in 10 countries. It will also be available on Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and the Google Play edition of both the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One in the coming weeks.
It’s an OS update that Google says is focused on furthering their vision for software that will run across all levels of all kinds of devices, not just on phones, which has interesting connotations give everything we’ve been hearing lately about Google wearables. |
Adrian Peterson has had better weeks.
The future Hall of Famer saw just nine snaps and six carries against his former team in his New Orleans Saints debut, while his fellow backs, Alvin Kamara and Mark Ingram, saw 31 and 26, respectively. Peterson was then caught on camera chirping at coach Sean Payton to "run the ball up their donkey," as he put it after the game. On Thursday, A.D. capped his rough start to the season by telling reporters that he didn't "sign up for nine snaps" in New Orleans.
Peterson's public quarrels have earned the veteran tailback some derision from retired backs who have been in his shoes before.
"Quite frankly, you hear A.P. say, 'I didn't come to New Orleans for nine plays.' I'm [going to] call B.S.," NFL Network analyst and former Seahawks back Michael Robinson said on Good Morning Football Weekend. "Because if they didn't tell you you were the starter -- which they didn't promise him the starting job -- he knew they had a 1,000-yard rusher from last year already there, so essentially you're walking into a backup role. You don't play special teams. Backups get about nine plays, 10 plays when you're not the main runner and you don't play special teams."
Robinson wasn't the only former ballcarrier suggesting Peterson "deal with it." Hall of Fame back and former Jets backup LaDainian Tomlinson said on The Rich Eisen Show this week that "the faster he is able to come to grips with [his role], I think the better he will be for the team."
Robinson offered Peterson some harsher advice and a suggestion to remedy the potential locker room discord.
"You know why people just dabble with backs like that, backs that have been the main dog for seven, eight, nine years like that? Because when they walk into the building, they expect to get the ball as many times as they did before," Robinson concluded. "You are not a starter anymore, A.P. You are a backup running back. Nine plays happens to backup running backs.
"You get more plays by playing special teams, get on punt, get on punt return, get on kickoff, and that's what he's not going to do."
Robinson added he thinks Peterson still could be a starting running back somewhere, just not in New Orleans.
The Saints signed Peterson to a two-year deal with Ingram, the "1,000-yard rusher," already in tow and then drafted Kamara in the third round of the draft. New Orleans didn't hide its intentions at running back this offseason, so it's surprising that Peterson is this perturbed so early in the season.
We'll see this week when the Saints take on the Patriots in Peterson's first home game at the Superdome if New Orleans changes its game plan and balances its RB snaps in the vet's favor. |
The Indiana Pacers went to work early and often against a short-handed Cleveland Cavaliers team, pushing a double figure lead early and never relinquishing it as they won their fourth straight preseason game. The Pacers and Cavs each shot similar percentages in the 45% range, but the Pacers forced 23 Cleveland turnovers, leading to 31 points, whereas Cleveland could only capitalize on three off of 16 Pacers turnovers.
Paul George led the Pacers in 27 minutes of action with 17 points, but struggled shooting the ball at just 5-16. Despite a poor shooting night, George was still Indiana's best player, coming up with eight boards, three assists, and a steal. The play of George continues to impress, and the use of George within the small ball lineup (forcing difficult matchups on offense against Anderson Varejao and Timofey Mozgov while allowing C.J. Miles to take on some defensive brunt at the four) could prove an interesting wrinkle yet with the regular season looming.
The real surprise of the night came from Ian Mahinmi, who put in excellent work against both Varejao and Mozgov to score 16 points on 6-9 shooting and a stunning 4-5 from the line. Mahinmi had big moves on offense throughout the night, staying engaged despite picking up three first half fouls. Mahinmi's athleticism was on display and for tonight looked the perfect starting center for Indiana's offense, especially if he catches passes as well as tonight.
Monta Ellis had his best preseason outing, scoring 14 points on 6-7 shooting, looking most fluid within the offense, playing a solid shooting guard to George Hill's play at the point. Hill had eight points, mostly coming from the line, hitting 5-6 to go along with a three pointer. C.J. Miles had just two points, but was the biggest beneficiary of Cleveland's turnover prone night, coming up with four steals.
