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The international news media has recently focused on Terry Jones, the leader of a small church in Gainesville, Fla., who has threatened to burn copies of Islam's holiest book, the Koran, on Sept. 11. This has, of course, garnered plenty of controversy and howls of protest from Muslims over Jones' blasphemous actions.
In his book "Blasphemy" (Knopf, 1993), Leonard Levy notes that what a group of people considers blasphemous "is a litmus test of the standards a society believes it must enforce to preserve its unity, its peace, its morality, and feelings, and the road to salvation."
In the Muslim world, blasphemy is considered a grave offense, punishable by death. Islam, however, is hardly unique in that regard. Early Christians were intolerant of blasphemy, and in fact Leviticus 24:16 specifically calls for blasphemers to be killed ("He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death, [and] all the congregation shall certainly stone him" KJV). The Hebrew Bible goes even further, specifying that those who offend God should be butchered alive and their homes destroyed: "Every people, nation, and language, which speak any thing amiss against God shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill" (Daniel 3:29).
So, in all religions — in theory anyway — this insulting God stuff is serious business.
Prof. Reinhold Aman, editor of the scholarly "Maledicta: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression," told LiveScience, "In puritanical America, before the sex-and-excrement curses took over around the mid-1990s, blasphemy was taken very seriously. Even such now-mild blasphemies as 'hell,' 'Jesus,' and 'goddamn' were grave offenses. Thus many euphemisms were created to blaspheme without actually blaspheming, such as 'heck,' 'jeez!', 'cheese and crackers!', 'cripes!', 'gosh!', 'golldarn!' and the like."
"In Catholic regions, the most taboo and sacred subject is religion," Aman said. "Therefore, Catholics blaspheme using the name of God, Holy Mary, saints, and church implements. Some of the most common blasphemies are 'Sacrament!', 'Crucifix!' and 'Cross!'; 'Mary, you whore!' and 'God, you pig!'; and 'By the 24 balls of the 12 apostles of Christ!'"
Why are Muslims so upset? Jews don't get upset when Gentiles eat pork. Though burning a Torah or a Bible would be considered in poor taste and disrespectful, neither Jews nor Christians would threaten death to anyone who dared to do such a thing. So why would Muslims care what non-Muslims do with their personal property (if that property happens to be a Koran)?
Among the world's major religions Muslims are unusually sensitive to blasphemy when it comes to their prophet, their god, and their holy book. The Koran is considered by Muslims to be the final, complete and inerrant word of Allah as revealed to the prophet Mohammed. It is, therefore, far more than a collection of writings, and the physical book itself is revered. According to Stanford University's Islamic scholar Azim Nanji, "A copy of the Koran is given an honored place in the house, where it is generally placed at a higher level than other belongings and furnishings. Muslims often carry a text from the Koran on their persons in a small ornamental amulet."
Fundamentalist Christians have also denounced blasphemy in recent years, often concerned with how Jesus is portrayed (for example in films such as Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" and Ron Howard's "The Da Vinci Code"). Some Christians have also protested art exhibits such as those featuring a photograph by artist Andres Serrano of a small plastic crucifix submerged in urine, titled "Piss Christ."
Yet Muslim protests against blasphemy are by far the best-known and most volatile. British author Salman Rushdie's 1988 book "The Satanic Verses" (Picador) was called blasphemous by many Muslim leaders for an irreverent depiction of Mohammed. The following year a fatwa (death sentence) was issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeni, who called for devout Muslims to kill Rushdie. Several attempts were made on his life, and Rushdie went into hiding for years. In 2005, cartoons of Mohammed were printed in a Danish newspaper, triggering protests, fire bombings, and riots, which resulted in the deaths of about 100 people.
While some blasphemy protests have turned violent, other recent Western depictions of Mohammed have received little criticism, such as a 2008 satirical board game called "Playing Gods" (which included a Muslim figure as a playing piece), and a 2009 online video game called "Faith Fighter."
Atheists and humanists consider blasphemy to be a victimless crime, though as Levy notes the idea of nonbelievers being blasphemous is a relatively recent development. Those accused of (and executed for) blasphemy have usually been religious people; indeed, "For most of history, blasphemers have been devout Christians."
Benjamin Radford is managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer science magazine. His new book is Scientific Paranormal Investigation; this and his other books and projects can be found on his website. His Bad Science column appears regularly on LiveScience. | {
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Blazing Griffin Games is a BAFTA-award winning studio best known for the murderous multiplayer franchise The Ship and its spiritual successor Murderous Pursuits. It’s most recent title is the atmospheric detective puzzle game Murder Mystery Machine for Apple Arcade. | {
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All Hail West Texas is a lonely album, a product of idle time and summer boredom recorded alone, quickly, in an empty house. John Darnielle wrote most of the lyrics in the margins of the stapled, mimeographed handouts given to him in the orientation sessions at his new health-care job in Ames, Iowa. It was 1999. Every day he’d come home at three to an empty house, dishes crowding the sink (his wife was away at hockey camp) and pass the solitary evenings leafing through his handouts and editing the day’s work. When a melody came to him, he’d grab his guitar, mute the TV and hit the red button on a dying, decade-old boombox that had documented hundreds of similarly fractured, bleating folk songs since he began recording as the Mountain Goats in 1991.
There were obstacles to recording this way-- sometimes the tape ran out mid-song, very occasionally the phone rang-- and once they were resolved, the composition in question had sometimes already fallen out of Darnielle’s favor. “In those days, a song got exactly one day in which to either resolve its issues or be cast forth from the company of its brethren,” he writes in the reissue’s liner notes. The lucky survivors, though, have a palpable immediacy. Most of the takes you hear on All Hail West Texas were recorded within hours (or, when the juices were really flowing, minutes) of being written.
There’s a common misconception that all Mountain Goats records were recorded this way, but that’s not exactly true. Up until All Hail West Texas’s release in 2002, they were more like compilations-- collage-like assortments of bedroom recordings, live shows, occasional duets, radio broadcasts and four-tracked one-offs. The subject matter was sometimes bleak (especially the many songs that charted in stinging detail the doomed relationship of the fictional Alpha couple) but these variedly textured means of recording lent the albums a feeling of motion: Darnielle seemed more like an eccentric, town-to-town troubadour than an elusive bedroom-folk hermit. But not so on All Hail West Texas. Recording in suburban solitary confinement and exclusively on the boombox gives All Hail West Texas a cohesion and an echoing sense of isolation-- the perfect atmosphere for 14 songs about crushed dreams (“The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton”), long-distance longing (“Source Decay”), and occasional moments of piercing joy (“Jenny”).
While recording All Hail, Darnielle did have a companion of sorts: his Panasonic RX-FT500, a temperamental machine so crucial to the album’s overall vibe that he credits it as a “second performer” in the liner notes. It had been out of commission for about two years (listening to the RX-FT500’s contributions to the Mountain Goats’ discography chronologically is kind of like listening to an alt-folk Disintegration Loops: you can practically chart its slow, gradual decay), but that fateful summer, it came back from the brink of death for an encore performance. “What you have with you now,” Darnielle writes on the inside sleeve, “[Is] the sound of a long-broken machine deciding, on its own and without the interference of repairmen or excessive prayer vigils, to function again.” And perhaps more than any other Mountain Goats record, you get a sense of this feeling in his voice, too: urgency, finality, and a twinge of superstition-- as though he’s not sure the “record” button will still be working by the next take.
The first people we meet are Jeff and Cyrus, a pair of pentagram-doodling teenage metalheads with big dreams for their still-unnamed two-man band (though they’ve been arguing over a few possibilities: Satan’s Fingers, the Killers, the Hospital Bombers). They’re the stars of album opener “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” a song that, if not the definitive Mountain Goats song, at least deserves an undisputed mention in the top 5. This isn’t a statement you throw around lightly about a band this prolific, but “Denton” feels like a dizzyingly succinct crash course in everything that makes the Mountain Goats great. In just two-and-a-half minutes, Darnielle pulls off three whiplashing tonal shifts. It starts off seeming like a light, funny song about a couple of high school goofballs, but then-- with a simple, unexpected pivot in the chord progression—things turn suddenly poignant: the band and the boys’ friendship is abruptly interrupted when Cyrus gets sent to a boarding school-- or, as the now-ominous “Hospital Bombers” suggests, could it be a psychiatric facility?-- “where they told him he’d never be famous.” In its closing moments, though, it becomes defiant, triumphant battlecry: “When you punish a person for dreaming his dream/ Don’t expect him to thank or forgive you/ The best ever death metal band out of Denton/ Will in time both outpace and outlive you.” It’s brilliantly structured and smartly crafted, but it wouldn’t be half as stirring if it were recorded with more polish. “Denton” is an imperfectly sung ode to all the songs that don’t get sung because of the people who put into the singers’ heads that the only songs worth singing are the perfect ones.
As advertised on its otherwise blank cover, All Hail West Texas is comprised of “fourteen songs about seven people, two houses, a motorcycle, and a locked treatment facility for adolescent boys.” The specificity of the narrative here is something of a joke: this was Darnielle’s first attempt at a concept album and-- somewhat paradoxically-- it succeeds mostly because of how loose the concept is. None of the other recurring characters get the first-name introductions that Jeff and Cyrus do, and it’s hard to follow which songs are about which of the seven people, or where one person ends and the other begins.
But that’s the point-- and even the brilliance-- of All Hail West Texas. Darnielle finds the common humanity in the people he’s singing about, whether it’s the injured high school football star who accidentally sells acid to an undercover cop (“Fall of the High School Running Back”), the blissfully happy couple in “Jenny” or the thoroughly miserable one in “Fault Lines”. There’s no shortage of contenders for “most devastating moment on All Hail West Texas”, but my vote goes to the half-second beat between tracks 8 and 9, the tender “Riches and Wonders” (“We are strong, we are faithful, we are guardians of a rare thing…/ And we dance like drunken sailors, lost at sea, out of our minds”) and the searing pre-break-up travelogue “The Mess Inside” (“We went down to New Orleans one weekend in the spring/ Looked hard for what we’d lost/ It was painful to admit it, but we couldn’t find a thing”). Are these two songs about the same couple? The suggestion that they could be-- that the potent feeling captured in “Riches” is too often something fleeting-- stings worse than knowing for sure.
As the Panasonic RX-FT500’s swansong, All Hail West Texas (which finally came out, first on cassette, in 2002) does mark the end of something fleeting, too. Later in 2002, Darnielle released the excellent Tallahassee-- not only the first “hi-fi” Mountain Goats record, but also the first in a series of concept albums that stick to much clearer narratives. But in the retrospective ruminations prompted by Merge’s new CD/LP reissue of this album, it feels less like a turning point in Darnielle’s career than an undeniable sweet spot. Mountain Goats fans are generally divided between the lo-fi diehards who champion the unpolished virtues of the early stuff and the people who prefer the more finely crafted later records. But All Hail West Texas (as well as the highlights of the previously unreleased material included with the reissue, like “Answering the Phone” and the proto-Tallahassee sketch “Indonesia”) is the best of both worlds: a snapshot of the moment when Darnielle had honed his lyrical and melodic sensibilities well enough to write songs as good as “Jenny” and “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton”, but also perhaps before he actually realized how good and enduring these songs actually were.
Revisiting All Hail West Texas over two decades into the Mountain Goats’ existence makes a central irony in their story all too clear: it’s not a lonely record anymore. A handful of these songs remain the most iconic in the Mountain Goats catalog, which-- thanks to Darnielle’s cult fanbase that seems to be steadily, improbably increasing with each year-- means that some of the lines that echoed off the empty walls that summer in Ames, Iowa have now been screamed by thousands and thousands of different people. When Darnielle put most of these songs to tape in 1999, even to his fans he seemed like someone who’d end up a committed but obscure lifer on the indie cassette circuit; it was hard to imagine there’d ever be a wide audience for the kind of eccentric, homespun music he was making. But remember: people underestimated Jeff and Cyrus, too. | {
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The US helped set fire to Syria. And now that Russia is trying to put out that fire, Washington is accusing them of not fighting the fire in the right way, says retired CIA and State Department official, Larry Johnson.
The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, has called for Russia and Syria to be investigated for alleged war crimes in Aleppo.
This statement comes as Russia has welcomed the suggestion of the UN Special Envoy for Syria to let Al-Nusra militants leave the war-ravaged town of Aleppo as a way of assisting the civilians there.
Washington has threatened to impose "costs" on Russia over the Syrian conflict.
It's the starkest warning so far from the US, which has been ramping up the rhetoric against Russia in recent weeks, moving from criticism to thinly veiled threats.
RT: First it was an end to cooperation with Russia, then it was the mention of so called costs. Now it's diplomatic sanctions and talk of a war crimes investigation. Is Kerry serious here or is it merely a continued ramping up of the rhetoric? What can this rhetoric lead to?
Read more
Larry Johnson: I am hoping he is not serious. Unfortunately, this heated rhetoric out of Kerry is buttressed by some Republicans as well. There’s almost a collective madness that is taking hold of many Americans. And the irony of all of this is if we are going to apply the same standard they now are trying to impose upon Russia, the US would be before international tribunals facing off accusations of war crimes for at least 30-40 years. You can start the litany with Vietnam and move forward. This is really a very unwise move and frankly I find it frightening.
RT: The US is calling for a war crimes investigation on Russia and Syria over the alleged killing of civilians. But, for example, in July this year, there was an attack in Manbij that killed 28 people and the US admitted it was bombing in this area. Where is the independent investigation into that?
LJ: The other thing that has been going here is that the US is akin to an arsonist. We helped set fire to Syria. And now that Russia and others are trying to put out that fire, we are accusing them of not fighting the fire in the right way. We started the fire, the US along with the UK, Saudis and Turks. The money that was being funneled to opposition groups for the expressed purpose of trying to provoke a war with Bashar Al-Assad. And then there has been disconcerted propaganda after what we’ve seen underway. The most recent aspect of it was this documentary film called ‘White Helmets’, which is a propaganda effort designed to shape opinion in the West and to build sentiment for some sort of military intervention in Syria. And all this comes against the backdrop that the US, whether it wants to admit it or not, has been helping to fund radical jihadists in Syria. That has to stop. The US is blind to several things, such as the fact that we depend upon Russia to be able to get back and forth from the space station. It is really childish and immature kind of policy - the chest-thumping - we’ve seen coming out of John Kerry’s mouth. Frankly, it just reflects a lack of leadership at the top, from Barack Obama on down.
‘Kerry is posturing and pandering to the domestic and foreign audience’
Former counter-terrorism officer Charles Shoebridge thinks that “Kerry is hedging his bets as to the (...) diplomatic and indeed the military situation on the ground in Syria; the direction of travel of those processes.”
“We’ve seen again and again where Kerry grandstands, he tends to go onto a soapbox and speak in a very bellicose, counterproductive and threatening way. Then behind the scenes he seems to be able to come to an accommodation with Lavrov and others, even if then subsequently America is unable to deliver on those undertakings he has signed into. For example, the recent Geneva agreements regarding separation of the so-called moderates from the more extremist fighters that Russia and indeed America committed to attacking”, Shoebridge said.
In his opinion, it may well be that “some degree of posturing is going on.”
“Kerry is pandering to the domestic and foreign audience that, in its diverse ways, makes up the elements of the US foreign policy - the different lobby groups. He has to think about the Saudis, the Israelis, the Qataris as well as all the different lobbying pressure groups at home, And of course, that’s in an election year. So, therefore one has to take some of his points with a pinch of salt. But nonetheless it is still has the effect of ramping up the psychological pressures on all parties because he paints himself into a corner. And that’s particularly when America is hardly one to lecture on war crimes.
At the moment, [the US] supplies arms freely to Israel, to Saudi Arabia, to other countries that are committing war crimes, and certainly in Saudi Arabia’s case which is committing war crimes on a daily basis in Yemen. So he opens himself and America up to criticism on that angle”, he told RT. | {
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京都アニメ会社放火事件 放火された京都アニメーションの第一スタジオ近くの献花台に捧げられたメッセージと京アニグッズ ＝１日午前、京都市伏見区（永田直也撮影） PR
アニメ制作会社「京都アニメーション」（本社・京都府宇治市）の放火殺人事件をめぐり、政府が被害者らへの寄付金を「地方公共団体に対する寄付金」と位置付け、税額控除制度を活用して寄付者の税負担を軽減する方向で調整していることが２１日、分かった。犯罪被害に関する寄付金を災害義援金と同じように扱うことは異例。特に企業が寄付しやすい環境をつくる狙いがあり、支出金の全額を決算時に損金として算入できる制度を活用する。
７月１８日に発生した事件では３５人が犠牲になった。貴重な人材や制作拠点を失った京アニには、アニメファンなど個人だけでなく、国内外の企業からも支援の申し出が相次いでいる。
京アニが開設した専用口座には、業界団体などの見舞金や募金を含めるとすでに２０億円以上が集まり、今後さらに増える見通しだ。
ただ、企業の寄付は法人税法上、原則として資本金などに応じて算出する一定の限度額しか所得から差し引くことができない。企業による寄付が無制限に行われ、所得額を低く抑えられれば法人税収の減少につながるためだ。寄付を検討する企業は少なくないが、税制上の優遇措置がないため、これまで判断が慎重になるケースがあった。
さらに、京アニの口座にある支援金は収益とみなされ、京アニ側の課税対象となる。遺族や負傷者への補償に加え、会社の再建を急ぐ京アニにとって、想定外の税負担が今後の復旧の足かせになるおそれもある。
PR
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Informed Comment
Robots, Race, Globalization and the 1%
Posted on 07/19/2013 by Juan Cole
The big question is whether Detroit’s bankruptcy and likely further decline is a fluke or whether it tells us something about the dystopia that the United States is becoming. It seems to me that the city’s problems are the difficulties of the country as a whole, especially the issues of deindustrialization, robotification, structural unemployment, the rise of the 1% in gated communities, and the racial divide. The mayor has called on families living in the largely depopulated west of the city to come in toward the center, so that they can be taken care of. It struck me as post-apocalyptic. Sometimes the abandoned neighborhoods accidentally catch fire, and 30 buildings will abruptly go up in smoke.
Detroit had nearly 2 million inhabitants in its heyday, in the 1950s. When I moved to southeast Michigan in 1984, the city still had over a million. I remember that at the time of the 1990 census, its leaders were eager to keep the status of a million-person city, since there were extra Federal monies for an urban area of that size, and they counted absolutely everyone they could find. They just barely pulled it off. But in 2000 the city fell below a million. In 2010 it was 714,000 or so. Google thinks it is now 706,000. There is no reason to believe that it won’t shrink on down to almost nothing.
The foremost historian of modern Detroit, Thomas J. Sugrue, has explained the city’s decline. First of all, Detroit grew from 400,000 to 1.84 million from 1910-1950 primarily because of the auto industry and the other industries that fed it (machine tools, spare parts, services, etc.) From 1950 until now, two big things happened to ruin the city with regard to industry. The first was robotification. The automation of many processes in the factories led to fewer workers being needed, and produced unemployment. (It was a trick industrial capitalism played on the African-Americans who flocked to Detroit in the 1940s to escape being sharecroppers in Georgia and elsewhere in the deep South, that by the time they got settled the jobs were beginning to disappear). Then, the auto industry began locating elsewhere, along with its support industries, to save money on labor or production costs or to escape regulation.
The refusal of the white population to allow African-American immigrants to integrate produced a strong racial divide and guaranteed inadequate housing and schools to the latter. Throughout the late 1950s and the 1960s, you had substantial white flight, of which the emigration from the city after the 1967 riots was a continuation. The white middle and business classes took their wealth with them to the suburbs, and so hurt the city’s tax base. That decrease in income came on top of the migration of factories. The fewer taxes the city brought in, the worse its services became, and the more people fled. The black middle class began departing in the 1980s and now is mostly gone.
Other observers have suggested other concomitants of the decline, like poor city planning or the inability to attract foreign immigrants in sufficient numbers. I suspect that the decline of Detroit as a port is important somehow to the story (only one of the four old locks at Sault St. Marie lets big ships come down to the lower Great Lakes and therefore to Detroit any more. A new, big [pdf] modern lock is being built to accommodate larger vessels, but it will be a decade before it opens. Some observers point out that Detroit would make sense as a Midwest hub port for international shipping containers if its harbor was expanded and linked by rail to the cities of the region, but I suspect the new lock at the Soo is a prerequisite.
After all these decades of dashed hopes, it is hard for me to take too seriously any assertions that the city is about to turn the corner or that some renewal project is about to succeed. At this point it seems to me a question of whether you retain some of the population that will otherwise leave. I find particularly unlikely the idea that urban farming is part of the solution. It sounds cute, but farmers don’t make nearly as much money as urban industrial workers, which is why they mostly went to the cities. You can’t put money into a city that way.
While other cities have avoided Detroit’s extreme fate, I think the nation as a whole faces some of the intractable problems that the city does, and I don’t think we have a solution for them.
Take robots (and I really just mean highly mechanized and computerized production of commodities). More and more factory work is automated, and advances in computer technology could well make it possible to substantially increase productivity. This rise of the robots violates the deal that the capitalists made with American consumers after the great Depression, which is that they would provide people with well-paying jobs and the workers in turn would buy the commodities the factories produced, in a cycle of consumerism. If the goods can be produced without many workers, and if the workers then end up suffering long-term unemployment (as Detroit does), then who will buy the consumer goods? Capitalism can survive one Detroit, but what if we are heading toward having quite a few of them?
It seems to me that we need to abandon capitalism as production becomes detached from human labor. I think all robot labor should be nationalized and put in the public sector, and all citizens should receive a basic stipend from it. Then, if robots make an automobile, the profits will not go solely to a corporation that owns the robots, but rather to all the citizens. It wouldn’t be practical anyway for the robots to be making things for unemployed, penniless humans. Perhaps we need a 21st century version of ‘from all according to their abilities, to all according to their needs.’
Communally-owned mechanized/ computerized forms of production would also help resolve the problem of increasing income inequality in the United States. The top 1% is now taking home 20% of the national income each month, up from 10% a few decades ago. The 1% did a special number on southeast Michigan with its derivatives and unregulated mortgage markets; the 2008 crash hit the region hard, and it had already been being hit hard. The Detroit area is a prime example of the blight that comes from having extreme wealth (Bloomfield Hills, Grosse Pointe) and extreme poverty (most of Detroit) co-existing in an urban metropolitan area. It doesn’t work. The wealthy have no city to play in, and the city does not have the ability to tax or benefit from the local wealthy in the suburbs. These problems are exacerbated by de facto racial segregation, such that African-Americans are many times more likely to be unemployed than are whites, and to live in urban blight rather than in nice suburbs.
The crisis of capitalism is being delayed in part because of the rise of Asia and the emergence of new consumer markets in places with rapidly growing populations. American corporations have relocated to those places with increasing numbers of people and cheap labor, leaving working communities like Detroiters abandoned and idle. US companies are making goods in Vietnam to sell to middle class Chinese and Indians. But the world population will level off in 2050 and probably will decline thereafter. At that point, consumerism will have reached its limits, since there will be fewer consumers every year thereafter. (There is also the problem that classical 1940s and 1950s consumerism is environmentally unsustainable).
With robot labor, cheap wind and solar power, and a shrinking global population, post-2050 human beings could have universally high standards of living. They could put their energies into software creation, biotech, and artistic creativity, which are all sustainable. The stipend generated by robot labor would be a basic income for everyone, but they’d all be free to see if they could generate further income from entrepreneurship or creativity. And that everyone had a basic level of income would ensure that there were buyers for the extra goods or services. This future will depend on something like robot communalism, and an abandonment of racism, so that all members of the commune are equal and integrated into new, sustainable urban spaces.
Insisting on a 19th century political economy like barracuda capitalism in the face of the rise of mechanized smart labor and the decline of human-based industry produces Detroit. Racial segregation and prejudice produces Detroit. Shrinking and starving government and cutting services while forcing workers to work for ever shrinking wages (or even forcing them out of the labor market altogether) produces Detroit. In essence, Detroit is the natural outgrowth of the main principles of today’s Tea Party-dominated Republican Party. It doesn’t work, and isn’t the future.
The future is not Detroit or today’s GOP-dominated state legislature in Lansing. It is Something Else. Michigan’s slow, painful decline is trying to tell us something, that robots, race and unhealthy forms of globalization are death to cities under robber baron rules. We need new rules. | {
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Kim Jong Un’s luxury ski resort will be used to conduct training for North and South Korean skiers ahead of next month’s Winter Olympics, providing a propaganda showcase for the despot’s multimillion pet project that's been riddled with controversy.
A South Korean delegation is expected to tour North Korean sites Tuesday, including the Masikryong ski resort, where events will be held ahead of the Olympic Games. The ski resort will host training for non-Olympic skiers, South Korea’s Unification Ministry announced after a joint meeting with the North last week.
The resort, near the city of Wonsan along the country’s northern coast, opened in 2013 and was one of the despot’s first major projects after assuming power. North Korean propaganda website “Today Chosun” on Monday began promoting the extravagant site, labeling it as Kim Jong Un’s signature achievement.
"Masikryong Ski Resort is a world-class one that lacks for nothing," the propaganda site said, according to Yonhap News Agency. "The resort is about 14 million square meters in its total area, and has 10 slopes, which are 40 meters to 120 meters wide.”
But the luxury resort — complete with snow-covered slopes, hotels, restaurants and shops — wasn’t always lauded by visitors as a “world class” vacation destination.
“The idea of joint training could be used as a propaganda tool to rationalize how far-sighted Kim Jong Un was in making what was actually an anachronistic decision to build the ski resort at a time when ordinary citizens are starving to death," Kim Sung-han, a former South Korean vice foreign minister, told Reuters on Sunday.
NORTH KOREA SENDING 22 ATHLETES TO WINTER OLYMPICS, BOTH COUNTRIES TO MARCH TOGETHER
Masikryong ski cost an estimated $35 million to build and was up and running within 10 months, what North Koreans proudly called “Masikryong speed.” However, visitors noted “some of the trimmings are less than perfect,” the Guardian reported.
“The design is quite modern and seems very much like a Chinese/European ski chalet,” visitors wrote in The Guardian.
But Korea Ski Association said the resort meets the International Ski Federation’s requirements as a training facility, according to the Korea Herald.
Despite its glamorous appearance, the ski resort reportedly has mostly been a “ghost town” since its opening. A 2017 report by NBC also showed North Korean citizens, including children, were tasked with clearing the snow on the roads near the resort with “makeshift wooden shovels.” No salt was scattered on the streets and snowplows were nowhere in sight, the report said.
Some of those clearing the snow were children as young as 11.
NORTH KOREA'S 'ARMY OF BEAUTIES' CHEERLEADING SQUAD HEADING TO SOUTH KOREA FOR OLYMPICS
Kim has made an effort to increase his regime’s tourism to boost foreign currency flowing into the country amid the toughening international sanctions. The Hermit Kingdom previously attempted to draw international interest to the ski resort by inviting celebrities such as former NBA star, and Kim's friend, Dennis Rodman.
South Korean critics said the use of the ski resort would only promote the location Kim reportedly hopes to become a tourist hotspot.
“Masikryong resort opened in 2013, and North Korea is busy promoting it because not enough foreigners are visiting. For our players to train there is preposterous,” said Rep. Na Kyung-won of the Liberty Korea Party on TBS radio, according to the Korea Herald. “I think [the Olympics] are being used for North Korean propaganda.”
KIM JONG UN'S EX, NORTH KOREA'S GIRL BAND LEADER APPEARS AT OLYMPIC MEETING DESPITE GRUESOME EXECUTION RUMORS
South Korean officials defended the decision last week as an effort to promote “Peace Olympics.”
"The idea is part of Seoul's vision to make the upcoming event the ‘Peace Olympics,’” an official at Seoul's unification ministry said, according to Yonhap. “It was proposed as a way to help improve inter-Korean ties and ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula, and it was realized [in the two sides' agreement]." | {
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Our new issue, “After Bernie,” is out now. Our questions are simple: what did Bernie accomplish, why did he fail, what is his legacy, and how should we continue the struggle for democratic socialism? Get a discounted print subscription today !
The poster for this year’s official celebrations of the Portuguese Revolution features a large question mark against a red background. It’s a fitting symbol for an event open to many interpretations. Does Portugal again stand at a crossroads? Or has the revolutionary legacy been co-opted once and for all? Does the poster highlight the revolution’s unfinished business, or put into question the wider gains it made? The Portuguese Revolution of 1974–5, also known as the Carnation Revolution, was the hottest topic of the post-1968 left. At the time, thousands of international revolutionaries travelled to Portugal to get a glimpse of what popular power and real democracy could look like. In their eyes, the revolutionary process in Portugal posed an alternative to both Western capitalism and the Soviet model. Like much of the Left associated with 1968 and after, the memory of these tumultuous years has largely faded into oblivion abroad. Yet in Portugal, the revolution remains a reference point by actors on both sides of the battle over austerity. While former Maoist student leader and current President of the European Commission Manuel Barrosso is a prominent supporter of the “refoundation of the Portuguese state,” which seeks to tear up the last vestiges of the revolution, a new generation of activists associated with groups such as Que Se Lixe a Troika (Screw the Troika), or, a precarious workers’ organization, continue to sing Zeca Afonso’s song Grandola Vila Morena on picket lines and at rallies. The song signaled the beginning of the coup d’état led by leftist military officers of the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA) who initially seized the public radio station on 25 April 1974, was sung unison at this year’s official celebrations. Beneath the cloak of unity, bitter wars have been raging over the nature of 1974–5, the government’s eager submission to the Troika’s austerity agenda, and whether the new Portuguese left is up for the task of providing a people ravaged by capitalism with a viable alternative to it.
Maybe news from May 1968 — a general strike in France, the Vietcong offensive, the uprisings in the US ghettoes — reached the fringes of the Iberian Peninsula with a bit of delay. At the time, Portugal was the poorest country in Western Europe. Its economy depended heavily on raw materials imports from its African colonies. It manufactured these at home in order to export. Low levels of consumption and economic devastation created a powder-keg in a country that was ruled by a fascist regime, a remnant of Europe’s past. The military had been fighting a thirteen-year-long colonial war in Mozambique which had both exhausted the conscript soldiers and stalled economic growth at home. By 1973, when the world was still on fire, socialist and communist agitation was widespread in the military ranks. For the Communist Party (PCP), which had operated in clandestine conditions since the end of World War II, circumstances suddenly changed when domestic class struggle began to catch up to their agitation. More than 100,000 workdays were lost to industrial action between October 1973 and April 1974 alone. When the military signaled the overthrow of the fascist Salazar regime by playing Afonso Zeca’s song, people’s fears instilled by decades of dictatorship were vanquished. To the MFA’s own surprise, the popular classes disobeyed their orders to stay at home. Armed with red carnations, the people of Lisbon unleashed a wave of popular support for the soldiers who stuck them down the barrels of their guns, turning the flower into the symbol of a popular revolution. Today, right-wing revisionists argue that the regime was opening itself up to the idea of democracy and European integration in any case, and that the revolution simply prolonged the process. The insurrectionary actions against the much-hated regime tell another story. On the first day, the people occupied the general headquarters of Salazar’s secret police, the PIDE. Once known as one of the world’s most effective secret services, the PIDE was so despised that workers and rank-and-file soldiers of the MFA chased undercover agents into neighboring Spain or underground during the course of the revolution. In a process that came to be known as saneamento, bosses, factory owners, middle management, and school principals who had collaborated with the Salazar regime were forced out of their positions by popular mandate. Over the course of the next nineteen months, Portugal was to become a laboratory of popular democracy and self-management. People occupied empty buildings and turned them into homes. They created workers’ councils, cooperatives, and free clinics. Newspapers and radio stations came under direct democratic control. In the countryside, workers helped peasants to plough the land. Children taught adults to read. The Portuguese people did not wait for the provisional government to ratify the freedom of assembly in parliament, but established it through their daily demonstrations. Political demands spilled over into economic ones. People won the right to organize in trade unions, the minimum wage, holiday and sick pay. Over one and a half years, the insurgents could push back two coup attempts and dethrone six provisional governments. It seemed like nothing could stop the revolutionary tide. Yet the newly-found Socialist Party — set up among others by the German Social Democratic Party — and high-ranking military officers were keen to return to business as usual. They wanted to see Portugal integrated into Europe, while the Communist Party adhered to a “stagist theory” which would have catastrophic political consequences. In this view, Portugal would first have to undergo a democratic revolution before meeting the conditions necessary for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. Thus, when moderate and right-wing sections of the armed forces finally regained control on 25 November 1975, the Communist Party (PCP) — by far the largest organization in the country — failed to support a group of rebelling soldiers that continued to occupy a barracks on the outskirts of Lisbon. This would mark the preliminary end of the revolutionary mobilizations, and the chance for a revolutionary alternative to emerge in the country. The CIA-backed coup against Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity government in Chile, the historical compromise of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the establishment of liberal democracy in Greece post-junta, and the ensuing peaceful transition after Franco in Spain contributed to the feeling that revolutions were deemed to fail. But the revolutionary turmoil in Portugal would shape the country for years to come.
The Carnation Revolution helped establish the Portuguese welfare state as part of the post-revolutionary settlement. Women had the right to choose and could divorce their husbands. Free healthcare, public education and other services became the common sense among all political parties. While other European countries received their first taste of neoliberalism in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Portugal was moving into the opposite direction. For a time, the country remained instable with frequently changing governments. In this period, Portugal’s process of Europeanization and integration into the EEC/EU also hailed a new set of policies associated with the Washington Consensus. The fractures at the top of society had displaced mass mobilizations until militant student demonstrations in 1992 played a tremendous role in bringing down the Cavaco government, the first government with an absolute majority since the fall of the dictatorship. With Portuguese state debt amounting to €209 billion, or the equivalent to 126.3% of the Gross Domestic Product, the €78 billion heavy bailout package in 2011 would put Portugal at the mercy of bondholders and financial sharks. Economist and leading member of the Left Bloc Francisco Louca told me in an interview, “An economy with a deficit of three percent cannot pay an interest rate of four percent. If debt creates debt, cancellation is the only possible solution.” Yet, debt cancellation was not on the agenda. Instead, the ruling coalition — made up of the Social Democrats (PSD, a right-wing party despite its name,) and the Conservatives (CDS) — cut civil servants’ salaries by over €1,500, or 10%; those earning over €1,000 had their holiday pay scrapped and more than 600,000 public sector jobs — around four out every five public sector workers in the entire country — came under severe scrutiny. According to Eurostat figures, 24% of the Portuguese population now live below the poverty line. In the budget for 2013, the ruling coalition demanded €3.5 billion worth of further cuts to health care, social security, and education. Not only would this plunge Portugal deeper into crisis, but it would also destroy the last gains of the revolution. The process of Europeanization in Portugal that began with the revolution has taken a perverse twist in more recent years. As the government committed itself to selling off €5 million worth of state assets, German and French companies made sure to snap up shares of profitable state-owned companies at a fraction of their original value. In December 2012, the government sold its shares of the profitable airport provider ANA to the French company VINCI for a bargain price. More recently, the French call centre giant Teleperformance won the government bid recently for Saude 24 (Health 24), a telemedicine service. The new owners of “Saúde 24” immediately embarked on restructuring the vital service. Yet more than 400 workers across two call centers took unofficial strike action over the lack of proper working contracts (“falsos recibos verdes”). When I spoke to Tiago, a nurse with nine years of work experience in emergency rooms, he told me “the rope is around our necks, but we remain firm.” It is this feeling of necessity and hopelessness in the face of the Troika which has broken the silence in Portugal once again. In late 2012 and early 2013, Portugal witnessed the largest mobilizations since the fall of the Salazar dictatorship. On 15 September 2012, the Que Se Lixe A Troika (Screw the Troika) coalition mobilized more than one million people into the streets. This demonstration was followed by a general strike called by the main Communist-dominated trade union confederation, the CGTP, on 14 November 2012. At the main demonstration in Lisbon, dock workers engaged in clashes with police in front of the parliament building. On 2 March 2013, the Screw the Troika Coalition once again called for democratic assemblies to censure the government. In a country of ten million inhabitants, it is estimated that more than 1.5 million people participated in the protests across eighty towns and cities. In 2013, the teachers went on strike during examination period. The strike lasted for more than three weeks and aimed to stop the latest austerity package that would impose drastic cuts to public education, increase their working hours, and lift the pension age. Catarina Principe, an activist with the Bloco de Esquerda now living in Germany, wrote at the time: “During this strike, teachers all over the country built networks of solidarity to support them. The national unions, of course, mobilized a big infrastructure to keep the strike going, but . . . many of these solidarity actions were proposed and put into practice by rank-and-file teachers in their schools.” On all these demonstrations, it has been particularly the younger people who chant Zeca Afonso’s “Grandola Vila Morena.” Zeca’s revolutionary song acts as the link between disparate struggles against austerity, extending the collective memory of the revolution to a new generation of activists who don’t have the same political structures, parties, and institutions of workers’ power as during the height of the revolution. Students at the ISCTE University in Lisbon, for example, hit the headlines when they sang the revolutionary anthem at Deputy Prime Minister Miguel Relvas in front of rolling television cameras and forced Relvas to flee the building. It appears that the new movement aims to get down to the old unfinished business of sanamento. The military has also raised its head again. On 6 November 2012, more than 5,000 local police officers marched against the government’s plans to stop early retirement and to end free public transport and healthcare for police officers. Only a few days later on November 10, 10,000 active and retired members of the military in civilian dress marched against austerity through Lisbon. There have been a number of demonstrations since. Some officers complained that their salaries have been cut by as much as 25%. One banner read: “The military is unhappy, the people are unhappy,” Reminding many of the role that radical officers played in the 1974–5 Revolution, one member of the military went on to say, “We will do everything so that the indignation of the people will not be suppressed.” During the November 2012 general strike, I spoke to sanitation workers, metro drivers, teachers, postal employees — all of whom compared the situation to the revolutionary years. Paolo, a postal worker, said, “I haven’t seen anything like this since the revolution back when I was three years old. This is a struggle of workers against the capitalists. We need the same to happen here as in Greece and Spain.” Francisco Louca, who was an activist during the revolution and had been arrested for a protest against the colonial war in December 1972, was more skeptical: “Young people today chant Grandola, Vila Morena, the wonderful and meaningful song used as the radio signal for the military operation in April 1974. One generation later people have re-appropriated the symbols of the revolution. But new modes of politics require different visual representations.” This poses a unique problem to a movement in its infancy. At a time when the possibility of revolution has been largely written out of history, the memory of past revolutions can reduce itself to mere nostalgia. But a new generation of activists appears to be using it to root their organizations in a lineage of resistance in Portugal. Whether they are successful depends on whether they are able to move beyond the mere choreography of protests and root their organizations in the popular neighborhoods of Bela Vista and Sétubal, where more than fifty percent of the population live below the poverty line. | {
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The Japanese scored and provided and assist on his return for Borussia Dortmund so how come Manchester United failed so miserably in getting the best from a clearly talented player?
There was one picture that stood out last week as Shinji Kagawa was back in training with Borussia Dortmund. Jürgen Klopp, clearly delighted to have his Japanese superstar back, had his arm tenderly around the 25-year-old’s shoulder. Both were smiling.
Looking at the picture it was impossible not to wonder whether Sir Alex Ferguson, David Moyes or Louis van Gaal had ever tried something similar during the Japanese’s miserable two-year spell in England – and whether such a warm approach is crucial in order to get the playmaker to produce the kind of football he is so obviously capable of.
The Dortmund fans are delighted to have him back and flocked to an autograph signing session last Wednesday while the sales of his No7 shirt have vastly outnumbered those of Bayern’s signings from late August, Mehdi Benatia and Xabi Alonso. As far as reunions go, this one has the potential to be remarkably successful.