Off the bench, the biggest nights came from Indiana's two rookie draft picks, with Joe Young getting backup point minutes, scoring 10 points on 4-7 shooting with six assists. Myles Turner also impressed with 11 points, six rebounds, and two blocks, both coming in 20 minutes of action. Chase Budinger struggled shooting, going 0-4. Lavoy Allen scored four and grabbed six boards with Glenn Robinson III getting six points on his night.
Indiana dominated the glass tonight, outrebounding the Cavs by 14, but the Pacers were simply the much more active team tonight. Indiana mainly stuck to a 10-man rotation tonight, but despite the effort, their biggest struggles came with the second unit. Rodney Stuckey should offer up some offensive help, but it might be a lot any given night to trust Joe Young with the weight of the second unit offense.
The Pacers will enter their final week of preseason play when they tip off against the Chicago Bulls on Tuesday. |
There’s a story about Bono, mid-show, ushering the crowd to be silent. He starts to clap his hands.
“Every time I clap my hands, a child dies somewhere in Africa,” he says.
An audience member yells out – in a broad Glaswegian accent, so the story goes – from the crowd: “Stop clapping your hands then!”
It’s true that this may be less an accurate record of an exchange and more an amusing dig at Bono’s sanctimoniousness.
But, even if it isn’t true, it’s not as funny as what I’m about to type next: Bono has become the first-ever man to be honoured at Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year awards.
Yep, you read that right. Bono is one of Glamour magazine’s women of the year – well, technically their first man of the year – alongside several other worthy, er, women, including the five-time Olympic medal winner Simone Biles, the three founders of the Black Lives Matter movement and Nadia Murad, who was nominated for the Nobel peace prize after escaping enslavement by Isis.
I can’t speak for Murad but if my being held prisoner in Mosul was implicitly put on a par with Bono’s “trying to do good for as long as he’s been making music”, I’d feel a bit put out.
Vann R. Newkirk II (@fivefifths) I thought peak Bono was him hacking our phones with his garbage album.
But it appears I was wrong.
“We’ve talked for years about whether to honour a man at Women of the Year and we’ve always kind of put the kibosh on it,” said the editor-in-chief, Cindi Leive, proving that her first impulses, at least, are sound. “You know, men get a lot of awards and aren’t exactly hurting in the awards department.
“But it started to seem that that might be an outdated way of looking at things and there are so many men who really are doing wonderful things for women these days.”
There you have it: Bono’s win – Finally! An award for Bono! – is actually a win for gender equality, bringing an end to sexist discrimination observed by Glamour’s Women of the Year awards.
Either men’s rights activists are a big market for magazines, or I’m missing something.
Bono’s email to Hillary Clinton: give me some space Read more
Here are some other “outdated way of looking at things” that I’d far rather we put behind us: that contraception is the responsibility of women. That their sports are not as demanding athletically, nor as entertaining to watch as men’s. That abortion involves “ripping the baby out of the womb of the mother”. That young women feel more valued for their looks than their intelligence or ability (and on that point, at least, Glamour could actually have some influence).
I’d say the gender pay gap too but we already know that’s going to take more than half a century.
Of course the real take away here is that such accolades are essentially meaningless.
When you’re asked to conflate the achievements and impact of Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, with those of the victim of Brock Turner (both of whom are also among Glamour’s Women of the Year), the result’s inevitably going to be a bit embarrassing.
But Bono?
Sure, he has sold 170m albums, won 22 Grammys, raised money for and now spearheaded a new Poverty is Sexist campaign, aimed at helping the world’s poorest women.
But, in terms of impact and effectiveness, to honour him at an award ceremony for women about rivals naming Wonder Woman as the UN’s ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls.
The appointment of the fictional character was made two weeks ago amid protests from staff members, who noted the damning implication: that the UN “was unable to find a real-life woman” who fit the bill.