One thing Kagawa will not be afforded, however, is a gradual reintegration into the team with which he won the Bundesliga title in 2011 and 2012. With Marco Reus out injured for four weeks the Japanese will be expected to play a significant part when Arsenal visit in the Champions League on Tuesday. Kagawa may even start in the No10 role as Dortmund struggle with injury problems before a tie they lost 1-0 last season, thanks to an Aaron Ramsey goal.
Apart from Reus, Klopp is likely to be without the following midfielders against Arsenal: Oliver Kirch, Nuri Sahin, Jakub Blaszczykowski and Ilkay Gündogan, although the latter is actually nearing a first-team return after terrible injury problems over the past two seasons. Jonas Hofmann, another option in attacking midfield, has been loaned to Mainz.
Klopp said: “I had 15 players available [against Freiburg on Saturday] so I can’t just say to Shinji: ‘Hey, why don’t you sit in the stands and take in a bit of the atmosphere.’ He will be needed. I can’t wait a few weeks.”
As it was, Kagawa celebrated his second debut for Dortmund with a goal and an assist in the 3-1 win against Freiburg, before leaving the pitch after suffering from cramps. “Today I had goosebumps the whole time. It was very refreshing and a joy to play again in this stadium,” he said afterwards.
Will there be a reaction against Arsenal? Quite possibly, and Hans-Joachim Watzke, the Dortmund chief executive who concluded the cut-price, £6.3m return of “the lost son” – as Kagawa has been labelled – is fully aware that they will need to be patient before Kagawa is back to his best.
“We have to give him time,” Watzke told Die Welt. “He was our No10 in some very successful years and then it is understandable that the fans’ fantasies take flight [when he returns]. But we will not overload him with expectations.
“The fact is that he has not ‘unlearnt’ how to play football. He has just lost a bit of confidence, although he hasn’t played as little at Manchester United as some people seem to think. Clearly the time at United did not unfold as he had hoped it would so now we have to massage his soul and that is what we are doing.
“We are sure that he will get the peace, the time and the appreciation he needs to get back to his absolute best. The people here have longed for him for two years and what is happening here at the moment is nothing short of massive hype.”
“Massive hype”? No pressure then Shinji…? Either way, it will be fascinating to see whether Klopp can restore Kagawa’s powers. There is a precedent, of course, with Sahin, who left Dortmund for Real Madrid and ended up at Liverpool at the start of the 2012-13 season. Come January, Sahin was back at the Westfalenstadion, saying: “I did not fail at Liverpool. Brendan Rodgers wanted me to play as a No10. But I do not play behind the strikers. I talked to him and asked him why he was playing me there. It is not my real position. The coach could not answer me …thank God I have left Brendan Rodgers.”
Kagawa would probably say similar things about his managers at Manchester United, but then he is too polite for that. The stats can do all the talking instead. For Dortmund he scored 21 goals in 49 league games, while at United that figure was six in 38 games. He created 77 chances for Dortmund in those games while the corresponding figure for United was 35. No wonder he is happy to be back.
“I did actually say in my farewell interview that for me the Borussia Dortmund chapter wasn’t closed,” Kagawa said at his unveiling. “I wanted to fulfil a dream in the Premier League but now I am simply pleased to be back at Dortmund again, with this great team, these incredible surroundings and the unique fans. BVB is like a family and I am proud that they have not forgotten me and that I once again belong to this family.”
One thing is for sure. Kagawa will once again be able to feel that he is appreciated and trusted by his manager. There are also likely to be a few more laughs than there were at Old Trafford or Carrington. At last Thursday’s press conference Klopp was asked in what language he was communicating with Kagawa. “Japanese,” quipped the Dortmund manager, then he smiled, and stood up. | {
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The FBI alleges that 22-year-old Karim Baratov, from Ancaster, Ont., was one of four men connected with a series of cyberattacks carried out on Yahoo that began in early 2014.
But you wouldn't know it from Baratov's online persona.
On Instagram, Baratov presents himself as a high-end car enthusiast. He has frequently posted pictures of Aston Martins, Audis, Mercedes and BMWs, among other cars that he claimed to own; gaining nearly 30,000 followers in the process.
In one post, he describes himself as "well off in high school to be able to afford driving a BMW 7 series and pay off a mortgage on my first house."
In others, he's shown spreading handfuls of $100 bills.
Baratov, who has dual Canadian-Kazakh citizenship, goes by at least two other names according to the FBI. He does not list his profession, nor how he became so well off at such a young age, on social media.
The 22-year-old was arrested Tuesday morning in Ancaster by Toronto police and turned over to the RCMP. (Instagram)
His Instagram profile describes him only as a: "Workaholic. Occasional drawer. Gym rat."
But a cached search reveals another description: "Self made entrepreneur/programmer/web developer/investor."
Clues left on Baratov's various social media profiles and websites registered under his name — coupled with allegations of computer hacking and economic espionage made by the FBI — offer a glimpse into how Baratov may have made his living.
He claimed in postings on the social media site Ask.fm that he made his "first million" when he was 15, working on "online services."
"I prefer online businesses because there is way less risk and less effort in a way," he wrote.
A call to the number tied with Baratov's home address was not answered.
Baratov made a brief appearance in a Hamilton courthouse on Wednesday morning and was returned to custody.
Old websites leave clues
Neighbours on Chambers Avenue where Baratov lives said Wednesday they often puzzled at the young man's lifestyle – to be able to afford to live alone in a large, new house in an expensive subdivision, and to always be seen driving pricey cars.
"His parents either bought him the house, or he's getting money somewhere else, because he doesn't seem to work all day; he just drives up and down the street," said Kerry Carter, a neighbour who lives a few doors down.
Karim Baratov's house in Ancaster. A call to the number tied to Baratov's house address was not answered. (Kelly Bennett/CBC News)
Baratov's Facebook page links to a website called Elite Space, written in Russian, which claims to offer a number of services, including servers for rent in Russia, protection from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and domain names in China.
Though it does not specifically mention hacking, there are clues on other sites that this may also have been among his services.
For example, an email address matching one of Baratov's aliases was used to register an account with a Russian discussion forum, which lists DDoS and hacking as the Canadian user's interests. The profile then links to a website that claims to offer email hacking services for a handful of Russian email services, including Mail.ru, as well as Gmail.
There are also a number of websites registered in Baratov's name, including one called "mail-google.us," and another "mail-yandex.us." Though the websites are no longer online, the URLs appear designed to trick visitors into thinking they are visiting a legitimate Google or Yandex email site — a common phishing tactic.
Karim Baratov is shown in a photo from his Instagram account. In online postings, he claims he made his 'first million' when he was 15, working in online services. (Instagram/Canadian Press)
While it is difficult to definitively link the sites to Baratov, they appear to fit the FBI's description of his alleged illicit work.
According to the agency's indictment, Baratov's job was to use the information gleaned from the Yahoo intrusion to gain access to targets' email accounts with other service providers.
Baratov's last Instagram post was a photo from the 70Down restaurant and lounge in Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood, the night before his arrest. | {
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La Digi24 continuă campania „1989, Anul care a schimbat lumea”. Vă prezentăm imagini document din perioada comunistă, fragmente din jurnalele de actualități și din filmele de propagandă.
În fiecare zi, timp de un an, pentru cei care au trăit în comunism, dar mai ales pentru cei care astăzi au 25 de ani, Digi24 vă prezintă „Imaginile comunismului”. | {
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High tides and 30-foot tall waves expected throughout the day Thursday have led the National Weather Service to issue a coastal flood warning for much of the Oregon Coast and parts of Washington.
The warning is in effect from midnight Thursday to midnight Friday for the north and central coasts of Oregon and for Washington's southern coast.
Coastal residents can expect to see swells up to 32 feet high and higher-than-normal tides, which will reach their high point midday Thursday.
Interested in just how high the waves will get on the Coast in the next few days? You can see charts of the winds and waves here (works better on a computer than on mobile): https://t.co/bFnD7MTOOQ pic.twitter.com/cjnMkLQAj4 — NWS Portland (@NWSPortland) January 17, 2018
Meteorologists believe these conditions will cause erosion and flooding in low-elevation areas along the coast, and expect Willapa Bay, Seaside, Nehalem, Tillamook and Florence to be among the areas at risk.
The weather service is urging residents to be on alert for rising water, and to take the appropriate precautions to protect themselves and their property. However, rivers are well below flood stage, possibly mitigating flooding impacts.
Beach-goers should also watch for sneaker waves, which often wash over jetties and farther up the beach than usual. These waves have killed people along the Pacific Northwest coast in similar weather events, the service said.
-- Anna Marum | {
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To see extremist Islam as a "perversion" of Islam misses an important point. The politically correct insistence that radical versions of Islam somehow pervert an essentially peaceful and tolerant faith forces policy-makers and legislators, church leaders, rabbis, interfaith workers and the public at large to leave to one side an important reality. Flatly, Islam in its original and classic forms has everything to do with today's radicals and the violence they commit. The Qur'an is explicit in its hatred for pagans, Jews and Christians. It calls for the fighting of holy war (jihad) to conquer the non-Muslim world, subdue it, and gradually bring it into the fold of Islam. Islam has been at war with Europe since the seventh century.
Is this to be the political landscape for the future, where groups of people demanding death and destruction are given the freedom of the streets whilst those wishing to hold a peaceful celebration are prevented from doing so?
At the moment, the bar for taking extremists out of circulation is set ridiculously high. People known for their own extremism that reaches pre-terrorist levels should not be walking the streets when they have expressed support for Islamic State (ISIS) or tried to head to Syria or called for the destruction of Britain and other democracies or allied themselves to people already in prison. Their demand for free speech or freedom of belief must never be elevated above the rights of citizens to live safely in their own towns and cities. It is essential for parliament to lower the bar.
On the Sunday morning after the terrorist attacks in London the night of June 3, British Prime Minister Theresa May addressed the nation in a powerful speech. It deserves to be read in full, but several points stand out and call for a response.
We cannot and must not pretend that things can continue as they are. Things need to change and they need to change in four important ways. First, while the recent attacks are not connected by common networks, they are connected in one important sense. They are bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division and promotes sectarianism. It is an ideology that claims our Western values of freedom, democracy and human rights are incompatible with the religion of Islam.
Lower down, she enhances that by saying:
Second, we cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed. Yet that is precisely what the internet, and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide.
No one who has watched the endless stream of radical Muslim preachers who appear on YouTube or who post extremist, anti-Western, anti-democratic, or anti-Semitic opinions on Facebook would object to May's stricture. But given earlier attempts to rein in the providers of so many internet spaces in a demand for better scrutiny and the removal of radicalizing material from their sites, we must remain pessimistic about how far May or any other Western leader can bring effective pressure to bear. Without strong financial disincentives, these rulers of the internet will pay little heed to the concerns of the wider public and our security services.
Perhaps May's strongest statement comes some lines later:
While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is -- to be frank -- far too much tolerance of extremism in our country. So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and across society. That will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations.
Here, she puts her finger on the most sensitive yet compelling reason for our vulnerability. The democracies have been and still are weakened by the very things that in other contexts give us strength. May speaks rightly of our "pluralistic British values". But those values include freedom of speech, freedom of religion, open-mindedness, and tolerance -- things that are not held as desirable values in any Muslim country. Such values are key to our survival as free and tolerant people unrestricted by any overarching ideology. Yet May is right. Even toleration has its limits. While allowing Muslims to live in our societies with full freedom to live their lives according to the tenets of their faith is desirable expression of our openness and love for humanity, we have been tolerant of radical Islam and even traditionalist and conservative Islam where it leads into radicalization and an extremism that erupts in physical assaults, fatalities, and, as intended, widespread public fear.
For years, we have known the identities of radical Islamic preachers and extremist organizations, but we have allowed them to bring their hatred for us onto university and college campuses, into mosques and Islamic centres, and even onto our streets, where they set up stalls to speak and hand out literature. Scroll down here or here to find long lists of radical individuals and organizations, few of which have even been banned. Few terrorist suspects have ever been deported. In a Telegraph article from 2015, one reads:
Here is an astonishing figure to mull over. In the past 10 years, the UK has deported just 12 terrorism suspects from its shores under its Deportation with Assurances (DWA) scheme. In the same period, France deported more than 100 more. The British figures come from a review of the DWA programme that is unlikely to be published until after the general election. It suggests, as we have always suspected, that the UK remains a soft touch for foreign-born jihadists.
It took eight years, 15 court cases and a £25 million bill to keep the hate preacher and terrorist fighter Abu Hamza and his huge family in the UK before he was finally deported (to the United States) in 2012, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment. In that same year, Theresa May (then Home Secretary) was frustrated because another sinister figure, Abu Qatada, could not be deported to Jordan because the European Court of Human Rights had ruled against it for fear of his being tortured there. But in 2013, once Jordan agreed not to do so, he was sent there only to be tried and set free. Last year, he used Twitter to urge Muslims to leave the UK for fear of persecution and "bloodshed" -- a possible encouragement to would-be jihadis to head abroad. May spoke vehemently against the Strasbourg ruling:
It is simply isn't acceptable, that after guarantees from the Jordanians about his treatment, after British courts have found that he is dangerous, after his removal has been approved by the highest courts in our land, we still cannot deport dangerous foreign nationals. ... The right place for a terrorist is a prison cell. The right place for a foreign terrorist is a foreign prison cell far away from Britain.
We constantly undermine ourselves by our need to be principled. This is an ongoing problem in politics. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain's Labour Party, is frequently described as a man of principle, and in many ways that judgement seems fair. Certainly, he has stuck by his socialist principles even if they have led him to adopt positions not well aimed at creating security for Britain. He has supported the IRA; refused many times to condemn their terrorist attacks; has called Hamas and Hizbullah his "friends" and invited their representatives to the British parliament. If that were not enough, he has boasted of his opposition to every piece of anti-terrorist legislation parliament has tried to pass.
In a 2015 interview just shown by the tabloid newspaper The Sun, Corbyn spoke with the Bahrain-based LuaLua Television. Although The Sun is not a reliable source, the clip from the interview shows Corbyn speaking in English with an accurate Arabic translation in subtitles. The interviewer speaks in Arabic. What are alarming are Corbyn's statements, including a criticism of the UK government laws preventing would-be fighters who have travelled to Syria and from returning to the UK:
The British government's response has been to try to make it impossible for them to travel, to restrict their ability to travel, to take upon themselves the ability to remove passports and, strangely, to deny people the right of return – which is legally a very questionable decision.
Surely no responsible politician would want to make it easy for jihadi fighters to come and go between Syria and the UK, especially while Islamic State is encouraging jihadis who leave to go back to European countries to carry out acts of terror -- which seem s to be exactly what has been happening.
In 2002, Corbyn addressed a large anti-Israel rally in London attended by Hizbullah supporters, several radical preachers including Abu Hamza, and 300 members of al-Muhajiroun, a banned extremist organization. According to one left-wing newspaper:
None of these groups called (openly at least) for the destruction of the state of Israel. It was a different story though for the ultra-reactionaries of such organisations as Al Muhajiroun, who held placards reading, "Palestine is muslim". They chanted, "Skud, Skud Israel" and "Gas, gas Tel Aviv", along with their support for bin Laden. Two would-be suicide posers were dressed in combat fatigues with a 'bomb' strapped to their waists. This section accounted for no more than 200-300, but they made a noise far out of proportion to their numbers.[1]
Stories concerning Corbyn's support for jihadis was plastered on the front pages of several newspapers one day before the general election on June 8. He may never take charge of our national security, but following the results of the election, which proved disastrous for May and her Conservative party, it is now not entirely unimaginable that he may yet form a minority government. Overconfidence in her party's strength, a hardline stance on Brexit, and a lack of concern in her Manifesto for public sensitivities concerning the National Health Service, social care and pensions led May to lose the confidence of much of the public, especially some, such as the elderly, who were traditional Tory voters. The campaign she ran turned out to be very badly handled. The two advisers who worked on it have just resigned, and large numbers of citizens, including 60% of Conservatives, are calling on her to resign. She no longer commands the large parliamentary majority of which she was so sure when she called the election, in fact she has no majority at all without pairing with the backward-looking Democratic Unionist Party, founded by bigoted Ian Paisley in 1971 and now the largest party in Northern Ireland. Many predict that the alliance will soon founder.
Whoever remains in power in coming months, the threat of terrorism has risen to the top of the agenda as a public preoccupation. Except that almost nobody talked much about it in the days after the London Bridge attack leading up to the election. Alarmingly, large numbers of young people rushed to vote for the leader of the one party that will do the least to combat that threat. The abolition of student fees or other right-on issues mattered so much more. And yet, in a matter of months, the British people have grown frightened of a beast our political correctness and laxity helped create, a Frankenstein monster that has risen from its slab and shows no signs of lying back down again. This beast has, in a few fell swoops, changed the nature of politics in Britain as it has elsewhere.
Jeremy Corbyn is the last person to whom we should entrust our future safety, yet he is now in a position to water down or cancel any legislation that might ensure more preparedness and better control. Theresa May, whatever her political disaster, has at least promised firmness in our relations with the Muslim community, identifying the problem and calling for action.
That promise of action is exemplified in her statements that:
If we need to increase the length of custodial sentences for terrorist-related offences -- even apparently less serious offences -- that is what we will do. Since the emergence of the threat from Islamist-inspired terrorism, our country has made significant progress in disrupting plots and protecting the public. But it is time to say "Enough is enough".
On June 6, addressing party supporters in Slough, and again speaking about resistance to terrorism, she went farther, saying:
I mean longer prison sentences for those convicted of terrorist offences. I mean making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terrorist suspects back to their own countries. And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they are a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court. And if our human rights laws get in the way of doing it, we will change the law so we can do it.
Clearly, not even May can ride roughshod over essential human rights values and legislation, things put in place to protect the public. Now, with Corbyn looking over shoulder, tough and measured action is in jeopardy. It is clear nonetheless that an excessive concern for the rights of dangerous individuals and hostile communities has served to take away vital protections for the lives of British citizens. This misguided generosity is linked to a growing worry that we have been too relaxed about individuals who have later gone on to commit atrocities in our midst. Salman Abedi, the suicide bomber who murdered 22 concert-goers, including several children, during an Ariane Grande concert in Manchester, had been reported to the authorities no fewer than five times, yet had been allowed to walk free enough to take forward his mission to kill and maim.
Youssef Zaghba, one of the three attackers on London Bridge and Borough Market on June 3, had been stopped in Bologna in 2016 carrying terrorist literature while trying to fly to Istanbul en route for Syria. He told officers "I am going to be a terrorist", was arrested but later released. His name was flagged on an international terrorism database and the Italian authorities notified the British security services. Allowed to go to the UK, he helped kill seven people and injure more.
Even more alarmingly, his accomplice, Khuram Butt, a Pakistani-born British man, was well above the horizon. He had been reported to the security services and was alleged to have been an associate of Anjem Choudary, a radical preacher now serving time in jail for his support for Islamic State. Butt had defended Choudary by calling a Muslim opposed to the preacher an apostate (murtadd); and in 2016, he had appeared in a Channel 4 television documentary where he was seen with others in a park holding an ISIS flag and at two events attended by radical preachers who had been arrested for radicalizing others. One of those preachers, Mohammed Shamsuddin, has said: "Our message is deadly, we are calling for world domination, and for Sharia for the UK."
In 2015, MI5, the UK's domestic intelligence service, stated that it had 3,000 extremists on its watchlist. According to Business Insider:
There are 6,000 employees at GCHQ and 4,000 at MI5. But there are up to 3,000 terror suspects in the UK. At the French ratio, you would need 60,000 officers to track them all. That's almost half of Britain's total number of police officers, 127,000.
What this means, in effect, is that thousands of potential terrorists are left free to live with little interference from the police or MI5. Raising the number of police, as Jeremy Corbyn demands, would place a heavy strain on the economy of a country sailing into uncharted waters as it leaves the EU. The answer must be, as May suggests, a different approach to human rights legislation. At the moment, the bar for taking extremists out of circulation is set ridiculously high. People who are known for their own extremism that reaches pre-terrorist levels should not be walking the streets when they have expressed support for Islamic State or tried to head to Syria or called for the destruction of the UK and other democracies or allied themselves to people already in prison. Their demand for free speech or freedom of belief must never be elevated above the rights of citizens to live safely in their own towns and cities. It is essential for parliament to lower the bar.
That the police and security services are avoiding any real confrontation with Islamists is clear from the contents of this letter, sent on June 7 to the Daily Mail by pro-Israel activist Clive Hyman. It makes troubling treading:
On 18th June, Muslims will be holding a march in central London to celebrate Al-Quds Day. In previous years these marches have called for the destruction of Israel and death to the Jews, and the marchers have carried signs to this effect and flags supporting Hamas, Hezbollah and ISIS. Despite requests from both the Christian and Jewish communities for this march to be cancelled because of the violence it will incite amongst those participating and their followers, Mayor Khan and the Metropolitan police have refused to do so, their reason being that there has been no violence at these marches in previous years. By comparison, an event to honour Israel organised by Christians United for Israel for 22nd June has been cancelled apparently because Mayor Khan and the Metropolitan Police cannot guarantee the safety of those who wish to attend. Is this to be the political landscape for the future, where groups of people demanding death and destruction are given the freedom of the streets whilst those wishing to hold a peaceful celebration are prevented from doing so?
As might be expected, leftists have rejected May's appeal for changes in human rights legislation. They argue that she will need to declare a state of emergency, something that can only be invoked when the life of the nation is under threat. This is not incorrect, since all democracies have to avoid potential dictators using changes in the law to give themselves powers they might not otherwise have. But that is not the whole story.
What May plans to do will take us far, but not far enough. Her weakness, set against Corbyn's show of strength, undermines the likelihood of any serious changes to how Britain tackles the Islamic threat. Bit by bit, the political fear of appearing xenophobic or "Islamophobic" will reassert itself. Labour will make sure of that. Members of parliament with substantial numbers of Muslim constituents will answer calls to water down any legislation that can be labelled as discriminatory to Muslims. It is only when we come to terms with the fact that terrorist attacks are not being carried out by Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Baha'is, Quakers or the members of any religion except Islam.
Regrettably May herself fell into a politically-correct trap in her speech, when she said in reference to Islamic radicalism, "It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a perversion of the truth." It is easy to see what she means by this -- that she wants to distance radicalism and terrorism from the majority of decent Muslims in the UK, the ones like Sara Khan who work to create a British Islam based on the best Islamic values in alliance with the British values May rightly extols. However, to see extremist Islam as a "perversion" of Islam misses an important point. The politically correct insistence that radical versions of Islam somehow pervert an essentially peaceful and tolerant faith forces policy-makers and legislators, church leaders, rabbis, interfaith workers and the public at large to leave to one side an important reality. If not tackled head-on, that reality will not go away.
In a June 3 speech, British Prime Minister Theresa May regrettably fell into a politically-correct trap, when she said in reference to Islamic radicalism, "It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a perversion of the truth." (Photo by Hannah McKay/Pool/Getty Images)
Flatly, Islam in its original and classic forms has everything to do with today's radicals and the violence they commit. The Qur'an is explicit in its hatred for pagans, Jews, and Christians. It calls for the fighting of holy war (jihad) to conquer the non-Muslim world, subdue it, and gradually bring it into the fold of Islam. Muhammad himself led his followers into battle and sent out expeditions out of Arabia before his death in 632. The astonishing Islamic conquests that followed in the Middle East, Europe, and far beyond into Central Asia and India turned a swathe of territories into Islamic fiefdoms, and most of these remain under Muslim rule today. The Ottoman Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 not only destroyed the Eastern Orthodox Roman Empire (the Byzantine Empire), but is still regarded by Muslims as a turning point in the history of the world. The subsequent Ottoman conquests across eastern Europe were only halted when the King of Poland John III Sobieski (1629-1696) defeated a massive Turkish army under the command of Sultan Soleiman I outside the city of Vienna.
In 2015, after Islamist attacks in Paris, French president François Hollande declared that "We are in a war against terrorism, jihadism, which threatens the whole world." But Islam has been at war with Europe since the seventh century. The beheadings, crucifixions, massacres and demolitions of towns and churches carried out by Islamic State today are replicas of wider atrocities carried out by the Muslim conquerors of Spain in the 8th century.[2]
Jihad wars against the Byzantines were carried out twice a year. Spain and Portugal were occupied for centuries until the Christian kingdoms of the north drove the Muslims out, in a process that itself took some centuries. The Ottomans continued to be a threat down to their defeat in the First World War. From the sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries, the Muslim slavers, known as the Barbary pirates, dominated the Mediterranean and took more than a million Christian slaves to North Africa. In the nineteenth century, jihad wars against European colonists were frequent.[3] Today, Europeans and others are fighting wars against Islamic radicals from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria, and on the streets of our own cities.
To be at war is justification for extreme measures. Deportation and internment are unattractive, just as the measures Western countries have been forced to take against their enemies in other wars. But set next to the threat of unending terror in our cities, and given the nature of the people we will deport or intern, they are probably not as bad as the alternative. We will not execute terrorists (just as Israel has never executed the thousands of terrorists who have murdered its citizens) nor torture them or harm their families. Minor adjustments to our human rights laws and the lowering of the bar a bit on what we consider unacceptable are all we need. But that will not stop Jeremy Corbyn and his terrorist-supporting friends crying that such measures will be a "slippery slope" that will set back community relations by decades.
Dr. Denis MacEoin has recently completed a large study of concerns with Islam. He is an Arabist, Persianist, and a specialist in Shi'i Islam. He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
[1] See also here.
[2] See Darío Fernández-Morera, The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, Wilmington, 2016, chapters 1 and 2.
[3] See Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History, The Hague, 1979, especially chapter 3. | {
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A 56-year-old man was arrested Monday after police said he drove naked through his Boynton Beach neighborhood with electrical wires attached to his genitals.
Someone called police after Kurt Allen Jenkins reportedly slowed his white four-door Toyota and made sexual advances toward that person. Jenkins allegedly motioned toward his groin area, at which point the person saw the wires, and opened the passenger-side door.
» Download our PostNOW app to get the latest Breaking News
The caller declined Jenkins’ offer to climb in but snapped a picture of him to show city police.
Jenkins continued his slow drive through the neighborhood west of Congress Avenue and south of Miner Road as school-aged children got off the bus, the caller told police.
Two marked police cars were needed to pull over Jenkins, who reluctantly stepped out of his car only wearing red shorts, a police report states.
An officer handcuffed Jenkins on the ground after he repeatedly ignored police orders, a report states.
Jenkins was hospitalized for three days, court records show. He is scheduled to appear before a Palm Beach County judge on Thursday morning, according to court records.
He is charged with lewd behavior in front of children, indecent exposure and resisting an officer without violence, according to jail records. | {
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Article content continued
Gottlieb also told Goodall that he has appointed an FDA team, including senior career officials and guided by primate veterinarians, to assess the “science and integrity” of the animal research process for the study and whether the research should be resumed. If the study is terminated, he said, the monkeys will be sent to an alternative location that can provide appropriate long-term care.
An FDA spokeswoman said the agency is also considering creating a wider-ranging “function that would provide for even greater oversight of the care of animals in the agency’s possession.”
The FDA actions represent the latest change in how the federal government treats research animals. In 2015, the National Institutes of Health said it would no longer support biomedical research on chimpanzees. The Department of Veterans Affairs said Monday that it would step up its oversight of experiments on dogs after an investigation found canine deaths at a Virginia research facility, USA Today reported.
Photo by Kevin King/Postmedia Network file photo
Goodall was enlisted in the fight against the monkey tests by the White Coat Waste Project, an advocacy group that says its goal is to publicize and end taxpayer-funded animal experiments. In January, the organization obtained 64 pages of documents on the nicotine-addiction research from the FDA under the Freedom of Information Act. It is suing the agency to get more information on the research’s costs, as well as veterinary records and photographs and videos of the experiments.
Based on a brief description on the agency’s website and the FOIA documents, the experiments appeared to involve 12 adolescent and 12 adult monkeys. The goal was “to examine behavioural and biological effects of nicotine in squirrel monkeys,” comparing the two age groups, the website said. The idea seemed to be to get the monkeys addicted to nicotine and then to see how they reacted to decreasing levels of the drug.
“Characterizing the effects of decreasing doses of nicotine on rates of self-administration in a nonhuman primate species will provide valuable information to inform what we might expect in human users when nicotine levels in tobacco products are lowered,” said one of the documents obtained by the White Coat Waste Project. Another document noted that “further information regarding the role of nicotine dose in the onset and maintenance of tobacco product use, particularly during adolescence, would be useful.”
Under federal law, the FDA has the authority to lower nicotine in cigarettes, and officials have long talked about it. In July, Gottlieb said he wanted to curb smoking by lowering the nicotine level in cigarettes to nonaddictive levels. | {
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The Chicago Blackhawks announced a two-year contract extension for general manager Stan Bowman on Wednesday.
Bowman's contract will run through the 2017-18 season. The 40-year-old Bowman, who is the NHL's youngest general manager, is entering his 13th season with the Blackhawks and was promoted to GM on July 14, 2009. The Blackhawks have won two Stanley Cups under his direction.
"Stan has been an integral part of our organizational success and we are proud to reward him with a well-deserved extension," Blackhawks president and CEO John McDonough said in a statement. "From the amateur levels to our team in Chicago, Stan has a great system in place as we all strive for consistent excellence throughout the organization."
The Blackhawks won the 2009-10 Stanley Cup in Bowman's first season as general manager. Because of salary cap restraints, Bowman had to dismantle a bulk of the team the following season. After back-to-back first-round playoff exits and a number of roster moves, the Blackhawks won the 2013 Presidents' Trophy and defeated the Boston Bruins in six games to clinch their second Stanley Cup in four years.
"Hockey-wise, this is a very exciting time to be part of the Blackhawks organization," Bowman said at the University of Notre Dame on the first day of training camp on Wednesday. "We had a tremendous season last year culminating with the ultimate victory. We had a lot of time this summer to enjoy that. As John [McDonough] and I have talked and we've talked to the coaching staff, that was a great moment for our organization, but it's time to close that book and start a new one. That's sort of why we're here. This is the first chapter of the new book for the Blackhawks, and we're excited for what's to come.
"I'm not going really good at defining what dynasty is; I guess I'll leave that for you guys to do. But I think we're striving to be a team that is competing for the Cup every year. We want to sustain this level of success not just for this year or next season, but for a number of seasons. Ultimately, time will tell. Like John [McDonough] said, we're just getting started here. I don't feel any sense of contentment of where we're at. Complacency is not a word that's going to be associated with the Blackhawks."
Bowman has been responsible for drafting current Blackhawks forwards Andrew Shaw and Brandon Saad and re-signing Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Patrick Sharp, Corey Crawford, Bryan Bickell, Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook and Niklas Hjalmarsson.
Bowman previously announced this summer multiyear extensions for coach Joel Quenneville, Bickell, Crawford and Hjalmarsson. He also recently said he planned on Kane and Toews being Blackhawks forever.
Bowman is the son of former NHL coach Scotty Bowman, who had 1,244 career wins and has been part of 13 Stanley Cup championships. Scotty is a Blackhawks hockey operations senior adviser. | {
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THE FACTS The reason people count sheep, as opposed to bluebirds or sailboats, is uncertain; some authorities think it may have to do with a tallying system devised by shepherds in ancient Britain. But there is no question that the phrase has entered the language. And its meaning is clear enough the sheer monotony of the task is meant to lull you to sleep.
But does it work? Scientists at Oxford University put it to the test. In their study, which appeared in the journal Behavior Research and Therapy, two sleep researchers recruited insomniacs and split them into groups. Then they monitored them as they tried different techniques for falling asleep on various nights.
Image Credit... Christoph Neimann
What they found was that subjects took slightly longer to fall asleep on nights they were instructed to distract themselves by counting sheep or were given no instructions at all. But when they were told to imagine a relaxing scene a beach, for example they fell asleep an average of 20 minutes sooner than they did on other nights. Counting sheep, the scientists suggested, may simply be too boring to do for very long, while images of a soothing shoreline or tranquil stream are engrossing enough to concentrate on. | {
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Decided to do something on a whim like this again…
I don’t think this is being translated into English yet, or at least I can’t find it with Google.
Just like Rengoku no Karma, I don’t know how far I will go with this.
Edit: After reading Ewindal and dIoIIoIb’s comments on Reddit (thanks btw), I’ve decided to change it back to Criminal. Thought they were “criminales” because of the manga title. Oops.
Original: http://urasunday.com/criminale/
Download? | {
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For the past month, the centrist Democrats running against Sen. Bernie Sanders have begged Democratic voters not to nominate him. Former Vice President Joe Biden, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar have argued that putting a socialist atop the ticket would help President Donald Trump and hurt Democratic candidates down the ballot. These warnings are well-founded, but they haven’t worked. Sanders has won the popular vote in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada.
Why, despite the warnings, is Sanders still winning? One reason is that a lot of people like him and what he stands for. Another reason is that other candidates are splitting the votes of moderate Democrats, leaving him with a plurality on the left. But there’s a third reason: Socialism doesn’t freak out Democratic voters the way it freaks out other Americans. On this subject, Democrats are very different not just from Republicans, but also from independents, who represent about 40 percent of Americans and about 30 percent of the electorate. Socialism is a loser among independents, and this makes it a liability in a general election. But Democrats don’t feel an aversion to socialism. So perhaps they don’t see the extent of the political danger.
The detachment starts with Sanders voters. In a September poll taken by Data for Progress, 37 percent of them identified themselves not as progressives or liberals, but as socialists, democratic socialists, or communists. Nearly all of them endorsed democratic socialism. In a January NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, most Sanders voters endorsed socialism even without the word “democratic” in front of it. Only 4 percent of them opposed it. These people aren’t likely to buy the argument that nominating a socialist is an unnecessary risk. For them, electing a socialist is the ballgame.
But the problem goes beyond Sanders supporters. Rank-and-file Democrats, as a whole, are significantly more pro-socialist than independents are. And while Republicans, conversely, are more anti-socialist than independents are, the gap between Democrats and independents, on average, is about 10 points bigger than the gap between Republicans and independents.
Over the past year, numerous national polls have asked Americans whether they view socialism positively or negatively. In every poll, Democrats lean in favor of socialism, and independents don’t. In every poll, the opinions of voters or of Americans in the aggregate—Democrats, independents, and Republicans combined—add up to a net rejection of socialism.
When pollsters raise specific objections to socialism, independents tend to agree with those objections. Democrats don’t. In a Monmouth poll taken last spring, most Democrats said socialism wouldn’t take away too many individual rights. But most independents (and therefore most voters, when the answers of Democrats, independents, and Republicans were combined) said it would. A plurality of Democrats, 50 percent to 32 percent, said socialism was compatible with American values. But most independents and voters as a whole said it wasn’t.
It won’t surprise you to hear that Democrats are far more willing than independents to support a socialist candidate. But you might be surprised by how much bigger the partisan gap is for a socialist than for other kinds of candidates. In a Gallup poll taken last month, Democrats didn’t differ much from independents in their stated willingness to vote for a black, female, gay, or atheist presidential nominee. For a Muslim nominee, the gap was more then 30 net percentage points. For a socialist, it was more than 60 points. Three-quarters of Democrats were willing to vote for a socialist. Most independents—and, consequently, most of the Gallup respondents—weren’t.
Why are Americans more likely to refuse (or, at least, to tell pollsters that they refuse) to vote for a socialist than for a woman or a Muslim? Probably because socialism isn’t an innate characteristic or a matter of personal faith. It’s a doctrine about how government should intervene in the lives of other people. That makes it a legitimate reason to vote against a candidate and therefore—unlike race, sex, or religion—a legitimate factor when you’re considering whether to nominate a candidate other voters won’t support.
This chasm endangers Sanders in a general election against Trump. In an ABC/Washington Post poll taken last summer, Biden led Trump in a hypothetical matchup by 10 points. Other potential Democratic nominees tied Trump or barely led him. Sanders held a one-point lead among independents and among voters as a whole. But when respondents were asked to choose between Trump and “a Democratic candidate who you regard as a socialist,” the numbers shifted. Democrats, by a margin of 82 percent to 8 percent, said they’d support the socialist. Independents, given the same choice, went for Trump, 50 percent to 42 percent. With their support, Trump beat the hypothetical socialist, 49 percent to 43 percent.
You could argue, based on this survey, that people who say they’d never vote for a socialist would, in fact, vote for Sanders anyway. He polls fairly well against Trump, and he claims that if Trump attacks him as a socialist, voters will ignore the attacks, because Trump “lies all the time.” But Sanders isn’t an accused socialist. He’s a self-identified socialist. A follow-up survey, taken a week ago by ABC and the Post, shows that this label would hurt him. The pollsters told half their sample that “Sanders identifies himself as a socialist,” and they asked whether “his being a socialist” made respondents more or less likely to support him against Trump. For Democrats, that information was a wash or a net plus. But for independents, it was a loser. Six percent of independents said it made them more likely to support Sanders. Thirty-seven percent said it made them less likely.*
Sanders stipulates that he’s a “democratic” socialist. That distinction helps him, but mostly among Democrats. In a Yahoo News/YouGov poll taken two weeks ago, Democrats agreed that democratic socialism was different from socialism. But a plurality of independents saw no difference. (Voters as a whole were evenly divided.) Only 45 percent of Democrats conceded that Sanders was a socialist; 30 percent said he wasn’t. But more than 60 percent of independents and voters as a whole said Sanders was a socialist. Fewer than 20 percent said he wasn’t.
Running as a democratic socialist isn’t as lethal as running as a socialist. But it’s still pretty bad. In an Emerson poll taken last summer, a plurality of independents (42 percent to 26 percent) said they wouldn’t vote for a self-described democratic socialist. In a November HarrisX poll, 64 percent of independents said they’d never vote for a democratic socialist. In this month’s Yahoo News poll, a 47 percent plurality of independents said they wouldn’t consider voting for a presidential candidate who called himself a democratic socialist. And in the new Post/ABC poll, 33 percent of independents said they were less likely to support Sanders after hearing that he “identifies himself as a democratic socialist.”*
Some advocates of a Sanders nomination believe that independents aren’t really in play. They argue that independents lean toward one party or the other and will vote that way, so it’s more important to turn out the Democratic base than to fuss over voters in the middle. That belief is mistaken. In 2016, independents voted for Trump against Hillary Clinton, 46 percent to 42 percent. In 2018, independents voted for Democratic House candidates against Republican House candidates, 54 percent to 42 percent. In both cases, independents made the difference.
Most Americans don’t like the idea of moving toward socialism, regardless of how you qualify it. In a Suffolk poll taken last spring, a slight plurality of Democrats said they’d be “satisfied with a presidential candidate who thinks the United States should be more socialist.” But steep majorities of independents (72 percent to 18 percent) and voters in the aggregate (67 percent to 22 percent) said they wouldn’t. Most Republicans wouldn’t vote for the Democratic nominee regardless. But these grim numbers go much further.
Democrats, perhaps because they differ from the rest of the electorate in their feelings about socialism, are bad at estimating how socialism would play in a general election. Two weeks ago, in the Yahoo News poll, a 49 percent plurality of Democrats said most, nearly all, or about half of Americans would consider voting for a presidential candidate who called himself a democratic socialist. The guess was incorrect. According to the same poll, only 35 percent of voters said they’d consider voting for such a candidate. Democrats got it wrong.
Yes, Sanders could try to duck the word socialism and just talk about health care and education. But even if he focuses on specific proposals—leaving labels aside—he’ll still face a big divide between Democrats and independents. In the Yahoo News poll, only 39 percent of Democrats opposed “eliminating private health insurance.” Fifty-seven percent of independents opposed that idea. Democrats overwhelmingly favored “a guaranteed annual income” and “forgiveness of all student loan debt.” Independents opposed both policies.
These numbers explain why it’s so hard to stop Sanders in the primary, even though his opponents are correct that in a general election, his socialism would alienate independents and hurt him. The audience to whom these opponents are speaking—the Democratic primary electorate—doesn’t seem to want to hear it. If Sanders wins the nomination and loses the election, it won’t be because Republicans, on this question, falsely accused Democrats of being out of touch with America. It will be because that accusation was true.
Correction, Feb. 24, 2020: This article originally misstated results from the February Washington Post/ABC poll. Six percent of independents said that knowing Sanders identifies as a socialist made them more likely to support him, not three percent. Meanwhile, 37 percent said it made them less likely to support him, not 79 percent. Likewise, 33 percent of independents said they were less likely to support Sanders after hearing that he “identifies himself as a democratic socialist,” not 37 percent. | {
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After claiming back in June, in reference to the government’s response to the oil spill, “Those morons don’t know what they’re doing,” James Cameron submitted a 25-report to the Department of Energy and U.S. Coast Guard “that said what to do.” Now, more than two months later, Cameron says not only did officials not take his plan seriously, they could have stopped the spill way sooner if they had!
“[The report] was promptly ignored by everyone,” Cameron said. “And guess what? At the end of the day, they did exactly what we recommended. I’m not saying they did it because we recommended it. I think they did it because it was the right thing to do. But they basically did exactly what we said should be done.”
The Avatar director says his ownership of the plan is probably what made the government hesitant (“we were probably ignored because I was involved”) and that this stubbornness led directly to the added damage, to the tune of 60 million gallons of oil: “The thing is, it was the right answer 60 days ago when we gave them that report,” he said, “That means you’ve got a million gallons a day, times 60 days, pouring into the gulf. [That’s] 60 million gallons of oil.”
James Cameron Says Gov’t Ignored His BP Oil Spill Advice [MTV] | {
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President Paul Biya also calls on separatists in English-speaking regions to surrender or face military action.
Cameroon‘s President Paul Biya has said in a rare public address that he is organising a “national dialogue” for the end of the month on all the crises facing the country, including violence that has killed thousands in its Anglophone regions.
The 86-year-old on Tuesday night also called on all separatists in the English-speaking regions to surrender and be forgiven, or face military action.
Before Biya’s address late on Tuesday, there were expectations that the president might grant amnesty to arrested separatists and political leaders as a way to bring peace to the country.
But Biya, who has been in power since 1982, said he has already made great efforts trying to solve the separatist crisis and denied any marginalisation of the English-speaking regions, adding that he has always appointed ministers from there.
“We should all know that we are Cameroonians, appointed to serve Cameroon, not our tribes or linguistic groups,” Biya said.
“In spite of the attempts to destabilise Cameroon, we are happy that our defence forces have fought hard and peace is gradually returning to the restive regions,” Biya said.
While announcing his plan for a dialogue presided over by Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute, Biya did not specify if representatives for the separatists would be invited to participate in the talks.
The president said it was difficult to know who to talk to, as individuals claiming to be separatist leaders were only visible on social media platforms, where they preach violence.
Biya added that the national dialogue would address more than just the separatist crisis.
“The dialogue to be presided over by the prime minister will bring together all Cameroonians, especially traditional rulers, lawmakers, the clergy and all elected officials,” Biya said.
Nkongho Agbor Balla, an Anglophone activist, told Al Jazeera that “the call for an all-inclusive dialogue is very appreciated”, saying the announcement “should signal the end of arrests of Anglophones for their political ideas”.
“Whilst my expectations were not fully met in the speech, we should give peace a chance by supporting the dialogue process,” he said.
“I urge those who will be attending the national dialogue to call for the release of all those detained in connection with the crisis, the need for constitutional amendment and also to ensure that the form of the state is equally discussed at the dialogue table,” he said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also welcomed the announcement.
His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement that Guterres “encourages the government of Cameroon to ensure that the process is inclusive” and “calls on all Cameroonian stakeholders, including the diaspora, to participate in this effort”.
Life sentences
On August 20, a Cameroon military tribunal handed down life sentences to separatist leader Julius Ayuk Tabe and nine others on convictions of secession, “terrorism” and hostility against the state.
The defence counsel boycotted the trial, claiming bias.
Those sentenced had been arrested in neighbouring Nigeria and extradited to Cameroon in January 2018 along with 46 others alleged to have supported a separatist Anglophone state in Cameroon, known as Ambazonia.
Violence erupted in 2016 with teachers and lawyers in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions protesting against alleged discrimination at the hands of Cameroon’s French-speaking majority.
The government responded with a crackdown that sparked an armed movement for an independent, English-speaking state – Ambazonia – which was declared by an umbrella of secessionist groups in October 2017.
Armed separatists then started attacking Cameroon officials, the military and police working in the region.
War on separatists
In November 2017, Biya declared war on the separatists and said he would crush them if they did not surrender.
The conflict has since killed more than 2,000 people, internally displaced more than 500,000 and caused more than 50,000 Cameroonians to seek refuge in Nigeria, according to the UN.
Cameroon is fighting both a separatist movement in its South East and North West regions and the Boko Haram armed group in the Far North.
It has also faced a political crisis after October elections saw the re-election of Biya.
Opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who came in second, claimed to have won the election. He and dozens of others are on trial in a military court on insurrection charges. | {
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Nick and Benji present more News, Listeners' Emails and the Randomoid Selectortron. Guest star: Samuel Barnett (Cicero). Drama tease: The Martian Invasion of Earth (starring Richard Armitage).
Along the way, there are some of our customary, off-topic interludes. But here's the official content...
Big Finish News - it's 'Trailer Central' with all the latest trailers from the Doctor Who Main Range, Torchwood and the Third Doctor. There's also a special feature on The Martian Invasion of Earth, featuring a special preview of the music by Jamie Anderson and an interview with star actor Richard Armitage.
Listeners' Emails - another plunge into the email inbox, with some bonus Facebook content, a surprise (and almost incomprehensible) phone conversation with composer Jamie Robertson - plus the return of the Big Finish Competition. All you have to do to join in is email us at [email protected] .
Guest Star Interview - this week, Cicero producer/director Scott Handcock chats to his star actors and Cicero brothers, Samuel Barnett and George Naylor.
Randomoid Selectortron - another corker of a release is selected by 'Ran'. Some entirely random chat also turns out to be really rather entertaining. Seriously.
Latest Releases - a selection of the latest releases for you to enjoy, plus some behind-the-scenes chatter.
Drama Tease - the first fifteen minutes of our latest HG Wells Big Finish Classics release The Martian Invasion of Earth, starring Richard Armitage and Lucy Briggs-Owen.
This podcast is released on Sunday 4th February 2018. You can download or stream it now simply by pressing one of those handy little buttons below this text. Go on, it'll tingle your ear molecules.
Check out other editions of the Big Finish Podcast in the range here, enabling you to put them into your account and listen via the Big Finish Listening app on Apple and Android devices! | {
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The Texas Water Development Board will provide a $47 million no-interest loan to the city of Houston that will be used to speed long-awaited flood control improvements on Brays Bayou.
Under a plan announced this year, the city will give the money to Harris County Flood Control District to replace eight bridges that block the flow of stormwater during heavy downpours, a key part of long-delayed Project Brays.
Work on the bridge replacements is expected to begin by March. City Council cleared the way for officials to apply for the money in January, citing damage to the Meyerland area during the Memorial Day and Tax Day floods in 2015 and 2016.
Thousands of the roughly 700,000 people living in the Brays Bayou watershed flooded again during Hurricane Harvey.
"When you have people that flooded, they want everybody at the table helping to solve these problems," said city "flood czar" Steve Costello. "This is the first time we're going to be able to say every sector of government is at the table helping resolve the flooding problems along Brays Bayou."
The plan is for the Army Corps of Engineers to reimburse the county after the work is complete, at which point the county would send the city the dollars needed to pay off the loan.
Water Development Board Chairman Bech Bruun said the agency was pleased to support the local effort.
"Projects that reduce future flooding impacts are not only important but imperative as the state looks at ways to mitigate flooding," he said. "This piece of the Brays Bayou project is a significant step in the right direction."
'Terrifying prospect'
Houston's first payment on the loan, an estimated $740,000, will be due in November 2018. It is unclear when federal reimbursement will arrive, but Costello said city officials do not anticipate the arrangement creating a cash crunch.
"There's a risk there, we understood that," he said, "but we also have the ability to pre-pay off once we get the payments from the Corps."
The delay between the idea's announcement last January and the board's vote Tuesday - six months of which was due to Environmental Protection Agency questions about the project's water quality benefits, according to Costello - has not slowed the project, he said, because engineers still are designing the new bridges.
Matt Zeve, director of operations for the Flood Control District, confirmed that, and said one batch of the bridges in question should be ready for construction next month.
Sluggish federal reimbursement has been a key factor in dragging Project Brays out for two decades. Work originally was slated to finish in 2014 and now is scheduled to be completed in 2021. But it could take decades more, county documents state, without sufficient funding.
Either scenario is a "terrifying prospect" to Art Pronin, a civic leader who lives in Westbury, adjacent to Meyerland.
Pronin's home flooded for the first time during Harvey, but many of his neighbors have flooded three years in a row.
"We talk about Project Brays every day in this neighborhood," he said. "Everywhere you go it's, 'What about the bayou? Is it going to be enough?' It feels like we're trapped: Waiting on the next extension of money for Project Brays. Waiting for the next flood. We need more commitments like we heard today."
The county and the Corps split the Project Brays costs 50-50, though the county typically pays up front and awaits reimbursement. The county originally expected to get $25 million in annual federal reimbursements for the roughly $550 million project, but actual funding has averaged less than half that.
Basin work completed
The county has rebuilt 14 of the 32 bridges included in the project, and the state loan will help fund another eight.
Work has finished on four upstream detention basins capable of holding 3.5 billion gallons of stormwater, and work to widen most of the bayou - which starts west of Texas 6 and ends 31 miles to the east, where it flows into Buffalo Bayou - is more than 80 percent finished.
Project Brays is expected to remove 15,000 homes and businesses from the 100-year flood plain, including 3,500 homes at a high risk of flooding. County officials estimate the work already done on the project prevented thousands of homes from flooding during recent storms, though Hurricane Harvey pushed Brays well out of its banks yet again.
City officials hope to repeat this financing model to spur improvements along two other bayous - White Oak and Hunting, likely in that order - ultimately forwarding the county about $130 million, Costello said. | {
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A year ago, as the Republican Party was preparing to head to its convention in Cleveland to officially nominate Donald Trump for president, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued an analysis of Trump's policy proposals.
That analysis, "Donald Trump: A One-Man Constitutional Crisis," concluded that his proposals to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, ban Muslims from entering the country, surveil American Muslims and their houses of worship, revise libel laws and bring back the Bush-era torture program would blatantly violate the Constitution.
It was a terrifying report. Still, many thought that this country – whose ideals have inspired people from all over the world to come here and become Americans, united not by ethnicity, language religion or culture, but by the ideas and ideals laid out in our Constitution – wouldn't elect a man whose proposals were seemingly so in conflict with it.
But we did.
And the election of a man who is openly hostile to minorities, immigrants and particularly to individuals of Latino descent has struck me, the son of Colombian immigrants, in a personal way.
I worry that my parents will be accosted at the grocery store for speaking Spanish. I worry that my two boys will be told by classmates to "go back where they came from" because their skin is brown.
As Trump's political rhetoric turns into policy, our fundamental American values are being put to their greatest test.
MORE ON TRUMP ON GRAY MATTERS: How Trump's threats have evolved
Thankfully, our system of checks and balances is serving to curtail many of the administration's efforts to run roughshod over our constitutional freedoms. Courts throughout the country have ruled against several of the Trump administration's most blatantly unconstitutional efforts – to defund cities that have chosen to limit participation in federal immigration enforcement and ban people from six predominantly Muslim countries from entering the country.
But the Trump administration is making headway with some its most problematic proposals. The president's stated goal of deporting millions of undocumented people has already resulted in widespread fear in immigrant communities. In his first week in office, President Trump issued an order giving agents the green light to prioritize the arrest of many immigrants who had been afforded some humanitarian discretion, including parents of U.S. citizen children who had been reporting annually to authorities.
But nowhere is this problematic headway more apparent than in Texas, where our legislature has passed Senate Bill 4. The law has been widely criticized by law enforcement and community leaders for harming public safety by removing discretion from local officials to determine how best to use limited police resources. It has effectively mandated that local agencies engage in immigration enforcement, and subjects law enforcement to heavy fines, criminal penalties and even removal from office.
These policies will have devastating consequences for our society — school attendance rates will decrease, families will be separated and an even greater number of individuals will fear reporting crimes or cooperating with federal or local officials out of concern that they or their family members might be targeted for deportation.
Immigration is one thing. But the Trump administration has also adopted retrograde policies on criminal justice. For example, before the election, there was bipartisan recognition that this country had a problem with incarceration; that 2.3 million people behind bars was too many; and the fact that a hugely disproportionate percentage of those people are black or brown was a serious problem. (The rate of imprisonment for black men is nearly six times that of white men.) It was generally accepted by both political parties that we needed to reduce the prison population by eliminating mandatory minimums and reducing sentences for drug offenses.
Instead of building on this consensus or paying heed to experts on criminal justice reform, the administration is reducing federal oversight over police departments accused of abuse. Whereas previous administrations – both Republican and Democrat – have responded to reports of systemic police abuse by investigating and entering into consent decrees to assist police departments in developing 21st century best practices, the Trump administration is on the record opposing these decrees, leaving many communities without needed federal protections. In short, it has sent the message that the status quo is acceptable and that black and brown people are not entitled to the same protection.
GRAY MATTERS: Can we stop saying Trump's presidency is an 'existential crisis'?
And then there is the most fundamental right to our democracy – the right to vote. In May, Trump created a Presidential Commission on Election Integrity, with the mission of combating purported "voter fraud." Despite that numerous studies have shown that voter fraud is virtually nonexistent here, President Trump continues to insist that he lost the popular vote because 3 million to 5 million undocumented residents cast ballots.
Such propaganda about illegal voting has been used to justify unnecessary and discriminatory restrictions on voting. And since Trump appointed Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach as vice-chair of that commission, there should be little doubt of his motives: Last year, Kobach was rebuked by a federal court for disenfranchising thousands of motor-voter applicants whom he claimed might not be citizens, based on what the court found was "pure speculation."
This list is not exhaustive. We are seeing increased attacks at both the federal and state level on reproductive rights and the rights of the LGBTQ community and people with disabilities. My colleagues and I are doing everything we can to challenge these constitutional violations, but there is a limit to what lawyers and courts can do to protect our constitutional values.
On this Independence Day, I hope Texans, who welcomed my parents here with open arms, will speak up against policies that threaten our most fundamental values.
Andre Segura is the new legal director of the ACLU of Texas.
Bookmark Gray Matters. There should be little doubt of its motives.
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Whereever we go
I do believe that our hearts will go on and on... | {
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OF IRELAND’S TOTAL land surface area, just ten per cent is comprised of forests, which represents the second lowest proportional percentage of any country in Europe, according to Professor John O’Halloran at the International Union of Forest Research Organisations (IUFRO).
Speaking at the international conference in UCC, O’Halloran said Irish forests were critical to biodiversity and must be maintained and managed: “The uncertainty about future forest ownership and a slow down in the rate of planting may mean a decline in biodiversity and some species of conservation concern, reliant on the forests.”
The IUFRO – which is being partly organised by UCC and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine – has brought together scientists and practitioners from around the globe with a mission to discuss recent research and future directions forest biodiversity. It aims to build on the success of the first IUFRO International Conference on Biodiversity in Forest Ecosystems and Landscapes, which was held in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada in 2008.
“Forest biodiversity is not as prominent a part of the Ireland’s natural heritage as it is of most other countries. Although the majority of Ireland would once have been forested, Ireland’s forest cover was reduced over centuries by human activities. Forests comprise only about 10 per cent of Ireland’s total land surface area, the second lowest level of any country in Europe,” said O’Halloran.
The majority of the Ireland’s forests are conifer plantations from the twentieth century, with native woodlands making up only about 1 per cent of the country’s land area.
Approximately 30 per cent of the Earth’s surface is covered by forests, which have been shown to be valuable to society for many reasons -including heritage, landscape, timber, recreational opportunities, climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. However, experts have raised concerns about a decline in forest biodiversity worldwide and have made conservation a global priority.
“The forests are critical as habitats and also ecosystem services such as carbon sinking and flood reduction,” said O’Halloran. | {
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PHOTO: ISPR
Frontier Corps (FC) averted a major terrorist activity in Balochistan by conducting Intelligence Based Operations (IBOs) on suspected terrorist hideouts in Karbala and Pishin.Six suspected terrorists were apprehended and a huge cache of arms and ammunition including 500kgs of explosives, suicide jackets, prepared Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), submachine guns, mines, and various communication equipment were recovered.Last week, four FC troops were martyred and seven others were seriously injured when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden vest at a check post in the outskirts of Balochistan’s provincial capital.According to official sources, the incident took place in the mountainous area of Nosahar, some 30 km to the west of Quetta, where the FC has established multiple check posts to keep an eye on the movement of extremist elements.“It was a suicide attack in which the bomber blew him up inside the check post,” an official source said. “There were over a dozen FC men present inside the post at the time of the blast,” he added.After the explosion, the FC troops deployed at other check posts in the area and levies officials rushed to the site and started the rescue operation. They shifted the injured and bodies to a government hospital.Sources said the remains of the victims were found at a distance from the check post.Four victims of the suicide bombing were identified as Muhammad Aamir, Muhammad Imran, Javed Ahmed and Muhammad Rashid.No one has claimed responsibility for the attack so far. | {
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DeArmond Tremolo Control top (Photo credit: germanium)
Control of the atheist and skepticism movements as they are (including whom gets to speak at conferences, themes and so on, evidenced for example by how PZ Myers and others have spoken against Abbie Smith, a young woman scientist, blogger and atheist, being allowed to speak at atheist conferences).
Who controls the atheist movement? Seems like a strange question, doesn't it? In one important sense, the atheist movement is controlled by the activists at the grassroots level. Without them, no movement would exist. At the same time, individual activists rarely make decisions about where the overall movement heads. That is up to those who lead the many groups and organizations that attempt to steer the movement.made an interesting point about the FtB/Skepchick/A+ controversy in a post written back in July at Stranger in an Even Stranger Land that escaped my attention at the time. He suggested that one of the issues driving the infighting may involve the question of who controls the atheist movement. Among the other factors contributing to the controversy, he added:I'll admit that I'm not familiar withor that particular part of the story, so I cannot comment on it. But there is something intriguing about Gurdur's point about control. Could the divide and the recent infighting be, at least in part, about who controls the atheist movement? I have heard two similar statements out there in the atheist blogosphere that get close to this possibility, but neither was phrased in quite this way. The first centers around the issue of expertise. Some have acknowledged that figures like, andare clearly deserving of top billing at atheist conventions in a way that many atheist bloggers are not . This has come up not only in the context of atheism and skepticism but also about feminism . That is, some have asked whyis put forward to speak about feminism when we might get legitimate experts on the subject to address us.I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I do believe we should recognize and celebrate real expertise, and we should be able to distinguish between earned credibility and skilled self-promotion. But I'd also like our movement to be egalitarian, and this means that it is good to have more people involved than just the experts . In fact, this brings me right to the second sort of statement I have heard: concern over the hierarchical nature of power in the atheist movement.Whether we would like it to be more egalitarian or not, there is a recognizable hierarchy within the atheist community. The same handful of bloggers are the ones speaking at conventions, and if Gurdur is correct, some of them may even exert influence over who else is invited to some of the conferences. None of this is necessarily problematic, but the concerns I have seen being expressed about it makes me think that there might be something to Gurdur's control theory. | {
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Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement The bodies of a man, woman and young boy have been recovered from about 400ft down Beachy Head in East Sussex. The coastguard saw two bodies at about 2020 BST on Sunday, but the search did not begin until first light on Monday. The boy, who was thought to be about five years old, was found inside a rucksack, a coastguard station officer who attended the scene said. The identities of the three people have not yet been confirmed, but they are not thought to be local. Sussex Police said the deaths were not being treated as suspicious but they were "keeping an open mind until the full facts have been established". The bodies were first spotted by a member of the coastguard who was on a routine patrol with a cliff-top chaplain. Soft toys Eastbourne Coastguard station officer Stuart McNab, who was one of the first to be winched down the cliff, said he found the child's body in a rucksack along with a second rucksack filled with toys. He said: "The bag was closed when I got to it. I saw what I thought was a doll's head, but on closer examination it was a child." He said the second rucksack contained toys, including a tractor and soft toys. The bodies were recovered by a coastguard team under the supervision of police officers by 1400 BST. The area has been cordoned off and coastguards, police and volunteers from the chaplaincy team have remained at the scene. Ch Insp Dick Coates said that a car, believed to be a Volkswagen or caravanette, had been recovered from the cliff-top car park and was being examined by officers. The cliffs at Beachy Head reach up to about 600ft (180m) high and are a notorious suicide spot. Mr McNab said an average of 20 people jump from the cliffs at Beachy Head every year. He added there had been cases of multiple suicides before but they generally tended to involve elderly people. Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team was set up in 2004 to try to prevent suicides.
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The British Street Food Awards are coming to Manchester, and with them come 17 of the UK's best street food traders.
After five regional heats, the 17 best traders in the UK will fight it out to be crowned champion – and win the right to represent the Britain in the inaugural European Street Food Awards in Berlin.
Taking place at GRUB Food Fair at the Mayfield Depot, the derelict railway station is being repurposed as the centre of the street food world – for one weekend at least – and punters will enjoy free tastings of the competition dishes.
Manchester's own Chaart Cart and Dim Sum Su are among the traders that will be battling it out over the weekend.
The street food event will be accompanied by GRUB’s craft beer festival, serving the best from breweries in Manchester and beyond - with free tasters for visitors.
A guest judging panel, including Andi Oliver (BBC’s Great British Menu) will choose two stand-out traders, and both winners will go to Berlin where they'll take on traders from France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Russia, the Netherlands and Ireland.
“Street food is taking over” says Richard Johnson, founder of the British Street Food Awards.
“And that’s because we are choosing to eat in different ways. We don’t want a fixed starter-main course-dessert menu any more – we want a bit of this and a bit of that.
"It’s flirty, low-commitment dining, and it’s why pop-ups and street food have become so popular. Street food is making the world a much nicer place to be."
Jason Bailey, founder of GRUB said “We’ve worked hard for the last three years to build our events and Manchester’s street food scene so it’s a massive honour for us and a great acknowledgement of our home city to be hosting the British Street Food Award final. It’s going to be magic”
The British Street Food Awards UK Finals take place on Saturday September 16 from 12pm - 10pm and Sunday September 17 from 12pm - 6pm
Tickets cost £5 in advance and are on sale now . A limited number will also be available on the door.
Full list of British Street Food Awards finalists
Mr D’s Magnificent Pie Machine, Leeds
Mr D is looking forward to bringing his Pie Machine to Manchester. And what a machine it is — think Steampunk meets Willy Wonka and Wallace & Gromit.
Tikk’s Thai Kitchen, York
Born on the paradise white island of Koh Samui in Southern Thailand, the young Tikk loved nothing more than helping out in the family restaurant kitchen, preparing the food and learning traditional techniques along the way. He has long since left the turquoise waters of Thailand behind, but he’s still obsessive about locally-sourced ingredients.
Dim Sum Su, Manchester
Sue Chiu-Fan Lee was born in Hong Kong and worked in the family food business as soon as she was old enough to reach the till. She’s now all grown up, and cooking authentic dim sum, gua bao, wontons and spring rolls for discerning customers in the North West of England.
Brother Thai, Cardiff
Taking inspiration from Thai family cooking and the famous Soi's of Bangkok, Brother Thai is all about creating classic Thai street food dishes.Expect flavours like his thai red curry, the pad pao: stir fried beef with green beans in a nam prik pao paste and thai papaya slaw.
Truly Crumptious, Cornwall
Is there anything more delicious than a crumpet? Yes. A homemade crumpet. Made with organic flour from the South West, and cooked up on a lightly-oiled griddle to give it a crisp, thick base. Serve it out of a 1967 Cheltenham Waterbuck – built in the day when caravans looked like caravans – with butter, jam or cheese, and you’ve got something just a little bit special.
Baked in Brick, Birmingham
Lee and co. are back to defend their 2017 Best of the Best title. Last year’s final was all about BIB’s thin-crust pizza, cooked on a wood-fired oven in a classic mini, and succulent chicken skewers barbecued under the bonnet.
Low ‘N’ Slow, Bristol
Andy is a true connoisseur of meat. He imports his ribs from Dexter farms in America, and understands about the need for fat - it’s what carries the flavour. The queue for meat like this was ridiculous, but it's well worth waiting for.
Homeboys, Nottingham
Pete Hewitt from Nottingham was a Masterchef finalist in 2015, yet his real passion is for more informal dining – what he calls ‘the bread and butter, the everyday eatin’.’ So he imported himself a 1978 Grumman Olson Stepvan from the US and set up Homeboys, specialising in Japanese soul food. Expect a strong veggie menu (braised aubergine donburi with soy cured yolk, pickels and tempura sauce) and meaty classics such as karaage and pickles – Japanese fried chicken.
The Bourneville Waffle Company, Birmingham
Presentation at the Bournville Waffle – from the beautiful vintage Mustang caravan to the good-looking team and their colour-coordinated aprons – is what rates this outfit as a cut above the rest. Jenny and Des are behind the operation, but locals might also know them as the two behind Birmingham’s Seasonal Markets events.
The English Indian, Lichfield
Being accepted as a trader into Digbeth Dining Club is no easy feat. The organisers are inundated with traders wanting a pitch and Anna and James were concerned that their application would get lost, even though their plan to reinvent English dishes with Indian spicing was an original one. Expect classic fast food dishes with an Indian twist.
The Buffalo Truck, Edinburgh
Once a marine biologist, Robin had had enough of spreadsheets and mud and sideways rain. Now, it’s less about the spreadsheets, and more about the buttermilk chicken burgers with truffle parmesan fries. ‘It’s high-class filth, essentially,’ says Robin. ‘Although fried chicken as a whole is far from revolutionary, I have managed to develop a cult following.'
ShrimpWreck, Edinburgh
ShrimpWreck started life as a side project. Little more than a fryer and a griddle, but ‘enough fish to feed an army,’ as Ewen says. Things began to take off after that. More recently, Ewen entered the Fish Finger Sandwich Awards to impress a panel of judges, including Greg Wallace, in London.
Stickybundits, London
Stickybundits is what happens when you take the idea behind sushi and the idea behind the burger and put one and two together. Stickybundits live and die by the creed of ‘bread is dead’ – this stuff wears the stripes of gluten free and dairy free, with a vegan option to boot. Slow cooked pork belly with a pork patty, Asian basil chutney and peanuts, all in a sesame rice bun is the kind of thing that gets people running for the hills of soy and sticky rice.
Wingmans, London
They call themselves the UK’s first ‘authentic wingery’. Bit ambitious. But then again, it’s that kind of ambitiousness what wins British Street Food Awards. Visitors can grab some of their crispy fried buttermilk chicken, sideckicked by truffle mac n’ cheese balls.
JAH JYOT Punjabi Street Food, Henfield
The inspiration for Jah Jyot came from the villages of Punjab. “The journey from Delhi to Punjab was along the Great Trunk Road which — back then – was a very long and tiring journey in the car” says Ranie. “Travelling through the intense heat of the midday sun without air conditioning meant stopping often at the little road side cafés (dhabas) for refreshments. These dhabas gave me the first glimpse of street food. The favourite dish for me was moolee (white radish) parathas and the freshest, greenest sarson di saag (spinach and mustard leaves) smothered in the creamiest makhani (butter).” The winners of the Sussex Food and Drink Awards in 2017 have got a taste for silverware. Is there space in the trophy cabinet for more?
The Flying Cows, Birmingham
Farmer and chef Dan set up The Flying Cows as an outlet for his family’s grass-fed Dexter beef, and he’s now a regular at the Digbeth Dining Club. A Michelin-star trained chef by trade, and 16 years experience in the kitchen, expect some of the juciest, beefed-up burgers on the circuit.
Chaat Cart, Manchester
After five years selling South Indian snacks and small plates across the streets of the North, Chaat Cart have just opened their first bricks and mortar place in Marple. But that hasn't stopped them from taking to the streets with their flavourful food. What to expect for their Awards menu? Indian classics such as bhel puri, gunpowder fries, homestyle lentil dahl and masala dosa that champion British produce. | {
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Alberts
Lapierre
Vancouver Canucks President & General Manager Mike Gillis announced today that the Canucks have signed centre Maxim Lapierre and defenceman Andrew Alberts each to two-year contracts.
Lapierre, 26, recorded 12 points (6-6-12) and 80 penalty minutes in 78 games played in the 2010.11 season with the Canucks, Anaheim Ducks and Montreal Canadiens. In the 2011 playoffs, Lapierre recorded five points (3-2-5) and 66 penalty minutes in 25 games played. He also ranked second in the League in hits (83) in the playoffs and notched the game-winning goal in game five of the Stanley Cup Final versus Boston on June 10.
The Saint-Leonard, Quebec, native has appeared in 333 NHL games, recording 84 points (41-43-84) and 301 penalty minutes over the span of six NHL seasons with the Canadiens, Ducks and Canucks.
The 6’2”, 207-pound centre was originally selected 61st overall in the 2003 NHL Entry Draft by the Montreal Canadiens.
Alberts, 29, appeared in 42 games in 2010.11, recording seven points (1-6-7) and 41 penalty minutes. The 6’5”, 209-pound defenceman led Canucks blueliners in hits with 113. In the 2011 playoffs, Alberts played in nine games, collecting six penalty minutes.
The Minneapolis, Minnesota, native has appeared in 381 career games, recording 51 points (6-45-51) and 420 penalty minutes over the span of six NHL seasons with the Boston Bruins, Philadelphia Flyers, Carolina Hurricanes and Canucks.
Alberts was originally selected 179th overall in the 2001 NHL Entry Draft by the Boston Bruins.
Lapierre's Career Regular Season Statistics
Season Team GP G A P +/- PIM PP SH GW S S% 2001-2002 Cap-de-Madeleine Estacades-QAAA 42 14 27 41 44 2001-2002 Montreal Rocket-QMJHL 9 2 0 2 2 2002-2003 Montreal Rocket-QMJHL 72 22 21 43 13 55 1 2 2003-2004 PEI Rocket-QMJHL 67 25 36 61 10 138 3 2 2004-2005 PEI Rocket-QMJHL 69 25 27 52 -10 139 4 1 2005-2006 Canadiens 1 0 0 0 -1 0 0 0 0 0 0.0 2005-2006 Hamilton Bulldogs-AHL 73 13 23 36 0 214 0 2 4 2006-2007 Canadiens 46 6 6 12 -7 24 0 1 2 82 7.3 2006-2007 Hamilton Bulldogs-AHL 37 11 13 24 6 59 1 2 1 2007-2008 Canadiens 53 7 11 18 5 60 0 0 0 68 10.3 2007-2008 Hamilton Bulldogs-AHL 19 7 7 14 2 63 1 0 2008-2009 Canadiens 79 15 13 28 9 76 1 2 2 165 9.1 2009-2010 Canadiens 76 7 7 14 -14 61 0 0 1 101 6.9 2010-2011 Canadiens 38 5 3 8 -7 63 0 0 0 78 6.4 2010-2011 Ducks 21 0 3 3 -6 9 0 0 0 28 0.0 2010-2011 Canucks 19 1 0 1 -1 8 0 0 0 23 4.3 NHL Totals 333 41 43 84 -22 301 1 3 5 545 7.5
Alberts Career Regular Season Statistics | {
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Um dos maiores empreiteiros do País e com estreita relação com políticos de vários partidos e autoridades de graduações importantes, o ex-presidente da OAS, Léo Pinheiro, fez um desabafo ao juiz Sérgio Moro. Ele disse que está sofrendo com as consequências da Operação Lava Jato e que vai revelar todos os crimes que cometeu ‘seja quem for do outro lado’.
Para os investigadores, o recado de Léo Pinheiro soa como uma ameaça explícita a agentes políticos que teriam sido contemplados com propinas.
O empreiteiro depôs nesta terça-feira, 13. Ele é alvo da Operação Lava Jato, que lhe atribui protagonismo no esquema de cartel e propinas instalado na Petrobrás entre 2004 e 2014.
Ele foi preso pela primeira vez em novembro de 2014, oito meses após o estouro da Lava Jato.
“Durante esse período, já são dois anos, né? Uma coisa que tem me angustiado muito, um prejuízo muito grande para mim , para minha família, para minha empresa, para os meus amigos”, desabafou.
Frente a frente com Moro, o empreiteiro se disse disposto a contar tudo o que sabe – afinal, malogrou o acordo de delação premiada que negociava com a Procuradoria-Geral da República.
“Eu quero colaborar, excelência, no que eu puder, agindo exatamente como fiz aqui”, disse Léo Pinheiro, ao final de seu depoimento em que relatou a extorsão de políticos para proteger empreiteiros nas duas CPIs da Petrobrás, em 2014.
“Eu sei dos crimes que cometi, não estou fugindo de nenhum deles e direi todos que cometi, seja quem for do outro lado”, concluiu o empresário, que foi preso pela segunda vez no dia 5 de setembro, acusado de obstruir as investigações.
Ele foi preso pela primeira vez na Operação Juízo Final, sétima fase da Lava Jato, em novembro de 2014, e ficou custodiado preventivamente até abril de 2015 quando o Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) deu habeas corpus a nove executivos de grandes empresas.
Em agosto de 2015 foi condenado a 16 anos e 4 meses de reclusão por corrupção, lavagem de dinheiro e organização criminosa no esquema de corrupção na Petrobrás.
Com a perspectiva de perder os recursos nas instâncias superiores e passar uma longa temporada na cadeia, além do risco de ser condenado em novas denúncias da Lava Jato, o empreiteiro chegou a negociar acordo de colaboração premiada com a força-tarefa da Lava Jato.
Com o vazamento de informações sobre as tratativas do empresário com os investigadores, em agosto, o procurador-geral da República Rodrigo Janot, determinou a suspensão da negociação. | {
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It was a good year for Adidas. Seven FBS apparel contracts changed hands in the 2017-18 academic year, according to research conducted by FootballScoop, and the Three Stripes scooped up all seven of them.
Across those seven, a clear pattern emerged. Adidas did not make much hay in challenging Nike for major college sports supremacy; the company did pull Washington away from Nike, but the list stops there. Instead, Adidas pushed Russell Athletic out of business at the FBS level and elbowed away Under Armour to stand as the clear No. 2 behind Nike.
Examine each conference and you’ll see a clear pattern emerge. Adidas is an aggressive bargain shopper; the Three Stripes matches Nike’s 26 Group of 5 contracts, and owns 20 of the 36 available contracts in Conference USA, the MAC and the Sun Belt. At the Power 5 level, Adidas mirrors Under Armour, owning a presence in every corner of the country, but not much more than that. Poaching Washington from Nike, for instance, gives Adidas one Pac-12 North school, matching its one Pac-12 South school, Arizona State.
The Three Stripes’ small comeback in college football matches that of the entire company as a whole. Adidas reported first-quarter 2018 sales 17 percent higher than analyst expectations, and North American sales grew 29 percent in the final quarter of 2017. Under Armour’s stock price, as high as $51.86 a share in September 2015, fell to $11.61 in November of last year and sits at $21.61 today.
Nike, meanwhile, has outfitted each of the nine programs to reach the College Football Playoff to date. Under Armour’s highest finish was Wisconsin at No. 6 in the 2017 final CFP poll, while Adidas hasn’t come closer than Mississippi State’s No. 7 ranking in the final 2014 poll.
Now in its fifth year, behold FootballScoop’s annual survey of Who Wears What in FBS.
Total FBS Breakdown
Nike – 68 (52.8%)
Adidas – 39 (30.2%)
Under Armour – 22 (17.1%)
Power 5 Breakdown
Nike – 42 (64.6%)
Adidas – 12 (18.5%)
Under Armour – 11 (16.9%)
Group of 5 Breakdown
Adidas – 27 (42.2%)
Nike – 26 (40.6%)
Under Armour – 11 (20.4%)
Italics – New deal announced in 2017-18
American
Central Florida – Nike
Cincinnati – Under Armour
Connecticut – Nike
East Carolina – Adidas
Houston – Nike
Memphis – Nike
Navy – Under Armour
South Florida – Adidas
SMU – Nike
Temple – Under Armour
Tulane – Nike
Tulsa – Adidas
BREAKDOWN: Nike 6 (50%), Adidas 3 (25%), Under Armour 3 (25%)
ACC
Boston College – Under Armour
Clemson – Nike
Duke – Nike
Florida State – Nike
Georgia Tech – Adidas
Louisville – Adidas
Miami – Adidas
North Carolina – Nike (Jordan Brand)
N.C. State – Adidas
Pittsburgh – Nike
Syracuse – Nike
Virginia – Nike
Virginia Tech – Nike
Wake Forest – Nike
BREAKDOWN: Nike 9 (64.3%), Adidas 4 (28.6%), Under Armour 1 (7.1%)
Big Ten
Illinois – Nike
Indiana – Adidas
Iowa – Nike
Maryland – Under Armour
Michigan – Nike (Jordan Brand)
Michigan State – Nike
Minnesota – Nike
Nebraska – Adidas
Northwestern – Under Armour
Ohio State – Nike
Penn State – Nike
Purdue – Nike
Rutgers – Adidas
Wisconsin – Under Armour
BREAKDOWN: Nike 8 (57.1%), Adidas 3 (21.4%), Under Armour 3 (21.4%)
Big 12
Baylor – Nike
Iowa State – Nike
Kansas – Adidas
Kansas State – Nike
Oklahoma – Nike (Jordan Brand)
Oklahoma State – Nike
Texas – Nike
TCU – Nike
Texas Tech – Under Armour
West Virginia – Nike
BREAKDOWN: Nike 8 (80%), Adidas 1 (10%), Under Armour 1 (10%)
Conference USA
Charlotte – Nike
Florida Atlantic – Adidas
Florida International – Adidas
Louisiana Tech – Adidas
Marshall – Nike
Middle Tennessee – Nike
North Texas – Nike
Old Dominion – Under Armour
Rice – Adidas
Southern Miss – Adidas
UAB – Under Armour
UTEP – Nike
UTSA – Adidas
Western Kentucky – Nike
BREAKDOWN: Adidas 6 (42.9%), Nike 6 (42.9%), Under Armour 2 (14.3%)
Independents
Army – Nike
BYU – Nike
Massachusetts – Adidas
New Mexico State – Under Armour
Notre Dame – Under Armour
BREAKDOWN: Nike 2 (40%), Under Armour 2 (40%), Adidas 1 (20%)
MAC
Akron – Adidas
Ball State – Nike
Bowling Green – Nike
Buffalo – Nike
Central Michigan – Adidas
Eastern Michigan – Adidas
Kent State – Under Armour
Miami (Ohio) – Adidas
Northern Illinois – Adidas
Ohio – Adidas
Toledo – Nike
Western Michigan – Adidas
BREAKDOWN: Adidas 7 (58.3%), Nike 4 (33.3%), Under Armour 1 (8.3%)
Mountain West
Air Force – Nike
Boise State – Nike
Colorado State – Under Armour
Fresno State – Nike
Hawaii – Under Armour
Nevada – Adidas
New Mexico – Nike
San Diego State – Nike
San Jose State – Adidas
UNLV – Nike
Utah State – Nike
Wyoming – Adidas
BREAKDOWN: Nike 7 (58.3%), Adidas 3 (25%), Under Armour 2 (16.7%)
Pac-12
Arizona – Nike
Arizona State – Adidas
California – Under Armour
Colorado – Nike
Oregon – Nike
Oregon State – Nike
Stanford – Nike
UCLA – Under Armour
USC – Nike
Utah – Under Armour
Washington – Adidas
Washington State – Nike
BREAKDOWN: Nike 7 (58.3%), Under Armour 3 (25%), Adidas 2 (16.7%)
SEC
Alabama – Nike
Arkansas – Nike
Auburn – Under Armour
Florida – Nike (Jordan Brand)
Georgia – Nike
Kentucky – Nike
LSU – Nike
Mississippi State – Adidas
Missouri – Nike
Ole Miss – Nike
South Carolina – Under Armour
Tennessee – Nike
Texas A&M – Adidas
Vanderbilt – Nike
BREAKDOWN: Nike 10 (71.4%), Adidas 2 (14.3%), Under Armour 2 (14.3%)
Sun Belt
Appalachian State – Nike
Arkansas State – Adidas
Coastal Carolina – Under Armour
Georgia Southern – Adidas
Georgia State – Under Armour
Louisiana-Lafayette – Adidas
Louisiana-Monroe – Adidas
South Alabama – Adidas
Texas State – Adidas
Troy – Adidas
BREAKDOWN: Adidas 7 (70%), Under Armour 2 (20%), Nike 1 (10%)
Did we miss anything? Let us know @zach_barnett on Twitter. | {
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A Vancouver, Washington man was taken into custody on Sunday after a standoff with police in which he serenaded them while standing in front of his house naked and playing the banjo.