If the goal was to promote the forthcoming Wonder Woman blockbuster, there’s even a real-life woman to do that – its director, Patty Jenkins, attended the ceremony.
If you employ women or otherwise give them money – if you listen to music made by women, or read books written by them; even if you retweet women sometimes – you are doing more for equality than Wonder Woman is. That is a laughably low bar that the UN would do well to meet; perhaps they could start by paying their interns.
Bono: send Amy Schumer and Chris Rock to fight Islamic State Read more
Of course Glamour magazine and the UN both stand to gain from even outraged coverage of their honorary titles, certainly more than Bono and a fake superhero do from receiving them. In fact both organisations are likely well aware that if they’d bestowed their honours on more worthy recipients, most of us would be unaware the titles exist at all.
As Jay-Z and Kanye West did before me, I find myself reaching for the quote from Blades of Glory, a strikingly prescient moment in an otherwise forgettable film: “Who cares what it means, it’s provocative! It gets the people going.”
Well, consider me got going, Glamour. And it’s not even an original stunt.
Like the US election campaign before it, Bono’s award is a plot twist lifted directly from the US comedy series Parks and Recreation. In one episode, Ron Swanson is named female empowerment award winner by a women’s organisation determined to give their award “to the opposite of a woman” for marketing purposes. (“Awards are stupid,” he responds, “which is why I fully intend to decline this nonsense and recommend it go to Leslie.”)
I am not deigning to list men who would have been better than Bono as man of the year at the Women of the Year awards – though “woke bae” Matt McGorry is more likely to have tweeted a picture of himself shirtless with a copy of the magazine in one hand and The Feminine Mystique in the other.
I plead instead that we stop bestowing these attention-seeking, arbitrary, ridiculous awards and honours, especially for “achievements” in feminism and gender equality. Because these “wins” are starting to look a lot more like losses. |
CLOSE There are now 513 billionaires in America, according to Forbes, and it's just one of the many signs that the rich just keep getting richer. USA TODAY
The wealth of the top 400 richest Americans totaled an astounding $2.29 trillion last year. (Photo11: Adam Gault, Getty Images)
There are 513 billionaires in America, according to Forbes, though only 400 of those make its annual list of the richest Americans. It's just one of the many signs that the rich just keep getting richer. In fact, the wealth of the top 400 richest Americans totaled an astounding $2.29 trillion last year, which is $270 billion higher than the year before. Meanwhile, the average member of that list has a net worth of $5.7 billion, which is $700 million more than the previous year. Suffice it to say, the richest Americans are better off than they have ever been.
Strangely familiar stories
Driving their staggering net worth is one undeniably common trait. They each own business assets that have become "compounding machines," as Warren Buffett likes to call them. Some of them started these businesses themselves, while others inherited or acquired their wealth creating businesses. What is clear from looking over the list is that no one on the list became a billionaire by being a salaried employee, unless of course that salary carried with it copious stock options giving them an outsized ownership stake in the business.
One place where we see that is at Microsoft(NASDAQ:MSFT). Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the company turned Gates into the richest man in the world.However, it also made billionaires out of Allen and longtime CEO Steve Ballmer, who joined the company in 1980 as employee No. 30. He's one of the few of the elite who became wealthy as an employee. However, his wealth stems from his large ownership interest in the company -- granted to him via stock options -- as he is now the largest shareholder after Gates pared down much of his stake over the years to diversify his holdings and give money away to charity. Over the years Microsoft has been a wealth-making machine for its owners, as it has not only made Gates, Allen, and Ballmer billionaires, but it has also produced 12,000 millionaires out of employees who received large stock option grants over the years.
It isn't the only tech giant that has blessed the richest Americans with an abundance of wealth, as three other tech founders -- Oracle's (NYSE:ORCL) Larry Ellison, Amazon.com's (NASDAQ:AMZN) Jeff Bezos, and Facebook's (NASDAQ:FB) Mark Zuckerberg -- are among the top 10 richest Americans. That said, founding a tech company isn't the only path to the top, as Buffett turned a struggling textile company into the insurance, energy, and railroad powerhouse Berkshire Hathaway(NYSE:BRK-A)(NYSE:BRK-B), while the Koch Brothers turned an equally disparate group of businesses owned through their inherited Koch Industries into a wealth-compounding machine.
What's interesting is that if one goes through Forbes' list of the richest Americans, they'll find individuals who made billions on all types of businesses. Many made vast wealth off rather unexciting businesses, including candy, self-storage, beer, tires, plumbing products, real estate, and cheese. Some made their billions by starting these companies from scratch, while others took their family's business to another level. Others bought into great businesses and held on for years.
On the other hand, what isn't found on the list are people who made billions working a 9-to-5 job. Neither are there any on the list who won the lottery or made a killing in Vegas. That's because those earnings will never compound like the earnings from owning a stake in a great business will over time. Instead, more often than not, these earnings are typically spent instead of invested to grow wealth.
What we can learn from the richest Americans
There are two very clear lessons to be learned from the richest Americans. First, the net worth of America's wealthy is directly related to the assets they own and not the salary they collect. The elite might use their earnings to buy fancy cars, nice houses, and art collections, but the bulk of their wealth is derived from owning business assets that have compounded its value for years. The second lesson is that these individuals held these assets for years. While some do buy and sell businesses quite regularly, the top of the top-tier elite have owned their compounding machines for years and have no plans to let it go.
The takeaway for those who would like to have a higher net worth is clear: Either become an entrepreneur and start a business in hopes of joining the elite, or buy a stake in great businesses started by others. Both carry a lot of risk, as 80% of new businesses fail within the first 18 months, while the economy and the stock market can be volatile and burn investors. However, with great risks can come great rewards.
This $19 trillion industry could destroy the Internet
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Matt DiLallo and The Motley Fool own shares of, and The Motley Fool recommends, Amazon.com and Facebook. Matt also has the following options: long January 2017 $135 calls on Berkshire Hathaway and short January 2017 $145 calls on Berkshire Hathaway. Finally, The Motley Fool recommends Berkshire Hathaway and owns shares of and Oracle. Needless to say, we like the stocks that made the richest Americans rich. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The Motley Fool is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news, analysis and commentary designed to help people take control of their financial lives. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.
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MARSEILLE/PARIS (Reuters) - The founder of a French breast implant company was sentenced to four years in prison on Tuesday for hiding the true nature of the sub-standard silicone used in implants sold to 300,000 women around the world.
Jean-Claude Mas (L), founder of French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), leaves the Marseille's court December 10, 2013. The founder of a French breast implant company was sentenced to four years in prison by a Marseille criminal court on Tuesday for hiding the true nature of the sub-standard silicone used in implants sold to 300,000 women around the world. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier
Jean-Claude Mas, 74, founder and long-time chief executive of Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), was prosecuted after a worldwide panic in 2011 when France recommended that women with such implants should have them removed due to an abnormally high rupture rate.
Worries about the implants launched a flurry of international lawsuits and prompted calls for Europe to toughen controls on medical devices and fix its fractured oversight system.
Once the third-largest global supplier of breast implants, the company was shut in 2010 and its implants ordered off the market after inspectors pursuing a tip-off discovered vats of industrial-grade silicone outside the PIP factory in the southern town of La-Seyne-sur-Mer.
A Marseille criminal court also ordered Mas, who had been pursued for aggravated fraud, to pay a 75,000-euro ($103,000) fine. His lawyer, Yves Haddad, said he would appeal.
Four other executives, including the chief financial officer, were sentenced to between one-and-a-half and three years in prison, some of it suspended, and fined.
“It’s a strong signal. This decision is what victims were waiting for,” said one of their lawyers, Philippe Courtois.
The president of a PIP victims group, Alexandra Blachere, called it a “symbolic sentence” that challenged any prejudice that there was “a ditzy bimbo behind every pair of silicone breasts.”
The two-month trial in April and May was held in an exhibition center to accommodate the 7,400 civil plaintiffs and 300 lawyers. Jeers from the crowd greeted Mas’ appearance in the makeshift courtroom.