According to Oregon’s KPTV, police received a call on Sunday afternoon about a naked man walking around his neighborhood with a knife.
When officers arrived on the scene, they found resident Andrew Helmsworth outside his house. Helmsworth refused to surrender.
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At one point during the two-hour standoff, he went inside, put on a pair of shorts and returned with a banjo, which he played for the officers before he was subdued with a non-lethal round and taken into custody.
Helmsworth reportedly assaulted a family member over the course of his bizarre outburst. He was charged with felony assault and booked into the Clark County jail.
Watch video about this story, embedded below:
KPTV – FOX 12 | {
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Washington(CNN) Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins said on Sunday that she does not believe Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore's denials of the sexual allegations against him and hopes the state's voters do not send him to Washington.
"I did not find his denials to be convincing at all," Collins said on CNN's "State of the Union."
The Washington Post published a report earlier this month based on interviews with more than 30 people that said Moore pursued relationships with teenagers while he was in his 30s. One woman alleged she was 14 years old when Moore initiated sexual contact with her. Alabama's legal age of consent, then and now, is 16.
Since the Post's report, another woman has come forward and accused Moore of sexually assaulting her when she was 16.
Moore has continued to deny the allegations and he says he will not drop out of the race.
Collins noted she was against Moore before the "terrible allegations" came out against him, citing his conduct as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, as well as his anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT comments. But she declined to say whether the Senate should move to expel Moore if he wins the December 12 election.
"These allegations are extremely disturbing, but under the Constitution, the test on whether or not you seat someone is whether they satisfy the age and residency requirement," Collins said. "We would have to seat him, but I hope we don't get there. ... I hope that the voters of Alabama choose not to elect him."
White House on Moore
President Donald Trump has not remarked publicly on the allegations against Moore. He initially supported appointed Republican Sen. Luther Strange in the election, but endorsed Moore after he won the primary.
White House legislative director Marc Short, speaking Sunday on ABC's "This Week," said the White House is "uncomfortable" with Moore's explanations so far, but said Trump is leaving the matter up to the voters of Alabama.
"We have serious concerns about the allegations that have been made," Short said. "The people of Alabama know best what to do."
Asked if Trump believed the women accusing Moore, Short said, "If he did not believe that the women's accusations were credible, he would be down campaigning for Roy Moore. He has not done that.
"But he's also concerned that these accusations are 38 years old," Short said.
Although Trump has yet to make comments on the matter, he took to Twitter on Thursday to slam Minnesota Democratic Sen. Al Franken about allegations that he forcibly kissed a woman and groped her while she slept.
Franken has apologized for his behavior and said he welcomed an ethics probe into his conduct.
The unfolding situation has also drawn attention to Trump, who has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by more than a dozen women.
Collins, in her interview Sunday, said part of the reason she opposed Trump's bid for the presidency was because of allegations about his treatment of women.
"I did not support President Trump," Collins said. "He was not my candidate for President, and part of the reason why were allegations about how he treated women."
Collins said she made her decision on Trump before the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape came out last October, in which he bragged about being able to grope women because of his "star" status.
Sexual harassment in Congress
Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he believed the women accusing Moore of misconduct are more credible than Moore, but like the White House, he said the decision is up to the Alabama voters at this point.
Blunt said regardless of who won the Alabama special election, it is incumbent on the Senate to do more to curb predatory behavior and ensure a safe workplace for all.
"We need to be sure that we've got an environment where people want to come and be part of that, where women are comfortable being part of that," Blunt said.
Asked about Trump and Franken, Blunt echoed the White House this week and said Franken had admitted wrongdoing, while the President continued to deny any. He said the accusations against Trump came out and voters still supported Trump.
"Whatever they had to say, people heard that and they elected President Trump the President of the United States," Blunt said. "At some point, I think you have to let the voters have a say here."
'Nothing about it felt right': More than 50 people describe sexual harassment on Capitol Hill
In a separate interview on the same program, a bipartisan pair of House members talked about their efforts to address sexual harassment in Congress.
"We had a lot of consensus on the changes that need to be made," said Virginia Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock. "We're on the same page, and we're going to get mandatory training, universal, uniform anti-harassment, zero-tolerance policies in place. We are not going to allow members to have any kind of fund pay for their harassment. That is universally agreed on. And we are also going to have better policies for the victims."
Comstock said she found the allegations against Moore credible and hopes he steps aside, adding, "For that matter, Al Franken can go hit the door with him."
Referencing the still undisclosed total of taxpayer funds that have gone to settle sexual harassment claims on Capitol Hill, Comstock and her Democratic colleague, Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell, said that going forward, members of Congress must be forced to pay any sexual harassment cases out of pocket and do so with transparency.
"What infuriates me is these confidentiality agreements," Dingell said. | {
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The biggest problem for Senate Republicans struggling to revive their healthcare legislation is the one that has bedeviled them from the beginning: Medicaid.
Deep cuts to the social safety net have led to a revolt from centrist GOP senators backed up by their home-state governors, who accepted federal funding under the Affordable Care Act to expand their Medicaid rolls.
They are all worried that the Senate bill’s unraveling of that expansion would leave millions of people without health insurance, a belief bolstered by a nonpartisan budget analysis that found 22 million more people would be uninsured in the bill’s first decade as law.
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Winning over the GOP centrists, including Sens. Susan Collins Susan Margaret CollinsDemocratic senator to party: 'A little message discipline wouldn't kill us' Poll: 57 percent of Americans think next president, Senate should fill Ginsburg vacancy On The Trail: Making sense of this week's polling tsunami MORE (Maine), Dean Heller Dean Arthur HellerOn The Trail: Democrats plan to hammer Trump on Social Security, Medicare Lobbying World Democrats spend big to put Senate in play MORE (Nev.), Rob Portman Robert (Rob) Jones PortmanMcConnell locks down key GOP votes in Supreme Court fight Romney undecided on authorizing subpoenas for GOP Obama-era probes Congress needs to prioritize government digital service delivery MORE (Ohio) and Shelley Moore Capito Shelley Wellons Moore CapitoCongress must finish work on popular conservation bill before time runs out Second GOP senator to quarantine after exposure to coronavirus GOP senator to quarantine after coronavirus exposure MORE (W.Va.), would almost certainly mean making significant changes to the Senate bill’s rollback of Medicaid that would make the legislation more expensive.
That would turn off Senate conservatives, whom Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellDemocratic senator to party: 'A little message discipline wouldn't kill us' House to vote on resolution affirming peaceful transition of power Republican lawyers brush off Trump's election comments MORE (R-Ky.) is also struggling to win over.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), asked Wednesday how important it was to keep Senate language restricting Medicaid’s growth, told reporters it’s “very important.”
Pressed on whether his support for the legislation hinges on its inclusion, he said, “It’s very, very important to me.”
Senate leadership is working under a tight time frame, aiming to wrap up negotiations by the end of this week and then send a revised version of the bill for the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to score over the weeklong recess. But there’s deep skepticism that can happen by Friday.
Medicaid has long been seen as a high hurdle to getting healthcare reform done in the Senate.
It was less of an issue in the House, which passed its ObamaCare repeal-and-replace legislation in May after a battle that centered more on what rules insurers would have to meet in offering insurance.
Conservatives in the House and Senate alike have sought changes to ObamaCare that would lower premium costs and have looked to weaken ObamaCare’s rules to allow insurers to offer cheaper coverage plans.
In the Senate, Medicaid has been a much bigger part of the debate, in part because 20 Republican senators — almost half of the conference — represent states that accepted the expansion. These senators are concerned about how changes to the healthcare law will affect constituents across their states.
The Senate bill begins ratcheting down the federal match for expansion states in 2021, reverting it to pre-ObamaCare levels by 2024. The House took a more conservative approach and included language in its bill that would have ended the expansion in 2020.
But the Senate approach has not won over all of the senators from Medicaid expansion states, who were advocating a seven-year phaseout of the extra federal funds for Medicaid expansion.
Another unresolved issue is how to calculate spending on the Medicaid program.
Both the House and Senate bills institute a per person cap on Medicaid funding for each state. That cap would be adjusted annually for inflation, but there are disagreements on what formula should be used.
The current language in the Senate bill includes deeper cuts than the House beginning in 2025. It ties the growth rate for Medicaid funding to the consumer price index for medical care before switching it to CPI-U in 2025 — which would lead to deeper cuts. This is the language that Toomey and other conservatives want to make sure stays in the bill.
In its analysis, the CBO estimated 15 million fewer people would be enrolled in Medicaid by 2026 under the Senate bill, which it said would lead to a $772 billion cut to the program.
After an effort to hold a vote on the bill this week was delayed, Capito and Portman cited Medicaid in announcing their opposition to the bill.
Portman and Capito represent Medicaid expansion states that have been hit hard by the opioid epidemic. Medicaid is a large payer of services for those with an opioid addiction.
The two had been pushing for $45 billion over a decade to combat the opioid addiction crisis. But the bill falls far short of their ask, instead including just $2 billion for fiscal 2018.
McConnell could put more money in that pot, but Capito indicated Tuesday that probably wouldn’t be enough to win her vote.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) — who has been calling for a bipartisan compromise on healthcare — said he’s warned Portman against being won over by minor concessions.
“I told him, ‘If they hand you a few billion dollars on opioids … that’s like spitting in the ocean,’ ” compared with the billions the bill would cut from Medicaid, Kasich said at a press conference Tuesday.
One option for leadership would be to soften the Medicaid provisions for moderates and include more flexibility on insurance regulations for conservatives. An aide to Sen. Mike Lee Michael (Mike) Shumway LeeBipartisan representatives demand answers on expired surveillance programs McConnell shores up GOP support for coronavirus package McConnell tries to unify GOP MORE (R-Utah) confirmed he may be open to Medicaid changes “if Americans were given more relief from ObamaCare’s Title I regulations,” which are ObamaCare’s insurance rules.
McConnell has nearly $200 billion in savings to pad the bill in an effort to win enough support for passage. But it’s unclear if that’s enough.
“Tinkering around the edges, putting a little bit of money in for one program or another, is not going to be sufficient,” Collins told reporters Wednesday. “I want to see changes that would have a real impact on the Medicaid issues and the number of people insured.”
When asked how to pay for a longer transition for Medicaid or a higher cap, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch Orrin Grant HatchBottom line Bottom line Senate GOP divided over whether they'd fill Supreme Court vacancy MORE (R-Utah) didn’t know.
“Well that’s the question for everything,” he said. “How are we going to pay for all this stuff no matter what we do?”
So, how can leadership massage the bill in a way to get both conservatives and moderates on board?
“Even porcupines make love,” Sen. Pat Roberts Charles (Pat) Patrick RobertsThe Hill's Morning Report - Sponsored by Facebook - Washington on edge amid SCOTUS vacancy The Hill's Morning Report - Sponsored by National Industries for the Blind - Trump seeks to flip 'Rage' narrative; Dems block COVID-19 bill GOP senators say coronavirus deal dead until after election MORE (R-Kan.) joked. | {
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Recent studies have shown that sleeping helps boosts memory and learning ability. But new findings by a team of researchers indicate sleeping might even help humans get rid of deep-rooted intrinsic biases, including sexism and racism.
A research team from Northwestern University has claimed that an individual can unlearn the unconscious and conscious biases within themselves with the help of "counter-stereotype training."
During this training, patients are exposed to a few typical sounds, after which they are allowed to sleep for a short duration. The researchers discovered that a person's recall ability was dependent on whether learning-related sounds were also played while they were taking a nap.
“We call this Targeted Memory Reactivation, because the sounds played during sleep could produce relatively better memory for information cued during sleep compared to information not cued during sleep,” said lead study author Ken Paller, in a statement.
Xiaoqing Hu and his team used the same technique to see if the intrinsic biases could be modified using the conditioning exercises. For the exercise, the team recruited 40 subjects, including men and women aged 18 to 30.
The participants were asked to complete two sets of counter-stereotype training, at the end of which the researchers found that their intrinsic bias had fallen down by more than 50 percent. According to Hu, the participants continued to be less biased, although by nearly 20 percent, even after a week of conducting the exercises.
"It is somewhat surprising that the sleep-based intervention could have an impact that was still apparent one week later. The usual expectation is that a brief, one-time intervention is not strong enough to have a lasting influence," said Hu, in a statement.
The complete study has been published in the journal Science. | {
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Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, ex-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, a hedge-fund billionaire and major Democratic donor, are linking arms Tuesday to release a report, Risky Business, that argues U.S. companies should treat climate change as any other business threat.
The report, which says climate change could cost the country billions of dollars over the next two decades, is the product of a bipartisan group of former cabinet officers, lawmakers, corporate leaders and scientists.
... | {
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British American Tobacco and three other firms’ use of platform ruled as advertising
British American Tobacco (BAT) and three other e-cigarette firms have been banned by the UK advertising watchdog from promoting their vaping products on public Instagram pages in a ruling described as “a huge step forward” by health campaigners.
The landmark ruling against the FTSE 100 tobacco giant and maker of brands including Lucky Strike, Dunhill, Rothmans and Benson & Hedges, puts the spotlight on tactics used to market increasingly controversial vaping and e-cigarette products to young people.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) rules ban the advertising of unlicensed, nicotine-containing e-cigarettes, however companies are allowed to put factual information about their products on their own websites. BAT, one of four companies to receive bans from the ASA for using Facebook-owned Instagram to promote vaping, had argued its Vype Instagram account was equivalent to a company-owned site.
The ASA rejected this claim, adding that BAT’s celebrity-driven ads “clearly went beyond the provision of factual information and was promotional in nature”.
The ruling followed complaints from Action on Smoking and Health, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and Stop (Stopping Tobacco Organisations and Products) that Instagram posts from BAT, Ama Vape Lab, Attitude Vapes and Mylo Vapes broke advertising rules.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of the Vype Instagram posts which featured Lily Allen promoting e-cigarettes. Photograph: Advertising Standards Authority/PA
The complaints focused on Instagram posts including seven early this year by BAT for its e-cigarette brand Vype, three of which featured captioned pictures of singer Lily Allen. Other posts promoting Vype congratulated Rami Malek on his Bafta best actor award for Bohemian Rhapsody and featured a picture of model Olivia Jade Attwood smoking an e-cigarette.
“The ASA’s ruling is a huge step forward in preventing tobacco companies from using social media to advertise to young people in the UK and around the world,” said Mark Hurley, director of international communications at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, one of three campaigning groups to lodge a complaint with the ASA. “While the ASA ruling is great news, urgent policy change is needed from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to prevent BAT and other tobacco companies from using social media to advertise their harmful products to young people around the world.”
Instagram has more than 20 million monthly users in the UK, almost 7 million of whom are aged between 12 and 24 years old and another 6 million are between 25 and 34 years old, according to research firm eMarketer.
The ASA’s ruling comes as the issue of vaping among younger people, and the health concerns emerging attributed to e-cigarettes, loads increasing pressure on the makers and marketers. In the US there have been more than 2,300 incidences of vaping-related lung injury, including 47 deaths.
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Late last year, the US Food and Drug Administration banned the sale of most flavoured e-cigarettes in tens of thousands of convenience stores and petrol stations across the US to curb the huge rise in vaping among teenagers.
“This is a major step forward in stopping the tobacco industry from promoting its new addictive products to children and teenagers,” said Professor Anna Gilmore, director of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath. But given that cigarette sales are falling and tobacco companies are desperate to recruit young people into using these new products, ongoing vigilance is essential.”
In May, Tobacco-Free Kids and more than 125 organisations from 48 countries called on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat to immediately prohibit influencer marketing of tobacco and e-cigarettes on their platforms.
“We do not allow adverts that promote the sale or use of tobacco or electronic cigarettes,” said a spokesman for Facebook. “Earlier this year we updated our policy to restrict organic content that depicts the sale or purchase of tobacco products to over 18s. We are currently updating our branded content policies to no longer allow paid promotions of these products too.” | {
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A boy attempted suicide after his obsession with video game Fortnite turned his life into a nightmare.
Carl Thompson, 17, spiralled into debt and drug addiction as he spent almost all of his time playing it – including 12-hour stints.
He hardly ate or slept and says he was “miserable and unable to function”.
Only a few months after first playing the game, he decided there was only one way to escape.
He tried to jump to his death from his third-floor bedroom window. By chance, Carl’s dad saw him as he was about to leap and pulled him to safety.
The teenager is now having treatment to deal with his issues.
Is your child being treated for an addiction? Email [email protected]
Now, he is speaking out in the hope it deters others from following in his footsteps. He says: “Fortnite turned me into a suicidal, thieving, lying drug addict.
“I want to warn kids or parents how the game sucks you in far, far worse than any 18-rated game I’ve played. The idea that young kids are playing this is terrifying.”
Fortnite has attracted 125 million players since its launch a year ago. The survival game, played online and on XBox and Nintendo consoles, is for over-12s.
It is predicted to make £15billion next year.
Meanwhile, figures show more than 5,000 people tried to get help for gaming addictions over the past year, a 167% rise – with 30% of them children.
Carl’s mum Carol, 38, says: “I’m petrified how many kids will get addicted to this game this summer.
“I urge every parent to keep their gaming console out of bounds at night and to spot the warning signs. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor... this game sucks you in and ruins lives.”
Carl, from Preston, Lancs, previously played addictive games such as Call of Duty, and Grand Theft Auto but found time to study and play sport.
But it was different when he started playing Fortnite in November, when he was 16.
He says: “The more battles you win, the more you want to keep playing.
“Each time you’re killed you’re automatically dropped back into the battle zone, so it’s like being on an endless loop, and all you want is to move up the rankings for more rewards and better status.”
Carl soon began missing college. He stopped playing sport and stole from his parents to pay for the game’s latest weapons and upgrades.
He says: “I was exhausted doing all-nighters, so my mates said I should try playing with amphetamines. I’ve always been anti-drugs, but all I wanted to do was play the game more, and this seemed the only way.
“I was doing all-nighters three or four nights a week. When I hadn’t slept, I’d just take more speed and carry on. I was a complete state, miserable and unable to function... kept up by the speed and not eating.
“One morning I urinated in a bottle by my desk and drank from another bottle.”
Suffering come-downs from the drugs, the only way he knew how to get back up was to take more speed.
It all got too much one night in April. He says: “I just had to escape this existence, and the only way I knew how was to kill myself.
“I climbed out of my bedroom window and looked down, wanting to end it all. I was shaking and crying. Before I could jump I felt a hand grab my neck and arm and yank me back.
“My dad had heard the window opening and came in see to what was going on, and rushed to grab me.
“In the room I started hitting him, screaming to let me go, but he wouldn’t. My mum came running in, watching dad and me wrestle on the floor. My mum was screaming, I was crying, it was complete chaos.”
Until then, Carl’s parents were oblivious to the dark place their son was in.
Dad Rob, 39, says: “The change we’ve seen in Carl over the past year is like a nightmare. We feel ashamed that as good parents this happened on our watch. We had no idea what this game was, what it could do.”
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The game, in which 100 players try to be the last to survive on an island, has millions of young players, and famous fans such as England footballer Dele Alli.
Carol says: “We honestly had no idea any of this was going on until the night Carl tried to kill himself.
“Fortnite [is] so addictive and destructive. It’s because it appears to be so inoffensive and fun that it lures you in, and by then you can’t get out.”
Carl’s parents called in counsellor Steve Pope, and the lad’s life is slowly getting back on track.
Carl says: “All I cared about was Fortnite. It’s almost impossible to describe how quickly it happened, the bubble I was in, how my old life felt like a dream.
“I’m back playing cricket again now and studying for exams. It all feels like such a horrible dream.”
US firm Epic Games, which created Fortnite, declined to comment.
We've had so many rows about it: Mum says I'm addicted
A mum and her ten-year-old son have shared their own experience of how Fortnite has affected their day-to-day lives.
Here they tell their sides of the story...
Ted Wiskar, 10, Brighton
Gamer
"I fibbed to my Mum so I could download the game. I said our friends in France had it - they didn’t. They are the same age as me.
She looked it up online because it is a 12. A few sites said that it was ok for younger kids as there wasn’t any blood and the graphics were like minecraft so not like GTA or Black Ops.
It isn’t any more violent than Star Wars Battlefront, rated 12, and I’ve played that so eventually she agreed I could download it. Mum would probably say she regrets that!
I got it in October 2017 before any of my friends so I didn’t really play it much with them at first.
Then everyone got it and it’s all we talked about in the playground. If you know your friend’s gamertag you can play it with them. I used to play Fifa 17 a lot and NBA 2K17 (a bastketball game) which Mum played with me.
But I have pretty much stopped playing any other games.. unless Fortnite won’t load or is updating. Sometimes this can take ages and I can get really annoyed.
It’s frustrating if you know your friends are playing and you can’t.
I have had so many rows with Mum about it. Mum cried once because the argument was so bad. I did call her some horrible names and screamed that I hated her.
She says I am addicted to it and we have talked about what this means. I do sort of agree with her because it is all I really want to do when I am at home. And it is all I want to talk about.
But it hasn’t stopped me from going to swim training three times a week or to cricket.
We have had to agree that Wednesdays is an XBox free day. I hate that. And I still get angry about it.
I want to punch something when I get angry and Mum and I have had to talk about that too. I know it's wrong to get so angry but I can't help it. I just want to play Fortnite with my friends!
We’ve agreed I can play it a bit later on a Friday night when I get back from swimming. Not as late as some of my friends though who are allowed to play past 10pm.
I have to do all my homework first so I like it if I don’t get any as then I can play earlier. I don’t play much at Dad’s at all although I do have a PS4 there.
Sometimes Mum gets annoyed because the XBox is in the lounge. She says it is ‘our shared space’ and she feels I take over when I am playing Fortnite.
But she won’t let me have the Xbox in my room. Mum has played it but she just hid in a bush the entire time so she did quite well. She was pretty rubbish apart from that and can't remember which button does what.
When I am not playing Fortnite, I like to read about it or watch YouTube tips on how to win games, My favourite YouTuber is Ninja. He has more than 2000 wins. I also like Ali A.
I have 10 solo wins 2 duos and 13 squad wins. My friend Alfie is a good person to do duos with. We do really well when we play together.
I have probably spent about £250 since October – most of it my Christmas and Birthday money.
Or I earn Mum-Bucks by helping round the house. I don’t get pocket money but if I did I would want to spend it on Fortnite. I’ve bought skins, gliders, pick axes and emotes, which are dances.
I probably ask for V-Bucks every day, sometimes just to wind Mum up, but also because I do want all the stuff on the game. And there’s new stuff all the time!"
What I like
You can play it when you’re younger as most shooter games are for 18+.
You can play alone or with friends.
Although the graphics are quite basic, I like it.
What I don't like
When someone who has a low HP (health) wipes you out
The regular updates can be slow
The fact you do have to spend money getting stuff... it would be good if you could earn V-Bucks by getting better at the game.
What the mum says
Rebecca Burns, 44, Brighton
Journalist
"I started to hate Fortnite as it became more of a phenomena. At first it was just another game but as it grew more popular, things started to change.
It wasn’t the game or the Xbox that I don’t like. It’s what was happening to Ted when he played it. He wasbecoming aggressive and at times having meltdowns when asked to turn it off.
This was causing an untold number of rows.
I’ve banned play, taken away the headset, limted time, written a contract that both signed, threatened to get rid of the console and even turned it off mid-game once which was a nightmare – screaming and tears from both of us.
One row got so bad that I took him to the local coffee shop so we could talk calmly about it all. Neither of us would dare raise our voices in public and it felt a better environment to try and understand what was going on for both of us.
I didn’t know for example that one game lasts about 20 mins so we talked about how starting a new game just before dinner wasn’t his best choice.
Ted has two homes and doesn’t get to play much game when at his Dad’s. He spends a great deal of time hoofing a ball about instead which is brilliant.
He explained he felt left out when he couldn’t play it when he was at his Dad’s and I understand that, so we agreed he could play a bit later on a Friday night and have a longer session on a Saturday.
(Image: Nottingham Post WS)
Ted does the 5k Park Run with me every Saturday or has a cricket match so to play on the Xbox when we get back is ok with me!
And talking to him has helped. The rows have subsided.
They haven’t gone completely but that’s not surprising. He’s 10 and sometimes thinks he has the meanest mum on the planet if I don’t let him have a second biscuit. He’s learning that life is sometimes unfair.
We do need to be aware that kids play differently these days. Of course I’d rather he go outside to play but we don’t have a garden and the nearest park is a 15 minute walk involving busy roads so he can’t go alone.
And if he is going to play computer games then I’d rather him be chatting to his mates while doing it than playing alone.
I feel angry that parents are being blamed (by the likes of Piers Morgan and Lorrine Marer on Good Morning Britain) for not being able to say no.
It isn’t always about saying no. Sometimes it is about not being able to say yes.
I am a single parent who has to work from home and much as I’d love to spend time with Ted, sometimes I simply can’t – I have to work.
And when Ted is at home, done all his homework, been swimming or played cricket then he is entitled to relax and this is the way he wants to do it.
Of course I monitor it, I am in the same room as him the entire time he is playing. He is basically on a digital/remote playdate with his friends.
A lot of the time he is talking tactics and using a language that is alien to me.
Tomato Town and green ARs, legendary bushes and stuff is part of his language. I talk to him about it so I can understand what he is doing. And I check who he is playing with all the time."
Q&A
By Dr Linda Papadopoulous, Psychologist & Internet Matters Amb
(Image: Epic Games / SWNS.com)
W hy do children become ‘addicted’ to games like Fornite?
A lot of games are designed to be addictive. Also, kids copy one another.
If we were talking 30 years ago you’d be asking why is everyone playing with a Rubik’s cube? One person does it, everyone does it.
The appeal is particularly strong for boys, who are programmed to seek competence during young adulthood. These games play on that, they want to be the best, have the best weapons, beat their friends.
It’s no wonder to me that kids want to play games like this.
What should you do if you think your child is getting addicted?
You need to have some sense of proportion. Whether it’s a game, or playing on your phone in general, parents need to parent.
They need to be on top of it. Be aware of what your kids are engaging with and set limits.
In the same way you vary the kids’ diets, it’s the same psychologically.
No child should be doing one activity the whole time.
At what point should parents seek professional help?
Are there major changes in your child’s behaviour? Are they talking about the game obsessively? Are they playing it for hours on end?
Is there a sense they’re staying away from you in their room and staying up late? If they’re staying up late, are basic needs like eating and sleeping being disrupted?
There are physical symptoms to look out for, like sore eyes, neck pain, headaches.
If they appear preoccupied, or if they seem low that could be a sign. No kid wants to stop doing something if you ask them, but if they get really irritated or aggressive, that’s a warning sign.
Visit internetmatters.org for more advice on kids’ online gaming safety.
For confidential support, the Samaritans can be contacted for free around the clock 365 days a year on 116 123. | {
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A revision has been made to the FINAL FANTASY XIV Materials Usage License to include the downloadable album “FINAL FANTASY XIV: Heavensward -EP-” (released Sep. 14, 2015) as material that may be utilized.The FINAL FANTASY XIV Materials Usage License can be found on the Square Enix Support Center, at the link below. Please make sure to consult it carefully before making use of any licensed materials. | {
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RICHMOND, Va. (WTVR) — There was a lot going on Thursday night at the Richmond Coliseum.
The crowds were out for the Lil’ Boosie concert, a multi-county police chase ended after a crash in front of the Coliseum, and rapper Red Rum was arrested.
Red Rum, a Richmond native, opened the Lil’ Boosie concert.
Police sources said he was arrested immediately after he stepped off stage, for failure to pay his child support.
Online court records show that Edward Anthony Anderson, stage name Red Rum, was booked shortly after 10 p.m. Thursday night. He is being held in Henrico.
The charge is failure to comply with order for spousal/child support.
Anderson’s rapper bio states that he was born on Mother’s Day, in 1984.
His bio goes on to say that his “experiences have matured him into strong work ethics, family values, and a hunger to not only give back to his community, but to the entire city.”
Anderson goes before a judge on Friday. His bond is set at $16,000. | {
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Beschreibung
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YOU MAY SELL FINISHED ITEMS MADE FROM THIS PATTERN!
DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE on your purchase of 2+ patterns: 10% - 25%!
See main shop page for details!
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Gerber Garden
PDF Pattern Crocheted Baby Afghan, GERBER GARDEN Car Seat Baby Afghan Blanket Pattern
Lovely, textured baby afghan, granny square construction, features bright color scheme, textured flower, and simple granny border.
~ Quick and easy to crochet!
~ Perfect baby shower gift!
SIZE: approx. 26" x 26"
YARDAGE: requires approx. 12 oz Worsted Weight yarn for Main Color, several oz each for 4 Coordinating Colors
HOOK: size H
~~ This listing is for a PDF file download! This listing does not include supplies, just the pattern. ~~
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https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Jewells-Handmades/263987067078534?ref=stream | {
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Alexandria Ocasio-CortezHouse passes bill to avert shutdown Trump attacks Omar for criticizing US: 'How did you do where you came from?' The Memo: Dems face balancing act on SCOTUS fight MORE (D-N.Y.) issued a call for donations from her supporters on Thursday following a pro-Israel activist's apparent threat to organize against her and two fellow Democrats.
In an email to supporters who funded her successful congressional bid with a wave of small-dollar donations, Ocasio-Cortez conveyed a line from an interview that American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) activist Stephen Fiske gave to The New York Times in which Fiske predicted that Ocasio-Cortez, as well as Reps. Ilhan Omar Ilhan OmarOmar fires back at Trump over rally remarks: 'This is my country' Trump attacks Omar for criticizing US: 'How did you do where you came from?' Democrats scramble on COVID-19 relief amid division, Trump surprise MORE (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib Rashida Harbi TlaibTrump attacks Omar for criticizing US: 'How did you do where you came from?' George Conway: 'Trump is like a practical joke that got out of hand' Pelosi endorses Kennedy in Massachusetts Senate primary challenge MORE (D-Mich.), would be leaving Congress sooner rather than later.
“They are three people who, in my opinion, will not be around in several years," Fiske told the Times.
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The line was seen by Ocasio-Cortez and others as a direct threat aimed at her and the first two Muslim women elected to Congress over their criticism of the Israeli government and its treatment of Palestinians.
"Rashida, Ilhan, and Alexandria have at times dared to question our foreign policy, and the influence of money in our political system. And now, lobbying groups across the board are working to punish them for it," her team wrote in an email.
The letter goes on to reference a tweet from fellow Democratic Rep. Juan Vargas Juan C. VargasHispanic Caucus asks for Department of Labor meeting on COVID in meatpacking plants Hispanic Caucus requests meeting with private detention center CEOs Hispanic Caucus asks Trump to rescind invitation to Mexican president MORE (Calif.), who tweeted this week that it was "unacceptable" for Democrats to question the U.S. relationship with Israel.
It is disturbing that Rep. Omar continues to perpetuate hurtful anti-Semitic stereotypes that misrepresent our Jewish community. Additionally, questioning support for the U.S.-Israel relationship is unacceptable. (1/2) — Rep. Juan Vargas (@RepJuanVargas) March 4, 2019
"Some members of Congress have even gone so far as to claim that 'questioning support for the US-Israel relationship is unacceptable.' But that’s not how our legislative process is supposed to work," Ocasio-Cortez's fundraising request states.
"Just a decade ago, it was ‘unquestionable’ to not support the war in Iraq. And we all saw what resulted from that lack of discussion and negotiation," the email continues.
Ocasio-Cortez defeated longtime New York Rep. Joseph Crowley (D) in a primary election last year in a shocking double-digit victory that led to her coasting to victory over a Republican opponent in November. | {
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At the height of Vancouver's housing boom in 2016, Patryk Gwardys was clearing $150,000 a year as a real estate agent.
He had a website full of listings and a profile on LinkedIn. Then he decided to take a trip to Australia.
Nearly three years later, Gwardys' recorded voice still answers his cell phone number, but the mailbox is full. His real estate licence lapsed weeks after what turned out to be a one-way trip to the land down under. For all intents and purposes, he vanished.
The answer to the mystery of his disappearance was explained last month by an Australian criminal appeal court. It apparently emerged over five days at a Sydney hospital after Gwardys refused an airport body scan.
"Between 2 and 7 December 2016, (Gwardys) passed 98 latex covered pellets, each of which were approximately three centimetres long and one centimetre wide and weighed about four grams," the ruling reads.
"In total, the pellets contained 477.7 grams of cocaine."
'Too late to withdraw'
The appeal court judges in New South Wales, Australia, rejected Gwardys' bid to appeal a six-year sentence for drug trafficking.
The ruling details a downward spiral that began after the collapse of the 39-year-old's marriage.
Patryk Gwardys claimed he fell into a cocaine habit after his marriage fell apart. He claimed his dealers asked him to carry drugs on a flight to Sydney. (CBC)
"The offender described the break-up as traumatic and said that his behaviour changed," the ruling said. "He worked only about one day a week, ignoring his clients and his work in general. He was drinking on a daily basis and then started using cocaine on a regular basis at the cost of about $100 a day, He said that he was in debt."
Gwardys claimed that individuals "who had sold him drugs in the past" offered him $20,000 and four ounces of cocaine to smuggle cocaine to Australia. He said he agreed because he owed them money.
"(He) told the sentencing judge that as the date of his departure drew closer he started to have second thoughts about undertaking a trip carrying drugs, but that when he approached those who had engaged him they told him that it was too late to withdraw," the judgement says.
"(He) said that it was about this time he was threatened."
They used to call them 'mules'
Gwardys flew from Vancouver to Sydney on Dec. 1, 2016. He was selected for a random inspection and his carry-on luggage turned up a trace of cocaine.
"A frisk search returned no results and the offender refused to consent to a body scan," the appeal court ruling said.
"The Australian Federal Police conveyed the offender to St. George Hospital where he consented to a CT scan of his abdomen. The CT scan revealed multiple foreign objects concealed therein. He was then arrested."
Patryk Gwardys consented to a CT scan like the one shown in this file photo, after he was taken to hospital by the Australian Federal Police. (Philippe Merle/AFP/Getty Images)
Gwardys claimed he didn't know how many pellets of cocaine he had ingested. He believed the drugs were protected by a wax layer as well as a latex covering. The judges pointed out that he had swallowed more than 200 times the amount that might be sold on the street.
The police found that Gardys had visited Australia 10 times since April 2008. He claimed he was visiting family and friends and that he had never brought drugs into the country before.
"Anyone who agrees to carry drugs within his person takes a great personal risk, not only of being detected with the drugs but also to his health and safety should the drugs leach into his body," the Australian judges wrote.
"In times gone by they were referred to, in cases like this, as 'mules' and they were considered at the bottom of the supply chain, given the risks that they were asked by others to take."
Depressed behind bars
According to the Real Estate Council of B.C., Gwardys was licensed as an agent from July 2009 until Dec. 29, 2016, by which time he was already incarcerated in an Australian prison.
A psychologist told the court Gwardys was depressed.
"Associated with this depression are symptoms of anxiety, particularly associated to the threat that he feels within the prison environment," the court document reads.
"He is, to some extent, relatively socially isolated as a result."
Gwardys is eligible for parole in 2020. He will likely be deported to Canada shortly thereafter. | {
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Social media is abuzz today with the confirmed news that the Tory government used public money to pay a company staffed by former military intelligence officers to conduct online smear campaigns against the leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, in what it laughably termed the ‘Integrity Initiative’:
It is a huge democratic and constitutional scandal – as well as confirmation of what Labour supporters have known all along: the Establishment is coordinating smears in desperation to undermine the Labour Party and its leader.
Such a scandal, in a genuinely democratic society with a genuinely free media, should be headline news – in fact, not merely headline news but the kind that makes governments fall and generates rolling coverage as the media’s talking heads and experts pore over every detail, cutting away occasionally for footage of the latest government minister being led away in handcuffs.
Here are the BBC News channel’s half-hourly headlines:
Not a single mention. Old news gets recycled and there’s room for opinion and trivia, so it’s not like the news agenda was brimming over with other breaking items.
But not a single word about the fact that the UK’s government misappropriated taxpayers’ money to pay former intelligence officers to conduct a clandestine operation against the leader of the UK’s main opposition party and likely next Prime Minister.
Labour MP Chris Williamson’s parliamentary written question led to the exposure of the scandal:
What the hell is going on?
I tabled a parliamentary question recently and discovered the Foreign Office has given £2m of public money to a shady organisation that's indulging in black propaganda against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party.https://t.co/wDbQwCMqnD — Chris Williamson #GTTO (@DerbyChrisW) December 9, 2018
He told the SKWAWKBOX:
This is an enormous democratic scandal and political dynamite. Of course, the left has been able to intuit all along that this has been happening, but now it’s confirmed – and it’s tempting to just be appalled rather than shocked, because we’re cynical about the behaviour of this government. But we should be shocked, because we’re told we live in a democracy – and if £2 million is known about, how much else has gone over the years on similar misuses? It’s utterly unacceptable – and we should be just as shocked that most of the mainstream media are not covering it. What are they there for? This shows again how essential the alternative media and social media are – without them, the vast majority of us wouldn’t find out about it this and similar scandals.
SKWAWKBOX comment:
The revelation of the government’s abuse both of public funds and of democracy manages to be shocking even while being entirely unsurprising.
But it’s the silence of the BBC and many other media outlets that piles scandal on top of scandal – and puts beyond reasonable doubt that the Establishment’s political and media arms collude to obscure or minimise the impact of the government’s corruption, incompetence and dishonesty.
The SKWAWKBOX needs your support. This blog is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal. Thanks for your solidarity so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.
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Damascus, SANA – Mohammad Onfwan Issam al-Naeb, Idriss Ahmad Mayya and Mohammad Ahmad Haj Ibrahim, Syria’s new ambassadors to South Africa, Cuba and Armenia, respectively, were sworn in before President Bashar al-Assad on Monday.
Afterwards, the President received the ambassadors, separately, where he provided them with his directives and wished them success in their mission.
Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign and Expatriates Minister Walid al-Moallem attended the swearing-in ceremony.
M. al-Frieh/H. Said | {
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Provinces, SANA- The army is advancing further in Aleppo, as its units, in cooperation with the supporting forces, have established control over several new areas after inflicting heavy losses upon the terrorist organizations there.
Aleppo
Units of the Army and Armed Forces, in cooperation with the supporting forces, restored security and stability to the neighborhoods of Karm al-Dada, Karm al-Qatirji and al-Shaar in the city of Aleppo, SANA reporter announced.
In a relevant context, the reporter said members of the Internal Security Forces detonated a car bomb for the terrorist organizations before it managed to reach a military post in the surroundings of Jamiyet al-Zahra.
He noted that the car bomb attack was planned in an attempt to raise the deteriorating morale of the terrorists who had to flee under the army’s strikes in the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo city.
Later, a military source said that army units restored security and stability to al-Marjeh and al-Sheikh Lutfi neighborhoods in Aleppo, and are pursuing the remaining terrorists in the area.
The source also said that the army units established control over Tallet al-Shurta (hill) after conducting intensive operations against the terrorist organizations to the east of Aleppo city and eliminating their gatherings.
Damascus countryside
Units of the army, in cooperation with backing forces, advanced in Housh al-Zawahra farms in Damascus countryside, stormed the defensive lines of the terrorists groups and destroyed their fortifications.
Idleb, Hama
The army killed a number of “Jaish al-Fatah” terrorists in military operations against their gatherings in several towns of Hama and Idleb countryside.
The army’s air force raided the gatherings of terrorists in Kfar Zeita, Latamneh, Hilfaya and Soran in Hama northern countryside, killing a number of the terrorists and destroying their dens.
Units of the army also hit the gatherings of terrorists in Tamana’a, Sarmin, Khan Sheikhoun and Binish in Idleb countryside, killing several terrorists and destroying a number of armored vehicles.
Daraa
Army units killed a number of Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists in operations against their gatherings and fortifications in Daraa al-Balad area and al-Nu’aimeh in the countryside of Daraa southern province.
The military source told SANA that an army unit on Tuesday clashed with a terrorist group which attacked a military post to the north of the Technical Institute in the southwestern part of al-Manshyia neighborhood in Daraa al-Balad area.
The source stressed that the clashes ending by foiling the attack and killing all members of the terrorist group, in addition to destroying an amount of arms and ammunition that was in their possession.
The source added that an army unit carried out precise bombardments against fortifications of the terrorist groups in the surroundings of the shoes factory and Katakit building in Daraa al-Balad area, killing a number of terrorists and injuring others.
5km to the east of Daraa City, an army unit killed a number of terrorists and destroyed their fortifications in al-Nu’aimeh town.
Homs
Army units targeted gatherings and supply lines of Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists in the northern countryside of Homs province.
A military source told SANA that army units carried out concentrated strikes which resulted in killing many terrorists in the villages of al-Tibah al-Gharbiya, al-Ghanto, Kisin, and al-Samalil, in addition to destroying a 23mm artillery gun in Um Sharshoh and a car loaded with munitions in Tal Abu al-Sanasil in the northern countryside of Homs.
The source added that an army unit thwarted a terrorist group’s attempt to infiltrate from the direction of Hosh al-Zabadi village towards Tasnin village in al-Rastan area, leaving most of the terrorists dead or injured. | {
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Anders følte sig som noget særligt, da han steg om bord på et privatfly sammen med FCK's spillertrup.
Han var af spilfirmaet Unibet blevet inviteret med til Stuttgart i Tyskland for at se en Champions League-fodboldkamp.
- Det var da en vild oplevelse. Man følte, at man var noget værd, siger Anders.
Han er omdrejningspunkt i en usædvanlig retssag, som retten i Herning i dag tager hul på.
Her skal det afgøres, om Unibet kan holdes ansvarlig for, at Anders gennem en periode på knap halvandet år spillede hele sin arbejdsskadeerstatning og pension for sammenlagt over to millioner kroner op på Unibets onlinekasinoer.
Anders ønsker at være anonym, men hans rigtige navn er redaktionen bekendt.
- Jeg havde det ikke godt med at spille
Anders mener, at Unibet har fastholdt ham i et spilmisbrug ved at invitere ham på eksklusive ture og lokke med bonusser, selv om de vidste eller burde have vidst, at han var psykisk sårbar og ved at udvikle ludomani.
- Jeg gjorde tidligt i forløbet opmærksom på, at jeg ikke havde det godt med at spille længere, siger Anders.
Når han ikke havde spillet noget tid, oplevede han alligevel, at han modtog tilbud om gratis spil for eksempelvis 1.000 kroner, hvis han selv satte et tilsvarende beløb ind på sin spilkonto.
- Det vil sige, at man følte sig for dum, hvis ikke man indbetalte maksimumbeløbet, for man fik det samme antal penge af dem, siger Anders.
Den samlede spilindustri ser ud til at have et fastholdelseskoncept for storkunder, som får dem til at føle sig ekstra vigtige og fastholder dem i spillet. Henrik Thrane Brandt, souschef ved Center for Ludomani
Han har fået fri proces til at føre retssagen og kræver en erstatning, der kan dække tabet.
- Man kan sammenligne det med, at Carlsberg tog ud og bankede på døren hos alkoholikere og sagde: ’Værsgo, her er en kasse Carlsberg. Og hvis du køber den, så giver vi dig en kasse oveni’ for at få dem til at fortsætte deres alkoholisme, siger han.
Læs også : Online casinoer lænser mindreårige for lommepenge
Hverken Unibet eller spilfirmaets advokat ønsker at stille op til interview om den verserende sag, og vi har derfor ikke deres udlægning af sagen i detaljer. Men Unibet mener, at selskabet har optrådt i fuld overensstemmelse med loven, og at firmaet ikke har pligt til at lukke en spillers konto.
Anders fortæller, at kontakten med Unibets personale var så hyppig, at han fandt tryghed i den personlige relation, som han opbyggede med sin bookmaker hos Unibet. | {
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9. The First Movie - Roundhay Garden Scene
1888 saw the creation of the first strip of celluloid ever shot that survives today: a two second shot of a man walking across a yard while some ladies mill about known as the Roundhay Garden Scene. Even beyond the importance of the strip in cinematic history terms, theres an interesting story regarding the aftermath of shooting this little film, as it was said to have left a cursed legacy that did for its major players. First, the director Louis Le Prince disappeared from a train a few years later (one of the suspects in that case was Le Prince's rival Thomas Edison, who will be featured repeatedly in this list later on,) before, in 1902, the man walking across the shot was shot dead for reasons unrelated to the film, and Le Princes mother-in-law - who also made an appearance in the film - died only ten days after the filming was completed. If theres any truth to this curse, it means that the first bit of film ever shot is much creepier than the first horror movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1i40rnpOsA | {
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play stop mute unmute max volume repeat
[M4F] A Ghost who loves you [Script by potentially_cute] [Ghost] [Sweet] [Cute] [Part 1]
"Can I stay with you? Cause I really do like you." | {
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Believes people are basically good. Wants more government intrusion because people can't be trusted to do the right thing.
815 shares | {
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Story by Roger Moore
It is a debate that has raged long before Oklahoma Territory became the state of Oklahoma in 1907, before a few Kansans settled near Stillwater Creek, even before the original colonies became the United States in the eighteenth century. In fact, just uttering the word “marijuana” brings about immediate discussion of the pros and cons of a plant that has any number of uses.
The current debate focuses on medicinal marijuana, stemming from the June 26, 2018 vote that saw 57 percent of Oklahoma voters approve State Question 788, legalizing marijuana for any medical use on a doctor’s recommendation. The literature established one of the nation’s most liberal medical marijuana laws in what is considered one of the most politically conservative states. A “Red” state such as Oklahoma does not necessarily agree with an abundance of government control. Unlike other states going through the process, Oklahoma officials created no list of qualifying medical conditions in order to receive a license.
Only one thing is certain in this debate: it will continue to evolve. Stillwater and Norman, the state’s two largest college towns, had, as of early January, 45 combined dispensaries. So, why and how has marijuana become the elephant in the room?
Marijuana, also known as cannabis or pot, was originally cultivated in parts of Asia as an herbal medicine as early as 500 BCE. Cannabis cultivation in America dates to the early colonists, who grew hemp for textiles and rope. Hemp is a variety of the cannabis sativa plant species that is grown specifically for the industrial uses of its derived products. Hemp fiber was used to make clothing, paper, sails and rope, and because of its many uses was grown throughout colonial America and at Spanish missions in the Southwest. The early colonial-era plants had low levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the chemical responsible for mind-altering effects. Research brought about further uses for the plant.
By the 1830s, pharmacies and doctors sold cannabis extracts to treat stomach problems and other ailments. THC was shown to be the source of cannabis’ medicinal properties, especially in regards to its ability to lessen nausea. Not until the early 1900s was marijuana used for recreational purposes. Many Mexicans, fleeing during the Mexican Revolution, introduced the practice of smoking marijuana to American culture. The unemployment and social unrest of 1930s America brought about resentment of Mexican immigrants and a public fear of the “evil weed.” Racism of the period also associated prominent marijuana usage with the African-American community. Right in line with the Prohibition-era’s view of all intoxicants, 29 states outlawed cannabis by 1933 and the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was the first federal U.S. law to criminalize marijuana nationwide. The Act imposed an excise tax on the sale, possession or transfer of hemp products. The 1936 film “Reefer Madness” illustrates the hysteria of the time in regards to misunderstood and unsubstantiated claims.
Following the tumultuous 1960s, the Controlled Substance Act of 1970, signed by President Richard Nixon, repealed the Marijuana Tax Act and listed marijuana as a Schedule I drug along with heroin, LSD, and ecstasy with no medical uses and a high potential for abuse. Two years later, in 1972, the Shafer Commission released a report titled “Marijuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding.” The report recommended “partial prohibition” and lower criminal penalties. Nixon and government officials ignored the report. Continued research into cannabis has invited yet more questions, but over the last two decades there has been changes in attitudes and acceptance.
California, with its Compassionate Act of 1996, became the first state to legalize marijuana for medicinal use by people with severe or chronic illnesses. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved two drugs with THC that are prescribed in pill form (Marinol and Syndros) to treat nausea caused by cancer chemotherapy and loss of appetite in AIDS patients.
Writer Malcolm Gladwell weighed in on the medical marijuana debate in The New Yorker’s Jan. 14, 2019 issue. He cites the National Academy of Medicine’s convening of a panel of sixteen leading medical experts to analyze the scientific literature on cannabis. The January 2017 report is 486 pages in length and contains no surprises, only that a drug “North Americans have become enthusiastic about remains a mystery.” Many studies on marijuana were done in the 1980s and 1990s when cannabis was not nearly as potent as it is in 2019. The amount of THC has increased dramatically since those studies; in the mid-1990s the average THC content of confiscated marijuana was 4 percent. By 2014 the THC content increased to, on average, 12 percent. Due to developments in plant breeding and growing techniques the THC concentration has gone from a sip of 3.2 percent beer to a shot of high quality tequila. What Gladwell and others point out is that there is no definitive evidence, on either side of the debate, as to the short-term or long-term effects of marijuana use. Medical professionals understand that different substances react differently to different people; young or old, healthy or sick, sane or unstable.
The U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, at the close of 2018, called on the federal government to rethink marijuana’s classification as a Schedule I substance. Adams did not condone legalization for recreational use, but he did say that medically, marijuana should be studied like any other pain relief drug and that both health and criminal justice policies need to be re-examined. He pointed out that the cannabis plant is made up of hundreds of chemical entities, thus a need for continued study. Cannabinoid oil and other derivatives of the plant have been used for treatment of everything from anxiety to epilepsy and that, coupled with the ongoing opioid crisis, warrants further research in regards to the medicinal properties of cannabis.
There is also a financial impact at the national and state level: A congressional report released in December entitled, “The National Cannabis Economy,” highlighted the economic benefits of legalized cannabis at the state and national levels. The report concludes that in 2018 more than $11 billion will be earned by the marijuana industry, and that sales will reach $23 billion by 2022 due to, “job creation, more tax revenue, and better patient care.” As of Dec. 10, 2018, the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority collected an estimated $8.3 million in application fees.
The OMMA was established to oversee the medical marijuana program for the State of Oklahoma. It is responsible for licensing, regulating, and administering the program as authorized by state law. Operating under the Oklahoma State Department of Health, the primary goal is to ensure safe and responsible practices for the people of Oklahoma. The website is the official site for application submission and information for patients, caregivers, dispensaries, growers, processors, and physicians. It is important to note that marijuana is still listed as a Schedule 1 controlled substance in federal law, so it cannot be prescribed. The Ninth Circuit Court ruling ensures protection for doctors who issue recommendations to patients who may benefit from cannabis-based treatments, but federal law precludes doctors from “aiding and abetting” patients obtaining marijuana. Doctors fill out a form indicating they discussed the risks and feel the benefits are worth the treatment.
Additionally, medical marijuana must be bought from a licensed dispensary; it cannot be used in the workplace and employees cannot be impaired on the job; you cannot transport across state lines or smoke in public or in front of minors. Also, a patient remains within legal guidelines if they possess no more than three ounces on their person and eight ounces in their residence, one ounce of concentrated marijuana, and 72 ounces of edible marijuana; if caught exceeding those limitations, the patient could lose their license and face criminal charges including intent to distribute or trafficking.
As of the first week of January, 35,802 patients, 252 caregiver, and 2,831 business applications had been received, totaling 38,885. Dispensaries began selling THC-rich products in November and patients were also able to harvest their first legal home-cultivated cannabis.
No doubt, there will be continued discussion regarding the positives and negatives of medical marijuana in and around the Stillwater community. Also, no doubt, the debate will involve those who have actively listened and tried to understand the medicinal impact such change can bring and those who continue to view cannabis from a stereotypical 1930s perspective. The goal of any medicine is to help heal and to possibly alleviate pain. That pain can be physical as well as mental and it is well known that what works for one patient might not necessarily work for another. At the same time, one person under the influence of marijuana does not react the same as another. What are the health risks? Is it on par with smoking cigarettes? E-cigarettes? How does the “high” differ from alcohol? Should soldiers returning from combat duty be allowed something to help with PTSD? If a cancer patient needs something following chemotherapy, and marijuana helps, should they not have that choice? And, like any medication or drug, getting behind the wheel means impaired driving. That we know for sure.
These and other questions will continue well past 2019.
Editor’s Note: As of January 10, 2019 there were 19 licensed Payne County Growers, 11 with Stillwater addresses; 4 Payne County Processors, 2 with Stillwater addresses; and 16 Payne County Dispensaries, 12 with Stillwater addresses.
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We have the third SPOILER for the Winter 2017 FabFitFun box! (If you haven’t signed up yet, use coupon code MSA10 to save $10 off your Winter Box!)
Each box will include:
Doucce Cosmetics Freematic Face Palette in Smokey or Nude – Value $70
This palette is available in two different shades and includes a highlighter and 8 eyeshadows. (Annual subscribers will be able to pick the color of their choice.)
These palettes are magnetic so you can swap out any of the pans:
This palette includes 5 shimmer eyeshadows, 3 mattes, and a highlighter. Here they are swatched:
(Highlighter on top.)
And here is the other color option:
Both palettes have the same champagne-colored highlighter.
This set has four shimmers (the top row), and four mattes.
Here is everything swatched (highlighter on the top):
The pigment is good throughout on both these eyeshadows, they were easy to blend, and I had minimal fallout!
UPDATE: Here it is in hand to give you a better sense of scale:
In case you missed the previous 2 spoilers:
BB Dakota Poncho – $70 Value
This poncho is open in the front and available in three different colors. (If you are an annual/select FabFitFun member, you’ll be able to pick the color of your choice!)
Here are the care instructions: Machine wash cold, no tumble dry, ironing OK on delicate setting, dry cleaning OK.
(The fabric is 65% acrylic, 35% polyester.)
It features a blanket stitch edge and just like a blanket, it’s super soft and cozy!
Here are the other colorways:
Want to see what this poncho looks like on? Jess and Christen are modeling it for us!
I chose to pair this drape-y poncho in the burgundy, navy, and grey color palette with an otherwise all black look. Being at the end of my pregnancy, black has been my best friend. I love that this poncho’s hues are subtle, and it adds just enough of a fall feel to my basic tank and black jeans. It’s also super soft and cozy (a definite plus, but I did notice some stray fuzz). This is the kind of versatile layered look that I can see myself wearing all fall in different variations — switch out the tank for a staple white tee or opt for distressed denim instead.
I believe ponchos are one of the most versatile pieces for fall and winter—the styling possibilities are endless. I’m a lso a big fan of blending base tones, so I layered this shades-of-grey poncho over a heather grey tee , my go-to brown belt and booties, and some pop-of-color jeans. Different tints and textures break up the monotone look so that my mostly-grey outfit is casual and suitable for everyday wear.
UPDATE: A few more modeling pictures:
And here is the black poncho reversed:
Here’s a better idea of the size of the poncho:
(And you can see the little tag on the reverse side.) For reference, I’m 5’7″.
And it works as a super cozy scarf, too!
UPDATE 2: Here are some pictures of Nicole modeling the poncho:
What do you think of the latest spoiler?
And in case you missed the first spoiler:
Kate Somerville ExfoliKate – 1.7 oz Value $75
From FabFitFun:
-1.7 fl oz
-Features papaya, pumpkin, and pineapple enzymes.
-Lactic acid (aka AHA) chemically exfoliates skin.
-Silica physically exfoliates skin.
I’ve sampled this a few times before thanks to subscription boxes, and I love it.
First, it’s a super quick-use beauty product. You only need to use it for 30 seconds (and you can leave it on for up to two minutes) and apply it twice a week. And it’s paraben, sulfate, and phthalate free!
The exfoliant particles are super fine, so it’s gentle on my skin, and I love the cinnamon scent, too.
What do you think of the latest Winter 2017 FabFitFun Box spoiler?
If you are a new subscriber, and you sign up now, your first box will be the Winter Box. This box is regularly $49.99, but you can use coupon code MSA10 to save $10 off your first box! (or use coupon code FROST to get a free $75 value mystery bundle with your first box!)
Check out all of my FabFitFun reviews to see what’s been in past boxes! | {
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Mike James and Jane Onyanga-Omara
USA TODAY
South Korean authorities urged their reclusive northern neighbor to stop using “threatening words” Thursday, and called for Pyongyang to enter into dialogue to ease tensions in the region.
The Vatican’s former diplomatic representative to the United Nations also appealed for dialogue, while China urged North Korea and the United States not to "play with fire."
It came as North Korea claimed it was writing an attack plan to fire missiles toward the western Pacific island of Guam — a U.S. territory — "to signal a crucial warning to the U.S.”
The North Korean military is "seriously examining the plan for an enveloping strike at Guam through simultaneous fire of four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range strategic ballistic rockets," North Korea's media reported.
It said the missiles will fly over Japan and land near Guam, located about 2,100 miles southeast of North Korea. The U.S. maintains large naval and air bases on the island.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the plan will not be ready until mid-August.
More:Tiny island of Guam is key U.S. military outpost now in North Korea's cross hairs
More:Trump, Mattis warnings to North Korea backed by aging but potent nukes
“The North's recent threatening words have gone too much and run squarely against with the consensus contained in the statement issued after the (ASEAN Regional Forum). It should stop them immediately," Cho June-hyuck, the spokesman for South Korean’s foreign ministry, told reporters Thursday, according to Yonhap.
"The North should make the right choice and come out to the road toward denuclearization. In particular, (we) urge it again to swiftly respond to our initiative for better inter-Korean relations so as to establish permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula," Cho added.
Archbishop Tomasi, the Vatican’s former diplomatic representative to the U.N., said the “way of conflict is always the wrong way.”
He added that “the way forward is not that of having the latest military technology, but of having an approach of inclusion."
China, Pyongyang's most important ally, called for North Korea and the U.S. to exercise restraint.
"The bottom line on the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula is that there must not be any armed conflict there. There is no room for any related party to play with fire on the issue," an editorial on the official Xinhua news agency's website said.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his North Korean counterpart Ri Yong Ho both attended the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Manila on Sunday, but avoided any direct contact.
"Expressing grave concern over the escalation of tensions in the Korean Peninsula, the Ministers urged the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to immediately comply fully with its obligations under all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions,” ASEAN’s chairman Alan Peter Cayetano said in a statement Monday.
“They supported initiatives to improve inter-Korean relations towards establishing peace in the Korean Peninsula,” the statement added.
President Trump has promised "fire and fury" on North Korea if it doesn't abandon its nuclear program.
North Korean media said the purpose of the missile launch will be "to interdict the enemy forces on major military bases on Guam and to signal a crucial warning to the U.S."
More:'Not helpful,' Donald: World reaction to Trump's 'fire and fury' comments
More:Tillerson sees no 'imminent threat' of North Korea attack; defends Trump's blunt talk
Military leaders in North Korea took the opportunity of the world spotlight to make a few digs at Trump. In a statement, North Korean general Kim Rak Gyom, commander of the nation's army, called Trump's "fire and fury" speech "a load of nonsense."
Gyom also called Trump "a guy bereft of reason . . . Only absolute force can work on him."
Among the U.S. military installations on Guam is the sprawling Andersen Air Force Base, as well as Naval Base Guam. The island's positioning in the Pacific is considered a key strategic point for U.S. military planning and presence. At least 6,000 U.S. troops are stationed there.
The island is the USA's most western territory. It is part of the Mariana Islands group, home to U.S. military installations, and it has been the launching point for historic attacks on Asia.
One of Guam's neighbor islands in the Marianas, Tinian Island, was the launching point for the atomic bomb attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II. | {
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HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Friday that his government will not allow any foreign military bases in its territory and called media reports that China is seeking a naval base there “fake news.”
Hun Sen, who is on a three-day visit to Vietnam, insisted at a news briefing with his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, that the Cambodian Constitution does not permit foreign military bases.
“I want to emphasize to you that the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia does not allow any country to set up military bases in Cambodia,” Hun Sun said through a translator.
Asia Times reported last month that China has lobbied Cambodia since 2017 for a base in the southwestern province of Koh Kong in the Gulf of Thailand.
Hun Sen dismissed the report.
“There has been distorting information over the past month that there are preparations to build military establishments in Cambodia,” he said. “I want to say and I have just told Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and the Vietnamese delegation that this is fake news and there’s no such thing happening in Cambodia.”
Asia Times said the alleged naval base is part of a $3.8 billion tourism development named Dara Sakor Beachside Resort led by a Chinese company. It said the project reportedly includes a deep-water port, an international airport and manufacturing facilities.
It is located in the Gulf of Thailand but has direct access to the South China Sea, most of which is claimed by China. China in recent years has built seven artificial islands in the disputed Spratly Island chain and placed military equipment on some of them, raising alarm among other countries in the region and in the United States.
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Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. | {
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A few weeks ago, leading public cloud companies announced their financials for H1 2019, which were astonishing compared to hardware manufacturers who have been ruling the data center industry for the past four decades. In fact, most of Microsoft’s profits came from Azure Cloud, while Amazon’s profits have been driven by AWS (Amazon Web Services). With the rise of cloud computing, it’s easy to see that the public cloud is bound to become a global phenomenon, with Pakistan included as well.
There are two types of cloud services: private cloud and public cloud. Private cloud service is an ‘on-premises’ data management system, which is controlled and handled by the company itself via the intranet. It is beneficial if the company already has expensive data centers however, it requires extensive management, maintenance, and hardware replacement.
On the other hand, public cloud outsources data management to another company which is beneficial since the maintenance costs and server management is handled by the cloud service provider, ensuring high security of data.
With impressive developments in the digital ecosystem over the past few years, public cloud service providers have moved beyond core computing services and are delivering services that companies need to stay agile and continue growing. Market analysis has shown a significant appetite for cloud computing in Pakistan. It is a complete paradigm shift that, if adhered to by all types and sizes of businesses, will prove to be substantially beneficial at almost no cost.
Cloud computing offers unlimited solutions and can effectively meet the technical requirements of all sorts of companies. While local cloud companies are offering virtual servers at a fixed or variable cost which is much higher than international cloud offerings, Telenor Pakistan’s partnership with Alibaba Cloud offers services that are agile, elastic, secure, cost-competitive, and above all in compliance with international standards.
Through Telenor Pakistan’s public cloud services, payments are simplified to be made in rupees while providing direct support from Alibaba Cloud on consultancy and other services. There are also discounts offered on bundled services on an annual subscription. To top it off, Telenor Pakistan has a team of certified cloud experts who can provide pre-migration consulting as well as managed service support as per organizational needs.
Within the public cloud, only specific services are paid for which companies use and nothing beyond that. Telenor Pakistan’s Public Cloud ensures payment models based on international standards that include flexible hourly payment, fixed monthly subscription, and discounted annual payment terms.
These services aim to bridge gaps such as the need to have physical data centers to ensure that the Pakistani technological market receives a true value-driven cloud experience.
In this era, analog or hardware-based systems are being replaced by soft-technologies. This transition has a multitude of benefits with cost reduction, ease of use, a variety of options, efficiency, resource savings, ease in creation and development, and much more. Developing and emerging economies are greatly benefiting from digital technologies and cloud storage is the reason behind this.
To learn more about Telenor Pakistan Cloud, click here. | {
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Five people ended up in hospital after a romantic plan to win back an ex-girlfriend by starting a fire in her dorm and saving residents from the blaze went wrong. The rejected lover is now facing five years in prison for arson.
The unlucky Romeo from the Siberian city of Omsk told police that he went to the dormitory where his former girlfriend lived, but he didn’t dare face her in case she rejected his advances.
The man, who was already intoxicated, instead came up with a plan to start a fire in the building and then emerge as a hero by saving the residents from the ensuing blaze.
He started the fire in the utility space of the building but failed in his attempts to put it out, forcing the residents to call the fire service. As a result of the stunt, five people including two children were hospitalized with carbon monoxide poisoning.
Also on rt.com Small boy joyrides car ‘to impress girlfriend’ (VIDEO)
Police later arrested the hapless romantic in a cafe nearby. The authorities didn’t appreciate the sentiment behind his actions and have launched a criminal investigation, classing the incident as an act of hooliganism.
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I deleted my wall posts Because My Facebook was getting too full
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El desvío y mal manejo de recursos públicos continuó en la administración de Javier Duarte hasta el último año de su gobierno, revelan seis auditorías de la ASF.
Más de 4 mil 300 millones de pesos de seis fondos federales, entregados en 2016 a Veracruz y destinados a programas de salud, educación e infraestructura para la remodelación de hospitales y escuelas, fueron desviados a cuentas bancarias ajenas a los objetivos o invertidos en supuestos bienes o servicios imposibles de comprobar.
Aún se desconoce el monto total del posible desfalco detectado por la Auditoría Superior de la Federación (ASF) en la Cuenta Pública de 2016, pues faltan por revisarse otros fondos como los de seguridad y justicia.
Con los nuevos hallazgos, la administración de Javier Duarte suma ya más de 40 mil millones de pesos de origen federal reportados por la ASF por su posible desvío. Además, hay 21 mil millones de pesos ya denunciados penalmente ante la PGR en contra de los funcionarios que resulten responsables.
Los malos manejos
El reporte parcial de la Cuenta Pública 2016, presentado por la ASF el pasado viernes 30 de junio, encontró irregularidades graves en el manejo de seis fondos federales en la administración de Javier Duarte, que dejaron un posible quebranto patrimonial para Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público (SHCP) que asciende a más de 4 mil 300 millones de pesos.
Los fondos en los que se detectaron malos manejos de recursos:
Posible quebranto: 1,651 millones de pesos
Los auditores encontraron que más del 70 % de los recursos entregados a Veracruz como parte del Fondo de Aportaciones para el Fortalecimiento de las Entidades Federativas, fueron posiblemente desviados o manejados mal por el gobierno de Duarte. Esto sin tomar en cuenta que otros 158 millones de pesos no fueron utilizados, pero tampoco devueltos por el estado.
Entre las irregularidades destacan mil 300 millones de pesos que el gobierno dice que no pudo invertir en infraestructura o programas sociales ya que, aseguró, los utilizó para el pago de nómina de personal administrativo y docente de la Secretaria de Educación de la entidad. Esto pese a que ya había recursos aprobados y etiquetados para ello a nivel local.
A esto se suman 252 millones de pesos que Veracruz transfirió a cuentas bancarias no autorizadas, sin que haya prueba alguna de para qué fueron utilizados.
Posible quebranto: 1,304 millones de pesos
La ASF revisó el Fondo para el Fortalecimiento Financiero y el Fondo para la Infraestructura Estatal y Municipal de forma conjunta y detectó malos manejos por mil 304 millones de pesos, que equivalen al 45 % de todo el presupuesto entregado a Veracruz por estos conceptos.
Los auditores detectaron que el dinero no se ejerció para lo que estaba etiquetado y por el contrario se transfirió a cuentas bancarias sin que haya evidencia de su utilización y destino.
Posible quebranto: 754 millones de pesos
La ASF encontró malos manejos del Fondo de Aportaciones para los Servicios de Salud 2016, en el 13 % de los recursos transferidos a Veracruz.
La gran mayoría del posible quebranto detectado tiene que ver con el desvío de recursos del programa a otras cuentas habilitadas por el Gobierno del estado, que presuntamente ya no fueron reintegrados a la cuenta del fondo y no hay datos de que se hayan utilizado para lo que estaban etiquetados.
Posible quebranto: 316 millones de pesos
El gobierno de Duarte recibió de la federación 327 millones de pesos en 2016 para atender acciones de salud como parte del programa PROSPERA. Los auditores encontraron que el 96.5 % de los recursos fueron mal manejados.
Los auditores encontraron desvíos de recursos de la cuenta bancaria oficial del Programa PROSPERA para apoyar a familias vulnerables a otras cuentas bancarias. También se advirtió así una total ausencia de documentos que comprueben el gasto de los recursos y la falta de mediciones sobre su efectividad
Posible quebranto: 303 millones de pesos
La Auditoría reportó el posible desvío de 303 millones de pesos que la federación entregó a Veracruz para el Fondo del Seguro Popular.
El posible fraude se originó cuando la Secretaria de Finanzas, sin haber razón para ello, simplemente decidió no transferir la referida cantidad a las cuentas habilitadas para su uso conforme a los objetivos marcados. En pocas palabras retuvo el dinero lo cual es totalmente ilegal.
Sin castigo
La administración de Javier Duarte acumula más de 40 mil millones de pesos de origen federal cuyo destino está pendiente por aclarar, luego de que se detectó que fueron desviados de su objetivo original, según la revisión de la ASF de la Cuenta Pública 2016.
A esto hay que agregar 21 mil millones de pesos que la ASF ya denunció penalmente ante la PGR, porque la administración de Duarte no pudo probar que los haya usado legalmente. Por estas denuncias se han iniciado seis averiguaciones previas.
Animal Político publicó el pasado 2 de junio, que hasta ahora ninguna de esas averiguaciones ha sido consignada ante un juez y por tanto no se han girado órdenes de aprehensión por el desvío de estos recursos federales.
Leer: Impunidad en desvíos de Duarte: La PGR no ha consignado ni una de las 56 averiguaciones previas
Hoy, clave en extradición
Este martes 4 de junio, se llevará a cabo en Guatemala la audiencia en la que se notificará a Javier Duarte de la solicitud formal de extradición que pesa en su contra, derivada de una orden de aprehensión que obtuvo la PGR, por los delitos de delincuencia organizada y operaciones con recursos de procedencia ilícita.
La PGR imputa a Duarte de haberse beneficiado de recursos públicos que fueron entregados a compañías fantasma y que a través de una red de prestanombres fueron triangulados para su beneficio.
En esta audiencia Duarte tendrá la opción de aceptar la extradición (como ya lo hizo en el caso de la solicitud de extradición solicitada por la Fiscalía de Veracruz) y será entonces cuestión de unos días para que regrese a México a enfrentar los juicios abiertos. De no admitir ser extraditado se tendrá que seguir este proceso en Guatemala.
Leer: Ahora que Duarte aceptó su extradición a México, ¿qué sigue? | {
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You can help hurricane victims by volunteering, donating, and praying.
Hurricane Relief 013779 $ Give
Note: This story was last updated on August 31. Please see more recent content: “Franklin Graham and Vice President Mike Pence Help in Texas After Hurricane Harvey” and “Hurricane Harvey Response Updates” and “Volunteers Serve Homeowners in Need Following Hurricane Harvey.” And, please continue to look for many future stories that will be posted regularly to samaritanspurse.org during this response.
Samaritan’s Purse is ramping up its response in storm-weary Texas as rain continues to fall and floodwaters keep rising.
President Franklin Graham has approved the deployment of five U.S. disaster relief units to southeastern Texas. These tractor trailers, stocked with emergency relief equipment and supplies, will help our staff and volunteers meet some of the mammoth needs created by Hurricane Harvey.
“The flooding is just horrendous in southeast Texas,” Graham said. “People have lost their homes, and some have lost everything. We want to go and we want to be there in their time of need, helping them in the Name of Jesus Christ put their lives back together again.”
Making landfall as a Category 4 storm, then spending days as a tropical storm, and now a tropical depression, Harvey continues to make history. The storm made a second landfall Wednesday morning near the Texas/Louisiana border, deluging the region with punishing bands of rain. Beaumont and Port Arthur, both in Texas, about 100 miles east of Houston, were pelted with 26 inches of rain in a 24-hour period.
Samaritan’s Purse Starts Massive Response to Harvey
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One of our disaster relief units is already on the scene in Victoria, and volunteer teams have begun work. They are tarping damaged roofs, chainsawing fallen trees, and cleaning up storm debris. Faith Family Church, located at 2002 E. Mockingbird Lane, serves as our host church.
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Bruce Poss, Samaritan’s Purse program manager, reports that more than 250 families in Victoria have already requested assistance. Nearly 100 of our volunteers showed up the first day and immediately got to work—coming alongside homeowners in Jesus’ Name.
And praise God, on day one, five people personally committed their lives to following Him. One was a young man who came to our work site and asked if we had any saw chains. We offered to sharpen his if he brought them by. He did and while his chains were being sharpened, our volunteers started talking with him and shared the Gospel. The man prayed to receive Christ.
As with every Samaritan’s Purse deployment, crisis-trained Billy Graham Rapid Response Team chaplains will be coming alongside our teams to provide spiritual and emotional care to distressed homeowners and others throughout each respective community.
“Some people we’re meeting with are completely broken. They’re lining up to be prayed for,” one chaplain said.
A second unit is set up near the coastal city of Rockport, which took the initial blow when Hurricane Harvey roared ashore Friday night as a Category 4 storm. Our host church is First Baptist in Portland, 1305 Wildcat Drive. Volunteers are hard at work there now as well.
We will soon be fanning out to the Galveston/Santa Fe area. The host church will be First Baptist Alta Loma at 5400 Main Street in Santa Fe. An open date for this site has not been released, as waters have not receded.
Two additional tractor trailers will head to Houston as soon as the devastating floodwaters recede, and it’s safe for our staff to set up a base of operation.
Luther Harrison, vice president for North American Ministries, called this storm a “Hurricane Katrina-sized event.”
“This will require our attention and commitment for quite some time,” he said. “Wherever God plants us, we will do our very best to minister to people and show them God’s love and compassion.”
Harrison said this catastrophic storm affords area churches with excellent opportunities to serve people in Jesus’ Name. “This is a great way for churches to get involved in local missions,” he said. “We want to help facilitate their outreach and their service to people in their own communities.
“God has a plan and a purpose, and we’re praying that God will do His marvelous work.”
Devastating, Unprecedented Flooding
This multi-city response remains in process and life-threatening floods continue to cripple Houston, the country’s fourth-largest city. Cedar Bayou, not far from Baytown and about 30 miles east of downtown Houston, received more than 51 inches of rain—a record for a landfalling tropical cyclone in the continental U.S. Trillions of gallons of water have inundated the region, and officials report that there have been more than two dozen Harvey-related deaths. That toll could certainly rise.
Roads and highways have turned into raging rivers. Countless homes and businesses have been submerged. Many thousands of water rescues have been made, with missions continuing. Some 30,000 people have been displaced from their homes. A levee in Brazoria County, southwest of Houston, was breached as river levels were swollen by days of relentless rain. Authorities there tweeted, “GET OUT NOW!!”
A hospital in Beaumont had to be evacuated today.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott deployed his state’s entire National Guard—12,000 service members—to help with rescues and attend to other critical needs. During a Monday afternoon press conference, he praised the “courageous and heroic” efforts by first responders.
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“This is a landmark event for Texas,” said FEMA Administrator William “Brock” Long at a Monday morning press conference. “Texas has never seen an event like this.”
President Donald Trump visited Texas on Tuesday to observe the horrific damage caused by Hurricane Harvey. He may make an additional trip to Texas and/or Louisiana this weekend. All branches of the U.S. military have been called in to help with this disaster.
Note: This story was originally published on August 29. Significant revisions were made on August 30 and 31 to keep up with new information. | {
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration said Thursday night it is pulling back advertising to promote HealthCare.gov as open enrollment draws to a close for this year.
The Health and Human Services Department said in a statement that the government has pulled back about $5 million in ads as part of an effort to cut costs. The statement said HHS has already spent more than $60 million to promote sign-ups this year under former President Barack Obama’s health care law.
Former Obama officials immediately accused the new administration of “sabotage.”
Calling the decision “outrageous,” former HealthCare.gov CEO Kevin Counihan said in a statement that the move could keep young, healthy people from getting into the insurance pool, thereby driving up costs. “We know that more young people enroll during the final days of open enrollment, but they need to be reminded of the Jan. 31 deadline,” Counihan said.
A call to the HealthCare.gov national call center Thursday night found it to be up and running. An operator read a reporter a script saying that the transition to a new administration has not affected coverage for 2017, and people are still able to sign up.
HealthCare.gov and its state counterparts offer subsidized private health insurance for people who don’t have access to coverage on the job. This year the online insurance markets have been rocked by sharply higher premiums and dwindling choice of insurers, although nearly 9 in 10 customers receive final assistance.
President Donald Trump and leading Republicans have portrayed the markets as on the verge of collapse, and have cast their own effort to repeal and replace the Obama health overhaul as a rescue mission. Most independent experts say the situation is not as dire, although fixes are needed to strengthen the markets.
Some 11.5 million people had signed up nationwide through Dec. 24, or about 290,000 more than at the same time during the 2016 enrollment season. It’s not clear, however, whether the Obama’s administration’s goal of 13.8 million enrolled for 2017 will be met.
More than 20 million people have gained coverage since the health care law passed in 2010, bringing the nation’s uninsured rate to a historic low of around 9 percent. In addition to subsidized private insurance, the law offers states an option to expand Medicaid for low-income people.
The advertising cutback was first reported by Politico. | {
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A 15-year-old New Jersey girl broke her ankle Wednesday morning after jumping two stories from her Asbury Park high school in a last ditch effort to avoid taking a standardized test.
According to an official with the Asbury Park School District, the student leaped from a bathroom window at Asbury Park High School at approximately 8:44 a.m. as her class was conducting the PSAT, a prep for the standard college entrance examination. The test was being administered to freshmen, sophomores and juniors, with a delayed opening for seniors.
The student, a sophomore, reported to homeroom at the start of the school day before heading up to the women's room and climbing out the window. When she fell, she yelled out for help and was treated at the scene by a team of nurses from Asbury Park High School and Monmouth County Vocational School District.
Eventually, the student was transported with a broken ankle to Jersey Shore University Medical Center, where she underwent further treatment and an evaluation by medical staff.
“It’s unfortunate that one of our students took extreme measures to exit the building, which resulted in her being injured,” said Superintendent Dr. Lamont Repollet. “Our priority is to have a safe learning environment where we take the safety and security of all of our students very seriously.”
Counselors will be made available to staff and students who may have been affected by the incident.