For less serious felonies in France, the criminal court hands down a sentence without pronouncing a guilty or not guilty verdict, which is implicit.
HIDDEN EVIDENCE
Mas admitted using silicone created by trial and error that was never approved by regulators and which cost a seventh of the price of silicone approved for use in medical devices.
He has insisted the gel he had relied on since the founding of the company in 1991 was non-toxic and has said women who complain about their PIP implants are “fragile people, or people who are doing it for the money.”
A police investigation revealed a sophisticated fraud at PIP, which managed to conceal the implants’ ingredients from regulators, thereby allowing them to be sold on international markets.
Before annual audits to the PIP factory by private certification company TUV Rheinland, employees would clear away evidence of the cheaper gel it used to fill implants.
For a special report on the PIP scandal, click here:
TUV sued PIP for fraud, but a French court ruled last month the German company had failed in its obligations of “vigilance and caution” and ordered it to pay 3,000 euros to each of the 1,600 plaintiffs, women wearing PIP implants who had sued.
Health experts insist that no link has been established between PIP implants and breast cancer.
Still, women around the world with PIP implants, whether in Venezuela, France or Britain, have rushed to their surgeons to have them removed, fearing health complications.
Since France recommended removal, some 14,729 women in France - nearly half of all French women with PIP implants - have chosen this option, according to French regulators.
Regulators say a quarter of PIP implants removed were found to be faulty, most having ruptured.
Slideshow (4 Images)
Only one case of anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a rare type of cancer originating in the lymphatic system, has been documented in France from a women wearing PIP implants.
National health agencies have given differing advice. While France and Venezuela offered to reimburse women who have their PIP implants removed, other countries, such as Britain, recommended that women merely have them checked.
Other legal cases related to PIP are still pending in France, including one related to the 2010 death of a woman wearing PIP implants. Another relates to tax fraud by Mas, his former girlfriend and Chief Executive Claude Couty. |
If you think your commute is bad, just imagine crossing a war-torn border to get to work.
Armed checkpoints, long waits at crossings, the occasional sound of gunfire and streams of refugees leaving the country on foot is the reality for Syrian businessmen like Jihad Awad.
The 51 year old business owner relocated to Lebanon in early 2012 after Syria’s unrest began, but said he is determined to continue doing business in his homeland — even if it means enduring a difficult journey to check in on his operations and his dozen employees. Hoping to minimise disruption at the border, he leaves early each Monday morning from Beirut and drives to Damascus for a two-day stay.
Before unrest broke out in Syria just over three years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for people to cross the border at any time of day or night to do business. These days, with multilateral sanctions on much of the private sector, and with the security situation hindering all but the most essential of business, those who make the regular crossings have become a rarity.
“We’re one of the lucky ones,” said Awad, whose Damascus-based medical and pharmaceutical equipment company is operating at 30% capacity.
Many other businesses throughout the country have collapsed under bombardments or financial strain that have come as part of the Syrian Civil War, which began as a peaceful uprising in March 2011, and has claimed more than 230,000 lives and has virtually wiped out the private sector. The remaining businesses are largely struggling to stay afloat, business owners and news reports say.
Awad noted that some of his friends from Aleppo — Syria’s biggest city that has been largely destroyed by bombshells, and whose routes in and out are marked with kidnappings and carjackings — have no businesses or homes to return to.
“They’re stuck. They can’t go back,” he said.
For some businesspeople, the commute is part of a long term investment in hopes of future returns. Maroun Charabati, who runs a power supply and renewable energy company, said keeping his business going in Syria is a way to keep his foot in the door until peace comes.
“The potential market is very promising,” said Charabati, a Lebanese citizen who grew up during his own country’s civil war (1975-1990). His sporadic visits to Syria complement the regular trips of his employees. “Once the market opens, there will be lots of new construction. Everyone will be fighting for business.”
Closing his business, even during wartime, would be unthinkable, given the amount of time and money he has invested in the business he started in Beirut 20 years ago and expanded into Syria 12 years ago.
A commute, elongated
The main Damascus highway from Beirut, to the Masnaa border crossing on the Lebanese side to the Jdeideh crossing on the Syrian side, links the two business centres and is by far the safest and most used of the roads out of Syria. It is controlled by the Syrian government and, even travelling in the middle of the night with a Canadian passport takes three hours, nearly double the time it used to take at that time.
While taxi drivers used to ferry people from Beirut to points in Syria , such as Damascus, Aleppo and Homs, and overland to Turkey and Jordan, drivers at the Charles Helou garage in Beirut, Lebanon’s main departure point to Syria, said business is down by 80% compared with before the war. Most of the businessmen they used to carry have left for work in Europe or the Gulf states, they said, and the few people who continue to return are labourers, usually making the journey to bring cash to their families in Syria.
Awad might be one of the few businessmen still making the unsettling journey to Syria..
“What you see at the border is shocking,” Awad said. Once he enters Syria, the checkpoints are a further reminder of the instability. Long lines and waits, intensive inspections of vehicles and car passengers and drivers peppered with never-ending questions are the norm. Once in Damascus, it is clear to him that residents have become numb to the sound of shelling.
Choices for the future
“I can run my business from here. I go to Syria to show compassion for my employees and show my clients in Syria that I’m not far away,” said Award from a café in downtown Beriut. “I want to show that I’m one of them.”
Similarly, Shadi Khoury, Middle East regional manager of an Italian firm that supplies machines for pharmaceuticals manufacturing, has had to do much of his business from Beirut.
For him, trips to Syria are more sporadic, ranging from twice a week to once a month. He is often delayed for hours at a time on the border or at a checkpoint.
“Of course this is my duty. If I didn’t keep going, people would be without medicine,” said Khoury, who went to the mostly- destroyed city of Homs — a risky proposition — about three months ago to check on a medical machine. .
Khoury, a Syrian, said it is hard to be comfortable in either country— Syria for its instability and Lebanon for what he perceives as xenophobia toward Syrians, he said.
For Awad, his presence in Lebanon and regular commutes to Syria are an important way to keep his business alive. It is down 80% because of the war.
“Once stability returns to Syria, everyone will be in need of medical supplies,” he said.
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If you've been following the news about Bitcoin, you've probably come away with the idea that the currency is unstable, potentially lucrative and more of a novelty than an actual payment method that people use on a daily basis.
Retailers who take Bitcoin say something different. For them, the currency is a viable, preferable alternative to credit cards that don't carry the same risk of fraud and have lower transaction fees. Merchants say bitoin payments aren't a huge part of their business, but the niche is growing steadily.
See also: Everything You Need to Know About Bitcoin in 2 Minutes
"It's really been fantastic," says Chris Nichols, CEO of GameTimeZone, an online seller of games and gaming consoles. "We're a merchant that unfortunately has to worry about credit card fraud. When we see orders from companies like Poland and Eastern Europe and even Western Europe in high dollar amounts, we have to worry." By contrast with Bitcoin "we know that it's a safe transaction."
GameTimeZone began taking bitcoin payments last October. Since then, such orders have encompassed as much as 20% of sales. That appears to be way above average. Online retailer Overstock says bitcoin transactions only account for about 0.25% of daily volume. The retailer posted $1 million in bitcoin-based sales within the first three months of offering the option and just recently hit $2 million in sales.
"It's limited to a very small community of tech-savvy people," says Vinny Lingham, CEO and cofounder of online gift card service Gyft, which First Data bought last week for an undisclosed sum. "It's not growing as fast as people would like. It's just not. It will go mainstream at some point in two- to five years."
Working with BitPay, Gyft started accepting bitcoins for transactions in spring 2013, making it one of the first retailers to embrace the payment option. A flurry of others soon followed. Bitpay now claims it works with 40,000 businesses and nonprofits that take bitcoin while rival Coinbase claims that it works with 35,000. Adam White, Coinbase's director of business development and strategy, says the number of merchants is growing about 10% per month.