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Reddish-haired and colorfully tattooed Sebastian Keys is the latest “victim” to get the Jizzo.com gang bang treatment. And let me tell, you it’s the full Monty. In fact, it’s two full Montys at the same time, as he gets double penetrated at one point by the enormous cocks of both Spencer Fox and Rafael Alencar.
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Greens’ role is to offer alternative vision of independence, says new co-leader
The SNP do not “own” the idea of independence and competing visions for the future of Scotland are healthy, the new co-leader of the Scottish Green party has said.
By Chris McCall Sunday, 25th August 2019, 4:55 pm
Lorna Slater is ready to stand for Holyrood or Westminster. Photograph: Lisa Ferguson
Lorna Slater, who took up her new role alongside Patrick Harvie earlier this month, insists that a Section 30 order for a second referendum will eventually be granted and that pro-independence supporters should now be debating what kind of country they wanted to build once a Yes vote is secured.
In an interview with Scotland on Sunday, she claimed the Greens are on the up despite a disappointing European election in May that saw the party fail in its bid to return its first MEP.
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Slater, an engineering project manager in the renewables sector, is bidding to become an MSP at the next Holyrood elections in 2021, but will also stand if a snap Westminster election is called.
The 43-year-old is stepping up her speaking engagements at pro-independence groups and is encouraging other women in the party to do the same.
“Too much of the debate around independence has focused on whether or not there should be a referendum,” she said. “We should be focusing on what we want an independent Scotland to look like.
“We will get our Section 30 order. But we need to know what we want from independence. That’s the conversation I want to be having.
“We can all see what went wrong with Brexit. No-one had any vision for what a post-Brexit UK would look like. What we don’t want to do is repeat that mistake. We should be working together to build something positive.”
Despite the SNP’s dominance at recent elections in Scotland, the new co-leader insisted there was room for more than one pro-independence party.
“The SNP and the Greens both want independence, but past that our politics are significantly different,” she continued.
“Our vision is much greener. We want to move away from oil and gas.
“It is important to have more than one vision of what an independent Scotland can look like.
“It’s unhealthy for the SNP to think they own independence. Many people cannot stand the SNP. It’s healthy for independence to be a cross-party cause.”
Slater grew up in Calgary and attended university in Vancouver. The daughter of an English father, she has held British citizenship from birth.
Upon graduation she bought “a one-way ticket” to Scotland after hearing the country had a shortage of qualified engineers.
“In my first two weeks I was offered jobs in Edinburgh and Liverpool – I ended up taking the one in Liverpool so I lived in England for a few years,” she added.
Slater describes herself as a “surger”, meaning she was one of thousands of new members who joined the Greens in the weeks after the 2014 independence referendum.
One immediate priority she has in her new role is to encourage more women to stand for the Greens at the 2021 Holyrood election. | {
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If you set your favorite song as your alarm You're gonna have a bad time
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The Australian dollar has been hit by another sudden sell-off, falling more than half a cent this afternoon as investors flee the currency.
The dollar fell as low as 97.32 US cents, a level not seen since early June 2012, and down from 99.12 US cents about midday on Thursday.
Sell in May ... the dollar has slumped 5 per cent this month. Credit:Louie Douvis
It's been a particularly volatile 24 hours for the currency, which was fetching 99.12 US cents as late as yesterday midday. During the offshore session it plunged to 97.9 US cents but quickly recovered, touching a high of 98.79 shortly after midnight. By morning it was buying 98.22 US cents, before the latest sell-off was triggered.
But the currency is not only falling against the greenback - versus the euro it's dropped to 75.80 euro cents, its lowest since December 2011. And even against the yen it's under pressure, slipping back below 100 yen. | {
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French cartooning team Ruppert & Mulot (whose mamas named them Florent and Jerome) are tough to put a label on. Setting aside the fact that "their creative partnership has grown so organically as to obscure the individual contribution of the work of either hand," per this book's press packet, their published efforts range as far and wide as any more familiar name that I can think of. Their first two offerings to the US market, an enigmatic short in Kramers Ergot and the bizarre metafiction Barrel of Monkeys, positioned them as hardcore avant-gardists, makers of work so full of sharp angles and jagged edges it could cut itself - literally, Barrel of Monkeys invites readers to employ the blade in rendering a magic lantern-type device from its pages at one point. I was genuinely shocked at encountering Le Grande Odalisque, the duo's frothy action-girl series with Bastien Vives, which shows that Ruppert & Mulot have another gear - or a whole different set of them. Odalisque's impactfully staged melodrama plays as well to the multiplex as Barrel of Monkeys does to the gallery space.
The Perineum Technique, which is the first Ruppert & Mulot work you're at all likely to encounter in a regular comic store, squares the circle. This is a very heady comic that's fun and easy to read; unusual to say the least. On the surface it's smooth and sleek, about as far from "experimental comics" as can be, but much swims in its depths. One is compelled to turn its pages over again and again, scrutinizing the smooth shell in search of a chink or flaw that might explain why this fun, easy book also feels so strange.
The Perineum Technique is unabashedly a romance comic, a new entry in a genre that's spent the past half decade poised for a big comeback that hasn't materialized. Romance is a genre comics has always done well, and one where new ground is currently offering itself up begging to be explored. Maybe it's symptomatic of the fact that comic books are mostly made by unlaid losers that the 2010s have delivered so many great comics about Being Online but so few about the way it's impacted modern romance? Regardless, Ruppert & Mulot are on the case with this baldly put tale of a love affair that starts on the apps and spills out messily into rl.
The actual plot mostly feels like it's there to laugh along to: JH, a cool artist, meets Sarah, a cool DJ, on okcupid. They start having regular skype sex. JH wants more, but Sarah demurs before unexpectedly inviting him to a masked swingers' party. They share a marginally satisfying public sexual encounter, after which Sarah says she's uninterested in further physical rendezvous unless JH can abstain from ejaculating for the next four months. Then... we'll see what happens. Hijinx ensue, and that's pretty much it. The story is casually displayed more than told, with no special narrative emphasis put on any one turn of its events, but that's not to say that certain scenes aren't given magnificent visual treatments. Ruppert & Mulot are hellacious draftsmen in a scratchy but open impressionistic style, and their way of using the comics form to mount visually immersive, brilliantly imaginative tableaux doesn't really have a match on either side of the Atlantic. Big gorgeous showpiece panels depict towering fantasy architecture, hot sex on top of Paris's Palais Garnier, and - a Ruppert & Mulot specialty - a roller coaster ride that absolutely nails the thrill and whirl of the real thing. Colorist Isabelle Merlet is a star throughout, whipping together a bright but subtle palette that feels vivid not so much in a superhero-blockbuster way as the way a loud bar full of attractive people does.
In a romantic comedy with a plot as, hmm, workmanlike as this one, it's refreshing to see the sheer amount of effort that's put into developing and using a language of cartoon shorthand. Here it's one that describes the sexual experience, which is welcome. For a medium that's spent decades putting together a dizzying toolbox of ways to describe human bodies engaged in strenuous interaction with one another during fights, comics' sense of the formalistic is still laughably undersexed. Most comics with fucking in them are either prude or crude, turning all the lights off before they undress or shrugging out the same unimaginatively literal drawings of shaking tits and blasting dicks.
By contrast, Ruppert & Mulot and Merlet use their sex scenes as excuses to move away from the way the world actually works, with samurai swords carving long, ribboning marks through an endless paper surface as JH and Sarah work up to their skype climaxes together, or a sudden shower of rain engulfing an elegant dining room as one of its occupants ejaculates, or the background colors of Warholesque identical panels changing with the rhythmic strokes of a handjob. Dreams and emotions are given similarly outre yet intuitive visual treatments - one character's clothing gives way to frenetically fluctuating fetish ensembles as another fantasizes about her, while an actual heavyweight boxer appears to deliver the emotional blows doled out by a bad date with his fists. This is high-level comics making employed in the service of a plot that, again, is fairly boilerplate post-internet romantic comedy fare. But it's hardly wasted effort, as it inarguably makes The Perineum Technique a better book. The moments of absurdity aren't just there to add color, they deepen the story's emotional beats. The unorthodox approach to visualizing sex is far more genuinely erotic and arousing than a literal approach could be. (Indeed, the only other person I know who's read this book told me they ended up finding a utilitarian use for it.)
It also speaks to the authors' understanding of their material: people don't like romantic comedies because of the plot machinations that happen in them, they like them because it's a delightful distraction to be introduced to some new, hot fictional friends and spend a few hours wondering whether or not they're going to fuck each other. Characters have to live in romantic comedies for anyone to care at all, and without attractive, charismatic movie stars to portray them, a comic book doing this kind of story needs to really commit to illustrating its protagonists' interiority. That level of care is unmissable here, both in the elaborate visual treatments bestowed on private physical and emotional states, and in the meandering way the story tells itself, giving time to each individual bump along the road that JH and Sarah traverse in their awkward courtship and leaving plenty of room for the untidy way friends, work, and the erotic attentions of other people slosh into the picture.
But The Perineum Technique is more than a superior entry in a worthy-if-maligned idiom. Ruppert & Mulot aren't just interested in illustrating characters' interior states - those states are the actual setting of this book. JH and Sarah's fantasies often show up on-panel without warning, taking over the steering of the book from the "real" story again and again. As the plot progresses, distinguishing fantasy from reality becomes more difficult. And that's before one of JH's video art projects necessitates the hiring of two actors who are drawn as looking indistinguishable from the book's two leads.
I've long been enamored of the anonymity Ruppert & Mulot's style conveys on their characters, with facial features indicated by no more than a couple of dots or a slashed line. It's a nice way of pleasurably complicating things for the reader. But here, in what's otherwise more conventional work from a pair of weirdos, it's completely essential. A sequence at the book's end which shows a scene we've been led to assume occurred in real life, now re-depicted in one of JH's video pieces, throws everything into question. Do JH and Sarah actually get together after all? Do they even meet irl? How much of this book is fantasy? How much is one of JH's videos? What the hell do the crinkly panel borders that pop up in a few scenes indicate? Jeez - do JH and Sarah even exist? Or is JH's long-suffering assistant (the Nice Girl Who's Right For Him Hiding In Plain Sight we've all seen in these stories before) the actual artist of all the scenes in this story, as seems implied by the final pages? Is everything we've just finished reading just a work of art, a fiction?
Only that last question has an answer, and the answer is, of course, an unequivocal yes.
The meta-textual game this book plays so delicately is typical of its creators, and to me at least, feels very French. At times reading The Perineum Technique I felt like I was reading a less cranky comic book version of Michel Houellebecq, which I say as a compliment and also an opening to drop the other shoe on this review. Romantic comedies aren't sexist and retrograde by nature, but that doesn't mean that a distressingly high percentage of them aren't totally those things. Being that this one is a titillating, unserious stab at the genre from two male authors whose back catalog displays a tendency to push boundaries, it's hard not to read it on high alert.
For me at least, The Perineum Technique's gender politics get a passing grade, if not an exemplary one. An exchange between JH and a gay male friend about how the problems in his love life are obviously because he dates women is cringeworthy in a few different ways, and should have been left on the cutting room floor. Other passages of toxic masculinity are more ambiguous: as I said earlier, most of the stuff that happens in this book is there so you can laugh at it. It really is a romantic comedy. When JH makes an ass out of himself by presuming he's owed something for sticking to the no-fap pact he makes with Sarah, his friends are there to hit the cymbal with amusing face-palm reactions. JH isn't positioned like a Joe Matt or Chester Brown, or even a Ware or Tomine guy - there's nothing nearly so dark or searing on these pages, but Ruppert & Mulot also truly seem uninterested in creating audience sympathy for their characters. Both the humiliations JH endures and the dickishness he sometimes takes refuge in as a response are positioned in the same manner: as reasons to laugh at the actions of, not sympathize with the struggles of, a semi-clueless naif who isn't quick on the uptake.
I went back and forth on whether Sarah's character qualifies for inclusion under the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl trope. She definitely lives by her own rules, pushing JH out of his comfort zone and into the rush of the story's plot et cetera - but if anything her existence is a more cosseted and less fun one than his, something he works on her to change. Maybe he's a Manic Pixie Dreamboy? I asked a female friend for her opinion, and she pointed out something I'd missed in my scrutiny of JH's shortcomings. Sarah is also kind of an asshole - unilaterally imposing terms on a relationship she's not the only one making commitments to and absenting herself from the emotional fallout - which means both principals in this book are, viewed kindly, at least shitty-adjacent people. Realism!
The Perineum Technique, then, is a truly quotidian romance comic. Everybody's on the apps and the relationships aren't very traditional, catfishing and consent are elephants in every room, people are spending as much energy portraying as they are being, and everyone has difficulty just being nice when their desire is as much a presence as the other person is... which in these panels is often literally the case. It's messy. Its creators' handling of said mess is occasionally less than it should be, and more often depicts less than ideal behavior by characters that isn't pushed back against. This didn't nuke the whole book for me - I don't really see a display of authorial opinion about anything here - but it certainly might for others. Still, the work, the comic part of the comic, is of a high enough quality that it merits reading more than other comics. It's a weird feeling to be excited about the critical reaction to a comic, but Ruppert & Mulot have made a book that's exceptional in many regards. It earns a read, and ought to engender some interesting conversations if enough people pick it up. | {
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HOUSTON -- The Astros headed back to the postseason for the fourth time in five years after securing a third consecutive American League West title, then won the AL pennant and took the Nationals to Game 7 of the World Series before bowing out. Let’s look back at the Top
HOUSTON -- The Astros headed back to the postseason for the fourth time in five years after securing a third consecutive American League West title, then won the AL pennant and took the Nationals to Game 7 of the World Series before bowing out.
Let’s look back at the Top 10 moments of the 2019 season.
1. Astros advance to World Series
Oct. 19 vs. Yankees
In one of most dramatic moments in club history, José Altuve crushed an Aroldis Chapman slider for a towering walk-off two-run homer in the ninth inning to score George Springer and clinch the AL pennant in a 6-4 win over the Yankees in Game 6 of the AL Championship Series at raucous Minute Maid Park. The Astros won the best-of-seven series, 4-2, to punch their second ticket to the World Series in three seasons. The homer came moments after DJ LeMahieu hit a two-run homer in the top of the ninth.
2. Astros advance to ALCS
Oct. 10 vs. Rays
In a winner-take-all Game 5 of the AL Division Series, Houston scored four times in the first inning and rode the pitching of Gerrit Cole to a 6-1 win to clinch the series. Cole struck out 10 batters and allowed two hits, including one homer -- a leadoff shot by Eric Sogard in the second inning -- over eight innings to win his 18th consecutive decision.
3. Verlander spins third career no-hitter
Aug. 31 vs. Blue Jays
Justin Verlander threw his third career no-hitter by allowing one walk and striking out 14 during a 2-0 win in Toronto. Rookie Abraham Toro , a native of Canada, hit a two-run homer in the top of the ninth to break a scoreless tie. With his third no-hitter, Verlander joined Nolan Ryan, Sandy Koufax, Bob Feller, Larry Corcoran and Cy Young as the sixth pitcher ever to throw three or more in their careers.
4. Astros clinch third consecutive AL West title
Sept. 22 vs. Angels
Verlander won his 20th game and Springer clobbered homers in each of his first three at-bats to lead the Astros to a 13-5 win over the Angels to Minute Maid Park that clinched their third consecutive AL West title.
5. Four pitchers combine on no-hitter
Aug. 3 vs. Mariners
In his first start since being traded from the Blue Jays, Aaron Sanchez threw six no-hit innings and then watched Will Harris , Joe Biagini and Chris Devenski finish off the second combined no-hitter in Astros history, and 12th overall by the club, during a 9-0 win at Minute Maid Park.
6. Reddick’s game-saving catch
May 9 vs. Rangers
Right-fielder Josh Reddick robbed outfielder Hunter Pence of what would have been a go-ahead, three-run homer in the ninth inning when he reached over the wall to pull back a home run during the Astros’ 4-2 win. Reddick was able to reach over the wall unimpeded by the arms and gloves of fans in the right-field seats after the heavy thunderstorms that hit downtown Houston caused rain to fall inside the retractable-roof ballpark, forcing the first three rows of the seats to be vacated.
7. Astros come back from 7-0 deficit
Sept. 5 vs. Mariners
Houston pulled off its biggest comeback in more than 25 years when it wiped out a 7-0 deficit and won, 11-9, at Minute Maid Park. Wade Miley became the first Astros pitcher in 30 years to not record an out without being injured or ejected, but Michael Brantley hit a two-run, walk-off homer in the 13th inning to win the game.
8. Astros hit 2 grand slams in same game
April 12 vs. Mariners
Houston belted two grand slams in a game for only the third time in its history during a 10-6 win at Seattle. Altuve hit a go-ahead grand slam in the sixth inning, and Yuli Gurriel joined the barrage in the eighth when he launched his fourth career slam. The Astros also accomplished the feat on June 8, 2014, against the Twins (Jon Singleton and Chris Carter) and July 30, 1969 (Denis Menke and Jimmy Wynn).
9. Astros score 23 runs
Aug. 10 vs. Orioles
In beating Baltimore, 23-2, the Astros set franchise records for most runs in a game, most extra-base hits in a game (13) and tied franchise records for most hits (25) and homers (six) in a game. Three of those homers were hit by rookie Yordan Alvarez , giving him 51 RBIs in his first 45 games, surpassing Ted Williams’ mark of 47 in 1939. Carlos Correa added a 474-foot blast in the win that is the longest tracked homer at Camden Yards.
10. Kemp hits walk-off HR
April 27 vs. Indians
The goal for Tony Kemp was to get on base and to try to spark a rally. The last thing he could have imagined was sparking a celebration at home plate. Kemp turned on a 2-1 sinker from Indians reliever Adam Cimber and sent it 360 feet down the right-field line for a pinch-hit, walk-off homer to lead off the 10th inning and send the Astros to a 4-3 win. | {
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Places of Doom - Where id Software built games
I read David Kushner's Masters of Doom a few years ago and just finished re-reading it again last night, inspired by Fabien Sanglard's awesome Doom 3 code review. It's a fun read that chronicles the rise of id Software and will leave you wanting to code, eat pizza, and slam Diet Cokes.
The book is interesting to me in the same way books like Founders at Work and Coders at Work are. While I hope to glean insights and learn from great programmers, they're entertaining as a kind of People magazine for entrepreneurs/programmers.
I got my first computer in high school, after Keen, Wolfenstein, Doom, and Doom II, so I never really played them, though I had friends that did. Thanks to my roommate at Georgia Tech, I did get a copy of Quake II. I didn't spend much time deathmatching but I liked firing rockets down dark corridors to light them up while exploring.
At my first co-op job at Tech, I downloaded the Quake source code and got it running with Visual Studio. I made my rockets fly faster. It was amazing to have the source, though I didn't do much with it.
Later, Michelle and I played a lot of Quake III Arena on Dreamcast. Her favorite character was the eyeball. She was ruthless, but prone to falling accidents despite being all eye.
As I read the book I found myself cross-referencing things I encountered: names, games, other companies, and locations. The locations are uninspiring (especially if you read TechCrunch), beginning in hot, humid, economically depressed Shreveport in 1989.
Softdisk offices, 606 Common St.. This is where they all met and worked. Carmack developed smooth 2D side-scrolling. They hauled Softdisk 386 PC's off in the night to work from their lake house on their own projects.
Bridge over Cross Lake to Lakeshore Drive in Shreveport, LA. One night, this bridge (or one around here), washed out during a storm. Romero waded through water to get to the house, where he and Carmack worked through the night.
A view from South Lakeshore Drive. The lake house they lived and worked in was somewhere around here. They cloned Super Mario Bros. 3 here and wrote Commander Keen.
La Prada apartments, Mesquite, TX, where they moved after a short, cold stint in Madison, WI. Wolfenstein development was completed here. Romero worked in an upstairs loft, Carmack sat at his NeXT workstation downstairs by the kitchen. Carmack, fed up with noise, eventually hauled his computer off to his own apartment to work alone.
Town East Tower in Mesquite, near Big Billy Barren's Used Cars and Sheplers Western Store. The black cube. One of the few offices in the area. Doom development.
id offices in Mesquite, across from Hooters and Olive Garden. Quake II, and probably most of the others.
"In the information age, the barriers just aren't there. The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars and capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers." - John Carmack
I'm fighting, unsuccessfully, the urge to end this with big things have small beginnings. | {
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Sailors missing for months didn't activate emergency beacon because they weren't 'in imminent peril' Jennifer Appel and Natasha Fuiava were rescued after being stranded for months.
-- Jennifer Appel, one of the two sailors rescued by a U.S. Navy ship after being stranded in the Pacific Ocean for almost five months, told ABC News via email that she and her fellow mariner didn't activate their emergency beacon because they weren't in "an immediate life-threatening scenario."
Jennifer Appel, an experienced sailor, and Natasha “Tasha” Fuiava, a sailing novice, left Honolulu on their sailboat on May 3 with their two dogs, Valentine and Zeus, bound for Tahiti, 2,600 miles away in the South Pacific. Less than a month into their voyage, during a spell of bad weather, Appel and Fuiava's sailboat's engine stopped running for good. Two months into their voyage, they began issuing daily distress radio calls.
They told Coast Guard officials that they never turned on the boat’s Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) because they never felt "truly in distress," nor did they think the situation was "dire" enough to warrant it, a spokesperson for Coast Guard District 14 said.
The EPIRB -- which the Coast Guard confirmed was properly registered -- would have immediately notified search and rescue teams of a vessel in distress, officials said.
Appel said via email to ABC News today, "EPIRB calls are for people who are in an immediate life-threatening scenario. It would be shameful to call on the USCG resources when not in imminent peril and allow someone else to perish because of it."
"The USCG Honolulu Sector receives many calls a day," Appel wrote. "They have limited resources for the enormous span of water their area covers. A fair amount of those calls are for people in the process of losing their boat and swimming in the ocean. While I do not deny that a broken spreader, blown backstay and non-functioning motor are all disabling situations -- and we had all at the same time when we were at the Equator and 160 degrees West, our boat was still afloat; we had food, water and limited maneuvering capability due to fortifying the broken items at the mast. (Yes, I climbed the mast in open ocean to make hack patches so we could continue as any good sailor would.)"
She added: "Pahn Pahn calls, which we made, are different than EPIRB or MAYDAY calls," Appel wrote. "Pahn Pahn calls let the USCG and other boats know that the vessel has issues but they are not immediately life-threatening."
"The Pahn Pahn distress calls that we made daily after we realized we could not return the last 726 nautical miles to Oahu from roughly 8 degrees North and 156 degrees West -- that went unanswered and allowed us to reach Wake Island -- were determined to be due to antenna issues that only allowed for a 1-2 nautical mile of reception. We thought we had about 200 miles reception and were notified of the discrepancy once aboard the Navy vessel," she wrote. "Had we known our calls were going nowhere -- we would have used the EPIRB -- but hindsight is 20/20."
"We did a MAYDAY call for assistance only when it was absolutely necessary and help did arrive because the resources were available," she wrote. "We are grateful for that."
On Oct. 24, the women were finally spotted by a Taiwanese fishing boat 900 miles from Japan -- 5,000 miles from where they'd intended to sail. But despite the crew's best efforts to secure the sailboat, they actually damaged it further. A bad towing job led to what the women called the scariest 24 hours of the voyage; apparently, it damaged the boat enough that they were concerned whether it could stay afloat.
"That 24 hours of being towed," Fuiava said in an interview provided by the U.S. Navy last week, "that was the scariest moment of the entire trip."
Appel told the Taiwanese boat to use their radio, which is how they were able to get a U.S. Navy ship to find them and pick them up. The women were rescued last Wednesday by the USS Ashland.
Appel said in the interview provided by the U.S. Navy last week that their rescue was the "most amazing feeling because we honestly did not believe that we would survive another 24 hours in the current situation."
The women and their dogs have since made it to solid ground in Okinawa, Japan.
Linus Wilson, a boating expert and author of three sailing books, told ABC News that he wondered if the women had fabricated some of their claims.
“Several of Ms. Appel’s statements about her voyage do not check out and don’t ring true to many experienced sailors,” he said in an e-mailed statement on Monday. “I think a reasonable person may start out thinking that Ms. Appel was just a foolish skipper, but it seems likely many events that she recounts may have been fabricated to sensationalize the story.”
“It would be a shame if someone used a very expensive U.S. Navy rescue as a publicity stunt,” he added.
Similarly, Phillip Johnson, a retired Coast Guard officer who was responsible for search and rescue operations, said something about the women’s story just doesn’t add up.
"There's something wrong there," Johnson told The Associated Press on Monday. "I've never heard of all that stuff going out at the same time."
The Coast Guard said it has some additional questions for the women, but it characterized its process as a routine "review" and not an "investigation."
ABC News’ Erin Dooley contributed to this report. | {
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This week (January 4, 2017), NASA announced the selection of two new space missions, both to asteroids. The first mission, called Lucy, will study asteroids, known as Trojan asteroids, trapped by Jupiter’s gravity. The Psyche mission will explore a very large and rare object in the solar system’s asteroid belt that’s made of metal, and scientists believe might be the exposed core of a planet that lost its rocky outer layers from a series of violent collisions.
Lucy is targeted for launch in 2021 and Psyche in 2023. Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a statement:
Lucy will visit a target-rich environment of Jupiter’s mysterious Trojan asteroids, while Psyche will study a unique metal asteroid that’s never been visited before. This is what Discovery Program missions are all about – boldly going to places we’ve never been to enable groundbreaking science.
Click here for NASA’s announcement of 2 new asteroid missions
The NASA announcement said:
Lucy, a robotic spacecraft, is scheduled to launch in October 2021. It’s slated to arrive at its first destination, a main belt asteroid, in 2025. From 2027 to 2033, Lucy will explore six Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These asteroids are trapped by Jupiter’s gravity in two swarms that share the planet’s orbit, one leading and one trailing Jupiter in its 12-year circuit around the sun. The Trojans are thought to be relics of a much earlier era in the history of the solar system, and may have formed far beyond Jupiter’s current orbit … The Psyche mission will explore one of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt – a giant metal asteroid, known as 16 Psyche, about three times farther away from the sun than is the Earth. This asteroid measures about 130 miles (210 km) in diameter and, unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, is thought to be comprised mostly of metallic iron and nickel, similar to Earth’s core. Scientists wonder whether Psyche could be an exposed core of an early planet that could have been as large as Mars, but which lost its rocky outer layers due to a number of violent collisions billions of years ago. The mission will help scientists understand how planets and other bodies separated into their layers – including cores, mantles and crusts – early in their histories.
Bottom line: NASA has announced 2 new missions to previously unexplored asteroids. Lucy will tour 6 Trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit. The other will go to 16 Psyche, a metal asteroid!
Via NASA | {
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If you're trying to get a good price on a hotel or airline go to the provider's website. Ditch priceline, expedia, etc because their prices are the same with extra restrictions and or fees.
139 shares | {
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Zap’s Decentralized Platform
Zap has just launched a completely decentralized tokenized bonding curve curation market, comprised entirely of smart contracts live on mainnet!
Use the platform now at admin.zap.org (use metamask).
As we continue to develop the platform, we saw the tokenized bonding curve curation market potential goes far beyond what we explained in our 2017 whitepaper. For this reason, we think it is important to offer a refresher or “re-introduction” to our platform and all it can provide.
Start with a bonding curve. This is a smart contract that can issue tokens as one stakes value, or “bonds” tokens, based on a floating price point signifying the intersection on a graph between the point on the x-axis (horizontal graph line) showing many tokens have been generated, and the y-axis (vertical graph line) showing how expensive they become. The value bonded stays in the contract ready to be redeemed for the secondary token at the price point currently reflected on the graph. This has the effect of allowing for trading to occur without needing market makers or liquidity. This creates an incentive to drive best practices among competing oracles. This also forms a speculative market where bonding early (when the quantity and price may both be lower, so the price point may be in the lower left corner on the graph) to high quality oracles yields a greater reward for those who would want to unbond or query this oracle later when the bonding ratio is at a substantially greater position than it was during its Initial Oracle Offering (IOO).
A few of the most exciting use cases currently being explored using our platform are:
Curating Oracles for Trusted Data Feeds — The staked value creates an incentive for the provider to remain honest while giving an indicator to the developers as to which feed the community has decided is most valuable. This also allows the provider to have a fluctuating price point and make more money based on a higher demand. The secondary token in this case would be, by design, a Dot, which is good for one (1) query of the oracle from a smart contract.
Ico Launch Platform — Generating a curve that issues erc20 secondary tokens eliminates the need for liquidity, exchange listings, or market makers as participants can enter and exit positions and have an increase or decrease in value by interacting directly with the contracts.
Tradable Futures Markets — In its simplest form, two bonding curves are created for generating long and short tokens on an asset, and at the end of a pre-set period, the losing curve pays out the staked value as a dividend to the holders of the winning curve token.
Fundraising or Bounty Development Competitions — Generate one master curve with a problem to be solved, and individuals stake value to this curve. Participants who want to enter the competition would each have their own curve. The community would then speculate on who they believe to be the winner by staking to one of the competitors curve. If the bounty is satisfied the winner would receive the original master value with the speculators on that winner receiving the value staked by the losing curves.
For any of these use cases, anyone in the world can run a server, host an oracle, and list it on our platform. In order to fuel the adoption of this technology, we will continue to focus heavily on developing templates in order to make our platform as developer friendly as possible. | {
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Whatever Election 2019 turns into (my guess is mudwrestling), it will never be a beauty contest.
What else can the conclusion be when the leaders of both mainstream parties are so disliked?
Which means this election may boil down to which leading candidate most confirms voters’ worst impressions of him.
Last week Andrew Scheer did just that, handing Justin Trudeau a gift by summoning Stephen Harper’s endorsement in a political ad. More, in a bit, about why that was so monumentally dumb.
First, ponder a recent Angus Reid poll, reported in the Globe and Mail, that indicates Trudeau and Scheer should probably be considering a new line of work.
Fifty-two per cent of respondents don’t believe Andy is dandy. A whopping 63 per cent have an unfavourable impression of Justin the Sock Doll.
The Angus Reid Institute recently put the same information in a different way. Only one out of three respondents think Scheer would be the best PM. That should have the Conservatives biting their fingernails.
But the Liberals have zero reason to be smug. Even fewer, one in four, thought that Trudeau would be the best PM. It wasn’t that long ago that Trudeau could walk on water, with an approval rating in June 2016 of 65 per cent. Now he’s stumbling on terra firma.
One reason the Grits are still in the game is because a lot of people think under Scheer’s smiling, dimpled mask is one Stephen J. Harper.
Right on cue, in one of the party’s new ads, the starring role was given to Harper, or some Harper-like embalmed version of the former PM.
There is Harper telling people to elect Scheer and save the country. There is Harper dunning the audience for money like a televangelist newly converted to the Republican Party. And oh yes, there in the stock footage accompanying Harper’s pitch is a guy named Andrew Scheer. Apparently, he can’t make his own case for replacing Trudeau.
This was a monumental faceplant, no matter what the backroom smarty pants of the Conservative party may think about galvanizing the base. What Scheer has done by agreeing to this ad is to confirm what a lot of people have suspected all along: he is not his own man, but a creature of Stephen Harper, a grinning puppet.
Anyone paying attention would have noticed two things by now about Scheer.
First, as leader he never disavowed the ruinous policies of his predecessor, never declared that the party was striking out in a new direction, and never came up with an idea that would have put a frown on Harper’s face.
Second, Scheer is not a leader guy, rather a follow-the-leader guy. From tax cuts to family values, from foreign policy to the environment, from corporate handouts to barely disguised homophobia, the Scheer agenda is the Harper agenda.
Trouble with that?
That is precisely the agenda that got the Conservatives routed in the 2015 election. There is a reason that Harper had an approval rating of just 23 per cent in 2013 running up to the election. At the end of his political shelf life, he was seen as thuggish, deceitful and authoritarian.
By putting Harper up in an ad, Scheer has answered Trudeau’s prayers. In a straight up choice, voters might have chosen Scheer over Trudeau with both leaders deeply unpopular. But in a choice between Trudeau and a Harper puppet, the Liberals will hang on. Unwittingly, Scheer has started the Harper lowlight reel playing in everyone’s head:
Contempt of parliament; muzzling scientists; demonizing the media; lies about the F-35 aircraft acquisition; a $50-billion deficit by the spring of 2009 after promising no deficit in the fall of 2008; the decision to meet panda bears in Toronto rather than First Nations people who had walked through winter to protest their plight under the Conservatives, and on and on and on.
Populist resentment, like what gave us Trump
The fact that both party leaders are unpopular should remind everyone of the 2016 presidential election in the United States.
Donald Trump was the most unpopular presidential election winner in U.S. history. He won the White House in 2016 despite 61 per cent of Americans actively disliking him.
How did that happen? Hillary Clinton was also deeply unpopular. Though she got a few million more votes than Trump, she was vulnerable to defeat in the (dodgy) electoral college because she was so widely disliked.
Up until 2016, no losing presidential candidate had a higher unfavourable rating than 47 per cent, according to the Conversation. Clinton drove that number up to 52 per cent. Emails, leaked debate questions, cheating dear old Bernie Sanders — it all added up.
The take-away?
Trump’s victory was less of an endorsement of a glitzy conman than a contemptuous kick at what American democracy had become — Washington-centric and lobbyist-driven.
This is good news for the Conservative Party of Canada, given the recent release of a major study by Simon Fraser University.
That report, State of Democracy + Appeal of Populism, found that a majority of Canadians feel alienated by the country’s political system, just as Americans did in the run up to November 2016.
As reported by the CBC, nearly half of the study’s 3,500 participants didn’t believe that Canada is governed democratically.
Nearly 60 per cent of them are only “moderately convinced” that Canada should even be a representative democracy.
The killer finding?
An eye-popping 70 per cent of participants believe that government officials don’t care what they think. Hell hath no fury like a voter scorned. That is not good news for any incumbent.
Trudeau could easily become the lightning rod for all those disaffected Canadians who think their democracy works for the top dogs but not for them. Scheer could do damage in the televised debates with skewer points like these:
Why did the PM take that free trip to a billionaire’s island? Is that what champions of the middle class do?
Why, at a time when Canadians believe our democracy needs fixing, did the Trudeau government break its promise on electoral reform?
Why did the PM defend interfering in a criminal case involving a corruption-ridden Quebec engineering company?
Why did he continue to do that even after the ethics commissioner found him guilty of breaking the Conflict of Interest law — not to mention withholding key testimony from the commissioner that he needed to complete his investigation?
How Trump Killed the Myth of Coherent Conservatism read more
And then there was that disastrous interview where a Netflix host, Hasan Minhaj, made clear that the most progressive part of Trudeau is his sound bites. It shouldn’t be that easy for a comedian to take apart a G7 leader.
Green surprise
So you would think that Scheer would thank his lucky stars for the Trudeau record. Instead, he brings Harper back from the politically dead, the first serious tactical blunder of the campaign.
With the NDP melting like Greenland’s ice sheets under the star-crossed leadership of Jagmeet Singh, only two people can benefit from Scheer’s choice of a pitchman — Trudeau and Elizabeth May.
For Trudeau, the benefit will be to cut his losses and perhaps hang on to power by a thread; for May, it is a question of how high she can go.
With headlines about defections from the NDP in New Brunswick to the Green Party, the election’s biggest surprise is already in the making.*
*Story updated at 11:45 a.m. on Sept. 5 to clarify information about defections from the NDP in New Brunswick to the Green Party.
The Tyee’s federal election coverage is made possible by readers who pitched in to our election reporting fund. Read more about how The Tyee developed our reader-powered election reporting plan and see all of our stories here. | {
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Slovakia’s interior minister quits over journalist’s murder
Tomas Drucker’s resignation comes amid mass public protests demanding the sacking of the country’s police chief following the murder of an investigative journalist that has shaken the nation. | {
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Ice cream makers come in different sizes and feature a variety of features. This can make it quite difficult to know exactly what features you should really look out for when buying one of these particular devices. Once again, we get to a factor where personal preference will play a big role in what you end up buying.
Your budget is one of the main elements that will determine what type of ice cream maker you will be able to get your hands on. If you have a lower budget, then you would have to look for basic features. If your budget is higher, then you will be able to buy an ice cream maker with a more impressive range of features that will come in handy when trying to fix up a batch of frozen dessert quickly and easily.
The goal of making the perfect batch of homemade ice cream would be to get the mixture to freeze quickly. The faster you get your ice cream to freeze, the lower the risk of ice crystals forming in the ice cream. If you are serious about a smooth texture and no ice crystals, then opting for a machine that comes with a built-in compressor would certainly be a good way to go about your shopping process.
Compressor devices have the ability to freeze the ice cream much faster than standard ice cream machines. This means your ice cream will come out with a texture that is much smoother – helping you avoid a grainy texture that is caused by the formation of ice crystals. In many cases, an ice cream maker with a built-in compressor would not even need the combination of salt and ice to effectively freeze your mixture and get the frozen dessert ready for serving.
While we are talking about the freezing factor of ice cream, be sure to also look at the temperature of the device that you might be interested in. If the device can reach a freezing temperature of -32 degrees Fahrenheit, then you have a great option at hand. The maintenance of temperature is another important factor. You would, however, usually only be able to get this low of temperature if the ice cream maker has a compressor.
You should also take a look at the material that the dasher is made from. In the majority of cases, you will find that the dasher is made from plastic. If you do have a higher budget, you should see if you can get a machine that has a metal dasher. This is a great way to improve the stirring and whipping of the ice cream while it freezes, and would also help to produce a smoother texture in the end.
All of these factors should be considered if you are looking for a frozen dessert maker that can satisfy your specific needs. An automatic ice cream maker is usually the preferred option – but if your needs differ. | {
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On traits privacy interfaces
I’ve been facing an issue several times in my Rust lifetime experience and never ever have come up with a pragmatic solution to this problem yet. This problem comes up as follows:
Given a trait defined in a library, some code of the library uses its associated types, methods and/or constraints. Those items use internal representations or dependencies that must not appear in the public interface of the library.
That trait is important for the public interface because it gives a practical list of types that can be used with functions constrained with that trait.
Since we need that trait in the public interface, we must make it public .
. However, in Rust, public traits will expose their whole internals to the world.
As you can see, we have a situation here. Rust doesn’t allow to expose a trait without showing its internals. Imagine the following code:
pub fn a_cool_function<T>(id: usize, foo: T) where T: Foo { // … } pub trait Foo: Sized { type Cons: Sized; fn compute(self, a: Self::Cons) -> Self; } impl Foo for String { type Cons = char; fn compute(mut self, a: Self::Cons) -> Self { self.insert(0, a); self } } impl<T> Foo for VecDeque<T> { type Cons = T; fn compute(mut self, a: Self::Cons) -> Self { self.push_front(a); self } }
We want to export a_cool_function . That function accepts as second argument a type that must implement the Foo trait. In order for the function not to leak private symbols, Foo then must be public. However, we don’t want to expose its internals (the Cons associated type nor the compute method). Why we would want to hide those? I have several points:
If you look closely at the implementation, a_cool_function requires its second argument to implement Foo . Not exposing the internals would then force people to use stock implementors and will prevent them from providing new ones. This might be wanted for several reasons (unsafe traits, performances, etc.).
requires its second argument to implement . Not exposing the internals would then force people to use stock implementors and will prevent them from providing new ones. This might be wanted for several reasons (unsafe traits, performances, etc.). A more sensible reason: imagine that the associated type Cons required a bound on a very specific trait that is there only because of your implementation details / choices (like a trait from a dependency). That would leak that trait into the interface, which is not wanted.
required a bound on a very specific trait that is there only because of your implementation details / choices (like a trait from a dependency). That would leak that trait into the interface, which is not wanted. As corollary, not exposing the internals of a trait would enable you to change the definition of the trait without inducing any breaking change, which is an interesting feature.