As Nichols mentioned, credit card fraud is an impetus. When a transaction is found to be fraudulent, the retailer is forced to pay up. To add insult to injury there's also usually a fine. "It's 90% to 95% of the transaction cost and on top of that they'll hit us with a fee, like $20 on top of a $10 sale," Nichols says.
Another draw for Bitcoin is low transaction fees. While credit card companies can charge up to 3%, Coinbase doesn't charge anything until there's $1 million in sales. Then it takes a 1% cut.
Of course, no one believes Bitcoin is risk-free. Robert Siciliano, a McAfee online security expert, says despite the fees, bank-backed credit cards are still preferable. "Relying on an outside company has another set of issues. Remember Mt. Gox? They lost upwards of $450 million in Bitcoins in a hack," he says. "Which is why it's nice to have real banks, credit card companies and the FDIC. You know, real entities."
Coinbase's White says Bitcoin is the online equivalent of cash, with the same potential benefits and downsides. On the plus side, Bitcoin transactions are processed much quicker than credit card payments. As with cash, though, if you lose possession of bitcoins, there's often no recourse. "I’m ultimately responsible," he says. "It's the same as if I had dollars and a wallet in my pocket."
Another downside for retailers is that online, bitcoin transactions don't leave much of a trail. While a credit card payment will yield information about the buyer, with bitcoin, there's no data to be gleaned.
Samovar, a West Coast tea parlor, now accepts Bitcoin in stores.
With mass adoption a few years away, for some retailers accepting bitcoin is a marketing play, meant to underscore a brand's forward thinking. That was Jesse Jacobs' reasoning. At the moment there are just a handful of retail establishments where you can walk in and actually buy something using bitcoins. One of the early adopters is Jacobs' Samovar, a small chain of tea lounges in the San Francisco area. In June, Samovar began letting customers pay with bitcoin, which they do by letting Samovar's Android tablet read the QR code off their phones.
Jacobs says to date about 100 customers have tried bitcoin payments."We haven't really stress tested it with thousands of people," he says. Regardless, merely stating the ability to take Bitcoin can't help but have a halo effect on Samovar's brand. Says Jacobs: "This whole technology is just so groundbreaking." |
WASHINGTON - The University of Phoenix, which runs an online college popular among military veterans, is under federal investigation for possible deceptive or unfair business practices, its parent company the Apollo Education Group told shareholders Wednesday.
The for-profit, publicly traded company is the largest recipient of federal student aid for veterans and often a sponsor at military education and employment events. Since 2009, when the GI Bill expanded student aid benefits for veterans, the University of Phoenix online program has collected more than $488 million in tuition and fees for veterans, a figure that dwarfs nearly every other institution identified as a GI recipient by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Graduates of Corinthian Colleges refuse to pay back student loans
In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company disclosed that it had received a "civil investigative demand" from the Federal Trade Commission this week. According to the document, investigators asked for information on a "broad spectrum" of matters, including marketing, recruiting, enrollment, financial aid, tuition, academic programs, billing and debt collection, as well other facets of the business. The filing lists "military recruitment" as one of the areas the FTC is examining.
The filing said Apollo is "evaluating the demand and intends to cooperate fully with the FTC."
Apollo and the FTC declined to comment further.
The FTC probe is the latest of several state and federal investigations into the for-profit college industry. Critics say many of these colleges are aggressive in recruiting students who qualify for large amounts of federal student aid, including GI money. But the credits often don't transfer to other schools and aren't recognized by employers.
Corinthian Colleges, another major for-profit schools, collapsed last year amid a government probe into its charging exorbitant fees, lying about job prospects.
Industry officials say they are unfairly being scrutinized, and say for-profit schools have expanded education opportunities to communities that wouldn't otherwise have access.
On July 1, new federal rules went into effect for any school with a career-training program. Graduates have to be able to earn enough money to repay their student loans, or a school risks losing access to financial aid. Consumer advocates say the regulation is a first step toward reining in the industry. But, they add, because the regulation looks at employment rates for graduates, it won't affect schools with high dropout rates.