Currently, you can perfectly make a type public without exposing all its methods as public. Why not having the same power with traits?
There is a – non-ideal – solution to this problem: #[doc(hidden)] on each items to hide from the trait. Items tagged with that annotation won’t show up in the documentation, but they will be definitely usable if a crafty developer reads the source. Not a very good solution to me, thus.
Pre-RFC: Enhanced trait privacy
It’s been a while since I’m looking for a good RFC to introduce this in Rust. This is some needed jargon, so let’s explain a few terms first:
A trait is an open set of types that have common properties, stated by the trait definition.
A trait definition contains associated types, type variables, methods, associated methods and associated constants.
A bound is found in where clauses to constrain a type or a function.
Currently, when you implement Display , you implement the trait. The fmt function you implement is part of its trait definition. When you write a function like fn show<T>(x: T) where T: Display , here, Display is not a trait: it’s a bound.
Bounds are interesting, because you cannot directly manipulate them. They only appear when you constrain a function or type. You can combine them, though, with the + operator:
fn borrow<'a, T>(x: &'a T) -> MyBorrow<'a, T> where T: Display + 'a
This example shows you that lifetimes can be used as bounds as well.
The idea of this RFC is to make a clear distinction between Display as trait and Display as bound so that it’s possible to use a trait only in bounds position and not implementation. One major avantage of doing so is to bring completely new semantics to Rust: exposing a trait as public so that people can pick types that implement the trait without exposing what the trait is about. This brings a new rule to the game: it’s possible to create ad hoc polymorphism that doesn’t leak its definition.
The idea is that we love types and we love our type systems. You might come across a situation in which you need to restrict the set of types that a function can use but in the same time, the implementation of the trait used to restrict the types is either unsafe, or complex, or depends on invariants of your crate. In my spectra crate, I have some traits that are currently public that leak rendering dependencies, which is something I really dislike.
As a prior art section, here’s the wanted feature in Haskell:
{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleInstances #-} -- don’t mind this {-# LANGUAGE TypeFamilies #-} -- this either module Lol ( Foo -- here, we state that we only export the typeclass, not its definition ) where import Data.Text (Text, cons) class Foo a where type Cons a :: * compute :: Cons a -> a -> a instance Foo [a] where type Cons [a] = a compute = (:) instance Foo Text where type Cons Text = Char compute = cons
Trying to use either the Cons associated type or compute function in a module importing Lol will result in a compiler error, because those symbols won’t be accessible.
What it would look like in Rust?
Currently, there is a weird privacy rule around traits. People not coming from Haskell might feel okay about that, but I learned Rust years ago while being already fluent with Haskell and got stunned at this (and I still have microseconds of “Wait, do I not need a pub here? Oh yeah, nah nah nah.”) When you declare a trait as pub trait … , everything in its definition is automatically pub as well.
This is so weird because everything else in Rust doesn’t work this way. For instance:
struct Bar; // here, Bar is not pub, so it’s private and scoped to the current module it’s defined in pub(crate) struct Zoo; // not public either but can be used in other modules of the current crate pub struct Point { // public pub x: f32, // public pub y: f32, // public } pub struct File { // public inode: usize // private } enum Either<L, R> { // private Left(L), // private Right(R), // private } pub enum Choice<L, R> { // public Left(L), // public (*) Right(R), // public (*) } // (*): enums require their variants to be public if they’re public for obvious pattern-matching // exhaustiveness reasons pub struct Foo; // public impl Foo { fn quux(&self); // not public, only callable in the current module pub(crate) fn crab_core_is_funny(self) -> Self; // not public but callable from within this crate pub fn taylor_swift() -> Self; // public, callable from the crate and dependent crates }
But:
trait PrivTrait { // private trait fn method_a(); // private fn method_b(); // ditto pub fn method_c(); // compilation error and wouldn’t make sense anyway } pub trait PubTrait { // public trait fn method_a(); // public, even without the pub privacy modifier!!! pub(crate) fn method_b(); // won’t compile pub fn method_c(); // won’t compile }
To me, it would make much more sense for Rust to authorize this:
pub trait PubTrait { // public trait fn method_a(); // private, only usable from this module pub(crate) fn method_b(); // callable only from modules from this crate pub fn method_c(); // public }
However, I know, I know. Turning this feature on would break pretty much everyone’s code. That’s why I think – if people are interested by this feature – we should instead go for something like this:
trait PrivTrait { // private trait fn method_a(); // private pub(crate) fn method_b(); // compilation error: the trait is private pub fn method_c(); // compilation error: the trait is private } pub trait PubTrait { // public trait fn method_a(); // public (backward compatibility) pub(crate) fn method_b(); // callable only from modules from this crate pub fn method_c(); // public, akin not to use the pub modifier priv fn method_d(); // private; only callable from this module }
I’d like to point the reader to this issue. In its foreword, @alexcrichton rightfully explains that removing the priv keyword was great because it has yielded a rule ever since – quoting him:
“I think that this would really simplify public/private because there’s one and only one rule: private by default, public if you flag it.”
I feel uncomfortable with the current trait situation because that rule has been broken. This other issue pinpoints the problem from another look: traits shouldn’t set their items visibility based on their own visibilities. This yields weird and unexpected code rules and precludes interesting design semantics – the one I just described above.
I hope you liked that article and thoughts of mine. I might write a proper RFC if you peeps are hyped about the feature – I have personally been wanting this for a while but never found the time to write about it. Because I care – a lot – about that feature, even more than my previous RFC on features discoverability, please feel free to provide constructive criticism, especially regarding breaking-changes issues.
Keep the vibes! | {
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Kako je talijanska javnost doznala da će kemijsko oružje iz Sirije biti prekrcano u nekoj od njihovih luka? Rekao joj je to hrvatski premijer Zoran Milanović. Talijanske vlasti zasigurno nisu zadovoljne što su dovedene pred gotov čin, što se strani državnik miješa u njihove poslove.
Vojne luke premale
– Tako se ne ponaša. U tom trenutku ni UN ni Organizacija za zabranu kemijskog oružja (OPWC) nisu službeno objavili što je dogovoreno. Smatramo da je ipak naša dužnost objaviti talijanskoj javnosti što se događa, u trenutku i na način koji smatramo prikladnim – kažu nam talijanski izvori. Izjava premijera Milanovića preduhitrila je i objavu službenog plana eliminacije sirijskog kemijskog oružja koji su načinili UN i Organizacija za zabranu kemijskog oružja, a koji bi trebao biti objavljen danas.
Gotov čin
Talijanska ministrica vanjskih poslova Emma Bonino nakon Milanovićeve izjave stavljena je pred gotov čin, dok je tamošnja javnost tek sada iz izvora bliskih ministarstvu obrane doznala da su “mete” kontroverzne pošiljke “neka luka na Siciliji ili Sardiniji”.
– Eliminirali smo mogućnost korištenja vojnih luka jer su premale – kazao je jučer u Bruxellesu izvor talijanskog ministarstva.
Bonino je prošli tjedan šturo rekla da je "Italija stavila na raspolaganje neku luku" u međunarodnoj akciji uništavanja oružja, no isto tako žustro ustvrdila da kemikalije iz Sirije “neće dotaknuti talijansko tlo”, što je bio i naslov vijesti talijanske državne novinske agencija ANSA. Da je odluka donesena, odnosno da je Italija odabrana kao odredište kontroverznog tereta, Talijani su doznali tek iz izjave premijera Milanovića. "Milanović demantirao izjave ministrice Bonino", jedan je od naslova u jučerašnjim talijanskim novinama.
Tek su jučer talijanski političari, primjerice parlamentarac Ermete Realacci iz Demokratske stranke, reagirao i uputio pitanje što se događa i gdje će se obaviti prekrcaj. Iz hrvatske Vlade pak odgovaraju da je "premijer Milanović samo ponovio ono što je prošli tjedan rekla ministrica Bonino".
Brodovi čekaju
Čekajući dopuštenje, dva broda, danski i norveški, usidreni su na Cipru i spremni preuzeti dio sirijskog kemijskog arsenala koji do kraja prosinca mora napustiti 0tu zemlju. Oni će pratiti dva teretna broda prema sirijskoj luci Latakiji, gdje će se ukrcati kontejneri s kemikalijama. Sirijska vojska i OPCW stavit će kemikalije u kontejnere koje će zapečatiti i opremiti GPS-om. Transport je najosjetljiviji dio, što uključuje i moguće napade, tako da se špekulira da ciljna luka za pretovar možda i neće biti objavljena, odnosno da će se prekrcati na drugom mjestu od onog službeno objavljenog. | {
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In 1934, David Hilbert, by then a grand old man of German mathematics, was dining with Bernhard Rust, the Nazi minister of education. Rust asked, “How is mathematics at Göttingen, now that it is free from the Jewish influence?” Hilbert replied, “There is no mathematics in Göttingen anymore.”
“There is no mathematics in Göttingen anymore”: the German math giant David Hilbert. Visual: Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA.
Or so the story goes. It is folklore at this point, a story mathematicians tell one another over coffee while exchanging knowing looks. The details vary in different retellings, but every version has Hilbert speaking this truth to power: Nazis destroyed mathematics at the University of Göttingen. “It’s one of the most well-known stories in the history of science,” says Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze, a math historian at the University of Agder in Norway. “Göttingen was so dominant in mathematics internationally.”
In 1933, that dominance came crashing down. On April 7, two months after Hitler became chancellor, Germany passed a law making it illegal for Jews — or rather those considered Jewish by the Nazis — and Communists to hold civil service jobs, with a few exceptions including for people who had served Germany in World War I. That immediately forced several Göttingen mathematicians from their jobs. The crisis snowballed, and over the course of the year, a total of 18 left or were driven out.
By the time of Hilbert’s legendary dinner with Rust, Germany had lost its status as the world’s foremost country for mathematical research. America took its place — and today, though globalization has spread the wealth, the U.S. has retained its eminence. From Princeton and Columbia to Berkeley and Stanford, it’s hard to find a great math department in the United States that was not shaped in part by European mathematicians who came to or stayed in the U.S. because of the Nazis.
As a new administration with a pronounced anti-science bent takes power in the United States, some scholars are recalling what happened at Göttingen as a cautionary tale. Donald Trump is not Hitler, of course, and “history doesn’t repeat,” as Siegmund-Schultze puts it. Still, he quickly adds, “One also knows from pain that mankind doesn’t really learn from history. Otherwise we wouldn’t do all the same foolish things all the time.”
American democracy is far stronger and longer-lived than was Germany’s between the wars. But we should take the similarities seriously. “I think what you see in both cases is this disaffection of the lower middle class,” says Julia Ault, an expert on German history at the University of Utah. “Part of their status rests on being better than someone else.” Lower-middle-class Germans in 1930 might have felt a loss of status if they perceived Jews to be advancing more quickly than they were. Ault sees a parallel to what some white people in rural America feel: They perceive immigrants as coming in and rising more quickly than they are.
Rather than a drastic Nazi-style crackdown on free speech, what is alarming many scholars today is the idea of a post-truth world, in which evidence doesn’t matter if a story reinforces your beliefs.
“In some sense every scholar is at risk,” says Robbert Dijkgraaf, the current director of the Institute for Advanced Study, which attracted many of the scientists and mathematicians who fled Göttingen and other German universities in the 1930s. “It’s not so much that people are persecuted because of their beliefs, but there is a certain trend where careful reasoning, the search for truth, all the delicacies of having a balanced point of view, acting on facts, being honest about what you do and don’t know, your uncertainty, all these values we have in science and scholarship are at risk.”
The dismissal of experts and the appeals to populism are dangerous, says Ault. “It’s going to be hugely devastating to the EPA, to climate science.” Trump, who has called climate change a Chinese hoax, has asked for the names of scientists who study global warming. His transition team backpedaled on the request, but it was unsettling for employees of the Department of Energy. More recently, it was reported that his administration issued a temporary ban on external communication from the EPA and blocked the agency from awarding new grants or contracts. “It’s going to take most of our lifetimes to redo what’s going to get undone in the next four years,” Ault says. And for that reason, the political cataclysm that upended the mathematical world in the 1930s is no mere historical curiosity.
Left, Hermann Weyl, Hilbert’s successor at Göttingen and one of the German émigrés who helped build the Institute for Advanced Study. Visual: Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA. Right, Abraham Flexner, a founder and guiding spirit of the institute. Visual: Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA.
Carl Friedrich Gauss, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, helped establish Göttingen’s prominence in the early to mid-19th century. The tradition was continued by a legion of people whose names are sprinkled throughout calculus and physics textbooks today: Riemann, Dirichlet, Schwarz, Klein, Minkowski, Landau, Noether, and Hilbert, who had to a large extent set the mathematical research agenda of the 20th century with his 1900 list of 23 unsolved problems he thought mathematicians should devote themselves to in the new century. Richard Courant, who was part of the 1933 flood of mathematicians leaving Göttingen and for whom a New York University institute of mathematical sciences is now named, helped secure funding from the Rockefeller Foundation for a new building to house the mathematics institute at Göttingen. It opened in 1929, and for the next few years, mathematics in Göttingen continued to thrive.
Providentially, the institution that would in many ways take Göttingen’s place — as a home not just for world-class mathematicians but for German Jewish ones — was being born at just that moment, in Princeton, New Jersey.
The Institute for Advanced Study, known to mathematicians and scientists simply as “the institute,” was founded in 1930 by the Bamberger family, who had sold their department store to Macy’s shortly before the stock market crash in 1929 and had thus managed to prosper through the Great Depression. At the time, many American institutions of higher education were anti-Semitic, and the Bambergers’ initial vision was to create a medical school that did not discriminate against Jews. Instead, Abraham Flexner, who had studied and written about medical and higher education, convinced them that an institute dedicated to basic research in mathematics and science was more important. He ended up joining them as a founder.
The institute opened in 1933 and was housed in Princeton University’s Fine Hall, home of its mathematics department, until the institute’s own facilities opened in 1939. (This has led to decades of confusion about the institute’s relationship with Princeton. They are in the same town, but they have no formal affiliation.) The timing could not have been better for the German Jews whose jobs at home had been abolished. Flexner and the trustees decided, with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, to create positions for exiled researchers at the institute.
It wasn’t an easy sell. American anti-Semitism was not the only issue; unemployment was high, and some believed that “every foreign scholar imported means an American out of a job,” as the MIT mathematics professor Norbert Wiener described it. He feared that “any appointment for more than a year would cause a feeling of resentment that would wreck our hopes of doing anything whatsoever.” Dijkgraaf, the IAS’s current director, says the institute had to walk a fine line. “All these efforts had to be done in a very subtle way,” he says. For one, each grant was fairly modest. But by getting a position at the institute, even a temporary one, a researcher “could at least get a visa and would have a foothold” as they worked to find jobs elsewhere in the U.S., says Dijkgraaf. “There was this joke that the institute was a little bit like an Ellis Island for these scholars at risk.”
In a 1939 report to the Institute for Advanced Study trustees, Flexner wrote, “Fifty years from now the historian looking backward will, if we act with courage and imagination, report that during our time the center of gravity in scholarship moved across the Atlantic to the United States.” And he was right. “In the end America profited hugely,” says Siegmund-Schultze, who adds that “many of these developments would have happened anyway even without the Nazis.” After all, America had more resources, the population was growing, and the nation was starting to replace private financing for the fundamental sciences with public financing — a large part of the reason the U.S. was able to retain its mathematical and scientific dominance after World War II. Nevertheless, America’s willingness to take in scholars fleeing the Nazis provided a boost to its rising scientific establishment and caused the balance of power to shift almost overnight.
“We now think of it as a given that the United States is a center of research and scholarship,” Dijkgraaf says. “It wasn’t at all in the 1930s. It was this brave act and this generosity that allowed this to happen.”
Albert Einstein is the most famous émigré scientist who ended up at the institute as a result of that generosity. Other luminaries included John von Neumann, a Hungarian mathematician, computer scientist, and physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project; Hermann Weyl, who had been Hilbert’s successor at Göttingen; and Kurt Gödel, who changed the way mathematicians think about certainty.
As that star-studded list suggests, taking in these refugees was not simply an act of generosity. Oswald Veblen, who had been influential in getting the institute to Princeton in the first place and had become one of the first scholars at the institute, “had a very clear vision that this was a win-win situation,” says Dijkgraaf. “He could help the refugees, but it was also a unique opportunity to strengthen mathematics in the United States.”
John von Neumann, who worked at Göttingen in the 1920s, became a pillar of the Institute for Advanced Study. He annotated this manuscript for publication. (From the institute’s Box 35, File: von Neumann, John: Publication of Collected Works.)
Institutions are fragile. They are easier to destroy than build. A few months of Hitler’s policies unraveled two centuries of mathematical progress in Göttingen. That university, and Germany more broadly, never fully recovered. As von Neumann correctly predicted in 1933, “If these boys continue for only two more years (which is unfortunately very probable) they will ruin German science for a generation — at least.”
America benefited hugely from the intellects of displaced mathematicians and scientists 80 years ago. And while America’s scientific institutions are not facing the same sudden existential threat Göttingen did in April 1933, their work and their scholars can still be seriously undercut by anti-science and anti-intellectual policies. It would be a tragic irony if American mathematics and science, which owe much of their status and success to the German prejudices of another era, were brought low by a kindred set of attitudes in this one.
Evelyn Lamb is a writer based in Salt Lake City. She taught mathematics and math history at the college level before leaving academia to pursue writing full time. She was AAAS mass media fellow at Scientific American in 2012 and has written for outlets including Scientific American, Nature News, the Smithsonian Magazine website, and Slate. | {
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Residents of the blocks in Adelaide Road have been demanding answers
CLADDING on the side of Camden tower blocks will be urgently removed after tests revealed it contains a similar plastic material to that used at Grenfell Tower.
The Town Hall said it would remove the cladding from the high rise Chalcot estate in Adelaide Road immediately amid concerns it could be flammable.
Independent tests of the cladding proved that they are “made up of aluminium panels with a polyethylene core,” Camden Council said.
It follows a week of uncertainty in which residents have nervously waited for answers.
As scaffolding is prepared, 24 hour fire wardens will be sent in to reassure people living in the five towers lining the road from Chalk Farm to Swiss Cottage.
At least 79 people were killed or are missing presumed dead after the blaze at Grenfell, a block in Kensington, last Wednesday.
Hundreds of residents of the Chalcots Estate have questioned their safety since it was revealed that construction firm Rydon and their subcontractor Harley Facades were responsible for refurbishing the fire-gutted tower in Kensington and had also carried out a massive overhaul work on their homes.
One of the panels at the Chalcot Estate taken away for testing
Camden Council sent samples of the cladding from each block for independent fire testing and the results were returned this morning.
Councillor Georgia Gould, leader of Camden Council, said: “Following last week’s tragic fire at Grenfell Tower, Camden Council immediately reviewed fire safety at all our high rise blocks. We knew we had set the highest standards but we weren’t prepared to take anything for granted and we were first in the queue to test the cladding on our blocks.
“We have now received the results of independent testing of cladding on Chalcots Estate from the laboratory at the Building Research Establishment.
“The arrangement of the cladding and insulation used on Camden Council’s buildings significantly differs from that on Grenfell Tower. It includes fire-resistant rock wool insulation designed to prevent the spread of fire and fire resistant sealant between floors, designed to stop a high-intensity flat fire from spreading to neighbouring flats. This arrangement previously contained a fire at a flat in Taplow block in 2012. These are significant and proven arrangements to stop the spread of fire.
“The new results from the laboratory show that the outer cladding panels themselves are made up of aluminium panels with a polyethylene core.
“Therefore the panels that were fitted were not to the standard that we had commissioned. In light of this, we will be informing the contractor that we will be taking urgent legal advice.
“Whilst we are clear that our cladding design and insulation significantly differs to that at Grenfell Tower, the external cladding panels did not satisfy our independent laboratory testing or the high standards we set for contractors. Camden Council has decided it will immediately begin preparing to remove these external cladding panels from the five tower blocks on the Chalcots Estate. Camden Council will do whatever it takes to ensure our residents are reassured about the safety of their homes.
“Until the panels have all been removed, we will carry out 24/7 fire safety patrols on the estate’s corridors to reassure residents and carry out enhanced fire safety checks. This additional assessment work includes a sweep of corridors to make sure they are clear of obstructions and anything that is potentially flammable. We will also be working with residents to test white goods (PAT testing), assessing fire doors in properties and we will be providing fire safety advice to residents.
“We have set up an information point on Chalcots Estate staffed by our housing teams who will be highly visible to our residents over the coming days. We want any residents who have concerns or questions to come to the information point so we can help them.
“We are working side-by-side with our housing groups and the London Fire Brigade and we remain ready to respond to any changes to national fire safety advice. We stand ready to fully support any national investigation into materials, building standards and safety regulations.
“It’s vital for all of London’s residents who live in high-rise buildings, that we learn from investigations into what caused and exacerbated the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower.”
Ray Bailey, Managing Director at Harley Facades said in a statement that the cladding panels used on the Chalcots were Reynobond – the same as those used in Grenfell Tower – but claimed they met the design specification they were given and said they had been signed off by Camden.
He added: “These works were as described in the contractual specification and approved in the usual process for construction and building control by the London Borough of Camden.
“All major construction projects are subject to a local authority on-site inspection process where inspectors will have to review the works and check whether the building is in line with the plans and specifications.”
He said: “There is no evidence to suggest that this product and cladding system installed in Camden is unsafe. Currently there is no link between the cladding and the spread of the fire at Grenfell Tower. It is right that questions are asked and there will be many questions about this whole tragic incident.” | {
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Editor’s note: This article is presented as part of the limited article series There Was An Idea…, where every week, the Lewton Bus crew dive into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the run-up to Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War.
—
The shared universe under discussion in this series has always been heavy on the “shared” and light on the “universe”. It’s a character-focused enterprise, after all. The plot and thematics are always rooted in the relationships of the characters – on their inner struggles rather than the world around them.
As a consequence, though, there hasn’t been a lot of time devoted to the (if you’ll pardon me) worldbuilding of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It seems that for the most part, we’re still working off that moment at the very beginning of Iron Man, where Larry King and Jim Cramer showed up in what Roger Ebert called a “Leno Device” – an intercession of real-world culture, to make the entire story feel just as real.
This was easy to do when the story concerned a fictional player in the military-industrial complex, going through his own story that was affected by real things like the war in Iraq and the rise of consumer electronics in the mid 2000s. Fifteen movies later, though, you can’t play the same game. Could Derren Brown have made a cameo in Doctor Strange? Could Black Panther have had a TV showing Trevor Noah? After so many distinct branches of variably soft science fiction, the ordinary state of the MCU isn’t that ordinary anymore, and the movies have tried to skate around acknowledging it.
Spider-Man: Homecoming is different. It finally gives us an understanding of what it means to be at the bottom of the MCU looking up, and how all these world-imperiling crises and superhuman figures have changed everyday life: That’s why the movie starts with a child’s drawing of the Avengers, making them seem like the simple fantasy figures they…y’know, are.
This start of the movie is all about the slow build, carefully moderating how all the silly SF starts to work its way into this grounded world, showing everything from the perspective of normalcy. When we see the big robot space eel crash into Grand Central station in The Avengers, it’s a quick peek of a real-recognizable locale into the uproarious, fantastical battle. Here, we see normal working schlubs discussing the woes of blue-collar life, as they clean up that very same robot space eel.
Superheroes intrude on these people’s lives from every angle, culminating in the long-overdue revelation that there’s an entirely new federal organization built specifically to handle the aftermath of superheroics, the Department of Damage Control. They take the construction company’s contract away from them, angering the foreman, who we can tell is important because he’s Michael Keaton. His solution is to completely revamp their organization into one that much more easily fits into the logic of a superhero’s world – guns, gadgets, goons – while still keeping themselves the same ordinary outer-borough New Yorkers.
Speaking of those, our story proper starts with the exact same trick done for the opposite effect: simple cell-phone videos shot by Peter Parker, of his side of the story that we saw in Civil War, that start in a car in Queens and escalate to a deliberately poorly-shot rendition of the Viennese airport fight. Bad, amateur cinematography has been a trick to get verisimilitude fast since The Blair Witch Project, and here it’s used as a constant reminder that this is a normal person’s view of things.
The entire rest of the movie is filled with touches that advance this style, show us glimpses of how there’s a new normal in a world with Avengers in it: Stark Tower stands proud and tall in the Manhattan skyline, Howard Stark and Bruce Banner sit among murals of great scientists, local news stations chatter about Avenger goings-on, Thor and Iron Man have become meme-worthy celebrities. It makes for a lot of clever jokes, but there’s an underlying point: This is the same city that got threatened by Loki, but these streets aren’t the Avengers’ world. Not really.
There’s a larger point to this, one that’s received some reasonable criticism when people recognize it: The story ultimately comes on the side of reinforcing this stratification. Spider-Man shouldn’t try to be a big-shot Avenger, he should just be a small-scale superhero. Moreover, he should defend that divide, putting himself in harm’s way to defend the Avengers’ otherworldly technology, to make sure it doesn’t intrude on his more mundane neighborhood troubles. Some people take issue with this, calling Spider-Man a class traitor who the movie paints as not deserving any reward for helping the rich stay rich, but I don’t see it that way. This is about class, true, but more specifically it’s about power.
Yep, I’ve invoked it, one of the most powerful magic words in the sacred invocation of Spider-Man, which I don’t even need to repeat here. The movie feels the same way, a deliberate act of omission that I put right alongside Dunkirk never showing the faces of German soldiers, because it wants you to escape that mindset: Spider-Man, as Homecoming has it, does not have great power.
It sounds silly when reduced to such simple terms, but movies have to convince you that their events are important. This usually isn’t a major consideration if your characters and story are well-reasoned enough, but you need to when you’re dealing with stories that are deliberately less important to the larger story – why see a movie about a once and future Avenger that’s not an Avengers movie?
The answer is twofold: First, the character focus I’ve mentioned before, that makes the individual dramas the entire point of the team-ups, and second, a personalized set of thematic concerns for each movie, that stress its primacy amid the rest of the Cinematic Universe. Imagine a continuous debate: “Why watch Age of Ultron when the reckoning of those events in Civil War will be more grounded and just as exciting?” “But why watch that when you could experience a complete reorientation of what you know of reality, in Doctor Strange?” “Why settle for that with just one guy, when you could see a whole team of people you already love encountering something just as uncanny in Guardians Vol. 2?”
Homecoming, being self-evidently the smallest and least consequential of all the above stories, therefore has to pick up the argument on the strength of that fact: “What’s the point of any of that if you don’t see how it affects normal people, folks who can’t fly and have never seen a psychedelic CGI worldscape?” This is why Spider-Man, a character embodying the drama of coming of age and having the burden of protecting others, is shown to be so young it’s frequently the target of humor and explicitly told it’s not his job to fight off every threat. That, as the excitable dude on the Staten Island Ferry says, is a job for Iron Man.
Just as with Age of Ultron, Homecoming puts Tony Stark at the center of a triptych of characters embodying his success and his failure – Spider-Man and Michael Keaton’s Vulture respectively, instead of The Vision and Ultron. You’ll note that unlike in the latter case, Spider-Man is actually the main character, both the protagonist and the focus of the story. This makes a lot more sense to me: Setting the triangle to stand on its weakest vertex makes the story a more spectacular balancing act.
From another perspective, though, the Vulture is actually the one in the center, with one foot in Iron Man’s world of political intrigue and absurdly well-built technology (with the fig-leaf of reverse-engineered alien doodads), and the other foot in Peter Parker’s harried, in-and-out family life. This duality gets driven home in the movie’s most memorable moment, when we find out that he even has something halfway approaching Peter’s secret identity: He’s the father of Peter’s classmate and crush, Liz.
This contextualizes a lot of the Vulture’s actions – he’s given growly, grandiose speeches all movie long on how his supervillainy is in service of maintaining his position in life – but it doesn’t excuse them. It’s a very identifiable mentality, that he elaborates on to Peter: Since that moment with the Department of Damage Control, he’s always considered himself an underdog. A little guy, just the same as Spider-Man. Though, everyone’s an underdog compared to folks like Iron Man. In his quest to measure up, he’s become such a ruthless force that dozens of ordinary people in Queens are suffering under his technological might. He’s too far in now, become too comfortable with suppressing any kind of altruism, to learn the lesson Peter’s been learning the whole movie about staying in your lane.
Despite this, he does show some magnanimity to Peter, who he thinks of as part of his in-group – another kid from Queens trying to make it in the world. He thinks they’re on the same power level, even though every interaction they have in the movie shows this is patently untrue: One has a professional support team, the other has a nerdy friend who’s also a high-schooler. One has a room you literally can’t lie down in, the other has a house so big and expensive it’s out in the suburban areas of Eastern Queens. He’s so used to discarding morality with the excuse of his low station in life, that he keeps using the excuse long after he’s used it to rise up and gain some stability. It’s his central flaw as a villain, the clearest example of the movie’s central theme: “Don’t claim victimhood if you’re privileged.”
Or, if you prefer, “Don’t abdicate responsibility if you have power” – which, as a high school kid like Peter could tell you, is the contrapositive statement of “With great power…” and so forth.
The same theme pops up in subtle ways, all across the movie: Tony Stark’s snarky self-deprecation is far less glib than it’s ever been, more genuinely wise. The result of years of hard experience that even when you’re all that, you’re not all that. Flash Thompson is now a rich kid who’s bought his way onto math teams, who complains when he’s bumped off the rotation despite never getting a single answer correct. To go back to an earlier point; as much sense as this makes for the smallest-scale Marvel movie (yes, I’m counting the ones with literal tiny characters), it doesn’t make an awful lot of sense for Spider-Man, because “claiming victimhood for being privileged” is kind of the entire point of the comics character.
Spider-Man, across most incarnations, was born in tragedy, and never escapes it. His loved ones die or turn evil, the delicate balance of his life threatens to lead to untold suffering if it gets upset, and he continually feels sad about that. Many of the hallmarks of his conventional status quo, from the earliest comics or the original movies, is about justifying this feeling of persecution: The Daily Bugle’s constant smears are only really there to make the real world’s most popular superhero angsty over his unpopularity.
The MCU’s Spider-Man, on the other hand, doesn’t think he gets to feel sad. After all, he has superpowers and so forth. Anything approaching an Uncle Ben death is barely even alluded to – in fact, sacreligious as it sounds, I would be interested in further exploration of a Spider-story where the death never happened at all, and Spider-Man was motivated by a simpler mix of morality and the teenage desire to make your way in an adult world.
Being Spider-Man, as Homecoming posits it, may not be sad, but it’s hard.
But then again, look at the rise of the cultural concept of “adulting” as a noteworthy struggle: Being any sort of Man, or Woman, or adult, is hard. | {
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michael barbaro
From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has governed as a right-wing populist whose nationalist message has pitted Hindus against Muslims. My colleague Jeffrey Gettleman on what Modi’s likely re-election this week tells us about the kind of country that India is becoming. It’s Tuesday, May 21. Jeffrey, what was the political landscape in India as voters were casting their ballots in this latest election?
jeffrey gettleman
It’s a complicated landscape here. This is an enormous electorate — 900 million registered voters. That’s bigger than the population of the U.S. and Europe combined. And India is a very diverse, very heterogeneous, different religions, different ethnic groups, different languages. And then there’s also very rigid caste distinctions in India, from Brahmins at the top, who traditionally have a lot of wealth and power, to untouchables, or Dalits is the word that’s most often used today. On the political landscape, there are something like 2,000 different political parties vying for the votes.
michael barbaro
Wow.
jeffrey gettleman
And there’s a couple leading parties, and the biggest one right now is the B.J.P. That party came up out of a Hindu social service organization, or some people call it a far-right organization, that in its early days was a little like a neo-Nazi party for Hindus. They even sent people to Fascist Italy in the ‘30s, and to Germany, to study the right-wing fascism of Nazi Germany. And they brought that back to India. And they believe that India should have a strong Hindu identity and that anybody who was not Hindu in India didn’t really deserve to be part of the leadership. And one man who was a member of this far-right Hindu nationalist group was the one who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. And after that, this political movement was banned. And only decades later, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, did it re-emerge as a political force. It had a couple different names, but eventually became the B.J.P. And the leader of that party is Narendra Modi, the current prime minister.
michael barbaro
So Jeffrey, how did this man come to lead this country given the controversial, and in some sense kind of ugly, roots of this party?
jeffrey gettleman
That’s a really good question. Narendra Modi is a fascinating political figure. He is the first prime minister of India who has lasted more than a couple of years who comes from a lower caste. So many of India’s prime ministers were Brahmins, the highest caste, very elite, well-educated, from wealthy families. And Modi is the antithesis of that. His father ran a tea stall in the state of Gujarat, which is in western India, highly industrialized state, one of the wealthier states in India. And Modi has developed this mythology about his upbringing where he was very poor, worked really hard, hustled at train stations selling tea with his brother, came from a big family and had nothing, and worked his way up step by step. So even though he was a lower caste operative of this big organization, his cunning, his intelligence, his determination allowed him to climb up the ladder. And his low caste was not held against him. In the early 2000s, he became the chief minister of Gujarat, which is a huge position. It’s like governor. You’re in control of the entire state. And he had enormous support because he had proven himself as a passionate Hindu who stood up for Hindu beliefs.
michael barbaro
So what takes Modi from regional leader to the national stage?
jeffrey gettleman
So 2002 was a defining moment for Modi and for India. There was a train car full of Hindu activists that was moving through Gujarat. And supposedly, according to many people on the Hindu right side, a mob of Muslim men attacked this train car and killed many people. [MUSIC] Hindu-Muslim relations in India have been tense, historically. India is about 80 percent Hindu. 14 percent is Muslim. And after that train car was burned and dozens of Hindus were killed, there was this intense thirst for revenge. And this anger just exploded.
archived recording Hindu mobs raged through the state, burning their neighbors alive and raping women whilst the police and authorities were accused of standing back and, at times, encouraging it. [CHANTING]
jeffrey gettleman
Hindu mobs across the state began to mobilize and attack any Muslims they could find. And the police services and the state government did very little to stop this violence before it had killed 1,000 people.
archived recording [CHANTING]
jeffrey gettleman
Now, guess who was in charge of the state at that time? Narendra Modi. And he was accused of standing by and letting these Hindu mobs eviscerate the Muslim population. And he’s been asked many times since then, why didn’t you do more? And he said that he couldn’t. And there was even a comment that he made, something like, of course he was upset, in the same way you’d be upset if a puppy was killed.
michael barbaro
So he compared the Muslims to a dog.
jeffrey gettleman
That’s how it was interpreted. He might argue that he was saying that you would be sad if any innocent life was lost. But this became a defining moment to both sides. So the Hindu right saw Modi as a very strong warrior protecting their interests. In Muslim quarters, it was the absolute opposite. They saw Modi as an agent of the Hindu right who used this spark of religious violence as pretext to let more than 1,000 Muslims be killed.
michael barbaro
In the end, though, that criticism of him didn’t hurt him all that much politically.
jeffrey gettleman
In Gujarat, it played quite well, because he was a forceful figure. He had a strong Hindu following. But there’s another dimension to him, which is quite interesting, and that is he’s very pro-business, and he’s organized, and he’s decisive. And Modi is credited with first doing a good job in Gujarat opening up the community to business, eliminating corruption and red tape, and really pushing infrastructure and a business-friendly climate. And he rode this wave of growth, of annual G.D.P. increases of 6, 7, 8 percent year after year after year, which delivers jobs for lots of people, and brings in wealth, and can change people’s entire lives. And he presented himself as somebody who could do that for the entire India. The other big party on the landscape here is the Indian National Congress. This party led India to independence from the British. This is the party of Mahatma Gandhi. This is the party of Nehru, who was India’s founding father and the first prime minister after independence in 1947. The Congress Party historically was the most powerful political force across the landscape in India. But over the years, like we see in other parts of the world, it becomes corrupt, dynastic and ineffective. So as Modi is leading this big state in western India, the Congress Party is getting weaker and weaker. And it was seen as an elitist party that was out of touch with the average Indian.
michael barbaro
So Modi is able to use this economic message, and this biography, and this anti-elitism to go all the way to the prime minister’s office.
jeffrey gettleman
Yeah. 2014 was a landslide election.
archived recording The B.J.P. has won the India 2014 election.
jeffrey gettleman
The B.J.P. won more seats in the Parliament than any party had won in India for decades.
archived recording This massive election in the most populous democracy on the globe has today produced a result that people are calling the biggest turnover in power in India since the country became independent from Britain in 1947.
jeffrey gettleman
It was a stunner. And Congress, meanwhile, did the worst it had ever done in the history of Indian politics, winning 44 seats out of 545, barely making a dent in the Parliament.
archived recording The Congress has done pretty badly. That has to be the understatement of the decade.
jeffrey gettleman
They were almost completely wiped out. And there was no question of who was in control.
archived recording [CHEERING]
jeffrey gettleman
There was no question that Modi had packaged the ideology and the message of economic growth and opportunity and prosperity. And he drew support not just from the people who loved his Hindu ideology and saw him as a real crusader for the Hindu cause, but he also got a lot of support from businesspeople, from educated people, from middle-class people who were fed up with the Congress Party. Even some intellectuals were willing to give Modi a chance and turn a blind eye to his Hindu right politics because they thought that he was a decisive leader that could really strengthen India, both internally and externally.
michael barbaro
But I wonder — to what extent did that far-right history within the party, and his history with Muslims, seem at the forefront in that election?
jeffrey gettleman
He did a really interesting thing in that election in 2014. He talked almost nothing about the Hindu right politics. He ran almost exclusively on economic growth and prosperity and his visions for more infrastructure, for more anti-poverty programs, for projecting an image of India as a strong country abroad. Those were his messages. And the reason why he could do that and still get the Hindu right is everybody knew his background. Here’s this poor kid who rose up the ranks of this Hindu organization and had presided over Gujarat at a time when 1,000 Muslims were massacred. And so nobody doubted his Hindu credentials. So that’s how he was able to appeal to both communities. And that’s why they won this stunning amount of parliamentary seats in 2014.
michael barbaro
So what happens once Modi takes office?
jeffrey gettleman
So when Modi takes office, a few things happen. [MUSIC]
archived recording Last October, in a village not far from India’s capital, Delhi, a 56-year-old Muslim man was beaten to death and his son gravely injured by an allegedly Hindu mob.
jeffrey gettleman
One of the first and most disturbing is the advent of Hindu lynch mobs that start killing people across the country for slaughtering cows.
archived recording In a horrific incident, a Muslim man was brutally beaten to death by cow vigilantes over suspicion of smuggling cows.
jeffrey gettleman
So cows are a sacred animal in Hinduism. And there are laws on the books of many states in India that cows should not be slaughtered, or if they are slaughtered, there has to be certain reasons why they’re slaughtered. And so vigilantes, empowered by the rise of this Hindu movement and politics, started taking the law in their own hands. And they would pounce on people who they said were trading in beef or slaughtering cows. And they’d kill them in broad daylight in front of hundreds of people, filming the scenes with their cell phones.
michael barbaro
Wow.
archived recording The cow slaughter vigilantism is ISIS in India. No sane person can defend or support or even offer excuses for what is done in the name of a cow.
jeffrey gettleman
And the police often stood by. And if they made any arrests, the culprits were usually let out of jail, or charges were dismissed. And sometimes it went even further, where members of Mr. Modi’s party would rally to the defense of the killers, help pay their legal fees, invite them to public events, and say that they were standing behind these men because these men were trying just to defend the faith. So that was one of the first troubling signs of the side effects of this Hindu right political agenda. Now, again, nobody believes Modi ordered these killings or had a direct role in this. But the belief is that he’s created this climate of intolerance where Hinduism is seen as the dominant religion, and anybody who goes against it is going against it at their own risk. Economically, Modi struggled a bit. He promised a lot. He promised creating something like a million jobs a month. He promised new train lines and new bridges and entire new infrastructure for India that would lift it out of its developing nation status into a very prosperous country. Much of that has not happened.