The University of Phoenix has collected more than a half a billion dollars in GI assistance since 2009. While its online program received $488 million, its campuses also took in large sums to educate vets. In San Diego, Calif., for example, its campus received $134 million in GI tuition assistance, while its campus in Costa Mesa, Calif., received $122 million.
By comparison, the top recipient of GI tuition assistance among public institutions is the University of Maryland-University College, with $150 million in GI tuition since 2009. |
Image copyright AP Image caption Robert Mugabe told delegates he welcomed the fact that his wife had exposed his deputy's plot
Zimbabwe's president has spoken of his anger that his embattled deputy Joyce Mujuru allegedly plotted to assassinate him and accused her of being a thief.
Speaking at the ruling Zanu-PF party's congress, Robert Mugabe said he would act against all corrupt officials.
Mrs Mujuru's absence from the congress showed she was "scared", he added.
Recently expelled Zanu-PF member Rugare Gumbo told the BBC the 90-year-old leader had "completely" turned the party into his "personal property".
Mr Mugabe had targeted Mrs Mujuru to advance the "fortunes" of his wife Grace, the former Zanu-PF spokesman added.
Mrs Mujuru, who has previously denied the allegations, had been seen as a potential successor to Mr Mugabe, with whom she fought for Zimbabwe's independence from white-minority rule.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Mugabe's opponents - in 90 seconds
However, her career ran into trouble when Mrs Mugabe entered into politics this year, and accused her of plotting against her husband.
The congress, being held in the capital Harare, is expected to elect the first lady as the head of Zanu-PF's women's wing.
'Bribing delegates'
Mr Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, will remain as Zanu-PF leader.
He told thousands of delegates that he welcomed the fact that his wife had exposed Mrs Mujuru's attempt to oust him.
"Thieves never succeed... look at all the transgressions. Her corruption is now exposed," Mr Mugabe said.
At the scene: BBC Africa's Brian Hungwe
Image copyright Reuters
The congress hall was packed with about 10,000 delegates. Some of them cheered when Mr Mugabe spoke; others remained quiet, suggesting they are worried about the divisions that have wracked the ruling party as the president consolidates his hold on power.
Leaders such as Joyce Mujuru and Didimus Mutasa have been Zanu-PF cadres for more than four decades, and command a huge following. They are now out in the cold, accused by Mr Mugabe of being key figures in a "cabal" opposed to his leadership.
Rugare Gumbo, expelled from Zanu-PF as part of the purge, told the BBC the party was not "moving forward" and could "collapse".
But War Veterans Association chairman Chris Mutsvangwa said it had addressed its "afflictions without too much ructions" and it would now focus on improving Zimbabwe's struggling economy. The 90-year-old leader is expected to appoint loyalists to key positions later in the week.
Profile: Zimbabwe's first lady Grace Mugabe
Mr Mugabe, while speaking in the local Shona language, said Mrs Mujuru planned to assassinate him but in English he only accused her of trying to have him "kicked out" by bribing delegates.
"But you delegates are not foolish. You can't be bought," Mr Mugabe added.
Vowing to tackle corruption, Mr Mugabe said: "If you were a minister, you will lose your job. Some will face the full might of the law."
Image copyright AP Image caption Many Zanu-PF members are still fiercely loyal to Mr Mugabe
Image copyright AFP Image caption Joyce Mujuru was once a staunch ally of Mr Mugabe
Mrs Mujuru was first accused in the state-owned media of plotting to kill Mr Mugabe and has instructed her lawyers to take legal action to clear her name.
Referring to her and her allies' failure to attend the congress, Mr Mugabe said: "As you see we have empty spaces on the stage. We didn't chase them away but they chose not to come."
Correspondents say Justice Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa is now among the candidates being tipped to succeed Mrs Mujuru, her long-time rival.
Mrs Mujuru took part in the 1970s guerrilla war against white-minority rule when her nom de guerre was Teurai Ropa (Spill Blood).
She married Solomon Mujuru, the former army chief seen as Zimbabwe's king-maker in 1977. He died in a fire at his farm in 2011. |
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