archived recording (narendra modi) Today I will be speaking to you about some critical issues and important decisions.
jeffrey gettleman
And then Modi did a couple things that were very controversial.
archived recording (narendra modi) We have decided that the prior 100-rupee and 1,000-rupee currency notes presently in use will no longer be legal tender.
jeffrey gettleman
He decided that he was going to take out all the big bills from Indian currency because he thought that criminals were hoarding lots of money in cash.
archived recording (narendra modi) The rights and the interest of honest, hardworking people will be fully protected.
jeffrey gettleman
And if he made everybody turn in all their money to get new bills, that the criminals would be left with these piles of cash, and their illegal fortunes would be wiped out. That didn’t happen. What happened was there was a huge crisis of currency in this country for several months, where nobody could get any bills. A.T.M.s ran out of money. Banks ran out of money. People didn’t have any cash in their pockets. All the industries that rely on cash, like rickshaw drivers or manual labor, weren’t able to get paid. And that had a longstanding impact on the economy, a bad one. And a lot of people were very upset about what happened and blamed Modi for it.
michael barbaro
So he turns out to be a better steward of Hindu nationalism than the economy.
jeffrey gettleman
Yeah, it looks like it. But he did — in his defense, he had these grand social initiatives. One of them was building 100 million toilets for India.
michael barbaro
Wow.
jeffrey gettleman
Because public sanitation is a real problem in a poor, crowded country like India. And he was the first prime minister to come up with this vast plan to build that many toilets so fast. And they mostly did it. So his record domestically was mixed. But at the same time, he was very forceful in projecting a strong image of India abroad — traveling to different conferences, meeting with world leaders. So he gets a pretty good report card in terms of global affairs and how he’s just boosted the image of India across the world.
michael barbaro
So Jeffrey, I’m curious what life has been like under Modi for India’s Muslims.
jeffrey gettleman
So it’s been pretty bad. There’s a lot of fear. I travel across this country into all different corners and different walks of life, and that is the feeling I get among almost every place I go where there’s a large Muslim community, is this sense of fear. Muslims say they’ve never felt as alienated and marginalized in their own country. And they’ve changed their behavior. I’ve talked to people who said that they don’t want to walk around at night. They don’t like letting their kids out of their sight. They often call each other, their friends and family members, to check in on them. There have been stories of Muslims riding trains, and a bunch of young guys grab them, and start punching them in the face, and throw them off the train. Nobody gets in trouble, and everybody laughs. And so enough of those stories get passed around, and it makes everybody really scared.
michael barbaro
So bring us up to today. With all of this as the backdrop, how has this election been playing out?
jeffrey gettleman
So it looked like Modi was losing support late last year and the beginning of this year. There was growing grumbling that he had not delivered on his promises. The economy was much weaker than it should be. And there were some elections in a couple states in December that his party lost. And so there was talk that maybe Modi was a lot weaker than he had seemed. But then, in February, everything changed.
archived recording Scenes of devastation. Body parts strewn across the Jammu-Srinagar Highway in Indian-administered Kashmir.
jeffrey gettleman
There was a militant attack in the disputed area of Kashmir, which is a beautiful Himalayan mountain territory between India and Pakistan that they both claim.
archived recording Dozens were killed when a car packed with explosives rammed into a truck.
jeffrey gettleman
The militants rammed a small truck packed with explosives into a busload of Indian soldiers.
archived recording India has said it will ensure the complete diplomatic isolation of Pakistan following the attack, the deadliest to hit the disputed territory in decades.
jeffrey gettleman
And Modi blamed Pakistan for supporting the militants.
archived recording 1 India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, observed a moment of silence before he gave a strong warning. archived recording 2 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] I want to tell the terrorist groups and their patrons that they have committed a huge mistake, and they will have to pay a big price for this.
jeffrey gettleman
And Indian flags went up around the country. People rallied behind Modi.
archived recording 1 Calls for revenge across India. archived recording 2 We demand that one life is avenged with 100,000 lives in Pakistan.
jeffrey gettleman
It played perfectly to his strengths as a decisive leader who had been stoking nationalism and trying to make India stronger. And then in late February, Modi ordered airstrikes on Pakistan. And several Indian warplanes crossed over into Pakistani airspace, dropped some bombs on a place that they said was a terrorist training camp. And the support for this response was enormous. Everybody was rallying around Modi. And it ends up that it looks like those bombs missed their targets. But there was this intense burst of jingoism that India had to stand strong against Pakistan. And Pakistan was an existential threat. And Modi was this big, strong, decisive leader standing up for India. And that changed the dynamic of the election 100 percent. [MUSIC]
michael barbaro
So all the concerns about Modi stoking religious tensions all kind of fade into the background.
jeffrey gettleman
Yeah. So what’s interesting about India is it made a deliberate decision at independence to be a secular country that would respect minorities. It’s even in the preamble of the Constitution — and this was added later, in the ‘70s — that India is a secular nation. So the decision always was, yes, Muslims are going to be in the minority. And when India was created in 1947, a parallel country, Pakistan, was created next door to be a Muslim nation. And that country has a strong religious identity. It’s called the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Islam is a state religion, and there’s many laws that enforce that. But India did not set itself up as a Hindu equivalent of Pakistan. It made a decision to be a tolerant, multicultural, multi-religion, secular country. And so that’s what’s really interesting about this election, is what direction is it going to going in? And is there going to be space for these minority Muslims? Because on the books, they have an equal stake in this country. But on the streets, there’s a sense of hopelessness.
archived recording Good evening. The exit poll numbers are in.
michael barbaro
So it’s Monday evening in India. You reported this morning that the exit polls are showing that Modi and the B.J.P. are very likely to have won another round in power for the next five years.
archived recording 72 to 78, the Bharatiya Janata Party clearly in the lead, best position to form the government.
jeffrey gettleman
Yeah. So all the information we have received from more than half a dozen different exit polls conducted with hundreds of thousands of voters show that the B.J.P. did really well in this election. Modi is likely to return as prime minister. Now, these are just exit polls. It’s an imperfect science. We’ll find out the true results on Thursday, when all election results are released. But it’s just not close. [MUSIC]
michael barbaro
Jeffrey, you started by telling us what a big, messy country India is. And yet here we have this country seeming to move away from this parliamentary democracy that reflects all that messiness toward one leader who is consolidating power.
jeffrey gettleman
I think people were pretty fed up with the messiness. And so there’s just a craving for an assertive leader who can speak to the people and who can get things done. And Modi had a reputation of doing that. And I’ve heard from so many people, Congress was in power for 50 of our 70 years. These guys have been in power, really, for just the past five years. Let’s give them another term to see what they can do. And the hope is there just won’t be too much damage to this very delicate social fabric. So if Modi wins, that means that’s who most Indians wanted to lead them. [MUSIC]
michael barbaro
Jeffrey, thank you very much. We really appreciate it.
jeffrey gettleman
My pleasure.
michael barbaro
We’ll be right back. Here’s what else you need to know today.
archived recording What about McGahn? Have you made any progress bringing him in on Tuesday? archived recording (jerry nadler) He’s supposed to come in on the 21st. He’s under subpoena. And if he doesn’t come in, we’ll do what we have to do then.
michael barbaro | {
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Manly Warringah Sea Eagles have today released Frank Winterstein from the remainder of his playing contract.
Contracted to Manly to the end of 2019, Winterstein played 41 first grade matches for the Sea Eagles after making his Club debut round 13 of the 2016 season.
“We thank Frank for his contribution to our Club and wish him every success in his future endeavours. He has been an outstanding ambassador on and off the field, ’’ said Sea Eagles CEO Lyall Gorman. | {
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Calvin Beck’s legendary monster movie magazine Castle of Frankenstein began publication in 1962. The magazine carried no, or very little outside advertising, so the magazine was published whenever Beck felt like it. It was mostly edited by Bhob Stewart, who also created many of the best-selling “Wacky Packages” stickers for Topps. Basically there were about two issues a year.
Aside from the erratic publishing schedule, most newsstands wouldn’t carry something like CoF anyway, and so it was very hard to find, meaning that an issue or two could go by before you saw one and there would already be new “back issues” for sale that you were just hearing about.
CoF covered comic books critically, the first such reviews ever to appear in a nationally distributed magazine, even underground comics. CoF also wrote about underground and experimental films and foreign “art” cinema, not just its mainstay, classic horror. Joe Dante was one of the writers and unlike Famous Monsters of Filmland (which was aimed at little kids and just full of film stills captioned with Forry Ackerman’s groan-worthy puns) CoF published some very good writing from some very hip characters.
I didn’t pick up on Castle of Frankenstein myself until it was almost over, with issue #21, featuring a cover painting (see above) of Ray Harryhausen’s The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, with photos within of its eye-poppingly gorgeous, scantily-clad co-star, Caroline Munro. It was 1973 and I was a not very innocent seven-year-old and something like CoF was like “WOW!” to me, a lot to take in.
I used to find it at the same place I would later buy Rock Scene and CREEM, a low rent department/hunting/garden/grocery store in Wheeling, WV called “Cook’s.” Thinking back on it, I am reasonably sure that no one working in that store had any idea what sort of seriously subversive wares came through their regional distributors aimed at impressionable young minds like mine. I simply cannot imagine a second resident of my Rust belt hometown buying a copy.
It was in CoF that I first read about John Waters and Divine. If memory serves, there was both a review of Female Trouble (calling it a part of the “lardass” sub-genre of women in prison flicks—whatever that was—and also a behind the scenes look at Female Trouble from the point of view of the actor who played the prison chaplain escorting Dawn Davenport to the electric chair. I read these articles when I was ten or younger, but it would take until I was eighteen before I was able to actually see Female Trouble... imagine that.
In any case, these days, rare issues of Castle of Frankenstein can claim a hefty price on eBay. On occasion I’ve seen pdfs floating around on torrent trackers as part of a “pulp magazines” collection and from time to time on blogs.
Here’s a collection of some of the best covers from Castle of Frankenstein:
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Click here for bigger view | {
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Waterproof fabrics that whisk away sweat could be the latest application of microfluidic technology developed by bioengineers at the University of California, Davis.
The new fabric works like human skin, forming excess sweat into droplets that drain away by themselves, said inventor Tingrui Pan, professor of biomedical engineering. One area of research in Pan's Micro-Nano Innovations Laboratory at UC Davis is a field known as microfluidics, which focuses on making "lab on a chip" devices that use tiny channels to manipulate fluids. Pan and his colleagues are developing such systems for applications like medical diagnostic tests.
Graduate students Siyuan Xing and Jia Jiang developed a new textile microfluidic platform using hydrophilic (water-attracting) threads stitched into a highly water-repellent fabric. They were able to create patterns of threads that suck droplets of water from one side of the fabric, propel them along the threads and expel them from the other side.
"We intentionally did not use any fancy microfabrication techniques so it is compatible with the textile manufacturing process and very easy to scale up," said Xing, lead graduate student on the project.
It's not just that the threads conduct water through capillary action. The water-repellent properties of the surrounding fabric also help drive water down the channels. Unlike conventional fabrics, the water-pumping effect keeps working even when the water-conducting fibers are completely saturated, because of the sustaining pressure gradient generated by the surface tension of droplets.
The rest of the fabric stays completely dry and breathable. By adjusting the pattern of water-conducting fibers and how they are stitched on each side of the fabric, the researchers can control where sweat is collected and where it drains away on the outside.
Workout enthusiasts, athletes and clothing manufacturers are all interested in fabrics that remove sweat and let the skin breathe. Cotton fibers, for example, wick away sweat — but during heavy exercise, cotton can get soaked, making it clingy and uncomfortable.
A paper describing the research was published recently in the journal Lab on a Chip. The work was funded in part by the National Science Foundation. | {
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Australia's biggest wine company Treasury Wine Estates will boost shareholder returns and reward staff with a one-off bonus payment to recognise their contribution.
Treasury revealed the cash splash on Thursday, when it announced that net profit after tax jumped 55 per cent in fiscal 2017 to $269.1 million and unveiled a $300 million buyback.
The special payment will be paid to eligible staff in cash in October. Treasury declined to say how much its workers would receive, exactly how many would get it, or the total cost to the business. It is the first time the wine company has made a one-off payment to workers.
Instead the company relied on a statement in its accounts which said; Having delivered strong financial results and significant shareholder value over the past three years, Treasury Wine Estates will recognise team members not eligible for the company's short term incentive program (STIP) with a one-off nominal payment, to all these employees, for their contribution to TWE's success to date. The reward will be funded by TWE's existing STIP program for fiscal 2017." | {
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His wife, Sally, said her husband’s sentence was a “disgrace”. She called him a “hero who had been betrayed”. She said she and the couple’s two daughters, aged two and five, faced losing their home after his Army pay was stopped. | {
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Kirjoittanut
Juha Sipilän kolmen ässän hallitus on ajautunut kriisiin. Kriisin syynä on kiista sote-alueiden lukumäärästä. Pääministeripuolue keskusta ajaa maakuntamalliaan ja soten muodostamista 18 itsehallintoalueen pohjalta, jonka myös perussuomalaiset ovat sittemmin hyväksyneet. Kolmas hallituspuolue, kokoomus, on alun perin lähtenyt viidestä sote-alueesta, mutta taipunut sittemmin kahteentoista. Pääministeri Sipilä on median mukaan tehnyt asiasta hallituskysymyksen: jos kokoomus ei taivu kahdeksaantoista sote-alueeseen, kokoomus saa lähteä hallituksesta ja hallitus hajoaa.
Perustuslain näkökulmasta asia on selvä. Kahdeksantoista sote-alueen ratkaisu joutuisi viimeistään perustuslakivaliokunnassa vakaviin ongelmiin.
Miksi? Yksinkertaisesti siksi, että kysymys on perusoikeuksien toteuttamisesta. Kuten perustuslakivaliokunta jo edellisellä sote-kierroksella korosti, koko sote-uudistuksen tarkoituksena on pyrkimys turvata eräät hyvin keskeiset perusoikeudet yhtäläisesti kaikille: kysymys on sosiaaliturvaa (19 §) ja yhdenvertaisuutta (6 §) koskevien perusoikeuksien toteuttamisesta perustuslain 22 §:ssä tarkoitetulla tavalla.
Sipilän edustama ratkaisu – se josta on nyt tullut hallituskysymys – johtaisi tilanteeseen, jossa hallitus esittäisi erilaisista vaihtoehdoista nimenomaan sellaista, jonka jo alun perin tiedetään toteuttavan perusoikeuksia merkittävästi heikommin kuin sille esitettyjen vaihtoehtoisten sote-ratkaisujen. Esimerkiksi YLE:n julkaiseman uutisen perusteella 18 sote-alueen malli toteuttaisi yhdenvertaista palveluiden saatavuutta ainoastaan tyydyttävästi, kun saatavuus olisi vielä 12 alueen mallissakin erinomainen. Samoin Sote-selvityshenkilöiden raportissa todetaan yksiselitteisesti, että niin hallitusohjelmassa mainittua 19 alueen mallia kuin nykyisiin maakuntiin perustuva jako muodostuisivat perusoikeuksien näkökulmasta ongelmallisiksi. Alueet jäisivät liian pieniksi, jotta niillä voitaisiin taata perustuslain 19 §:n mukaisten hoitoon pääsyn ja palveluihin sekä huolenpitoon liittyvät tavoitteet maassa yhdenvertaisella tavalla. Terveyden ja hyvinvoinnin laitos on itse asiassa aiemmin arvioinut soten kannalta parhaiten toimivaksi itsehallintoalueiden lukumääräksi 4 – 5. Ei olekaan sattumaa, että Ylen haastattelemat asiantuntijat ovat ykskantaan tyrmänneet Keskustan maakuntamallin.
Perustuslaki ei tietenkään sisällä nimenomaisia säännöksiä sote-alueiden määrästä. Silti lukumäärä on kaikkea muuta kuin yhdentekevä. Kysymys on perusoikeuksien toteuttamisesta ja Suomessa on yleensä lähdetty siitä, että julkinen valta – ja hallitus sen ytimessä – pyrkii turvaamaan perusoikeudet mahdollisimman hyvin. Ainakaan Suomessa ei ole ollut tapana pyrkiä ehdoin tahdoin vaihtoehtoihin, jotka toteuttavat niitä kaikista esillä olevista vaihtoehdoista huonoimmin. Perustuslakivaliokunnan käytännössä perustuslain 22 §:ään nojautuvan perusoikeusmyönteisen laintulkinnan onkin toistuvasti katsottu edellyttävän, että tuomioistuimet ja viranomaiset valitsevat erilaisista perusteltavissa olevista tulkintavaihtoehdoista sellaisen, joka parhaiten edistää perusoikeuksien tarkoituksen toteutumista (PeVM 25/1994 vp). Sote-asiassa viimeksi antamassaan lausunnossa valiokunta katsoi puolestaan yksiselitteisesti, että ”jos hallinnollisesti toimiva aluejako on mahdollista määritellä useilla vaihtoehtoisilla tavoilla, perusoikeuksien turvaamisvelvollisuus edellyttää, että niistä valitaan vaihtoehto, joka parhaiten toteuttaa kielelliset perusoikeudet.”
Se, että yllä siteeratussa lausumassa viitataan kielellisiin oikeuksiin, ei ole nyt merkityksellistä. Koska kielelliset perusoikeudet eivät ole Suomen perustuslaissa mitenkään erityisasemassa suhteessa muihin perusoikeuksiin, on lausuman syytä katsoa olevan ongelmitta sovellettavissa myös sosiaalisten perusoikeuksien toteuttamiseen.
Ylipäätäänkin suomalaiseen perustuslakiajatteluun sopii hyvin huonosti ajatus siitä, että hallitus toisi eduskuntaan tietoisesti nimenomaan huonosti perusoikeuksia toteuttavia lakiesityksiä. Päälinja on toiminut täysin päinvastoin. Juuri pyrkimyksestä toteuttaa perustuslaissa tehtyjä arvoratkaisuja mahdollisimman hyvin (eikä mahdollisimman huonosti) on myös kysymys siinä perustuslakivaliokunnan tavassa, jossa lakiehdotuksiin ehdotetaan perustuslakin nojautuvia muutoksia myös kun kysymys ei ole suoranaisesta säätämisjärjestykseen vaikuttavasta ristiriidasta perustuslain kanssa.
Lopuksi on syytä kiinnittää huomiota vielä yhteen mahdolliseen näkökohtaan, jolla Sipilän ajamaa 18 sote-alueen mallia saatetaan pyrkiä perustelemaan. Tämä argumentti liittyy alueelliseen itsehallintoon. Näyttää nimittäin siltä, että 18 alueeseen pohjautuvan malli voisi olla perusteltu siltä kannalta, että se edistää muita vaihtoehtoja paremmin alueellista demokratiaa ja asukkaiden itsehallintoa. Näin tietysti tekisi myös vaikkapa työläisten ja talonpoikien neuvostoille rakentuva malli. Valtiosääntöoikeudellisesti olennaista kuitenkin on, että koska sote-tehtävät ja niiden rahoitus on tarkoitus siirtää pois kunnilta, kysymys ei nyt ole enää perustuslain 121 §:ssä turvatusta kunnallisesta itsehallinnosta, vaan perustuslain 121 § 4 momentissa tarkoitetusta itsehallinnosta kuntia suuremmilla aluilla. Perustuslaki säätää tästä itsehallinnosta varsin niukasti, eikä perustuslakivaliokunnan käytäntöä juuri ole. Momentin mukaan itsehallinnosta kuntia suuremmilla alueilla säädetään lailla. On hyvin vaikea kuvitella sitä tilannetta, jossa PL 121 §:n 4 momenttiin liittyvät puoluepoliittiset tarpeet saisivat etusijan suhteessa perustuslain 2 luvussa turvattujen perusoikeuksien toteutumiseen.
JL & TO | {
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india
Updated: Mar 03, 2019 08:43 IST
Pakistan’s foreign minister, Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi, may have admitted that the founder and chief of the terror group behind the Pulwama attack, Masood Azhar, is in Pakistan, but he conveniently forgot to mention that the entire family of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) emir is involved in terror operations — controlled from a swank second HQ at Bahawalpur in Punjab province that the group moved to in 2017.
According to the intelligence dossier provided to Pakistan by India after the latter’s preemptive strike on a Jaish camp in Balakot, Pakistan, the new HQ is located at Markaz Usman-o-Ali, Railway Link Road, Bahawalpur, officials in India’s intelligence establishment said, asking not to be identified.
The entire decision-making body of the Deobandi terrorist group functions from within the complex under the direct command of Maulana Masood Azhar. A rabid India hater, Azhar has not been seen in public since 2017 as he has a life-threatening condition of spinal cancer, but his is still the final word in his sprawling terror empire, the officials added.
The HQ is a huge, modern building, and used for special events and meetings by Azhar’s brothers, the operating chiefs responsible for terror strikes in both India and Pakistan, and also Afghanistan, according to the officials.
Masood Azhar, officials said, still lives in the first headquarters of the group.
Also read | ‘Plan to target JeM base conceived a decade ago’: Source
Azhar’s elder brother, Ibrahim Azhar, was the principal orchestrator of the hijacking in December 1999 of Indian Airlines Flight IC-814 from Kathmandu to Kandahar with the help of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence and the Taliban. India freed Masood Azhar and two other jailed militants in return for the passengers and crew taken hostage.
Ibrahim Azhar is involved in JeM’s Afghan operations in support of its ideological affiliate, the Taliban.
Ibrahim’s elder son Usman Hyder was killed on October 30, 2018 in Jammu & Kashmir’s Tral area, only 10 days after he infiltrated into the Kashmir Valley. Ibrahim’s younger son Umair is hiding in the Pulwama area today and there are desperate attempts being made to ex-filtrate him with Pakistani JeM terrorists engaging the Indian security forces almost on a daily basis. Pulwama is where, on February 14, a Jaish suicide bomber attacked a bus carrying Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) men, killing at least 40 troopers.
Masood Azhar himself has two sons—Abdullah and Wali—and two daughters. Both the sons are involved in radicalising cadre for Islamic jihad in Kashmir.
Mufti Abdul Rauf Asghar is another brother of Masood Azhar and the head of JeM’s operations against India. Rauf has four sons (the oldest is only 16), and two daughters.
Masood Azhar has two more brothers, also younger than him. Maulana Ammar and Talha Saif are both believed to be involved in the terror factory of JeM.
While Masood Azhar is believed to have lost his brother-in-law Yusuf Azhar in the Balakot strike, according to Indian intelligence officials, Talha Rasheed, the son of Azhar’s other brother-in-law Abdul Rasheed Kamran, was killed by Indian security forces in an encounter in Pulwama on November 6, 2017.
“Given his clout with the Taliban and the Rawalpindi GHQ, Masood Azhar is running terror camps in Balochistan and in the Taliban stronghold areas in Afghanistan around the Khyber and Spin Boldak passes for action on either side of Durand or Radcliffe lines,” said a senior Indian official.
Also read | Pakistan’s doubts on JeM role in Pulwama invites India ire | {
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It didn’t take long for a central theme to emerge at the funeral of U.S. Marine Pfc. Joseph Livermore, an event attended by hundreds of area r… | {
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If you didn't want a lucky item on your F2P account You shouldn't have done SoF on all your F2P accounts
3,118 shares | {
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The U.S. Navy reportedly sailed a warship through the Taiwan Strait Wednesday just a day after Beijing said the United States is undermining global stability through “power politics.”
China said it would take all necessary military measures to defeat “separatists” in Taiwan.
The U.S. Navy identified the warship as the Antietam, according to Reuters.
CHINA: US AN ‘INITIATOR’ OF SECURITY CONCERNS, UNDERMINES GLOBAL SECURITY WITH 'POWER POLITICS'
“The transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Commander Clay Doss, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, said in a statement. “The U.S. Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows.”
The U.S. and China are already embroiled in a tense trade war as Taiwan and other Pacific allies grow concerned about China’s growing military threat.
Earlier this month, the U.S. tentatively approved the sale of $2.2 billion in arms to Taiwan – a proposal that had prompted China to threaten sanctions against the U.S.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“Taiwan makes no compromise on its freedom, democracy and sovereignty,” Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said about the crossing, Reuters reported. | {
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View Image Details Yongle Street, one of Changhua City’s main shopping streets, six hours before the Mazu procession arrives.
My last night in Changhua City 彰化市 was surprisingly eventful thanks to a fortunate accident of timing. Earlier in the day I had noticed an unusual uptick in the amount of activity on the streets while cycling around. Banquet tents had been setup on major thoroughfares, police were standing at major intersections, scooters flying yellow banners were buzzing around like angry hornets, and the air was filled with a palpable sense of expectation and excitement. After an early supper next to a coffee shop I often work at I approached to one of the staff (who speaks passable English) and asked, “What’s going on?” Their answer, “It’s the…” Trailing off, hands aflutter, obviously searching for the right word—and then: “Mazu!”
View Image Details Ghost money vendor outside the main Mazu temple in Changhua City. This isn’t usually here.
Mazu is easily the most popular deity in Taiwan and the Dajia Holy Mazu Pilgrimage 大甲媽祖繞境, which passes through Changhua 彰化, is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) religious festivals in the nation. I was aware it was going on but had missed the first pass (through the city from north to south) while in Hong Kong 香港 the previous weekend. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me to look up the timing of the return trip—when the pilgrimage makes its way back from Chiayi 嘉義1 to Zhènlán Temple 鎮瀾宮 in Dajia.
View Image Details Waiting for Mazu at the main Mazu temple in Changhua City. This is about six hours before arrival.
I had to wake up early the next day to meet my landlord so I didn’t have as much time to roam around as I would have liked. Even so, I still spent a couple of hours on the streets, reveling in the atmosphere and occasionally shooting some photos while doing my best to not get caught up in an unruly mob. The last time Mazu passed through Changhua City a brawl had broken out on the streets. It is considered good luck to touch Mazu’s palanquin and people have been known to get a little overenthusiastic about it.
View Image Details Monks at the end of Yongle Street.
View Image Details It’s a bit hard to see but these guys made a picture of Mazu out of firecrackers with a heart below. Helpfully they had someone with a stepladder setup near by to capture a better photo than this.
Temple events in central and southern Taiwan attract an interesting mix of characters. There are lots of old people, of course, as well as some regular family types, but also a lot of punk kids swaggering around with cheeks full of betel nut, recklessly riding scooters through crowds of people, hanging outside convenience stores and smoking cigarettes in little posses, and generally acting cool. Many of these same guys will act as palanquin-bearers or lay firecrackers for temple events.
View Image Details A glowing temple car. The dashboard was covered with bottles of what I would presume is alcohol. People like to get toasted at temple events in Taiwan and nobody’s driving fast enough for it to matter much.
My understanding is that troubled youth often fall in with religion in Taiwan, much like what happens in Monga, a Taiwanese coming-of-age film set in the 1980s that focuses on a gang of young toughs based out of a temple in Wànhuá District 萬華區. On big nights like this I always see lots of young people affecting a fashion sense and personal style generally known as táikè 台客, a formerly pejorative term that has been repurposed to express an authentic Taiwanese identity. I’m no expert in this kind of thing but it might be comparable to zef in South Africa, unabashedly hyper-local, low-class, and proud of it2.
View Image Details An offering in front of the Guandi Temple 關帝廟 in Changhua City.
View Image Details Minquan Market 民權市場 offering table. They were whipping up free dumplings and offering drinks for anyone passing by.
One thing the holy Mazu pilgrimage is known for is free food and drink. In my brief walkabout I saw many different businesses handing out dumplings and the like. I rather wish I had stopped for some but was caught up in trying to find a halfway decent perch to watch the procession pass. This wasn’t easy as tens of thousands of other people has the same general idea. If I’m not mistaken Changhua City is the biggest settlement the procession passes through—so it probably doesn’t get any crazier except at both ends of the pilgrimage.
View Image Details An incredible crowd gathers to welcome Mazu.
Eventually I found a spot by getting ahead of the process and then working my way backwards along its path through the crowd. As luck would have it I ended up not far from Kāizhāngzǔ Temple 開彰祖廟, the tiny nub of a historic temple at the former location of the city’s southern gate. Changhua City’s walls were dismantled in the Japanese colonial era and several historic temples were partly demolished or even bisected to make way for road widening measures and the like. As such, you can’t judge the importance of a Changhua City temple by its size or appearance. There are several temples with absolutely huge followings and considerable influence that don’t look like much at all.
View Image Details Kicking off the half hour fireworks show in front of Kaizhangzu Temple 開彰祖廟 .
I don’t really know where Kaizhangzu Temple fits into all of this as the Chinese language articles I dug up didn’t make a lot of sense to me (even with machine translation). Whatever the case, this temple made an enormous investment in fireworks to delay the procession. The way this works, insofar as I understand it, is that the procession stops at various temples to charge them up with Mazu energy. The longer the procession stops the more energy a temple will receive. And how do you make the procession stop? Blow things up! The gods of Taiwan love for things to be rènào 熱鬧, a term that literally means “hot and noisy”, and translates to “lively”. In real-world terms this means big crowds, lots of hustle and bustle, deafening noises, and plenty of things that go boom. And so the various temples blow up as many things as they can for as long as they can to accrue maximum spiritual brownie points.
View Image Details More fireworks means more Mazu. The longer the show the more luck this temple will receive.
The fireworks show in front of Kaizhangzu Temple had all the subtlety of a brick to the face. It was absolutely epic in length, tearing a hole in the sky for a good half hour or so, but Symphony of Fire it was not. It was, in fact, hilariously monotonous, a ceaseless barrage on the senses that left us all halfway deaf and blind and without much of a sense of smell. I may as well have smoked a pack of cigarettes for all the toxic fumes I must have inhaled while wondering when it would end.
View Image Details A curtain of lights.
No particular regard is shown for personal safety when blowing things up to appease the gods in Taiwan. As you can see from my photos there is hardly any room for anyone to move—and the fireworks are being shot in all directions in a rather cramped downtown intersection. I had a laugh thinking about the Taipei Dome controversy, in which an unfinished stadium in the nation’s capital is under fire for an unrealistic evacuation plan. Temple culture in Taiwan gets a free pass for this sort of thing—and it’s only a matter of luck that nobody ends up getting killed. (Well, they probably do from time to time, but I don’t have any news reports handy.)
View Image Details The big guns come out for Mazu.
Things really started to heat up at the 25 minute mark. After a curtain of fire rained down on the crowd around the intersection the temple brought out the big guns—some kind of crazy fireworks cannon that swept back and forth launching volleys of explosives into the sky, put-put-put. Many of these blasts swept close to the many people watching the show on the rooftops surrounding the intersection.
View Image Details The show goes on… and on… and on.
One thing I don’t really understand about Taiwan is how blasé everyone seems about this sort of thing. I kept expecting to hear a cheer go up when the fireworks ended but there was no sound, no clapping, nothing to mark the passage from one phase to the next. The inordinately bright light on the truck behind Mazu’s palanquin, heretofore hidden in the cloud of smoke in the middle of the intersection, began to creep forward, and the crowd began to move—slowly, at first, and then violently.
View Image Details Finally we’re on the move again. I have about a second to snap a quick picture of Mazu’s palanquin as the crowd surges forward.
I was not inclined to risk getting trampled simply for the privilege of snapping a good photo up close so I pressed myself against the back of a parked car and did my best to withstand the onrushing human torrent. The photo I managed to capture is blurry as hell but in a way that’s a fairly representative of the experience. People were absolutely mad for it, screaming in desperation when the palanquin passed just out of reach, pushing and shoving to break through the crowd for their chance to touch the divine.
View Image Details Half an hour of fireworks left nothing more than a smoldering crater and a hell of a lot of smoke in the air.
The intersection next to the temple was a smoldering crater. Don’t spare a moment to contemplate the environmental impact of this single display—it is merely a drop in the bucket. From the Mazu pilgrimage live map (yes, that’s a thing) you can see that the procession stopped at around eight temples in Changhua City alone—and many more besides. And let me tell you: Taiwanese need absolutely no excuse to set off fireworks at any time of day or night in absolutely any quantity. (Indeed, the fireworks were still going at dawn, a fact that I was all too keenly aware of as I lay wide awake in my bed later on.)
View Image Details Walking back to my bicycle I heard some mainstream electronic music up ahead. Lo and behold, a local DJ was rocking.
I wandered back up Mínzú Road 民族路 to where I had parked my bicycle, crossing my fingers that it hadn’t been subsumed by a sea of scooters outside Kāihuà Temple 開化寺, making a brief stop to pick up some fresh watermelon juice. Along the way I witnessed another curiously Taiwanese phenomena: a DJ blasting out EDM tunes on the street to a completely still audience. People here don’t seem to know how to dance—or even that they should be dancing—so the usual thing is for people to stand around like a bunch of stiffs and take photos. You see the same thing at local nightclubs where the DJs and dancers on stage are a commodity to be consumed and perhaps documented, not an experience to participate in by dancing. So why bother having a DJ at all? To answer that all you need to do is return to first principles: the gods like it hot and noisy. DJs (particularly attractive female DJs) playing EDM are exactly that.
View Image Details Last night on the streets of Changhua City.
I would have loved to stay out to see what else might happen, particularly when Mazu arrived at her destination for the night—the main Mazu temple in town—but I had to turn in. I really couldn’t have asked for a better last night in Changhua City. I have not always enjoyed living here this winter—but experiences like this remind me of how much fun it can be when you take to the streets and get caught up in the wild side of Taiwanese culture. At any rate, I hope this little window into a brief few hours of this nine-day Mazu odyssey stoked your interest in the subject! | {
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This article's title is derived from disc or cartridge data ... because it was never named outside of its respective game's files.
Swordory is an enemy in the Kirby series, debuting in Kirby's Return to Dream Land. It yields the Sword ability when inhaled.
Contents show]
Physical Appearance
Swordory is an animated sword with a brown hilt, a small pair of wings, and a single blue eye in the middle of its handle.
Games
Swordory debuts as an enemy in this game, first appearing in Onion Ocean in the main game or the Sword Challenge in the Lor Starcutter. When Kirby approaches Swordory, it will wind up and then release three quick slashes in an attempt to hurt the pink puffball. Occasionally, Swordory will use a secondary attack, lunging toward the player with a quick thrust.
Notably, large groups of Swordorys appear in the Sword Challenge.
Swordory appears in the New Challenge Stages in this game. It appears in the Sword Challenge, the Fighter Combat Chamber, and Magolor Race 1. Swordory's behavior has not changed since Kirby's Return to Dream Land.
Swordory is not present in the main game, and instead only appears in Stages 3 and 4 of the Dedede's Drum Dash sub-game. Here, whether or not King Dedede is close by, it slashes through the air in a repetitive fashion. Swordory also appears in the downloadable Dedede's Drum Dash Deluxe with the same behavior and purpose.
Etymology
Swordory's name is derived from the word sword, referencing its design.
Gallery | {
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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan police officer and cook poisoned their colleagues at a checkpoint in an assault coordinated with insurgent fighters that left six dead in the country's south, officials said Saturday.
It was the latest in a string of attacks from inside the Afghan army and police that are threatening to undermine both the partnership with international troops — which have been the target of many attacks — and the morale of Afghan forces, who have suffered equally heavy casualties from such strikes.
The police officer and the cook worked with outside insurgents in the assault, which hit police manning a checkpoint in the Gereskh district of Helmand province, the governor's office said in a statement.
They poisoned two of the officers and then the militants attacked from outside, killing the remaining four officers, provincial spokesman Ahmad Zirak said. He did not say how the officers were poisoned. The police officer was captured as he fled, but the cook escaped and remains at large, Zirak added.
The insurgent gunmen escaped by motorcycle with weapons and ammunition, the governor's statement said.
A recent upsurge in the number of insider attacks on coalition troops by Afghan soldiers or police — or insurgents disguised in their uniforms — has further undermined public support for the war in the West. So far this year, at least 52 foreign troops — about half of them Americans — have been killed in insider attacks.
The Afghan government has not provided statistics on the number of its forces killed in insider attacks. However, U.S. military statistics obtained by The Associated Press show at least 53 members of the Afghan security forces had been killed by the end of August.
Meanwhile, a Taliban attack elsewhere in Helmand killed two district community council members, while Taliban-fired rocket-propelled grenades destroyed a warehouse full of food destined for the main U.S. base in Afghanistan.
Insurgents ambushed the council members while they were driving to a tribal meeting in the volatile Sangin district, the governor's office said in its statement, adding that the attackers escaped and police are pursuing them.
Story continues
The attack against the council members is a reminder of the other worrying trend in insurgent tactics this year — a shift toward more targeted killings of those affiliated with the government. The United Nations has recorded a sharp increase in such killings in the first six months of 2012 as compared with the same period of 2011.
In the warehouse attack, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at a compound used by military contractor Supreme Group to store food and other supplies destined for Bagram Air Field, the main U.S. base in the country. A warehouse inside the compound caught fire in the assault and burned through the night.
"The local fire brigade attended the scene and brought the fire under control, but the warehouse itself and all contents were destroyed," Victoria Frost, a spokeswoman for Supreme Group in Dubai, wrote in an email. She said no one was injured and staff at the site did not have to evacuate.
The fire could still be seen burning Saturday morning, said Mohammad Asif, the deputy administrator for Bagram district, where the compound is located. He said the Supreme compound encompasses about five hectares (12 acres).
Frost said the fire was contained much earlier.
"As with any major fire, there are some areas still smoldering but there is no current danger to any of the staff or the other buildings within the compound," she said.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in an email that the fire at the Supreme Group compound destroyed a "large stock of food meant for U.S. troops."
Frost did not say how much material was destroyed though she did say it was "primarily food supplies," adding that the company was working to make up the loss with inventory from other warehouses.
____
Vogt reported from Kabul. Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report in Kabul. | {
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Tangram Documentation
Tangram is a flexible browser-based mapping engine, designed for real-time rendering of 2D and 3D maps from geolocated vector data.
This repo stores the source files for our documentation site:
👉 https://tangrams.readthedocs.io/ 👈 | {
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Last updated on .From the section Tennis
Britain's Katie Boulter and Cameron Norrie beat their higher ranked opponents in one hour and seven minutes
Katie Boulter and Cameron Norrie beat Serena Williams and Frances Tiafoe in the mixed doubles to give Great Britain victory over the US at the Hopman Cup.
The Britons fought back to win 3-4 (2-5) 4-3 (5-4) 4-1 in Perth after Norrie had stunned Tiafoe in the singles and Boulter had lost to Williams.
GB were already eliminated from the team event but the win is a confidence boost before the Australian Open.
The first Grand Slam of the year starts on 14 January in Melbourne.
Britain finished their Group B campaign with two wins and a loss but it is not enough to progress to the final, with defending champions Switzerland having already booked their place.
They can, however, take great encouragement from their showing here, having followed up their surprise opening victory over Greece with this win over much higher ranked opponents.
World number 90 Norrie started the day with a 7-6 (7-4) 6-0 victory over Tiafoe - who is ranked 51 places above him - before world number 97 Katie Boulter put up a fight in the second set of her 6-1 7-6 (7-2) defeat by former world number one Williams.
"She's a champion so to actually share the court with her is such a privilege," Boulter, 22, said.
The United States failed to progress from the group after three defeats, despite 23-time Grand Slam champion Williams winning all three of her singles matches here.
The 37-year-old, who was watched by her one-year-old daughter Olympia from the stands, said the event had been great preparation for her bid to win an eighth Australian Open title.
"It was perfect - it's just like this in Melbourne," Williams said on the tournament website.
"It's the exact same sun and it gives me so many problems. After you serve, you are blind for the next two points." | {
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